Two experiments investigated the effectiveness of reading backwards as a proofreading technique. Experiment 1 examined the general usefulness of backwards vs. forwards proofreading strategies and the effects of these strategies for two types of typographical errors: misspellings and contextual errors. Subjects, 36 undergraduate students at a…

An alternative definition has been developed of the delta scale of item difficulty used at Educational Testing Service. The traditional delta scale uses an inverse normal transformation based on normal ogive models developed years ago. However, no use is made of this fact in typical uses of item deltas. It is simply one way to make the probability…

The transcript of and guide to a two-cassette course designed to assist speakers of Black English in erasure of their accents includes an introduction on Black and Standard English usage, an explanation of the system used in this course, the pronunciation symbols used, and an explanation of how to change or eliminate trouble spots. The course is…

This report describes efforts made in 1981-82 to develop an error-prone model (EPM) to help judge the extent of misreporting of income and family size on applications for government-sponsored school meal benefits. (EPM's are statistical formulas that produce scoring systems used to distinguish applications likely to result in excess benefits from…

A probabilistic approach is introduced to classify and diagnose erroneous rules of operation resulting from a variety of misconceptions ("bugs") in a procedural domain of arithmetic. The model is contrasted with the deterministic approach which has commonly been used in the field of artificial intelligence, and the advantage of treating the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the division procedures of preschool children to determine whether such procedures involved one-to-one correspondence. Large and small numerosity trials were included so that the amount of effort and ease of using other procedures would vary. Odd and even number trials were included to determine whether…

A discussion of the preference structure of repair sequences in conversation argues that the structure varies predictably from one context to the next, based on the interpersonal relationship of the interlocutors. In particular, it is said to depend on the asymmetrical distribution of knowledge among the interlocutors, including knowledge of the…

In order to determine the knowledge and skills needed by novice programmers to successfully learn computer programming, four studies were conducted using a clinical interview technique. The first study determined that many systematic errors in programming were due to programmers' high-level misconceptions of the nature of the computer and of the…

Children learn arithmetic procedures by rote, rather than by constructing them with an understanding of numbers. Rote learning produces lack of flexibility, nonsensical errors, and other difficulties. Proposed is a theory of conceptual understanding and its role in learning and executing arithmetic procedures. The basic hypothesis is that…

This paper is the result of a study of ninety-two essays on three different topics by fifth-form pupils in the city of Ibadan. (Author)

The major emphasis of this paper is in the examination of test item response patterns. Tatsuoka and Tatsuoka (1980) have developed two indices of response consistency: the norm-conformity index (NCI) and the individual consistency index (ICI). The NCI provides a measure of the degree of consistency between the response pattern of an individual and…

If older children automatically label pictorial stimuli, then their performance should be impaired on tasks in which such labeling would increase the error rate. Children were asked to learn pairs of verbal or pictorial stimuli which, when combined, formed a different compound word (BUTTER-FLY). Subsequently, a false recognition test that included…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of two methods of teaching reading upon reversal errors. A sample of 210 pupils in grades one through four were selected for this study. One half of the group had learned to read through an analytic method while the other half had learned through a synthetic method. Since the synthetic group had…

Reported are the results of a study to determine if specific errors in subtraction occur when students demonstrate ability to apply selected decimal numeration system principles. A secondary purpose was to examine and compare errors made by various subsets of the sample population characterized by grade level, arithmetic achievement, mental…

This issue contains five articles dealing with several aspects of linguistic theory. The first, "Origine et evolution de la notion de 'situation' de 'l'Ecole linguistique de Londres': de Malinowski a Lyons," examines the origin and meaning of the concept of "situation" in articles by the London school of linguists. The second, "Some Aspects of a…