Classical item and test analysis with graphics: The ViSta-CITA program

Current advances in test development theory have mostly been influenced by item response theory. Notwithstanding this, classical test theory still plays a major part in the development of tests for applied educational and behavioral research. This article describes ViSta-CITA, a computer program that implements a set of classical item and test analysis methods that incorporate innovative graphics whose aim is to provide deeper insight into analysis results. Such an aim is achieved through the SpreadPlot, a graphical method designed to display multiple, simultaneous, interactive views of the analysis results. It behaves on a dynamic basis, so that users’ changes (e.g., selecting a subset of items) are automatically updated in the graphical windows showing the analysis results. Moreover, ViSta-CITA is freely available, and its code is open to modifications or additions by the user. Features such as these constitute useful tools for research and teaching purposes related to test development.     

Inconsistent Self-Report of Delinquency by Adolescents and Young Adults with ADHD

The purpose of the current study was to test the ability of adolescents and young adults with childhood ADHD to reliably self-report delinquency history. Data were examined from the Pittsburgh ADHD Longitudinal Study (PALS), a follow-up study of children diagnosed with ADHD between 1987 and 1996. Self-report of lifetime delinquency history was compared to concurrent parent-report and to self-report 1 year later. Participants included 313 male probands and 209 demographically similar comparison individuals without ADHD. Results indicated that adolescents and young adults with childhood ADHD were more likely than comparison participants to fail to report delinquent acts reported by a parent and to recant acts they endorsed 1 year earlier. This trend was most apparent for acts of mild to moderate severity. After controlling for several covariates, current ADHD symptom severity and parent-report of the participant’s tendency to lie predicted reporting fewer delinquent acts than one’s parent. Current ADHD symptom severity also predicted more recanting of previously endorsed acts. Based on these findings, several recommendations are made for the assessment of delinquency history in adolescents and young adults with childhood ADHD.     

The Academic Experience of Male High School Students with ADHD

This study compared the high school academic experience of adolescents with and without childhood ADHD using data from the Pittsburgh ADHD Longitudinal Study (PALS). Participants were 326 males with childhood ADHD and 213 demographically similar males without ADHD who were recruited at the start of the follow-up study. Data were collected yearly from parents, teachers and schools. The current study used assessment points at which the participants were currently in or had recently completed grades 9, 10, 11, and 12. Results indicated that adolescents with ADHD experienced significant academic impairment in high school relative to comparison adolescents, including lower overall and main academic subject grade point averages (GPA), lower levels of class placement (e.g. remedial vs. honors), and higher rates of course failure. In addition, teacher reports indicated that adolescents with ADHD completed and turned in a significantly lower percentage of assignments and were significantly less likely to be working up to their potential. Adolescents with ADHD were also significantly more likely to be absent or tardy during the academic year, and they were over eight times more likely than adolescents without ADHD to drop out of high school. These findings demonstrate that children with ADHD continue to experience severe academic impairment into high school.     

Risk profiles and peer violence in the context of school and leisure time

Though violence at school is by no means a new phenomenon, there has been growing social and scientific concern about this issue in recent years. The present study builds on prior analysis of the roles adolescents play in peer harassment, and the relationship between violence occurring at school and during free time. A representative sample of students between the ages of 14 and 18 was selected in the Community of Madrid (N = 1622) through random cluster sampling (school was the unit of analysis). Participants completed the C.E.V.E.O. questionnaire, which presents fifteen situations involving peer violence. The results reveal a relationship between violent situations occurring at school and during free time, and between the roles of aggressor and victim during free time. A profile analysis yielded three different categories: the "minimal violence exposure" type (1126 adolescents), the "psychological violence exposure" type (413 adolescents), and the "high risk of violence" type (83 adolescents). Judging from these results, we posit that interventions must be designed which tailor to each group and their respective risk situations.     

Substance use and delinquency among adolescents with childhood ADHD: The protective role of parenting

Several domains of parenting have been identified as important for adolescent well-being. Whether these same domains are equally beneficial for adolescents with ADHD histories remains an empirical and clinically important question. This study examined whether parental knowledge of their teen's activities and whereabouts, consistency, support, and parent-adolescent conflict are associated with substance use and delinquency similarly for adolescents with and without a diagnosis of ADHD in childhood. A sample of 242 adolescents, 142 diagnosed with ADHD in childhood and prospectively followed into adolescence, and 100 without ADHD in childhood, were the focus of study. The relations between adolescent-reported outcomes (i.e., substance use and delinquency) and parenting behaviors were tested using latent variable modeling to determine both the effects of general (common) and specific (unique) parenting behaviors for participants with and without a history of ADHD. Adolescents' report of parental knowledge was a significant correlate of delinquency and substance use above and beyond other parenting variables and the variance in common across the parenting variables. More knowledge was associated with less delinquency and substance use for all participants, but parental knowledge was more strongly associated with alcohol use for adolescents with versus without childhood ADHD. These correlational findings suggest that, despite the increased difficulty of parenting youths with ADHD histories, actions taken by parents and youth to increase parental awareness may provide some protection against behavioral transgressions known to be elevated in this population. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The effects of age and emotional valence on recognition memory: An ex‐Gaussian components analysis

The aim of this work was to study the effects of valence and age on visual image recognition memory. The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) battery was used, and response time data were analyzed using analysis of variance, as well as an ex‐Gaussian fit method. Older participants were slower and more variable in their reaction times. Response times were longer for negative valence pictures, however this was statistically significant only for young participants. This suggests that negative emotional valence has a strong effect on recognition memory in young but not in old participants. The τ parameter, often related to attention in the literature, was smaller for young than old participants in an ex‐Gaussian fit. Differences on the τ parameter might suggest poorer attentional performance in old participants.     

An Index of Progress Towards the MDG1 in Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa

In this article we present a new proposal for measuring progress towards Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, applied to a group of countries particularly affected by poverty in the context of southern Africa and the Horn of Africa. Our index is novel in that it has been constructed taking into account a larger number of variables defined in the UN Millennium Declaration which are generally considered to determine countries’ levels of underdevelopment. As technique applied to the data, provided by the UN, we used the P₂ distance of Pena method and applied it to the year 2007; the last year for which data are available. This index incorporates variables that permit a ranking of the countries of southern Africa and the Horn of Africa in terms of those partial indicators. To sum up, the objective is to produce a global indicator of fulfilment of the MDG1.     

Applications of the Speed–Accuracy Trade-off and Impulse-Variability Theory for Teaching Ballistic Motor Skills

Bridging the gap between innovative research and teaching is a fundamental necessity for physical education practitioners to promote motor skill development and competency. This requires practitioners to understand, synthesize, and appropriately apply relevant research from different academic domains in their instructional environments. Ballistic motor skills such as kicking, throwing, and striking are fundamentally integrated into many games and sports and provide a foundation for physical activity and fitness for children and adults. Unfortunately, many individuals do not attain a high level of competence in these types of skills by adolescence. The purpose of this review is to integrate theory, pedagogical best practices, and current evidence on studies relating to Fitts’ Law’s application of the speed–accuracy trade-off and impulse-variability theory to provide an evidence-based framework for promoting effective instructional environments for learning ballistic motor skills.     

Inhibitory mechanism of the matching heuristic in syllogistic reasoning

A number of heuristic-based hypotheses have been proposed to explain how people solve syllogisms with automatic processes. In particular, the matching heuristic employs the congruency of the quantifiers in a syllogism — by matching the quantifier of the conclusion with those of the two premises. When the heuristic leads to an invalid conclusion, successful solving of these conflict problems requires the inhibition of automatic heuristic processing. Accordingly, if the automatic processing were based on processing the set of quantifiers, no semantic contents would be inhibited. The mental model theory, however, suggests that people reason using mental models, which always involves semantic processing. Therefore, whatever inhibition occurs in the processing implies the inhibition of the semantic contents.