Use of subjective estimation in motor skill tests of young children: judgment based on observation of behavior in daily life

This study assessed what motor skill tests were appropriate by observing 636 young children's behavior in daily life (low-aged classes, M = 3.7 yr.; middle-aged classes, M = 4.7 yr.; high-aged classes, M = 5.7 yr.). A homeroom teacher and an assistant teacher estimated motor achievement as pass-or-fail, and then judged pass-or-fail based on practical testing. Estimate-re-estimate agreement, interrater agreement, and agreement between estimated values and measured values were examined for 27 items, e.g., skipping, bouncing a ball, and turning on one leg. Estimate-re-estimate agreement was high on the whole. Interrater agreement ranged from 34% to 100% for 3-yr.-olds, 21% to 100% for 4-yr.-olds, and 89% to 100% for 5-yr.-olds. Agreement between estimated values and measured values greater than 80% was found in most items for 5-yr.olds (14 items). After examining the above-mentioned agreements, 26 items were selected as possible tests to judge motor development, using a pass-or-fail, from the observation of young children's behavior in daily life.     

Usefulness of assessment techniques in assessing classification for emotional disturbance and generating classroom recommendations

A national survey of specialist school psychologists examined the perceived usefulness of assessment techniques in making decisions regarding eligibility for the educational classification of emotional disturbance and in generating classroom recommendations. Analysis showed measures rated as most useful were interviews with the parent, teacher, and student, observations of the student, and norm-referenced rating scales. Projective techniques were least useful. These findings are important in the context of "best practices" for the multidimensional assessment of emotional disturbance which promotes a more direct link between assessment and intervention.     

Minimizing error in measurement of error: a proposed method for calculation of error in a two-dimensional motor task

Traditional one-dimensional error scores are still consistently used in research on motor learning to quantify two-dimensional error; however, the inherent differences in two-dimensional tasks render that application inappropriate and often misleading. Consequently, the purpose of this paper was to propose a novel method of presenting errors, which more precisely represents the accuracy, direction, and variability of error in two-dimensional settings. Although closely related to several alternatives for representing errors, the methodology used and the results obtained provide a more accurate procedure for pinpointing critical trends in what have been commonly referred to as AE (absolute error), VE (variable error), CE (constant error), and E (total variability). The proposed measurements of AVE (adjusted variable error), DE (directional error), TSE (total spread of error), and RE (radial error) provide composite error scores carrying a variety of information about performance on two-dimensional tasks. Formulas and examples are provided to facilitate computation and enhance understanding of the proposed scores.     

Human movement-related brain potentials preceding voluntary movements in different arousal states monitored with skin potential level

The present study investigated the readiness potential (RP) preceding a brisk extension of the right middle finger during different arousal states as monitored by skin potential level (SPL). The late component of the readiness potential in the medium arousal state was significantly larger than those in the low and high arousal states. This finding indicates that the RP waveform may vary as a function of arousal states, suggesting the inverse U-shaped relationship proposed in studies of the contingent negative variation.     

A left hemisphere, but not right hemispace, advantage for tactual simultaneity judgments

Hemispheric asymmetries for tactile simultaneity judgments were investigated in 34 dextral adults. Pairs of vibrotactile stimuli with simultaneous or successive onsets were delivered unilaterally to the left or right hand. Participants made a forced-choice, bipedal response, indicating whether a stimulus was simultaneous or successive. The effect of hemispatial attentional biases was investigated, using ipsilateral (arms uncrossed) and contralateral (arms crossed) hand placements. Trials presented to the right hand were associated with fewer errors and a trend for faster response times than were those presented to the left hand. There was no asymmetry in response bias. Manipulations of hemispace did not affect the right hand advantage. These results confirm the existence of a left hemisphere temporal-processing advantage but fail to demonstrate that the asymmetry is the result of a rightward attentional bias. The implications of these results for absolute and relative models of hemispheric specialization are discussed.     

Tactile perception in blind Braille readers: a psychophysical study of acuity and hyperacuity using gratings and dot patterns

It is not clear whether the blind are generally superior to the sighted on measures of tactile sensitivity or whether they excel only on certain tests owing to the specifics of their tactile experience. We compared the discrimination performance of blind Braille readers and age-matched sighted subjects on three tactile tasks using precisely specified stimuli. Initially, the blind significantly outperformed the sighted at a hyperacuity task using Braille-like dot patterns, although, with practice, both groups performed equally well. On two other tasks, hyperacute discrimination of gratings that differed in ridge width and spatial-acuity-dependent discrimination of grating orientation, the performance of the blind did not differ significantly from that of sighted subjects. These results probably reflect the specificity of perceptual learning due to Braille-reading experience.     

Spelling-sound regularity effects on eye fixations in reading

An interaction of word frequency and word regularity has typically been observed in naming and lexical decision experiments in which, in addition to an overall effect of word frequency, responses to low-frequency exception words are slower than those to low-frequency regular words, while no such difference occurs with high-frequency words. The only eye movement study to examine this effect in reading (Inhoff & Topolski, 1994) reported only transient effects of regularity. In the present experiment, we examined the frequency x regularity interaction using different stimuli than those of Inhoff and Topolski and also varied the parafoveal preview of the target word prior to fixation. When the preview was valid, the frequency x regularity interaction appeared. However, with an invalid preview, the effect of regularity disappeared. The results suggest that the activation of phonological codes is a very early component of reading.     

Evaluating frequency proximity in stream segregation

Consecutive sounds of similar structure that are close in frequency or pitch are more likely to be perceived as part of the same sequence than those at greater frequency separations. The principle of grouping into such perceptual sequences, or auditory streams, is known as frequency proximity. However, the metric by which one frequency difference is judged to be greater or less than another in complex auditory scenes is not yet known. Two experiments explored the metric for frequency proximity. We presented repeating three-tone stimulus patterns at a rate where they are normally heard as two streams, one containing the highest tone and one containing the lowest. The middle tone joined one stream or the other depending on its frequency. Subjects reported the perceived allocation of the variable tone by responding on a 5-point scale. The frequency at which either of these two percepts was equally probable was found to be lower than a logarithmic midpoint or the midpoints on a cochlear map or the Mel scale; that is, it was unlike metrics arrived at by direct comparisons of tones. Further, the midpoint for high and low tones presented synchronously was lower than that for the same tones presented sequentially, demonstrating that in addition to a proximity factor, some additional factor or factors must operate differently when the lower and upper fixed tones are, or are not, presented simultaneously.     

The psychophysics of imagery

A series of experiments considers the extent to which the interrelations among subjective magnitudes aroused by images corresponds to those for subjective magnitudes aroused by physical stimuli. In Experiment 1, 68 undergraduates typed phrases in response to graded categories regarding the imagined magnitude of lights, sounds, and smells. In Experiment 2, 5 undergraduates and, in Experiment 3, 3 graduate students then magnitude estimated the image intensity aroused by each of these stimulus phrases. In Experiments 4 and 5, the same subjects performed cross-modality matches between phrases arousing images for different attributes (light, sound, and smell). Statistical analysis indicates that estimates based on images display many of the same patterns as those based on physical stimuli. The major exception involves sequence effects, present for actual stimuli but not for images.     

Revisiting the constraint attunement hypothesis: reply to Ericsson, Patel, and Kintsch (2000) and Simon and Gobet (2000)

This article is part of an exchange concerning the contributions of the constraint attunement hypothesis (CAH) to the understanding of expertise effects in memory recall. K. A. Ericsson, V. Patel, and W. Kintsch (2000) and H. A. Simon and F. Gobet (2000) claim that the CAH is not novel and that existing theories of this phenomenon do not have the limitations that were attributed to them. In this reply, the CAH is argued to be the only theory of expertise effects in memory recall to adopt the abstraction hierarchy as a theory of the environment, a feature that has important theoretical implications. Also, other theories focus on psychological mechanisms but have not satisfied the burden of scientific proof required of process theories. Progress can be made by integrating the complementary advantages of existing theories into a unified theory that acknowledges the equally important roles of the organism and the environment.