Empirical derivation of SVIB-Holland scales and conversion tables

Significant relationships between the Holland Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) and the Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB) were again empirically demonstrated in this study, and conversion equations were developed to use standard scores of SVIB scales, rather than items, to produce estimates of VPI scores. Cross validation on a limited population yielded supportive evidence that these conversion equations can provide meaningful VPI estimates from SVIB scale scores. The need for validation across a variety of populations was underscored in order to assess further generalizability of these findings.     

Children's component selection with varying degrees of training

With the component selection measure developed by Hale and Morgan (1973), children's use of selective attention was assessed at six levels of learning, ranging from undertraining to overtraining, and this function was examined at each of ages 4, 8, and 12. It was found that, as the children learned the task, they maintained a relatively wide focus of attention, acquiring information about both features of the stimuli, color and shape. Thus, contrary to the model under investigation, the children did not exercise a high degree of selectivity as they approached mastery of the task; nor did overtraining produce the expected “broadening” of attention, as the children acquired little stimulus information beyond the point at which criterion had been reached. The data were interpreted to be more consistent with a model that assumes the bulk of stimulus learning to occur prior to task mastery.     

Development and Validation of the Clutter Image Rating

Few instruments are available to assess compulsive hoarding and severity of clutter. Accuracy of assessment is important to understanding the clinical significance of the problem. To overcome problems associated with over- and under-reporting of hoarding symptoms, the clutter image rating (CIR) was developed. This pictorial scale contains nine equidistant photographs of severity of clutter representing each of three main rooms of most people’s homes: living room, kitchen, and bedroom. The psychometric properties of this measure were examined in two studies. Internal consistency, test–retest, and interobserver reliabilities were good and convergent validity with other questionnaire and interview measures was also good. The CIR correlated more strongly with measures of clutter than with other hoarding and psychopathology scales. The CIR’s very brief pictorial assessment method makes it useful in clinical and treatment contexts for measuring the clutter dimension of compulsive hoarding. The Clutter Image Rating (CIR) is available in conjunction with the following publication: Steketee, G., & Frost, R.O. (2007). Treatment of compulsive hoarding. New York: Oxford University Press at .     

Developmental trends in children's component selection

A new method is introduced for assessing children's component selection—i.e., the disposition to attend to a single feature of multifaceted stimuli. Eight-year-old children were found to exercise component selection to a lesser degree than 4-year-olds; while children at both age levels attended primarily to one stimulus component (shape), the older children showed a moderate amount of attention to a secondary redundant feature (color) as well. However, a comparable age difference in attention deployment was not observed when a single stimulus dimension (shape) was “relevant” in two variant tasks. These results imply a developmentally increasing ability to distinguish between conditions in which attending to redundant stimulus information can and cannot be useful. That this ability undergoes little further development beyond age 8 was suggested in a second experiment with 8- and 12-year-olds in which the three tasks produced relatively similar developmental trends in performance.     

Second-order dimensions of the Work Values Inventory (WVI)

An item factor analysis of the 45 items of the Work Values Inventory (WVI) for 445 physically disabled clients produced six second-order dimensions: Stimulating Work, Interpersonal Satisfaction, Economic Security, Responsible Autonomy, Comfortable Existence, and Esthetic Concerns. These second-order factors provide a summary of clients' work motivation at a higher level of generality that is consistent with the WVI primary structure. The six factors are virtually independent of age, education, and intelligence and can be hand-scored by a simple procedure.     

The role of multiple-choice tests in increasing access to difficult-to-retrieve information

Answering multiple-choice questions improves access to otherwise difficult-to-retrieve knowledge tested by those questions. Here, I examine whether multiple-choice questions can also improve accessibility to related knowledge that is not explicitly tested. In two experiments, participants first answered challenging general knowledge (trivia) multiple-choice questions containing competitive incorrect alternatives and then took a final cued-recall test with those previously tested questions and new related questions for which a previously incorrect answer was the correct answer. In Experiment 1, participants correctly answered related questions more often and faster when they had taken a multiple-choice test than when they had not. In Experiment 2, I showed that the more accurate and faster responses were not simply a result of previous exposure to those alternatives. These findings have practical implications for potential benefits of multiple-choice testing and implications for the processes that occur when individuals answer multiple-choice questions.     

Children's selective attention with variation in amount of stimulus exposure

Selective attention in children was measured by means of a central-incidental learning paradigm. Children performed a central task requiring attention to one element in each of several stimuli, after which their incidental learning was assessed by a combination of two tests measuring: (a) recognition of the second, or incidental, element in each stimulus, and (b) association between the incidental and central elements. Principal independent variables were the age of the children (9 vs 12 years) and the amount of exposure time per trial in the central task (6 vs 12 sec). Douling the exposure time increased the incidental as well as the central scores for 9-year-olds, while it increased only the central scores for 12-year-olds. It would appear that younger children maintain a relatively nonselective orientation during an extended exposure period, distributing attention between both relevant and irrelevant stimulus elements, whereas adolescents adopt a more selective approach and concentrate exclusively on task-relevant information. The results are discussed in relation to hypotheses regarding development of selective attention.     

Effects of testing on subsequent re‐encoding and long‐term forgetting of action‐relevant materials: On the influence of recall type

Testing one's memory of previously studied information reduces the rate of forgetting, compared to restudy. However, little is known about how this direct testing effect applies to action phrases (e.g., “wash the car”) – a learning material relevant to everyday memory. As action phrases consist of two different components, a verb (e.g., “wash”) and a noun (e.g., “car”), testing can either be implemented as noun‐cued recall of verbs or verb‐cued recall of nouns, which may differently affect later memory performance. In the present study, we investigated the effect of testing for these two recall types, using verbally encoded action phrases as learning materials. Results showed that repeated study–test practice, compared to repeated study–restudy practice, decreased the forgetting rate across 1 week to a similar degree for both noun‐cued and verb‐cued recall types. However, noun‐cued recall of verbs initiated more new subsequent learning during the first restudy, compared to verb‐cued recall of nouns. The study provides evidence that testing has benefits on both subsequent restudy and long‐term retention of action‐relevant materials, but that these benefits are differently expressed with testing via noun‐cued versus verb‐cued recall.     

Adaptation transculturelle de tests et échelles de mesure psychologiques : guide pratique basé sur les Recommandations de la Commission Internationale des Tests et les Standards de pratique du testing de l’APA

Thirty years ago, Vallerand (1989) wrote a pioneering article entitled “Toward a methodology for the transcultural validation of psychological questionnaires: Implications for research in the French language”, whose success has never failed, as well as its usefulness. However, considerable progress has been made in the field of test development and test adaptation since the publication of this article, notably with the publications (and their updates) of the ITC Guidelines for Translating and Adapting Tests (2017) by the International Test Commission, and of the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (2014) by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). Based on these two key references, the present article aimed to update the procedure proposed by Vallerand. Without claiming to replace these major references, on the contrary, our objective here is to propose a 10-step procedure for adapting tests and psychological measures originally developed for other cultures and/or languages, a sort of framework guiding in step-by-step manner the adaptation of tests and the validation of their scores.     

Retrieval activates related words more than presentation

Retrieving information enhances learning more than restudying. One explanation of this effect is based on the role of mediators (e.g., sand-castle can be mediated by beach). Retrieval is hypothesised to activate mediators more than restudying, but existing tests of this hypothesis have had mixed results [Carpenter, S. K. (2011). Semantic information activated during retrieval contributes to later retention: Support for the mediator effectiveness hypothesis of the testing effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(6), 1547–1552. doi:10.1037/a0024140; Lehman, M., &; Karpicke, J. D. (2016). Elaborative retrieval: Do semantic mediators improve memory? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(10), 1573–1591. doi:10.1037/xlm0000267]. The present experiments explored an explanation of the conflicting results, testing whether mediator activation during a retrieval attempt depends on the accessibility of the target information. A target was considered less versus more accessible when fewer versus more cues were given during retrieval practice (Experiments 1 and 2), when the target had been studied once versus three times initially (Experiment 3), or when the target could not be recalled versus could be recalled during retrieval practice (Experiments 1–3). A mini meta-analysis of all three experiments revealed a small effect such that retrieval activated mediators more than presentation, but mediator activation was not reliably related to target accessibility. Thus, retrieval may enhance learning by activating mediators, in part, but these results suggest the role of other processes, too.