Adjusting for information inflation due to local dependency in moderately large item clusters

When multiple items are clustered around a reading passage, the local independence assumption in item response theory is often violated. The amount of information contained in an item cluster is usually overestimated if violation of local independence is ignored and items are treated as locally independent when in fact they are not. In this article we provide a general method that adjusts for the inflation of information associated with a test containing item clusters. A computational scheme was presented for the evaluation of the factor of adjustment for clusters in the restrictive case of two items per cluster, and the general case of more than two items per cluster. The methodology was motivated by a study of the NAEP Reading Assessment. We present a simulated study along with an analysis of a NAEP data set.The research was supported under the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Grant No. R999G30002) as administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. This work was started when the author was at the Division of Statistics and Psychometrics at the Educational Testing Service. The author thanks Juliet Shaffer, Bob Mislevy, Eric Bradlow, three reviewers and an associate editor for their helpful comments on the paper.     

Models for ordinal hierarchical classes analysis

This paper proposes an ordinal generalization of the hierarchical classes model originally proposed by De Boeck and Rosenberg (1998). Any hierarchical classes model implies a decomposition of a two-way two-mode binary arrayM into two component matrices, called bundle matrices, which represent the association relation and the set-theoretical relations among the elements of both modes inM. Whereas the original model restricts the bundle matrices to be binary, the ordinal hierarchical classes model assumes that the bundles are ordinal variables with a prespecified number of values. This generalization results in a classification model with classes ordered along ordinal dimensions. The ordinal hierarchical classes model is shown to subsume Coombs and Kao's (1955) model for nonmetric factor analysis. An algorithm is described to fit the model to a given data set and is subsequently evaluated in an extensive simulation study. An application of the model to student housing data is discussed.     

The effects of presession exposure to attention on the results of assessments of attention as a reinforcer

The effects of presession exposure to attention on responding during subsequent assessments of attention as a reinforcer were evaluated across three behavioral assessments. In Experiment 1, a contingent attention assessment condition was preceded by either a noncontingent attention condition (free play) or a contingent escape condition. In Experiment 2, a diverted attention with extinction condition was preceded by either an alone or a free-play condition. In Experiment 3, a two-choice preference assessment was preceded by either 10 min of free play or 10 min of playing alone. In each experiment, the participant responded differentially within the test condition according to the presence or absence of dense schedules of attention immediately prior to that condition. The results of this study show that events occurring immediately prior to an assessment condition can influence behavior within the assessment.     

Effects of high-probability requests on the latency to initiate academic tasks

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a high-probability request sequence on the latency to and duration of compliance to a request for completion of an independent math assignment. The participant was an elementary-school student with learning disabilities who exhibited noncompliance during math instruction. The results showed that high-probability requests were effective in reducing the latency to compliance but only minimally affected duration of engagement.     

REPEATED ACQUISITION OF BEHAVIORAL CHAINS: RESPONSE SEQUENCES OR CONDITIONAL DISCRIMINATIONS?

The purpose of this study was to determine whether pigeons learn a sequence of positional responses or a series of conditional discriminations under a repeated-acquisition-of-behavioral-chains procedure. Three pigeons were trained under a repeated-acquisition procedure in which three different key colors served as stimuli correlated with the three steps in a chain. The order of presentation of the three stimuli was altered during the latter part of each test session after acquisition had occurred. If the pigeons had acquired a response sequence, the pattern of responding should remain the same as in the initial portion of the test session. However, if the pigeons had acquired a conditional discrimination, the response pattern should change in accordance with the changed order of the key colors. Although the results of this study do not rule out the possibility that the subjects acquired, to some degree, a response sequence, the results suggest that the behavior of pigeons under a repeated-acquisition-of-behavioral-chains procedure is controlled primarily by conditional discriminative stimuli.     

Improving argumentative writing skills: Effect of two types of aids

Young children have difficulties writing argumentative texts which contain well-linked arguments and counterarguments even though they are capable of arguing by oral. Two main explanations have been provided to account for those difficulties: a) The writer has to manage alone two different points of view, whereas each of the two (or more) speakers can take charge of one of the points of view. b) The inability of young children to attribute an argumentative valence to statements.In order to improve the ability of 8-year-old writers (skilled or less skilled) to manage the dialogical dimension of the argumentative text, two types of aids were tested. 1) A collaborative writing in which the children worked in twos to recompose an experimental argumentation. 2) A classification task was presented before the text recomposition task. The results show that 8-year-old children are capable of processing the argumentative valence of statements. However, only skilled writers take advantage of the two types of aids to compose a text comparable to the standard argumentative schema.     

A new proof for monotone likelihood ratio for the sum of independent bernoulli random variables

By use of an inequality of Marcus and Lopes for elementary symmetric functions, a new proof is presented for the following result by Ghurye and Wallace: Given that the independent random variablesX _j are Bernoulli with success probabilityp _j () strictly between 0 and 1 and nondecreasing in, the sum X _j has monotone likelihood ratio.     

Constructing measures with maximum reliability

The scoring of response vectors to give maximum test-retest correlation is investigated. Simple sufficiency arguments show that the form of the best scores is very restricted. A general method is given for finding the best scores, deriving the best scores for the normal factor model, and showing by calculation of several particular cases that for a standard model for binary response it is easy to approximate the best scores.