Non-verbal Measures of Ability Within the Context of Ability Assessment

1984 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-59
Author(s):  
Helga A. H. Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Standardized Tests ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
Personal Attitude ◽  
Ability Tests ◽  
Ability Testing

To provide a framework for our discussion of the use of non-verbal ability tests, I would like to precede my paper by a few general remarks concerning ability testing in the 1980s. Everything I am going to say does, in fact, apply to non-verbal tests, the same as it applies to other types of tests; and it certainly applies to the battery of non-verbal ability tests, the NAT, which the ACER will publish during the next 12 months.We cannot ignore the controversy which is going on around us. No one operates in a vacuum. No matter what our present personal attitude to the use of tests in assessment might be, nothing we do can be perceived in isolation from present, and for that matter past, debate in the field.We are finding ourselves at a point in time where there is widespread concern and often fierce debate about the use of standardized tests for the assessment of individual differences and the evaluation of programs.

Normal Variation in Reading Acquisition

1986 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 691-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Wise Berninger
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Reading Instruction ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Normal Variation ◽  
Word Decoding ◽  
Linguistic Skills ◽  
Whole Word ◽  
Reading And Spelling

Visual, linguistic, reading, and spelling tests were administered to the same 45 children at the end of kindergarten and of first grade. Normal variation, i.e., diversity not related to pathology, was found in the visual and linguistic skills and was shown to be related to reading and spelling achievement for a sample of suburban children of similar socioeconomic status. Individual differences in three visual skills—selective attention to letter information (RT), memory for a component letter (accuracy), and memory for a whole word (accuracy)—and two linguistic skills—phonemic analysis and vocabulary understanding—were reliable over the first year of formal reading instruction and had concurrent validity in that they were correlated with achievement in word decoding/encoding at the end of kindergarten and of first grade. Of these five skills, phonemic analysis accounted for more variance in achievement (52% to 64%, depending upon achievement measure) than any other single skill. Significantly mote variance in achievement was accounted for when both a visual skill (memory for a sequence) and a linguistic skill (phonemic analysis) were considered than when either alone was at end of first grade. The predictive validity of quantitatively defined “disabilities” (at or more than a standard deviation below the mean) was investigated; disabilities in both visual and linguistic skills at the end of kindergarten were associated with low achievement in word decoding/encoding at the end of first grade. Two pairs of identical twin girls (each co-twin taught by a different teacher) were not mote congruent on several achievement measures than two pairs of unrelated girls, taught by the same teacher and matched to each other and a twin pair on verbal ability and age. Normal variation in acquisition of word decoding/encoding probably results from an interaction between genetic individual differences in cognitive skills and the processes of assimilation and accommodation during environmental transactions proposed by Piaget.

Learning Efficiency: Identifying Individual Differences in Learning Rate and Retention in Healthy Adults

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (9) ◽  
pp. 1436-1450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher L. Zerr ◽  
Jeffrey J. Berg ◽  
Steven M. Nelson ◽  
Andrew K. Fishell ◽  
Neil K. Savalia ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Learning And Memory ◽  
Standardized Tests ◽  
Healthy Adults ◽  
Learning Rate ◽  
Learning Abilities ◽  
Learning Efficiency ◽  
Paired Associates

People differ in how quickly they learn information and how long they remember it, yet individual differences in learning abilities within healthy adults have been relatively neglected. In two studies, we examined the relation between learning rate and subsequent retention using a new foreign-language paired-associates task (the learning-efficiency task), which was designed to eliminate ceiling effects that often accompany standardized tests of learning and memory in healthy adults. A key finding was that quicker learners were also more durable learners (i.e., exhibited better retention across a delay), despite studying the material for less time. Additionally, measures of learning and memory from this task were reliable in Study 1 ( N = 281) across 30 hr and Study 2 ( N = 92; follow-up n = 46) across 3 years. We conclude that people vary in how efficiently they learn, and we describe a reliable and valid method for assessing learning efficiency within healthy adults.

Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Dumont ◽  
John O. Willis ◽  
Kathleen Viezel ◽  
Jamie Zibulsky
Keyword(s):  
Verbal Ability ◽  
Ability Tests

The Facilitative Effects of Diagrams on Scaffolding Knowledge Acquisition and Metacognition in Low Verbal Ability Learners

2001 ◽  
Vol 45 (13) ◽  
pp. 936-940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haydee M. Cuevas ◽  
Stephen M. Fiore ◽  
Randall L. Oser
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
System Design ◽  
Conceptual Knowledge ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
Training System ◽  
Declarative Knowledge ◽  
Instructional Efficiency ◽  
Ability Levels ◽  
Metacognitive Accuracy

This study investigated the differential benefit of diagrams as a learning aid for participants of differing ability levels. Diagrams facilitated the acquisition of conceptual knowledge but had no effect on declarative knowledge acquisition. Additionally, diagrams increased metacognitive accuracy. More importantly, the effect on knowledge acquisition and metacognitive accuracy was found to be strongest for participants with low verbal ability. Finally, incorporating diagrams into the training resulted in improved instructional efficiency (i.e., higher level of performance was achieved with less mental effort). Implications for incorporating findings on individual differences into training system design are discussed.

Two Measures of Free Association Response and Their Relations to Scores on Selected Personality and Verbal Ability Tests

1963 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 667-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Kjeldergaard ◽  
John B. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
Free Association ◽  
School Students ◽  
Personality Tests ◽  
Association Response ◽  
Ability Tests ◽  
Two Measures ◽  
Senior High School Students

The first 50 stimuli from the K-R list, two personality tests (the MCI and the GZTS), and 26 verbal ability paper-and-pencil tests were given to a large number of senior high school students. Two response categories for the K-R, opposites and non-opposite primaries, and the personality tests had low correlations, most of which did not differ significantly from zero. This finding is consistent with that of previous investigators. The correlations between the K-R response classes and the 26 verbal tests, however, yielded different results. The non-opposite primaries tended to exhibit low positive (significant) correlations with the verbal tests, whereas the opposite scores showed essentially zero correlations with these same tests. These findings were interpreted as further supporting the contention that commonality scores do not represent a unitary verbal habit.

scholarly journals Individual Differences in Students’ Effort Source Beliefs Predict Their Judgments of Ability

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Miele ◽  
Alexander S. Browman ◽  
Marina Vasilyeva
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Student Motivation ◽  
Verbal Ability ◽  
Standard Measure ◽  
Education Practice ◽  
Math Ability ◽  
Academic Abilities ◽  
Perceived Effort

A recent set of studies (Muenks, Miele, & Wigfield, 2016) introduced the concept of perceived effort source to better explain how students reason about the relation between effort and ability when evaluating the academic abilities of other students. These studies showed that participants who were induced to perceive effort as task-elicited (i.e., as being primarily due to the subjective difficulty of the task) were more likely to view effort and ability as inversely related than participants who were induced to perceive effort as self-initiated (i.e., as being due to students’ motivation to go beyond the basic demands of the task). The current studies expanded on this research by demonstrating that, in the absence of an effort source manipulation, college students spontaneously invoked beliefs about the source of effort when evaluating their own (Study 2) and other students’ (Studies 1–3) abilities. The three studies also showed that our novel measure of individual differences in effort source beliefs was a better predictor of participants’ judgments of math ability (Studies 1 and 2) and verbal ability (Study 3) than a standard measure of their ability mindsets (i.e., beliefs about the extent to which intelligence is malleable). Specifically, participants who naturally tended to perceive effort as task-elicited generally rated students who expended relatively little effort as having more ability than did participants who tended to perceive effort as self-initiated. Implications for research on student motivation and for education practice are discussed.

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