Developmental Measurement of Mental Attention

A dialectical constructivist model of mental attention ("effort") and of working memory is briefly presented, and used to explicate subjects' processing in misleading test items. We illustrate with task analyses of the Figural Intersections Test (FIT). We semantically derive a set of 10 Theoretical Structural Predictions (TSP) that stipulate relations between mental attentional resources (mental-power: Mp) and the systematically varied mental demand of items (mental-demand: Md), as they jointly codetermine probable performance (conditional probabilities of passing and failing). These predictions are evaluated on first approximation using a known family of ordered Latent Class models, all probabilistic versions of Guttman's unidimensional scale. Parameters of these models were estimated using the Categorical Data Analysis System of Eliason (1990). Main results are: (1) Data fit Lazarsfeld's latent-distance model, providing initial support for our 10 predictions; (2) The M-power of children (latent Mp-classes) when assessed behaviourally may increase with age in a discrete manner, and have the potential to generate interval scales of measurement; (3) In the light of our results what statisticians often consider "error of measurement" appears (in part) to be signal, not noise: The organismic signal of misleading (Y-) processes that in their dialectical (trade-off) interaction with success-producing (X-) processes generate performance.