Evaluation of Online Information in University Students: Development and Scaling of the Screening Instrument EVON

As Internet sources provide information of varying quality, it is an indispensable prerequisite skill to evaluate the relevance and credibility of online information. Based on the assumption that competent individuals can use different properties of information to assess its relevance and credibility, we developed the EVON (evaluation of online information), an interactive computer-based test for university students. The developed instrument consists of eight items that assess the skill to evaluate online information in six languages. Within a simulated search engine environment, students are requested to select the most relevant and credible link for a respective task. To evaluate the developed instrument, we conducted two studies: (1) a pre-study for quality assurance and observing the response process (cognitive interviews of n = 8 students) and (2) a main study aimed at investigating the psychometric properties of the EVON and its relation to other variables (n = 152 students). The results of the pre-study provided first evidence for a theoretically sound test construction with regard to students’ item processing behavior. The results of the main study showed acceptable psychometric outcomes for a standardized screening instrument with a small number of items. The item design criteria affected the item difficulty as intended, and students’ choice to visit a website had an impact on their task success. Furthermore, the probability of task success was positively predicted by general cognitive performance and reading skill. Although the results uncovered a few weaknesses (e.g., a lack of difficult items), and the efforts of validating the interpretation of EVON outcomes still need to be continued, the overall results speak in favor of a successful test construction and provide first indication that the EVON assesses students’ skill in evaluating online information in search engine environments.

The Views of NU Ulama in Medan about Polygamy

This study uses a perspective that uses a combination of theories polygamy normative scientific perspective, the opinion of the scholars and the phenomenon of reality as viewed by scholars NU in Medan. Generally found that the views of the scholars NU Medan on polygamy is something that is permissible on the basis of the text of the Quranic verse of Surat an-Nisa ', paragraph 3 which makes the fair as an essential prerequisite skill, because polygamy is a kemslahatan and also a solution to solve the problem, sehinggah polygamy is allowed to be done but it must first be discussed with the family without needing any government intervention to deal with it, because they consider the legislation only complicates something that has obviously legal skill in the Qur'an.

Session 2: Managing Emotions Related to OCD

This chapter describes the second session of treatment, during which families begin to work on recognizing and managing their emotional responses to OCD. The therapist provides psychoeducation about the range of emotional responses to childhood OCD, including feelings of frustration, manipulation, resentment, and disappointment, and begins to process and normalize the family’s experiences. Emotion monitoring is introduced as a prerequisite skill for managing challenging feelings, and families practice using a thermometer rating system to track their emotions that is based on the use of the feelings thermometer. Initial strategies for responding to difficult emotions are also presented, including self-soothing exercises and initial practice with disengaging from highly charged situations. The chapter concludes with a description of informing the OCD child about how his parents will respond to him at home.

Teaching Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders to Expressively Discriminate Between “What’s That?” and “Where Is It?”

Discrimination of question-asking is a critical conversational skill with considerable practical importance. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) must be taught this skill to become competent communicators and function in everyday communicative situations. In previous question-asking literature, researchers have focused on teaching wh-questions in isolation. This study is an extension of previous research and conducted to investigate the ability of three preschool children with ASD to learn and discriminate when to use the two wh-questions, “What’s that?” and “Where is it?” Results are interpreted to conclude that all three children learned to ask and discriminate between the questions within 6 to 16 instructional sessions, and learned novel vocabulary after asking “What’s that?” This study supports using a prompting procedure for teaching these two wh-questions, and the importance of identifying individualized establishing operations to increase attending behavior, as well as conducting detailed prerequisite skill assessments to maximize learning of wh-questions.

Alphabetics

This paper is concerned with the relation between our capacity for alphabetic reading and writing the sound forms of languages on the one hand, and the structure of speech and language on the other. It starts from two questions: (1) What structural properties of human languages enable us to read and write their sound forms with a handful of alphabetic symbols? (2) Why is learning this skill so difficult? Ad (1) it is argued here that the basis for reading and writing in an alphabet is the inherent segmentability of speech, stemming from the synchronization of articulatory gestures during speech production. This synchronization arises from inherent properties of both speech production and speech perception. Ad (2) it is suggested here that learning to read and write with alphabetic letters is so difficult, because in the mental structure of sound forms there are no pre-existing discrete phoneme-sized segments, at least not of a kind that language users are easily aware of. This makes analysis of sound forms into such phoneme-sized segments difficult, although such analysis is a prerequisite skill for alphabetic reading and writing. For easy learning, the relation between letters and speech segments should preferably be systematic and transparent.

Is Conservation of Number a Necessary Condition for Mathematical Understanding?

This study investigated the importance of conservation of number as a prerequisite skill for arithmetic instruction. Piaget's theory maintains that the child's ability to conserve number constitutes a prerequisite to arithmetic understanding. 116 Ss (ages 4 to 6) were homogeneously grouped on the basis of a conservation of number pretest and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group was trained in arithmetic concepts, while the controls played a game under similar conditions. The 2 groups were posttested on arithmetic and number conservation tasks. The regression of arithmetic posttest scores on the conservation dimension was plotted separately for the experimental group and for the control group. The homogeneity of regression analysis showed that the 2 regression lines were separated but essentially parallel. In other words, although training had an effect, it did not have a differential (interaction) effect on nonconservers and conservers. Thus, the results failed to confirm the hypothesis that conservation of number is necessary for the understanding of arithmetic.