Answering quasi-randomized reading items without the passages on the SAT—I.

Examinees can correctly answer many Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) reading items when the passages accompanying the items are missing. According to one hypothesis, examinees use information from other reading items (cognates) belonging to the same passage. The purpose of this study was to test that hypothesis for the revised SAT (SAT-I) reading task. Cognate information was diminished by dispersing cognates among other reading items from 4 parallel forms of the SAT-I. Examinee performance in this condition was inferior to performance in a control, where cognate information was readily available. Nonetheless, the correlation between performance and verbal SAT score in the experimental condition remained high and equivalent to the control. Examinees do seem to use cognate information when passages are missing on the SAT-I reading task, but such information is not among the no-passage factors that systematically affect reading performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of Spanish-English production in bilingual children.

30 Spanish–English bilingual and 30 English monolingual children aged 3–7 yrs were asked to imitate Spanish and English lexical and syntactic constructions. Lexical items contained phonemes that have been previously identified as "high risk" for monolingual speakers of Spanish or English. Therefore, specific error patterns were predictable. Sentence constructions emphasized plurality, possessiveness, and adjective–noun word order. Monolinguals and bilinguals did not significantly differ on English imitations: Both groups scored near 100% correct. As expected, bilinguals scored significantly higher than monolinguals on all Spanish tasks. Errors for both bilinguals and monolinguals on Spanish sentence tasks took the form of omissions. Results indicate that Spanish competency on tasks like these does not "handicap" similar competencies in English for bilingual children at these age levels. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Familiarization effects for bilingual letter detection involving translation or exact text repetition.

In two experiments, English-Spanish bilinguals read passages, performing letter detection on some passages by circling target letters as they read. Detection passages were sometimes familiarized (primed) by prior reading of the same passage or a translation of it. Participants detected letters in English passages in Experiment 1 and in Spanish passages in Experiment 2. For both experiments, a missing letter effect occurred (depressed detection accuracy on frequent function words relative to less frequent content words). Familiarization promoted overall improvements in letter detection only for English passages, suggesting that reprocessing benefits depend on high language fluency. For Spanish passages, cognates engendered greater error rates than noncognates; the visual similarity of Spanish and English cognates apparently enabled faster identification of Spanish cognates in a way unaffected by familiarization of the whole text passage. Priming by familiarized text was significantly higher when the passages were in the same language than when they were in different languages, suggesting that the reprocessing benefits are at the word level instead of the semantic level. These results are consistent with the GO model of reading (Greenberg, Healy, Koriat, & Kreiner, 2004) but require an expanded consideration of attention redistribution processes in that model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Responses of emotionally disturbed and nondisturbed retardates to PPVT items of human versus nonhuman content.

On the basis of scores obtained by the Shipe behavior rating scale, 40 institutionalized, mildly retarded children and adolescents were classified as emotionally disturbed and 20 as nondisturbed. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) was administered to all Ss and relative successes on items with human and nonhuman content determined. All Ss found the items with human content more difficult than those with nonhuman content; however, the disturbed Ss had significantly more difficulty than the nondisturbed on PPVT items with human content relative to items with nonhuman content. It is speculated that a past history of disturbed interpersonal relationships interfered with the efficiency of the disturbed individuals on human items. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The intriguing role of spanish language vocabulary knowledge in predicting English reading comprehension.

This study explored a holistic model of English reading comprehension among a sample of 135 Spanish-English bilingual Latina and Latino 4th-grade students This model took into account Spanish language reading skills and language of initial literacy instruction. Controlling for language of instruction, English decoding skill, and English oral language proficiency, the authors explored the effects of Spanish language alphabetic knowledge, fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and listening comprehension on English reading comprehension. Results revealed a significant main effect for Spanish vocabulary knowledge and an interaction between Spanish vocabulary and English fluency, such that faster English readers benefited more from Spanish vocabulary knowledge than their less fluent counterparts. This study demonstrates the existence of literary skills transfer from the 1st to the 2nd language, as well as limits on such transfer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bilingual performance on the boston naming test: preliminary norms in Spanish and English

A total of 100 young educated bilingual adults were administered the Boston Naming Test (BNT) (Kaplan, Goodglass, & Weintraub, 1983) in both Spanish and English. Three group performance scores were obtained: English only, Spanish only, and a composite score indicating the total number of items correctly named independent of language. The scores for the entire group were significantly greater in English than in Spanish. An additional set of analyses explored individual differences in picture naming performance across the two languages as measured by the BNT. For a subset of the larger group (n = 25) there were significant differences in composite over single language scoring, but no significant differences between Spanish and English. Item analyses of correct responses were conducted in both languages to explore the construct validity of the standardized administration of the BNT with this population. There was much greater variability in responses over the Spanish items for this bilingual group. The results of a correlation analysis of information obtained from the initial questionnaire with the BNT scores in each language is also reported. The practical implications of this preliminary bilingual BNT normative data are discussed.     

Ego development and chronic illness in adolescents.

To examine the effects of chronic illness on the psychological growth process known as ego development, scores were compared on the Sentence Completion Test for 36 teens (16 boys, 20 girls) with chronic illness and 50 teens (16 boys, 34 girls) without chronic illness. Their ages ranged from 13 to 21 years, with a mean of 17.4 years. Most were Black (37%) or Hispanic (41%) and lived in poor or working-class neighborhoods. When age, sex, and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) scores were controlled in multiple regression analyses, no direct association between ego development stage and presence of chronic illness, severity of illness, age at onset, or duration of illness was found. Analysis of the chronically ill group alone revealed a significant PPVT?×?Severity interaction, indicating that ego development in chronically ill teens is lower when illness is more severe and verbal IQ is higher. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of programmed instruction related to motivation, anxiety, and test wiseness on Group IQ test performance.

To investigate the efficacy of a cognitive approach to problems of motivation, anxiety, and test wiseness, programed texts were used to condition verbal repertoires relevant to each of these problems. Five 6th-grade classes (118 Ss) were administered the Otis-Lennon Mental Ability Test in a pretest–posttest design. Each class received one of the following conditions: control condition, motivation program, test wiseness program, or a combination of all 3 programs. There was a significant effect only on raw scores. Comparing the combination group with the control group, both IQ and raw score gains were significant. Lower IQ level Ss made greater raw score gains than did upper IQ level Ss. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A difference that is not a difference: Reply to Vanderploeg and Logan.

Replies to Vanderploeg and Logan's comment on Russell and Levy's (1987) article. We used statistics to support the contention that differences in the Revised Category Test (RCAT), which was introduced by Russell and Levy, did not change what the original Category Test (CAT) was measuring. Rather than being a substitute for the test–retest criterion method, rescoring items from the CAT eliminated much of the variance introduced by retesting. Two new forms of criterion testing that reduce error variance are suggested. Multiplying the RCAT raw score by 2.2 provides scores that are close to those derived from the CAT. Finally, evidence is presented that, for the subject, the primary difficulty in the CAT is making conceptual rather than perceptual shifts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading ability and utilization of orthographic structure in reading.

Used a perceptual-recognition task to assess whether utilization of orthographic structure in letter recognition varies with reading ability. Anagrams of words were made to create strings that orthogonally combined frequency and regularity measures of orthographic structure. These strings and the original words were used as test stimuli in a letter-recognition task. 22 good and poor undergraduate readers (selected by their scores on the Nelson-Denny Reading Test) showed equally large effects of orthographic structure on task accuracy, whereas in a 2nd experiment, 10 poor 6th-grade readers did not utilize orthographic structure to the same degree as 10 very good 6th-grade readers. To facilitate the teaching of orthographic structure, some of the important constraints in written English and various games for teaching these constraints are presented. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of psychometrically matched English and Spanish language neuropsychological tests for older persons.

Item response theory (IRT) methods were used to develop a neuropsychological test battery with matched English and Spanish language forms. Candidate items for 12 scales measuring core neuropsychological abilities were generated and administered to 200 community-dwelling elderly participants tested in Spanish and 208 tested in English. IRT methods were used to eliminate linguistically biased items and refine scales to assess broad ability ranges. Reasonably good psychometric matching of scales was achieved within and across English and Spanish language forms. All scales were sensitive to cognitive impairment as measured by the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), with highly similar relationships between scale scores and MMSE across English and Spanish groups. The outcome supports the use of IRT methods in cross-cultural and multilingual test development and indicates that this strategy has potential for future neuropsychological test development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Language proficiency as a moderator variable in testing academic aptitude.

Students from 3 public (n?=?225) and 3 private schools (n?=?186) in Puerto Rico took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), Prueba de Aptitud Académica (PAA), Pruebas de Aprovechamiento Académico, and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The strength of the relationship between scores on the SAT given in English and on the PAA given in Spanish increased as proficiency in English as a 2nd language increased. It is concluded that scores on tests of student proficiency in English as a 2nd language, such as the TOEFL for an international population or the English as a Second Language Achievement Test for a Hispanic population, not only indicate readiness for academic study in English but may also bear on the interpretation and use of other tests given in English. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age of learning affects rate-dependent processing of stops in a second language

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of speaking rate changes on the perception of English stop consonants by four groups of subjects: English and Spanish monolinguals, 'early' Spanish/English bilinguals who learned English in childhood, and 'late' bilinguals who learned English in adulthood. Subjects identified, and then later rated for goodness as exemplars of the English /p/ category, the members of two voice onset time (VOT) continua. The English monolinguals identified a well-defined range of VOT stimuli as English /p/, and stimuli with longer VOT values as 'exaggerated' instances of English /p/. Their goodness ratings increased as VOT increased, then showed a systematic decrease as VOT began to exceed values typical for English /p/. The English monolinguals' goodness ratings also varied systematically as a function of speaking rate, which was simulated in the two continua by varying syllable duration. The Spanish monolinguals, on the other hand, failed to consistently identify any of the stimuli as English /p/. Although speaking rate influenced their goodness ratings, the Spanish monolinguals' rate effects differed significantly from the English monolinguals'. The early bilinguals resembled the English monolinguals, and differed from the Spanish monolinguals to a greater extent than did the late Spanish/English bilinguals. This was taken as support for the hypothesis that early bilinguals are more likely than are late bilinguals to establish new phonetic categories for stop consonants in a second language.     

A crossvalidation of the Revised Category Test.

The Revised Category Test (RCAT) and 2 other well-known short forms of the Halstead Category Test (W. E. Halstead, 1947) were assessed with regard to accuracy of prediction of total errors on the standard Halstead Category Test (CAT). Because of its brevity and theoretical underpinnings, the recently developed RCAT represents a promising new approach to shortening the CAT. CAT protocols from 294 male veterans were rescored using the items from each short form. The RCAT correlated at .96 with the CAT and had a standard error of estimate of ±8.32. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test as a measure of general adult intelligence.

Evaluates the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) as a rapidly administrable test of intelligence in a county hospital adult patient population. The PPVT and the Doppelt Short Form (D) of the WAIS were adminstered to 150 outpatients. Although the tests correlated .81, additional analyses demonstrated (a) the PPVT underestimated the D-WAIS scores in the lower ranges and grossly overestimated them in the upper ranges, and (b) the 2 tests differed grossly in clinical category placement of patients. Results suggest that clinicians should be cautious in making decisions about individual patients on the basis of PPVT scores. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bilingual aphasia: semantic organization, strategy use, and productivity in semantic verbal fluency

A semantic verbal fluency task (Animals, Foods) was administered to 16 aphasic, bilingual adults in French and English. Each subject was tested twice in each language. The two goals of the study were to compare performance across languages and to determine the effect of a deliberate grouping strategy on productivity. All subjects claimed approximately equal prestroke abilities in both languages. The number of words subjects produced was not significantly different in the two languages. Semantic organization across languages was also similar on Test 1. On Test 2, 8 subjects were instructed to group items by subcategory and 8 simply repeated the task. There was no consistent between-group difference in number of correct words or in the semantic organization of responses. Implications for the clinical use of verbal fluency tests and for further research into bilingual lexicosemantic systems are discussed.     

Cognitive modification and systematic desensitization with test anxious high school students.

30 10th-grade, test anxious (Achievement Anxiety Test) students were randomly assigned in equal numbers to either a cognitive modification, systematic desensitization, or waiting-list control group. The Raven Standard Progressive Matrices (RSPM), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory—State form (STAI-S), and the Anxiety Differential were administered as pre- and posttests. Statistically significant Treatment?×?Time interactions emerged on the RSPM and the STAI-S, favoring an increase for the systematic desensitization treatment on the RSPM and a decrease for the cognitive modification treatment on the STAI-S. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relation of perceptual activity to Matching Familiar Figures Test accuracy.

Examined the relation between Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFF) performance and Piaget's construct of perceptual activity in 48 3rd- and 4th-grade males. Type I and Type II illusions were used to assess the Ss' perceptual-attentional skills. While perceptual activity was found to relate to MFF errors for the entire sample, other findings indicate that perceptual skill alone did not determine MFF accuracy. It is hypothesized that solution of the MFF items may also depend on a higher order operation: the ability to coordinate available perceptual-attentional skills during visual search of the stimulus array. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contextual effects of bilingual programs on beginning reading.

This study of 1,338 Spanish-speaking 1st graders examined contextual effects of bilingual programs on reading comprehension and the effect of language of instruction within these contexts. The study included 128 classrooms in 32 schools located in border Texas and in urban Texas and California. These classrooms used either English immersion or Spanish maintenance bilingual programs. Detailed observations of teachers' instructional language were made, sampled within the year. The analyses allowed classroom-level differences to be separated from student-level differences, and for Spanish and English passage comprehension to be considered simultaneously. While mean differences between programs were reduced for English passage comprehension, maintenance programs still outperformed immersion programs in Spanish. Results also indicated large program and locale covariance differences at the classroom level, implying important differences in how these programs operate in these locales. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Localization of prothymosin alpha in the nucleus

Age differences in processing resources seem salient to age-related declines in secondary (or "recent") memory. Community-dwelling adults (N = 90, ages 30-80) completed 4 memory tests: Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) Logical Memory (LM), Cowboy Story (CS), WMS-R Visual Reproductions (VR), and Extended Complex Figure Test (ECFT; Fastenau, in press). Two space-capacity measures (WMS-R Digit Span and Visual Memory Span) and 4 processing speed measures (cancellation and mental-tracking tasks) assessed processing resources. A statistical control procedure was used to isolate retrieval efficiency and measures contributions of age and processing resources to retrieval. A negative relationship between age and retrieval efficiency emerged on all measures (p < .05). The age effect was reduced 60% on LM and CS when processing resources were controlled, eliminated for VR, and unchanged on ECFT. It is possible that visual-spatial retrieval requires fewer processing resources than does verbal retrieval.