Evaluation of five guidelines for option development in multiple-choice item-writing. 'Evaluaci??n de cinco directrices para la construcci??n de opciones en ??tems de elecci??n m??ltiple'

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Use of multilevel logistic regression to identify the causes of differential item functioning

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Madurez para la lectura : estudio experimental sobre el test-pronóstico para el comienzo del aprendizaje de la lectura.

Saber hasta qué punto debemos fiarnos de este instrumento de diagnóstico. Se trata del Test PL, o sea, el test llamado Pronóstico Lector, editado en mil novecientos setenta. Para determinar su validez y fiabilidad debe comparársele con otra bateria de tests. La tarea consistirá en correlacionar los resultados obtenidos en la prueba PL y los tests ABC, por un grupo de niñas. Exponer, también, algunas ideas sobre madurez, en general, y madurez para iniciar el aprendizaje de la lectura. Niños y niñas de cinco años de edad, de segundo año de párbulos y niños y niñas de seis años que cursan primero de EGB en colegios de Salamanca capital y en la agrupación escolar mixta de la provincia; Colegio Nacional del Patronato 'La Inmaculada'; Colegio Salesiano ' María Auxiliadora'; Colegio Nacional 'Francisco de Vitoria'; Agrupación Escolar Mixta 'La Fuente de San Esteban'. Test Pronóstico Lectura; Test ABC; Dibujos e ilustraciones. La correlación existente entre las puntuaciones de los tests de Madurez Lectora y el Pronóstico Lector es muy alta. En el Test ABC el ochenta y ocho por ciento de los niños poseen madurez lectora; el doce por ciento no la han alcanzado. Las niñas un noventa y cinco por ciento la han adquirido y un cinco por ciento no la han adquirido. En el test Pronóstico Lector un cien por cien han alcanzado la madurez lectora. Las niñas en un noventa y siete por cien. Los item que presentan una puntuación muy baja, debido a su dificultad en su realización, son grandes.

A comparison of discriminant logistic regression and Item Response Theory Likelihood-Ratio Tests for Differential Item Functioning (IRTLRDIF) in polytomous short tests

Resumen tomado de la publicaci??n

Turing Test: Mindless Game?

The Turing Test, originally configured for a human to distinguish between an unseen man and unseen woman through a text-based conversational measure of gender, is the ultimate test for thinking. So conceived Alan Turing when he replaced the woman with a machine. His assertion, that once a machine deceived a human judge into believing that they were the human, then that machine should be attributed with intelligence. But is the Turing Test nothing more than a mindless game? We present results from recent Loebner Prizes, a platform for the Turing Test, and find that machines in the contest appear conversationally worse rather than better, from 2004 to 2006, showing a downward trend in highest scores awarded to them by human judges. Thus the machines are not thinking in the same way as a human intelligent entity would.

Using what we know: consequences of intentionally retrieving gist versus item-specific information

The effect of a prior gist-based versus item-specific retrieval orientation on recognition of objects and words was examined. Prior item-specific retrieval increased item-specific recognition of episodically related but not previously tested objects relative to both conceptual- and perceptual-gist retrieval. An item-specific retrieval advantage also was found when the stimuli were words (synonyms) rather than objects but not when participants overtly named objects during gist-based recognition testing, which suggests that they did not always label objects under general gist-retrieval instructions. Unlike verbal overshadowing, labeling objects during recognition attenuated (but did not eliminate) test- and interference-related forgetting. A full understanding of how retrieval affects subsequent memory, even for events or facts that are not themselves retrieved, must take into account the specificity with which that retrieval occurs.

An item response analysis of the motor and behavioral subscales of the unified Huntington's disease rating scale in huntington disease gene expansion carriers

Although the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS) is widely used in the assessment of Huntington disease (HD), the ability of individual items to discriminate individual differences in motor or behavioral manifestations has not been extensively studied in HD gene expansion carriers without a motor-defined clinical diagnosis (ie, prodromal-HD or prHD). To elucidate the relationship between scores on individual motor and behavioral UHDRS items and total score for each subscale, a nonparametric item response analysis was performed on retrospective data from 2 multicenter longitudinal studies. Motor and behavioral assessments were supplied for 737 prHD individuals with data from 2114 visits (PREDICT-HD) and 686 HD individuals with data from 1482 visits (REGISTRY). Option characteristic curves were generated for UHDRS subscale items in relation to their subscale score. In prHD, overall severity of motor signs was low, and participants had scores of 2 or above on very few items. In HD, motor items that assessed ocular pursuit, saccade initiation, finger tapping, tandem walking, and to a lesser extent, saccade velocity, dysarthria, tongue protrusion, pronation/supination, Luria, bradykinesia, choreas, gait, and balance on the retropulsion test were found to discriminate individual differences across a broad range of motor severity. In prHD, depressed mood, anxiety, and irritable behavior demonstrated good discriminative properties. In HD, depressed mood demonstrated a good relationship with the overall behavioral score. These data suggest that at least some UHDRS items appear to have utility across a broad range of severity, although many items demonstrate problematic features.