An Empirical Assessment of Coaching and Practice Effects on Three Army Tests of Spatial Aptitude.

Author(s):  
Henry H. Busciglio ◽  
Dale R. Palmer
2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 157-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Hagemeister

Abstract. When concentration tests are completed repeatedly, reaction time and error rate decrease considerably, but the underlying ability does not improve. In order to overcome this validity problem this study aimed to test if the practice effect between tests and within tests can be useful in determining whether persons have already completed this test. The power law of practice postulates that practice effects are greater in unpracticed than in practiced persons. Two experiments were carried out in which the participants completed the same tests at the beginning and at the end of two test sessions set about 3 days apart. In both experiments, the logistic regression could indeed classify persons according to previous practice through the practice effect between the tests at the beginning and at the end of the session, and, less well but still significantly, through the practice effect within the first test of the session. Further analyses showed that the practice effects correlated more highly with the initial performance than was to be expected for mathematical reasons; typically persons with long reaction times have larger practice effects. Thus, small practice effects alone do not allow one to conclude that a person has worked on the test before.


2006 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 164-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Rabbitt ◽  
Mary Lunn ◽  
Danny Wong

There is new empirical evidence that the effects of impending death on cognition have been miscalculated because of neglect of the incidence of dropout and of practice gains during longitudinal studies. When these are taken into consideration, amounts and rates of cognitive declines preceding death and dropout are seen to be almost identical, and participants aged 49 to 93 years who neither dropout nor die show little or no decline during a 20-year longitudinal study. Practice effects are theoretically informative. Positive gains are greater for young and more intelligent participants and at all levels of intelligence and durations of practice; declines in scores of 10% or more between successive quadrennial test sessions are risk factors for mortality. Higher baseline intelligence test scores are also associated with reduced risk of mortality, even when demographics and socioeconomic advantage have been taken into consideration.


2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Grozman ◽  
Anne Marie D. Haddock ◽  
Lindsey M. Lee ◽  
Lisa S. Moore ◽  
Amy Gammon ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 1652-1662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophie J. M. Rijnen ◽  
Sophie D. van der Linden ◽  
Wilco H. M. Emons ◽  
Margriet M. Sitskoorn ◽  
Karin Gehring

Author(s):  
Karl Widerquist ◽  
Grant S. McCall

This chapter empirically investigates two hypotheses often used to support the claim that virtually everyone is better off in state society than they could reasonably expect to be in any stateless environment. “The strong violence hypothesis” is the claim that violence in stateless societies is necessarily intolerable. “The weak violence hypothesis” is the claim that violence in stateless societies tends to be higher than in state society. Section 1 uses anthropological and historical evidence to examine violence in prehistoric stateless societies, early states, and contemporary states. Section 2 reviews evidence from modern stateless societies. Section 3 attempts to assemble anthropologists’ consensus view of violence in stateless societies. Section 4 evaluates the strong and weak hypotheses in light of this information, arguing that societies in which sovereignty is most absent maintain the ability to keep violence at tolerable levels. Although it is reasonable to suppose that stateless societies tend to have higher violence than contemporary state societies, some stateless societies have lower violence than some states. Because these findings reject 350 years of accumulated theory of sovereignty, Section 5 briefly discusses how bands are able to maintain peace without state-like institutions. Section 6 concludes.


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