On the Issue of Item Selection in Computerized Adaptive Testing With Response Times

Many standardized tests are now administered via computer rather than paper‐and‐pencil format. The computer‐based delivery mode brings with it certain advantages. One advantage is the ability to adapt the difficulty level of the test to the ability level of the test taker in what has been termed computerized adaptive testing (CAT). A second advantage is the ability to record not only the test taker's response to each item (i.e., question), but also the amount of time the test taker spends considering and answering each item. Combining these two advantages, various methods were explored for utilizing response time data in selecting appropriate items for an individual test taker. Four strategies for incorporating response time data were evaluated, and the precision of the final test‐taker score was assessed by comparing it to a benchmark value that did not take response time information into account. While differences in measurement precision and testing times were expected, results showed that the strategies did not differ much with respect to measurement precision but that there were differences with regard to the total testing time.     

The role of the entry-and-stretch phase at the different paces of race in front crawl swimming

The aim of this study was to determine the role played by the entry-and-stretch phase in the coordination of swimming, at the different paces of race. Three national level swimmers (two men and one woman) were recorded, in lateral and bottom views, in three swimming paces: sprint (50 m and 100 m), middle-distance (200 m and 400 m) and long-distance (800 m and 1500 m). Anatomical landmark positions were obtained by manual digitalisation of the videos. Computational fluid dynamics and experimental studies (with a strain gauge balance and particle image velocimetry method) were used to measure and to calculate the external forces applied to the hand and to the forearm and to visualise the flow around the profile. Entry-and-stretch is the phase which varies the most according to the swimming pace. This phase can be decomposed into two sub-phases: one, the extension forward coordinated with the insweep of the opposite arm, and another one, the rotation downward coordinated with the upsweep. Results show that, at the three paces, this phase is not propulsive and could contribute essentially to maintain the horizontal balance of the body.     

Statistical learning of past participle inflections in French

The purpose of this research was to understand better how morphemic units are encoded and auto-organised in memory and how they are accessed during writing. We hypothesised that the activation of morphemic units would not depend on rule-based learning during primary school but would be determined by frequency-based learning, which is a process that automatically encodes whole orthographic forms encountered during reading. To evaluate gradual changes in the impacts of each process, the ability to inflect a verb was investigated in a spelling-to-dictation task utilising simple sentences that included past participle inflections in three participant populations: 2nd to 5th primary-school graders, 6th and 8th secondary-school students with varying print linguistic abilities and young adults. Two frequency indicators were manipulated: past participle inflection frequency (the frequency of a particular suffix irrespective of the word root) was used to index the use of a rule-based procedure, and orthographic-form frequency was used to index the use of a frequency-based procedure. The results revealed the following: (a) the younger spellers mainly used a frequency-based procedure that produced many spelling errors that were mostly due to the selection of the most frequent orthographic forms in their orthographic lexicon; (b) the rule-based procedure is notably late and led to fewer errors only at the 5th grade in primary school; and (c) the frequency-based procedure is still operating in the less skilled spellers of grades six and eight. The results are discussed in light of statistical learning, which seems to jeopardise the use of an efficient grammatical processing by younger children and less skilled spellers.