A brief for individual merit in Michigan

Amicus Curiae

A brief for individual merit in Michigan Covington &; burling for the national association of scholars     

Positive behavioral contrast,autoshaping, and omission responding in the goldfish (Carassius auratus)

Two experiments with goldfish were performed to investigate the role of stimulus-reinforcer vs. response-reinforcer relationships in omission training and the role of stimulus localizability in a positive behavioral contrast paradigm. The directed behavior of fish, like that of pigeons and rats in other studies, was greatly influenced by positive stimulus-reinforcer correlations, as evidenced by maintained contacts of a signal for food, even though such responses terminated the signal and cancelled reinforcement delivery. Goldfish exhibited positive behavioral contrast when the signals for reinforcement and nonreinforcement were displayed directly on the response key, but no contrast was observed when variations in a diffuse houselight stimulus were used as signals for reinforcement or nonreinforcement. Analysis of sequential-trial data yielded effects analogous to Pavlovian positive and negative induction. Theoretical and methodological problems were briefly considered.     

First order or higher order general factor?

The Schmid‐Leiman decomposition of a hierarchical factor model converts the model to a constrained case of a bifactor model with orthogonal common factors that is equivalent to the hierarchical model. This article discusses the equivalence and near‐equivalence of the hierarchical and bifactor models and the implications of the difficulty of distinguishing between these models because of low power in samples commonly found in academic research.     

AILEM Programme: a long‐term intervention to promote literacy learning in low‐performing primary schools in Chile

After one year of implementation, this paper describes a programme designed to support literacy learning in low performing schools from poor sectors in Santiago, Chile. School‐based intensive training on theory and practice of a literacy learning framework for classroom instruction and long‐term support were used to impact the achievement of students from disadvantaged families in 16 kindergarten classrooms and 16 1st‐grade classrooms in nine primary schools. Preliminary results showed an improvement in learning achievement positively related to level of implementation of the literacy instruction framework in the classrooms and teachers' perception of an improvement in their knowledge and classroom practices. Although findings from this study cannot support definite conclusions, because of the lack of experimental conditions, they provide relevant information for future experimental studies on how to meet the literacy learning needs of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.