Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-88).

This thesis investigates extending the dynamically-typed, functional programming language Scheme, with simulated overloading in order to permit the binding of multiple, distributed defnitions to function names. Overloading facilitates the use of an incremental style of programming in which functions can be defined with a base behaviour and then extended with additional behaviour as it becomes necessary to support new data types. A technique is demonstrated that allows existing functions to be extended, without modifcation, therefore improving code reuse. Using the primitives provided by Scheme, it is possible to write functions that perform like the generic routines (functions) of the programming language EL1. These functions use the type of their arguments to determine, at run-time, the computation to perform. It is shown that by gathering the definitions for an overloaded function and building a generic routine, the language appears to provide overloading. A language extension that adds the syntax necessary to instruct the system to gather the distributed set of definitions for an overloaded function and incrementally build an equivalently applicable generic function is described. A simple type inference algorithm, necessary to support the construction of generic functions, is presented and detailed. Type inference is required to determine the domain of an overloaded function in order to generate the code needed to perform run-time overload resolution. Some limitations and possible extensions of the algorithm are discussed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2004. / Thesis directed by Felicia B. LeClere for the Department of Sociology. "March 2004." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 198-212).

No description available.

This study was designed to determine the effect of written and oral guidance to drawing inferences related to a short story upon performance on an instrument constructed to assess inference-making ability of eighth grade students. The sample consisted of 194 subjects--members of nine English classes in three rural Indiana schools. Students who scored more than two years above or below grade level in reading achievement tests were not included in the sample.The reading material consisted of a short story selection from a literature anthology, a guide to inferences in the story, and a ten-item multiple-choice inference test. The inference guide and test were constructed specifically for use in this study.Three null hypotheses were tested for significance at the .01 level of confidence to ascertain the effect of a pre-reading guide on inferential reading comprehension, and accepted:1. There is no significant difference in inference making achievement between students having a pre-reading oral guide read by the teacher and students having no guidance in inferencing2. There is no significant difference in inference making achievement between students having a pre-reading oral guide read by the teacher and a pre-reading written guide read silently by students3. There is no significant difference in inference making ability between students having a pre-reading written guide to read silently and students having no guidance in inferencingAll hypotheses were accepted at the .01 level; however, significance was indicated at the .05 level when a comparison was made among the schools, and at the .001 level among teachers. It was concluded from the results of analysis of variance that the pre-reading techniques utilized in this study had no statistically significant effect on the performance score on a measure on inferential reading comprehension of the eighth grade students. Further analysis of data supported the educational principles that the teacher, administrator, and school reading program exert important influences on student achievement in reading and comprehension.

No description available.

Experiments 1-3 investigated the relationship between working memory and syllogistic and five-ten-n series spatial inference. A secondary aim was to replicate the findings of Shah and Miyake (1996) who suggested the use of separate central resources of working memory for spatial and verbal ability. The correlational analysis showed that the complex verbal and spatial working memory span tasks were associated together and consistently predicted reasoning performance in both verbal and visual modalities. The confirmatory factor analysis showed that three factors best accounted for the data -a verbal, a spatial, and a general resource. All the span tasks and most of the reasoning tasks significantly and consistently loaded the general factor. Experiments 4-6 investigated the relationship between working memory and a range of reasoning tasks - identified as either propositional. spatial, or quantifiable tasks. These experiments were based on the work of Stanovich and West (1998) who found that a range of reasoning tasks were predicted by cognitive ability and a reasoner's thinking style. The correlational anaylsis showed that the complex verbal and spatial working memory span tasks were associated together and consistently predicted reasoning perforinance. Two clusters of reasoning task emerged from the correlational analysis - one cluster related to the propositional and simple spatial reasoning tasks, whilst the other related to the quantifiable and complex spatial reasoning tasks. The confin-natory factor analysis showed that four factors best accounted for the data -a verbal, a spatial, a general, and a thinking style resource. All the span tasks and the reasoning tasks loaded the general factor, and most of the reasoning tasks further loaded the thinking disposition factor. These results are discussed in light of models of workino memory, theories of reasoning, and how to best characterise factor 3 (executive function) and factor 4 (thinking style) from tile factor analysis.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1986. / "September 1986." "This work was partially supported by the Office of Naval Research under contracts number N00014-81-K-0303 and N00014-81-K-0004, by the National Institutes of Health under grant number 5P41 RR 00785, and by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency under contract number N00039-86-C-0033"--P. vi. Bibliography: p. 160-167.

Thesis (M Info Tech) -- Auckland University of Technology, 2005. / Also held in print (137 leaves, 30 cm.) in Wellesley Theses Collection (T 519.7 MOH)