DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Edited by Royce R. Ronning, John A. Glover, Jane C. Conoley, and Joseph C. Witt (Hillsdale, New Jersey, United States: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1987)
Copyright © 1987 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Digital Edition Copyright © 2012 Buros Center for Testing. This book may be downloaded, saved, and printed by an individual for their own use. No part of this book may be re-published, re-posted, or redistributed without written permission of the holder of copyright.

At our second symposium, Dr. Gene Glass, the keynote speaker, emphasized the field of measurement had become too isolated from its roots in psychology and had suffered grievously from lack of theoretical relevance to other fields and from the contributions that other fields could make to its development. His plea was reminiscent of that made earlier by Anne Anastasi. The theme for the third Buros-Nebraska symposium might be said to have taken this lament in the most serious manner possible. As we planned the third symposium, there were several people in the planning committee who felt the field of cognitive psychology had done much in recent years that had important implications for how and what we should measure and for the improvement of measurement instruments. And thus was born the theme of our third symposium and the basis for this third symposium book: The Influence of Cognitive Psychology on Testing. The development of the theme and plans for this third symposium and book is an interesting history of the stage-setting influence of the Buros "crusade" for better tests combined with the search in all of our symposia for the best ways to improve those tests. It is obviously our hope that the reader will find the results of this theme development to be both interesting and illuminating.