Another set of tasks covering a range of difficulty on the document scale involved
a rather complicated document taken from a page in a consumer magazine rating clock
radios. The easiest of the three tasks, receiving a difficulty value of 287, asks the reader:
"Which two features are not on any basic clock radio?" In looking at the document, the
reader has to cycle through the document to find the listing for basic clock radios and
then determine that a dash represents the absence of a feature. The reader then has to
locate the two features indicated by the set of dashes. As a result, type of match received
a score of 4 because it is a cycle requiring multiple responses with a condition or low
text-based inference. Type of information was scored a 2 because its features are attributes
of the clock radio, and plausibility of distractor is a 2 because there are some characteristics
that are not associated with other clock radios.
A somewhat more difficult task associated with this document received a difficulty
value of 327 and asks the reader: "Which full-featured clock radio is rated highest on
performance?" Here, the reader must make a three-feature match (full-featured,
performance, and highest), where one of the features requires the reader to process
conditional information. It is possible, for example, that some readers were able to find
the full-featured clock radios and the column listed under performance but selected the
first clock radio listed, assuming it was the one rated highest. In this case, they did not
understand the conditional information, which is a legend stating what the symbols
mean. Others may have gone to the column labeled "Overall Score" and found the
highest numerical number and chosen the clock radio associated with it. For these
reasons, type of match received a score of 4 and plausibility of distractor was scored a 3.
Type of information received a 1 because the requested information is a thing.
The most difficult task associated with this document (with a difficulty value of
408) asks the reader to identify the average advertised price for the basic clock radio
receiving the highest overall score. This task was made more difficult because the reader
had to match four rather than three features; the reader also had to process conditional
information, and there was a highly plausible distractor in the same node as the correct
answer. As a result of these factors, type of match received a score of 5, type of
information a score of 2, and plausibility of distractor a score of 5.
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