638 EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT

instruments developed in the study, including several not described

above, areanother important contribution. The &dquo;situational&dquo; meas-
ures of teacher trait perceptions are especially ingenious.
Those engaged in the training, employment, and supervision of
teachers should study this research and consider the implications
mentioned by the authors. Those engaged in educational research
should also consider the implications, particularly those who collect
and interpret data relevant to the classroom behaviors of teachers.
Finally, those engaged in the training of researchers should study
this report and make it available to their students. It so well illus-
trates thoughtful analysis and definition of a problem, the relating
of a problem to theory and to earlier research, the formulating of
hypotheses, the defining of terms, the drawing of inferences from
data with recognition of their limitations, and the effective organi-
zation and writing of a research report. The student should acquire
a better understanding of attitude measurement, Q sorts, different

types of factor analysis, factorial invariance and congruence, and

the importance of replication.
MAX D. ENGELHART
Duke University
Stimulus Sampling Theory by E. D. Neimark and W. K. Estes
(Editor). San Francisco: Holden-Day. Pp. xvi + 681. $10.75.
The intent of the editors of this volume was to bring together
scattered but significant articles which are representative of the
principal ideas of stimulus sampling theory. Stimulus sampling
theory is not just one theory, but a number of theories which differ
in their assumptions yet share a general conceptual framework
within which one can analyze formation of associative connections.
Indeed, much of the present-day work in mathematical learning
theory can be formulated within this framework. The articles in the
first chapter introduce this schema by discussing the central con-
cepts of stimulus elements, sampling of elements, and connection of
elements to responses. Three alternative models of the sampling
process are explored at length; component models with fixed sample
size, component models with fixed sampling probabilities, and pat-
tern models. The remainder of the volume is concerned with varia-
tions of these models derived by focusing upon a special assumption
or from lifting some of the restrictions of the initial theory.
The editors indicate that stimulus sampling theory refers not only
to the whole collection of models and applications but also to cer-
tain communalities of conception, method and outlook. Their con-
tention is that these communalities can be discerned more readily
if the reader acquires them by a sort of osmosis during the reading
process, hence these communalities are never explicitly stated.
The book is organized into five chapters, each approximately 140

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 BOOK REVIEWS 639

pages in length: Chapter I-&dquo;Development and General Theory of

Stimulus Sampling;&dquo; Chapter II-Elements of Associative Learn-
ing ;&dquo; Chapter III-&dquo;Probability Learning;&dquo; Chapter IV-&dquo;Single
Process Models for Generalization and Discrimination;&dquo; and Chap-
ter V-&dquo;Multiprocess Models for Discrimination and Choice.&dquo;
The articles in each chapter are preceded by a carefully written
introduction which provides an overview of the topic, a discussion
of the related research and an indication of problem areas in which
further research is needed.
The articles which appear in this volume are drawn from fourteen
sources, including bothjournals and books of readings. The most
heavily represented original sources are the Journal of Experimental
Psychology (14 articles), Psychological Review (10), Psychomet-
rika (6), Studies in Mathematical Learning Theory (5), and Jour-
nal of Mathematical Psychology (3). The remaining eleven articles
are distributed among nine other sources.
Although the editors intentionally included some of the earlier
articles in the field in order to provide a historical view, thirty-five
of the forty-nine articles were published during the last ten years.
The recency of the contents is, however, less noteworthy when one
considers that stimulus sampling theory was &dquo;born&dquo; in 1950.
The text is not only comprehensive but unusually well integrated
for a book of readings. The principal reason for this is that Estes
and Atkinson were author or co-author on twenty-six of the forty-
nine articles; in addition, thirty-nine of the forty-nine articles were
written by staff members at either Indiana or Stanford University.
Such a narrow representation does provide unity to the discourse
and is not unexpected since stimulus sampling theory is a relatively
new area of psychology in which few persons have conducted exten-
sive research. The two leading contributors to this volume are in-
deed major contributors to the literature so that the distribution is
not as one-sided as it may appear.
This reviewer found the frequent change of type face within an
article somewhat disconcerting. In addition, the recurrent use of a
double column of print across the page detracted from the readabil-
ity. Estes’ article, &dquo;All-or-None Processes in Learning and Reten-
tion,&dquo; pages 157-166, exemplifies the weaknesses of these printing
techniques-they make the reading an unpleasant task. These de-
ficiencies were made more noticeable by the highly readable single
column, large type face used in the introduction to each chapter. It
is unfortunate that economics apparently dictated use of the origi-
nal plates for each article.
A lesser defect was the numbering in the Table of Contents. The
introduction to Chapter II had no corresponding page number listed
in the Contents, while the page number for the first article in Chap-
ter I was listed as page 149 rather than correctly as page 157. A

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640 EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT
more serious inconvenience was that page references within an
article were not changed to conform to the numbering system of the
text, e.g., a sentence on page 49 urges the reader to proceed to page
33 instead of the intended page 67. In short, the copy editing of this
text is not on a par with the scholarly editing.
Those readers with an interest in quantitative psychology will
find this volume an interesting and thorough guide to work in stimu-
lus sampling. Each article provides a bibliography for a more ex-
tensive investigation if supplementary reading is desired. The book
is suitable for use as a text in a course in mathematical models of
learning if the students have the appropriate mathematical back-
ground.
on the dust jacket claims the book is comprehensible
The &dquo;blurb&dquo;
to the general nonspecialist reader. While one might enjoy and un-
derstand many portions of the text by skipping over its numerous
mathematical formulations, it seems likely that little of the real
value can be obtained by this procedure. Hence, unless the general
nonspecialist reader has a good background in matrix algebra and
probability theory he would be better advised to look elsewhere for
reading material.
RUSSELL A. CHADBOURN
Laboratory of Educational Research
University of Colorado
Schematic Approach to Analysis and Research: Optometric and
Reading Measures by Jin Ong. New York: Vantage Press, Inc.,
1967. Pp. 120. $3.75.
This small tome reflects a combination of the author’s disserta-
tion and later cogitation. The scrivener avers that the purpose of
the book is to furnish students with a way to aid them in identify-
ing research problems and then the methodologies to employ once
the problem or problems have been determined. To attain this
worthy goal, the author presents a schematic approach to research
using various optometric and reading inventories as his models with
heavy emphasis given the former. More specifically, the writer has
developed a rather peculiar rendition of the scientific method as
articulated by John Dewey. His &dquo;schematic approach&dquo; consists of:
(a) identifying the general problem, (b) delineating the problem
into a number of smaller and less general problems, (c) further de-
lineating and investigating the problem by examining concomitant
specific problems, and (d) developing a theoretical structure to ac-
count for the investigative findings. To consider a topic of such
magnitude in something less than one hundred pages is, if not im-
possible, at least highly improbable.
If the preceding seems somewhat confusing, the reviewer has ac-
complished one aspect of his task in that he is, in his opinion, re-

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