A dialectical constructivist model of mental attention ("effort") and of working
memory is briefly presented, and used to explicate subjects' processing in
misleading test items. We illustrate with task analyses of the Figural Intersections
Test (FIT). We semantically derive a set of 10 Theoretical Structural Predictions
(TSP) that stipulate relations between mental attentional resources (mental-power:
Mp) and the systematically varied mental demand of items (mental-demand: Md), as
they jointly codetermine probable performance (conditional probabilities of passing
and failing). These predictions are evaluated on first approximation using a known
family of ordered Latent Class models, all probabilistic versions of Guttman's
unidimensional scale. Parameters of these models were estimated using the
Categorical Data Analysis System of Eliason (1990). Main results are: (1) Data fit
Lazarsfeld's latent-distance model, providing initial support for our 10
predictions; (2) The M-power of children (latent Mp-classes) when assessed
behaviourally may increase with age in a discrete manner, and have the potential to
generate interval scales of measurement; (3) In the light of our results what
statisticians often consider "error of measurement" appears (in part) to be signal,
not noise: The organismic signal of misleading (Y-) processes that in their
dialectical (trade-off) interaction with success-producing (X-) processes generate performance.
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