Applying the permutation test to factorial designs

The permutation test follows directly from the procedure in a comparative experiment, does not depend on a known distribution for error, and is sometimes more sensitive to real effects than are the corresponding parametric tests. Despite its advantages, the permutation test is seldom (if ever) applied to factorial designs because of the computational load that they impose. We propose two methods to limit the computation load. We show, first, that orthogonal contrasts limit the computational load and, second, that when combined with Gill’s (2007) algorithm, the factorial permutation test is both practical and efficient. For within-subjects designs, the factorial permutation test is equivalent to an ANOVA when the latter’s assumptions have been met. For between-subjects designs, the factorial test is conservative. Code to execute the routines described in this article may be downloaded from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

A reappraisal of successive negative contrast in two populations of domestic dogs

When an anticipated food reward is unexpectedly reduced in quality or quantity, many mammals show a successive negative contrast (SNC) effect, i.e. a reduction in instrumental or consummatory responses below the level shown by control animals that have only ever received the lower-value reward. SNC effects are believed to reflect an aversive emotional state, caused by the discrepancy between the expected and the actual reward. Furthermore, how animals respond to such discrepancy has been suggested to be a sign of animals’ background mood state. However, the occurrence and interpretation of SNC effects are not unequivocal, and there is a relative lack of studies conducted outside of laboratory conditions. Here, we tested two populations of domestic dogs (24 owned pet dogs and 21 dogs from rescue kennels) in a SNC paradigm following the methodology by Bentosela et al. (J Comp Psychol 123:125–130, 2009), using a design that allowed a within-, as well as a between-, subjects analysis. We found no evidence of a SNC effect in either population using a within- or between-subjects design. Indeed, the within-subjects analysis revealed a reverse SNC effect, with subjects in the shifted condition showing a significantly higher level of response, even after they received an unexpected reduction in reward quality. Using a within-, rather than a between-, subjects design may be beneficial in studies of SNC due to higher sensitivity and statistical power; however, order effects on subject performance need to be considered. These results suggest that this particular SNC paradigm may not be sufficiently robust to replicate easily in a range of environmental contexts and populations.     

Analyzing estimates of automatic and conscious retrieval in between- and within-subjects designs

The process dissociation procedure (PDP) was developed as a means of quantifying the contributions of conscious and automatic retrieval to memory performance. Although the required inclusion and exclusion conditions are manipulated within subjects in most experiments, several researchers have expressed concerns that the instructions may be particularly difficult to follow under these conditions. Thus, manipulating instructions between subjects may have some advantages, although some aspects of the statistical analysis of conscious and automatic estimates are not routine in such a design. We describe a procedure for this analysis and present some initial data to illustrate its application to PDP. We also comment on other issues related to the calculation of estimates of automatic and conscious retrieval in between- and within-subjects designs.     

Determinants of seeking timely and necessary pediatric care

Ninety mothers were interviewed in a pediatrician’s waiting room about their reasons for seeking care. We compared their answers, and the pediatrician’s judgment of the visit’s necessity and timeliness to a model which distinguishes appraisal, illness, and utilization stages in seeking medical treatment. Clearly defined symptoms and the use of few home treatments predicted a more rapid assessment that one’s child was ill. No factors predicted how quickly a mother would decide that her child needed professional care, nor how rapidly she would then seek that care. The pediatrician judged visits to be necessary when the child had many physical symptoms, pain, and/or fever, and when the child’s mother was employed. He judged visits to be delayed for mothers who reported that cost of treatment may influence their decisions to seek care. He indicated that only 39% of the visits were both necessary and on time. We discuss ways to encourage appropriate utilization of pediatric visits.     

LABSIM: A data-driven simulation program for instruction in research design and statistics

LABSIM is a general-purpose FORTRAN program that simulates the collection of data from laboratory experiments. Student-specified parameters are employed in a multiple-regression model that allows manipulation or control of up to 10 potential independent variables. Variables may be discrete (up to eight levels), continuous, or range (e.g., IQ). Raw scores may be generated for up to six groups, optionally accompanied by statistical analyses for simple between- or within-subjects designs or for factorial designs, including mixed factorial designs. Seventeen models (content areas) are currently available. As contrasted with other simulation programs, LABSIM models are exceptionally easy to design and implement; no computer expertise is required. Summary data automatically collected by LABSIM indicate a high success rate and extensive use of the program beyond course requirements. The current version of LABSIM is available in either batch or interactive form. A newer version that allows the simultaneous manipulation of up to three independent variables will be available soon.     

Effect of snap and thoughtful judgments on person impressions

Judgment type (snap and thoughtful) and valence of stimulus person (from likable to unlikable) were varied as within-subjects factors in four studies to test whether situational and motivational variables (as opposed to the perceptual variable of unit formation) would interfere with integrative activity in forming first impressions. If such variables are influential, both the averaging and meaning shift formulations would expect that snap judgments should produce less extreme impression ratings than more thoughtful judgments. None of three indices of integrative activity (impression ratings, component ratings and variance of impression ratings) detected a difference between the snap and thoughtful response conditions for early and late judgments in a series, for moderate or extreme traits, or for between- or within-subjects designs. These findings suggest that certain boundary conditions need to be placed on the assumptions underlying the averaging and meaning shift formulations.     

Respect and Types of Injustice

Jonathan Wolff and Timothy Hinton have criticized a version of liberal egalitarianism, often associated with Ronald Dworkin, for promoting an account of social justice that fails to treat everyone with respect. This paper analyses Wolff’s and Hinton’s critiques, particularly with regard to how notions of self-respect and respect-standing are deployed. The paper argues that the analyses of both Wolff and Hinton display affinities with a dualist approach to social justice. A dualist approach theorizes respect as an aspect of both distributive, socioeconomic injustice and cultural injustice, rather than of the former only, which is typical of liberal egalitarianism. Nancy Fraser is widely associated with such a dualist framework, so her version is used to assess Wolff’s and Hinton’s work. The paper argues that both make use of ideals and commitments from the dualist approach to justice in their respect objection. However, despite their evident sympathy for the notion of cultural injustice, both continue to theorize respect primarily as an aspect of distributive justice. Thus, for cultural justice theorists, Wolff’s and Hinton’s critiques of Dworkinian justice may leave something to be desired. Thanks to Anne Phillips, Kathy King, Tamara Jugov, Neal Razzell and reviewers for Res Publica for comments on an earlier draft of the paper. Thanks to Itai Rabinowitz for insightful conversations about the issues touched on here. Thanks to the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for making this research possible.     

Distinctiveness and serial position effects in recognition

Digitized photographs of snowflakes were presented for a recognition test after retention intervals of varying durations. While overall accuracy and discrimination remained constant, as the retention interval increased, primacy increased from chance to reliably better than chance while recency decreased to chance levels. A variation of Murdock’s (1960) distinctiveness model accounted for the changing primacy and recency effects observed in both between- and within-subjects designs. The generality of the model was examined in two different paradigms: lexical access during sentence processing, and free recall in the continual distractor paradigm. In both cases, the model made accurate qualitative predictions for both latency and accuracy measures.     

Transfer of inhibition after serial and simultaneous feature negative discrimination training

Three experiments examined the nature of inhibitory learning in Pavlovian simultaneous (A+, XA-) and serial (A+, X → A-) feature negative discrimination prodecures in a conditioned suppression situation with rat subjects. The feature (X) trained with simultaneous procedures readily inhibited suppression conditioned to another excitor (B) that was not involved in the feature negative discrimination with X. But the feature trained with serial procedures showed little or no ability to inhibit suppression conditioned to other excitors. These results were obtained with both between- and within-subjects designs, with a variety of test procedures, and after extinction of the A excitor used to establish the inhibition to X. They suggest that nature of the inhibition learned in feature negative discriminations depends on the temporal arrangement of stimuli. We favored the possibility that inhibitors established using simultaneous stimulus arrangements modulate behavior by acting on a representation of the unconditioned stimulus, but inhibitors established with serial procedures act on particular conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus associations.     

Intimate Partner Violence Within Gay Male Couples: Dimensionalizing Partner Violence Among Cuban Gay Men

Using a quantitative–qualitative mixed design, the current study investigated relationship violence within 35 gay male couples living in Santiago, Cuba. Informants narrated how violence was enacted within their relationship. Qualitative analyses revealed men’s construction of masculinity and the sequelae of economic hardships—which led to economic emasculinization—were primary contributors to relationship abuse. Gendered interpretations to the display of heightened masculinity contributed to intimate partner violence. Enacted interpersonal violence was not meaningfully associated with alcohol consumption or to personality measures. We suggest the economic constraints that are perceived by couples to precipitate relational stress may be similar across heterosexual and gay/lesbian couples, and that the relational power accorded to economic privilege cannot be aligned fully by gender.     

Copying without rewards: socially influenced foraging decisions among brown capuchin monkeys

An individual’s foraging activity can be influenced by the choices made by nearby conspecifics. The interest shown in the location and characteristics of a feeding patch may depend on the feeding success of a conspecific there, a process that needs to be distinguished from choices guided by rewards to the observer itself. We investigated how rewards for both self and others influence the foraging choices of captive capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Thirteen adult capuchins observed familiar female conspecific models explore one of three opaque boxes under three conditions. In the first, there were no rewards available to either monkey; in the second, rewards were available to the model only; and in the third, both monkeys could retrieve a reward. Under all conditions, subjects more often explored the same box as the model than was expected by chance. Thus, without ever receiving a reward themselves or without seeing another receive rewards, subjects’ searches were directed at the box explored by another monkey. The tendency to match the model’s choice increased if the subject was rewarded. We compared these results to control conditions in which the model was either absent, or present but not allowed to demonstrate. Subjects’ located the reward less often in control conditions, than in the experimental conditions. We conclude that extrinsic rewards, while helpful, are not required for partners to influence the foraging choices of capuchins, and that the unrewarded copying of foraging choices demonstrated here may provide the basis for additional social influences on learning. This contribution is part of the Special Issue “A Socioecological Perspective on Primate Cognition” (Cunningham and Janson 2007)     

Comparing Four Methods of Integrating Parent and Teacher Symptom Ratings of Attention-deficit/hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Although parents and teachers are valid informants in the assessment of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), there is relatively little systematic research on how these ratings should be optimally combined. We compared four methods of ADHD assessment to determine how well they identified impaired children: (1) parent only, (2) teacher only, (3) parent or teacher (‘or rule’), and (4) parent and teacher (‘and rule’). We obtained parent and teacher ratings of ADHD from the Disruptive Behavior Disorder Rating Scale on 232 5- to 10-year-old children (69% male; 47% Caucasian) with (n = 121) and without (n = 111) ADHD. We used receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) and seemingly unrelated regression analyses (SUR) to evaluate how accurately each method identified categorically- and dimensionally-defined measures of functional impairment. Parent ratings of ADHD optimally identified globally impaired children based on categorical and dimensional measures. However, teacher ratings of ADHD most accurately identified children who were negatively regarded by peers using categorical, but not dimensional, measures. No ADHD assessment method effectively identified children with academic difficulties. Although multiple informants are valuable in the assessment of ADHD, no single method was consistently superior in identifying impaired children across domains. We consider alternative assessment strategies in ADHD as well as other potential factors that may contribute to modest agreement among informants.     

Belief and recollection of autobiographical memories

In three experiments, undergraduates rated autobiographical memories on scales derived from existing theories of memory. In multiple regression analyses, ratings of the degree to which subjects recollected (i.e., relived) their memories were predicted by visual imagery, auditory imagery, and emotions, whereas ratings of belief in the accuracy of their memories were predicted by knowledge of the setting. Recollection was predicted equally well in between- and within-subjects analyses, but belief consistently had smaller correlations and multiple regression predictions between subjects; individual differences in the cognitive scales that we measured could not account well for individual differences in belief. In contrast, measures of mood (Beck Depression Index) and dissociation (Dissociative Experience Scale) added predictive value for belief, but not for recollection. We also found that highly relived memories almost always had strong visual images and that remember/know judgments made on autobiographical memories were more closely related to belief than to recollection.     

Power and Participation: Social Representations among Children in Pre-school

Children’s play is usually connected with qualities such as happiness and innocence, and regarded as important and necessary for learning and development. However, play is not always a state of joy. Experiences of being socially excluded or ignored and of taking part in such activities are occurring. The article draws on a re-analysis of empirical data from a study of pre-school children’s play. The focus in the article is directed towards how pre-school children within the context of play communicate and act in relation to social participation and power. The theoretical framework is built upon a socio-cultural research tradition, particularly emphasising context and communication. Interpretive reproduction, secondary adjustment, and social representations are used as additional theoretical concepts in the analyses and discussions of the results. Empirical data show that children’s social representations of power and participation in play include rationales for who can join the play and who can not, and also how to allow exceptions from the main rule that ‘anyone can join’.     

Parents’ Autobiographical Narratives: Setting Events for Their Contemplation of Mindful Changes

The ability to tell a coherent and rich story about one’s personal life is an important marker of an individual’s capacity and willingness to contemplate personal change. We review research on correlations between the coherence of parents’ narrative accounts of life experiences and their responsiveness during interactions with their children. Based on this review, we explore ideas about the nature of narrative coherence, how parents might be taught to improve this structural feature when telling their stories, and why a well constructed story might enhance the parents’ objective study of the here and now. We discuss how the effects of narrative restructuring may enable parents to be more cognitively mindful of their interactions with their children. We present our speculations in the spirit of promoting discussion of new clinical strategies for parents and new research strategies aimed at experimental analyses of observed connections between parent narratives and their willingness to contemplate personal change.     

Africa Humiliated? Misrecognition in Development Aid

Critiques of development aid from its recipient’s sometimes draw our attention to the perception of paternalism on the part of ‘development industry’ actors. Even within participatory project designs, critical voices recount experiences of clear power divides and informal hierarchies determining the content and form of ‘cooperation’. While neoliberal as well as neo-Marxist scholars base their critiques on a distributive scheme of global justice, post-development theory emphasizes respect and recognition as the central aspect of justice Indeed, post-development theorists continue to complain of neo-colonial power structures between nations as well as on a micro-level between the ‘experts’ and local people. The latter feel misrecognized in being judged according to the parameters of Western actors within the international community. This article explores how charges of misrecognition within development cooperation challenge the assumption by many liberal political theorists that more global justice could be achieved through more aid.     

Does a salient distractor capture attention early in processing?

Kim and Cave (1999) used spatial probes in order to measure the effects of bottom-up and top-down factors on the allocation of spatial attention over time. Subjects searched for a target with a unique shape, with a uniquely colored distractor present on each trial. The singleton distractor captured attention early in processing, whereas attention homed in on the target’s location later on. Kim and Cave (1999) concluded that top–down factors cannot prevent the presence of a salient distractor from delaying target selection. The present study tested the idea that such results were obtained only because subjects adopted the strategy of searching for the most salient item. Kim and Cave’s (1999) finding was replicated in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, instead of a feature search, subjects performed a conjunction search—that is, a task that could not be performed using a salience–based strategy. Probe response times were longest at the salient distractor’s location at both the short and the long stimulus onset asynchronies. These results suggest that, early in processing, top–down factors can exert their influence and prevent the capture of attention by a salient distractor.