Legislation and Non-neutral Principles: A Lockean Approach

When citizens and legislators attempt to justify coercive acts, such as fines or imprisonment, they often do so on the basis of controversial justificatory principles. There are at least two ways a principle can be controversial: one may claim that the principle in question is false; or one may claim that the principle, correctly applied, does not actually justify the specific act in question. Thus, suppose the state invokes the principle 'false beliefs should be censored' to justify silencing a dissident. The dissident might disagree because she thinks the state should not be in the business of censoring false beliefs, or she might agree with the principle but object to the action because she is quite convinced that her beliefs are not false.     

Time complexity and consistency issues in using the AHP for making group decisions

Two different ways of using the AHP in making group decisions are compared and evaluated. The first method combines different experts’ opinions before applying an eigenvalue method to obtain final weights for decision alternatives. The second, in contrast, derives each expert's rating for the decision alternatives before combining them. Both methods take into account the relative importance of different experts in making decisions. Comparison and evaluation of these two methods are made by using two criteria: time complexity and consistency indices. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the use of these two methods, and results of a mathematical simulation are presented for comparing the time complexity in different-sized problems. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Equivalence class establishment, expansion, and modification in preschool children

Preschool children were taught four two-choice match-to-sample conditional discriminations with 10 arbitrary visual stimuli. For 6 participants, 2 of the 10 stimuli served as the sample, or conditional, stimuli in all discriminations. For 5 additional participants, the same pair of stimuli served as the discriminative, or comparison, stimuli in all discriminations. Equivalence classes were established with more participants in the latter group, replicating prior research with participants with retardation. Four participants, in whom equivalence classes were established and who were available for further participation, were exposed to new conditional discriminations without trial-by-trial feedback and involving some novel and some familiar stimuli. Consistent conditional responding was observed, and tests for inclusion of the novel stimuli in the original classes showed class expansion. Training to reverse the unreinforced conditional performances produced a reversal of class membership in 3 of 4 participants, an outcome not consistent with other studies. The results are discussed with respect to the interaction of class structure and size.     

Controlled comparison of aversive therapy and covert sensitization in compulsive homosexuality

Ethical objections to the use of behaviour therapy in homosexuality are discussed. It is pointed out that these objections were often based on a limited view of the aims of the therapy. The need for evaluating such therapy, as it is currently used, is elaborated.Twenty subjects requesting behaviour therapy to reduce compulsive homosexual urges were randomly allocated, half to receive aversive therapy using electric shocks and half to receive covert sensitization. Both groups were studied for one year. There was no consistent trend for one therapy to be more effective than the other in reducing the strength of compulsive homosexual urges, and the response to both was similar to that reported in previous studies. It was considered that aversive therapies in homosexuality do not act by establishing a conditioned aversion, nor by altering the subjects' sexual orientation. They reduce aversive arousal produced by behaviour completion mechanisms when subjects attempt to refrain from homosexual behaviour in response to stimuli which have repeatedly provoked such behaviour in the past.     

The negative event scale: measuring frequency and intensity of adult hassles

This study examined the structure, concurrent validity, and reliability of a hassle measure for middle-aged adults in both event frequency and intensity recordings. The measure included a range of interpersonal day-to-day events and re-examined aspects of the primary appraisal confounding debate between Lazarus and colleagues (Lazarus, Delongis, Folkman, & Gruen, 1985) and Dohrenwend and Shrout (1985). Of the 373 participants, 73% were female, 72% were in paid work, 69% were in permanent relationships and 62% had children. Principal component analyses of separate hassle frequency and intensity scores highlighted components consistent with previous research. There were seven interpersonal and four non-interpersonal subscales associated with negative events with family and friends, work, health, money, and household. The subscales had very good reliability and concurrent validity and there were generally strong correlations (i.e. up .84) between frequency and intensity scores for each subscale. Given some important sampling limitations (e.g. female overrepresentation) the findings show a psychometrically sound hassle scale for adults.     

Early Adolescent Growth in Depression and Conduct Problem Symptoms as Predictors of Later Substance Use Impairment

Most studies of adolescent substance use and psychological comorbidity have examined the contributions of conduct problems and depressive symptoms measured only at particular points-in-time. Yet, during adolescence, risk factors such as conduct problems and depression exist within a developmental context, and vary over time. Though internalizing and comorbid pathways to substance use have been theorized (Hussong et al. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors 25:390-404, 2011), the degree to which developmental increases in depressive symptoms and conduct problems elevate risk for substance use impairment among adolescents, in either an additive or potentially a synergistic fashion, is unclear. Using a school-based sample of 521 adolescents, we tested additive and synergistic influences of changes in depressive symptoms and conduct problems from 6th to 9th grade using parallel process growth curve modeling with latent interactions in the prediction of late adolescent (12th grade) substance use impairment, while examining gender as a moderator. We found that the interaction between growth in depression and conduct disorder symptoms uniquely predicted later substance use problems, in addition to main effects of each, across boys and girls. Results indicated that adolescents whose parents reported increases in both depression and conduct disorder symptoms from 6th to 9th grade reported the most substance use-related impairment in 12th grade. The current study demonstrates that patterns of depression and conduct problems (e.g., growth vs. decreasing) are likely more important than the static levels at any particular point-in-time in relation to substance use risk.     

A Regression Framework for Causal Mediation Analysis with Applications to Behavioral Science

We introduce and extend the classical regression framework for conducting mediation analysis from the fit of only one model. Using the essential mediation components (EMCs) allows us to estimate causal mediation effects and their analytical variance. This single-equation approach reduces computation time and permits the use of a rich suite of regression tools that are not easily implemented on a system of three equations. Additionally, we extend this framework to non-nested mediation systems, provide a joint measure of mediation for complex mediation hypotheses, propose new visualizations for mediation effects, and explain why estimates of the total effect may differ depending on the approach used. Using data from social science studies, we also provide extensive illustrations of the usefulness of this framework and its advantages over traditional approaches to mediation analysis. The example data are freely available for download online and we include the R code necessary to reproduce our results.     

Behavioral discrimination of click intensity in cat

Avoidance conditioning procedures were used to train cats to discriminate intensity differences between successive clicks. The discriminative behavior was applied in a modified method of adjustment to determine a difference limen (DL) for click intensity. The obtained DLs were consistent within and between subjects, and averaged 4.4 db. This value is greater than previously reported intensity DLs for pure tones in cats.