The Calgary semantic decision project: concrete/abstract decision data for 10,000 English words

Psycholinguistic research has been advanced by the development of word recognition megastudies. For instance, the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007) provides researchers with access to naming and lexical-decision latencies for over 40,000 words. In the present work, we extended the megastudy approach to a task that emphasizes semantic processing. Using a concrete/abstract semantic decision (i.e., does the word refer to something concrete or abstract?), we collected decision latencies and accuracy rates for 10,000 English words. The stimuli were concrete and abstract words selected from Brysbaert, Warriner, and Kuperman’s (2013) comprehensive list of concreteness ratings. In total, 321 participants provided responses to 1,000 words each. Whereas semantic effects tend to be quite modest in naming and lexical decision studies, analyses of the concrete/abstract semantic decision responses show that a substantial proportion of variance can be explained by semantic variables. The item-level and trial-level data will be useful for other researchers interested in the semantic processing of concrete and abstract words.     

Developing new online calibration methods for multidimensional computerized adaptive testing

Multidimensional computerized adaptive testing (MCAT) has received increasing attention over the past few years in educational measurement. Like all other formats of CAT, item replenishment is an essential part of MCAT for its item bank maintenance and management, which governs retiring overexposed or obsolete items over time and replacing them with new ones. Moreover, calibration precision of the new items will directly affect the estimation accuracy of examinees’ ability vectors. In unidimensional CAT (UCAT) and cognitive diagnostic CAT, online calibration techniques have been developed to effectively calibrate new items. However, there has been very little discussion of online calibration in MCAT in the literature. Thus, this paper proposes new online calibration methods for MCAT based upon some popular methods used in UCAT. Three representative methods, Method A, the ‘one EM cycle’ method and the ‘multiple EM cycles’ method, are generalized to MCAT. Three simulation studies were conducted to compare the three new methods by manipulating three factors (test length, item bank design, and level of correlation between coordinate dimensions). The results showed that all the new methods were able to recover the item parameters accurately, and the adaptive online calibration designs showed some improvements compared to the random design under most conditions.     

Child Characteristics,Parent Education and Depressive Symptoms,and Marital Conflict Predicting Trajectories of Parenting Behavior from Childhood Through Early Adolescence in Taiwan

The study examined how child and parent characteristics, and contextual sources of stress, such as marital conflict predict initial status and trajectories of parent involvement, support, and harsh control, over a 4‐year period in families in Taiwan (n = 4,754). Based on Belsky's (1984) ecological model of parenting, three domains predicting parenting were tested, child characteristics (age cohort and gender), father and mother characteristics (education and depressive symptoms), and contextual sources of stress (marital conflict). The study followed two cohorts of children; the younger cohort was followed from first to fourth grade and the older cohort from fourth to seventh grade. Initially, fourth graders reported more parental involvement, support, and harsh control than first graders. However, involvement, support, and harsh control decreased across the 4 years for the older cohort as they transitioned to early adolescence. In the first year, girls reported more parental involvement and support and less harsh control than boys. Across the 4 years, involvement and support increased, and harsh control decreased for boys; whereas involvement stayed the same, support slightly decreased, and harsh control slightly increased for girls. Children whose parents were more educated reported more parent involvement, support, and harsh control in the first year. Children whose fathers were chronically depressed and whose parents were experiencing marital conflict reported decreasing parent involvement and support over the years.     

Stereotype‐based judgments of child welfare issues in cases of parent criminality

Approximately 2.5 million children in the European Union and the United States have incarcerated parents, the vast majority of which are fathers. Three experiments modeled on real legal cases (total N = 881) investigated how parent gender affects decisions regarding contact between incarcerated parents and their children. Results showed that measures facilitating relationship maintenance in relevant domains (sentence length, visitation rights, and alleviating postsentencing conditions) were supported less when they involved a father despite identical prior information about the legal case. Mediation analyses suggest two distinct processes explaining these disparities: participants' crime‐related attributions, and their stereotypical expectations about the different familial roles of mothers and fathers. Practical implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Help yourself by helping others: The joint impact of group member organizational citizenship behaviors and group cohesiveness on group member objective task performance change

This paper examines how a group member's individual‐targeted citizenship behavior (OCBI) and organization‐targeted citizenship behavior (OCBO) interact with a salient group‐level contextual variable, group cohesiveness, to foster positive change for that group member, starting with job self‐efficacy change, and followed by objective task performance change. Over a span of 6 months, we engaged in multilevel, multisource, multistage data collection and surveyed 587 members in 83 work groups. Our results indicate that a group member's OCBI, in comparison with OCBO, is more positively related to his or her job self‐efficacy change. Group cohesiveness was found to attenuate the relationship between a group member's OCBI and job self‐efficacy change, and conversely, to accentuate the relationship between a group member's OCBO and job self‐efficacy change. Furthermore, a group member's job self‐efficacy change mediated the interactive effects of the group member's OCBI and group cohesiveness (as well as the group member's OCBO and group cohesiveness) on his or her objective task performance change.     

Motivating emotional intelligence: A reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) perspective

Trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) is generally associated with positive outcomes and can inform clinical and social interventions. We investigated the sub-factors of trait EI: Wellbeing, Self-control, Emotionality, and Sociability, in the context of the reinforcement sensitivity theory (RST) of motivation. In Study 1, participants (N?=?247) completed Carver and White’s (J Personal Soc Psychol 67:319–333; Carver, White, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67:319–333, 1994) BIS/BAS scales and a measure of trait EI. All EI sub-factors were positively associated with BAS Drive and negatively with BIS. Study 2 (N?=?382) employed a new questionnaire based on revised RST (Corr and Cooper, Psychol Assess 28:1427–1440; Corr, Cooper, Psychological Assessment 28:1427–1440, 2016). All trait EI factors were positively associated with BAS Goal-Drive Persistence and Reward Interest, and negatively with the BIS. Self-control showed negative associations with BAS Impulsivity and was the only factor not to correlate with BAS Reward Reactivity. Results suggest that high trait EI individuals are goal driven, sensitive to reward and lower in avoidance motivation and negative emotion. This motivational basis to trait EI further explicates its structure.     

Mentoring as a Mediator or Moderator of the Association between Racial Discrimination and Coping Efficacy in Urban,Low‐Income Latina/o Youth

The aim of this study was to examine the associations among mentoring relationship quality (i.e., relational and instrumental quality), racial discrimination and coping efficacy with racial discrimination. Three social support models were tested, including the stress buffering, support mobilization, and support deterioration models. Participants were 257 urban, low‐income Latina/o high school students, who completed surveys in both 9th and 10th grades. While controlling for gender and coping efficacy with discrimination in 9th grade, results supported the social support deterioration model. Specifically, there was a significant indirect effect of racial discrimination in 9th grade on coping efficacy in 10th grade through instrumental mentoring quality. As racial discrimination increased, mentoring quality decreased and then coping efficacy decreased. We also found that more racial discrimination in 9th grade was significantly associated with lower coping efficacy in 10th grade, and higher instrumental mentoring quality in 9th grade was significantly associated with higher coping efficacy in 10th grade, while controlling for gender and coping efficacy in 9th grade. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Longitudinal Profiles of Girls’ Irritable,Defiant and Antagonistic Oppositional Symptoms: Evidence for Group Based Differences in Symptom Severity

Three subdimensions of ODD symptoms have been proposed –angry/irritable (IR), argumentative/defiant (DF) and antagonism (AN). This study tested whether longitudinal symptom trajectories could be identified by these subdimensions. Group-based trajectory analysis was used to identify developmental trajectories of IR, DF and AN symptoms. Multi-group trajectory analysis was then used to identify how subdimension trajectories were linked together over time. Data were drawn from the Pittsburgh Girls Study (PGS; N = 2450), an urban community sample of girls between the ages of five--eight at baseline. We included five waves of annual data across ages five-13 to model trajectories. Three trajectories were identified for each ODD subdimension: DF and AN were characterized by high, medium and low severity groups; IR was characterized by low, medium stable, and high increasing groups. Multi-trajectory analysis confirmed these subdimensions were best linked together based on symptom severity. We did not identify girls’ trajectory groups that were characterized predominantly by a particular subdimension of ODD symptoms. Membership in more severe symptom groups was significantly associated with worse outcomes five years later. In childhood and early adolescence girls with high levels of ODD symptoms can be identified, and these youth are characterized by a persistently elevated profile of IR, DF and AN symptoms. Further studies in clinical samples are required to examine the ICD-10 proposal that ODD with irritability is a distinct or more severe form of ODD.     

Between Luxury and Need: The Idea of Distance in Philosophical Anthropology

Abstract

This paper offers a critical analysis of the use of the idea of distance in philosophical anthropology. Distance is generally presented in works of philosophical anthropology as the ideal coping strategy, which rests in turn on the thesis of the instinct deficiency of the human species. Some of the features of species life, such as its sophisticated use of symbolic forms, come to be seen as necessary parts of this general coping strategy, rather than a merely expressive outlet, incidental to the ultimate goal of life preservation. The paper analyses the arguments used in support of the thesis of instinct deficiency in Hans Blumenberg and considers their implications for the status of symbolic expression in species life. It contrasts the approach this thesis involves with one that proceeds by presenting and arguing from biological evolutionary evidence. The contrast is used to examine the questions: in what sense instinct deficiency is specifically anthropological, and in what precise sense philosophical anthropology is ‘philosophical’.