The naïve intuitive statistician: a naïve sampling model of intuitive confidence intervals

The perspective of the na?ve intuitive statistician is outlined and applied to explain overconfidence when people produce intuitive confidence intervals and why this format leads to more overconfidence than other formally equivalent formats. The na?ve sampling model implies that people accurately describe the sample information they have but are na?ve in the sense that they uncritically take sample properties as estimates of population properties. A review demonstrates that the na?ve sampling model accounts for the robust and important findings in previous research as well as provides novel predictions that are confirmed, including a way to minimize the overconfidence with interval production. The authors discuss the na?ve sampling model as a representative of models inspired by the na?ve intuitive statistician.     

Pretabular varieties of modal algebras

We study modal logics in the setting of varieties of modal algebras. Any variety of modal algebras generated by a finite algebra — such, a variety is called tabular — has only finitely many subvarieties, i.e. is of finite height. The converse does not hold in general. It is shown that the converse does hold in the lattice of varieties of K4-algebras. Hence the lower part of this lattice consists of tabular varieties only. We proceed to show that there is a continuum of pretabular varieties of K4-algebras — those are the non-tabular varieties all of whose proper subvarieties are tabular — in contrast with Maksimova's result that there are only five pretabular varieties of S4-algebras.     

Oedipus the king: Quest for self‐knowledge – denial of reality. Sophocles’ vision of man and psychoanalytic concept formation

In the Oedipus myth we find a dramatic representation of the child’s passionate ties to its parents. In the play Oedipus the King, Sophocles relates the theme of the myth to the question of self‐knowledge. This was the predominant reading in German 19th century thinking, and even as a student Freud was fascinated by Oedipus’ character – not primarily as the protagonist of an oedipal drama, but as the solver of divine riddles and as an individual striving for self‐knowledge. Inspired by Vellacott, Steiner has proposed an alternative reading of Oedipus the King as a play about a cover‐up of the truth. The text supports both these arguments. The pivotal theme of the tragedy is Oedipus’ conflict between his desire to know himself and his opposing wish to cover up the truth that will bring disaster. It is this complex character of Oedipus and the intensity of his conflict‐ridden struggle for self‐knowledge that has made the tragedy to a rich source of inspiration for psychoanalytic concept formation and understanding both of emotional and cognitive development up to our own time.     

Capturing the Naturally Occurring Superior Performance of Experts in the Laboratory: Toward a Science of Expert and Exceptional Performance

ABSTRACT— Expertise researchers have traditionally shied away from studying the highest levels of achievement in favor of studying basic cognitive processes, such as memory and categorization. In this article, we present a different approach that is focused on capturing superior (expert) performance on representative tasks that reveal the essential characteristics of expertise in a given domain. In domains where expert performance is measurable, acquisition is gradual and the highest levels are only attained after 10 years of intense preparation—even for the most "talented." Analyses of reproducibly superior performance show that it is mediated by physiological adaptations and cognitive skills acquired as a result of the cumulative effects of special practice activities (deliberate practice). It appears that the genes necessary to attain such adaptations and expert skills can be activated in healthy children—the only clear exceptions to date being genes that control body size and height. Our knowledge of how experts acquire their superior skills provides insights into the potential for human adaptation and skill acquisition and has important implications for theories of the structure of general and expert cognition, as well as for training interventions in applied psychology and education.     

Internet‐initiated sexual abuse: adolescent victims' reports about On‐ and Off‐line sexual activities

The purpose of the present study was to investigate how adolescent girls, who had been sexually (on‐ and off‐line) deceived and abused by an Internet hebephile, reported about these acts. As we had access to documentation of 68 girls' conversations (i.e. chat logs) and involvement with the perpetrator, we were able to gauge what the victims reported during the police interview against this detailed documentation. In contrast with findings from previous research, the majority of victims reported about the off‐line activities (real‐life meetings) with the perpetrator. However, the victims omitted and/or denied more of the on‐line activities, specifically the more severe sexual on‐line acts (sending nude photos and participating in sexual web shows). There is probably a gap between what the victims reported and what they presumably remembered about the on‐line activities. Factors that might have affected the victims' pattern of reports are discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alexithymia,memory of emotion,emotional awareness,and perfectionism

The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20; R. M. Bagby, J. D. A. Parker, & G. J. Taylor, 1994) is a self-assessment instrument designed to measure deficits in meta-emotional functioning (e.g., difficulties in identifying and describing emotions). Four studies were carried out to examine the association between the TAS-20 and (a) performance measures of meta-emotional functioning (memory of emotion and emotional awareness; Studies 1-2) and (b) measures of perfectionistic standards that may possibly be involved in the self-assessment of abilities-difficulties (Studies 3-4). The TAS-20 failed to correlate in the predicted direction with the performance measures but showed sizable correlations with measures of perfectionism. Moreover, perfectionism was found to predict TAS-20 scores independent of depression, anxiety, and somatic complaints. The results are discussed in terms of the TAS-20 measuring primarily certain aspects of meta-emotional self-efficacy.     

Tracking fear in snake and spider fearful participants during visual search: A multi-response domain study

In visual search tasks snake or spider fearful participants showed shorter reaction times (RTs) to respond to their feared animal (e.g., snake) than to the nonfeared animal (i.e., spider) (Öhman, Flykt, & Esteves, 2001). Here, we used this paradigm with heart rate (HR), RTs, and event-related potential (ERP) measures, to investigate the nature of the responses to the feared animal, a nonfeared (but fear-relevant) animal, and fear-irrelevant target stimuli with snake fearful, spider fearful, and nonfearful participants. Fearful participants showed shorter RTs and evoked larger amplitudes on a late positive potential (LPP; 500–700 ms) for their feared compared to the nonfeared and the fear-irrelevant targets. No relevant significant differences were found on early ERP components and HR measures. These findings do not support an involvement of early information processing in the detection of the feared animal in fearful participants, they favour instead a more elaborated analysis of these complex stimuli to achieve the detection.     

A gentle reminder that mean does not imply modal behavior: Few are in-group biased in minimal groups

Previous research reports that people organized into newly formed, arbitrary groups (i.e., minimal groups) are on average in-group biased. However, that people on average behave in a certain way does not imply that most people behave that way. Here, I report four studies (n = 224) demonstrating in-group biased average behaviors driven by a minority of about 30% participants. Further, only 14% reported allocating resources in a group-biased manner because they “favored the in-group.” I investigate and discuss how methodological issues related to non-normally distributed data, not taking participants’ intentions into account, and using fixed response matrices can lead to overestimations of how widespread in-group bias is in minimal groups.     

Generalized multilevel structural equation modeling

A unifying framework for generalized multilevel structural equation modeling is introduced. The models in the framework, called generalized linear latent and mixed models (GLLAMM), combine features of generalized linear mixed models (GLMM) and structural equation models (SEM) and consist of a response model and a structural model for the latent variables. The response model generalizes GLMMs to incorporate factor structures in addition to random intercepts and coefficients. As in GLMMs, the data can have an arbitrary number of levels and can be highly unbalanced with different numbers of lower-level units in the higher-level units and missing data. A wide range of response processes can be modeled including ordered and unordered categorical responses, counts, and responses of mixed types. The structural model is similar to the structural part of a SEM except that it may include latent and observed variables varying at different levels. For example, unit-level latent variables (factors or random coefficients) can be regressed on cluster-level latent variables. Special cases of this framework are explored and data from the British Social Attitudes Survey are used for illustration. Maximum likelihood estimation and empirical Bayes latent score prediction within the GLLAMM framework can be performed using adaptive quadrature in gllamm, a freely available program running in Stata.gllamm can be downloaded from http://www.gllamm.org. The paper was written while Sophia Rabe-Hesketh was employed at and Anders Skrondal was visiting the Department of Biostatistics and Computing, Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.