Reliability,stability, and factor structure of the Bulimia Test-Revised and Eating Disorder Inventory-2 scales in adolescence

The Eating Disorder Inventory-2 (EDI-2) and Bulimia Test-Revised (BULIT-R) have demonstrated strong reliability and validity in college students and adults. Although used in adolescent samples, little is known about the psychometric properties of these measures for adolescents. The reliability, factor structure, and mean levels of five EDI-2 scales and the BULIT-R were evaluated over 3 years. Data were collected yearly from two samples of adolescent females, one recruited from three public middle schools (n = 239, mean baseline age = 12.8) and one from two public high schools (n = 119, mean baseline age = 15.9). Results provide strong evidence for the reliability and stability of these measures. Mean levels of both measures appeared remarkably consistent over the 3 years. These results provide evidence of good psychometric performance for these scales in adolescence. The lack of change in these measures raises questions about the developmental trajectory of these variables through adolescence.     

Tracking the mind during reading via eye movements: comments on Kliegl, Nuthmann, and Engbert (2006)

R. Kliegl, A. Nuthmann, and R. Engbert reported an impressive set of data analyses dealing with the influence of the prior, present, and next word on the duration of the current eye fixation during reading. They argued that outcomes of their regression analyses indicate that lexical processing is distributed across a number of words during reading. The authors of this comment question their conclusions and address 4 different issues: (a) whether there is evidence for distributed lexical processing, (b) whether so-called parafoveal-on-foveal effects are widespread, (c) the role of correlational analyses in reading research, and (d) problems in their analyses because they use only cases in which words are fixated exactly once.     

Driving after use of alcohol and marijuana in college students.

Driving after use of marijuana is almost as common as driving after use of alcohol in youth (P. M. O'Malley & L. D. Johnston, 2003). The authors compared college students' attitudes, normative beliefs and perceived negative consequences of driving after use of either alcohol or marijuana and tested these cognitive factors as risk factors for substance-related driving. Results indicated that youth perceived driving after marijuana use as more acceptable to peers and the negative consequences as less likely than driving after alcohol use, even after controlling for substance use. Results of zero-inflated Poisson regression analyses indicated that lower perceived dangerousness and greater perceived peer acceptance were associated with increased engagement in, and frequency of, driving after use of either substance. Lower perceived likelihood of negative consequences was associated with increased frequency for those who engage in substance-related driving. These results provide a basis for comparing how youth perceive driving after use of alcohol and marijuana, as well as similarities in the risk factors for driving after use of these substances.     

On the validity and utility of discriminating among impulsivity-like traits

The ability to make precise distinctions among related personality constructs helps clarify theory and increases the utility of clinical assessment. In three studies, the authors evaluated the validity of distinctions among four impulsivity-like traits: sensation seeking, lack of planning, lack of persistence, and urgency (acting rashly when distressed). Factor analyses indicated that lack of planning and lack of persistence are two distinct facets of one broader trait, whereas urgency and sensation seeking are both very modestly related to each other and to the planning/persistence measures. The authors developed interview assessments of each, and multitrait, multimethod matrix results indicated clear convergent and discriminant validity among the constructs. The distinctions among them were useful: The traits accounted for different aspects of risky behaviors. Sensation seeking appeared to relate to the frequency of engaging in risky behaviors, and urgency appeared to relate to problem levels of involvement in those behaviors.     

The Laozi Code

The term “dao” (道) has been playing the theoretically paradigmatic role in almost all East Asian philosophies, religions, and cultures. The meanings of the term “dao” in the Dao De Jing and other ancient East Asian texts have remained hermeneutically problematic up to this point in time. This article argues that one of the main causes of this hermeneutical problematic is the failure to establish a theoretically formal typology of the “dao.” It further suggests that a hermeneutically disciplined reading of the 76 uses of the term “dao” in the Dao De Jing accomplishes two important goals: (1) it demonstrates that a typological approach may enhance an understanding of the Laoian Dao, and (2) it provides some good data to begin reconstructing such a theoretically formal dao-typology.     

Estimated age of acquisition norms for 834 Portuguese nouns and their relation with other psycholinguistic variables

The main objective of this study is to report rated age of acquisition (AoA) norms for 834 nouns in Portuguese (European). AoA ratings were collected on a 7 point scale, generally following Gilhooly and Logie (1980) procedure with an 8 extra point for "don't know the word" answers. Results were analyzed considering AoA ratings and their standard deviations and considering the relationship between AoA ratings and other psycholinguistic variables (imageability, familiarity, written word frequency, concreteness, number of syllables and number of words). AoA ratings and their standard deviations were significantly and positively correlated, with early acquired word ratings showing higher agreement. Correlation and multiple regression analyses confirmed the major contribution of imageability and familiarity to AoA ratings obtained in other languages. The full database of AoA ratings and other psycholinguistic variables may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive or www.fpce.ul.pt/pessoal/ulfpfred/aoa.htm.     

A verification framework for agent programming with declarative goals

A long and lasting problem in agent research has been to close the gap between agent logics and agent programming frameworks. The main reason for this problem of establishing a link between agent logics and agent programming frameworks is identified and explained by the fact that agent programming frameworks have hardly incorporated the concept of a declarative goal. Instead, such frameworks have focused mainly on plans or goals-to-do instead of the end goals to be realised which are also called goals-to-be. In this paper, the programming language GOAL is introduced which incorporates such declarative goals. The notion of a commitment strategy—one of the main theoretical insights due to agent logics, which explains the relation between beliefs and goals—is used to construct a computational semantics for GOAL. Finally, a proof theory for proving properties of GOAL agents is introduced. Thus, the main contribution of this paper, rather than the language GOAL itself, is that we offer a complete theory of agent programming in the sense that our theory provides both for a programming framework and a programming logic for such agents. An example program is proven correct by using this programming logic.     

Visual word recognition by bilinguals in a sentence context: evidence for nonselective lexical access

Recent research on bilingualism has shown that lexical access in visual word recognition by bilinguals is not selective with respect to language. In the present study, the authors investigated language-independent lexical access in bilinguals reading sentences, which constitutes a strong unilingual linguistic context. In the first experiment, Dutch-English bilinguals performing a 2nd language (L2) lexical decision task were faster to recognize identical and nonidentical cognate words (e.g., banaan-banana) presented in isolation than control words. A second experiment replicated this effect when the same set of cognates was presented as the final words of low-constraint sentences. In a third experiment that used eyetracking, the authors showed that early target reading time measures also yield cognate facilitation but only for identical cognates. These results suggest that a sentence context may influence, but does not nullify, cross-lingual lexical interactions during early visual word recognition by bilinguals.