Estimation of the MIRID: A program and a SAS-based approach

The MIRID CML program is a program for the estimation of the parameter values of two different componential IRT models: the Rasch—MIRID and the OPLM—MIRID (Butter, 1994; Butter, De Boeck, & Verhelst, 1998). To estimate the parameters of both models, the program uses a CML approach. The model parameters can also be estimated with a MML approach that can be implemented in PROC NLMIXED of SAS Version 8. Both the MIRID CML program and the MML SAS approach are explained and compared in a simulation study. The results showed that they did about equally well in estimating the values of the item parameters but that there were some differences in the estimation of the person parameters, as could be expected from the differential assumptions regarding the distribution of the persons. The SAS MML approach is much slower than the MIRID CML program, but it is more flexible.     

Teacher Burnout and Lack of Reciprocity1

Results are presented of a study on burnout among 249 Dutch elementary and secondary school teachers. The current study considers burnout in terms of the exchange of investments and outcomes at interpersonal (teacher-student) and organizational (teacher-school) levels. In addition, demographic (age and gender) and work-related factors (school type, teaching experience, number of hours employed) are included. Findings show that when teachers invest more than they get back from their school, they report higher levels of emotional exhaustion. As expected, at the interpersonal level, low outcomes from students are related to higher burnout levels; whereas at the organizational level, low investments are related to higher burnout levels. These findings are discussed in terms of the extent to which psychological contact is more intimate or impersonal in both types of relationships.     

Preferences for and evaluation of self‐relevant information depending on the elaboration of the self‐schemata involved

Previous findings have shown that some reactions (e.g. satisfaction with feedback) are guided by self‐enhancement theory, whereas other reactions (e.g. perceived feedback accuracy) have been shown to follow predictions of self‐consistency theory. The Integrative Self‐Schema Model (ISSM) assumes that these effects should be moderated by the elaboration of the self‐schema involved: This assumption was tested in an experimental study: 72 participants received fictitious feedback on different personality dimensions allegedly based on an adjective checklist. This feedback was either consistent with self‐perceptions, more positive than expected, or more negative than expected, and addressed highly elaborated (schematic) or less elaborated (aschematic) personality dimensions. Satisfaction, feedback accuracy and interest in further information were analysed as dependent variables. The experimental results clearly confirmed the hypotheses derived from the ISSM for satisfaction and perceived feedback accuracy. A self‐consistency effect regarding perceived feedback accuracy was found only for feedback on schematic dimensions but was attenuated on aschematic dimensions. A self‐enhancement effect regarding satisfaction was found only on aschematic dimensions. This finding was reversed on schematic dimensions. Finally, interest in further information did not follow the predictions made by the ISSM. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sociology in search of the booster: Review essay

Donald N. Levine. Visions of the Sociological Tradition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995. 365 pp. $47.50 (cloth). 15.95 (paper). ISBN 0-22647547-6. A book by so eminent a colleague as Donald Levine merits attention whatever the subject matter. And such an effort prefixed by the word “visions” deserves special note. For it may be expected from a person who has spent a lifetime pursuing systematic thinking about the sociological tradition that he will offer some visions that should be helpful for everyone in that very tradition. Visions we need, I think, if there should be a valid justification in continuing what we have been doing in sociology since its foundation. The twenty-first century is close at hand, and it seems worth while to think about the future of the field. Let me begin with an unequivocal statement. I urge all serious social scientists to read this book. The enormity of the enterprise, coupled with the essential seriousness of the author, who offers us the harvest of thirty years of his thinking about sociology, earn the book broad treatment and discussion in the field. But what exactly is that “field”? For Levine, the field of sociology is an enormous intellectual enterprise that started right with Aristotle, i.e., more than two thousand years ago. And not only did it start somewhat earlier than those of us believed who thought it began with Auguste Comte, but it enlists among its contributors almost every thinker who played any significant role in West European and North American thinking during those last twenty centuries. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Estimating the quantitative relation between incongruent information and response time

In Eriksen's flanker paradigm, participants' responses are slower and more error-prone when task-relevant and simultaneously available task-irrelevant cues are incongruent. The influence of task-irrelevant information decreases as its distance from the task-relevant information increases. Here, we manipulated the quantity of task-irrelevant information while keeping the distance constant. We asked whether when the impact on response selection processes was stronger the more incongruent information was available, or whether the impact on response selection depended only on its presence or absence. We conducted an experiment, in which subjects had to discriminate the direction of motion of a central point-light-walker that was flanked by two, four, or eight point-light-walkers at an equal distance from the center. The experiment showed that reaction times increased with the number of incongruent walkers. This effect was modulated by the total number of walkers, showing that the effect of incongruent information saturates when the display is cluttered.     

Stronger renewal in human fear conditioning when tested with an acquisition retrieval cue than with an extinction retrieval cue

It was previously demonstrated in our laboratory that conditioned fear in humans can renew after extinction, when this procedure took place in a different context (ABA-renewal [Vansteenwegen et al. (2005). Return of fear in a human differential conditioning paradigm caused by a return to the original acquisition context. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 43(3), 323–336]). Using the same experimental design, we now tested the power of retrieval cues to interact with this contextual renewal phenomenon. Two groups went through acquisition and extinction (in a different context). They were then tested in the original acquisition context and in the presence of a retrieval cue. In the acquisition-cue group, this cue previously featured during the acquisition procedure; in the extinction-cue group, the cue previously featured during the extinction procedure. As expected, renewal of conditioned electro-dermal responding and retrospective expectancy ratings was strongest in the acquisition-cue group. Theoretical and clinical implications of this finding are discussed.     

The role of extinction and reinstatement in attentional bias to threat: a conditioning approach

We investigated the effects of extinction and reinstatement on attentional bias to fear-conditioned signals in healthy individuals using an emotional modification of a spatial cueing paradigm. Spatial cues were emotionally modulated using differential conditioning. The CS+ was sometimes followed by an aversive electrocutaneous stimulus (UCS), whereas the CS- was never followed by the UCS. During a subsequent extinction phase no UCS was presented anymore. The reinstatement phase started with one or four unpredicted UCS-only trials for half of the participants (reinstatement group). For the other half there were no additional UCS presentations (control group). We found that attention was biased to threat signals during acquisition. This biased attention largely disappeared during extinction. During the reinstatement phase attentional bias to threat signals re-emerged in the reinstatement group, but not in the control group.     

Distractor interference during smooth pursuit eye movements

When 2 targets for pursuit eye movements move in different directions, the eye velocity follows the vector average (S. G. Lisberger & V. P. Ferrera, 1997). The present study investigates the mechanisms of target selection when observers are instructed to follow a predefined horizontal target and to ignore a moving distractor stimulus. Results show that at 140 ms after distractor onset, horizontal eye velocity is decreased by about 25%. Vertical eye velocity increases or decreases by 1 degrees /s in the direction opposite from the distractor. This deviation varies in size with distractor direction, velocity, and contrast. The effect was present during the initiation and steady-state tracking phase of pursuit but only when the observer had prior information about target motion. Neither vector averaging nor winner-take-all models could predict the response to a moving to-be-ignored distractor during steady-state tracking of a predefined target. The contributions of perceptual mislocalization and spatial attention to the vertical deviation in pursuit are discussed.