How shared are age-related influences on cognitive and noncognitive variables?

Several theories have suggested that age-related declines in cognitive processing are due to a pervasive unitary mechanism, such as a decline in processing speed. Structural equation model tests have shown some support for such common factor explanations. These results, however, may not be as conclusive as previously claimed. A further analysis of 4 cross-sectional data sets described in Salthouse, Hambrick, and McGuthry (1998) and Salthouse and Czaja (2000) found that although the best fitting model included a common factor in 3 of the data sets, additional direct age paths were significant, indicating the presence of specific age effects. For the remaining data set, a factor-specific model fit at least as well as the best fitting common factor model. Three simulated data sets with known structure were then tested with a sequence of structural equation models. Common factor models could not always be falsified--even when they were false. In contrast, factor-specific models were more easily falsified when the true model included a unitary common factor. These results suggest that it is premature to conclude that all age-related cognitive declines are due to a single mechanism. Common factor models may be particularly difficult to falsify with current analytic procedures.     

Causes of taxonomic sorting by adults: a test of the thematic-to-taxonomic shift

The tendency among adults to sort items into taxonomic and thematic categories was examined in two experiments. Past demonstrations of adults’ preference for taxonomic categories have usually not used stimuli with a salient thematic organization. The stimuli in Experiment 1 could be divided into three equal-size categories either thematically or taxonomically. Under two sets of instructions, the majority of the college-student subjects sorted thematically. In Experiment 2, a subset of the stimuli was changed so that those within it were strongly taxonomically organized. Subjects then preferred to sort the remaining items taxonomically as well. The two experiments explain why many past sorting studies have yielded a taxonomic preference in adults and provide further evidence against a global change from thematic to taxonomic preference with development.     

Mathematics in Economics: An Austrian Methodological Critique

Even the briefest and most superficial perusal of leading mainstream economics journals will attest to the degree that mathematical formalism has captured the economics profession. Whereas up to the early 20th century virtually all of the output of the dismal scientists was in the literary format, by the early 21st century this is not at all any longer the case. Mathematical formalism is supposed to serve economics, and yet now true economic insight has been crowded out by the math. If mainstream neoclassical economics is to come back to its proper path, a far less central role for mathematical economics, statistics and econometrics will have to be fashioned.     

ROBERT JOHN RUSSELL VERSUS THE NEW ATHEISTS

This essay compares Robert John Russell's work in his recent book Cosmology from Alpha to Omega: The Creative Mutual Interaction of Theology and Science (2008) to that of the authors known collectively as "the new atheists." I treat the latter as recent contributors to the modern tradition of scientific naturalism. This tradition makes claims to legitimacy on the basis of its close relations to the natural sciences. The purpose of this essay is to show up the poverty of the naturalist tradition's scientific credentials by contrasting it with Russell's careful account of positive relations between science and Christian theology.     

Defining Treatment Outcomes in Pediatric Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Using a Self-Report Scale

This study examined benchmarks of treatment response and clinical remission on the Obsessive Compulsive Inventory–Child Version (OCI-CV) for youth with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Participants were 91 youth who enrolled in a randomized controlled trial that examined the benefit of augmenting cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) with either d-cycloserine or placebo. Youth completed the OCI-CV at baseline, Week 4 (prior to initiating exposure therapy), and posttreatment. Receiver operator curve (ROC) analyses examined optimal benchmarks for treatment response and clinical remission as identified by independent evaluators at the posttreatment assessment using the Clinical Global Impression (CGI) scales of Improvement (CGI-Improvement), Severity (CGI-Severity), and Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS). Optimal benchmarks for treatment response were a 20%–25% reduction in the OCI-CV total score. Meanwhile, optimal benchmarks for remission were a 55%–65% reduction in the OCI-CV total score and a posttreatment total score ≤ 6-8. OCI-CV benchmarks exhibited moderate agreement with the CY-BOCS for treatment response and clinical remission. Meanwhile, fair agreement was observed for response and remission with CGI scales. A lower pretreatment OCI-CV total score was associated with less agreement between classification approaches. Findings provide benchmarks for classifying treatment response and clinical remission in an efficient manner. Given the moderate agreement between the CY-BOCS and OCI-CV benchmarks, the OCI-CV may serve as a useful alternative when clinician-rated scales cannot be administered due to limited resources (e.g., time, training). Thus, evidence-based measurement can be incorporated to monitor therapeutic response and remission in clinical practice.     

Identity narratives of Muslim foreign workers in Japan

This article examines the identity and acculturation experience of Muslim foreign workers in Japan. The psychological impact of prolonged stay in a foreign country was studied by eliciting narratives of experiences of 24 male foreign workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Iran who had been in Japan more than 5 years. By analysing the narratives they produced, three different styles of stories emerged which explained their experiences and their attempts to maintain or construct a sense of identity. Accepting the dominant narrative of Japanese society and describing oneself as ‘almost like Japanese’ was one way. Another strategy stressed the rejection of the dominant narrative as well as attempts to maintain the original narrative of the self as educated and active young men. The third narrative showed how individuals re‐defined themselves as Muslim by incorporating religious identity into a central part of their self‐concepts, and asserting its pervasive effect on all aspects of life. This study provides a perspective for acculturation research focused on social elements of identity, and derived from experiences in a relatively mono‐cultural society recently opening to immigration and in which there is a prevailing ideology of assimilation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.