The Susceptibility of the EPPS to Faking in Simulated and Actual Employment Situations

To investigate the fakability of the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) 60 Ss were given the scale under standard (anonymous) instructions; a month later, a third of them were given the scale under ‘simulated’ instructions, a third under instructions to make a ‘good impression’ and a third under ‘actual employment’ conditions. Since the pattern of scores differed significantly between the standard instructions and each of the latter instructions it was concluded that the EPPS is very easily faked and hence should be used with caution outside the research setting.     

Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Differences in Interpersonal Perceptions

The purpose of this research was to study the patterns of interpersonal behavior of depressed students. Depressed participants rated themselves lower than non-depressed controls on assertiveness and initiation of interactions and significantly higher than controls on concern about what others think, introversion, and submissiveness. Depressed participants also scored significantly higher than controls on measures of dependency, self-criticism, and the need to please others. Ratings of depressed participants by their roommates were not correlated with depressed participants' self-reports. In contrast, most subscale self-ratings and roommate ratings for the nondepressed participants and their roommates were significantly correlated.     

Instructional and behavior management practices implemented by elementary general education teachers

This investigation examined 317 general education kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers' use of instructional and behavioral management strategies as measured by the Classroom Strategy Scale (CSS)-Observer Form, a multidimensional tool for assessing classroom practices. The CSS generates frequency of strategy use and discrepancy scores reflecting the difference between recommended and actual frequencies of strategy use. Hierarchical linear models (HLMs) suggested that teachers' grade-level assignment was related to their frequency of using instructional and behavioral management strategies: Lower grade teachers utilized more clear 1 to 2 step commands, praise statements, and behavioral corrective feedback strategies than upper grade teachers, whereas upper grade teachers utilized more academic monitoring and feedback strategies, content/concept summaries, student focused learning and engagement, and student thinking strategies than lower grade teachers. Except for the use of praise statements, teachers' usage of instructional and behavioral management strategies was not found to be related to years of teaching experience or to the interaction of years of teaching experience and grade-level assignment. HLMs suggested that teachers' grade level was related to their discrepancy scores of some instructional and behavioral management strategies: Upper grade teachers had higher discrepancy scores in academic performance feedback, behavioral feedback, and praise than lower grade teachers. Teachers' discrepancy scores of instructional and behavioral management strategies were not found to be related to years of teaching experience or to the interaction of years of teaching experience and grade-level assignment. Implications of results for school psychology practice are outlined.     

Toward Modeling and Automating Ethical Decision Making: Design, Implementation, Limitations, and Responsibilities

One recent priority of the U.S. government is developing autonomous robotic systems. The U.S. Army has funded research to design a metric of evil to support military commanders with ethical decision-making and, in the future, allow robotic military systems to make autonomous ethical judgments. We use this particular project as a case study for efforts that seek to frame morality in quantitative terms. We report preliminary results from this research, describing the assumptions and limitations of a program that assesses the relative evil of two courses of action. We compare this program to other attempts to simulate ethical decision-making, assess possibilities for overcoming the trade-off between input simplification and output reliability, and discuss the responsibilities of users and designers in implementing such programs. We conclude by discussing the implications that this project highlights for the successes and challenges of developing automated mechanisms for ethical decision making.     

Putting the “IRT” in “Dirty”: Item response theory analyses of the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen—An efficient measure of narcissism,psychopathy, and Machiavellianism

The Dark Triad Dirty Dozen is a new, concise personality inventory designed to measure individual differences in narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism in sub-clinical populations. To date, the psychometric work on this measure has used classical test theory to assess its validity, reliability, and structure. In two independent samples (N = 1014), we provide the first analyses of this measure using item response theory. In both samples, the Dark Triad Dirty Dozen efficiently recovered information and showed some evidence of differential scale functioning by sex, with a lower endorsement threshold for men compared to women. Results shed new light on the measurement of these “dark” personality traits.     

A Framework of Statistical Tests For Comparing Mean and Covariance Structure Models

Temporal patterning in blood glucose (BG) consistent with fractals—how BG follows a repetitive pattern through resolutions of time—was used to examine 2 different samples of adolescents with Type 1 diabetes (10–14 years). Sample 1 contained 10 adolescents with longtime series for accurate estimations of long-term dependencies associated with fractals. The second contained 94 adolescents measured multiple times daily over a 2-week period corresponding to psychosocial measures. In both samples, temporal dependencies in BG showed patterns consistent with fractals. In the second sample, temporal dependencies were associated with indicators of vigilant regulation including adolescents' higher anxiety, mothers' higher monitoring, and intrusive support. The existence of temporal dependencies in BG moderated the relationship between glycosylated hemoglobin (Hb_A1c) and indicators of low BG risk but not the relationship between Hb_A1c and high BG risk. These results show how a biomedical indicator may be susceptible to metric issues associated with fractals.     

The Metasyntactic Interpretation of Two-Dimensionalism

Robert Stalnaker contrasts two interpretations, semantic and metasemantic, of the two-dimensionalist framework. On the semantic interpretation, the primary intension or diagonal proposition associated with an utterance is a semantic value that the utterance has in virtue of the actual linguistic meaning of the corresponding sentence, and that primary intension is both what a competent speaker grasps and what determines different secondary intensions or horizontal propositions relative to different possible worlds considered as actual. The metasemantic interpretation reverses the order of explanation: an utterance has the primary intension it has because it yields the secondary intensions it yields relative to different possible worlds considered as actual. In these possible worlds, the semantic facts can be different: the metasemantic interpretation is metasemantic in the sense that the secondary intensions are determined relative to possible worlds considered as actual given the meanings the expressions have there. Stalnaker holds a causal picture of the reference of names, according to which names have no meaning over and above their unique referent, and therefore maintains that the semantic interpretation is not an option. He thus endorses the metasemantic interpretation, while insisting that this interpretation does not, contrary to what he originally thought, yield any account of a priori truth and knowledge. My double aim in this paper is to show (i) that the metasemantic interpretation, as sketched by Stalnaker, is not compatible with one natural understanding of the causal picture of reference, on which names are rigid because they have their original bearers essentially, and (ii) that a third kind of interpretation of the framework is available, the metasyntactic interpretation, which grants that names have their bearers essentially and yields some account of a priori knowledge.     

Typos of Principia Mathematica

Principia Mathematic goes to great lengths to hide its order/type indices and to make it appear as if its incomplete symbols behave as if they are singular terms. But well-hidden as they are, we cannot understand the proofs in Principia unless we bring them into focus. When we do, some rather surprising results emerge – which is the subject of this paper.