Using Deterministic, Gated Item Response Theory Model to Detect Test Cheating due to Item Compromise

The Deterministic, Gated Item Response Theory Model (DGM, Shu, Unpublished Dissertation. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2010) is proposed to identify cheaters who obtain significant score gain on tests due to item exposure/compromise by conditioning on the item status (exposed or unexposed items). A “gated” function is introduced to decompose the observed examinees’ performance into two distributions (the true ability distribution determined by examinees’ true ability and the cheating distribution determined by examinees’ cheating ability). Test cheaters who have score gain due to item exposure are identified through the comparison of the two distributions. Hierarchical Markov Chain Monte Carlo is used as the model’s estimation framework. Finally, the model is applied in a real data set to illustrate how the model can be used to identify examinees having pre-knowledge on the exposed items.     

The Myth of Gender Cultures: Similarities Outweigh Differences in Men's and Women's Provision of and Responses to Supportive Communication

Michaud and Warner (1997) and Basow and Rubenfeld (2003) recently reported studies of gender differences in “troubles talk” that allegedly provide support for the different cultures thesis, that is, the notion that men and women communicate in such different ways that they should be regarded as members of different communication cultures or speech communities. In this article, we identify several limitations in these two studies that, collectively, have the effect of casting doubt on their conclusions. We then report three studies that show that men and women provide and respond to supportive messages (“troubles talk”) in ways that are much more similar than different. The current findings, in conjunction with other recent findings, suggest that the different cultures thesis is a myth that should be discarded.     

Hemispheric contributions to pragmatics

Twenty-seven patients with right-hemisphere damage (RBD) and thirty-one patients with left-hemisphere damage (LBD) received a new pragmatics battery in Hebrew consisting of two parts: (1) comprehension and production of basic speech acts (BSAs), including tests of assertions, questions, requests, and commands, and (2) comprehension of implicatures, including implicatures of quantity, quality, relevance, and manner. Each test had a verbal and a nonverbal version. Patients also received Hebrew versions of the Western Aphasia Battery and of the Right Hemisphere Communication Battery. Both LBD and RBD patients were impaired relative to controls but did not differ from each other in their overall scores on BSAs and on Implicatures when scores were corrected by aphasia and neglect indices. There was a systematic localization of BSAs in the left hemisphere (LH) but not in the right hemisphere (RH). There was poor localization of Implicatures in either hemisphere. In LBD patients, BSAs were associated with language functions measured with the WAB, suggesting the radical possibility that the classic localization of language functions in aphasia is influenced by the localization of the BSAs required by aphasia language tests. Both BSAs and implicatures show greater functional independence from other pragmatic, language and cognitive functions in the RBD than in the LBD patients. Thus, the LH is more likely to contain an unmodular domain-nonspecific set of central cognitive mechanisms for applying means-ends rationality principles to intentional activity.     

Aging and the Ranschburg effect: no evidence of reduced response suppression in old age

Two experiments tested 1 aspect of L. Hasher and R. T. Zacks's (1988) reduced inhibition hypothesis, namely, that old age impairs the ability to suppress information in working memory that is no longer relevant. In Experiment 1, young and older adults were asked to recall lists of letters in the correct order. Half of the lists contained repeated items while half were control lists. Recall of nonadjacent repeated items was worse than that of control items. This Ramschburg effect was larger (i.e., greater response suppression) in older than in young adults. In Experiment 2, young and older adults were required either to recall the list or to report if there was a repeated item. Repetition detection was high and similar in the 2 age groups. When age differences in overall performance were taken into account, there was evidence of increased repetition inhibition with age in both experiments. Thus, contrary to the general reduced inhibition hypothesis, the specific process of response suppression during serial recall is not reduced by aging.     

Pervasive influence of semantics in letter and category fluency: a multidimensional approach

We used multidimensional statistical procedures to study semantic and lexical processes underlying word retrieval in verbal-fluency performance. Forty healthy participants were given a two-choice letter task (i.e., generate items beginning with the letter 'A' or 'F', in any order) and a two-choice category task (i.e., generate animal or fruit names, in any order). Using correspondence analysis (CoA) and hierarchical clustering (HC), we found evidence of prominent semantic organization in both letter and category fluency. For example, a striking categorical segregation between animate and inanimate entities emerged during the letter task. Analysis of inter-item times revealed strong sequential priming effects in both tasks. Taken together, these results indicate that semantic facilitation is pervasive in word retrieval processes, even in the letter-fluency task, and therefore suggest that the traditional view of letter fluency as a purely phonemically based task should be revised. Finally, our findings may help explain patterns of verbal-fluency measures obtained in focal brain lesion patients.     

Refining CVLT-II recognition discriminability indices to enhance the characterization of recognition memory changes in healthy aging

The present study examined age-related differences on the four false-positive (FP) error subtypes found on the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition yes/no recognition memory trial and the influence of these subtypes on source and novel recognition discriminability (SoRD and NRD, respectively) index calculations. Healthy older (n = 55) adults generally made more FP errors than healthy young adults (n = 57). Accordingly, older adults performed worse than young adults on all SoRD and NRD indices. However, the manner in which FP error subtypes were incorporated into SoRD and NRD index calculations impacted the magnitudes of observed differences between and within the two age groups on SoRD and NRD indices. The present findings underline the importance of examining FP errors in assessments of recognition memory abilities, and using more refined indices of recognition discriminability to further elucidate the nature of age-related recognition memory impairment.     

The missing link? Testing a schema account of unitization

Unitization refers to the creation of a new unit from previously distinct items. The concept of unitization has been used to explain how novel pairings between items can be remembered without requiring recollection, by virtue of new, item-like representations that enable familiarity-based retrieval. We tested an alternative account of unitization – a schema account – which suggests that associations between items can be rapidly assimilated into a schema. We used a common operationalization of “unitization” as the difference between two unrelated words being linked by a definition, relative to two words being linked by a sentence, during an initial study phase. During the following relearning phase, a studied word was re-paired with a new word, either related or unrelated to the original associate from study. In a final test phase, memory for the relearned associations was tested. We hypothesized that, if unitized representations act like schemas, then we would observe some generalization to related words, such that memory would be better in the definition than sentence condition for related words, but not for unrelated words. Contrary to the schema hypothesis, evidence favored the null hypothesis of no difference between definition and sentence conditions for related words (Experiment 1), even when each cue was associated with multiple associates, indicating that the associations can be generalized (Experiment 2), or when the schematic information was explicitly re-activated during Relearning (Experiment 3). These results suggest that unitized associations do not generalize to accommodate new information, and therefore provide evidence against the schema account.     

Places of Information Generation: Bridging Pannenberg’s Logos and Deacon’s Emerging Semiosis

Bridging Wolfhart Pannenberg’s comprehensive twentieth-century systematic theology of Creation and Terrence Deacon’s very thorough scientific account of material and biological development and evolution results in an integrative view of Creation from Trinitarian relationality to biomolecular processes. Pannenberg’s understanding of Logos guides the investigation of the progressive unfolding of forms toward the key construct of information generation which Deacon’s theory of emergence explains as selection dynamics. Modeling both space and form as a place where activity generates information synthesizes Pannenberg’s complementary activities of Logos and Spirit with Deacon’s emergent dynamics and semiosis to develop generative distinctions among a field of systems as a key component of a scientifically plausible theological anthropology.     

The Relationship Between Nonsuicidal Self‐Injury and Suicidal Ideation

This correlational study was conducted with 403 undergraduate college students from 2 universities. The authors used path analysis and bootstrap regression to analyze the relationships between variables. Locus of control and family connectedness related to current nonsuicidal self‐injury (NSSI) engagement. However, when entered into the same regression, the variables current NSSI engagement and current NSSI number of methods used mediated all other relationships with suicidal ideation. Implications to current theories and clinical practice are provided.