PROsetta: An R Package for Linking Patient-Reported Outcome Measures

A common problem when using a variety of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) for diverse populations and subgroups is establishing a harmonized scale for the incommensurate outcomes. The lack of comparability in metrics (e.g., raw summed scores vs. scaled scores) among different PROs poses practical challenges in studies comparing effects across studies and samples. Linking has long been used for practical benefit in educational testing. Applying various linking techniques to PRO data has a relatively short history; however, in recent years, there has been a surge of published studies on linking PROs and other health outcomes, owing in part to concerted efforts such as the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS^®) project and the PRO Rosetta Stone (PROsetta Stone^®) project (www.prosettastone.org). Many R packages have been developed for linking in educational settings; however, they are not tailored for linking PROs where harmonization of data across clinical studies or settings serves as the main objective. We created the PROsetta package to fill this gap and disseminate a protocol that has been established as a standard practice for linking PROs.     

How children perceive fractals: Hierarchical self-similarity and cognitive development

The ability to understand and generate hierarchical structures is a crucial component of human cognition, available in language, music, mathematics and problem solving. Recursion is a particularly useful mechanism for generating complex hierarchies by means of self-embedding rules. In the visual domain, fractals are recursive structures in which simple transformation rules generate hierarchies of infinite depth. Research on how children acquire these rules can provide valuable insight into the cognitive requirements and learning constraints of recursion.     

Explaining Muslim Americans’ Opinions on Salient Issues

Despite numerous individual success stories of living the American dream, the Muslim American community still remains one of the most misunderstood and underrepresented minorities in the United States. This study investigates the views of this community by mapping and explaining members' investigates on a number of issues of social and political import. It shows that the issue attitudes of Muslim Americans are rather uniform on some social and non-social issues but very diverse on others. Moreover, it also shows that the differences of opinion that were uncovered can be explained by a variety of factors including a respondent's ethnic or national origin and how committed a respondent is to the practice of Islam, defined by the frequency of mosque attendance. While these results are temporally limited, they do show that this is a very diverse community and set a strong foundation for further quantitative and qualitative investigations of how Muslim Americans' religious practices, ethnic backgrounds, and socio-economic characteristics affect their essential social and political beliefs.     

Regulatory focus as a predictor of attitudes toward partitioned and combined pricing

Partitioned pricing is a widely used pricing strategy, but little is known about the buyer characteristics that influence its effectiveness. The current research contributes to the pricing literature by investigating the impact of regulatory focus on the perceived attractiveness of partitioned and combined pricing. In four studies, we hypothesized and found support for the idea that promotion focused individuals perceive partitioned prices to be more attractive than combined prices, while prevention focused individuals do not differentiate between the two pricing types. Our results also show that regulatory focus influences consumers' information processing style, which in turn leads to important differences in attitudes towards partitioned and combined pricing. Specifically, promotion focused consumers are more likely to engage in global processing and global processing is linked to preferences for partitioned (versus combined) prices.     

Dispositional Interferers and the Metaphysics of Superheroes

Axiomathes - Many recently released Hollywood films feature superheroes like Superman, Ironman, the Hulk, Optimus Prime, and so on who possess amazing superpower and defeat supervillains with...     

Effects of International Student Counselors' Broaching Statements About Cultural and Language Differences on Participants' Perceptions of the Counselors

Undergraduates (N = 135) evaluated 1 of 4 simulated 1st counseling sessions. Two international counselors (Canadian and Korean) alternated between making or not making broaching statements about their language and cultural differences. Significant main effects for counselor nationality and interaction effects between counselor nationality and broaching were found. Participants perceived the Canadian counselor more positively and the Korean counselor less positively in the broaching condition. Participants' cognitive flexibility was a significant covariate of their perceptions. Un grupo de estudiantes universitarios (N = 135) evaluó 1 de 4 sesiones iniciales de consejería simuladas. Dos consejeros internacionales (canadiense y coreano) alternaron entre hacer comentarios o no para abordar las diferencias entre sus idiomas y culturas. Se encontraron efectos principales significativos en relación a la nacionalidad del consejero y una interacción entre la nacionalidad y el abordamiento. Los participantes percibieron al consejero canadiense de forma más positiva y al consejero coreano de forma menos positiva en la situación de abordamiento. La flexibilidad cognitiva de los participantes fue una covariable significativa en su percepción.     

Picture This: The Influence of Emotionally Valenced Images,On Attention,Selection, and Sharing of Social Media News

Social media platforms have become the primary conduits to news for many consumers, yet little is known about how the content in social media posts is viewed and evaluated by consumers or how it shapes their decisions about selecting and sharing this information. A within-subjects eye-tracking experiment (N = 60), was conducted to examine the influence of image presence and valence on attention to and engagement with news stories on social media. Participants viewed a series of 29 social media posts of news stories, each of which was either paired with no image, a positively valenced image, or a negatively valenced image. Participants attention to the images was captured via eye tracking, and they answered dependent measures to gauge level of emotion and arousal, and intention to click and share. The results show that posts containing positive images elicited a higher level of visual attention than those with negative or no images, which led to higher intentions to click and share posts with positive images. The results provide a deeper understanding of the importance of images in driving news consumption, and offer practical implications for journalists, news organizations and groups using social media to spread a message.     

Development of a puff- and suction-type pressure stimulator for human tactile studies

In this study, we developed a tactile stimulator capable of administering either puff- or suction-type stimuli. The system is composed of three parts: a control unit, an air-handling unit, and a stimulation unit. The control unit controls the type, intensity, and time of stimulation. The air-handling unit delivers the stimulation power quantitatively to the stimulation unit, as commanded by the control unit. The stimulation unit stably administers either type of pressure to the skin, without any change of the tactor. Although the design of the stimulator is simple, it allows for five levels of control of the stimulation intensity (2–6 psi) and 0.1-s steps of control of the stimulation time, as we confirmed by tests. Preliminary electroencephalographic and event-related potential (ERP) studies of our system in humans confirmed the presence of N100 and P300 waves at standard electrode position C3, which are related to perception and cognition, respectively, in the somatosensory area of the brain. In addition, different stimulation types (puff and suction) and intensities (2 and 6 psi) were reflected in different peak-to-peak amplitudes and slopes of the mean ERP signal. The system developed in this study is expected to contribute to human tactile studies by providing the ability to administer puff- or suction-type stimuli interchangeably.     

Sociodemographic risk and early environmental factors that contribute to resilience in executive control: A factor mixture model of 3-year-olds

Young children at sociodemographic risk generally demonstrate lower executive control (EC), although with substantial heterogeneity across children. Given this marked variability, there may be some at-risk children who display higher EC and may be buffered from or resilient to the effects of sociodemographic risk who can be studied to identify the contributory factors. In this study, factor mixture modelling was used to determine whether subgroups of 3-year-old children existed based on their observed performance on a battery of EC tasks. Results indicated 2 latent groups: One characterized by lower EC and the other by higher EC. Both sociodemographically at-risk and low-risk children were represented in each group, yielding 4 risk-status-by-EC groups, where at-risk higher EC children were termed the resilient group. Proximal household enrichment (e.g., exposure to learning materials, varied enriching experiences, academic and language stimulation, parental responsivity) distinguished the resilient group from lower performing children of similar risk status, whereas distal financial resources and proximal social network resources did not distinguish these two groups. Results suggest potential intervention targets to promote optimal EC development, particularly among children at risk.