Partial Likelihood Estimation of IRT Models with Censored Lifetime Data: An Application to Mental Disorders in the ESEMeD Surveys

Developmental studies of mental disorders based on epidemiological data are often based on cross-sectional retrospective surveys. Under such designs, observations are right-censored, causing underestimation of lifetime prevalences and correlations, and inducing bias in latent trait models on the observations. In this paper we propose a Partial Likelihood (PL) method to estimate unbiased IRT models of lifetime predisposition to develop a certain outcome. A two-step estimation procedure corrects the IRT likelihood of outcome appearance with a function depending on (a) projected outcome frequencies at the end of the risk period, and (b) outcome censoring status at the time of the observation. Simulation results showed that the PL method yielded good recovery of true frequencies and intercepts. Slopes were best estimated when events were sufficiently correlated. When PL is applied to lifetime mental health disorders (assessed in the ESEMeD project surveys), estimated univariate prevalences were, on average, 1.4 times above raw estimates, and 2.06 higher in the case of bivariate prevalences.     

Identification of risk factors for suffering fear of hypoglycemia in type 1 Diabetes Mellitus patients

Hypoglycemia is one of the main burdens for type I Diabetes Mellitus (DM I) patients. The consequences of hypoglycemia can be quite unpleasant due to the variety of disagreeable physical and psychological symptoms it triggers. The patient's previous experience with hypoglycemia episodes will condition his psychological reaction to future episodes, promoting behavioral modifications that associate with poor glycemic control and worse prognosis, and even with developing psychological disorders, leading to fear of hypoglycemia (FH). To be able to provide tailored prevention and treatment of patients with FH it is necessary to identify the risk factors in DM I patients. We developed and validated the FH‐15 scale, a novel instrument to assess FH, which showed good concurrent and predictive validity in DM I patients. In this work we aim to identify the risk factors for suffering FH by detecting DM I patients with FH using the FH‐15 scale and then analyzing the association of clinical and sociodemographic variables. We found that age, needing help to resolve an episode of hypoglycemia, and a perceived lack of social support are risk factors for suffering FH.     

Knowability as potential knowledge

The thesis that every truth is knowable is usually glossed by decomposing knowability into possibility and knowledge. Under elementary assumptions about possibility and knowledge, considered as modal operators, the thesis collapses the distinction between truth and knowledge (as shown by the so-called Fitch-argument). We show that there is a more plausible interpretation of knowability—one that does not decompose the notion in the usual way—to which the Fitch-argument does not apply. We call this the potential knowledge-interpretation of knowability. We compare our interpretation with the rephrasal of knowability proposed by Edgington and Rabinowicz and Segerberg, inserting an actuality-operator. This proposal shares some key features with ours but suffers from requiring specific transworld-knowledge. We observe that potential knowledge involves no transworld-knowledge. We describe the logic of potential knowledge by providing models for interpreting the new operator. Finally we show that the knowability thesis can be added to elementary conditions on potential knowledge without collapsing modal distinctions.     

An Index of Progress Towards the MDG1 in Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa

In this article we present a new proposal for measuring progress towards Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, applied to a group of countries particularly affected by poverty in the context of southern Africa and the Horn of Africa. Our index is novel in that it has been constructed taking into account a larger number of variables defined in the UN Millennium Declaration which are generally considered to determine countries’ levels of underdevelopment. As technique applied to the data, provided by the UN, we used the P₂ distance of Pena method and applied it to the year 2007; the last year for which data are available. This index incorporates variables that permit a ranking of the countries of southern Africa and the Horn of Africa in terms of those partial indicators. To sum up, the objective is to produce a global indicator of fulfilment of the MDG1.     

The role of phonological and executive working memory resources in simple arithmetic strategies

The current study investigated the role of the central executive and the phonological loop in arithmetic strategies to solve simple addition problems (Experiment 1) and simple subtraction problems (Experiment 2). The choice/no-choice method was used to investigate strategy execution and strategy selection independently. The central executive was involved in both retrieval and procedural strategies, but played a larger role in the latter than in the former. Active phonological processes played a role in procedural strategies only. Passive phonological resources, finally, were only needed when counting was used to solve subtraction problems. No effects of working memory load on strategy selection were observed.     

Eine streitlustige psychoanalytische Psychosomatik und die gegenseitige Analyse von Ferenczi und Groddeck

This article is the third part of an originally unplanned trilogy caused by the internal logic of the research process on psychosomatic theories. On the background of Freud’s difficulties with the illness and disease theory the fragmentation of the field of psychosomatic medicine has been described and presented in the two previous parts as an attempt to explain its tortuous developmental course. In the first part of this current paper the author tries to understand both the ideas and sociopolitical forces that were involved in the historical development of psychosomatic medicine. The scope of the field as well as the models used oscillated greatly. Psychoanalysis has played an important role in this development even if the mainstream psychoanalysts showed relatively little interest. Psychosomatics also required therapeutic approaches that were foreign to the accustomed psychoanalytical setting. Occasionally the influence of various physiological models was strongly displayed (e.g. Selye’s stress model and the influence of the immune system). The deepening of the psychological understanding is nevertheless due to original marginal psychoanalytic thinkers, such as Ferenczi and Groddeck. Under the influence of Ferenczi the unconventional search was completed by Balint to some extent either through development of the psychotherapeutic technique or by the influence of listening to the doctors in their interaction with patients.     

Value-Congruent Information Processing: The Role of Issue Involvement and Argument Strength

Two experimental studies were carried out to investigate the influence of value-congruent information on information processing. We hypothesized that recipients would engage in systematic processing in value-congruent conditions, whereas heuristic processing would be used in value-incongruent conditions. One hundred participants in each experiment received a message that was framed in either environmental/altruistic or economical/egoistic terms, containing either strong or weak arguments. Results showed that value-congruent messages resulted in discrimination between strong and weak arguments, whereas for value-incongruent messages argument strength had either weak or no effects. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Strategic Numeracy: Self-Serving Reasoning About Health Statistics

This research shows that the same people who appear to have low numerical competence when analyzing personally irrelevant health-related numerical information are able to overcome their reasoning shortcomings and make better judgments when they are shown equivalent information that is personally relevant, and when only a sophisticated kind of reasoning enables them to interpret this information in a favorable way. The fact that people can engage in poorer or more sophisticated numerical reasoning depending on whether that reasoning produces favorable or unfavorable conclusions has implications both for the concept of numeracy as an individual-difference variable and for health communication.