Multilevel Dynamic Generalized Structured Component Analysis for Brain Connectivity Analysis in Functional Neuroimaging Data

We extend dynamic generalized structured component analysis (GSCA) to enhance its data-analytic capability in structural equation modeling of multi-subject time series data. Time series data of multiple subjects are typically hierarchically structured, where time points are nested within subjects who are in turn nested within a group. The proposed approach, named multilevel dynamic GSCA, accommodates the nested structure in time series data. Explicitly taking the nested structure into account, the proposed method allows investigating subject-wise variability of the loadings and path coefficients by looking at the variance estimates of the corresponding random effects, as well as fixed loadings between observed and latent variables and fixed path coefficients between latent variables. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach by applying the method to the multi-subject functional neuroimaging data for brain connectivity analysis, where time series data-level measurements are nested within subjects.     

An fMRI study of advertising appeals and their relationship to product attractiveness and buying intentions

This study examines the effects of various visual apparel advertisements on consumers' brain activation during exposure to different types of advertising appeals (i.e., celebrity, non‐celebrity, and rational). The influence on consumer perceptions of products and their subsequent buying intentions are also measured. A repeated measures experimental design was employed, and the total of 27 right‐handed female subjects participated in the study. The results of the quantitative data showed significant differences in perceived product attractiveness for each of the three types of advertising appeals, but not in buying intentions. Regarding the fMRI results, our findings support the notion that celebrity advertising appeals are associated with heightened brain activation of memory‐related/retrieval regions, reflecting how consumers remember the ad and are influenced by the attractiveness of the source. Non‐celebrity advertising appeals were more closely associated with brain activation of regions thought to mediate self‐reflection and also engaging executive functions. For rational advertising appeals, our findings showed significant activation in brain areas associated with logical evaluative decision making reflecting more logical processing value assessments and reward potential. Therefore, retailers/marketers must be particularly mindful to match the appropriate advertising appeal to the specific purpose of the advertisement. This study also provides brain‐based insight into the effectiveness of different types of advertising appeals and whether or not they have the desired impact on the consumer. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality of Jobs for Female Workers: A Comparative Study of South Korea and Australia

This study conducts a comparative analysis regarding the quality of job in Australia and South Korea on the basis of ordered logit model using two countries’ household data sets during 2003–2009. We compose the quality of job into various subgroups by combining hourly wage, job security and working hours, and verify that despite having similar Affirmative Action (AA) systems in the two countries, Australian women are more likely to work in jobs with higher quality compared to South Korean women subject to the loose incentive operation of AA.     

The psychology of ongoing threat: relative risk appraisal, the September 11 attacks, and terrorism-related fears

There are now replicated findings that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms related to the September 11, 2001, attacks occurred in large numbers of persons who did not fit the traditional definition of exposure to a traumatic event. These data are not explained by traditional epidemiologic "bull's eye" disaster models, which assume the psychological effects are narrowly, geographically circumscribed, or by existing models of PTSD onset. In this article, the authors develop a researchable model to explain these and other terrorism-related phenomena by synthesizing research and concepts from the cognitive science, risk appraisal, traumatic stress, and anxiety disorders literatures. They propose the new term relative risk appraisal to capture the psychological function that is the missing link between the event and subjective response in these and other terrorism-related studies to date. Relative risk appraisal highlights the core notion from cognitive science that human perception is an active, multidimensional process, such that for unpredictable societal threats, proximity to the event is only one of several factors that influence behavioral responses. Addressing distortions in relative risk appraisal effectively could reduce individual and societal vulnerability to a wide range of adverse economic and ethnopolitical consequences to terrorist attacks. The authors present ways in which these concepts and related techniques can be helpful in treating persons with September 11- or terrorism-related distress or psychopathology.     

Opposing effects of stimulus-driven and memory-driven attention in visual search

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review - When one searches for a specific target in a cluttered visual scene, a perceptually salient stimulus or a stimulus that matches working memory’s contents...     

Sacred Canopies or Religious Markets? The Effect of County-Level Religious Diversity on Later Changes in Religious Involvement

Secularization theories, such as Berger's Sacred Canopy argument, hold that religious diversity leads to a decline in religious participation. Religious market models (e.g., Finke and Stark) argue the opposite. Voas, Olson, and Crockett found that nearly all of the vast research exploring this important question prior to 2002 was flawed due to a previously unrecognized noncausal statistical relationship between measures of religious diversity and measures of religious participation. Since 2002, this methodological issue has largely stymied research on this important topic. We first describe how, following Voas et al.’s recommendations, longitudinal models can overcome these problems. We then apply these methods to data measuring the religious composition of all U.S. counties found in the Religious Congregations and Membership Studies from 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2010. Using multilevel longitudinal regression models, we find that greater county-level religious diversity is followed by later declines in county-level religious participation rates. The negative effect size of religious diversity is large and robust to changes in the control variables and different methods of measuring religious diversity.