Introduction to the Special Issue: Evaluating Assistive Technology in the Education of Persons with Severe Disabilities

This special issue of the Journal of Behavioral Education was prepared to highlight the use of a range of assistive technologies for promoting improved learning and adaptive behavior functioning among individuals with severe disabilities. The range of technologies evaluated in this special issue includes microswitches, assistive communication devices, iPods, and computer-based technologies. Collectively, these papers illustrate how the use of assistive technology can be taught and evaluated to ascertain its effects on learning and adaptive functioning among person with severe disabilities.     

Driver responses to motorcycle and lead vehicle braking events: The effects of motorcycling experience and novice versus experienced drivers

In many countries, motorcyclists are over-represented in traffic collision fatalities and injuries compared to vehicle registrations. Why drivers may violate the right-of-way of motorcyclists traveling as lead vehicles in front of drivers is empirically examined in two studies that were conducted with a moderate-fidelity driving simulator. The purpose of the first study was to determine if drivers, who also held a motorcycle license (N = 16), drove cars differently than regular drivers (N = 16) around motorcycles. The two groups did not differ on responses to motorcycling braking events, which was consistent with previous research on car following. The second study compared the driving performance of sixteen novice teenage drivers (M = 16.2 years of age) to 15 experienced drivers (M = 32.9) over the span of six monthly simulator sessions. Novice drivers’ perception response times (PRT) to the braking events were significantly longer than those of the experienced drivers. PRTs to motorcycle and lead vehicle braking events decreased over sessions. For all participants, PRTs to the motorcycle events were longer than to the car events. The implications of these results for motorcyclists and drivers with different levels of experience are discussed.     

Investigating the Performance of Alternate Regression Weights by Studying All Possible Criteria in Regression Models with a Fixed Set of Predictors

We describe methods for assessing all possible criteria (i.e., dependent variables) and subsets of criteria for regression models with a fixed set of predictors, x (where x is an n×1 vector of independent variables). Our methods build upon the geometry of regression coefficients (hereafter called regression weights) in n-dimensional space. For a full-rank predictor correlation matrix, R _xx, of order n, and for regression models with constant R ² (coefficient of determination), the OLS weight vectors for all possible criteria terminate on the surface of an n-dimensional ellipsoid. The population performance of alternate regression weights—such as equal weights, correlation weights, or rounded weights—can be modeled as a function of the Cartesian coordinates of the ellipsoid. These geometrical notions can be easily extended to assess the sampling performance of alternate regression weights in models with either fixed or random predictors and for models with any value of R ². To illustrate these ideas, we describe algorithms and R (R Development Core Team, 2009) code for: (1) generating points that are uniformly distributed on the surface of an n-dimensional ellipsoid, (2) populating the set of regression (weight) vectors that define an elliptical arc in ℝ ⁿ , and (3) populating the set of regression vectors that have constant cosine with a target vector in ℝ ⁿ . Each algorithm is illustrated with real data. The examples demonstrate the usefulness of studying all possible criteria when evaluating alternate regression weights in regression models with a fixed set of predictors.     

Ecstasy Use,Outcome Expectancies,and Sexual Risk Taking

Ecstasy has become one of the most widely used illicit drugs in Australia. This study investigated outcome expectancies as possible motivating and maintaining factors in ecstasy use and sexual risk‐taking behaviour. A sample of regular ecstasy users (N = 220) from Sydney and Canberra, Australia, was recruited for structured face‐to‐face interviews. They also completed an Ecstasy Expectancy Questionnaire. Seven of eight subscales significantly differentiated regular users from non‐users. Interestingly, light and heavier users held similar outcome expectancies, except that light users endorsed items on the sexual enhancement subscale more strongly than heavier users. Further investigation showed that the level of sexual risk taking observed in this sample was high, with the majority of participants reporting multiple partners, “casual” sexual encounters, sex under the influence of substances, and inconsistent condom use. Using logistic regression analyses, a key finding was that positive sex‐related ecstasy outcome expectancies were associated with involvement in disinhibited sexual behaviour under the influence of ecstasy. These effects persisted after statistically controlling for the frequency of ecstasy use. The findings suggest that sexual risk taking is related not only to the disinhibiting properties of ecstasy but also to beliefs that users hold about the effects of the drug.     

Disentangling the prospective relations between maladaptive cognitions and depressive symptoms

In a four-wave, cohort-longitudinal design with a community sample of 515 children and adolescents (grades 2 through 9), this study examined the longitudinal structure of and prospective interrelations between maladaptive cognitions and depressive symptoms. Multigroup structural equation modeling generated four major findings. First, the longitudinal structures of maladaptive cognitions and depressive symptoms consist of a single time-invariant factor and a series of time-varying factors. Second, evidence supported a model in which depressive symptoms predicted negative cognitions but not the reverse. Third, the time-invariant components of cognition and depression were highly correlated. Fourth, the strength of the depression-to-cognition relation increased with age. Implications regarding the mechanisms underlying clinical interventions with depressed children are discussed.     

Paying the cost of skeptical theism

In this paper I show that two arguments for the inconsistency of skeptical theism fail. After setting up the debate in “Introduction” section, I show in “The initial debate” section why Mylan Engel’s argument (Engel 2004) against skeptical theism does not succeed. In “COST” section I strengthen the argument so that it both avoids my reply to Engel and parallels Jon Laraudogoitia’s argument against skeptical theism (Laraudogoitia 2000). In “COST*” section, I provide three replies—one by an evidentialist theist, one by a closure-denying theist, and one by a necessitarian theist, and argue that the necessitarian’s reply successfully rebuts the inconsistency charge. I conclude that skeptical theism which accepts God’s necessary existence is immune to both kinds of arguments for its inconsistency.     

Structural and psychological empowerment climates, performance, and the moderating role of shared felt accountability: a managerial perspective

The authors proposed and tested a model in which data were collected from managers (n = 539) at 116 corporate-owned quick service restaurants to assess the structural and psychological empowerment process as moderated by shared-felt accountability on indices of performance from a managerial perspective. The authors found that empowering leadership climate positively relates to psychological empowerment climate. In turn, psychological empowerment climate relates to performance only under conditions of high-felt accountability; it does not relate to performance under conditions of low-felt accountability. Overall, the present results indicate that the quick-service restaurant managers, who feel more empowered, operate restaurants that perform better than managers who feel less empowered, but only when those empowered managers also feel a high sense of accountability.     

Further evidence for mixed emotions

Emotion theorists have long debated whether valence, which ranges from pleasant to unpleasant states, is an irreducible aspect of the experience of emotion or whether positivity and negativity are separable in experience. If valence is irreducible, it follows that people cannot feel happy and sad at the same time. Conversely, if positivity and negativity are separable, people may be able to experience such mixed emotions. The authors tested several alternative interpretations for prior evidence that happiness and sadness can co-occur in bittersweet situations (i.e., those containing both pleasant and unpleasant aspects). One possibility is that subjects who reported mixed emotions merely vacillated between happiness and sadness. The authors tested this hypothesis in Studies 1-3 by asking subjects to complete online continuous measures of happiness and sadness. Subjects reported more simultaneously mixed emotions during a bittersweet film clip than during a control clip. Another possibility is that subjects in earlier studies reported mixed emotions only because they were explicitly asked whether they felt happy and sad. The authors tested this hypothesis in Studies 4-6 with open-ended measures of emotion. Subjects were more likely to report mixed emotions after the bittersweet clip than the control clip. Both patterns occurred even when subjects were told that they were not expected to report mixed emotions (Studies 2 and 5) and among subjects who did not previously believe that people could simultaneously feel happy and sad (Studies 3 and 6). These results provide further evidence that positivity and negativity are separable in experience.     

Theory in Religion,Aging, and Health: An Overview

This paper provides an overview of theory in religion, aging, and health. It offers both a primer on theory and a roadmap for researchers. Four “tenses” of theory are described—distinct ways that theory comes into play in this field: grand theory, mid-range theory, use of theoretical models, and positing of constructs which mediate or moderate putative religious effects. Examples are given of both explicit and implicit uses of theory. Sources of theory for this field are then identified, emphasizing perspectives of sociologists and psychologists, and discussion is given to limitations of theory. Finally, reflections are offered as to why theory matters.     

Spectrum inversion without a difference in representation is impossible

Even if spectrum inversion of various sorts is possible, spectrum inversion without a difference in representation is not. So spectrum inversion does not pose a challenge for the intentionalist thesis that, necessarily, within a given sense modality, if two experiences are alike with respect to content, they are also alike with respect to their phenomenal character. On the contrary, reflection on variants of standard cases of spectrum inversion provides a strong argument for intentionalism. Depending on one’s views about the possibility of spectrum inversion, the impossibility of spectrum inversion without a difference in representation can also be used as an argument against a variety of reductive theories of mental representation.