Cluster randomized trials with treatment noncompliance

Cluster randomized trials (CRTs) have been widely used in field experiments treating a cluster of individuals as the unit of randomization. This study focused particularly on situations where CRTs are accompanied by a common complication, namely, treatment noncompliance or, more generally, intervention nonadherence. In CRTs, compliance may be related not only to individual characteristics but also to the environment of clusters individuals belong to. Therefore, analyses ignoring the connection between compliance and clustering may not provide valid results. Although randomized field experiments often suffer from both noncompliance and clustering of the data, these features have been studied as separate rather than concurrent problems. On the basis of Monte Carlo simulations, this study demonstrated how clustering and noncompliance may affect statistical inferences and how these two complications can be accounted for simultaneously. In particular, the effect of the intervention on individuals who not only were assigned to active intervention but also abided by this intervention assignment (complier average causal effect) was the focus. For estimation of intervention effects considering noncompliance and data clustering, an ML-EM estimation method was employed.     

Differential sensitivity of recent vs. remote memory traces to extinction in a water-maze task in rats

Extinction has mostly been studied in conditioning paradigms, more sparsely in spatial tasks, and never as a function of the age of a spatial memory. Using rats, we compared the time-course of extinction of a recent (5 days) vs. remote (25 days) spatial memory in a water maze, over three probe trials. When the trials were set 24h apart, performance in the remote memory group was significantly worse on the first probe trial and significantly better on the third probe trial, as compared to the recent memory group, thereby showing differences between cognitive operations underlying recent vs. remote memory extinction. In contrast, when trials were given consecutively, both groups showed a similar profile of extinction. Furthermore, in a room with overly-salient cues providing a strong remote memory trace, no difference between groups was observed when the spaced extinction paradigm was used. These results might be related to a balance between reconsolidation and extinction processes occurring after a first retrieval experience, of which the outcome may depend on the extinction protocol, and on the age and strength of a memory.     

Collective rationality in interactive decisions: evidence for team reasoning

Decision theory and game theory rest on a fundamental assumption that players seek to maximize their individual utilities, but in some interactive decisions it seems intuitively reasonable to aim to maximize the utility of the group of players as a whole. Such team reasoning requires collective preferences and a distinctive mode of reasoning from preferences to decisions. Findings from two experiments provide evidence for collective preferences and team reasoning. In lifelike vignettes (Experiment 1) and abstract games (Experiment 2) with certain structural properties, most players preferred team-reasoning strategies to strategies supporting unique Nash equilibria, although individually rational players should choose equilibrium strategies. These findings suggest that team reasoning predicts strategy choices more powerfully than orthodox game theory in some games.     

Being Human: Experiencing and Communicating

Haye’s article Living being and speaking being highlights a confusion that the traditional cognitive science has been making between cognition and representation, reducing semantics (meaning) to the syntax (computation with symbols). This traditional view cannot fully grasp the dependence of meaning on the relational context, opening space for the need to take into account the Bakhtinian notions of responsivity and addressivity to an other as defining features of the communicational social act. Socialized signs are conceived here as central tools to our relation to the world and to the others. We pursue some of the implications of this radical dialogical commitment specifying their implications to an ontological level of human beings: relationships are the ground for the depiction of human beings and otherness as a necessary complementarity of our own existence.     

Overproduction timing errors in expert dancers

The authors investigated how expert dancers achieve accurate timing under various conditions. They designed the conditions to interfere with the dancers' attention to time and to test the explanation of the interference effect provided in the attentional model of time processing. Participants were 17 expert contemporary dancers who performed a freely chosen duration while walking and executing a bilateral cyclic arm movement over a given distance. The dancers reproduced that duration in different situations of interference. The process yielded temporal overproductions, validating the attentional model and extending its application to expert populations engaged in complex motor situations. The finding that the greatest overproduction occurred in the transfer-with-improvisation condition suggests that improvisation within a time deadline requires specific training.     

Effects of a computer-assisted language intervention in a rural Nevada center

A computer-assisted language intervention, Fast ForWord-Language (FFW-L), was tested at a rural Nevada center in a group of children (Grades 2-12) referred by parents and teachers to assess enhancement of language skills. Given conflicting results from previous studies, language scores were measured using Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, Third Edition (CELF-3) before and after the FFW-L intervention. 58 children's CELF-3 postintervention scores were adjusted for age-specific expected changes and compared with pretest scores. Adjusted scores increased in both receptive and expressive domains of the CELF-3. Children with prior diagnoses of language and/or learning impairment did not differ from other referrals on adjusted CELF-3 adjusted gain scores after treatment. Thus the Fast ForWord-Language intervention may benefit a much broader group of children referred by parents and teachers for language or reading problems.     

Retrieval Inhibition and Memory Distortion: Negative Consequences of an Adaptive Process

ABSTRACT— Despite the fact that misinformation effects have long been studied by both applied researchers and modelers of human memory, there is little consensus as to the value of such endeavors. We argue that this may be due to a failure to identify the underlying mechanism responsible for such memory distortions. We consider novel evidence for a relationship between retrieval-induced forgetting and the reporting of misinformation. We also explore the extent to which retrieval inhibition underpins this relationship and the implications this has for the modeling of memory and finding potential solutions to real-world problems.     

Eliciting salient beliefs in research on the theory of planned behaviour: The effect of question wording

The authors of the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and its extension, the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) recommend that researchers who use these theories to investigate the determinants of a given behaviour should first conduct an elicitation study to identify the modal salient beliefs in the target population. In spite of the importance accorded to salient beliefs by the TRA/TPB, the elicitation stage has received little research attention. This paper reports a detailed analysis of beliefs about “being more physically active in the next 12 months.” A general population sample of 213 adults completed a questionnaire while attending a research centre for a series of tests. The findings showed that the beliefs that were elicited by questions designed to prompt affective outcomes (like or enjoy, dislike or hate) differed systematically from those that were elicited by the traditional questions designed to prompt instrumental out-comes (advantages and disadvantages). Whether this resulted in different final sets of modal salient beliefs was found to depend on the particular decision rule that was employed. An alternative decision rule is proposed, based on maximizing the degree of overlap between the modal set and the full set of salient beliefs generated by the sample. The index of overlap can be used to gauge the adequacy of using a modal set of a given size to represent the salient beliefs of the whole sample. In the current dataset, the optimal modal set for “advantages and disadvantages” was associated with only 26 percent overlap with the salient beliefs of the whole sample, which was judged to be insufficient. In such cases, a better strategy may be to ask participants to generate and rate their own beliefs.     

Report of the ACA Ethics Committee: 2001–2002

This report summarizes the activities of the American Counseling Association (ACA) Ethics Committee during the period of July 1, 2001, through June 30, 2002. An overview of the mission of the Ethics Committee, Ethics Committee membership, educational activities, review of policies and procedures, and adjudication activities is presented.     

A Game of Inches: Spontaneous Use of Counterfactuals by Broadcasters During Major League Baseball Playoffs1

We tested whether counterfactuals are made spontaneously outside of the laboratory by coding sportscasters’ online verbalizations during 1998 and 1999 Major League Baseball (MLB) playoff broadcasts, and we assessed whether naturally occurring game features relating to closeness (score closeness, series closeness, game end, and playoff end) delineated some conditions under which counterfactuals were more likely. Sportscasters made counterfactuals quite frequently during these MLB playoff games. In addition, sportscasters uttered greater numbers of counterfactuals as games progressed from early to late innings, which was particularly true when scores were close. Counterfactuals were also uttered in greater numbers with closer scores when series were tied than when one team had a lead. Results are discussed in terms of spontaneous counterfactuals, closeness as an antecedent, and the ecological validity of such thoughts.