Individual half-judgment brightness functions

Nine Ss made half-judgments of each of nine brightness standards. Individual half-judgment brightness functions were constructed, one for each of the two threshold forms of the power law. The ω-Law (translation on the psychological axis) provided a better fit to the half-judgment data than did the ?-Law (translation on the intensity axis). A test of scale consistency for the fractionation method was confounded with the power law hypothesis, but the data are interpreted as providing fair support for the method independent of the form of the power law. The effect of Standard on exponent estimates was significant for both forms of the law, and the effect of Standard on threshold estimates was significant for the ?-Law but not for the ω-Law. Both forms of the law contain a so-called threshold parameter, but the interpretation of this parameter as a threshold was rejected for the ?-Law and accepted for the ω-Law.     

Patent Productivity of Research Chemists as Related to Age and Experience

Some previous publications have indicated that the creative skills of chemists tend to decline once they are past their thirties or early forties. These conclusions have been based on such criteria of creativity as merit ratings, citations in the literature, etc. In the present study, patent records for all 89 professional men (mostly chemists and chemical engineers) in one division of a large industrial scientific organization were analyzed to determine whether creativity as measured by the production of patentable ideas tended to decrease with age, to increase, or to remain about the same. In the statistical treatment of data both longitudinal and cross-sectional methods were used. All the results were consistent in revealing no decline in creative productivity with increase in age, and indicated instead a tendency for productivity to increase as chemists mature.     

Statistical simulation on microcomputers

The statistical simulation program DATASIM is designed to conduct large-scale sampling experiments on microcomputers. Monte Carlo procedures are used to investigate the Type I and Type II error rates for statistical tests when one or more assumptions are systematically violated-assumptions, for example, regarding normality, homogeneity of variance or covariance, mini-mum expected cell frequencies, and the like. In the present paper, we report several initial tests of the data-generating algorithms employed by DATASIM. The results indicate that the uniform and standard normal deviate generators perform satisfactorily. Furthermore, Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests show that the sampling distributions ofz, t, F, χ², andr generated by DATASIM simulations follow the appropriate theoretical distributions. Finally, estimates of Type I error rates obtained by DATASIM under various patterns of violations of assumptions are in close agreement with the results of previous analytical and empirical studies; These converging lines of evidence suggest that DATASIM may well prove to be a reliable and productive tool for conducting statistical simulation research.     

STATED WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR PUBLIC GOODS:

Abstract— In the contingent valuation method for the valuation of public goods, survey respondents are asked to indicate the amount they are willing to pay (WTP) for the provision of a good. We contrast economic and psychological analyses of WTP and describe a study in which respondents indicated their WTP to prevent or to remedy threats to public health or to the environment, attributed either to human or to natural causes. WTP was significantly higher when the cause of a harm was human, though the effect was not large. The means of WTP for 16 issues were highly correlated with the means of other measures of attitude, including a simple rating of the importance of the threat. The responses are better described as expressions of attitudes than as indications of economic value, contrary to the assumptions of the contingent valuation method.     

Standards for Organizational Consultation Assessment and Evaluation Instruments

Although consultation researchers and practitioners have called attention to the need for more psychometrically sound instruments, little advancement has occurred in this area. The authors outline key quantitative and qualitative psychometric standards for organizational consultation assessment and evaluation instruments. In addition, a framework and review of several existing questionnaires are presented. Implications for instrument use by practitioners and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Quality care in residential placement for children and youth with developmental disabilities

There is a growing concern for quality care in residential placements outside of the natural family for children and youth with developmental disabilities. Ideally, children with developmental disabilities should remain with their natural parent or parents of parents with appropriate supports until the age when children typically leave home. In reality, parents of children and youth with development disabilities are not always able or willing to care for their children at home, and alternate residential placements must be found. This paper will discuss some of the issues surrounding the provision of quality care in out-of-home residential placements for children and youth with developmental disabilities.     

Perceptual organization of auditory temporal patterns in European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris)

The perception of continuously repeating auditory patterns by European starlings was explored in seven experiments. In Experiment 1, 4 starlings learned to discriminate between two continuously repeating, eight-element, auditory patterns. Each eight-element pattern was constructed from different temporal organizations of two elements differing in timbre. In Experiments 2–7, the repeating patterns were transformed in ways designed to identify the starlings’ perceptual organization of the patterns. In Experiment 2, the starlings identified patterns beginning with novel starting points. In Experiment 3, discrimination performance was adversely affected by reorganizing the elements in the patterns. In Experiments 4 and 5, the pattern elements were altered. In Experiment 4, the patterns were constructed from two novel elements. In Experiment 5, the temporal location of the two pattern elements was reversed. The transformations of the patterns in Experiments 4 and 5 affected discrimination performance for some, but not all, of the starlings. In Experiments 6 and 7, replacing either of the two elements with silent intervals had no effect on discrimination performance. The results of these experiments identify basic grouping principles that starlings use when they perceive auditory patterns.