Resolving the debate over birth order, family size, and intelligence

Hundreds of research articles have addressed the relationship between birth order and intelligence. Virtually all have used cross-sectional data, which are fundamentally flawed in the assessment of within-family (including birth order) processes. Although within-family models have been based on patterns in cross-sectional data, a number of equally plausible between-family explanations also exist. Within-family (preferably intact-family) data are prerequisite for separating within- and between-family causal processes. This observation reframes an old issue in a way that can be easily addressed by studying graphical patterns. Sibling data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are evaluated, and the results are compared with those from other studies using within-family data. It appears that although low-IQ parents have been making large families, large families do not make low-IQ children in modern U.S. society. The apparent relation between birth order and intelligence has been a methodological illusion.     

Counterconditioning in the treatment of spider phobia: effects on disgust, fear and valence

From the perspective that disgust is a core feature of spider phobia, we investigated whether the treatment efficacy could be improved by adding a counterconditioning procedure. Women with a clinically diagnosed spider phobia (N = 34) were randomly assigned to the regular one-session exposure condition (EXP) or to the exposure with counterconditioning condition (CC). In the CC-condition tasty food-items were used during the regular exposure exercises and the participants' favourite music was played. Both treatment conditions appeared very effective in reducing avoidance behaviour and self-reported fear of spiders, strongly attenuated the disgusting properties of spiders and altered the affective evaluations in a positive direction. CC was not more effective in altering the affective valence of spiders than EXP and was not superior with respect to the long term treatment efficacy at 1 year follow up. Apparently, regular exposure treatment is already quite effective in altering the affective-evaluative component of spider phobia and it remains to be seen whether it is possible to further improve treatment outcome by means of procedures which are specifically designed to reduce the spiders' negative affective valence.     

Sustained efficacy of dialectical behaviour therapy for borderline personality disorder

Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) is considered one of the most promising treatments for borderline personality disorder (BPD). Recently, we reported significantly positive effects of 12 months DBT on parasuicidal behaviour and impulsivity in a mixed group of female BPD patients with and without substance abuse. Fifty-eight women with BPD were randomly assigned to either 52 weeks of DBT or treatment as usual (TAU). Follow-up assessment took place at 78 weeks, i.e., 6 months after discontinuation of DBT. Participants were clinical referrals from addiction treatment and psychiatric services. Outcome measures included parasuicidal behaviour, impulsivity and substance abuse. Six months after treatment discontinuation, the benefits of DBT over TAU in terms of lower levels of parasuicidal and impulsive behaviours, and in alcohol use, sustained. No differences between the treatment conditions were found for drug abuse. In conclusion, DBT seems to have a sustained effect on some of the core symptoms of BPD and on alcohol problems in a mixed population of female borderline patients with and without substance abuse problems.     

Meaning through syntax is insufficient to explain comprehension of sentences with reduced relative clauses: comment on McKoon and Ratcliff (2003)

The authors argue that the meaning through syntax (MTS) model proposed by G. McKoon and R. Ratcliff fails to account for the comprehension of sentences with reduced relative clauses. First, the theory's core assumptions regarding verb-based event representations and how they link to constructions are incompatible with well-established analyses from the lexical semantics literature. Second, the MTS theory provides neither a principled nor a consistent account for why some reduced relatives are hard whereas others are easy. Finally, McKoon and Ratcliff's critique of constraint-based models is flawed in that sometimes they tested a nonexistent theory and sometimes they provided evidence for the constraint-based models against which they were arguing.     

Semantic feature production norms for a large set of living and nonliving things

Semantic features have provided insight into numerous behavioral phenomena concerning concepts, categorization, and semantic memory in adults, children, and neuropsychological populations. Numerous theories and models in these areas are based on representations and computations involving semantic features. Consequently, empirically derived semantic feature production norms have played, and continue to play, a highly useful role in these domains. This article describes a set of feature norms collected from approximately 725 participants for 541 living (dog) and nonliving (chair) basic-level concepts, the largest such set of norms developed to date. This article describes the norms and numerous statistics associated with them. Our aim is to make these norms available to facilitate other research, while obviating the need to repeat the labor-intensive methods involved in collecting and analyzing such norms. The full set of norms may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

Ambiguity and gratuitous concurrence in inter-cultural communication

A: Excuse me, but we're just trying to find the right bus that takes us to the boat for Upolu. We were told that it stops here in front of the village store, but we've been waiting since 9 o'clock this morning and we'd like to know if there is going to be a bus before this evening or if we'll have to wait until tomorrow for a bus. I: Yes.     

Illusory causal crescents: misperceived spatial relations due to perceived causality

When an object A moves toward an object B until they are adjacent, at which point A stops and B starts moving, we often see a collision--ie we see A as the cause of B's motion. The spatiotemporal parameters which mediate the perception of causality have been explored in many studies, but this work is seldom related to other aspects of perception. Here we report a novel illusion, wherein the perception of causality affects the perceived spatial relations among two objects involved in a collision event: observers systematically underestimate the amount of overlap between two items in an event which is seen as a causal collision. This occurs even when the causal nature of the event is induced by a surrounding context, such that estimates of the amount of overlap in the very same event are much improved when the event is displayed in isolation, without a 'causal' interpretation. This illusion implies that the perception of causality does not proceed completely independently of other visual processes, but can affect the perception of other spatial properties.     

Difficulties in comprehending causal relations among children with ADHD: the role of cognitive engagement

The present study examined whether time spent in long looks (i.e., >or=15 s), an index of cognitive engagement, would account for differences between children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and comparison children in understanding causal relations. Children viewed two televised stories, once in the presence of toys and once in their absence. Dependent variables were visual attention and questions tapping factual information and causal relations. Comparison children answered significantly more causal relations questions than did the children with ADHD, but only in the toys-present condition. Four lines of evidence revealed that the difficulties children with ADHD had in answering causal relations questions in the toys-present condition could be linked specifically to this group's decreased time spent in long looks.     

Seeing the Fisher<Emphasis Type="Italic">Z</Emphasis>-transformation

Since 1915, statisticians have been applying Fisher'sZ-transformation to Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients. We offer new geometric interpretations of this transformation.     

Additive factors analysis of inhibitory processing in the stop-signal paradigm

This article reports an additive factors analysis of choice reaction and selective stop processes manipulated in a stop-signal paradigm. Three experiments were performed in which stimulus discriminability (SD) and stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) were manipulated in a factorial fashion. In each experiment, the effects of SD and SRC were assessed first for going and next for stopping. Two experiments yielded the anticipated additive relation between SD and SRC for going but stopping appeared to be insensitive to the SD manipulation. Increasing the SD demands in the third experiment by using a different display resulted in a significant (over-additive) interaction between SD and SRC for going and a non-significant (under-additive) interaction for stopping. The pattern of results that emerged from this set of experiments was interpreted to suggest that going and stopping are both similar and different. They are similar in that distinct stages can be identified in both going and stopping but they are also different, as selective stopping seems to be less sensitive to discrimination manipulations relative to going.