When “reliability” fails,must a measure be discarded?—The case of Kinesthetic Aftereffect

Critics of Kinesthetic Aftereffect (KAE) recommend abandoning it as a personality measure largely because of poor test-retest reliability. Although no test can be valid if lacking true reliability, to discard a measure because of poor retest reliability is an oversimplification of validation procedures. This pitfall is exemplified here by a reexamination of KAE. KAE scores involve measures before (pretest) and after (test) aftereffect induction. Internal analysis of a KAE study showed: Differential bias is present; its locus is the second session pretest; its form makes second-session pretest scores functionally more similar to first- and second-session test scores and functionally more dissimilar to first-session pretest scores. Given this second session bias, the retest correlation tells us nothing about the true reliability of a one-session KAE score. However, if a measure possesses external validity, it must to some degree show true reliability. Based upon a literature review of one-session KAE validity studies, we conclude that one-session KAE scores are valid and hence show true reliability. KAE remains a promising personality measure.     

A demonstration of shape constancy

In order to compare the recognition of objective (defined in three dimensions) and projective (on the frontal-parallel plane) shapes, subjects were asked to identify angles (either objective or projective) on random polygons that were displayed in complex and meaningful photographic slides in the frontal-parallel plane. The subjects’ judgments corresponded much more closely to the objective than to the projective shapes, almost independently of which of the two shapes they were asked to judge and of whether the slides were presented in a normal upright orientation or were rotated 180 deg. The results are incompatible with the strong form of the shape-slant hypothesis, which assumes that the primary perceptual information concerns the properties of the projective retinal image. The results indicate, instead, that a tacit conception of three-dimensional space is primary in the perceptual process.     

Visual perception of motion in depth: Application of a vector model to three-dot motion patterns

The aim of the present study was to identify spatial properties of three-dot motion patterns yielding perceived motion in depth. A proposed vector model analyzed each pattern in terms of common and relative motion components of the moving parts. The dots moved in straight paths in a frontoparallel plane. The Ss reported verbally what they perceived. The common motion did not affect the kénd of perceived event (translation or rotation in depth). Relative motions toward or away from a common point, i.e. concurrent motions, yielded perceived translatory motion in depth. Parallel relative motions toward or away from a common line generally yielded perceived rotation in depth. Complex motion patterns, consisting of concurrent and parallel relative motion components combined, evoked simultaneously perceived translation and rotation in depth under certain phase conditions of the components. Some limitations of the model were discussed and suggestions made to widen its generality.     

Heidegger's Nietzsche interpretation

Continental Philosophy Review -     

On the nature of children's judgments of linguistic features: Semantic relations and grammatical morphemes

Children's judgments of sentences were examined in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds in an effort to examine the relationship between children's use of various linguistic features and their judgments of these features in formal tasks. The sentences the children were asked to judge differed on the basis of features acquired gradually during the development of children's linguistic usage. The judgments made by the children did not appear related to the course followed in the acquisition of language usage, a finding that suggests that language acquisition and formal linguistic judgments may reflect different processes.     

Anxiety as a Predictor and Outcome Variable in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA)

Initial moderator analyses in the Multimodal Treatment Study of Children with ADHD (MTA) suggested that child anxiety ascertained by parent report on the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children 2.3 (DISC Anxiety) differentially moderated the outcome of treatment. Left unanswered were questions regarding the nature of DISC Anxiety, the impact of comorbid conduct problems on the moderating effect of DISC Anxiety, and the clinical significance of DISC Anxiety as a moderator of treatment outcome. Thirty-three percent of MTA subjects met DSM-III-R criteria for an anxiety disorder excluding simple phobias. Of these, two-thirds also met DSM-III-R criteria for comorbid oppositional-defiant or conduct disorder whereas one-third did not, yielding an odds ratio of approximately two for DISC Anxiety, given conduct problems. In this context, exploratory analyses of baseline data suggest that DISC Anxiety may reflect parental attributions regarding child negative affectivity and associated behavior problems (unlike fearfulness), particularly in the area of social interactions, another core component of anxiety that is more typically associated with phobic symptoms. Analyses using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) indicate that the moderating effect of DISC Anxiety continues to favor the inclusion of psychosocial treatment for anxious ADHD children irrespective of the presence or absence of comorbid conduct problems. This effect, which is clinically meaningful, is confined primarily to parent-reported outcomes involving disruptive behavior, internalizing symptoms, and inattention; and is generally stronger for combined than unimodal treatment. Contravening earlier studies, no adverse effect of anxiety on medication response for core ADHD or other outcomes in anxious or nonanxious ADHD children was demonstrated. When treating ADHD, it is important to search for comorbid anxiety and negative affectivity and to adjust treatment strategies accordingly.     

Simulating the Acquisition of Verb Inflection in Typically Developing Children and Children With Developmental Language Disorder in English and Spanish

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) have significant deficits in language ability that cannot be attributed to neurological damage, hearing impairment, or intellectual disability. The symptoms displayed by children with DLD differ across languages. In English, DLD is often marked by severe difficulties acquiring verb inflection. Such difficulties are less apparent in languages with rich verb morphology like Spanish and Italian. Here we show how these differential profiles can be understood in terms of an interaction between properties of the input language, and the child's ability to learn predictive relations between linguistic elements that are separated within a sentence. We apply a simple associative learning model to sequential English and Spanish stimuli and show how the model's ability to associate cues occurring earlier in time with later outcomes affects the acquisition of verb inflection in English more than in Spanish. We relate this to the high frequency of the English bare form (which acts as a default) and the English process of question formation, which means that (unlike in Spanish) bare forms frequently occur in third-person singular contexts. Finally, we hypothesize that the pro-drop nature of Spanish makes it easier to associate person and number cues with the verb inflection than in English. Since the factors that conspire to make English verb inflection particularly challenging for learners with weak sequential learning abilities are much reduced or absent in Spanish, this provides an explanation for why learning Spanish verb inflection is relatively unaffected in children with DLD.     

Disentangling the components of surface acting in emotion work: experiencing emotions may be as important as regulating them

Measures of surface acting (SA) do not distinguish between feeling emotions and regulating emotions. SA typically involves negative emotions; these often persist and may, at least partly, be responsible for the effects of SA on well‐being. In two diary studies and one survey study, negative emotions felt predicted lower well‐being, and controlling for them rendered the effect of suppressing their display insignificant. Additionally, in Study 2, SA predicted higher interaction quality once emotions felt were controlled. Results indicate that the effects of SA are, at least partly, due to emotions felt when negative emotions are suppressed. Therefore, research should control for emotions felt and focus more strongly on the emotions themselves and their triggers.     

Overgeneral autobiographical memory predicts higher prospective levels of depressive symptoms and intrusions in borderline patients

Overgeneral memory (OGM), the tendency to retrieve categories of events from autobiographical memory instead of single events, is found to be a reliable predictor for future mood disturbances and post-traumatic symptom severity. Patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often report co-morbid episodes of major depressive disorder (MDD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therefore, we investigated whether OGM would predict depression severity and (post-traumatic) stress symptoms in BPD patients. At admission (N?=?54) and at six-month follow-up (N?≥?31), BPD patients completed the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Disorders, the Assessment of DSM-IV Personality Disorders, the Autobiographical Memory Test, the Beck Depression Inventory—2nd edition (BDI-II), and the Impact of Event Scale. OGM at baseline predicted (a) higher levels of depressive symptoms at follow-up and (b) more intrusions related to a stressful event over and above baseline levels of borderline symptoms, depressive symptoms, and intrusions, respectively. No association was found between memory specificity and event-related avoidance at follow-up. Despite previous findings suggesting that OGM in BPD is less robust than in MDD and PTSD, our results suggest that memory specificity in BPD patients may have some relevance for the course of depressive and stress symptomatology in BPD.