Signed difference analysis: Theory and application

Psychological constructs can only be measured indirectly in terms overt behavior, often by means of changes in the level of performance on tasks they are presumed to affect. However, the exact relationship between constructs and the tasks they are presumed to affect is usually not known, which often requires non-essential auxiliary assumptions to be added to a psychological model to allow it to contact the data. Signed difference analysis is a method of deriving testable consequences from psychological models under the general assumption that the relationship between task performance and the constructs or combinations of constructs postulated by the model is at least monotonic. The predictions derived using signed difference analysis do not depend upon estimation of either model parameters or explicit functional relationships. In the present paper, the mathematical theory of signed difference analysis is presented and applied to illustrative problems drawn from research in memory, spatial attention, and reading. The relationships between signed difference analysis and related inferential procedures such as conjoint measurement, state-trace analysis, and double dissociation are discussed.     

Parents of the Battered Child: A Multidisciplinary Group Therapy Approach to Life-Threatening Behavior

ABSTRACT: This paper reports the demographic findings and the experience of a three-year, multidisciplinary group psychotherapy program, with 31 child-abusing families. No predictive demographic characteristics were identified. The abuse of children ranged from mild bruising to severe brain damage and multiple fractures. Group therapy as an intervention procedure had its successes and failures. The dynamics of male-female co-therapists, the peer group sharing, and the capacity to ultimately verbalize inadequacies in the parenting role were crucial factors in therapy. As an experiential encounter the study gives a poignant insight into the personal and family pathology of parents who abuse their children.     

Reconciling divergent models of research utilization

Knowledge, Technology &; Policy -     

Do conflict management styles affect group decision making? Evidence from a longitudinal field study

This study examined the relationship between group conflict management styles and effectiveness of group decision making in 11 ongoing, naturally occurring workgroups from 2 large U.S. organizations. The major postulate of the study was that groups develop norms regarding how they will manage conflicts that carry over to affect other activities, such as decision making, even when these activities do not involve open conflict. To determine the impact of conflict management style on decision effectiveness, a longitudinal design was used that identified conflict management styles in the initial portion of each team's series of meetings and then analyzed a group decision taken in a meeting near the end of that series. Group conflict management styles were determined using observational methods, and decision effectiveness was measured using multiple indices that tapped member, facilitator, and external observer viewpoints. Task complexity also was considered as a possible moderating variable. The findings suggest that groups that developed integrative conflict management styles made more effective decisions than groups that utilized confrontation and avoidance styles. Groups that never developed a stable style were also less effective than groups with integrative styles.     

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Clusters and Acquired Capability for Suicide: A Reexamination Using DSM-5 Criteria

This study used the interpersonal–psychological theory of suicide to explore the relationships among DSM-5 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom clusters derived from the six-factor anhedonia model and facets of acquired capability for suicide (ACS). In a sample of 373 trauma-exposed undergraduates, most PTSD symptom clusters were negatively associated with facets of ACS in bivariate correlations, but the anhedonia cluster was positively associated with ACS in regression models. Structure coefficients and commonality analysis indicated that anhedonia served as a suppressor variable for the other symptom clusters. Our findings further elucidate the complex relationship between specific PTSD symptom clusters and ACS.     

The Relation of ERP Components to Complex Memory Processing

The relation between various ERP components generated during encoding of a word and its subsequent recall were investigated using a “rote” serial-order and an “elaborative” category memory task. Words (flashed separately) were time-locked to EEG recordings from 21 cortical sites. ERP components from the five subjects having the highest recall scores were compared to the five lowest scoring subjects. Results based on the P200 peak amplitude data as well as the N400 and late positive component peak amplitude and latency data suggest that anterior and posterior distributional differences are elicited during encoding of words for rote and elaborative memory tasks. Furthermore, strong individual differences in these patterns were found as a function of task. A tentative argument was made that the obtained anterior and posterior differences may index different word feature selection and encoding processes, which are differentially utilized by high and low recallers.     

Judgments of average magnitude: Analyses in terms of the functional measurement and two-stage models

Subjects made magnitude estimates of the average loudness of pairs of 1,000-Hz tones varying in sound pressure. A test of fit of an averaging model employing an analysis of variance suggested that the judgments were internally consistent. However, estimates of the parameters of a two-stage model based on the assumption that power transformations were imposed in both input and output implied a nonlinear output function, inconsistent with the averaging model. Additional analyses employing a nonmetric scaling solution also suggested that output was nonlinear, indicating that this implication was not an artifact of the strong assumptions of the two-stage model. Large differences were found among the output functions of individual subjects, and it was suggested that these may have inflated the error term in the analysis of variance, reducing its power to detect violations of the additive model. Similar analyses were performed on data from judgments of average grayness collected by Weiss (1972).     

A note on a sufficiency condition for uniqueness of a restricted factor matrix

A counterexample is produced to a conjecture by K. G. Jöreskog concerning sufficiency conditions for uniqueness of a restricted factor matrix. A substitute condition is stated and proved for the most common situation where the restricted elements are specified to be zero.     

Is Satan a Lover of the Good?

There are, apparently, two inherited stories of intentional action. On the motivational story, intentional agents are pursuers of goals. On the evaluative story, intentional agents are pursuers of value. In a spirit of unification, we might try to supplement the motivational story with the evaluative one – or even collapse the former into the latter. The problem with such moves is that they cannot accomodate certain pathologies of agency. Thus, they convert apparently perverse agents – like Satan and self-haters – into closet lovers of the good. I argue that pathological agents like Satan and self-haters are not lovers of the good. They are just lovers of success in action. We can make sense of such agents as practical reasoners because the cares that constitute us as practical reasoners are plural.