Neuroticism and marital satisfaction

Thirty happily married and thirty unhappily married couples were examined by means of the MPI questionnaire to test the hypothesis that emotional instability impaired satisfaction in marriage. Unhappily married partners were very significantly higher on neuroticism than happily married partners, but there were no differences in extraversion/introversion. The data suggest that the high neuroticism of the unhappily married partners antedates their marriage.     

Consumer information processing strategies in middle and late adulthood

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which performance of a complex cognitive task of a type resembling that encountered in everyday life is maintained through adulthood. A total of 80 subjects participated; 20 in their thirties, 20 in their fifties, 20 in their sixties, and 20 in their seventies. Subjects were asked to make preference judgments with respect to 32 pocket-size notebooks of a sort they might encounter as consumers in a stationery or variety store. Independently, they were also asked to express their preferences with respect to each of the four dimensions on which the notebooks varied. With only minor differences across age groups, most subjects demonstrated the ability to integrate their individual dimension preferences into a complex preference judgment of an object embodying those dimensions, in a logically consistent manner.     

Orthogonal procrustes rotation for two or more matrices

Necessary and sufficient conditions for rotating matrices to maximal agreement in the least-squares sense are discussed. A theorem by Fischer and Roppert, which solves the case of two matrices, is given a more straightforward proof. A sufficient condition for a best least-squares fit for more than two matrices is formulated and shown to be not necessary. In addition, necessary conditions suggested by Kristof and Wingersky are shown to be not sufficient. A rotation procedure that is an alternative to the one by Kristof and Wingersky is presented. Upper bounds are derived for determining the extent to which the procedure falls short of attaining the best least-squares fit. The problem of scaling matrices to maximal agreement is discussed. Modifications of Gower's method of generalized Procrustes analysis are suggested.     

Fuzzy intuitionistic quantum logics

Fuzzy intuitionistic quantum logics (called also Brouwer-Zadeh logics) represent to non standard version of quantum logic where the connective not is split into two different negation: a fuzzy-like negation that gives rise to a paraconsistent behavior and an intuitionistic-like negation. A completeness theorem for a particular form of Brouwer-Zadeh logic (BZL ³) is proved. A phisical interpretation of these logics can be constructed in the framework of the unsharp approach to quantum theory.     

Instructive feedback: A comparison of simultaneous and alternating presentation of non-target stimuli

Instructive feedback involves presenting extra, non-target stimuli in the consequent events for children's responses. Two methods of presenting instructive feedback during direct instruction were compared. These methods involved presenting two extra stimuli on all trials, and presenting the two extra stimuli separately on alternating trials. Preschool students were taught coin combinations using a constant time delay procedure with instructive feedback stimuli added to both praise and correction statements. An adapted alternating treatments design was used to evaluate the two methods of presenting instructive feedback. The students were assessed to determine the extent to which instructive feedback stimuli were learned. The results indicate that students learned some of the instructive feedback stimuli and no consistent differences in the effectiveness of the two presentation methods were noted. Further, relationships between the two instructive feedback stimuli appeared to be established. Implications for instruction and future research are discussed.     

A numerical approach to the approximate and the exact minimum rank of a covariance matrix

A concept of approximate minimum rank for a covariance matrix is defined, which contains the (exact) minimum rank as a special case. A computational procedure to evaluate the approximate minimum rank is offered. The procedure yields those proper communalities for which the unexplained common variance, ignored in low-rank factor analysis, is minimized. The procedure also permits a numerical determination of the exact minimum rank of a covariance matrix, within limits of computational accuracy. A set of 180 covariance matrices with known or bounded minimum rank was analyzed. The procedure was successful throughout in recovering the desired rank.The authors are obliged to Paul Bekker for stimulating and helpful comments.     

Retrieval processes in perceptual recognition and cued recall: The influence of category size

The purpose of these experiments was to determine whether nonsemantic category size and other variables would influence perceptual recognition as they influence cued recall. Procedures developed by Jacoby and his associates were replicated with words belonging to either small or large nonsemantic categories and with recognition tested under bright-target/patterned-mask conditions. The results indicated that words belonging to larger nonsemantic sets were more difficult to identify. This finding and the results of other manipulations are discussed in relation to the interactive activation model and to the proposal that perceptual recognition performance is dependent on a retrieval process similar to that involved in recall prompted by nonsemantic cues.