A Preliminary Study Using the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory—Adolescent Form as an Outcome Measure With Adolescent Offenders

The authors describe a preliminary study using the Substance Abuse Subtle Screening Inventory‐Adolescent Form (SASS‐A; E Miller, 1994) as an outcome measure with adolescent offenders. Results indicate that the SASSI‐A can be successfully used as a treatment planning tool as well as a measure to evaluate programs.     

Separating the influences of escape and access to preferred activities on problem behavior occurring in instructional contexts

Two individuals with developmental disabilities were observed to engage in destructive behavior when demands were presented, suggesting that the behaviors were maintained by negative reinforcement. Subsequent analyses revealed that (i) the behavior problems persisted when the participants were asked to cease a high‐probability, ongoing activity (walking) while demands were not presented and (ii) problem behaviors ceased when the participants were trained to request access to walking through appropriate means. These findings suggested that the presentation of demands, per se, was not the critical variable in maintaining destructive behavior. Rather, it appeared that restricting the participants from walking, which was only coincidentally necessary in the initiation of demands, set the occasion for the aberrant responses. Subsequent analyses were conducted with one participant to further strengthen this hypothesis. These findings are discussed in terms of the utility of seeking out idiosyncratic and individualized behavioral functions subsequent to initial assessments and their contribution to the growing body of literature regarding the complex interactions of destructive behavior and other naturally occurring high‐rate behaviors. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application of Latent Semantic Analysis to Divergent Thinking is Biased by Elaboration

Scoring divergent‐thinking response sets has always been challenging because such responses are not only open‐ended in terms of number of ideas, but each idea may also be expressed by a varying number of concepts and, thus, by a varying number of words (elaboration). While many current studies have attempted to score the semantic distance in divergent‐thinking responses by applying latent semantic analysis (LSA), it is known from other areas of research that LSA‐based approaches are biased according to the number of words in a response. Thus, the current article aimed to identify and demonstrate this elaboration bias in LSA‐based divergent‐thinking scores by means of a simulation. In addition, we show that this elaboration bias can be reduced by removing the stop words (for example, and, or, for and so forth) prior to analysis. Furthermore, the residual bias after stop word removal can be reduced by simulation‐based corrections. Finally, we give an empirical illustration for alternate uses and consequences tasks. Results suggest that when both stop word removal and simulation‐based bias correction are applied, convergent validity should be expected to be highest.     

Nonparametric Calibration of Item-by-Attribute Matrix in Cognitive Diagnosis

A nonparametric technique based on the Hamming distance is proposed in this research by recognizing that once the attribute vector is known, or correctly estimated with high probability, one can determine the item-by-attribute vectors for new items undergoing calibration. We consider the setting where Q is known for a large item bank, and the q-vectors of additional items are estimated. The method is studied in simulation under a wide variety of conditions, and is illustrated with the Tatsuoka fraction subtraction data. A consistency theorem is developed giving conditions under which nonparametric Q calibration can be expected to work.     

A Purely Recombinatorial Puzzle

A new puzzle of modal recombination is presented which relies purely on resources of first‐order modal logic. It shows that naive recombinatorial reasoning, which has previously been shown to be inconsistent with various assumptions concerning propositions, sets and classes, leads to inconsistency by itself. The context sensitivity of modal expressions is suggested as the source of the puzzle, and it is argued that it gives us reason to reconsider the assumption that the notion of metaphysical necessity is in good standing.     

Culture, trust, and social networks

Although the role of trust in group processes has been well established, less is known about the role of trust in social network processes. Trust, conceptualized to have generalized and particularistic aspects, was measured by generalized trust (people can be trusted in general) and relationism (people can be trusted if one has relationships), and their relations with social network characteristics of network homogeneity (extent to which one has a number of friends with similar attitudes) and network closure (extent to which one's social network is closed) were examined in three Western (Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom) and two East Asian countries (Japan and Korea). Although generalized trust was shown to be positively related to network closure across the five countries, generalized trust and relationism had different relations with network homogeneity in different cultures. The results were interpreted in terms of social institutional and cultural differences.