The short-form Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ-SF): a validation study with federal offenders

The 12-item short form of the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (BPAQ-SF) was originally developed by Bryant and Smith (2001) and modified and confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis with mentally ill offenders by Diamond, Wang, and Buffington-Vollum (2005). In the current study, construct validity of the BPAQ-SF was assessed with a sample of 1,181 male and 435 female general population federal offenders. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the four-factor structure. Tests confirmed factorial invariance across gender for all loadings and covariances. Reliabilities were found to be adequate and comparable to those found in the studies cited above. Concurrent validity was supported by high correlations between the subscales of the BPAQ-SF and several relevant subscales on the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI). In addition, those offenders with prior history of violence, head injuries, childhood abuse, residential treatment, custody, or foster care as a child had higher scores on the BPAQ subscales.     

The distinct contributions of age of acquisition and word frequency in auditory word perception

We report two studies of the distinct effects that a word's age of acquisition (AoA) and frequency have on the mental lexicon. In the first study, a purely statistical analysis, we show that AoA and frequency are related in different ways to the phonological form and imageability of different words. In the second study, three groups of participants (34 seven-year-olds, 30 ten-year-olds, and 17 adults) took part in an auditory lexical decision task, with stimuli varying in AoA, frequency, length, neighbourhood density, and imageability. The principal result is that the influence of these different variables changes as a function of AoA: Neighbourhood density effects are apparent for early and late AoA words, but not for intermediate AoA, whereas imageability effects are apparent for intermediate AoA words but not for early or late AoA. These results are discussed from the perspective that AoA affects a word's representation, but frequency affects processing biases.     

Substituing supplementary subtests for core subtests on reliability of WISC-IV Indexes and Full Scale IQ

The effects of replacing core subtests with supplementary subtests on composite score reliabilities were evaluated for the WISC-IV Indexes and Full Scale IQ. When Wechsler's guidelines are followed, i.e., only one substitution for each Index; no more than two substitutions from different Indexes when assessing the Full Scale IQ, summary score reliabilities remain high, and measurement error, as defined by confidence intervals around obtained scores, never increases by more than 1 index score point. In three instances, substitution of a supplementary subtest for a core subtest actually increased the reliabilities and decreased the amount of associated measurement error.     

A theory of dynamic occluded and illusory object perception

Humans see whole objects from input fragmented in space and time, yet spatiotemporal object perception is poorly understood. The authors propose the theory of spatiotemporal relatability (STR), which describes the visual information and processes that allow visible fragments revealed at different times and places, due to motion and occlusion, to be assembled into unitary perceived objects. They present a formalization of STR that specifies spatial and temporal relations for object formation. Predictions from the theory regarding conditions that lead to unit formation were tested and confirmed in experiments with dynamic and static, occluded and illusory objects. Moreover, the results support the identity hypothesis of a common process for amodal and modal contour interpolation and provide new evidence regarding the relative efficiency of static and dynamic object formation. STR postulates a mental representation, the dynamic visual icon, that briefly maintains shapes and updates positions of occluded fragments to connect them with visible regions. The theory offers a unified account of interpolation processes for static, dynamic, occluded, and illusory objects.