A portable four-channel cassette recording system for short-term electroencephalogram in the field

A portable four-channel electroencephalogram (EEG) cassette recording system has been designed which offers good performance, is simple to construct, and moderate in cost. The recorder is compatible with a commercially available, portable, battery-operated power source, and is therefore usable in the field where line power is unavailable. The system incorporates a small, lightweight, portable, battery-powered oscilloscope which provides monitoring and playback capability. While a few experimental portable EEG recorders have been reported in recent years with more channel capacity or perhaps lighter weight, the engineering details of these units are rarely published and, in any event, would require a substantial effort for most electronics support shops to reproduce. The recording system described here, however, should be within the capability of most electronics support groups to assemble in a very short time and provide good performance.     

Measuring Attitudes in Test-Alien Cultures: When Illiteracy and Unfamiliarity Do Not Matter

This study reports the construction of an attitude scale called a "Shah attitude scale." This scale overcomes the problems of scale construction and attitude measurement in test-alien cultures peculiar to Western scales. The major problems with the use of these scales are the non-correspondence of the samples used in scale construction and attitude measurement, difficulty of their use with the illiterate and rural samples, unfamiliarity of their verbal character and the response modality. Our scale is simple to construct and can be easily used with every section of society. Its conceptualization and development is based upon the agreed upon bipolar definition of attitude and the ideas derived from well-known attitude scales. The scale is based upon trait adjectives and can be used easily in cross-cultural attitudinal studies.     

Activation and integration of motor components in a short-term priming paradigm

The aim of the present research was to study the processes involved in knowledge emergence. In a short-term priming paradigm, participants had to categorize pictures of objects as either "kitchen objects" or "do-it-yourself tools". The primes and targets represented objects belonging to either the same semantic category or different categories (object category similarity), and their use involved gestures that were either similar or very different (gesture similarity). The condition with a SOA of 100ms revealed additive effects of motor similarity and object category similarity, whereas another condition with a SOA of 300ms showed an interaction between motor and category similarity. These results were interpreted in terms of the activation and integration processes involved in the emergence of mental representations.     

A note on monotone likelihood ratio of the total score variable in unidimensional item response theory

This note provides a direct, elementary proof of the fundamental result on monotone likelihood ratio of the total score variable in unidimensional item response theory (IRT). This result is very important for practical measurement in IRT, because it justifies the use of the total score variable to order participants on the latent trait. The proof relies on a basic inequality for elementary symmetric functions which is proved by means of few purely algebraic, straightforward transformations. In particular, flaws in a proof of this result by Huynh [(1994) . A new proof for monotone likelihood ratio for the sum of independent Bernoulli random variables. Psychometrika, 59, 77–79] are pointed out and corrected, and a natural generalization of the fundamental result to non‐linear (quasi‐ordered) latent trait spaces is presented. This may be useful for multidimensional IRT or knowledge space theory, in which the latent ‘ability’ spaces are partially ordered with respect to, for instance, coordinate‐wise vector‐ordering or set‐inclusion, respectively.     

Drivers' knowledge, attitudes, and behavior: a cross-sectional study

A cross-sectional survey was conducted by random duster sampling in the city of Tehran. Knowledge of the drivers was assessed with 6 questions about national traffic laws. Attitude was assessed on a 7-item scale of drivers' perceptions. Behavior was observed by a police officer on 13 areas of assessment. Correlations were low among these three scores. Drivers with advanced education had higher scores on behavior. Knowledge, attitude, and behavior of these drivers did not seem associated.     

A qualitative investigation of Muslim and Christian women's views of religion and feminism in their lives

This qualitative investigation explored a relatively understudied aspect of cultural diversity: feminism and religion in the lives of religiously diverse women. More specifically, structured interviews were used to investigate views of religion, women's issues, gender roles, culture, and feminism for a small group of Muslim and Christian women living in the United States. The data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research methods (Hill, Thompson, & Williams, 1997). Findings indicated a complex relationship between feminism, gender roles, culture, and religion for these women with the majority of the Muslim women reporting that their religion supports feminist principles and identifying themselves as feminist. Christian women were less willing to endorse the feminist label. Implications for multicultural feminist practice are discussed.     

Religion,Ethnicity, Culture,Way of Life: Jews,Muslims, and Multicultural Counseling

Jews and Muslims represent 2 unique cultural groups that have been relatively under‐examined by multicultural counseling scholars. In this article, the authors review the recent literature on Jews and Muslims, synthesize and discuss the commonalities across these 2 groups, provide some recommendations for counseling members of these populations, and offer suggestions for future research.     

Empathy deficits and trait emotional intelligence in psychopathy and Machiavellianism

This study investigated the relationships between psychopathy (primary and secondary), Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and empathy, using an image task that required an appropriate empathic response to the emotional displays of others (happy, sad and neutral). Results indicated that primary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with the experience of positive affect from sad stimuli, while secondary psychopathy and Machiavellianism were positively associated with the experience of negative affect in response to neutral stimuli, and the opposite pattern was found for trait emotional intelligence. Regressional analyses demonstrated that secondary psychopathy, Machiavellianism, trait emotional intelligence and state anxiety are important predictors when stimuli are ambiguous.     

How Scientific Is Scientific Essentialism?

Scientific essentialism holds that: (1) each scientific kind is associated with the same set of properties in every possible world; and (2) every individual member of a scientific kind belongs to that kind in every possible world in which it exists. Recently, Ellis (Scientific essentialism, 2001; The philosophy of nature 2002) has provided the most sustained defense of scientific essentialism, though he does not clearly distinguish these two claims. In this paper, I argue that both claims face a number of formidable difficulties. The necessities of scientific essentialism are not adequately distinguished from semantic necessities, they have not been shown to be necessities in the strictest sense, they must be relativized to context, and they must either be confined to a subset of scientific properties without warrant or their connection to causal powers must be revoked. Moreover, upon closer examination (1) turns out to be a trivial thesis that can be satisfied by non-kinds, and (2) is inapplicable to some of the most fundamental kinds in the basic sciences.     

The relative influence of advice from human experts and statistical methods on forecast adjustments

Decision makers and forecasters often receive advice from different sources including human experts and statistical methods. This research examines, in the context of stock price forecasting, how the apparent source of the advice affects the attention that is paid to it when the mode of delivery of the advice is identical for both sources. In Study 1, two groups of participants were given the same advised point and interval forecasts. One group was told that these were the advice of a human expert and the other that they were generated by a statistical forecasting method. The participants were then asked to adjust forecasts they had previously made in light of this advice. While in both cases the advice led to improved point forecast accuracy and better calibration of the prediction intervals, the advice which apparently emanated from a statistical method was discounted much more severely. In Study 2, participants were provided with advice from two sources. When the participants were told that both sources were either human experts or both were statistical methods, the apparent statistical‐based advice had the same influence on the adjusted estimates as the advice that appeared to come from a human expert. However when the apparent sources of advice were different, much greater attention was paid to the advice that apparently came from a human expert. Theories of advice utilization are used to identify why the advice of a human expert is likely to be preferred to advice from a statistical method. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.