Procedural fairness and self-esteem

We argue that people's self-esteem is affected by the fairness of procedures to which they are subjected; unfair treatment will lower self-esteem. Moreover, since this influence on self-esteem is presumably due to the implicit evaluation expressed by the choice of procedure and hence by the evaluation expressed by the person implementing the procedure, people's concern with the fairness of treatment will be focused on the interactional aspects of the procedure. In two experiments designed to test these hypotheses subjects received either a high or a low grade on an ability test on the basis of either fair or unfair grading procedures. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that subjects' self-esteem was lower after unfair treatment, and this influence was only apparent when subjects received high test feedback. Additionally, ratings of the fairness of the interaction were lower following unfair grading procedures. Experiment 2 also manipulated level of involvement with the test. Self-esteem was affected by procedural fairness and procedural fairness influenced perceived fairness of the interaction only in the high involvement condition.     

Racial bias and the MCMI

We studied the scores obtained on the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) by Black and White male psychiatric inpatients to determine the presence or absence of racial bias. In predicting psychopathology for the two races, comparisons of MCMI performance indicated significant differences for all diagnoses except the personality disorders. The subjects were then matched into two groups of 209 patients each, according to DSM-III psychiatric diagnoses. The data were analyzed at the item, scale, and structural levels. At the item level, application of the Mantel-Haenszel Procedure revealed that 45 of the 175 items of the inventory were answered significantly different by the two racial groups. Because this number was higher than what could be expected by chance, the finding suggested possible deficiencies in terms of the culture-fairness of the items used in the test. At the scale level, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) demonstrated that the scores obtained by the Black and White groups were significantly different in 9 of the 20 scales (Histrionic, Narcissistic, Antisocial, Paraphrenia, Hypomania, Dysthymia, Alcohol Abuse, Drug Abuse, and Psychotic Delusion). With the exception of the Dysthymic scale, all of the differences were in the direction of the Blacks obtaining a higher score than the Whites. At the structural level, however, a principal components factor analysis performed on each group resulted in factor structures that looked identical.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

An on-line assessment of causal reasoning during comprehension

Fletcher and Bloom (1988) have argued that as readers read narratives, clause by clause, they repeatedly focus their attention on the last preceding clause that contains antecedents but no consequences in the text. This strategy allows them to discover a causal path linking the text's opening to its final outcome while minimizing the number of times long-term memory must be searched for missing antecedents or consequences. In order to test this hypothesis, we examined the reading times of 25 subjects for each clause of eight simple narrative texts. The results show that: (1) causal links between clauses that co-occur in short-term memory (as predicted by the strategy) increase the time required to read the second clause; (2) potential causal links between clauses that never co-occur in short-term memory (again as predicted by the strategy) have no effect on reading time; and (3) reinstatement searches are initiated at the end of sentences that are causally unrelated to the contents of short-term memory or that contain clauses that satisfy goals no longer in short-term memory. These results support the claim that subjects engage in a form of causal reasoning when they read simple narrative texts.     

Separability of item and person parameters in response time models

This paper discusses two forms of separability of item and person parameters in the context of response time (RT) models. The first is separate sufficiency: the existence of sufficient statistics for the item (person) parameters that do not depend on the person (item) parameters. The second is ranking independence: the likelihood of the item (person) ranking with respect to RTs does not depend on the person (item) parameters. For each form a theorem stating sufficient conditions, is proved. The two forms of separability are shown to include several (special cases of) models from psychometric and biometric literature. Ranking independence imposes no restrictions on the general distribution form, but on its parametrization. An estimation procedure based upon ranks and pseudolikelihood theory is discussed, as well as the relation of ranking independence to the concept of double monotonicity.I am indebted to Wim van der Linden for bringing Thissen's (1983) paper to my notice, and to Martijn Berger, Frans Tan, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Critical Thinking and Foundational Development

Studies in Philosophy and Education - We elaborate on Israel Scheffler's claim that principles of rationality can be rationally evaluated, focusing on foundational development, by which we mean...     

Location errors in partial-report bar-probe experiments: In search of the origin of cue-alignment problems

In studies using Averbach and Coriell’s (1961) partial-report bar-probe paradigm with linear arrays, most errors involve the naming of an item that was in the display but in a position other than the cued one. Up to now, there is no general agreement on the origin of these location errors. Point of departure in this paper is that part of the location errors arises from inappropriate application of the cue. It is tested whether this originates from problems to perceive the position of the cue (“cue-displacement hypothesis”) or from confusion about the order of the items in the array (“item-order hypothesis”). The results of two bar-probe experiments are reported. A novel, crucial, finding in both experiments is that, among the location errors, there was a preponderance of response letters that came from the central side of the cued item. In the second experiment, this was observed not only in the usual postcue conditions but also when the cue preceded the array. These results positively corroborate the cue-displacement hypothesis and do not support the item-order hypothesis: The cue tends to be perceived more toward the center of the visual field than it actually is exposed—that is, there is a central drift of the cue.