The Factor Structure of the Beavers Interactional Scales

Confirmatory factor analysis and regression analyses of the Beavers Interactional Scales did not appear to support the model offered by its developers, namely, several specified family attributes contributing respectively to two global factors of Family Competence and Family Style. Moreover, regression analysis indicated that only three of 12 items predicted raters' assessments of Global Family Health, and one of seven items predicted Global Family Style. Individuals interested in the family dynamic centripetal/centrifugal might best think of that as a unitary entity and rate it accordingly.     

Infants of “depressed” mothers interact better with their nondepressed fathers

To determine whether infants of “depressed” mothers interact better with their nondepressed fathers, twenty-six 3- to 6-month-old infants were videotaped during face-to-face interactions with their parents. The “depressed” mother group consisted of twelve 3- to 6-month-old infants and their “depressed” mothers and nondepressed fathers. The control group was composed of 14 nondepressed mothers and nondepressed fathers and their 3- to 6-month-old infants. In the “depressed” mother group, the nondepressed fathers received better interaction ratings than the “depressed” mothers. In turn, the infants received better interaction ratings when they interacted with their nondepressed fathers than with their “depressed” mothers. In contrast, nondepressed fathers and mothers and their infants in the control group did not differ on any of their interaction ratings. These findings suggest that infants' difficult interaction behaviors noted during interactions with their “depressed” mothers may not extend to their nondepressed fathers. The data are discussed with respect to the notion that nondepressed fathers may “buffer” the effects of maternal depression on infant interaction behavior.     

Evidence for a sensitive period in the effects of early life stress on hippocampal volume

Exposure to stress has been causally linked to changes in hippocampal volume (HV). Given that the hippocampus undergoes rapid changes in the first years of life, stressful experiences during this period may be particularly important in understanding individual differences in the development of the hippocampus. One hundred seventy‐eight early adolescents (ages 9–13 years; 43% male) were interviewed regarding exposure to and age of onset of experiences of stress; the severity of each stressful event was rated by an objective panel. All participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging, from which HVs were automatically segmented. Without considering the age of onset for stressful experiences, there was a small but statistically significant negative association of stress severity with bilateral HV. When considering the age of onset, there was a moderate and significant negative association between stress severity during early childhood (through 5 years of age) and HV; there was no association between stress severity during later childhood (age 6 years and older) and HV. We provide evidence of a sensitive period through 5 years of age for the effects of life stress on HV in adolescence. It will be important in future research to elucidate how reduced HV stemming from early life stress may contribute to stress‐related health outcomes.     

The scope of formal explanation

The existence of multiple modes of explanation means that a crucial step in the process of generating explanations has to be selecting a particular mode. The present article identifies the key conceptual, as well as some pragmatic and epistemological, considerations that license the use of the formal mode of explanation, and thus that enter into the process of selecting and generating a formal explanation. Formal explanations explain the presence of certain properties in an instance of a kind by reference to the kind of thing it is (e.g. That has four legs because it is a dog). As such, this mode of explanation is intrinsically tied to kind representations and is applicable domain-generally. Although it is possible for formal explanation to apply domain-generally, for any given kind it is selective in its application, in that it can explain some, but not all, properties of the instances of a kind. It also appears that different types of properties can receive formal explanations across different domains. This article provides a sketch of a theory of the selectivity of formal explanation that results from the manner in which kinds of different types are distinguished. The present discussion also suggests how the mechanisms underlying formal explanations may contribute to the illusion of explanatory depth Keil (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 368–373,2003), the operation of the inherence heuristic Cimpian & Salomon (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 461–480, 2014a; Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 506–527,2014b), and psychological essentialism (Gelman, 2003).     

Algebraic reasoning and bat-and-ball problem variants: Solving isomorphic algebra first facilitates problem solving later

The classic bat-and-ball problem is used widely to measure biased and correct reasoning in decision-making. University students overwhelmingly tend to provide the biased answer to this problem. To what extent might reasoners be led to modify their judgement, and, more specifically, is it possible to facilitate problem solution by prompting participants to consider the problem from an algebraic perspective? One hundred ninety-seven participants were recruited to investigate the effect of algebraic cueing as a debiasing strategy on variants of the bat-and-ball problem. Participants who were cued to consider the problem algebraically were significantly more likely to answer correctly relative to control participants. Most of this cueing effect was confined to a condition that required participants to solve isomorphic algebra equations corresponding to the structure of bat-and-ball question types. On a subsequent critical question with differing item and dollar amounts presented without a cue, participants were able to generalize the learned information to significantly reduce overall bias. Math anxiety was also found to be significantly related to bat-and-ball problem accuracy. These results suggest that, under specific conditions, algebraic reasoning is an effective debiasing strategy on bat-and-ball problem variants, and provide the first documented evidence for the influence of math anxiety on Cognitive Reflection Test performance.     

Improved low-cost,MR-compatible olfactometer to deliver tobacco smoke odor

We describe a low-cost, MRI-compatible olfactometer that delivers fresh cigarette smoke odor, a challenging odorant to present, as well as other odorants. This new olfactometer retains all of the advantages of an earlier design that was capable of only delivering volatile odors (Lowen & Lukas, Behavior Research Methods, 38, 307–313, 2006). The new system incorporates a novel switching mechanism that allows it to deliver fresh smoke generated from a burning cigarette during a stimulus presentation paradigm that might be employed in a cue-reactivity experiment. An evaluation study established that the olfactometer reliably delivered smoke to the participants and that tobacco smoke was discriminated from other odorants; there were no adverse reactions to the device.     

The Calgary semantic decision project: concrete/abstract decision data for 10,000 English words

Psycholinguistic research has been advanced by the development of word recognition megastudies. For instance, the English Lexicon Project (Balota et al., 2007) provides researchers with access to naming and lexical-decision latencies for over 40,000 words. In the present work, we extended the megastudy approach to a task that emphasizes semantic processing. Using a concrete/abstract semantic decision (i.e., does the word refer to something concrete or abstract?), we collected decision latencies and accuracy rates for 10,000 English words. The stimuli were concrete and abstract words selected from Brysbaert, Warriner, and Kuperman’s (2013) comprehensive list of concreteness ratings. In total, 321 participants provided responses to 1,000 words each. Whereas semantic effects tend to be quite modest in naming and lexical decision studies, analyses of the concrete/abstract semantic decision responses show that a substantial proportion of variance can be explained by semantic variables. The item-level and trial-level data will be useful for other researchers interested in the semantic processing of concrete and abstract words.     

How many trials are required for parameter estimation in diffusion modeling? A comparison of different optimization criteria

Diffusion models (Ratcliff, 1978) make it possible to identify and separate different cognitive processes underlying responses in binary decision tasks (e.g., the speed of information accumulation vs. the degree of response conservatism). This becomes possible because of the high degree of information utilization involved. Not only mean response times or error rates are used for the parameter estimation, but also the response time distributions of both correct and error responses. In a series of simulation studies, the efficiency and robustness of parameter recovery were compared for models differing in complexity (i.e., in numbers of free parameters) and trial numbers (ranging from 24 to 5,000) using three different optimization criteria (maximum likelihood, Kolmogorov–Smirnov, and chi-square) that are all implemented in the latest version of fast-dm (Voss, Voss, & Lerche, 2015). The results revealed that maximum likelihood is superior for uncontaminated data, but in the presence of fast contaminants, Kolmogorov–Smirnov outperforms the other two methods. For most conditions, chi-square-based parameter estimations lead to less precise results than the other optimization criteria. The performance of the fast-dm methods was compared to the EZ approach (Wagenmakers, van der Maas, & Grasman, 2007) and to a Bayesian implementation (Wiecki, Sofer, & Frank, 2013). Recommendations for trial numbers are derived from the results for models of different complexities. Interestingly, under certain conditions even small numbers of trials (N < 100) are sufficient for robust parameter estimation.     

Holos: A collaborative environment for similarity-based holistic approaches

Through this article, we aim to introduce Holos—a new collaborative environment that allows researchers to carry out experiments based on similarity assessments between stimuli, such as in projective-mapping and sorting tasks. An important feature of Holos is its capacity to assess real-time individual processes during the task. Within the Holos environment, researchers can design experiments on its platform, which can handle four kinds of stimuli: concepts, images, sounds, and videos. In addition, researchers can share their study resources within the scientific community, including stimuli, experimental protocols, and/or the data collected. With a dedicated Android application combined with a tactile human–machine interface, subjects can perform experiments using a tablet to obtain similarity measures between stimuli. On the tablet, the stimuli are displayed as icons that can be dragged with one finger to position them, depending on the ways they are perceived. By recording the x,y coordinates of the stimuli while subjects move the icons, the obtained data can reveal the cognitive processes of the subjects during the experiment. Such data, named digit-tracking data, can be analyzed with the SensoMineR package. In this article, we describe how researchers can design an experiment, how subjects can perform the experiment, and how digit-tracking data can be statistically analyzed within the Holos environment. At the end of the article, a short exemplary experiment is presented.     

The state of web-based research: A survey and call for inclusion in curricula

The first papers that reported on conducting psychological research on the web were presented at the Society for Computers in Psychology conference 20 years ago, in 1996. Since that time, there has been an explosive increase in the number of studies that use the web for data collection. As such, it seems a good time, 20 years on, to examine the health and adoption of sound practices of research on the web. The number of studies conducted online has increased dramatically. Overall, it seems that the web can be a method for conducting valid psychological studies. However, it is less clear that students and researchers are aware of the nature of web research. While many studies are well conducted, there is also a certain laxness appearing regarding the design and conduct of online studies. This laxness appears both anecdotally to the authors as managers of large sites for posting links to online studies, and in a survey of current researchers. One of the deficiencies discovered is that there is no coherent approach to educating researchers as to the unique features of web research.