Word norms for blind and sighted subjects: Familiarity,concreteness, meaningfulness,imageability, imagery modality,and word associations

Normative values for word characteristics were obtained from a sample of 12 college-educated, totally congenitally blind subjects on the basis of their ratings of 161 nouns on scales of familiarity, concreteness, meaningfulness, and imageability. The dominant modality of imagery for each image-evoking word and the strongest word associate for each item also were recorded. The same data were collected for a group of sighted subjects, both to provide a comparison group for the blind subjects and to test the comparability of sighted subjects’ ratings with existing norms. Ratings for sighted subjects correlated strongly with those norms, although the coefficients were slightly higher for ratings of concreteness and imageability than for ratings of familiarity and meaningfulness. Ratings of blind subjects correlated only slightly lower with existing norms for imagery and concreteness, but considerably lower for familiarity and meaningfulness.     

Biological factors and psychometric intelligence: a review.

Results from a synthesis of correlations between psychometric intelligence and two physical traits, head size and body size, are reported. Within-family studies are reviewed for evidence of pleiotropy, the effect of a single genetic factor on two traits. Studies are also reviewed to determine whether prenatal effects bias twin studies, leading to underestimates of genetic influence. An N-weighted mean partial correlation (controlling height) of .10 between intelligence and head size was found. Using a method developed by Van Valen (1974), the correlation of intelligence and brain size was estimated as .29 based on all the intelligence/head-size studies of adults and adolescents, and .44 based on studies measuring intelligence with IQ tests. The N-weighted mean partial correlations (controlling age) of intelligence and height were .18 for children and .22 for adults. The within-family studies indicated that pleiotropy may contribute to the correlation of intelligence with head size and to the correlation of intelligence with body size. Prenatal effects are not an important source of bias in twin studies or for heritability estimates based on them.     

Intergenerational relationships and marriage in China: Within-family longitudinal associations and between-family differences

Marriage is embedded in the web of spouses' broader social ties, and relationship quality with parents and parents-in-law is associated with marital quality. Guided by Family Systems theory and using three waves of dyadic data from 268 Chinese different-sex couples across the first several years of marriage, we first conducted a Random-Intercept Actor-Partner Interdependence Cross-lagged Panel Model (RI-APIM-CLPM) to examine the within-family longitudinal associations among husbands' and wives' relationship quality with parents, parents-in-law, and spouse. Then, husbands' and wives' filial obligations were added as predictors of between-family differences in their own and their partner's relationship quality in the three social ties. Among husbands, increased relationship quality in one social tie (e.g., with parents) predicted reductions in relationship quality in the other social ties (e.g., relationships with parents-in-law and marital quality). Our examination of between-family differences demonstrated that high levels of filial obligations predicted higher intergenerational relationship quality and marital quality. By simultaneously considering the within-family associations of multiple social ties and how filial obligations account for between-family differences in relationship quality, we contribute to a nuanced understanding of how Chinese couples' romantic partnerships are embedded in their broader family system.     

The educational pyramid: A model for community intervention

Urban adolescents represent a group who are at special risk for a variety of psychological and behavioral problems. A life skills program was implemented with middle and high school students, using an educational pyramid approach to maximize the ecological appropriateness of the intervention and to increase the likelihood that the program will be continued with progressively lessened university facilitation. Additionally, the educational pyramid offers the opportunity for all participants—university faculty, graduate students, collaborating professionals in the community, and high school leaders—to be both teachers and learners.     

Imitative violence in the real world: A reanalysis of homicide rates following championship prize fights

Recently, Phillips [Am Soc Rev, 1983; 48:560–568] reported that the homicide rate increases on the third day after heavyweight championship prize fights. The present paper reports a reanalysis of Phillips's data using more sophisticated statistical techniques and examining several theoretically important variables not discussed by Phillips or his critics. Using a conservative analysis strategy, our results suggest that the increases in homicides reported by Phillips were not a methodological artifact as suggested by Baron and Reiss [Am Soc Rev 1985; 50:347–363, 372–376]. The homicide increases only occur on the first weekend or holiday after prize fights that receive the greatest publicity.     

The use of item scores and response times to detect examinees who may have benefited from item preknowledge

According to Wollack and Schoenig (2018, The Sage encyclopedia of educational research, measurement, and evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 260), benefiting from item preknowledge is one of the three broad types of test fraud that occur in educational assessments. We use tools from constrained statistical inference to suggest a new statistic that is based on item scores and response times and can be used to detect examinees who may have benefited from item preknowledge for the case when the set of compromised items is known. The asymptotic distribution of the new statistic under no preknowledge is proved to be a simple mixture of two χ² distributions. We perform a detailed simulation study to show that the Type I error rate of the new statistic is very close to the nominal level and that the power of the new statistic is satisfactory in comparison to that of the existing statistics for detecting item preknowledge based on both item scores and response times. We also include a real data example to demonstrate the usefulness of the suggested statistic.     

A Social Network Analysis of Friendship and Spiritual Support in a Religious Congregation

Religious congregations are social settings where people gather together in community to pursue the sacred (Pargament, 2008). Such settings are important to understand as they provide a context for individuals to develop relationships, share ideas and resources, and connect individuals to larger society (Todd, 2017a). Yet, research to date has not deeply examined the inherently relational nature of religious congregations. Thus, in this study, we used social settings theory (Seidman, 2012; Tseng & Seidman, 2007) to develop and test hypotheses about relationships within one Christian religious congregation. In particular, we used social network analysis to test hypotheses about relational activity, popularity, and homophily for friendship and spiritual support types of relational links. Our findings demonstrate how relational patterns may be linked to participation in congregational activities, occupying a leadership role, a sense of community and spiritual satisfaction, stratification, socialization, and spiritual support. Overall, this advances theory and research on the relational aspects of religious congregations, and more broadly to the literature on social settings. Limitations, directions for future research, and implications for theory and religious congregations also are discussed.