Financial stress, attitudes toward money, and scores on a Dream Inventory

During stock market losses in 2009 and high unemployment, ratings on the KJP Dream Inventory were correlated with factors of the Money Attitude Scale and items on the Contemporary Financial Stress Inventory for 71 graduate students in Counseling Psychology and Education. Correlations were significant for Retention on the Money Attitude Scale with Dissociative Avoidance (-.31), Dreams of falling (.26), Risk-taking in dreams (.24), and Dreaming of being chased (.28). Also, ratings for the Money Attitude Scale of Distrust correlated with Discontentedness in dreams (.33) and Dreams of being chased (.26), Repetitive trauma (.33), Nightmares (.30), and Recurring nightmares (.35). Concern about retention in graduate school due to finances correlated with recalled frequencies of nightmares (.27) and dreams of flying (.25).     

Paradoxical Results and Item Bundles

Hooker, Finkelman, and Schwartzman (Psychometrika, 2009, in press) defined a paradoxical result as the attainment of a higher test score by changing answers from correct to incorrect and demonstrated that such results are unavoidable for maximum likelihood estimates in multidimensional item response theory. The potential for these results to occur leads to the undesirable possibility of a subject’s best answer being detrimental to them. This paper considers the existence of paradoxical results in tests composed of item bundles when compensatory models are used. We demonstrate that paradoxical results can occur when bundle effects are modeled as nuisance parameters for each subject. However, when these nuisance parameters are modeled as random effects, or used in a Bayesian analysis, it is possible to design tests comprised of many short bundles that avoid paradoxical results and we provide an algorithm for doing so. We also examine alternative models for handling dependence between item bundles and show that using fixed dependency effects is always guaranteed to avoid paradoxical results.     

TWINNING, INORGANIC REPLACEMENT, AND THE ORGANISM VIEW

In explicating his version of the Organism View, Eric Olson argues that you begin to exist only after twinning is no longer possible and that you cannot survive a process of inorganic replacement. Assuming the correctness of the Organism View, but pace Olson, I argue in this paper that the Organism View does not require that you believe either proposition. The claim I shall make about twinning helps to advance a debate that currently divides defenders of the Organism View, while the claim I shall make about inorganic replacement will help to put the Organism View on a par with its rival views by allowing it to accommodate a plausible intuition that its rivals can accommodate, namely, the intuition that you can survive a process of inorganic replacement. Both claims, I shall also argue, are important for those who are interested in the identity condition of a human organism, even if they do not hold the view that you are essentially an organism.     

Mother and Adolescent Reports of Associations Between Child Behavior Problems and Mother-Child Relationship Qualities: Separating Shared Variance from Individual Variance

This study contrasts results from different correlational methods for examining links between mother and child (N = 72 dyads) reports of early adolescent (M = 11.5 years) behavior problems and relationship negativity and support. Simple (Pearson) correlations revealed a consistent pattern of statistically significant associations, regardless of whether scores came from the same reporter or from different reporters. When correlations between behavior problems and relationship quality differed, within-reporter correlations were always greater in magnitude than between-reporter correlations. Dyadic (common fate) analyses designed for interdependent data decomposed within-reporter correlations into variance shared across reporters (dyadic correlations) and variance unique to specific reporters (individual correlations). Dyadic correlations were responsible for most associations between adolescent behavior problems and relationship negativity; after partitioning variance shared across reporters, no individual correlations emerged as statistically significant. In contrast, adolescent behavior problems were linked to relationship support via both shared variance and variance unique to maternal perceptions. Dyadic analyses provide a parsimonious alternative to multiple contrasts in instances when identical measures have been collected from multiple reporters. Findings from these analyses indicate that same-reporter variance bias should not be assumed in the absence of dyadic statistical analyses.     

The Role of the Dominant Social Paradigm in the Quality of Life/Environmental Interface

In this examination of the relationship between quality of life and the environment, it is argued that a broad framework within which the relationship can be established is required. The framework used is that of the dominant social paradigm (Pirages & Ehrlich, 1974) that contains political, economic, and technological institutions. It is these institutions that determine both the quality of life and environmental constructs within any society. The paper integrates these three areas in a single model that hypothesizes a particular relationship between the dominant social paradigm, the environment, and quality of life.     

Idealism and the Ontological Argument

The ontological proof became something of a signature argument for the British Idealist movement and this paper examines how and why that was so. Beginning with an account of Hegel's understanding of the argument, it looks at how the thesis was picked up, developed and criticized by the Cairds, Bradley, Pringle-Pattison and others. The importance of Bradley's reading in particular is stressed. Lastly, consideration is given to Collingwood's lifelong interest in the proof and it is argued that his attention is best understood as a direct continuation of theirs. In view of the fact that recent commentators have tried to draw a sharp line between Collingwood's approach to metaphysics and ontology and that of his predecessors, the establishment of this connection calls for a measure of reassessment on both sides.     

False recognition following study of semantically related lists presented in jumbled word form

Three experiments explored a jumbled word effect in false recognition. Lists of theme-related items were presented in word or nonword form. Results indicated that critical lures semantically related to studied items were falsely recognised regardless of whether they were presented as words or nonwords. High false recognition rates to either SLEEP or SELEP following study of an appropriate theme list of items in nonword form should only occur if nonwords are recoded at study. With study conditions conducive to recoding, jumbled words induced false recognitions based on semantic associations among their respective base words. Disrupting a recoding process by creating “difficult” letter rearrangements for jumbled words (Experiment 2) appeared to eliminate the false recognition effect. In Experiment 3, presentation durations ranged from 110 ms to 880 ms. Although there was little evidence of a semantic false recognition effect at the fastest presentation rate, the brief durations appeared to be effective in eliminating the effect when items were studied in nonword form. These results appear to be consistent with an encoding activation/retrieval monitoring model.     

The incidence of false memories in native and non-native speakers

The current study consisted of four experiments that utilised a novel approach to investigating false memories. Each of the experiments in the current study investigated individuals with varying experience with different languages. Experiment 1 tested participants in both their native and secondary languages as well as monolingual English speakers, while Experiment 2 assessed native Spanish speakers using both English and Spanish associative lists. Experiment 3 examined the illusory memories in monolingual Spanish speakers in both English and Spanish, while Experiment 4 investigated false memories in monolingual English speakers in both English and Spanish. Results indicated that memory for list items and critical lures was greatest when the lists were presented in the participants' primary language. Results can be explained by either activation-based or fuzzy-trace theories.     

Assessing the Relationship Between Youth Sport Participation Settings and Creativity in Adulthood

This article presents an assessment of the relative influences of time spent participating in organized sports and informal sports during childhood with respect to the development of general creativity. In this study, 99 upper-division undergraduate and graduate students completed a comprehensive childhood leisure activities questionnaire and the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults. According to the results of the joint generalized least-squares regression analysis, hours spent in organized sport settings was negatively related to creativity as an adult; time spent in unstructured sport settings was found to be positively related to adult creativity. The findings also point to the importance of balancing participation across organized and unstructured settings. The most creative individuals in the sample were those who spent roughly half of their sport participation time in each setting, as opposed to individuals with below-average creativity, who spent upwards of 3/4 of their sport participation time in organized settings. Therefore, fostering creative development through sport may not require a dramatic reorientation from current youth sport development models, but only a shift toward a more balanced distribution of time spent playing in both organized and unstructured settings. Future experiments are needed to test this relationship.