Object decision test (BORB): normative data for the adult Quebec population and performance in Alzheimer’s disease and the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia

Object decision (OD) test is one subtest of the Birmingham Object Recognition Battery (BORB). It is useful for differential diagnosis among several neurodegenerative diseases. However, normative data provided with this battery count on very few subjects and do not control for the effect of age, which limits interpretability. The purpose of Study 1 was to provide normative data for the OD test of the BORB (version A—hard). The objectives of Study 2 were to establish the diagnostic validity of this task and predictive validity of the normative data in the case of the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia (svPPA) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD).Based on multiple linear regressions, equations to calculate Z-scores corrected for age were provided for 130 participants aged from 47 to 89 years. Performance of 20 healthy participants was compared to that of 14 individuals with svPPA and 18 with AD. After controlling for confounders, participants with svPPA had a lower total score than controls and AD participants. AD participants had a poorer performance than controls only when chimeric objects were considered. Among those with a deficit on the total score of the test, 94% (17/18, including 12 with svPPA) were correctly identified as having a pathological condition (svPPA or AD). This test could help refine differential diagnosis between svPPA and AD patients, especially before the deficits of episodic memory show up.     

Introducing dental students to reflective practice: a dental educator’s reflections

There is growing consensus that being reflective and developing reflective practice is an important part of becoming a healthcare professional, adding to and enhancing our everyday professional values, knowledge and skills. For dentists, reflective practice is an essential part of dental training and professional development with dental undergraduate curricula creating and scaffolding opportunities for students to be reflective and develop reflective writing skills. This article describes the introduction of a reflective portfolio to the undergraduate Bachelor of Dental Science (BDS) programme at the University of Bristol. This will be followed by the author sharing some personal reflections, as the faculty member overseeing the assessment of these reflective portfolios, on the first year of this initiative. Lessons learned from the exercise as well as areas for future work and improvement will also be mentioned.     

Blurring boundaries and advancing interreligious understanding by engaging textual ‘others’ in a women’s interfaith book group

This article casts analytical light on how Jewish, Christian and Muslim women develop understanding of religious identities by engaging with multidimensional textual ‘others’ in the Daughters of Abraham interfaith book groups. It focuses on a group discussion of a rabbi’s memoir about her religious journey. Drawing on ethnographic material and Talal Asad’s analysis of the relationship between text and reader, I examine how narratives outside primary religious texts influence ideas about Jewish, Christian and Muslim identities. I argue that the Daughters members’ appropriation of literary voices advances their engagement with religious diversity by developing understanding of religious self and others. Moreover, members’ navigation of inter- and intra-religious relations during discussions of texts blur boundaries for inclusion into this interfaith encounter. This examination raises questions about issues of identity, power dynamics and interfaith relations. Importantly, it provides novel insight into the understudied areas of women’s interreligious encounter and shared reading practices.     

知识治理机制对知识共享敌意的影响：员工关系的中介作用

为了考查“关系导向”的中国文化背景下企业的知识治理机制、员工间的人际关系与知识共享敌意之间的关系,研究开发了知识共享敌意测量问卷,并采用问卷对知识型企业中212名员工进行调查研究。结果表明：（1）交易型知识治理机制对员工的工具性关系起促进作用,契约型知识治理机制对员工的工具性关系起抑制作用,而对情感性关系起促进作用;工具性关系对知识囤积和知识排斥起促进作用,情感性关系对消极分享失败态度起抑制作用。（2）工具性关系在知识治理机制与知识囤积、知识排斥之间起中介作用,而情感性关系在契约型知识治理机制与消极的分享失败态度之间起中介作用。     

La valorisation professionnelle des caractéristiques de personnalité masculines,féminines et androgynes

This article examines the professional valorisation of gender-typed traits. In the study, participants should assess masculine, feminine and androgynous profiles in a set of professional contexts obtained by the crossing of social status (high versus low), gender (masculine versus feminine) and sector (production versus maintenance) of occupations. Consistent with a gender- typed trait matching model, the results showed that masculine profiles were the most valued ones in the most masculine occupations, feminine profiles were mostly valued in the most feminine occupations while androgynous profiles were the most valued in gender ambiguous occupations. Of particular interest was the fact that the perception of occupations’ gender was a function of the interaction between the gender and the sector of occupations (i.e.: the most masculine occupations were those that were stereotypically masculine and belonging to the production sector; the most feminine were those that were stereotypically feminine and belonging to the maintenance sector; the stereotypically masculine and maintenance occupations as the stereotypically feminine and production occupations were perceived as less gender typed).     

How surprising is a simple pattern? Quantifying "Eureka!"

Simple patterns are compelling. When all the observed facts fit into a simple theory or "story," we are intuitively convinced that the pattern must be real rather than random. But how surprising is a simple pattern, really? That is, given a pattern of featural data, such as the properties of a set of objects, how unlikely would the pattern be if they were actually generated at random? In conventional statistics dealing with patterns of numbers, this type of question would be answered by reference to a null distribution such as the t distribution. This paper gives the analogous answer in the realm of concept learning, that is, the formation of generalizations from patterns of featural data. Using a formal but psychologically valid definition of complexity, I derive and exhibit the distribution of subjective complexity under the hypothesis of no pattern. This leads directly to a number of applications, including a statistical test indicating whether an observed pattern is sufficiently simple that it is not likely to have been an accident: literally, the "significance of simplicity."     

Empirical bayes estimates of domain scores under binomial and hypergeometric distributions for test scores

We introduce two simple empirical approximate Bayes estimators (EABEs)— and —for estimating domain scores under binomial and hypergeometric distributions, respectively. Both EABEs (derived from corresponding marginal distributions of observed test scorex without relying on knowledge of prior domain score distributions) have been proven to hold -asymptotic optimality in Robbins' sense of convergence in mean. We found that, where and are the monotonized versions of and under Van Houwelingen's monotonization method, respectively, the convergence rate of the overall expected loss of Bayes risk in either or depends on test length, sample size, and ratio of test length to size of domain items. In terms of conditional Bayes risk, and outperform their maximum likelihood counterparts over the middle range of domain scales. In terms of mean-squared error, we also found that: (a) given a unimodal prior distribution of domain scores, performs better than both and a linear EBE of the beta-binomial model when domain item size is small or when test items reflect a high degree of heterogeneity; (b) performs as well as when prior distribution is bimodal and test items are homogeneous; and (c) the linear EBE is extremely robust when a large pool of homogeneous items plus a unimodal prior distribution exists.The authors are indebted to both anonymous reviewers, especially Reviewer 2, and the Editor for their invaluable comments and suggestions. Thanks are also due to Yuan-Chin Chang and Chin-Fu Hsiao for their help with our simulation and programming work.     

An investigation of hierarchical Bayes procedures in item response theory

Hierarchical Bayes procedures for the two-parameter logistic item response model were compared for estimating item and ability parameters. Simulated data sets were analyzed via two joint and two marginal Bayesian estimation procedures. The marginal Bayesian estimation procedures yielded consistently smaller root mean square differences than the joint Bayesian estimation procedures for item and ability estimates. As the sample size and test length increased, the four Bayes procedures yielded essentially the same result.The authors wish to thank the Editor and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions.     

Estimating true score in the compound binomial error model

Several procedures have been proposed in the statistical literature for estimating simultaneously the mean of each ofk binomial populations. In terms of mental test theory, however, it is not clear that these procedures should be used when an item sampling model applies since the binomial error model is usually viewed as an oversimplification of the true situation. In this study we compare empirically several of these estimation techniques. Particular attention is given to situations where observations are generated according to a two-term approximation to the compound binomial distribution.The author would like to thank Shelley Niwa for writing the computer programs used in this study.The work upon which this publication is based was performed pursuant to Grant # NIE-G-76-0083 with the National Institute of Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Points of view or opinions stated do not necessarily represent official NIE position or policy.