An Examination of the Effectiveness of Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Groups

This study implemented a multiple‐phase, contrast, single‐case research design to examine the effectiveness of the 4 core dialectical behavior therapy skills group modules in reducing emotion dysregulation. Three participants completed four 6‐week skills modules over 9 months. Examination of calculated estimates of treatment effect indicated that 2 out of the 3 participants experienced meaningful changes in their degree of emotion dysregulation over the course of treatment. Implications for counseling practice are discussed.     

An Ecological View of School Counselor Ratios and Student Academic Outcomes: A National Investigation

The effect of student‐to‐school‐counselor ratios on academic outcomes has been widely studied, yet few researchers have taken a multilevel approach. Using the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study: 2009 dataset, the authors found ratios were significantly associated with student grade point average (GPA) and graduation. Attending a Title I school also was associated with students’ GPA, advanced placement/international baccalaureate credits earned, and postsecondary course taking. The authors discuss implications for advocacy and practice, contextualizing their findings within an ecological framework.     

Compensating for an Inattentive Audience

The common ground that conversational partners share is thought to form the basic context for language use. According to the classic view, inferences about common ground, or mutual knowledge, are guided by beliefs about the physical, cognitive, and attentional states of one's communicative partners. Here, we provide a first test of the attention assumption for common ground, the proposal that common ground for a co‐present entity—such as an object or an utterance—can only be formed if a person has evidence that his or her partner has also attended to it. In three experiments, a participant speaker and two partners learned names for novel monster pictures as a group. The speaker was then asked to describe the monsters to each partner separately in a referential communication task. The critical manipulation was the (in)attentiveness of one partner at different points in the study. Analysis of the speaker's referring expressions revealed that speakers assumed their partner shared common ground for the monster names only when that partner exhibited engaged attention as the names were learned. These findings provide key and novel support for the classic proposal that formation of common ground critically depends on assumptions about the attentional state of one's conversational partner.     

A novel approach for controlling precipitation kinetics based on diffusional and thermodynamic interactions in multicomponent systems

A novel concept for selection of alloying elements based on diffusional and thermodynamic interactions is proposed. A general model to predict enhancement or reduction of diffusion flux of an element arising from the addition of another is described and specifically applied to determine the appropriate ternary alloying addition to reduce the fast precipitation kinetics observed in binary Ti–Fe based alloy. It is experimentally shown that addition of Cr and Mo decreases the kinetics of precipitation of TiFe, whereas addition of Ta and Nb enhances the kinetics, which is consistent with the predictions of the proposed model.     

Producing Pronouns and Definite Noun Phrases: Do Speakers Use the Addressee’s Discourse Model?

We report two experiments that investigated the widely held assumption that speakers use the addressee's discourse model when choosing referring expressions (e.g., Ariel, 1990; Chafe, 1994; Givón, 1983; Prince, 1985), by manipulating whether the addressee could hear the immediately preceding linguistic context. Experiment 1 showed that speakers increased pronoun use (and decreased noun phrase use) when the referent was mentioned in the immediately preceding sentence compared to when it was not, even though the addressee did not hear the preceding sentence, indicating that speakers used their own, privileged discourse model when choosing referring expressions. The same pattern of results was found in Experiment 2. Speakers produced more pronouns when the immediately preceding sentence mentioned the referent than when it mentioned a referential competitor, regardless of whether the sentence was shared with their addressee. Thus, we conclude that choice of referring expression is determined by the referent's accessibility in the speaker's own discourse model rather than the addressee's.     

External communication of automated vehicles in mixed traffic: Addressing the right human interaction partner in multi-agent simulation

The urban traffic system is most likely to change in the next years to a mixed traffic with human drivers, vulnerable road users, and automated vehicles. In the past, the development of external communication approaches for automated vehicles focused on scenarios where an automated vehicle communicates with either a pedestrian or a human driver. However, interactions with more than one traffic partner are more realistic. Therefore, a study with 42 participants was conducted with a multi-agent simulation in which an automated vehicle interacted simultaneously with two participants, a pedestrian and a driver of a manual vehicle. In this study, two main scenarios were investigated in order to evaluate the safety and efficiency of the interactions and to determine whether the human road users feel correctly addressed. In one scenario, the pedestrian had to cross the road in front of the automated and the manual vehicle, which were approaching from different sides. In the other, the manual vehicle had to drive through a bottleneck in front of the oncoming automated vehicle, while the pedestrian had to cross the road after both vehicles passed. The communication approach of the automated vehicle consisted of implicit signals using a speed profile and lateral offset within its lane, and explicit signals using an external human–machine interface. The results of the study show that no collisions were observed in terms of safety and no significant negative effects on efficiency were measured. However, in contrast to single agent interactions, a majority of participants felt wrongly addressed in situations where the automated vehicle signals the right-of-way to the other human road user. It can be concluded that the communication approach of the automated vehicle needs to be modified in order to address certain road users more clearly.     

项目反应理论观察分数核等值的影响因素

探究带宽选择方法、样本量、题目数量、等值设计、数据模拟方式对项目反应理论观察分数核等值的影响。通过两种数据模拟方式,获得研究数据,并计算局部与全域评价指标。研究发现,在随机组设计中,带宽选择方法表现相似;考生样本量和题目数量影响甚微。在非等组设计中,惩罚法与Silverman经验准则表现优异;增加题目量可降低百分相对误差和随机误差;增加样本量导致百分相对误差变大,随机误差减小。数据模拟方式可影响等值评价。未来应重点关注等值系统评估。     

社会创造性的微观变化：基于虚拟仿真技术的研究

本研究将微观发生法设计和虚拟仿真技术相结合,考察了不同特质社会创造性大学生跨情境、跨时间的状态社会创造性的变化特点。结果表明：（1）在四种具体社会问题情境中,个体策略新颖性的变化表现出了跨情境的多样性特点,而策略实用性的变化则主要表现出了跨情境的一致性特点;（2）个体特质社会创造性对其状态社会创造性的表现的影响主要体现在策略的实用性上。     

Single-case effect size calculation: Comparing regression and non-parametric approaches across previously published reading intervention data sets

Growing from demands for accountability and research-based practice in the field of education, there is recent focus on developing standards for the implementation and analysis of single-case designs. Effect size methods for single-case designs provide a useful way to discuss treatment magnitude in the context of individual intervention. Although a standard effect size methodology does not yet exist within single-case research, panel experts recently recommended pairing regression and non-parametric approaches when analyzing effect size data. This study compared two single-case effect size methods: the regression-based, Allison-MT method and the newer, non-parametric, Tau-U method. Using previously published research that measured the Words read Correct per Minute (WCPM) variable, these two methods were examined by comparing differences in overall effect size scores and rankings of intervention effect. Results indicated that the regression method produced significantly larger effect sizes than the non-parametric method, but the rankings of the effect size scores had a strong, positive relation. Implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.     

Using generalized additive (mixed) models to analyze single case designs

This article shows how to apply generalized additive models and generalized additive mixed models to single-case design data. These models excel at detecting the functional form between two variables (often called trend), that is, whether trend exists, and if it does, what its shape is (e.g., linear and nonlinear). In many respects, however, these models are also an ideal vehicle for analyzing single-case designs because they can consider level, trend, variability, overlap, immediacy of effect, and phase consistency that single-case design researchers examine when interpreting a functional relation. We show how these models can be implemented in a wide variety of ways to test whether treatment is effective, whether cases differ from each other, whether treatment effects vary over cases, and whether trend varies over cases. We illustrate diagnostic statistics and graphs, and we discuss overdispersion of data in detail, with examples of quasibinomial models for overdispersed data, including how to compute dispersion and quasi-AIC fit indices in generalized additive models. We show how generalized additive mixed models can be used to estimate autoregressive models and random effects and discuss the limitations of the mixed models compared to generalized additive models. We provide extensive annotated syntax for doing all these analyses in the free computer program R.