Is the link between forebrain size and feeding innovations caused by confounding variables? A study of Australian and North American birds

The short notes of ornithology journals feature new and unusual feeding behaviours, which, when systematically collated, could provide a quantitative estimate of behavioural flexibility in different bird groups. Previous studies suggest that taxonomic variation in the frequency of new behaviours (innovations) is correlated with variation in relative forebrain size. Recent work on primates shows, however, that observer bias can affect innovation frequency. We assess this possibility in birds via three estimates in North America and Australia: the number of full-length papers in academic journals, the frequency of photographs in birding magazines and a questionnaire on reporting bias given to ornithologists at a meeting. We also look at sampling effects due to single journal sources by doing a split-half analysis of our North American database (The Wilson Bulletin vs. six other journals) and adding three new Australian journals to the one we had used previously. In multiple regressions that also included species number per taxon, none of the potential biases could account for the correlation between forebrain size and innovation frequency. Species number was the best predictor of full-length paper frequency, which was the best predictor of photograph numbers. Ornithologists are not preferentially interested in innovative, large-brained taxa, suggesting that the correlation between innovations and neural substrate size is not a spurious effect of the biases examined here. Accepted after revision: 27 July 2001 Electronic Publication     

A Polychoric Instrumental Variable (PIV) Estimator for Structural Equation Models with Categorical Variables

This paper presents a new polychoric instrumental variable (PIV) estimator to use in structural equation models (SEMs) with categorical observed variables. The PIV estimator is a generalization of Bollen’s (Psychometrika 61:109–121, 1996) 2SLS/IV estimator for continuous variables to categorical endogenous variables. We derive the PIV estimator and its asymptotic standard errors for the regression coefficients in the latent variable and measurement models. We also provide an estimator of the variance and covariance parameters of the model, asymptotic standard errors for these, and test statistics of overall model fit. We examine this estimator via an empirical study and also via a small simulation study. Our results illustrate the greater robustness of the PIV estimator to structural misspecifications than the system-wide estimators that are commonly applied in SEMs. Kenneth Bollen gratefully acknowledges support from NSF SES 0617276, NIDA 1-RO1-DA13148-01, and DA013148-05A2. Albert Maydeu-Olivares was supported by the Department of Universities, Research and Information Society (DURSI) of the Catalan Government, and by grant BSO2003-08507 from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology. We thank Sharon Christ, John Hipp, and Shawn Bauldry for research assistance. The comments of the members of the Carolina Structural Equation Modeling (CSEM) group are greatly appreciated. An earlier version of this paper under a different title was presented by K. Bollen at the Psychometric Society Meetings, June, 2002, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.     

自我实现的幸福——心理幸福感研究述评

心理幸福感是基于实现论的幸福感研究范式,研究者认为幸福并不只是情感上的体验,而更应该关注个人潜能的实现,从理论出发建构幸福感的结构,指导幸福感测量的发展。已有的研究表明,人口学变量、人格变量和生活事件等内外因素可以较为有效地预测心理幸福感水平。近年来,心理幸福感与主观幸福感之间呈现出整合的趋势。此外,中国人的幸福感研究在借鉴西方成果的同时,仍然需要立足于本土文化,做进一步的理论探讨和实证检验     

The Impact of Demographic Characteristics on Health-related Quality of Life Profile of Malaysian Epilepsy Population

The possibilities of adverse drug reactions and disease-related psychosocial implications have led to the current emphasis on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) assessment in epilepsy. The main objective of this study was to determine the impact of various demographic characteristics i.e. gender, age, marital status, ethnic origin, religion, and employment status on HRQoL profiles in Malaysian epilepsy patients. Patients with epilepsy were recruited from ten public hospitals in Sabah, Malaysia. Upon written consents, they completed the Malay Quality of Life In Epilepsy-30 (QOLIE-30) instrument which assesses Seizure Worry, Overall QoL, Emotional Well-Being, Energy/Fatigue, Cognitive Functioning, Medication Effects and Social Functioning. An Overall Score was generated to represent a summarised HRQoL score. Univariate and multiple linear regression analyses were both carried out using SPSS 14 for (1) all patients and (2) patients possessing Poor QoL (Overall Score < median) and Good QoL (Overall Score ≥ median). One-hundred-and-thirteen patients participated in the study. The respondents ranged from 18–76 years with a mean age of 31 years. Majority were Kadazandusuns (n = 46; 40.7%) and many were unmarried (n = 68; 60.2%), Muslims (n = 50; 44.2%) and unemployed (n = 54; 47.8%). Age was the most significant factor across all patients (B = −0.372, t = −2.238, p = 0.027), regardless of Poor or Good QoL level. Older patients (>56 years) fared the worst in many HRQoL areas. Those with Poor QoL were mostly affected by marital status (widowed/divorced) and ethnic origin (Kadazandusun/Chinese). Religion (Buddhism/Hinduism) emerged as the most prominent HRQoL predictor for patients experiencing Good QoL and being Chinese too played a role. These outcomes indicate that specific demographic characteristics are influential in determining the HRQoL of epilepsy patients. Consequently, healthcare professionals could utilise such information in planning the best treatment and care by considering both the medical and psychosocial impacts towards patients. This paper was part of a research project and majority of its components had been presented at the 7th Conference On International Society For Quality Of Life Studies (ISQoLS) 2006, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, 17–20 July 2006.     

An attenuation of the 'normal' category effect in patients with Alzheimer's disease: a review and bootstrap analysis

There is a consensus that Alzheimer's disease (AD) impairs semantic information, with one of the first markers being anomia i.e. an impaired ability to name items. Doubts remain, however, about whether this naming impairment differentially affects items from the living and nonliving knowledge domains. Most studies have reported an impairment for naming living things (e.g. animals or plants), a minority have found an impairment for nonliving things (e.g. tools or vehicles), and some have found no category-specific effect. A survey of the literature reveals that this lack of agreement may reflect a failure to control for intrinsic variables (such as familiarity) and the problems associated with ceiling effects in the control data. Investigating picture naming in 32 AD patients and 34 elderly controls, we used bootstrap techniques to deal with the abnormal distributions in both groups. Our analyses revealed the previously reported impairment for naming living things in AD patients and that this persisted even when intrinsic variables were covaried; however, covarying control performance eliminated the significant category effect. Indeed, the within-group comparison of living and nonliving naming revealed a larger effect size for controls than patients. We conclude that the category effect in Alzheimer's disease is no larger than is expected in the healthy brain and may even represent a small diminution of the normal profile.     

Impulsivity,intelligence, and academic performance: Testing the interaction hypothesis

Previous research suggests a moderator effect of intelligence on the relationship between impulsivity and academic achievement. However, the interaction hypothesis has not been adequately tested so far. The present study was aimed to analyze the interrelations between impulsivity, intelligence, and academic performance, with special interest in testing the interaction effect between impulsivity and intelligence in the prediction of performance. To that end, 174 university students, aged from 18 to 37 years, were tested. Analyses were carried out at the latent level in order to minimize measurement error and to increase statistical power. The main findings of the study show that: (a) impulsivity was negatively related to both academic performance and intelligence; (b) intelligence was positively related to academic performance; (c) impulsivity and intelligence contributed significantly and independently to predict and explain academic performance; and (d) there was a significant interaction effect between impulsivity and intelligence in predicting academic performance, such that impulsivity was more strongly associated with performance among the more intelligent students than among the less intelligent ones.     

The Effect of Propensity Scores on DIF Analysis: Inference on the Potential Cause of DIF

Differential item functioning (DIF) analysis is important in terms of test fairness. While DIF analyses have mainly been conducted with manifest grouping variables, such as gender or race/ethnicity, it has been recently claimed that not only the grouping variables but also contextual variables pertaining to examinees should be considered in DIF analyses. This study adopted propensity scores to incorporate the contextual variables into the gender DIF analysis. In this study, propensity scores were used to control for the contextual variables that potentially affect the gender DIF. Subsequent DIF analyses with the Mantel-Haenszel (MH) procedure and the Logistic Regression (LR) model were run with the propensity score applied reference (males) and focal groups (females) through propensity score matching. The propensity score embedded MH model and LR model detected fewer number of gender DIF than the conventional MH and LR models. The propensity score embedded models, as a confirmatory approach in DIF analysis, could contribute to hypothesizing an inference on the potential cause of DIF. Also, salient advantages of propensity score embedded DIF analysis models are discussed.     

Stable Causal Relationships Are Better Causal Relationships

We report three experiments investigating whether people's judgments about causal relationships are sensitive to the robustness or stability of such relationships across a range of background circumstances. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate that people are more willing to endorse causal and explanatory claims based on stable (as opposed to unstable) relationships, even when the overall causal strength of the relationship is held constant. In Experiment 2, we show that this effect is not driven by a causal generalization's actual scope of application. In Experiment 3, we offer evidence that stable causal relationships may be seen as better guides to action. Collectively, these experiments document a previously underappreciated factor that shapes people's causal reasoning: the stability of the causal relationship.     

Further extensions of precision medicine to behavior analysis: A demonstration using functional communication training

The potential applicability of concepts and methods of the paradigm of precision medicine to the field of applied behavior analysis is only beginning to be explored. Both precision medicine and applied behavior analysis seek to understand and classify clinical problems through identification of their causal pathways. Both aim to develop treatments directly targeting those causal pathways, which also requires an understanding of the mechanisms by which treatments produce change (treatment-action pathways). In the current study, we extend the data-analytic methods and concepts described by Hagopian et al. (2018) toward the identification of variables that predict response to functional communication training (FCT). We discuss emerging conceptual issues, including the importance of distinguishing predictive behavioral markers from predictor variables based on their purported involvement in the causal or treatment-action pathways. Making these discriminations is a complex undertaking that requires knowledge of these mechanisms and how they interact.     

The psychological nature of subjective memory complaint in non-demented older adults: The respective predictive values of psycho-affective,lifestyle, and cognitive inhibition variables

Introduction/ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate, using path analysis (Lisrel 8.52), the relationships between subjective memory complaint and cognitive inhibition, lifestyle, and psycho-affective variables on a sample of non-demented older adults.MethodOur sample was composed of 109 older adults, who were required to undertake two cognitive inhibition tasks (stroop and verbal fluency) and to respond to scales designed to measure individuals’ psycho-affective status (depression/subjective health) and subjective memory complaint level (Mac Nair). Lifestyle predictors (education and activity levels) were also assessed.Results/ConclusionThis study highlights the importance of adopting a multifactorial approach to the study of subjective memory complaint. In addition to executive variables (verbal fluency task), predictors such as subjective health and activity levels seem to be crucial in our understanding of the psychological nature of subjective memory complaint.