Improved bounds for optimal intervals in weakly constrained regression problems

The solution of weakly constrained regression problems typically requires the iterative search, in a given interval, of a point where a certain function has a zero derivative. This note deals with improved bounds for the interval to be searched.     

The stability and clinical significance of distress: A rejoinder to pepper and coyne

Past research has established that some individuals with high Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores at one time point have scores that are lower at a second time point. Recently, we provided evidence indicating that the temporal instability of certain BDI scores may be due partly to the regression to the mean phenomenon. Pepper and Coyne (1996) question this statistical interpretation; they argue that distress among students is unstable for substantive reasons. In the current paper, we reaffirm our view that statistical and measurement factors may account, in part, for changes in BDI scores over time. Given this possibility, inferences about distress or depression as a latent construct in student samples are not warranted if these inferences are based on the administration of a single instrument such as the BDI; any conclusions about distress as a psychological construct must be qualified by acknowledging the possible roles of error and method variance. Clearly, empirical research is needed in order to obtain a better understanding of the nature of distress as a latent variable, especially in light of evidence which indicates that subthreshold levels of depression have a high degree of clinical significance.     

A bayesian alternative to least squares and equal weighting coefficients in regression

This paper details a Bayesian alternative to the use of least squares and equal weighting coefficients in regression. An equal weight prior distribution for the linear regression parameters is described with regard to the conditional normal regression model, and resulting posterior distributions for these parameters are detailed. Some interesting connections between this Bayesian procedure and several other methods for estimating optimal weighting coefficients are discussed. In addition, results are presented of a Monte Carlo investigation which compared the effectiveness of the Bayesian procedure relative to least squares, equal weight, ridge, and Bayesian exchangeability estimations.     

A monotonically convergent algorithm for factals

Takane, Young, and de Leeuw proposed a procedure called FACTALS for the analysis of variables of mixed measurement levels (numerical, ordinal, or nominal). Mooijaart pointed out that their algorithm does not necessarily converge, and Nevels proposed a new algorithm for the case of nominal variables. In the present paper it is shown that Nevels' procedure is incorrect, and a new procedure for handling nominal variables is proposed. In addition, a procedure for handling ordinal variables is proposed. Using these results, a monotonically convergent algorithm is constructed for FACTALS of any mixture of variables.The authors are obliged to Jos ten Berge for stimulating comments on an earlier version of this paper. The research of H. A. L. Kiers has been made possible by a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The research of Y. Takane has been supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, grant number A6394, and by the McGill-IBM Cooperative Grant.     

银屑病发病的心理社会因素及危险因素间关系的探讨——非条件Logistic回归分析和通径分析

本文对97例寻常型银屑病患者以及71例皮肤科对照组患者进行了成组病例对照性研究。相对危险度分析从36个研究因素中筛选出14项可疑危险因素;非条件Logistic回归分析提示其中8项因素有明显的致病意义;结合专业知识,对这8项危险因素进行通径分析。研究结果表明,银屑病发病是多因素综合作用的结果,心理社会危险因素通过直接或/和间接(联合)作用,影响致病过程。经通径图将各因素的作用大小、作用形式及协同作用关系较直观地描绘出来。     

视觉诱发电位与老年人智力和记忆力相关性研究的多因素逐步回归分析

以年龄在55—79岁的正常人(男40人,女34人,平均年龄64.34±5.67岁)为被试,做视觉诱发电位(VEP),并测试韦氏智力测验的11项分值及智力商数、临床记忆测验的5项分测验及记忆商数、测量血压和头颅CT的脑萎缩程度,根据眼底动脉硬化表现和神经体征确定脑动脉硬化的程度.将上述资料数字化输入计算机进行多因素逐步回归分析。结果表明,智力和记忆力分别与视觉诱发电位的某些指标变量有关,与脑动脉硬化程度有关,与收缩压相关性较大,与舒张压相关性不大,与生理性脑萎缩程度关系不大。还探讨了推测老年人智力和记忆力的计算公式。     

Ordinal state-trait regression for intensive longitudinal data

In many psychological studies, in particular those conducted by experience sampling, mental states are measured repeatedly for each participant. Such a design allows for regression models that separate between- from within-person, or trait-like from state-like, components of association between two variables. But these models are typically designed for continuous variables, whereas mental state variables are most often measured on an ordinal scale. In this paper we develop a model for disaggregating between- from within-person effects of one ordinal variable on another. As in standard ordinal regression, our model posits a continuous latent response whose value determines the observed response. We allow the latent response to depend nonlinearly on the trait and state variables, but impose a novel penalty that shrinks the fit towards a linear model on the latent scale. A simulation study shows that this penalization approach is effective at finding a middle ground between an overly restrictive linear model and an overfitted nonlinear model. The proposed method is illustrated with an application to data from the experience sampling study of Baumeister et al. (2020, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46, 1631).     

定序变量回归模型在心理数据分析中的应用

定序变量在心理现象和心理数据中随处可见, 采用综合的定序变量回归分析模型可以对“镜像模式”和“漏斗模型”的心理现象做出合理的解释和预测。首先通过非参数检验对影响因素进行初步降维, 其次用Probit定序回归对降维后的影响因素贡献率进行判别, 从而进一步筛选具有显著性判断水平的有效指标, 最后用Logistic回归模型对某种特定的心理现象发生与否进行信息量足够大的解释和预测。大学毕业生工作生活质量满意度的预测对这种综合定序变量回归分析模型的实例拟合, 证实了综合定序变量回归分析模型在心理现象和心理数据分析中的应用价值。     

Pentheus rather than Oedipus: On perversion,survival and analytic ‘presencing’1

Following an introductory review of the main developments in the psychoanalytic thinking on perversion, the author focuses on her own understanding of perversion and its treatment, based on the psychoanalytic treatment of patients with severe sexual perversions. This paper uses the term ‘autotomy’ (borrowed from the fi eld of biology) to describe perversion formation as an ‘autotomous’ defence solution involving massive dissociative splitting in the service of psychic survival within a violent, traumatic early childhood situation; thus, a compulsively enacted ‘desire for ritualised trauma’ ensues. The specifi c nature of the perverse scenario embodies the specifi c experiential core quality of the traumatic situation. It is an actual repetition in the present of the imprint of a past destructive experience which is pre‐arranged and stage‐managed; it thus encounters haunting scenes of dread or psychic annihilation while, at the same time, controlling, sanitising and disavowing them. Hence, the world of severe perversion is no longer oedipal, but rather the world of Pentheus, Euripides's most tragic hero‐a world dominated by a mixture of a mother's madness, devourment, destruction and rituals of desire. According to this view, the (diffi cult) psychoanalytic treatment of perversion focuses on patient‐analyst interconnectedness‐brought about by the analyst's ‘givenness to being present’ or ‘presencing’‐at a deep, primary level of contact and impact (the emphasis being on the ontological dimension of experience). This evolving therapeutic entity creates and actualises a new, alternative experiential‐emotional reality within the pervert's alienated world, eventually generating a change in the perverse essence. The author illustrate this approach with three clinical vignettes.     

Early trauma and narcissism—autism bipolarity1

The analyst makes a series of considerations taken a posteriori from the analysis of a small number of patients. These patients have saved themselves from an early narcissistic catastrophe by developing precocious mental processes, while affective relationships rudimentarily repeat the impact with the original trauma. Primitive defences, essentially denial and vertical splitting, dissociate the tear in the psyche and structure a narcissism–autism bipolarity, revealed in aspects of the character which oblige the patient to automatically repeat a single matrix of experience. In therapy, it is necessary to construct a rst time of the trauma, by pending and linking threads of the primary relationship and strengthening them in the analytic relationship. This reconstruction of the background, a screen to project what had originally been rejected, is the prerequisite for coming out, in deferred action, from the hold of the pathological identifications. The author dedicates particular attention to the undifferentiated background, the nature‐environment torn by the trauma, and to the need to reconstruct this fabric of experience in the analytical relationship, as a fundamental element to the recomposition of the dissociated nuclei. In the clinical case, the analyst describes in particular how the analyst's words encounter an unbridgeable gap, a failure in the capacity for representation when opening the autistic nucleus. Through a regression lasting for about a year, a patient was able to live the experience of primitive agonies and that of an unbearable helplessness and, at the same time, was able to feel how the analyst supported her sense of existence. Subsequently, the patient was able to give shape, through visual images, to deep states of being and start the process of metabolising and symbolising the trauma.