ASSESSING OBSERVER ACCURACY IN CONTINUOUS RECORDING OF RATE AND DURATION: THREE ALGORITHMS COMPARED

The three algorithms most frequently selected by behavior‐analytic researchers to compute interobserver agreement with continuous recording were used to assess the accuracy of data recorded from video samples on handheld computers by 12 observers. Rate and duration of responding were recorded for three samples each. Data files were compared with criterion records to determine observer accuracy. Block‐by‐block and exact agreement algorithms were susceptible to inflated agreement and accuracy estimates at lower rates and durations. The exact agreement method appeared to be overly stringent for recording responding at higher rates (23.5 responses per minute) and for higher relative duration (72% of session). Time‐window analysis appeared to inflate accuracy assessment at relatively high but not at low response rate and duration (4.8 responses per minute and 8% of session, respectively).     

Effects of self‐enhancement on agreement on personality profiles

Effects of self‐enhancement and socially desirable responding (SDR) on rater agreement for personality profiles were studied in 304 students. Dyads of participants described themselves and their peer on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO‐PI‐R) that measures 30 facets of personality. In addition, participants filled in six scales measuring self‐enhancement or SDR. Data analyses focussed on moderator and suppressor effects of SDR on the similarity between self‐reported and other reported NEO‐PI‐R profiles. Three kinds of profile agreement were distinguished: (a) normative agreement; (b) distinctive agreement and (c) profile normativeness, that is, how strongly a self‐reported personality profile resembled the average profile of all participants. There were no moderator or suppressor effects on distinctive agreement, but SDR predicted profile normativeness quite strongly. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

ERP Evidence for the Rapid Assignment of an (Appropriate) Antecedent to PRO

Event-related brain potentials were recorded while subjects listened to sentences containing a controlled infinitival complement. Subject and object control items were used, both with 2 potential antecedents in the upper clause. Half of the sentences had a gender agreement violation between the null subject of the infinitival complement and an adjective predicated of it. The rapid detection of this anomaly would indicate that the parser had established the coreference relation between the null subject and an antecedent, and that the processor had rapidly consulted verb control information to select the proper antecedent of the null subject. The results showed that for both subject and object control items ungrammatical adjectives elicited a P600 effect. These data imply that the processor has coindexed the null subject with an antecedent, and that the antecedent has been selected on the basis of control information. These results are compatible with parsing models that emphasize the rapid influence of verb-specific information on sentence processing.     

A Measure for the Reliability of a Rating Scale Based on Longitudinal Clinical Trial Data

A new measure for reliability of a rating scale is introduced, based on the classical definition of reliability, as the ratio of the true score variance and the total variance. Clinical trial data can be employed to estimate the reliability of the scale in use, whenever repeated measurements are taken. The reliability is estimated from the covariance parameters obtained from a linear mixed model. The method provides a single number to express the reliability of the scale, but allows for the study of the reliability’s time evolution. The method is illustrated using a case study in schizophrenia. The authors are grateful to J&J PRD for kind permission to use their data. We gratefully acknowledge support from the Belgian IUAP/PAI network “Statistical Techniques and Modeling for Complex Substantive Questions with Complex Data.”     

Hierarchical Classes Modeling of Rating Data

Hierarchical classes (HICLAS) models constitute a distinct family of structural models for N-way N-mode data. All members of the family include N simultaneous and linked classifications of the elements of the N modes implied by the data; those classifications are organized in terms of hierarchical, if–then-type relations. Moreover, the models are accompanied by comprehensive, insightful graphical representations. Up to now, the hierarchical classes family has been limited to dichotomous or dichotomized data. In the present paper we propose a novel extension of the family to two-way two-mode rating data (HICLAS-R). The HICLAS-R model preserves the representation of simultaneous and linked classifications as well as of generalized if–then-type relations, and keeps being accompanied by a comprehensive graphical representation. It is shown to bear interesting relationships with classical real-valued two-way component analysis and with methods of optimal scaling. The research reported in this paper was supported by the Research Fund of the University of Leuven (GOA/00/02 and GOA/05/04) and by the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (project G.0146.06). Eva Ceulemans is a Post-doctoral Researcher supported by the Fund for Scientific Research, Flanders. The authors gratefully acknowledge the help of Gert Quintiens and Kaatje Bollaerts in collecting the data used in Section 4 and of Jan Schepers in additional analyses of these data.     

Climate justice after Paris: a normative framework

This paper puts forward a normative framework to differentiate between the climate-related responsibilities of different countries in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement. It offers reasons for applying the chief moral principles of ‘historical responsibility’ and ‘capacity’ to climate finance instead of climate change mitigation targets. This will (i) provide a normative basis to realize the goal of climate change mitigation while allowing for developing and newly industrialized countries to develop economically and (ii) offer an account of the distributive principles that can regulate climate finance. This is a real-world interpretation of the 1992 UNFCCC principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ that takes into account the progress accomplished at the COP21 in Paris and offers a solution to the still unsolved problem of differentiated responsibilities. This paper offers an application of this proposal to the Green Climate Fund.     

How gender-expectancy affects the processing of “them”

How sensitive is pronoun processing to expectancies based on real-world knowledge and language usage? The current study links research on the integration of gender stereotypes and number-mismatch to explore this question. It focuses on the use of them to refer to antecedents of different levels of gender-expectancy (low–cyclist, high–mechanic, known–spokeswoman). In a rating task, them is considered increasingly unnatural with greater gender-expectancy. However, participants might not be able to differentiate high-expectancy and gender-known antecedents online because they initially search for plural antecedents (e.g., Sanford & Filik), and they make all-or-nothing gender inferences. An eye-tracking study reveals early differences in the processing of them with antecedents of high gender-expectancy compared with gender-known antecedents. This suggests that participants have rapid access to the expected gender of the antecedent and the level of that expectancy.     

Determinants of Multiple Informant Agreement on Child and Adolescent Behavior

This study examined whether characteristics of behavioral items reported by parent and child are related to parent–child agreement. Data were collected from 20 judges rating 59 child behaviors on 11 dimensions hypothesized to affect parent–child agreement. Data from 675 parent–child dyads (85% female caregivers, 62% male children, aged 7–17) reporting on 59 child behaviors were used to examine agreement. Behavior characteristics accounted for 43% of variability in parent–child agreement. Three components, saliency to the parent, saliency to the child, and observability/willingness to report, contributed uniquely to prediction of agreement.     

Parent–Adolescent Agreement on Disruptive Behavior Symptoms: A Multitrait-Multimethod Model

This study examined parent–adolescent agreement on reports of inattention, hyperactivity/impulsivity, and conduct disorder in 203 adolescents (94 girls, 109 boys) ranging in age from 13 to 18 years (M = 15.21, SD = 1.37). Results of confirmatory factor analyses provided additional evidence of construct validity for these traits in adolescents. Internal consistency was examined for parent reports and adolescent self-reports. In addition, correlational analyses were used in a multitrait-multimethod format (MTMM; D. T. Campbell & D. W. Fiske, 1959) to examine convergent and discriminant validity. Results showed that parents provided more consistent and valid reports of inattention and hyperactivity/impulsivity, whereas adolescents provided more consistent and valid reports of conduct disorder. In addition, interviews produced higher levels of convergence than rating scales. These findings are discussed in terms of implications for assessment of disruptive behavior disorders.     

Subject-Verb Agreement in Children and Adults: Serial or Hierarchical Processing?

Two processes, serial and hierarchical, are generally opposed to account for grammatical encoding in language production. In a developmental perspective, the question addressed here is whether the subject-verb agreement during writing is computed serially, once the words are linearly ordered in the sentence, or hierarchically, as soon as the number features are determined in a hierarchical frame. Adults and children from 3rd to 5th grades were requested to listen to sentences with built-in prepositional phrases or relative clauses and to transcribe them as quickly as possible. A serial hypothesis assumes that subject-verb agreement errors should be equally frequent with both preambles because each has the same length separating the subject head noun and the main verb. Conversely, according to a hierarchical view, errors should be more frequent with a prepositional phrase because the syntactic distance between the subject and the verb is greater than with a relative clause. The results revealed a main effect of the preamble manipulated in 5th graders and adults, but not in 3rd graders. These data were in favor of a hierarchical processing in older writers and a serial one in younger children. However, in 3rd grade, we assumed that the potential serial account was a result of the resource constraint on writing more than of a real serial processing of the agreement.