中介效应的检验方法和效果量测量:回顾与展望

通过中介效应检验方法之间的比较和效果量指标之间的比较,建议放弃将总效应c显著作为中介效应检验的前提条件,放弃基于直接效应c'显著性的完全和部分中介的提法,推荐使用偏差校正的百分位Bootstrap法直接对中介效应ab进行检验,使用κ²、R_med²等中介效果量指标并报告效果量的置信区间。作为示例,用R软件的MBESS软件包对某消防员饮食健康调查进行了中介效应检验和效果量测量。随后展望了中介效应检验方法和效果量测量的拓展方向。     

共同方法变异的影响及其统计控制途径的模型分析

共同方法变异(common method variance, CMV)指两个变量之间变异的重叠是因为使用同类测量工具而导致, 而不是代表潜在构念之间的真实关系。虽然以往研究显示CMV不一定导致研究结果的偏差, 在实际研究中应当加以考量。特别是在使用测量方法的研究中, 如果数据来源越单一, 测量方法越类似, CMV效应使研究结果产生偏差的可能性越大。CMV效应的控制方法包括过程控制法和统计控制法。在统计控制法的选择和使用上, 需要重点考虑该方法是否分离了三大变异(特质变异、方法变异和误差变异), CMV效应是在测量构念层面还是题目层面, CMV效应是加法效应还是乘法效应。控制潜在方法因子途径是统计控制方法中最重要的一类方法, 理解其模型是正确使用这类方法的前提。未来研究应当关注多个研究的CMV效应和侧重评估某个理论研究中CMV所引起的潜在的效度威胁。     

关键字母法对英文词汇记忆效能的制约因素初步研究

通过干预范式和中介刺激法,选择89名初中一年级学生为被试,采用一系列自编的材料和工具,初步探讨了关键字母法对英文词汇记忆效能的制约因素.结果表明:(1)无论从短期看,还是从长期看.难以识别关键字母,会在一定程度上制约关键字母法的效能,不过,该因素的制约作用并不显著;(2)无论从短期看.还是从长期看,无论为准确的回忆,还是为大致的回忆,难以提取关键字母释义是制约关键字母法的显著因素.中介刺激法,作为本研究的突出特征,试图继承和发展维果茨基所创立的双莺刺激法.     

‘Caesura’ as Bion’s discourse on method1

The author contends that Caesura, one of Bion’s last works, can be read as the equivalent of Descartes’s Discourse on Method. In this compact and complex text, the dictate of ‘methodical’ and ‘hyperbolic doubt’– so called because it is taken to the extreme form of application to the faculty of thought itself – which, for Descartes, represents the fundamental principle of philosophical and scientific research, is reflected in the formula of ‘transcending the caesura’. Bion directs his attention successively to the pairs of opposing concepts that structure psychoanalytic discourse and demonstrates their paradoxical and non‐separative logic. The binary system of producing meaning is deconstructed through the systematic use of non‐pathological – i.e. not static but dynamic – reversible perspective. A viewpoint that appears natural, self‐evident and primary is plunged into crisis and proves to be founded on what the punctuation mark of the slash excludes. Yet the new point of view does not supplant its predecessor, but supplements it. The conceptual opposition is not overturned, but merely destabilized in such a way as to maintain a creative tension that generates new thoughts. By this technique of wrong‐footing the reader, Bion achieves what is tantamount to a Kuhnian revolution: the transition from Freud’s semiotic or evidential paradigm to an aesthetic one, centred on emotional experience – to a ‘science of at‐one‐ment’. Working with the antithetical concepts of censorship and caesura, the author illustrates some clinical implications of this radical shift.     

A microgenetic study of insightful problem solving

An eight-session microgenetic study of acquisition of an insightful problem-solving strategy was conducted. A total of 35 second graders who did not use this insightful strategy initially were assigned to two groups that differed in the frequency of problems likely to facilitate discovery and generalization of the strategy. Children in the facilitative problems group discovered the insightful strategy earlier, used it more often subsequently, and transferred it more often to novel problems than did those in the nonfacilitative problems group. Children generally discovered the insightful strategy on the most facilitative items and extended it progressively to items on which its advantages were smaller but still substantial. The results indicate that experience outside the experimental situation, as well as experience inside the experimental situation, influences use of new strategies.     

Categories and Dimensions

ABSTRACT— The distinction between categories and dimensions has important consequences for basic and applied science in many areas of psychological research. Decisions as to whether individuals should be assigned to groups or located along one or more continua often are based on personal preferences or discipline-specific measurement traditions, which can lead to the creation, use, or reification of spurious categories or dimensions. Methods for evaluating the latent structure of psychological constructs, using powerful and informative tests between competing models, are available. Rather than choosing on a priori grounds, investigators can perform structural research to evaluate the strength and consistency with which results tease apart categorical and dimensional models. Here, we review why researchers should make this distinction empirically, briefly discuss methods available for doing so, and describe the breadth of areas ripe for exploiting the largely untapped potential of structural research.     

In Defence of Constructive Empiricism: Maxwell’s Master Argument and Aberrant Theories

Over the past years, in books and journals (this journal included), N. Maxwell launched a ferocious attack on B. C. van Fraassen’s view of science called Constructive Empiricism (CE). This attack has been totally ignored. Must we conclude from this silence that no defence is possible and that a fortiori Maxwell has buried CE once and for all? Or is the attack too obviously flawed as not to merit exposure? A careful dissection of Maxwell’s reasoning will make it clear that neither is the case. This dissection includes an analysis of Maxwell’s ‘aberrance–argument’ (omnipresent in his many writings) for the claim that science implicitly and permanently accepts a substantial, metaphysical thesis about the universe, which then paves the way for his own metaphysical-realist hierarchy-view of science. This aberrance-claim, which Maxwell directs against a widely shared and harmful ideology of science called ‘Standard Empiricism’, generally has been ignored too, for more than a quarter of a century. Our conclusions will be that (i) Maxwell’s attacks on CE can be beaten off, and (ii) his ‘aberrance–arguments’ do not establish what Maxwell believes they establish, but (iii) we can draw a number of valuable lessons from these attacks about the nature of science and of the libertarian nature of CE.     

Evaluating the method of levels

An investigation of the method of levels (MOL) was undertaken. Based on the principles of perceptual control theory (PCT), MOL is a way of helping people to reduce psychological distress. MOL assumes that psychological distress results when people are unable to control experiences that are important to them. The approach was implemented over six months in a large urban GP practice. Patients attended for between one and six sessions. Patients who attended for more than one session demonstrated significant reductions in scores of symptomatology on a standardized questionnaire. Effect sizes of these differences were relatively large. There appeared to be no relationship between the number of sessions a patient attended and the amount of reduction in symptomatology that was recorded. Similarly, there was no relationship between the number of sessions a patient attended and their recorded level of symptomatology at their first appointment. Although the study has important limitations we suggest that these findings might offer new directions for future research and might provide a way of unifying the specific and common factors as well as understanding the Dodo Bird effect.     

An Invitation to Behavior Analysts: Review of in Search of Memory: The Emergence of A New Science of Mind by Eric R. Kandel

This fascinating autobiography and multifaceted case history in neuroscience research is accessible to laymen and potentially instructive to working scientists. Kandel takes the reader through his thought processes as he describes experiments that led to some of the past decades'' major neuroscience discoveries (some highlights of which are summarized in the review''s Appendix), and eventually to his Nobel Prize. The review analyzes some of the terminological and conceptual issues that have often inhibited communication between behavior analysts and neuroscientists, with special attention to some of Bennett and Hacker''s admonitions viewed from the perspective of language evolution and linguistics. The review then discusses opportunities for behavior analysts to collaborate with neuroscientists by applying behavioral contingency analysis to help specify the independent variables of neuroscience experiments described by Kandel. Finally, it examines Kandel''s provocative heuristics for locating important research problems, and the lessons that can be gleaned from the book regarding the attributes of potentially great achievers.     

Empirical metaphysics: the role of intuitions about possible cases in philosophy

Frank Jackson has argued that only if we have a priori knowledge of the extension-fixers for many of our terms can we vindicate the methodological practice of relying on intuitions to decide between philosophical theories. While there has been much discussion of Jackson’s claim that we have such knowledge, there has been comparatively little discussion of this most powerful argument for that claim. Here I defend an alternative explanation of our intuitions about possible cases, one that does not rely on a priori extension-fixers. This alternative explanation provides a vindication of our reliance on intuitions, while blocking Jackson’s abductive argument for a priori semantic knowledge. In brief, I argue that we should regard our armchair intuitions as providing an important, a priori source of evidence for hypotheses about the contents of our implicit referential policies with regard to our terms. But all such hypotheses have a potential falsifier that is only discoverable empirically. In other words, gold-standard evidence for such hypotheses is always empirical.