Relations of trauma exposure with current religiousness and spirituality

Many theorists posit that religiousness/spirituality (RS) may change after trauma. However, empirical findings regarding RS following trauma are inconclusive. The present study examined the relationship between potentially traumatic events (PTEs) and current RS by considering the cumulative effect of PTEs and multiple dimensions of RS. In our sample of 245 undergraduates (60% female, 79% White), there were no differences in RS between participants who did and did not have PTEs. When analysed as a continuous variable, the number of PTEs was positively correlated with many RS dimensions (i.e., daily spiritual experiences, religious strain, religious comfort, provident and challenging God images, belief in God) but not all (i.e., organised religious involvement, belief in afterlife, benevolent God image). These results suggest that PTEs relate distinctly to different aspects of RS and that examining multiple dimensions of RS may be a more informative way of studying this association.     

Treating excessively slow responding of a young man with Asperger syndrome using differential reinforcement of short response latencies

Fjellstedt and Sulzer-Azaroff (1973) used differential reinforcement of short latencies to decrease a child's latency to comply with instructions. We replicated this contingency with a young man diagnosed with Asperger syndrome across two tasks (question answering and math problem solving). We added a differential reinforcement contingency to teach the participant to discriminate between math problems that could be answered rapidly and those that required more time for accurate performance.     

Effects of post-session wheel running on within-session changes in operant responding

This study tested the effects of post-session wheel running on within-session changes in operant responding. Lever-pressing by six rats was reinforced by a food pellet under a continuous reinforcement (CRF) schedule in 30-min sessions. Two different flavored food pellets were used as reinforcers. In the wheel conditions, 30-min operant-sessions with one of the flavored pellets were followed by 30-min free-wheel running sessions. Meanwhile, in the home conditions, rats’ operant responding was reinforced by the other flavored pellets during 30-min operant-sessions, and the rats were then returned to their homecages. All rats were exposed to 4 wheel and 4 homecage sessions. Operant responding was lowered during the wheel conditions. However, post-session running did not alter the within-session pattern of operant responding. These effects were practically identical to the effects of drug-induced taste-aversion learning on within-session changes in operant responding, suggesting similar mechanisms in both taste-aversion preparations.     

Cues produced by reward and nonreward and temporal cues influence responding in the intertrial interval and to the conditioned stimulus

Rats in a Pavlovian situation were trained under three different reward schedules, at either a 30 s or a 90 s intertrial interval (ITI): Consistent reward (C), 50% irregular reward (I), and single alternation of reward and nonrewarded trials (SA). Activity was recorded to the conditioned stimulus (CS) and in all 10 s bins in each ITI except the first 10 s bin. Responding increased progressively over the bins of the 90 s ITI indicating a role for temporal cues in the ITI. Single alternation patterning (SAP), more vigorous responding on rewarded than on nonrewarded trials, occurred in the ITI as well as to the CS and differed little at the 30 s and 90 s ITI. The occurrence of SAP to the CS and, as shown here for the first time, in the ITI along with the findings for the C and I schedules, indicate three matters of importance. First, along with other cues such as temporal cues, behavior is influenced by cues associated with reward and nonreward both in the ITI and when the CS is presented. Second, as the percentage of reward associated with these cues increases so too does vigor of responding. Finally, if the cues produced by reward events are memories the retrieval cues for such memories are present in the ITI as well as when the CS is presented. Considerations are advanced indicating that reward produced cues may influence responding in the Pavlovian situation not only under regular schedules such as the SA schedule, but under all schedules. Indeed, such cues may more validly signal reward and nonreward than the CS itself.     

A comparison of methods to teach foreign-language targets to young children

Using instructional strategies based on derived relational responding (DRR) to teach foreign-language targets may result in emergent, untrained foreign-language relations. One benefit of using DRR instructional strategies is the efficiency with which an individual acquires additional stimulus relations as a result of emergent responding following acquisition of one or a small number of relations. In the current study, we compared the efficiency of tact training alone to a traditional foreign-language teaching strategy (i.e., teaching all relations concurrently—mixed training) with four, 4-year-old children. The results demonstrated that tact training was more efficient than mixed training for 5 of 7 stimulus sets. The findings add to the research demonstrating that DRR instructional strategies, specifically tact training, may be more efficient than concurrently teaching all targeted relations.     

On measurement properties of continuation ratio models

Three classes of polytomous IRT models are distinguished. These classes are the adjacent category models, the cumulative probability models, and the continuation ratio models. So far, the latter class has received relatively little attention. The class of continuation ratio models includes logistic models, such as the sequential model (Tutz, 1990), and nonlogistic models, such as the acceleration model (Samejima, 1995) and the nonparametric sequential model (Hemker, 1996). Four measurement properties are discussed. These are monotone likelihood ratio of the total score, stochastic ordering of the latent trait by the total score, stochastic ordering of the total score by the latent trait, and invariant item ordering. These properties have been investigated previously for the adjacent category models and the cumulative probability models, and for the continuation ratio models this is done here. It is shown that stochastic ordering of the total score by the latent trait is implied by all continuation ratio models, while monotone likelihood ratio of the total score and stochastic ordering on the latent trait by the total score are not implied by any of the continuation ratio models. Only the sequential rating scale model implies the property of invariant item ordering. Also, we present a Venn-diagram showing the relationships between all known polytomous IRT models from all three classes.     

I’m paid biweekly,just not by leprechauns: Evaluating valid-but-incorrect response rates to attention check items

Participant carelessness is a source of invalidity in psychological data (Huang, Liu, & Bowling, 2015), and many methods have been created to screen for this carelessness (Curran, 2016; Johnson, 2005). These include items that researchers presume thoughtful individuals will answer in a given way (e.g., disagreement with “I am paid biweekly by leprechauns”, Meade & Craig, 2012). This paper reports on two samples in which individuals spoke aloud a series of these questions, and found that (a) individuals do occasionally report valid justifications for presumed invalid responses, (b) there is relatively high variance in this behavior over different items, and (c) items developed for this specific purpose tend to work better than those drawn from other sources or created ad-hoc.     

Careless Responding to Reverse-Worded Items: Implications for Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Many self-report measures include some items worded in the direction opposite to that of other items. These so-called reverse-worded (RW) items can reduce the reliability and validity of a scale, and frequently form a separate method factor that does not appear to be substantively meaningful. One possible explanation for factors defined by RW items is respondent carelessness. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate whether relatively few careless responders to RW items can influence confirmatory-factor-analysis model fit enough that researchers would likely reject a one-factor model for a unidimensional scale. Results based on simulations indicated that if at least about 10% of participants respond to RW items carelessly, researchers are likely to reject a one-factor model for a unidimensional scale.