Shrinkage estimation of the three-parameter logistic model

The three-parameter logistic model is widely used to model the responses to a proficiency test when the examinees can guess the correct response, as is the case for multiple-choice items. However, the weak identifiability of the parameters of the model results in large variability of the estimates and in convergence difficulties in the numerical maximization of the likelihood function. To overcome these issues, in this paper we explore various shrinkage estimation methods, following two main approaches. First, a ridge-type penalty on the guessing parameters is introduced in the likelihood function. The tuning parameter is then selected through various approaches: cross-validation, information criteria or using an empirical Bayes method. The second approach explored is based on the methodology developed to reduce the bias of the maximum likelihood estimator through an adjusted score equation. The performance of the methods is investigated through simulation studies and a real data example.     

Quantifying Structural and Non-structural Expectations in Relative Clause Processing

Information-theoretic complexity metrics, such as Surprisal (Hale, 2001; Levy, 2008) and Entropy Reduction (Hale, 2003), are linking hypotheses that bridge theorized expectations about sentences and observed processing difficulty in comprehension. These expectations can be viewed as syntactic derivations constrained by a grammar. However, this expectation-based view is not limited to syntactic information alone. The present study combines structural and non-structural information in unified models of word-by-word sentence processing difficulty. Using probabilistic minimalist grammars (Stabler, 1997), we extend expectation-based models to include frequency information about noun phrase animacy. Entropy reductions derived from these grammars faithfully reflect the asymmetry between subject and object relatives (Staub, 2010; Staub, Dillon, & Clifton, 2017), as well as the effect of animacy on the measured difficulty profile (Lowder & Gordon, 2012; Traxler, Morris, & Seely, 2002). Visualizing probability distributions on the remaining alternatives at particular parser states allows us to explore new, linguistically plausible interpretations for the observed processing asymmetries, including the way that expectations about the relativized argument influence the processing of particular types of relative clauses (Wagers & Pendleton, 2016).     

Self-regulation of commitment to reduce cigarette consumption: Mental contrasting of future with reality

The model of fantasy realisation (Oettingen, 2000 Oettingen, G. 2000. Expectancy effects on behavior depend on self-regulatory thought. Social Cognition, 18: 101–129. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) specifies mental contrasting of a positive future with negative reality as a strategy that creates strong goal commitments. We propose that fantasies about a positive and negative future produce strong goal commitments when contrasted with the respective reality. The present study supports this hypothesis in the area of reducing cigarette consumption. Mental contrasting of a positive future with negative reality as well as mental contrasting of a negative future with positive reality led to taking immediate action when participants had high expectations of success. Results indicate that both fantasies about a positive future and a negative future can be used to commit to goals that benefit health and prevent disease.     

A Phenomenal Case for Sport

The article attempts to show some limitations to reductive accounts in science and philosophy of body-mind relations, experience and skill. Extensive literature has developed in analytic philosophy of mind recently due to new technology and theories in the neurosciences. In the sporting sciences, there are also attempts to reduce experiences and skills to biology, mechanics, chemistry and physiology. The article argues there are three fundamental problems for reductive accounts that lead to an explanatory gap between the reduction and the conscious experience. First, reductive accounts deal with objective observations; conscious experiences are subjective. Second, subjective experience seems difficult to identify with physical events described by chemistry, biology, mechanics or neurophysiology. Finally, sport involves knowing how and knowing how is also difficult to reduce to propositional knowledge, which is the reductive scientific/philosophical project. The article argues that sport provides an excellent platform to better understand what is wrong with reductive analysis in body-mind relations, since both conscious experience and knowing how are fundamental to sport performance.     

Adaptive Mechanisms in Perceptual-Motor Coordination

Aftereffect measures of visual shift and proprioceptive shift were obtained for prism exposure conditions in which, at the end of a sagittal pointing movement, most of the arm was visible (concurrent exposure) or only the first finger joint was visible (terminal exposure). Intermediate exposure conditions permitted view of the hand or the first two finger joints. Under the concurrent exposure condition, proprioceptive shift was greater than visual shift but, as view of the pointing hand decreased, the relative magnitude of the two components gradually reversed so that, under the terminal exposure condition, visual shift was greater than proprioceptive shift. These results are discussed in terms of a model of perceptual-motor organization (Redding, Clark, & Wallace, 1985) in which the direction of coordinative linkage between eye-head and hand-head systems determines the locus of discordance and adaptive recalibration.     

Chance,command, and chaos in ancient military engagements 1

The Greeks and the Romans believed that commanders ought to exercise their foresight to preclude risks in combat. They also tried to inculcate and to preserve order in their military systems by the use of initiatory mechanisms, repetitive drill, and replication of the military order in social, economic, and spatial arrangements. In spite of their efforts to minimize entropy within their military units, these systems sometimes underwent chaotic transformations during set‐piece engagements on the battlefield. These set‐piece battles which followed a simple, formulaic pattern provide the data for a case‐study in the behavior of military systems within a relatively simple set of constraints. The results suggest that command functions can have little influence once a system is actively engaged with the enemy and that small effects can drive even simple military systems irreversibly over thresholds into chaos. They illustrate the dangers in any analysis of military phenomena which assumes linear rather than chaotic change. They also suggest that prediction, let alone control, of the course of an engagement is considerably more difficult than is often assumed. It is even difficult to label known outcomes as victories or losses, since the same result may appear differently to two observers occupying different vantage points. Military analysts should take into account values held by society at large.     

Strength of affective reaction as a signal to think carefully

Analytic processes reduce biases, but it is not known how or when these processes will be deployed. Based on an affective signal hypothesis, relatively strong affective reactions were expected to result in increased analytic processing and reduced bias in judgement. The valence and strength of affective reactions were manipulated through varying outcomes in a game or evaluative conditioning of a stimulus. Relatively strong positive or negative affective reactions resulted in less desirability bias. Bias reduction only occurred if participants had time to deploy analytic processes and indicators of the degree of analytic processing (in the form of attentional control) predicted less bias. Affective processes have long been acknowledged as a source of bias, but these findings suggest affective processes are also integral to bias reduction.     

The Attitudinal Entropy (AE) Framework as a General Theory of Individual Attitudes

Abstract

This article introduces the Attitudinal Entropy (AE) framework, which builds on the Causal Attitude Network model that conceptualizes attitudes as Ising networks. The AE framework rests on three propositions. First, attitude inconsistency and instability are two related indications of attitudinal entropy, a measure of randomness derived from thermodynamics. Second, energy of attitude configurations serves as a local processing strategy to reduce the global entropy of attitude networks. Third, directing attention to and thinking about attitude objects reduces attitudinal entropy. We first discuss several determinants of attitudinal entropy reduction and show that several findings in the attitude literature, such as the mere thought effect on attitude polarization and the effects of heuristic versus systematic processing of arguments, follow from the AE framework. Second, we discuss the AE framework’s implications for ambivalence and cognitive dissonance.     

Negative cognitive emotion regulation as a predictor of adolescent heart rate variability and entropy under social stress

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives: Negative cognitive emotion regulation (ER) strategies are particularly important within the framework of anxiety problems amongst youths and how they cope with stressful events. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between both negative and positive ER style and cardiac regulation under stressful conditions.

Design: Eighty-nine adolescents (M?=?13.31 years, SD?=?0.68, 44.94% girls) were exposed to a socially relevant stress induction protocol.

Methods: Participants’ emotion regulation strategies were assessed and their cardiac function was recorded.

Results: A negative ER style predicted heart rate (HR) entropy at the stressful stage after controlling for anxiety scores. In addition, heart rate variability reactivity and recovery and HR entropy recovery were larger (p?<?.05) in the low negative ER style group (n?=?16) than in the high negative ER style group (n?=?23).

Conclusions: Results suggest that individuals with a highly negative ER style have diminished autonomic flexibility.