The role of structural consistency between categories and attributes in hierarchical category learning

This study investigated how consistency between categories and attributes determines attribute selection in hierarchical category learning. Participants learned six categories for which number and color were equally relevant attributes, followed by a transfer task, to test which attribute was used. Before that, half of them learned embedding higher-level categories for which numbers were likely to be used. Orthogonal to this factor, the hierarchical structure was made explicit for half of them by category labels. The results showed that participants used numbers in the prior learning, but that the use of numbers was inhibited in the subsequent six-category learning task. However, this inhibitory effect was reduced when the hierarchical structure was explicit. The pattern of results suggests that attribute selection is determined by structural consistency between categories and attributes, not by a prior use of an attribute.     

Full-information item bi-factor analysis

A plausibles-factor solution for many types of psychological and educational tests is one that exhibits a general factor ands − 1 group or method related factors. The bi-factor solution results from the constraint that each item has a nonzero loading on the primary dimension and at most one of thes − 1 group factors. This paper derives a bi-factor item-response model for binary response data. In marginal maximum likelihood estimation of item parameters, the bi-factor restriction leads to a major simplification of likelihood equations and (a) permits analysis of models with large numbers of group factors; (b) permits conditional dependence within identified subsets of items; and (c) provides more parsimonious factor solutions than an unrestricted full-information item factor analysis in some cases. Supported by the Cognitive Science Program, Office of Naval Research, Under grant #N00014-89-J-1104. We would like to thank Darrell Bock for several helpful suggestions.     

Exploratory Factor Analysis: A Users’Guide

In 1978, Comrey wrote a guide to factor analysis in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. This paper provides an update of the information given by Comrey in relation to exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for work and organizational psychologists, and particularly those involved with test development, interpretation and validation. In doing so, it offers a user's guide to contemporary methods and available techniques and introduces heuristics for dealing with problems of skew and kurtosis, social desirability response set, and factor naming.     

RELIGION AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION

Abstract. The end of the twentieth century marks the slow disintegration of both the Marxist and capitalist socioeconomic theories, inasmuch as both have proven inadequate to meet basic issues of human existence. Their inadequacy rests on the tendency to use the criteria of extrinsic rewards, quantification, production, and consumption to evaluate human personhood and human activity. What is needed is a third alternative to these two systems, one that is based on intrinsic rewards and cultivates internal values rather than production, consumption, and quantification. Religious communities have traditionally been such an alternative and seem to represent an ordered nucleus of information that can counter the inadequacies of Marxism and capitalism. To carry out this function, religions must (1) minimize the trivial differences that set belief systems against one another; (2) support bimodal cultural evolution that allows the old and the new to coexist; and (3) discover the unifying factors that cut across human groups.     

CONSCIOUSNESS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Abstract. Human action and experience are the outcome of genes and memes. Not only are both of these represented in consciousness, but consciousness mediates their claims and thus governs our choices. Hence it is important how consciousness is ordered and where it is directed. Sorokin's typology of the sensate and the ideational ("spiritual"), and the dialectic between them, is relevant to this issue. In our period of history, the sensate factors of materialism and secularism need to be dialectically counterbalanced by the reinforcement of memes that value the spiritual intimations of the realm beyond the senses. As we approach the twenty-first century, the memes that will undergird our spirituality will be those that resacralize nature and emphasize our unity as humans with all of universal reality, in an idea of common "beinghood." Spiritual systems that accord with this trend in evolution will have to respect three conditions. They will (1) integrate the sensate and the ideational; (2) reflect the importance of the "flow" state of optimal experience, which matches ever-complexifying skills with comparable challenges; and (3) move the fulcrum of their worldview from the human being to the network of beings and its evolution.     

Model selection and Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC): The general theory and its analytical extensions

During the last fifteen years, Akaike's entropy-based Information Criterion (AIC) has had a fundamental impact in statistical model evaluation problems. This paper studies the general theory of the AIC procedure and provides its analytical extensions in two ways without violating Akaike's main principles. These extensions make AIC asymptotically consistent and penalize overparameterization more stringently to pick only the simplest of the “true” models. These selection criteria are called CAIC and CAICF. Asymptotic properties of AIC and its extensions are investigated, and empirical performances of these criteria are studied in choosing the correct degree of a polynomial model in two different Monte Carlo experiments under different conditions.     

Multivariate normal integrals and contingency tables with ordered categories

Ak-dimensional multivariate normal distribution is made discrete by partitioning thek-dimensional Euclidean space with rectangular grids. The collection of probability integrals over the partitioned cubes is ak-dimensional contingency table with ordered categories. It is shown that loglinear model with main effects plus two-way interactions provides an accurate approximation for thek-dimensional table. The complete multivariate normal integral table is computed via the iterative proportional fitting algorithm from bivariate normal integral tables. This approach imposes no restriction on the correlation matrix. Comparisons with other numerical integration algorithms are reported. The approximation suggests association models for discretized multivariate normal distributions and contingency tables with ordered categories.The contingency-table approach occurred to me while I was collaborating with Paul Holland of the Educational Testing Service in 1985 on bivariate dependence functions. Holland maintains a belief that the continuous can learn from the discrete. This work is a reassertion of his claim.This research was sponsored by the National Science Council, Republic of China.     

PROMPTING TECHNIQUES TO INCREASE THE RETURN RATE OF MAILED QUESTIONNAIRES1

To increase the return rate of questionnaires mailed to clergy and physicians concerning their mental-health practices, different prompts were used after the questionnaire was received during four mail-outs to four randomly drawn samples of clergy and physicians. For each mail-out, the sample was divided into experimental (received prompt) and comparison (no prompt) groups, and one type of prompt or combination was used. Non-returnees of the questionnaire in the experimental group received either: (a) a single telephone call, (b) a memo, (c) a package (personal letter and new questionnaire) or package plus a telephone call, or (d) a double call. Comparison physicians and clergy were mailed only the original questionnaire. Relative to their respective comparison group's return rate, which averaged 22% across the four mail-outs (range 18% to 24%), the single call and package alone about doubled the overall return rate, the package and call increased the return rate about two-and-a-half fold, and the double call almost tripled the return rate. The memo was ineffective. A cost-effectiveness analysis indicated that the double-call procedure was less expensive than the single call, and much less expensive than the package alone or package with a call in securing returns. An analysis of the pattern of returns showed clearly that when prompts were not delivered (comparison groups), very few returns were received after about seven days from the initial mail-out. Most returns from prompts (experimental groups) were received by several days after the prompt. The results were seen as salient to the problem of reducing selection or volunteer bias in questionnaire studies and subsequent research demonstrating the effectiveness of telephone calls made about a week after distribution of surveys in securing high return rates was discussed.     

选择作业中证伪思维的影响因素

研究了选择作业中证伪思维的影响因素。被试为星海音乐学院本科生592名。实验1、2研究了问题的诊断性对证伪思维的影响;实验3研究了提示证伪样例是否促进证伪;实验4研究了证真证伪相对难度改变是否影响证伪。结果表明：（1）证真和证伪都为诊断性问题,人们倾向于证真;证真为非诊断问题,证伪为诊断性问题,人们倾向于证伪。（2）提示证伪样例,可以促进证伪。（3）证真难度加大,可以促进证伪。结合正反信息转换系统的心理模型理论,可以很好地解释该研究结果。     

Development of co-feeding behavior in young wild Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata)

This study describes the developmental course of the social context of feeding behavior in infants and yearlings of Japanese macaques in a provisioned free-ranging troop. Results of this longitudinal study revealed that infants and yearlings exhibited synchronous feeding behavior in the majority of cases in which they had feeding neighbors within 1 m. They consistently showed feeding behavior more often when their closest neighbor fed than when they did not. In feeding situations, infants tended mainly to be in close proximity with their mothers in the early stages of life and, later, also with peers. The results imply that potential opportunities for the social transmission of food selection habits are available for young Japanese macaques in the wild.