A COMPUTATIONAL THEORY OF SELECTION BY CONSEQUENCES APPLIED TO CONCURRENT SCHEDULES

Virtual organisms animated by a computational theory of selection by consequences responded on symmetrical and asymmetrical concurrent schedules of reinforcement. The theory instantiated Darwinian principles of selection, reproduction, and mutation such that a population of potential behaviors evolved under the selection pressure exerted by reinforcement from the environment. The virtual organisms' steady‐state behavior was well described by the power function matching equation, and the parameters of the equation behaved in ways that were consistent with findings from experiments with live organisms. Together with previous research on single‐alternative schedules (McDowell, 2004; McDowell & Caron, 2007) these results indicate that the equations of matching theory are emergent properties of the evolutionary dynamics of selection by consequences.     

儿童攻击和同伴关系的相关:20年研究的元分析

用多水平分析技术对近20年关于儿童攻击和同伴关系相关的研究结果进行的元分析显示,现有研究中关于攻击和同伴关系相关结果的变异程度比较大,总体来说攻击和同伴接受之间有负向相关关系,和同伴拒绝之间有正向相关关系。     

A Multilevel Contextual Model of Family Conflict and Deviance

This paper presents a multiple-group multivariate hierarchical specification of family problem behaviors across ethnicities using structural equation modeling techniques which explicitly model the individual-level and family-level covariance matrices in familial problem behavior. Analyses were conducted across White and African American ethnic groups. The sample (N = 1,168; 647 White and 521 African Americans) comprised children and their parents from 392 families. In addition to relations between family conflict and deviant behaviors, covariates were included at each level of analysis: neighborhood desirability at the family (between) level, and age and gender at the individual (within) level. At the between level, neighborhood desirability influenced family conflict and family conflict influenced family levels of deviance. At the within level, conflict was significantly related to individual levels of deviance. Discussion focuses on the substantive results as well as the application of multilevel analyses to contextual influences of family problem behavior.     

Androgen dynamics in the context of children's peer relations: an examination of the links between testosterone and peer victimization

Testosterone levels have been shown to decrease in the face of social defeat in several mammalian species. Among humans, the loss of social status has been studied primarily in the context of athletic competition, with winners having higher testosterone levels than losers. This study examined testosterone levels in relation to peer victimization (bullying) in a sample of 151 boys and girls aged 12–13. Statistically controlling for age and pubertal status, results indicated that on average verbally bullied girls produced less testosterone and verbally bullied boys produced more testosterone than their nonbullied counterparts. Similar trends were evident comparing social and physical bullying with testosterone. Sex differences are discussed in terms of empirically validated differences in coping styles, as girls tend to internalize, whereas boys tend to externalize, their abuse. Aggr. Behav. 35:103–113, 2009. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Maternal interactive behaviour towards children with and children without cleft lip and palate

The present study examined qualitative and quantitative differences in maternal interactive behaviour towards infants with and without cleft lip and palate (CLP). Thirty-three mother-child pairs with CLP and 34 pairs without CLP were videotaped at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months of age in two sorts of play situations at home. In addition, the mothers were questioned by letter about their ability to recognize and interpret the child's signals; their willingness to respond to such signals; and the duration of shared daily activities in the context of feeding and play. The results showed that mothers of CLP children are somewhat less sensitive than other mothers. In addition, it appeared that CLP children play less with other people. Longer feeding times for CLP children appeared to be restricted to the age of 3 months. It is suggested that mothers of CLP children may be comparatively directive and stimulating because of uncertainty about additional deficiencies. Furthermore, they may be inclined to keep their children away from the outside world.     

PARENTAL TRAINING OF THE PLURAL MORPHEME IN NORMAL TODDLERS1

Experimental studies with young normal children can provide useful strategy for the functional analysis of language. Research by Whitehurst (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1972, 13 , 502–515) exemplifies this approach, in which 2-yr-old children were exposed to a training procedure that involved imitation and differential reinforcement for a two-word productive sequence of the adjective-noun form. Results indicated that these young children could be trained to produce rudimentary novel utterances that were grammatically appropriate. More recently, Hursh and Sherman (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1973, 15 , 328–339) reported the existence of a functional relationship between parental modelling and reinforcement of vocalizations, and increased instances of these vocalizations in young (15- to 20-month-old) children. These demonstrations relate to a summary of findings with linguistically deviant populations discussed by Sherman (Advances in Child Development, 1971). The present study attempts to extend these “generative” investigations to normal children and to provide useful information for those interested in teaching speech forms to them. Modelling and differential reinforcement were used by three mothers to establish the use of the plural morpheme in the speech of their 19- to 25-month-old children. During training trials, verbal praise was presented contingent on correct labelling of singular and plural items, while correct labelling was modelled if the child responded incorrectly. Children learned to label specifically trained sets of singular and plural items and also exhibited correct labelling when asked to label never-trained singular and plural items. After establishing correct usage, the same training procedures were used to train reversed labelling (plural responses to single items and singular responses to plural items). This produced a corresponding reversal of responding (both trained and untrained items) by each child for the plural items but not for singular items. Correct singular and plural labelling was recovered by returning to the initial procedures.     

On muthén’s maximum likelihood for two-level covariance structure models

Data in social and behavioral sciences are often hierarchically organized. Special statistical procedures that take into account the dependence of such observations have been developed. Among procedures for 2-level covariance structure analysis, Muthén’s maximum likelihood (MUML) has the advantage of easier computation and faster convergence. When data are balanced, MUML is equivalent to the maximum likelihood procedure. Simulation results in the literature endorse the MUML procedure also for unbalanced data. This paper studies the analytical properties of the MUML procedure in general. The results indicate that the MUML procedure leads to correct model inference asymptotically when level-2 sample size goes to infinity and the coefficient of variation of the level-1 sample sizes goes to zero. The study clearly identifies the impact of level-1 and level-2 sample sizes on the standard errors and test statistic of the MUML procedure. Analytical results explain previous simulation results and will guide the design or data collection for the future applications of MUML.This research was supported by NSF Grant DMS04-37167.We thank Dr.Bengt Muthén for providing key references. We are also grateful to three expert reviewers for their constructive comments that have led the paper to an improvement over the previous version.This revised article was published online in August 2005 with the PDF paginated correctly.     

Relative deprivation,national GDP and right-wing populism: A multilevel,multinational study

We conducted a secondary analysis of the 2018 (ninth round) European Social Survey dataset (N = 19,512, nested in 24 countries) to analyse the association between relative deprivation and right-wing populist voting, moderated by participants' income and their country's GDP. A multilevel moderated model showed that relative deprivation, income and GDP had no association with right-wing populist votes by themselves. However, income and GDP moderated the relation between relative deprivation and right-wing populist votes, that was significant for participants with high incomes and for those living in wealthy countries. The strengths, limitations and future developments of the study are discussed.     

Innovation across cultures: Connecting leadership,identification, and creative behavior in organizations

Innovation is considered essential for today's organizations to survive and thrive. Researchers have also stressed the importance of leadership as a driver of followers' innovative work behavior (FIB). Yet, despite a large amount of research, three areas remain understudied: (a) The relative importance of different forms of leadership for FIB; (b) the mechanisms through which leadership impacts FIB; and (c) the degree to which relationships between leadership and FIB are generalizable across cultures. To address these lacunae, we propose an integrated model connecting four types of positive leadership behaviors, two types of identification (as mediating variables), and FIB. We tested our model in a global data set comprising responses of N = 7,225 participants from 23 countries, grouped into nine cultural clusters. Our results indicate that perceived LMX quality was the strongest relative predictor of FIB. Furthermore, the relationships between both perceived LMX quality and identity leadership with FIB were mediated by social identification. The indirect effect of LMX on FIB via social identification was stable across clusters, whereas the indirect effects of the other forms of leadership on FIB via social identification were stronger in countries high versus low on collectivism. Power distance did not influence the relations.     

Geographical profiling incorporating neighbourhood-level factors using spatial interaction modelling

The aim of this study was to examine the applicability of methods that use spatial interaction modelling to predict the most probable area for an offender's residence. Tokyo, which is the capital of Japan and is divided into 1507 square-kilometre zones, was selected as the study area. We analysed 4316 criminal trips to commit residential burglaries by 1089 offenders who lived in Tokyo. The following neighbourhood-level factors, and a distance-decay effect between zones, were incorporated into the proposed model: the size of the residential population aged 15–59 years in origin zones, the numbers of households living in detached houses, newcomers, the number of police facilities in destination zones, and the spatial structures of the criminal trips. Search areas calculated by the proposed model were smaller than previous models, suggesting that neighbourhood-level factors are important for predicting the location of an offender's residence.