Individual distributions under ordinal measurement

For ordinal measurement the concept of an individual propensity distribution is developed. For any given individual the mean of this distribution is his true score, for which estimation procedures are discussed. Two measures of individual dispersion are considered and their distributions derived in the null case. These measures are shown to be counterparts at the individual level of Kendall's tau and Spearman's rho. Estimation of the two dispersion measures from sample data is investigated, and the relation of these estimates to the variance of the individual propensity distribution is derived.     

The effect of witnessing consequences on the behavioral recordings of experimental observers

The cueing effects of interviewer praise contingent on a target behavior and expectation of behavior change were examined with six observers. Experiment I investigated the effect of cues in conjunction with expectation. Experiment II assessed the relative contributions of cues and expectation, and Experiment III examined the effect of cues in the absence of expectation. The frequencies of two behaviors, client eye contact and face touching, were held constant throughout a series of videotaped interviews between an "interviewer" and a "client". A within-subjects design was used in each experiment. During baseline conditions, praise did not follow eye contact by the client on the videotape. In all experimental conditions, praise statements from the interviewer followed each occurrence of eye contact with an equal number of praises delivered at random times when there was no eye contact. Three of the six observers dramatically increased their recordings of eye contact during the first experimental phase, but these increases were not replicated in a second praise condition. There were no systematic changes in recorded face touching. Witnessing the delivery of consequences, rather than expectation seemed to be responsible for the effect. This potential threat to the internal validity of studies using observational data may go undetected by interobserver agreement checks.     

Anaphoric agreement violation: an ERP analysis of its interpretation

In the present study we analyzed the processing of grammatically anomalous sentences like "The famous dancer were nervously preparing herself/themselves to face the crowd.", which contains two anomalies, one early and one late. We investigated how processing of the later anomaly (at the pronoun 'herself' or 'themselves') was affected by the processing of the early anomaly (at 'were'). We considered two processing scenarios involving the first anomaly: (1) The representation of the subject-verb number agreement error at the first verb is coerced to match the verb, rendering 'herself' anomalous; (2) The representation of the subject-verb agreement error is coerced to match the subject noun, rendering 'themselves' anomalous. Our dependent measure was event-related scalp potentials (ERPs). When the pronoun disagreed with the verb (and agreed with the subject), a P600 was recorded, while the opposite condition elicited no reliable effect. Our data suggest that interpretation of reflexive pronouns involves the reactivation of multiple lexical items, verbs included.     

ASSESSING OBSERVER ACCURACY IN CONTINUOUS RECORDING OF RATE AND DURATION: THREE ALGORITHMS COMPARED

The three algorithms most frequently selected by behavior‐analytic researchers to compute interobserver agreement with continuous recording were used to assess the accuracy of data recorded from video samples on handheld computers by 12 observers. Rate and duration of responding were recorded for three samples each. Data files were compared with criterion records to determine observer accuracy. Block‐by‐block and exact agreement algorithms were susceptible to inflated agreement and accuracy estimates at lower rates and durations. The exact agreement method appeared to be overly stringent for recording responding at higher rates (23.5 responses per minute) and for higher relative duration (72% of session). Time‐window analysis appeared to inflate accuracy assessment at relatively high but not at low response rate and duration (4.8 responses per minute and 8% of session, respectively).     

Effects of self‐enhancement on agreement on personality profiles

Effects of self‐enhancement and socially desirable responding (SDR) on rater agreement for personality profiles were studied in 304 students. Dyads of participants described themselves and their peer on the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO‐PI‐R) that measures 30 facets of personality. In addition, participants filled in six scales measuring self‐enhancement or SDR. Data analyses focussed on moderator and suppressor effects of SDR on the similarity between self‐reported and other reported NEO‐PI‐R profiles. Three kinds of profile agreement were distinguished: (a) normative agreement; (b) distinctive agreement and (c) profile normativeness, that is, how strongly a self‐reported personality profile resembled the average profile of all participants. There were no moderator or suppressor effects on distinctive agreement, but SDR predicted profile normativeness quite strongly. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

定序变量回归模型在心理数据分析中的应用

定序变量在心理现象和心理数据中随处可见, 采用综合的定序变量回归分析模型可以对“镜像模式”和“漏斗模型”的心理现象做出合理的解释和预测。首先通过非参数检验对影响因素进行初步降维, 其次用Probit定序回归对降维后的影响因素贡献率进行判别, 从而进一步筛选具有显著性判断水平的有效指标, 最后用Logistic回归模型对某种特定的心理现象发生与否进行信息量足够大的解释和预测。大学毕业生工作生活质量满意度的预测对这种综合定序变量回归分析模型的实例拟合, 证实了综合定序变量回归分析模型在心理现象和心理数据分析中的应用价值。     

Climate justice after Paris: a normative framework

This paper puts forward a normative framework to differentiate between the climate-related responsibilities of different countries in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement. It offers reasons for applying the chief moral principles of ‘historical responsibility’ and ‘capacity’ to climate finance instead of climate change mitigation targets. This will (i) provide a normative basis to realize the goal of climate change mitigation while allowing for developing and newly industrialized countries to develop economically and (ii) offer an account of the distributive principles that can regulate climate finance. This is a real-world interpretation of the 1992 UNFCCC principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ that takes into account the progress accomplished at the COP21 in Paris and offers a solution to the still unsolved problem of differentiated responsibilities. This paper offers an application of this proposal to the Green Climate Fund.     

How gender-expectancy affects the processing of “them”

How sensitive is pronoun processing to expectancies based on real-world knowledge and language usage? The current study links research on the integration of gender stereotypes and number-mismatch to explore this question. It focuses on the use of them to refer to antecedents of different levels of gender-expectancy (low–cyclist, high–mechanic, known–spokeswoman). In a rating task, them is considered increasingly unnatural with greater gender-expectancy. However, participants might not be able to differentiate high-expectancy and gender-known antecedents online because they initially search for plural antecedents (e.g., Sanford & Filik), and they make all-or-nothing gender inferences. An eye-tracking study reveals early differences in the processing of them with antecedents of high gender-expectancy compared with gender-known antecedents. This suggests that participants have rapid access to the expected gender of the antecedent and the level of that expectancy.     

Interval estimation of gamma for an<Emphasis Type="Italic">R</Emphasis>×<Emphasis Type="Italic">S</Emphasis> table

When the underlying responses are on an ordinal scale, gamma is one of the most frequently used indices to measure the strength of association between two ordered variables. However, except for a brief mention on the use of the traditional interval estimator based on Wald's statistic, discussion of interval estimation of the gamma is limited. Because it is well known that an interval estimator using Wald's statistic is generally not likely to perform well especially when the sample size is small, the goal of this paper is to find ways to improve the finite-sample performance of this estimator. This paper develops five asymptotic interval estimators of the gamma by employing various methods that are commonly used to improve the normal approximation of the maximum likelihood estimator (MLE). Using Monte Carlo simulation, this paper notes that the coverage probability of the interval estimator using Wald's statistic can be much less than the desired confidence level, especially when the underlying gamma is large. Further, except for the extreme case, in which the underlying gamma is large and the sample size is small, the interval estimator using a logarithmic transformation together with a monotonic function proposed here not only performs well with respect to the coverage probability, but is also more efficient than all the other estimators considered here. Finally, this paper notes that applying an ad hoc adjustment procedure—whenever any observed frequency equals 0, we add 0.5 to all cells in calculation of the cell proportions—can substantially improve the traditional interval estimator. This paper includes two examples to illustrate the practical use of interval estimators considered here.The authors wish to thank the Associate Editor and the two referees for many valuable comments and suggestions to improve the contents and clarity of this paper. The authors also want to thank Dr. C. D. Lin for his graphic assistance.