A general model for the analysis of multilevel data

A general model is developed for the analysis of multivariate multilevel data structures. Special cases of the model include repeated measures designs, multiple matrix samples, multilevel latent variable models, multiple time series, and variance and covariance component models.We would like to acknowledge the helpful comments of Ruth Silver. We also wish to thank the referees for helping to clarify the paper. This work was partly carried out with research funds provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (U.K.).     

Declines in Major League Batting Performance as a Function of Game Pressure: A Drive Theory Analysis1

Zajonc's (1965) drive theory explanation argues that greater arousal tends to impair performance on difficult tasks. The hypothesis that arousal generated by “pressure situations” during major league baseball games would hinder batting performance—a difficult task—was tested by examining such performance during the 1989 season. Six “pressure situations” were identified, some occurring during the late innings of close games and others occurring throughout the game when there were two outs. Two measures of batting performance (batting average and slugging average) were employed. Results indicated broad support for the hypothesis. Reasons for this pattern are discussed, as are possible alternative explanations for these findings.     

Word-finding abilities of three types of aphasic subjects

Word-finding difficulties are often observed among different types of aphasic patients. This investigation analyzed the word-finding abilities of 30 aphasic subjects (10 Broca's, 10 Wernicke's, and 10 anomic). Forty nouns counterbalanced according to word length and frequency of occurrence in English language usage were used as stimuli and presented through four modalities (oral expression, writing, auditory comprehension, and reading comprehension). It was expected that patterns of word finding abilities would help in the classification of the different types of aphasia. In addition, long words and less frequently occurring words in English language usage should prove more difficult in word-finding ability, regardless of modality. The results of this study found long words and less frequent words were more difficult for aphasic subjects. Among the modalities, long words were significantly harder than short words for the writing modality only. It was also found that semantic errors were the most common errors for all types of aphasic subjects. Broca's subjects produced significantly moreno response errors in oral expression; Wernicke's subjects produced significantly more semantic and phonemic errors in reading comprehension; and, Wernicke's subjects produced significantly more unrelated errors in both oral expression and reading comprehension. Clinical implications were also discussed.The present study was based on a doctoral dissertation completed at the City University of New York in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the doctoral degree in Speech and Hearing Sciences by the first author under the direction of the second author. The authors wish to thank Dr. Louis J. Gerstman for his assistance with the statistical analysis of this research and Dr. Robert Goldfarb for all his helpful suggestions and editorial comments.     

Spatial frequencies and the cerebral hemispheres: contrast sensitivity, visible persistence, and letter classification

The hypothesis that the two cerebral hemispheres are specialized for processing different visual spatial frequencies was investigated in three experiments. No differences between the left and right visual fields were found for: (1) contrast-sensitivity functions measured binocularly with vertical gratings ranging from 0.5 to 12 cycles per degree (cpd); (2) visible persistence durations for 1- and 10-cpd gratings measured with a stimulus alternation method; and (3) accuracy (d') and reaction times to correctly identify digitally filtered letters as targets (L or H) or nontargets (T or F). One significant difference, however, was found: In Experiment 3, a higher decision criterion (beta) was used when filtered letters were identified in the right visual field than when they were identified in the left. The letters were filtered with annular, 1-octave band-pass filters with center spatial frequencies of 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 cpd. Combining four center frequencies with three letter sizes (0.5 degrees, 1 degree, and 2 degrees high) made some stimuli equivalent in distal spatial frequency (cycles per object) and some equivalent in proximal spatial frequency (cycles per degree). The effective stimulus in the third experiment seemed to be proximal spatial frequency (cycles per degree) not distal (cycles per object). We conclude that each cerebral hemisphere processes visual spatial frequency information with equal accuracy but that different decision rules are used.     

The choice of constraints in correspondence analysis

A discussion of alternative constraint systems has been lacking in the literature on correspondence analysis and related techniques. This paper reiterates earlier results that an explicit choice of constraints has to be made which can have important effects on the resulting scores. The paper also presents new results on dealing with missing data and probabilistic category assignment.I am most grateful to the following for their helpful comments. Arto Demirjian, Michael Greenacre, Michael Healy, Shizuhiko Nishisato, Roderick Mcdonald, and several anonymous referees.     

Belief systems and attitudes toward the death penalty and other punishments

This study focused on the relationship of belief systems as a configural construct and conservatism-liberalism to attitudes toward the death penalty and other punishments for offenses of varying severity Extrapersonalists, the most concretely functioning of the four conceptual or belief systems posited by Harvey, Hunt, and Schroder (1961), were most in favor of the death penalty They also endorsed the most severe punishment for a variety of crimes, to a particularly greater extent than did representatives of either of the two more abstractly functioning systems The belief dimensions of Openness, Evaluativeness, and Complexity, as well as the frequency of church attendance, correlated more highly and consistently with attitudes toward punishment than did either Conservatism-Liberalism or gender Both of the latter variables failed to correlate with a number of the outcome variables and related at only low levels to the others The greater predictive power of a configural conception of personality or belief systems over a unidimensional conception seems to have been demonstrated Configural concepts may additionally be generally superior to multidimensional concepts treated linearly     

Family therapy with deaf persons: the systemic utilization of an interpreter

This paper discusses the theory and practice of providing family therapy to families in which there are hearing parents and at least one Deaf child, particularly regarding the optimal utilization of an interpreter. The therapist must be knowledgeable about the psychosocial effects of deafness, the cultural aspects of deafness, and preferably be able to use American Sign Language and Signed English. The therapeutic benefit of utilizing an interpreter extends far beyond simply facilitating communication between each family member whose primary-language is either spoken English or Sign Language. The presence of an interpreter helps the therapist to modify family rules that deny the implications of deafness and prohibit the use of Sign Language, to modify the balance of power in the family, and to encourage participants to exhibit the ego defense mechanisms of projection and transference. The family therapist can utilize those subtle yet profound influences to therapeutic advantage.