Some subordinates are more equal than others: Play fihgting amongst adult subordinate male rats

Adult male rats living together form dominance relationships, with one dominant and the remainder adopting subordinate roles. In previous studies, it was shown that in adult male pairs, the subordinate rat initiates more playful contacts and retains a more juvenile response to the playful contacts by the dominant. In this experiment, triads were used to examine the play between subordinate males. The subordinates directed fewer playful contacts to each other than to the dominant rat, and there was a symmetrical play relationship between the subordinates. After the dominant was removed from the colony, one subordinate became the dominant. Playful interactions amongst these pairs increased, with the subordiante intiating more playful contacts than the dominant. Furthermore, from a similarly low frequency of juvenile-type response to playful contact to each other when in triads, the subordinate in the dyads increased its frequency of juvenile responses to the dominant partner. This supports the hypothesis that the playful behavior of subordinate male rats towards the dominant is an adaptive response, playful behavior of subordinate male rats towards the dominant is an adaptive response, serving a “friendship maintenance” function. Finally, when in triads, one subordinate was more playful with the dominant than the other subordinate. It was the least playful subordinate that was the most likely to become the dominant. This sugests that within a colony, not all subordinates are the same. © 1993 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

A simple multivariate probabilistic model for preferential and triadic choices

Multidimensional probabilistic models of behavior following similarity and choice judgements have proven to be useful in representing multidimensional percepts in Euclidean and non-Euclidean spaces. With few exceptions, these models are generally computationally intense because they often require numerical work with multiple integrals. This paper focuses attention on a particularly general triad and preferential choice model previously requiring the numerical evaluation of a 2n-fold integral, wheren is the number of elements in the vectors representing the psychological magnitudes. Transforming this model to an indefinite quadratic form leads to a single integral. The significance of this form to multidimensional scaling and computational efficiency is discussed.The authors would like to thank Jean-Claude Falmagne and Norman Johnson for suggestions and advice concerning quadratic forms.     

Checking for Systematic Value Preferences Using the Method of Triads

Value preferences have long been central to research in political science and psychology. Despite their well‐established theoretical importance, however, their measurement is still an open question. Early research on values relied heavily on ranking instruments for data collection, but more recent work calls this measurement technique into question. Specifically, it is argued that traditional ranking instruments are (1) too long, (2) too complex, and (3) may force respondents to make ad hoc differentiations between values of similar importance, behind which there is no systematic preference. As a result, the reliability of the measure is called into question, and measurement error remains a concern. In this article, we discuss the method of triads—a technique used to gather rankings data that affords the researcher the opportunity to assess the extent to which random error affects preference rankings. Using the method of triads to collect preference data on five values central to American political culture, we find that Americans' value preferences are clearly structured and driven by systematic preferences, even when psychological theory suggests they may not. We also compare the predictive validity of the data collected with the method of triads against that of the data collected with traditional importance ratings. We show that models of ideology, party identification, presidential approval, and vote‐choice fit to “triads” data explain more variance than models fit to ratings data.     

Understanding Triadic and Family Group Interactions During Infancy and Toddlerhood

This paper outlines recent conceptual and methodological developments in the assessment of triadic and family group process during infancy and toddlerhood. Foundations of the emerging family group process are identified, and conditions specific to the assessment of the family during the early phases of family formation are summarized. Both microanalytic and global approaches to evaluating mother–father–child interactions are discussed. We highlight both similarities and differences in the strategies and methods employed by several different investigators who have been studying the group dynamics of families with infant and toddler children, and underscore several important family patterns and emerging themes that appear to be cutting across these different methods and measurement strategies. Preliminary evidence for the validity and clinical significance of family-level assessments is summarized, and directions currently being pursued by researchers engaged in studies of the family triad are outlined. We close by identifying several conceptual and clinical issues that remain to be addressed by subsequent work.     

A general model for preferential and triadic choice in terms of centralF distribution functions

A model for preferential and triadic choice is derived in terms of weighted sums of centralF distribution functions. This model is a probabilistic generalization of Coombs' (1964) unfolding model and special cases, such as the model of Zinnes and Griggs (1974), can be derived easily from it. This new form extends previous work by Mullen and Ennis (1991) and provides more insight into the same problem that they discussed.