Quantitative Psychology Commons^™

Capacity Coefficient Variations, Joseph W. Houpt, Andrew Heathcote, Ami Eidels, Nathan Medeiros-Ward, Jason Watson, David Strayer

Joseph W. Houpt

The capacity coefficient has become an increasingly popular measure of efficiency under changes in workload. It has been used in applications ranging from psychophysical detection tasks to complex cognitive tasks, as well as in addressing questions in social and clinical psychology. The basic formulation compares response times to each stimulus property (or task) in isolation to response times with all stimulus properties (or tasks) at the same time. A number of variations on the basic capacity coefficient have been used, both in the experimental design and in the calculations, and many more are possible. Here we outline the theoretical reasons …

General Recognition Theory Extended To Include Response Times: Predictions For A Class Of Parallel Systems, Joseph W. Houpt, James T. Townsend, Noah H. Silbert

Joseph W. Houpt

No abstract provided.

Convex Combinations Of Quadrant Dependent Copulas, Martin Egozcue, Luis Fuentes García, Wing Wong, Ricardas Zitikis

Martin Egozcue

It is well known that quadrant dependent (QD) random variables are also quadrant dependent in expectation (QDE). Recent literature has offered examples rigorously establishing the fact that there are QDE random variables which are not QD. The examples are based on convex combinations of specially chosen QD copulas: one negatively QD and another positively QD. In this paper we establish general results that determine when convex combinations of arbitrary QD copulas give rise to negatively or positively QD/QDE copulas. In addition to being an interesting mathematical exercise, the established results are helpful when modeling insurance and financial portfolios.

Bayesian Approaches To Assessing Architecture And Stopping Rule, Joseph W. Houpt, A. Heathcote, A. Eidels, J. T. Townsend

Joseph W. Houpt

Much of scientific psychology and cognitive science can be viewed as a search to understand the mechanisms and dynamics of perception, thought and action. Two processing attributes of particular interest to psychologists are the architecture, or temporal relationships between sub-processes of the system, and the stopping rule, which dictates how many of the sub-processes must be completed for the system to finish. The Survivor Interaction Contrast (SIC) is a powerful tool for assessing the architecture and stopping rule of a mental process model. Thus far, statistical analysis of the SIC has been limited to null-hypothesis- significance tests. In this talk …

Bayesian Approaches To Assessing Architecture And Stopping Rule, Joseph W. Houpt, Andrew Heathcote, Ami Eidels, J. T. Townsend

Psychology Faculty Publications

Much of scientific psychology and cognitive science can be viewed as a search to understand the mechanisms and dynamics of perception, thought and action. Two processing attributes of particular interest to psychologists are the architecture, or temporal relationships between sub-processes of the system, and the stopping rule, which dictates how many of the sub-processes must be completed for the system to finish. The Survivor Interaction Contrast (SIC) is a powerful tool for assessing the architecture and stopping rule of a mental process model. Thus far, statistical analysis of the SIC has been limited to null-hypothesis- significance tests. In this talk …

Statistical Methods Used In Gifted Education Journals, 2006-2010, Russell Warne, Maria Lazo, Tami Ramos, Nicola Ritter

Russell T Warne

This article describes the statistical methods used in quantitative and mixed methods articles between 2006 and 2010 in five gifted education research journals. Results indicate that the most commonly used statistical methods are means (85.9% of articles), standard deviations (77.8%), Pearson’s r (47.8%), χ2 (32.2%), ANOVA (30.7%), t tests (30.0%), and MANOVA (23.0%). Approximately half (53.3%) of the articles included reliability reports for the data at hand; Cronbach’s alpha was the most commonly reported measure of reliability (41.5%). Some discussions of best statistical practice and implications for the field of gifted education are included.

Managing Clustered Data Using Hierarchical Linear Modeling, Russell Warne

Russell T Warne

Researchers in nutrition research often use cluster or multistage sampling to gather participants for their studies. These sampling methods often produce violations of the assumption of data independence that most traditional statistics share. Hierarchical linear modeling is a statistical method that can overcome violations of the independence assumption and lead to correct analysis of data, yet it is rarely used in nutrition research. The purpose of this viewpoint is to illustrate the benefits of hierarchical linear modeling within a nutrition research context.

General Recognition Theory Extended To Include Response Times: Predictions For A Class Of Parallel Systems, James T. Townsend, Joseph W. Houpt, Noah H. Silbert

Joseph W. Houpt

General Recognition Theory (GRT; Ashby & Townsend, 1986) is a multidimensional theory of classification. Originally developed to study various types of perceptual independence, it has also been widely employed in diverse cognitive venues, such as categorization. The initial theory and applications have been static, that is, lacking a time variable and focusing on patterns of responses, such as confusion matrices. Ashby proposed a parallel, dynamic stochastic version of GRT with application to perceptual independence based on discrete linear systems theory with imposed noise \citep{Ash89}. The current study again focuses on cognitive/perceptual independence within an identification classification paradigm. We extend stochastic …

General Recognition Theory Extended To Include Response Times: Predictions For A Class Of Parallel Systems, James T. Townsend, Joseph W. Houpt, Noah H. Silbert

Psychology Faculty Publications

General Recognition Theory (GRT; Ashby & Townsend, 1986) is a multidimensional theory of classification. Originally developed to study various types of perceptual independence, it has also been widely employed in diverse cognitive venues, such as categorization. The initial theory and applications have been static, that is, lacking a time variable and focusing on patterns of responses, such as confusion matrices. Ashby proposed a parallel, dynamic stochastic version of GRT with application to perceptual independence based on discrete linear systems theory with imposed noise (Ashby, 1989). The current study again focuses on cognitive/perceptual independence within an identification classification paradigm. We extend …

The Dependent Samples T And Wilcoxon Sign Rank Maximum Test, Saverpierre Maggio

Wayne State University Dissertations

A maximum test using the parametric dependent samples t-test and the non-parametric Wilcoxon sign rank test was created using a FORTRAN program and various subroutines of the International Mathematical and Statistical Libraries (IMSL, 1980). Two tailed critical values were derived from a mixed normal distribution. Critical values obtained were at the 0.05, 0.025, 0.01 and 0.005 alpha levels via sample sizes (n) 8 through 30, 45, 60, 90 and 120. Critical values were compared to values obtained through the application of the Bonferroni correction method. It was concluded that the Bonferroni is an unnecessary method. Findings of the study are …

Internal Consistency Of The Self-Perception Profile For Children: Using Covariance Structure Modeling To Overcome The Limitations Of Cronbach's Α, Ian Cero

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Self-perception is linked to a variety of psychosocial outcomes and its measurement has become a priority across a several disciplines. The Self-Perception Profile for Children (SPP-C) is commonly utilized to measure both global self worth and several important sub-domains of self-perception. Although much research has suggested this instrument possesses good internal consistency, previous investigations have primarily employed Cronbach's α; to estimate the stability of responding across items. This represents an important limitation, as α; is vulnerable to mis-estimation in the presence of correlated errors and non-τ-equivalent indicators, neither of which have been ruled out for the SPP-C. The present investigation …

An Introduction To Item Response Theory For Health Behavior Researchers, Russell Warne

Russell T Warne

OBJECTIVE:

To introduce item response theory (IRT) to health behavior researchers by contrasting it with classical test theory and providing an example of IRT in health behavior.

METHOD:

Demonstrate IRT by fitting the 2PL model to substance-use survey data from the Adolescent Health Risk Behavior questionnaire (n=1343 adolescents).

RESULTS:

An IRT 2PL model can produce viable substance use scores that differentiate different levels of substance use, resulting in improved precision and specificity at the respondent level.

CONCLUSION:

IRT is a viable option for health researchers who want to produce high-quality scores for unidimensional constructs. The results from our example-although not …