Critiques violence prediction via methods for quantifying accuracy that fail to control for base rates or biases and describes how receiver-operating characteristic analysis can compensate. Via reanalysis of datasets from previously published studies suggests that mental health professionals' violence predictions are substantially more accurate…

A practical theory is offered for probing external validity, the generalization of causal relationships. This alternative theory is built around five principles abstracted from research on construct validation. It emphasizes purposive sampling for theoretical ends rather than random sampling to represent a population. (SLD)

A causal model that delineates the processes whereby clinical social workers experience burnout and job dissatisfaction was developed and evaluated using linear structural relationship techniques. The model was tested on questionnaire data from Florida social workers (N=165). Role conflict, role ambiguity, and social support were studied as…

Marital interaction processes that are predictive of divorce or marital stability and processes that discriminate between happily and unhappily married stable couples are explored (N=130). Seven types of process models are examined, and results are discussed. Divorce and stability were predicted with 83% accuracy, and satisfaction with 80%…

Examines the claim that it is necessary to change an organization's culture in order to bring about organizational change. Considers the purported causal relationship between the role of the leader and organizational learning and develops the notion of culture as cognitive process based on research in cultural anthropology and cognitive science.…

Summarizes a study exploring the relationship between higher education and economic development, using cointegration and Granger-causality tests. Results show a significant causality from higher education efforts in Sweden, United Kingdom, Japan, and France. However, a similar causality link has not been found for Italy or Australia. (68…

Parental monitoring, teacher support, classmate support, and friend relationship presumably affect adolescents' runaway from home. According to social control theory, social control based on conventional social norms would prevent adolescent runaway, but association with friends may erode such control. This expectation appears to hold true in a…

In the analysis of stimulus competition in causal judgment, 4 variables have been frequently confounded with respect to the conditions necessary for stimuli to compete: causal status of the competing stimuli (causes vs. effects), temporal order of the competing stimuli (antecedent vs. subsequent) relative to the noncompeting stimulus,…

In 4 experiments, the author explored the spontaneous construction of spatial situation models during discourse comprehension by using the sentence-recognition paradigm of J. D. Bransford, J. R. Barclay, and J. J. Franks (1972). In Experiment 1, signaling causal relevance of spatial relations was a necessary precondition for replicating their…

Can people learn causal structure more effectively through intervention rather than observation? Four studies used a trial-based learning paradigm in which participants obtained probabilistic data about a causal chain through either observation or intervention and then selected the causal model most likely to have generated the data. Experiment 1…

The authors outline a cognitive and computational account of causal learning in children. They propose that children use specialized cognitive systems that allow them to recover an accurate "causal map" of the world: an abstract, coherent, learned representation of the causal relations among events. This kind of knowledge can be perspicuously…

Teleological explanations (TEs) account for the existence or properties of an entity in terms of a function: we have hearts because they pump blood, and telephones for communication. While many teleological explanations seem appropriate, others are clearly not warranted--for example, that rain exists for plants to grow. Five experiments explore…

A simple proof to some known results on the convergence of linear recursive sequences with nonnegative coefficients is given, using the technique of monotone convergence.

Numerous studies have examined the etiology of the association between reading difficulties and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in school-age children, but little is known about the relation between prereading skills and ADHD behaviors prior to the beginning of formal reading instruction. A population-based sample of 809 pairs of…

In many practical settings, essentially the same differential item functioning (DIF) procedures have been in use since the late 1980s. Since then, examinee populations have become more heterogeneous, and tests have included more polytomously scored items. This paper summarizes and classifies new DIF methods and procedures that have appeared since…