Do cultures differ with respect to judgments of rationality? If so, does it follow that rationality is culturally specific, or that cultures have their own "rationalities"? If so, does it further follow that the philosophical status or worthiness of multiculturalism as a social value or ideal varies from culture to culture? In this article I…

The conjunction fallacy (CF) comes about when the occurrence of two events is rated as more likely than either in isolation. A typical participant in a CF study is presented with a description of a hypothetical individual (i.e., a compound sample stimulus) and then asked to make judgments as to the likelihood that that person engages in a…

Objectives: Evaluators examining the same evidence often arrive at substantially different conclusions in forensic assessments of child sexual abuse (CSA). This study attempts to identify and quantify subjective factors that contribute to such disagreements so that interventions can be devised to improve the reliability of case decisions. Methods:…

Outliers in assessments are often treated as a nuisance for data analysis; however, they can also assist in quality assurance. Their frequency can suggest problems with form codes, scanning accuracy, ability of examinees to enter responses as they intend, or exposure of items.

Adjunctive or induced behavior is generated during a variety of schedules of reinforcement. Several theoretical conceptualizations suggest that rate of reinforcement is the primary variable controlling the strength or levels of induced behavior. The operant response requirement within the schedule context has not been extensively studied as a…

We conducted descriptive observations of severe problem behavior for 2 individuals with autism to identify precursors to problem behavior. Several comparative probability analyses were conducted in addition to lag-sequential analyses using the descriptive data. Results of the descriptive analyses showed that the probability of the potential…

This study sought to determine the accuracy of an assessment format in which selection outcomes were delayed and probabilistic; these are unavoidable features of an assessment designed to determine preferences of multiple children simultaneously. During the single arrangement, preference hierarchies were established by having a child repeatedly…

Acquisition of interactive skills involves the use of internal and external cues. Experiment 1 showed that when actions were interdependent, learning was effective with and without external cues in the single-task condition but was effective only with the presence of external cues in the dual-task condition. In the dual-task condition, actions…

Four methods for estimating a dynamic factor model, the direct autoregressive factor score (DAFS) model, are evaluated and compared. The first method estimates the DAFS model using a Kalman filter algorithm based on its state space model representation. The second one employs the maximum likelihood estimation method based on the construction of a…

A squared semipartial correlation coefficient ([Delta]R[superscript 2]) is the increase in the squared multiple correlation coefficient that occurs when a predictor is added to a multiple regression model. Prior research has shown that coverage probability for a confidence interval constructed by using a modified percentile bootstrap method with…

Binocular rivalry occurs when the eyes are presented with different stimuli and subjective perception alternates between them. Though recent years have seen a number of models of this phenomenon, the mechanisms behind binocular rivalry are still debated and we still lack a principled understanding of why a cognitive system such as the brain should…

This paper identifies key concepts and issues associated with the reasoning of informal statistical inference. I focus on key ideas of inference that I think all students should learn, including at secondary level as well as tertiary. I argue that a fundamental component of inference is to go beyond the data at hand, and I propose that statistical…

Government agencies typically apply a general value of statistical life (VSL) estimate when performing cost-benefit analysis (CBA). However, theory suggests that college students attach a value to statistical lives that differs from society's VSL; therefore, CBA may lead to inefficient levels of risk reduction among students. A contingent…

We study different ways of determining the mean distance (r[subscript n]) between a reference point and its nth neighbour among random points distributed with uniform density in a D-dimensional Euclidean space. First, we present a heuristic method; though this method provides only a crude mathematical result, it shows a simple way of estimating…

The title of this article comes from a remark made by a Y10 girl in response to a question about repetition in her mathematics lessons. When asked why she thought that teachers returned to the same topic in different year groups, she replied: "So that it's, like, branded in our brains, so that we know it forever". Her comment stands in…