[tips] Social Media and Grades
Hi Inside Higher Ed had a brief blurb on lack of relationship between use of social media (e.g., facebook) and grades. See: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/12/28/qt#216242 Here is link to summary of study (a student project): http://www.unh.edu/news/docs/UNHsocialmedia.pdf I thought it might be useful for evaluation. Here are some of my thoughts, which I posted in comment: According to the summary report linked to in the social media article, use of such media varied by faculty. Namely, there were more heavy users from Liberal Arts and more light users from Engineering. No indication in the article that this factor was controlled in grade comparisons, despite possibility that it would (arguably) be easier to get high grades in some faculties than others. Also treatment of social media use as a binary categorical variable could easily mask meaningful patterns (e.g., drop in grades with extremely high use). Finally, students might self-regulate media use depending on their grades, suggesting that it would not be safe for individual students to assume that they could increase their use without any impact on their grades (i.e., reverse causality as explanation for non-relationship observed by students). Project appears to have been undertaken by students in a business school ... no wonder our economies are in such bad shape! [only partly a joke ... I don't think business schools have taken enough flack for collapse of economy] Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Boder and Holocaust interviews
Hi Interesting article about psychologist David Boder's interviews with displaced persons (holocaust survivors) in Feb 2010 issue (#9) of Knowledge magazine (a product of BBC). Interviews were obtained shortly after WW II ended. Information is available at the following link, although it is not working (for me) at this moment: http://voices.iit.edu Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Anybody See Any Snow?
Hi And here I was feeling good that our temperature was going to reach a high of -10 centigrade (+14 F, 263.15 kelvin) after several weeks of -20 or so. But my joy was short-lived, once I saw this posting. I bet, however, that you don't get to skate on the world's longest ice rink. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA2XCv3qenw Best wishes Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Bourgeois, Dr. Martin mbour...@fgcu.edu 19-Dec-09 9:55:11 AM It's only getting up to 70 here today, winter is definitely on the way. Had to turn the pool heater on. My current fave is Bob Dylan's cover of Brave Combo's Must be Santa. If you haven't seen or heard it, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8qE6WQmNus From: Mike Palij [m...@nyu.edu] Sent: Saturday, December 19, 2009 4:17 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: [tips] Anybody See Any Snow? On the east coast of the U.S. there is supposed to be this lollapalooza of a snow storm moving north which is supposed to hit NYC and leave 8+ inches of snow (*yawn*). So far, no flakes (outside of the usual ones that one encounters on the streets of NYC). But I hear that there is a little bit of snow now around Maryland, round a place called Frostburg. Is this true or another misrepresentation by the eastern liberal elite media establishment? By the way, anyone have a favorite Holidays song? I'm partial to Annie Lennox's version of Winter Wonderland. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Darwin's illness revisited
Hi I actually use the PKU example as well to address the perceived immutability of genetically determined characteristics. As to my admittedly cryptic phrasing, I was referring to the immutability of the genetic influence on the manifested characteristic, as elaborated by Stephen. If I can quote a more credible source than myself for my wording, Plomin writes: The example of PKU serves as an antidote to the mistaken notion that genetics implies immutability, as discussed later. For the article go to http://www.uth.tmc.edu/clinicalneuro/institute/2005/Mazzocco's%20pdf's/Plomin%20Walker.pdf Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA sbl...@ubishops.ca 18-Dec-09 12:46 PM On 17 Dec 2009 at 22:15, Jim Clark wrote: It also allows one to make the point that genetic does NOT equal immutable, perhaps another factor in student resistance to genetic hypotheses. I must demur, although perhaps only to the way this is expressed. Genetic causation does mean immutable. It is possible to reduce or prevent the secondary consequences of the genetic specification (a trivial example would be hair dye for people suffering from red hair; a non-trivial example the special diet used to treat PKU) but the genetic basis remains unchanged. It's still red under the blonde hair dye; the individual with PKU still can't metabolize phenylalanine. It is true that we are on the cusp of real genetic change through gene therapy; it may already be here in a few extraordinary cases. But in general, while we can ameliorate the consequences of a genetic specification, we cannot change the specification nor its direct consequence. Cautious note to the red-haired. I joke. I have nothing against red hair. Indeed, some of my best friends have red hair. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Darwin's illness revisited
Hi Lactose intolerance is definitely unevenly distributed across different populations, as Beth indicates. Here are some statistics and maps showing its distribution. http://www.foodreactions.org/intolerance/lactose/prevalence.html The level of lactose intolerance (in modern times at least) is quite low for UK (presumably Caucasians?), which leads one to wonder about its a priori probability as a disorder for Darwin. The story in Africa is more complicated because lactose tolerance appears to have evolved in parts of East Africa independent of its evolution in Europe. See: http://darwinstudents.blogspot.com/2009/02/evolution-of-lactose-tolerance.html I've also seen other sites arguing for the fairly rapid evolution of lactose tolerance once milk is introduced, but I'm not sure where. So incidence statistics may vary across generations. I talk about this and a number of other genetic determined disorders that vary across ethnicity (e.g., sickle cell anemia) in my culture and psychology class. Students appear more receptive to genetic explanations for physical disorders than for psychological traits, in part perhaps because the mechanisms for some physical disorders are well understood. It also allows one to make the point that genetic does NOT equal immutable, perhaps another factor in student resistance to genetic hypotheses. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com 17-Dec-09 4:32:30 PM People who have bowel problems such as Crohn's, colitis and inflammatory bowel disease, are often also lactose intolerant, at least in my own and many family members' experience. Lactose intolerance is also a lot more common in the world than many realize. (Asians, Africans, African-Americans and Native Americans are almost 100% lactose intolerant, and worldwide, about 75% of adults are unable to tolerate lactose.) So lactose intolerance could have been just one of the many intestinal problems that poor Darwin endured. He was probably encouraged to drink milk to settle his stomach, as my poor grandmother was urged to do. She had bleeding ulcers, but it was before lactose intolerance was understood, and she was encouraged to drink milk all day to soothe her tortured stomach. It's a marvel she lived as long as she did, albeit with most of her stomach removed and lots of other things as well... Secondly, we don't have to stick to just one disease to explain his skin problems. They don't *have* to be explained by the same disorder that caused his bowel problems. Beth Benoit Granite State College Plymouth State University New Hampshire On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 3:34 PM, sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: On 16 Dec 2009 at 11:40, Allen Esterson wrote, concerning my complaint that a new article by Hayman (2009) on Darwin's affliction didn't consider the previous most recent paper on the topic in 2005: Stephen has missed (vacationing?) what I find the most likely explanation, cited on TIPS on 5 October this year: Darwin's illness: a final diagnosis (2007) Fernando Orrego and Carlos Quintana Notes and Records of the Royal Society 2007: 61, 23-29 http://rsnr.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/61/1/23.full.pdf+html Yes, I was rash to assert that without checking. As it happens, I was startled and pleased to receive an e-mail yesterday from none other than John Hayman himself, which once again should remind us that our postings are public. Dr. Hayman also pointed out that there have been a number of other recent diagnoses, including a resurgence of Crohn's disease and mercury poisoning...and Helicobacter. He told me that the original version of his paper did address the lactose intolerance theory, but was cut from the paper due to space limitation. He sent me a copy of his views on the lactose question, possibly the material edited out from his article, and while he seems to agree that the lactose (or milk protein) intolerance theory does have merit, it fails to adequately explain the severity and range of his symptoms. As for Allen's nomination of the Orrego and Quintana hypothesis of Crohn's disease as most likely, I'm not so sure. O Q argue that the precipitating circumstance was a bacterial infection contracted in Chile. But both Campbell and Mathews (2005) and Hayman (2009) argue that there were signs of the illness before Darwin set sail. That would seem to rule it out, or at least O Q's version. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact:
Re: [tips] APA citation question
Hi I found following Noor, Q. (2003). Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life. New York: Miramax reference at http://division39.org/pub_reviews_detail.php?book_id=293 (APA section on Psychoanalysis). It does not strike me as correct, either. I wonder if something like following would apply Queen Noor (2003). Leap ... on the assumption that Queen Noor acts as her single name, and one would probably be citing her as Queen Noor (2003) or (Queen Noor, 2003). Speaking personally, I would not be citing her as Noor (2003) or (Noor, 2003), just as one would not cite Queen Elizabeth (were she to write her undoubtedly interesting memoirs) as Elizabeth (2008) or (Elizabeth, 2008). Reference should probably correspond to citation style. I do not see how one can use names that in fact do not appear in the authorship, as in the other possibilities. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com 13-Dec-09 5:04:42 PM How does one cite an author in the reference section if he/she is royalty? I have a student who is writing a paper about Queen Noor, from a developmental standpoint. My student is using her autobiography (called *Leap of Faith)*, as a reference, and the author is listed in the book as Queen Noor. Her real name is Noor Al-Hussein (or, of course, Lisa Najeeb Halaby). How to cite in the Reference section? Noor, Q. Noor, A. Al-Hussein, N. Halaby, L. N. (a.k.a. Noor, Q.) ??? None of these sounds correct, but Al-Hussein, N. seems the most valid. Yet she didn't cite herself that way in her book. Very strange... How, for example, would Queen Elizabeth be cited if she were ever to do an unexpected thing like write a book? Beth Benoit Granite State College Plymouth State University New Hampshire --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] fear, conditioning, and memory
Hi Just on reading the news report (not much detail), sounds as though this was extinction, with some manipulation of the interval between learning and extinction. Also mentions initial representation of stimulus (blue square) without shock before the extinction proper. Has anyone studied effect of immediate vs delayed extinction? Might the phenomenon of spontaneous recovery suggest benefits of delayed extinction? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA DeVolder Carol L devoldercar...@sau.edu 10-Dec-09 11:21 AM This is kind of interesting. Oversimplified, but interesting. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091209/sc_nm/us_fear_memory Carol DeVolder, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Chair, Department of Psychology St. Ambrose University Davenport, Iowa 52803 phone: 563-333-6482 e-mail: devoldercar...@sau.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Birth order effects for cooperation?
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA sbl...@ubishops.ca 07-Dec-09 10:11 AM ... But here's the catch. They provided a complex statistical analysis (to me, anyway) but their analysis depends on a curious grouping of birth order: first-borns comprised one group, and later-borns the other. But the later-born group also included only children (without siblings). On logical grounds, one would think that only children belong in the first-born category instead. Their justification for doing this was inspection of the data. For trust: Means of x [their monetary datum] for middleborn, lastborn and only children appeared much closer to each other than to the mean of x for firstborns (Table 2); these three categories were therefore pooled. For reciprocity: Only children and laterborns were pooled because their average amounts sent (y) were closer to each other than to the average amount sent by firstborns (Table 2). My own inspection of their data suggests that without this post- hoc categorization, they would not have been able to report significant results. Is their move kosher, or do we have a case of data-massaging here? JC: Stats were nonconventional (randomization tests), but looks to me like they got a significant effect (.042) WITHOUT the grouping (i.e., using the 4 groups First, Middle, Last, Only) and then grouped them to show that the significant variability was due to First vs Non-First (other 3 groups). Depending on hypothesized underlying mechanism (I did not read rest of paper, just results), it could make sense to group Only with non-First born since, for example, they would have no younger siblings. Of course that reasoning would not apply to middle born, who were also lumped together and actually showed results most different from Firstborns. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Remember Those Free Copies of the On the Origin of the Species Being Given Out by Fundament
Hi This creationist effort has been around for the past few months and is about to hit certain Canadian universities on 24 Nov. You can see responses discrediting the information in the insert and more at http://ncse.com/ If you follow the Don't Diss Darwin link, you will find a list of the institutions lucky enough to receive this special gift! http://www.dontdissdarwin.com/schools.php I don't know how much actual impact this has had on campuses where book has already been distributed. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 22-Nov-09 6:18:16 PM At least one source points out that some of these copies have a 50 page introduction which attacks the volume; see: http://www.dailytech.com/AntiEvolution+Actor+Modifies+Darwins+Work+With+Questionable+Intro/article16892.htm or http://tinyurl.com/ycfu3mp I admit that there are big holes in my pop culture knowledge and that I never watched the sitcom Growing Pains, thus, I have no familiarity with Kirk Cameron, an actor, who was on the show and who authored the introduction as well as handing out copies of the free Darwin on Perdue's campus. I assume this is just another child star whose life has gone seriously wrong. He also promotes the notion that Hitler's ideas were based on Darwin's theory, a position advocated by Ben Stein (political analyst/eye drop shill) and others. In other news, if you had a first edition of the Darwin's On the Origin of Species (published in 1859), where would you keep it? (a) in a glass case, opened to the title page (b) closed in an archival grade envelope to protect against light, humidity, and insects (c) on the book shelf with the rest of the Darwinia (d) in the toilet For the answer to where one person kept it, see: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h-AA11NDInkwPqU7N0Er8sKs0MHA or http://tinyurl.com/yff26en -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Famous Narcissists?
Hi I was curious ... google to the rescue! http://www.ultimate-self.com/famous-narcissists-picasso/ http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_are_some_famous_narcissists http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/ultimate-self/posts/tag/famous+narcissists/ http://blogcritics.org/culture/article/study-finds-celebrities-to-be-narcissistic/ (last one actually cites the following research study by Young and Pinsky on narcissism in celebrities ... paper is also available at link) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL_udi=B6WM0-4K9C558-2_user=1068128_rdoc=1_fmt=_orig=search_sort=d_docanchor=view=c_searchStrId=1099327499_rerunOrigin=google_acct=C51257_version=1_urlVersion=0_userid=1068128md5=23e92c22a9d47a55184160b7409807e6 Looks like Pinsky is becoming a celebrity? http://www.celebitchy.com/42079/dr_drews_new_book_says_most_celebs_are_narcissists/ http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-narcissism-epidemic/200906/the-normal-narcissism-reality-tv Time to stop and do some real work! But looks like an interesting exercise. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Britt, Michael michael.br...@thepsychfiles.com 18-Nov-09 7:22 AM In my next episode I plan to discuss the study that was published last year on the topic of how narcissism can be detected by looking at Facebook pages. Since I'm going to talk about narcissism in general, and I assume that many of your do in your classes on this topic, here's my question: I'd like to refer to someone that just about everyone would know and just about everyone would agree is a narcissist. Who would make for a good example? Oh yes, it would be better if this person were dead. ;) Michael Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] SPSS Stats help needed
Hi Assuming you mean the MANOVA routine in SPSS (not GLM, for example), use syntax like the following to partition the interaction: MANOVA dep BY major(1 2) place(1 3) /PRINT = SIGNIF(SINGLEDF) /CONTRAST(place) = SPECIAL(1 1 1 -2 1 1 0 -1 1). .NOTE: if this is the contrast you want! The above will partition the 2 df (2-1)(3-1) interaction into single df contrasts. To test the simple effects (assuming same contrast) and partition simple effects into single df contrasts, use: MANOVA dep BY major(1 2) place(1 3) /PRINT = SIGNIF(SINGLEDF) /CONTRAST(place) = SPECIAL(1 1 1 -2 1 1 0 -1 1) /DESIGN major place WITHIN major(1) place WITHIN major(2). These analyses can also be done with GLM using LMATRIX command or other options. If you are using Manova in the more generic sense (i.e., multiple dependent variables), I am less certain about how the above apply. But since, multiple dep var Manova is often followed up by single dep var analyses, one could repeat above for each dep var. Hope this helps. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Julie Osland osla...@wju.edu 16-Nov-09 3:37:54 PM Hi All-- I am hoping one of you can help me. Here is what I need to figure out. A student, one of our really good students, asked if you can test for interactions using MANOVA just like you do with ANOVA. I said sure you can. So now I am in a position to have to show them how and I want to be really prepared. I found some data from a of study mine and ran a 2x3 Manova, no problem at all. But I want to be really prepared to have to answer further questions. The data has the following IVs: math major (math intensive vs. non- math intensive) and math placement (remedial, college algebra, and advanced) and what I want to know in the event I am asked, how to test for the simple main effects and Interaction Contrasts in MANOVA. I did this stuff years (and years ago) in ANOVA but have been separated from my notes and books. I've spent the better part of an hour looking at stats books and searching SPSS help to no avail. Can anyone point me to a good resource regarding how to do this in SPSS? Thanks much, Julie -- Dr. Julie A. Osland, M.A., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Psychology Wheeling Jesuit University 316 Washington Avenue Wheeling, WV 26003 Office: (304) 243-2329 e-mail: osla...@wju.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] NoNotes
Hi As someone who agrees that note-taking is helpful for learning and as someone who definitely abuses powerpoint (just like I use to abuse overheads!) in my teaching, I would raise one caution about Chris's (and Tufte's) criticisms. Namely, there is much evidence for the benefit of concreteness and relevant images for memory in general and for the benefit of accompanying relevant images in comprehension of text and generalization from text (e.g., basic work by Allen Paivio and work on informational texts by Richard Mayer). So images per se are not bad and can in fact be good ... just not irrelevant fluff, as noted in Chris's slides. Also I am a very data-heavy lecturer (I'm just not convinced yet that our theories do justice to the complexity of the results) and hence find powerpoint with corresponding handouts for students very useful for presenting figures and tables of results. And since images can easily be pasted into powerpoint, one is not particularly limited by the crudeness of powerpoint graphs and the like. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 08-Nov-09 11:51:12 AM *From:* Don Allen [mailto:dal...@langara.bc.ca] *Sent:* Saturday, November 07, 2009 7:24 PM *To:* Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) *Subject:* [tips] NoNotes Being a student (with money) just got a whole lot easier: http://nonotes.com/index.htm The company says that their service allows you to concentrate on the lecture rather that note taking. I think this is a red herring. I have argued elsewhere that note-taking is the first cognitive pass through the material of the lecture (http://www.yorku.ca/christo/papers/PablumPoint.htm). It forces one to quickly interpret and summarize what has been said. Without it, it is too easy to just let the words pass over one without really comprehending them, or to drift off entirely. In short, note-taking HELPS concentration, rather than distracting one. (Yes, of course there are exceptions.) Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Memory research
Hi The standard DRM does NOT use categorically related items, as described in Michael's original message, but rather words that are all associatively related to some critical item (e.g., sleep). Indeed, the occurrence of false memories for categorical lists appears to be much reduced, if not completely absent. See Park, L. P., Shobe, K. K., Kihlstrom. (2005). Associative and categorical relations in the associative memory illusion. Psychological Science, 16, 792-797. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Stuart McKelvie smcke...@ubishops.ca 05-Nov-09 6:44:24 PM Roediger, H., L. III, McDermott, K. B. (1995) Creating false memories: remembering words not presented on lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 803-814. Dear Michael, This is the classic study using this paradigm which been tabbed the DRM procedure after these two authors and James Deese. Actually, I have argued that it should be called the DRMRS paradim becayse Reid and Solso also originated but this suggestion has not caught on. McKelvie, S. J. (2001). Effect of free and forced retrieval instructions on false recall and recognition. Journal of General Psychology, 128. 261-278. Sincerely, Stuart _ Sent via Web Access Floreat Labore Recti cultus pectora roborant Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D., Phone: 819 822 9600 x 2402 Department of Psychology, Fax: 819 822 9661 Bishop's University, 2600 rue College, Sherbrooke, Qušbec J1M 1Z7, Canada. E-mail: stuart.mckel...@ubishops.ca (or smcke...@ubishops.ca) Bishop's University Psychology Department Web Page: http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy Floreat Labore ___ From: Britt, Michael [michael.br...@thepsychfiles.com] Sent: 05 November 2009 19:24 To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Memory research Does anyone have a reference for those memory studies in which a) subjects were given a list of things to memorize in a short period of time and b) some subjects had a list of things that all belonged to a group (like animals or pointed objects) and c) subjects were asked if they saw an object which belonged to the group, but which was not actually on the list and finally, d) subjects claimed to have seen the object in the list? Michael Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] CBC News - Canada - Hype can make us all ill
Hi But is this on top of regular flu or instead of regular flu? If the latter great. If the former, then it is like saying that new disease X is not too bad as it kills fewer people than existing disease Y. Also, is it not the case that H1N1 is killing people who are NOT likely to be killed by regular flu? Difficult then to compare mortality rates (e.g., H1N1 only kills 5% of infected [young] people versus regular flu which kills 10% of infected [old] people ... warning ... numbers chosen out of the air and no basis in fact!). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 03-Nov-09 6:58:07 PM Still worried about the swine flu? Check out this interview: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/11/02/f-viewpoint-cassels.html The best line is: There is substantial evidence that the mortality rate from H1N1 flu is actually much smaller than seasonal flu. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Intro Statistics Text recommendation
Hi There is an intermediate approach in which students implement formulas using more powerful programs than hand calculators. Minitab is great for this (I haven't used it for years) because you could implement formula to compute values that could then be entered into later formula. Something like: let sum =3D sum(x). let mean =3D sum / n. This can also be done in Excel or some other spreadsheet. There was a debate a number of years ago about using spreadsheets to teach statistics, with some worrying about the inappropriate algorithms once upon a time incorporated into spreadsheets or the limitations of definitional formula (from a math point of view) and others focusing on the pedagogical value. In my honours stats class where students have to use syntax, I also do some of this using computes, such as (below 34.234 is mean of x): compute xdev =3D x - 34.234 compute xdev2 =3D xdev**2 descr xdev xdev2 /stat =3D sum shows sum of deviations about mean =3D 0 and gives SS for x. Avoids problem that Rick mentions but still requires students to compute the statistics, which I too believe is very important for understanding stats. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Rick Froman rfro...@jbu.edu 30-Oct-09 3:37:36 PM The PS below is a good imitation of an invitation to a discussion (with the obvious exception of the opening sentence). So I will respect Dr. Melucci*s wishes and say that I don*t want to discuss the necessity of hand calculations either and furthermore that my undergrad stat class where I did paper and pencil hand calculations each weekday evening for a semester didn*t get me any closer to understanding statistics and only frustrated me when minor little mathematical errors prevented me from getting the answers shown in the book. It was kind of like teaching me to be a computer without providing me with a mathematical CPU unit. * Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Box 3055 x7295 rfro...@jbu.edu http://tinyurl.com/DrFroman Proverbs 14:15 A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps. From: drna...@aol.com [mailto:drna...@aol.com] Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 2:28 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Intro Statistics Text recommendation PS. I don't want to discuss whether teaching the hand calculations is necessary. I could never learn mathematics by reading descriptions of how to do it. Before they learn SPSS, they need to learn at least a very basic version of what SPSS does. It's like teaching someone to use a calculator without teaching them to add, subtract, multiply etc. with his or her own brain first. Thanks for your help - and have a good weekend too. Nancy Melucci Long Beach CIty College Long Beach CA -Original Message- From: Gerald Peterson peter...@vmail.svsu.edu To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Sent: Fri, Oct 30, 2009 12:12 pm Subject: Re: [tips] Seligman's Explanatory Style Would his ideas constitute a model, a formal theory, a moderator variable, a theoretical line of research, or in other words, just a theoretical idea? I just teach undergrads about features of formal scientific theories, but they soon find that anything passes for theory in psych textbooks and journals, and authors research various principles, effects, etc., without necessarily seeking the explanatory prowess of a developed theory. Learned helplessness in animals can be shown, but indeed, the human equivalent seems linked to styles/habits of attribution while its causal involvement in producing such experiences remains moot. It may be more relevant when covering cognitive therapies for these fundamentally neurobiological disorders. I enjoy mentioning the attributional style ideas when covering issues in adjustment, abnormal, etc., but am not convinced it deserves more than a gleeful mention allowing me to express my social-cognitive biases. Gerald L. (Gary) Peterson, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Psychology Saginaw Valley State University University Center, MI 48710 989-964-4491 peter...@svsu.edumailto:peter...@svsu.edu - Original Message - From: Scott O Lilienfeld slil...@emory.edumailto:slil...@emory.edu To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edumailto:tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 1:07:11 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: RE: [tips] Seligman's Explanatory Style Gary et al.: Seligman's attributional model has been presented and tested in many peer review articles over the past three decades, e.g., Abrahamson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E. P., Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87, 49*74. (just noticed that this article has been cited a whopping 4181 times according to Google
RE: [tips] Article in WSJ on study how brain develops without Dad.
Hi I essentially agree with Marie (having grown up without a father, I pretty much have to!). But doing fine with two same-sex parents does not deny the possibility of differences, such as (HYPOTHETICALLY!) boys growing up to be less aggressive and more caring. Also, there is a literature showing positive associations with father involvement in child-rearing, which is not the same as father absent unless one thinks of father (completely) absent as 0 involvement. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Helweg-Larsen, Marie helw...@dickinson.edu 30-Oct-09 10:02 AM Aside from the problems of generalizing from degu pups to human infants I think the study was lacking some control groups (perhaps they were included in the study which I have not read). In order to conclude that the changes were due to the absent father (aside: do degu pups have fathers - I am imagining lots of son-father chats, trips to the playground, etc) it seems that you would need to compare what would happen if you replaced the father with another male caregiver or with another female caregiver. It makes sense that having more caregivers might be advantageous (in humans as well) but do they really have to be related and does the gender matter (the article said that the male/female parents gave the same type of care)? As an aside I found the Washington Post writing pretty heterosexist. The first sentence reads : Conventional wisdom holds that two parents are better than one. Scientists are now finding that growing up without a father actually changes the way your brain develops. I think we have pretty well established that kids do fine when raised by two same-sex parents. Marie Washington Post article http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704754804574491811861197926.html Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013, office (717) 245-1562, fax (717) 245-1971 Office hours: Mon/Thur 3-4, Tues 10:30-11:30 http://www.dickinson.edu/departments/psych/helwegm From: Don Allen [mailto:dal...@langara.bc.ca] Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 10:41 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Article in WSJ on study how brain develops without Dad. Hi Joan- Quite a stretch to go from degu pups to human infants. The inrer-species differences are profound. Just consider the vast differences in the effects of olfactory stimulation between humans and rodents. I have never been impressed with the evidence that suggests that the absence of a parent (through death, divorce, etc.) has any significant lasting effect on children. I am even less impressed by studies which try to show that putting kids in day care somehow harms the kids. In fact, I have a standing bet of $10,000 that no one can reliably determine whether an adult was raised in day care or at home by observing their behaviour and their interactions with others. Let me know if you want to put some money on the table and I'll provide you the details of the wager. -Don. - Original Message - From: Joan Warmbold Date: Thursday, October 29, 2009 5:26 pm Subject: Re: [tips] Article in WSJ on study how brain develops without Dad. To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) http://mensnewsdaily.com/sexandmetro/2009/10/29/this-is-your- brain-without-dad/ This study on the impact of life without Dad for degu pups was presentedat the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago this month and recently published in the journal Neuroscience. Fascinating though, at least for me, not particularly surprising. We have known for some time how an infant's brain is very plastic and therefore, primed to be strongly influenced by early experiences. Another fascinating study with degu pups studied the impact on the pups who were removed from their caregiversfor just one hour a day. To me this latter study has potential (just potential) significance for parents considering early day care for their children. Joan jwarm...@oakton.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) Don Allen, Retired Formerly with: Dept. of Psychology Langara College 100 W. 49th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. Canada V5Y 2Z6 Phone: 604-733-0039 --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Scary experiments
Hi Here's a link to the 25 scary experiments, courtesy of Jeff Ricker on PESTs, and my comment on the examples. James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Jeffry Ricker jeff.ric...@sccmail.maricopa.edu 30-Oct-09 12:21 PM http://io9.com/5390389/25-of-the-scariest-science-experiments-ever-conducted JC: Seems to me this would be a good site to use for teaching critical thinking skills as claims about at least some of the examples have been debunked: e.g., Milgram experiment as noted by one commenter, the Tuscagee experiments, ... For the latter, see Shweder at http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/000CA34A.htm I'm not sure what the overall purpose of the site is, but it can hardly be good for scientists and psychologists to be lumped in with Nazis. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Scary experiments
Hi Rick and Michael got what I was after, not just about Milgram, but some of the other experiments as well. That is, they were not SCARY in the sense presented on the website as something horrific done to human beings (or animals in some examples). To me, what is scary about Milgram is the level of obedience elicited (and confirmed in a real life study with nurses, also on the list of 25, and other replications). Happy Hallowe'en! Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Britt, Michael michael.br...@thepsychfiles.com 30-Oct-09 3:49 PM Based upon what I found after a careful review of the recent Milgram replication study (and other pubs), it is not true that participants claimed they were traumatized for life. Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com On Oct 30, 2009, at 4:23 PM, Rick Froman wrote: I think the debunking Stephen is asking about involved claims made on the 25 Scariest site including this sentence about the Milgram study: Later, many participants claimed they were traumatized for life after discovering that they were capable of such inhumane behavior. My understanding is that that did not happen. Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Professor of Psychology Box 3055 John Brown University 2000 W. University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 rfro...@jbu.edu (479)524-7295 http://tinyurl.com/DrFroman -Original Message- From: sbl...@ubishops.ca [mailto:sbl...@ubishops.ca] Sent: Friday, October 30, 2009 3:20 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Scary experiments On 30 Oct 2009 at 15:41, Jim Clark wrote: Hi Here's a link to the 25 scary experiments, courtesy of Jeff Ricker on PESTs, and my comment on the examples. ricopa.edu 30-Oct-09 12:21 PM http://io9.com/5390389/25-of-the-scariest-science-experiments-ever-conducted I was just going to complain that the author of that website, Annalee Newitz, ripped off The Chronicle of Higher Education. Oops! It seems the CHE got it from that website. What I clicked on on the Chronicle site took me to her website but I didn't notice. Good thing I didn't leave a nasty comment for Annalee. Jim also said: claims about at least some of the examples have been debunked: e.g., Milgram experiment as noted by one commenter I thought that Milgram held up pretty well despite difficulties in repeating it for ethical reasons. Perhaps Jim could elaborate on this debunking. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Assessment of learning, not grades?
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca tay...@sandiego.edu 28-Oct-09 2:02:35 PM I'm not sure I can add much to what Marc has said but there are some really great references all over the web about why grades don't make the assessment grade, including notions concerning issues of inconsistent across courses or sections elements of points for attendance, points for participation, extra credit; subjective grading of papers and presentations and so on. In most cases the grade is a composite of so many factors that it's hard to say just exactly what any one person may have actually learned. JC: There is lots of evidence that grades provide a very reliable and valid measure of student learning, although I agree it might be difficult to check off what outcome boxes different grades represent (more on that later). The evidence includes such things as: 1. Variation in student gpas. The standard deviation of an average (i.e., gpa here) depends on the correlations between the scores (i.e., grades) that go into the average. If grades included too much noise, everyone would end up with approximately the same gpa, something one does not see. 2. Grades are reliably correlated with a host of variables that one would expect them to correlate with, such as: measures of academic aptitude, study time and skills, attendance at class, Although the correlation between aptitude measures and grades are often cited as validating the aptitude measures, they do validate the grades at the same time. 3. On a more subjective note, it is almost always the case that students who truly impress me with their abilities in class, in carrying out thesis research, in conversation, ... have exceptional grades. My concern with an outcomes approach in higher education (something we do not presently face in Canada, at least not at my institution) is that I do not see exactly how many of the important outcomes could be evaluated other than by recreating the classroom experiences and evaluations. How do outcome approaches, for example, evaluate whether students can study material related to some topic, organize and give a clear 50 minute spoken presentation, and write a coherent and correct 15 page paper? How do outcome approaches evaluate whether students can read a bunch of articles on some topic, synthesize the material, and come up with a worthwhile research project? How do outcome approaches evaluate whether students can independently study and learn complex material? How do outcome approaches determine that students have developed the capacity to persist with difficult material and cope effectively with the associated stress? (This last one probably arises because I teach a very stressful honours stats course!) My fear would be that the outcomes approach would lead to an emphasis on narrow, identifiable skills amenable to outcomes evaluation and that more important competencies would be ignored. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] APA style and DOI numbers
Hi If a full reference is adequate to produce a DOI, if available, then doesn't that mean that the DOI is redundant and unnecessary to find the article? The rationale for this requirement really escapes me, which leaves one in the unfortunate position of having to say to students: do it because the APA Style guide says to do it. On an empirical note, is there any evidence that people were retrieving incorrect articles given the information available in past editions? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 24-Oct-09 7:18:53 PM Here's some good news from those of you who were dreading having to cut and paste dozens of DOI numbers into your reference sections starting in January. It is a website that allows you to enter a list of reference, and if gives you back the references with all available DOI numbers appended: http://www.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery/ Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] APA style and DOI numbers
Hi Thought I might try to answer my own question about rationale of and purpose for DOIs. One planned use for DOIs would be as active links to an on-line version of the reference, as mentioned at the bottom of the following piece: http://equinoxjournals.com/ojs/equinoxdownloads/doicitations.pdf I input a set of 12 references into the program Chris mentioned. It found two DOIs. When I clicked on the DOI links it went to the article site, but the actual articles required $ or login as licensed user. Presumably, DOIs as links to articles would primarily be of use in an institutional environment with licensed access. I'm not sure how or whether that would work if one were clicking on DOIs outside of some proprietary system like PsycINFO. If I simply print a PDF of the data returned by the CrossRef DOI system, the links are not active. The numbers themselves need to be embedded in html code to function. And when I copied the entire data and tried to paste it into a wordprocessor, the reference format was messed up. Perhaps there is a way around this? There does appear to be some mercenary motives also at work (but of course the whole publishing enterprise is in the make money business). See: http://doi.contentdirections.com/eps/sieck1.pdf http://doi.contentdirections.com/eps/sieck2.pdf Naturally, all of this is not free ... there are charges to acquire a DOI. Which leads one to wonder how all of this will integrate with Open Access efforts? About which there has been discussion: http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1155.html Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Jim Clark j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca 24-Oct-09 11:27:45 PM Hi If a full reference is adequate to produce a DOI, if available, then doesn't that mean that the DOI is redundant and unnecessary to find the article? The rationale for this requirement really escapes me, which leaves one in the unfortunate position of having to say to students: do it because the APA Style guide says to do it. On an empirical note, is there any evidence that people were retrieving incorrect articles given the information available in past editions? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 24-Oct-09 7:18:53 PM Here's some good news from those of you who were dreading having to cut and paste dozens of DOI numbers into your reference sections starting in January. It is a website that allows you to enter a list of reference, and if gives you back the references with all available DOI numbers appended: http://www.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery/ Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date
Hi Or a more pessimistic interpretation ... it is a sign of an immature discipline that its current members do not recognize (a) the foundations of their ideas, and (b) when they are rediscovering the wheel. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA William Scott wsc...@wooster.edu 23-Oct-09 8:12 AM Fechner, schmechner. Ask the graduate students if they know who Donald Hebb was. You'll get the same response. Maybe it's the sign of a maturing science. It's more important to know the facts than the names of those who discovered them. Or maybe it's something else. Bill Scott Wuensch, Karl L wuens...@ecu.edu 10/22/09 10:26 PM I am probably the only faculty member at my institution who even mentions Fechner in the Intro class. When I refer to Fechner with my graduate students they give me that WTF are you talking about look. When I ask who has ever heard of Fechner, not a single hand is raised. So sad. A few will say they remember hearing of Weber, but none can comment on his contributions to the discipline. Cheers, Karl W. -Original Message- From: Gerald Peterson [mailto:peter...@vmail.svsu.edu] Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 8:20 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date Is psychophysics being taught at the undergrad level? I was introduced to Fechner in an undergrad Exper. Psych class and then in the capstone History and Systems class, but I don't see references to psychophysical methods in most Experimental psych texts. I would think it would be covered in our SP class. I do mention Fechner and Weber in Intro tho. Gary Gerald L. (Gary) Peterson, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Psychology Saginaw Valley State University University Center, MI 48710 989-964-4491 peter...@svsu.edu - Original Message - From: William Scott wsc...@wooster.edu To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Sent: Thursday, October 22, 2009 5:44:39 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [tips] Fechner Day! -- that darn date A long time ago an old friend introduced me to the tradition of serving cake in class on Fechner day. I recommend it. Some places can even put a photo in the icing. Fechner's mug makes everyone take a small piece so one cake can stretch through a large class. Bill Scott Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 10/22/09 5:28 PM The Zend-Avesta was a religious text (after a manner of speaking) by Fechner, in which he outlined his daylight view of science (a kind of pan-psychist, post-Romantic view of the world), as opposed to he called the twilight view (of materialism). (The Avesta is a sacred text of Zoroastrians, who (to a first approximation) worship the sun.) He also wrote abook about the soul life of plants. Neither has ever been translated to my knowledge, but Michael Heidelberger's biography of Fechner is an excellent source (if a bit dense). Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == Ken Steele wrote: I have been wondering about the report of that dream, because it is repeated so often--but without attribution. I looked at the 1966 English translation of Elements of Psychophysics (Vol I) and no mention of the date or a dream occurs in the text. (The translation of the volume was NIH-funded to celebrate the centennial of the publication of E of P. I guess we will need to wait until 2066 to see the translation of Vol. II). E G Boring does the introduction to the translation and repeats the dream story--without attribution of course. Even more irritating is an article by Boring (1961), in which the date/dream story is higlighted several times, still without attribution. However, Boring (1929/1950) does provide an interesting bit of info in his Experimental Psychology. Fechner wrote a book, Zend-Avesta, oder uber die Dinge des Himmels und des Jenseits, which was published in 1851. Boring (1929/1950, p. 279) notes: Oddly enough this book contains Fechner's program of psychophysics... 1851 would be a year after the famous dream and the dream/idea would still be fresh. The Elements contains mainly the results of the program Google books has the Zend-Avesta online but my rusty knowledge of German and the old font system have managed to block my efforts to find the psychophysics section. Perhaps another scholar will have better luck. Happy Fechner's Day, Ken Boring, E. G. (1961). Fechner: Inadvertent founder of psychophysics. Psychometrika, 26, 3-8. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make
Re: [tips] Not really about teaching of psych
Hi Talk about religion and universities without debate? Good luck! :) See: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-90845928.html Anyway, there apparently are some issues in the American situation about separation of church and state. I looked for stuff on invocation, since convocation is where prayer is normally expected and accepted in institutions, including universities. Seems that some universities are moving away from prayer even for convocations. See: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/07/AR2009040704634.html http://www.secularstudents.org/node/2610 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2228789/posts http://www.queensu.ca/secretariat/senate/hondegre.html You might start with what your practice is at Valdosta for convocation, and see if anything has been articulated. The general sense appears to be that there is more latitude in universities about prayer than in lower level schools, although whether there is anything coercive about participation seems to be a factor. See: http://pewforum.org/events/?EventID=141 It gets even trickier when cultures are involved, as in some Canadian (and perhaps American) universities with a high representation of Native Canadians (American Indians) and perhaps incorporating special programs to be inclusive and respectful of their culture. The province of Manitoba has a northern university where it appears to be the practice to begin Board of Governors meetings with a prayer led by an Elder. I did find some policies for universities, although some of them appear to finesse the problem by leaving it to the group holding the event, which I guess is tacit approval. http://appl003.ocs.lsu.edu/ups.nsf/4d8b193f0753c7e48625714000672ba4/5BBBC0FAF0E791BF86256C250062AE8B/$File/ps62Rev00.pdf http://www.acaffairs.ed.ac.uk/Committees/Senate/Meetings/200304/20031210/PaperA1-Prayers.pdf My gut feeling is that opening up more meetings and events to prayer will make it even more likely that some sort of protest will ensue, either from those not satisfied with the narrowness of the prayers (always subject to interpretation) or those opposed to any religous ceremony in university life. I guess another issue is how uncomfortable some people attending these events will feel? That at least should be an easily answered empirical question. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Deborah S Briihl dbri...@valdosta.edu 22-Oct-09 5:41:59 PM Hi - Sorry for the non teaching question, but I'm in a bind here. I'm not looking for any kind of debate here (please don't start one), but I serve on a committee at VSU that has been requested to develop a policy or recommendation on prayer on campus (yeah, yeah - I know some of you have a joke in mind). Anyway, the idea is to discuss the appropriateness of it at events that you might not expect it and may feel required to attend (such as Student Government or Honor's ceremony dinner). We are having difficulty finding one. If somebody at a public university has such a policy - could you send it to me backchannel (dbri...@valdosta.edu)? Thanks. -- Deb Dr. Deborah S. Briihl Dept. of Psychology and Counseling Valdosta State University 229-333-5994 dbri...@valdosta.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Recent Research using Classical Conditioning?
Hi Here's a brief blurb on this research ... you might have to register to see it. http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55989/ At least from the summary here, the researchers appear to hint that the learning might be conscious, which seems to me a stretch. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca sbl...@ubishops.ca 18-Oct-09 2:04:31 PM On 18 Oct 2009 at 12:17, Britt, Michael wrote: I haven't done an episode on classical conditioning so I'm looking around to see if there has been anything interesting on the topic. Just wondering if anyone had heard of any neat applications of classical conditioning in recent research? How about this? Bekinschtein, T. et al (2009). Classical conditioning in the vegetative and minimally conscious state. Nature Neuroscience, published online 20 September. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Recent Research using Classical Conditioning?
Hi Rick and I probably differ on how we interpret the word hint. To me when someone writes the study does not provide _clear_ evidence of conscious learning and It's _possible_ learning was independent of consciousness (underlining mine), then I see this as suggesting that learning was conscious. Others, like Rick, might read it differently. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Rick Froman rfro...@jbu.edu 20-Oct-09 11:37:49 AM What they said in the article was, while the cognitively impaired patients may have the neural circuitry that permits some learning, the study does not provide clear evidence that these patients are conscious of what they are learning. 'It's possible that this learning process may be independent of awareness,' said Giacino. (underline mine) I wouldn't characterize that as hinting that it might be conscious. I think it was probably in response to a question about whether or not these results indicate that these patients are actually conscious and the authors are saying that their research does not provide evidence of consciousness. Rick Dr. Rick Froman, Chair Division of Humanities and Social Sciences Box 3055 x7295 rfro...@jbu.edu http://tinyurl.com/DrFroman Proverbs 14:15 A simple man believes anything, but a prudent man gives thought to his steps. -Original Message- From: Jim Clark [mailto:j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca] Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 10:46 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Recent Research using Classical Conditioning? Hi Here's a brief blurb on this research ... you might have to register to see it. http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55989/ At least from the summary here, the researchers appear to hint that the learning might be conscious, which seems to me a stretch. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca sbl...@ubishops.ca 18-Oct-09 2:04:31 PM On 18 Oct 2009 at 12:17, Britt, Michael wrote: I haven't done an episode on classical conditioning so I'm looking around to see if there has been anything interesting on the topic. Just wondering if anyone had heard of any neat applications of classical conditioning in recent research? How about this? Bekinschtein, T. et al (2009). Classical conditioning in the vegetative and minimally conscious state. Nature Neuroscience, published online 20 September. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Worst manuscript reader advice ever?
Hi Darwin did write a wonderful book on worms (and books on many other topics) that should be required reading for all people wanting to emulate his great mind. He even describes some tests of worm's perceptual abilities based on research conducted in his study. The essential question was whether worms pull the narrowest part of leaves into their holes on cold nights by trial and error or by first feeling out the narrowest point. Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca sbl...@ubishops.ca 18-Oct-09 6:30:59 PM Make it a manual on pigeon-breeding! Forget the rest. Everyone loves pigeons--it'd be reviewed by every journal in the land. Unnamed publisher's reader on the MS for _ On the Origin of Species_. From the poem, A Pigeon Fancier's Manual by Ruth Padel (Darwin's great-great-grandaughter), reprinted in _Science_, 326, October 2, 2009, p. 49. See also http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/books/18pade.html I tried to verify this quote and came up with another version of the claim which seems authoritative (which means I believe it). The misguided reader was the Reverend Whitwell Elwin who was appalled by what he read and in a letter to Murray [Darwin's publisher] poured out his pain and hostility to Darwin*s theories, advising Murray not to publish this controversial work. He described it as `wild and foolish* and instead suggested that Darwin should write a book on pigeons. Everybody is interested in pigeons. The book would be received in every journal in the kingdom and would soon be on every table. http://darwinspigeons.com/#/john-murray/4535045590 Imagine if Darwin had taken his advice. Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] *Nature* on APA and clinical psychology
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Lilienfeld, Scott O slil...@emory.edu 15-Oct-09 1:26:35 PM Can we persuade individuals who enter graduate school with an indifference or even antipathy toward science to care about science - or at least care about finding ways of minimizing their propensity toward errors - with proper training? I don't know, although that's the focus of our manuscript. I believe (?) I've had a few scattered successes over the years in my graduate teaching and mentoring, but there's no question that it's hard work. JC: This suggests that perhaps the problem is better addressed prior to grad school; i.e., at the undergraduate level. We want to inculcate in our students the firm belief that science is THE way to address most issues about human behavior and experience. This also serves to address the problem that it it may not be just clinical psychology that experiences ascientific students ... might this not be similarly characteristic of other applied domains? And if we take the arrival of too many students into clinical psychology without a strong scientific orientation, does that indicate a shortcoming in our current practices with respect to inculcating science in our students? Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Shutter Island
Hi If the assignment is to read, review, and critique a _nonfictional_ instance of psychological writing, then I would probably not agree. The point would be to get practice processing expository material, and clearly fiction does not fit the bill. If the nonfictional is not part of the requirement and it is clear to _all_ students that fiction is acceptable, then ok. Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca tay...@sandiego.edu 14-Oct-09 2:33:08 PM I have a student who wants to read Shutter Island by Lehane for a homework assignment in my honors intro to psych class. I generally don't allow novels but he assures me that the story line about psychopathology is one he could easily critique. Are any tipsters familiar with this book? With Lehane's work in general? I am not. A web search doesn't give me any real substance to judge on. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 tay...@sandiego.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] News: Correcting a Style Guide - Inside Higher Ed
Hi I just read this ... many people outside psychology appear to be upset and rightly so. I'm not enamored of the suggestion, however, to shift to some other style (e.g., MLA). I also have been wondering just who is responsible for the mandated changes. For example, I find the DOI requirement for all references that have a DOI pretty weird ... would appear to just put more work on the author. And the issue of one or two spaces after a period appears like minutia that could have safely been ignored. And to what extent are the errors in the substantive parts because too much time and energy went into such irrelevant things? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 13-Oct-09 8:19:15 AM Debate over errors in the APA manual reaches Inside Higher Ed. http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/13/apa Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] On chick
Hi To add (minimally and empirically) to Stephen's discussion of chick, here are the top free associations to chick from the Florida Free Association norms. CHICK, CHICKEN, YES, 148, 35, .236 CHICK, GIRL, YES, 148, 23, .155 CHICK, EGG, YES, 148, 20, .135 CHICK, HEN, YES, 148, 15, .101 CHICK, BABY, YES, 148, 10, .068 CHICK, BABE, NO, 148, 6, .041 CHICK, YELLOW, YES, 148, 6, .041 CHICK, BIRD, YES, 148, 5, .034 CHICK, DUCK, YES, 148, 3, .020 CHICK, GUY, YES, 148, 3, .020 CHICK, CHIRP, YES, 148, 2, .014 CHICK, YOUNG, YES, 148, 2, .014 Last number in each column is proportion of 148 respondents who gave response in second column. Those clearly implying the girl sense are: girl, babe, and guy, constituting about 30% of responses. Looking up girl and guy gives no chick responses. Babe is not included as a stimulus (the no in third column above). Norms are somewhat dated now (probably from 1980s and 1990s) and also not broken down by gender. Perhaps safe bet to assume more male than female respondents made the girl association to chick. Also the case, however, that free associations are a relatively insensitive measure of the relatedness of constructs in the human mind because many English words are homonyms (as here) and properties having to do with the overall availability of the response term contributes to likelihood of producing that term. Might be of interest to track across generations associations to such sensitive terms, and also by demographic groups. Could perhaps also be worked into some kind of class exercise? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] To curve or not to curve
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca michael sylvester msylves...@copper.net 08-Oct-09 9:03:09 AM Is there evidence that adjuncts give more of the A grade than regular faculty? I forget now where I got it from but here are data from a talk a did here a few years ago. %As by Course Level For course levels 1, 2, and 3 - Full 26% 31% 35% - Assistant 30% 45% 42% - Adjunct 38% 50% 42% As to why more As for adjuncts, that is another question. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] To curve or not to curve
Hi As I noted, I am not sure where I got those figures, but if you look at following report (e.g., page 6), you will see that %As is quite high at Simon Fraser University, especially in Education. So figures reported are not out of line with some universities. http://www.sfu.ca/irp/Students/grades_report/documents/grades.report.pdf Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Don Allen dal...@langara.bc.ca 08-Oct-09 11:20:07 AM Hi Jim- I find that these percentages are remakably high. I just went over my grade distributions for the last several years and calculated the percentage of A grades (Including A-, A and A+) to be about 6-7% for both my Intro and Research Methods classes. I used a fixed grading system with 85% as the cut off point for the A range. Few, if any, of my students considered me to be a hard marker. I'm sure that if I had handed in a grade distribution with even 25% As I would have had a conversation with the department chair. Are you sure that those numbers are correct? -Don. - Original Message - From: Jim Clark Date: Thursday, October 8, 2009 8:49 am Subject: Re: [tips] To curve or not to curve To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca michael sylvester 08-Oct-09 9:03:09 AM Is there evidence that adjuncts give more of the A grade than regular faculty? I forget now where I got it from but here are data from a talk a did here a few years ago. %As by Course Level For course levels 1, 2, and 3 - Full 26% 31% 35% - Assistant 30% 45% 42% - Adjunct 38% 50% 42% As to why more As for adjuncts, that is another question. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) Don Allen Dept. of Psychology Langara College 100 W. 49th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. Canada V5Y 2Z6 Phone: 604-323-5871 --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Concept Map on Sexual Orientation
Hi 1. I would be reluctant to rest the continuum idea on Kinsey's work alone. He deliberately selected quite non-representative samples and sought out unusual sexual experiences and practices. Are there sounder data for this claim? 2. I'm not sure why demographics fits in with nature? How about a descriptive node including methods of measurement, notion of continuum, and demographics? 3. Nature question, especially genes, is a tricky one. Monozygotic twins tend to have more similar intrauterine environments (shared placenta, shared chorion) than dizygotic twins, who would be more similar than non-twin siblings. Complicates attributing twin differences to genes, especially given other findings of intrauterine hormonal effects. 4. Depending on audience might expand material on politics of sexual orientation research. I've always found it interesting that gays find idea of genetic cause attractive (not personal choice), whereas genetic explanations for other differences (race, gender) tend to be resisted. 5. Number of spelling errors / typos (homsexuality, temperment, ...) that need correcting and I believe that Bem Sex Role Inventory was constructed by Sandra Bem, not Daryl. Might want to check that out. 6. Concept map shows nice potential, although I could not determine whether it is possible to re-expand nodes after left ones were shrunk to show nodes expanded on right without lower level nodes of some major nodes also opening. That is, can one re-expand and just get the main headings. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Britt, Michael michael.br...@thepsychfiles.com 08-Oct-09 11:38:30 AM I'm putting together my notes for an upcoming episode on the origins of sexual orientation. The topic, of course, is huge, but I'm going to try to provide a general overview of the various explanations - nature/nurture and in between - for sexual orientation. I've got my notes in a concept map which is starting to get out of hand. Any thoughts/input/feedback appreciated (especially if anything really important is missing). Here's the link to the map: http://bit.ly/sexualorientation Michael Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] From the If You're So Smart How Come You Ain't Rich? Department
Hi The Zagorsky article appears to go out of its way to make the case for a lack of relationship between IQ and wealth. Just a couple of observations. 1. From figures 1 and 2, Zagorsky points out disparity in upper quadrants for income but not wealth. That is, more people of high income have high IQ than low IQ, but about equal numbers for wealth. But looking at figure 2 (wealth), it is clear that the (ignored) quadrant of low income and low wealth is much denser than the (ignored) quadrant of high income and low wealth. 2. In Table 2, average wealth (Net Worth) is presented for groups of different average IQ levels. The relationship is clearly linear with only one reversal. In fact the correlation between the aggregate figures (IQ and net worth) produces r2 = .963, only marginally less than IQs correlation with income for these aggregate data, r2 = .968. Much lower correlations for individual scores appears to be more due to noise in the data than to a lack of relationship. 3. The regression analyses, some of which actually show a negative relationship between IQ and wealth, appear problematic to me because they include predictors that are at least moderately correlated and arguably serve as mediators of relationships. For example, IQ and education correlated .62 according to Table 1 and both correlated about .16 / .17 with wealth. Including both in the regression analysis means that one is examing the relationship between wealth and IQ controlling statistically for education. That is, what is impact of IQ if education level does not differ. Is that really a sensible thing to do if the causal path is IQ * Education * Wealth or Income? My main take from this study is if you want to be wealthy ... don't get divorced, don't be born Black or Hispanic or in the USA, be self-employed (good luck) rather than a professional, don't marry someone who works (presumably wealthy people can keep their spouse at home), don't smoke heavily (good advice at the best of time), and don't be the primary earner (anyone looking for a partner to keep at home to make themselves wealthy, give me a call ... but don't tell my wife and ignore the fact that you would be the primary earner!). Personally I think this is a good candidate for the correlation (i.e., non-experimental) does not imply causation book, despite the seeming sophistication of the analyses. One final note ... anyone wanting to give away IQ points can also give me a call. I find that one can never have enough! Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 06-Oct-09 8:04:33 AM The Motley Fool website (a website that provides stock and investing advice) has a little article titled Are You Too Smart to Be Rich? in which the author goes over the reasons for why smart people (aka Big Brain/High IQ types -- I think that's a Jungian category :-) do badly at getting wealthy. Although skimpy on details (e.g., Michael Lewis wrote about the collapse of Long-Term Captial Management, an investment house with a couple of Nobel prize winning economists and heavy duty quantitative modelers and the collapse was not as simple as presented here; Lewis' article appeared in the NY Times and I provided a link to in a previous post to TiPS, so one should be able to search the archives for it). For more, see: http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2009/09/28/are-you-too-smart-to-be-rich.aspx To provide a sense of the presentation consider the following quote: |Economist Jay Zagorsky ran a study to determine whether |brains translate into riches. His conclusion? Intelligence is not |a factor for explaining wealth. Those with low intelligence should |not believe they are handicapped, and those with high intelligence |should not believe they have an advantage. | |In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explored example |after example of how the successful became so. He concluded |that once someone has reached an IQ of somewhere around 120, |having additional IQ points doesn't seem to translate into any |measurable real-world advantage. I'm not a fan of Gladwell so I haven't read Outliers but I presume some Tipsters are fans and wonder if they can confirm that Gladwell actually says that one doesn't get a benefit for having an IQ over 120. Some people seem to believe in this as shown in the following quote: |Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) billionaire |Warren Buffett seems to agree: If you are in the investment business |and have an IQ of 150, sell 30 points to someone else. Anybody know where one can sell some excess IQ points? ;-) -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re:[tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe?
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 03-Oct-09 8:56:25 AM On Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:11:01 -0600, Michael Smith wrote: Feeling a bit verbose, a few notes about what Mike P wrote. This was posted after I hit my 3 post limit yesterday, so I had to wait until today to provide a response. I was curious about what kind of responses Prof. Smith's comments would elicit and I remain curious. I had planned on making one of my verbose responses to Prof. Smith's points but I now think that there would be little point is doing so. Via con Dios folks. JC: Like Mike P. I'm skeptical of the consequences of responding, but here's a few thoughts. Mike S: I doubt whether any psychologist could assess the validity of the evidence for Ardi, we would simply be trusting the authority of the people working on it. JC: Might authorities differ in credibility to those committed to science and reason. For example, is a geologist stating that the earth is 4.5 billion years old no more credible / trustworthy / likely to be correct than a minister / priest / ... stating that the earth is 6 thousand years old? Is a social psychologist stating that people who are similar to one another are attracted no more credible than a self-proclaimed marriage counsellor on CNN stating that opposites attract? Isn't the critical question the kind of evidence being appealed to by the authority, rather than simply that they are an authority? It would seem completely unreasonable to say that we should accept as truth ONLY those things that we can personally validate as true. For one thing, I would never fly again or even drive again if I operated by that rule. Mike S.: I doubt the 6000 year old universe people would claim it's a fraud. Probably, that the dating etc., is mistaken. JC: I don't see a huge difference between these rationalizations, nor that they are mutually exclusive. The second (dating mistaken) might appear more polite, but when thousands of geologists attest to the methods how else could the mistake be shared and perpetuated except through some grand conspiracy to advance the secular world view or a complicit educational system bent on the same end? And of course the credibility of the person claiming that the methods are mistaken will depend upon their expertise, returning us to the preceding point. Ultimately, the question is whether the young earth types would EVER accept ANY evidence for the ancient age of the earth (other than perhaps a revelation of some sort from on high). Mike S.: Shouldn't scientists work to counter claims of fraud from any group? (And I would say just by doing good scientific work.) Why focus on religious grounds for claims of fraudulance? JC: Perhaps it appears to young earth / religious advocates that they are being persecuted (and it certainly helps their public / political case to make such claims), but this is a false claim. First, skeptics do indeed take issue with all sorts of diverse false claims. Simply read any issue of Skeptical Inquirer, or visit any of the skeptic websites. Sadly, there is no shortage of unsubstantiated claims floating around. The Skeptics Dictionary might be a good place to appreciate the broad range of issues examined by skeptics. http://skepdic.com/whatisthesd.html Second, except perhaps in academia, it is the skeptical / questioning worldview that is discriminated against in politics and the wider public (at least in USA). Indeed, a case can be (and has been) made that atheists are the most despised group. See: http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistbigotryprejudice/a/AtheistSurveys.htm Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re:[tips] How Do You Explain A 4.4 Million Skeleton in a 6,000 Year Old Universe?
Hi On Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 10:11:01 -0600, Michael Smith wrote: Shouldn't scientists work to counter claims of fraud from any group? (And I would say just by doing good scientific work.) Why focus on religious grounds for claims of fraudulance? I missed one disturbing part of Mike S's statement here ... namely the phrase (And I would say just by doing good scientific work.). This seems to be saying that scientists' jobs are done once they have conducted the research and they have no further responsibilities to the political or wider communities ... i.e., they should mind their own business and stay in the lab. Is Mike S really saying that scientists should NOT respond when false information is publicized? They should NOT comment on global warming, cold fusion, the age of the earth, or any other matter once it is in the public domain? Their job ends in the laboratory and they should just go home and leave the rest to others. Rather perverse view of scientists, many of whom are also educators. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Books on Psych of Thinking for Lay People
Hi I'm wondering what good books people on TIPS and PESTS have found on psychology of thinking for laypeople? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Correlation example
Hi A few examples I like ... 1. Li (1975) showed in Taiwan a negative correlation between birth-rate and number of appliances in the home. I ask Would giving away free toasters reduce birth rate? 2. Association of Pellegra (various spellings) with lack of indoor plumbing led to germ hypothesis for the disorder. Higher incidence in prisons also attributed to hygiene. Hypothesis questioned, first on basis of non-experimental observations (e.g., inmates but not guards became ill) and then on experimental studies of diet (corn based diet led to disease, enriched diet cured it, Goldberger's filth parties in which he and others injected or ingested diseased matter, such as feces, without becoming ill). 3. And for the much less attended to lack of correlation does NOT imply lack of causation I like the weak simple correlation between study time and grades (I use an old head-line from a British Columbia newspaper Want to get good grades? Don't study!), which becomes more positive when aptitude is controlled because of aptitude's positive association with grades and aptitude's negative association with study time (intelligent people study more effectively or otherwise need to study less to learn the material). Leads to the general principle that in non-experimental studies (AND in poorly designed experimental studies) confounding variables may either produce a spurious correlation or mask a real association. I think the qualification about poor experiments is important for students to learn ... there are many poorly designed experiments out there. A classic study comparing words related schematically versus categorically, for example, included the schema label in the schema lists but NOT the category label in the category lists. When this confound was corrected by Khan and Paivio, the supposed superiority of schema disappeared. Or the classic British experiment (of sorts) on supplemental milk, was undone by nurses who gave the milk to the most needy children rather than the supposedly random experimental children. This confounding produced no difference after study between groups because pre-existing differences masked any effects and the misleading conclusion of no benefit from supplement. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com 01-Oct-09 11:04 AM Here's an almost laughable example of correlation is not causation that some might find a good example for class. (Well, aren't they almost always laughable??) It's about a study that found that children who eat lots of candy are more likely to be arrested for violent behavior as adults. In all fairness, one researcher did try to encourage people to dig a little deeper: Previous studies have found better nutrition leads to better behavior, in both children and adults. Moore said his results were not strong enough to recommend parents stop giving their children candies and chocolates. This is an incredibly complex area, he said. It's not fair to blame it on the candy. But in my morning newspaper, neither that conclusion was posted, nor was the journal cited. Only the term British researchers was used. Here's the story: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/01/crimesider/entry5355367.shtml Beth Benoit Granite State College Plymouth State University New Hampshire --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Creation
Hi Here's a piece on Pandasthumb by Eugenie Scott on Creation with some links to other sites. http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/09/eugenie-scott-r.html#more Also, USA is just tip of anti-evolution iceberg. Many developing countries have levels of religiosity that far exceed those in USA, which does not bode well for evolution. A recent survey, for example, found that only 8% of Egyptians think there is evidence for evolution. Perhaps not surprising since only 38% had even heard of Darwin. Similarly low figures for South Africa. USA had 33% believing there is evidence for evolution, versus over 50% (depressingly low) for UK, China, and Mexico. Ironically, USA had highest figure (55%) for knowing a good/fair amount about evolution. See following or numerous other sites for results http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/jul/01/evolution You can also complete a related survey at http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/survey.zgi?p=WEB229CD3MTHT5 It is too bad they are not collecting demographic information (except religiousness) in this survey (e.g., education, gender, age, ...). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 13-Sep-09 10:00:28 AM sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: I've been waiting for Chris Green to post this here, as he did on the History of Psychology list, but as he doesn't seem to be going to, allow me. Believe it or not, I tried to do exactly that yesterday afternoon, but had run out of posts for the day. Here's what I attempted to post: We are all, by now, used to the idea that there are a lot of people in the US who find Darwin's theory of evolution anathema to their firmly held religious beliefs. But the new feature film about the impact that the 1851 death of Darwin's daughter, Annie, had on both his own religious beliefs and his scientific work has apparently been unable to even find a distributor in the US and, so, will probably never be seen in the major theaters there. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6173399/Charles-Darwin-film-too-controversial-for-religious-America.html (Thanks to new York grad student Eric Oosenbrug for pointing this article out to me.) I would have thought that the revenues from major coastal cities alone would have been enough to entice a distributor to pick it up, but (apparently) the anticipated backlash (boycotts, etc.), presumably against other movies or products sold by the same company, has caused them to decline one of the major releases of the year. Quizzical. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Creation
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Michael Smith tipsl...@gmail.com 13-Sep-09 12:07 PM Besides, I think if the Creation/Evolution thing is hugely divisive in America perhaps a lot of the blame lies in the new aethiest camp. If the issue was approached with a bit of humility, and real concern over people and their beliefs then perhaps it wouldn't be so divisive (if it actually is). Anyone who thinks the Atheists started the war needs to look at Answers in Genesis and like websites. See in particular some of their so-called educational material, such as the slide showing Evolution as being responsible for all manner of social ills. Slide is at http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/overheads/pages/oh20010316_2.asp This is described as The Problem, for which AIG provides the solution (Christianity). Elements of the problem include homosexuality, abortion, and other faith-based causes. In other words, evolution has long been under attack from well-funded and influential sources. These same kind of arguments have surfaced in recent years in Turkey in the writings of Harun Yahya. See http://us2.harunyahya.com/Detail/T/EDCRFV/productId/9543/ONLY_TURKEY_CAN_RESCUE_THE_EUROPEAN_UNION_(EU)_FROM_THE_SWAMP_OF_MATERIALISM where evolution is blamed for materialism, communism, and terrorism. (Not to worry ... Turkey is going to rescue Europe from the swamp of materialism). As in the USA, substantial funding is behind these efforts (e.g., a volume titled The Evolution Deceit was circulated freely in Turkey, another volume titled The Atlas of Creation is purported to be widely available). Perhaps this is my week to disagree with people's view of history, but I believe the new atheists arose BECAUSE these attacks continued unabated despite decades of politeness and attempts to educate people (i.e., disabuse them of the numerous falsities available at sites like AIG). When another group literally hates your worldview and will do anything (scrupulous or not) to undermine that view, then I believe advocates for evolution came to realize that the time for humility and politeness may have passed ... indeed it may have passed decades ago. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] The Science Wars
Hi Just taking off on the following part of Christopher's recent post on hero worship. James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 11-Sep-09 10:16 AM Over the past 25 years or so, history of science has become a more or less independent discipline, conducted mostly by professional historians, rather than by scientists. And historians traditionally pay great attention to the contexts (intellectual, personal, social, cultural, political) in which various scientific ideas (among other events) arise. But in the process, modern historians of science have alienated a lot scientists who have mistaken their activities for having the primary aim of criticizing scientists and science itself (where not being sufficiently adulatory counts is regarded as being overly critical). This misunderstanding of intentions precipitated the very nasty Science Wars of the 1990s. Thankfully, we are mostly over the worst of that silliness now, but it still rears its ugly head from time to time. JC: I have a different view of the history and current state of the science wars. First, it was not primarily historians of science who were anti-science (see more below), although historians like Kuhn were much misused by the critics of science. Kuhn was quite explicit in his writings that he did NOT see his ideas as incompatible with the standard view of science (i.e., search for truth, objectivity, use of evidence, ...). He did NOT see his views as supporting the relativism that was central to the unfounded attacks on science by others. Second and on the point of what disciplines were at war with science, I do not believe that scientist simply misinterpreted intentions or that we are over the worst of that silliness now. Here is Sandra Harding's 2006 revision of a 1998 paper reprinted in an edited volume. Whereas conventional philosophies of science and popular thought have assumed truth claims to be an uncontroversially valuable goal for the sciences, a critical evaluation of this assumption has emerged in the past four decades from three schools of science studies: Euro-American philosophy, history, sociology, and ethnography of sciences; feminist science studies; and postcolonial science studies. From the perspectives of central themes in these accounts, the ideal of truth obstructs the production of knowledge. Moreover, claims to truth support antidemocratic tendencies in science and society because a democratic social order in a multicultural world should not provide the necessary conditions for the kind of strong, universal agreement among scientists that the truth ideal requires. The truth ideal in science supports tendencies toward inequality. ... all ways of understanding are historically and culturally relative. ... we should not assume that our ways of understanding are necessarily any better (in terms of being any nearer the truth) than other ways. Therefore, what we regard as 'truth' ...is a product not of objective observation of the world, but of the social processes and interactions in which people are constantly engaged with each other. (Burr, 1995, p. 4) I have in front of me a flyer publicizing a course here on Rhetorics of Science and Law in which students will Discover the relationship between rhetoric and 'facts' (scare quotes in original) and Explore the role of rhetoric in how 'scientific knowledge' moves across these domains (scare quotes in original). There are innumerable examples of these substantive attacks on the nature and value of scientific activity, and they are not readily explained simply as being misinterpreted by scientists. Rather than the science wars being over, I believe a more accurate characterization is that Snow's Two Cultures are even more sharply delineated today than in the past, although the fault line would not fall sharply between the Sciences and the Humanities (probably did not in his day either), but rather between most sciences (some social sciences appear to have gone over to the Dark Side ... sorry my son is into Star Wars right now) and a good chunk but not all of the humanities. I hope I am wrong and Chris is right! Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] So You Want To Be A Billionaire?
Hi Mike asked about what denominator was used to arrive at 1.25%. If you go to the tables he linked to you will find that total column gives value of 196,305,000 for 25 years and over. This is the value Mike used in the denominator below (in thousands, the same as the numerator). The ENTIRE population of the USA was about 300,000,000 in 2008. So the percentage PhDs in the population 25 and older is 1.25%, as Mike indicated. The percentage among billionaires is much higher. James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 01-Sep-09 10:44 AM The percentage I've calculated from CPS 2008 (Detailed Tables) which is available at: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/educ-attn.html is 1.25% (=2,472/196,305) and this number has sampling error associated with it. Is 1.25% significantly different from 3.96% (i.e., 4/101)? Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] So You Want To Be A Billionaire, Part 2
Hi First, thanks to Mike for taking the time to track down this information. Just a couple of points ... I've reordered relevant parts of Mike's posting (prefaces by MP:) before my comments (prefaced by JC:). [apologies if this is duplicate or triplicate or ... I've had to send it a number of times because of some computer glitch] MP: Note that 4.5% of this group have doctorates. In previous posts on this topic, estimates of the percentage in the general population were calculated using the Census* Community Survey data. In retreospect, this is the wrong calculation to do, that is, one should not take the number of Ph.D. estimated in the population and divide it by the total number of people in the sample. This does give one the percentage of the general population that have Ph.D. but for purposes of comparison, the denominator should the number of people between 24 to 94 years of age, that age range of the richest groups. Children, which would be included in the total sample number will inflate the denominator and not provide the appropriate number for comparison. In other words, to determine whether the 4.5% of Ph.D.s in this richest group is an *overrepresentation* or *underrepresentation* requires one to compare 4.5% to the percentage of Ph.D.s in the age range of 24 to 94 (excluding the richests). JC: The tables Mike and I used earlier DO limit the denominator to adults (18 and over or 25 and over in the case of Mike's earlier estimate of .0125). So the earlier estimates hold. MP: (3) Given that this dataset represents that richest 400minus2 people in the U.S. in 2008 and under the assumption that is exhaustive, this group is not a sample but a population. Consequently, the usual tests of statistical significance would not apply (e.g., testing whether the correlation between networth in $billions and educational level is zero or not would not be appropriate since we are dealing with the population rho and not the sample r). Bootstrapping and re-sampling techniques can be used to estimate standard errors for various statistics/parameters but one would do so under specific explicit assumptions. Note also that the usual formula for the variance and standard deviation which correct for sample estimates/sampling error would provide overestimates of the true variance and standard deviation JC: But some statistical tests would be valid, such as the likelihood of getting 18 or more PhDs among 400 billionaires if p = .0125. Although the current proportion of .045 is close to that of the earlier 100 billionaires, the statistical probability is MUCH reduced because of the larger group. Below is the exact probabilities of 0 to 20 or more PhDs in a group of 400 if p = .0125. The likelihood of 18 or more PhDs is extremely small, .011. Indeed the chance of just 9 or more PhDs is less than .05. I used SPSS to generate these exact probabilities, but it might be interesting to use the normal approximation as well. xpx cpx upx 0 .0065289 .0065289 .9934711 1 .0330579 .0395868 .9604132 2 .0834815 .1230683 .8769317 3 .1401926 .2632609 .7367391 4 .1761281 .4393890 .5606110 5 .1765740 .6159630 .3840370 6 .1471450 .7631079 .2368921 7 .1048375 .8679454 .1320546 8 .0651917 .9331371 .0668629 9 .0359425 .9690796 .0309204 10 .0177893 .9868688 .0131312 11 .0079837 .9948525 .0051475 12 .0032760 .9981285 .0018715 13 .0012377 .9993662 .0006338 14 .0004331 .9997993 .0002007 15 .0001411 .403 .597 16 .430 .833 .167 17 .123 .956 .044 18 .033 .989 .011 19 .008 .997 .003 20 .002 .999 .001 MP: (3) Mean Networth in $Billions for each level of education: using the Degree.2 above (separates MA/MS from MBA), here are the descriptive statistics (standard errors are provided but they may not be meaningful): Estimates for NetWorth$Bil Degree.2 Mean Std.Er 00 High School 6.076 0.776 10 Associate 2.600 3.680 20 Bachelors 3.330 0.404 30 Masters8.817 1.227 31 MBA3.545 0.575 40 MD or JD 3.389 0.855 50 Doctorate 3.189 1.227 JC: As Mike correctly notes, this is an excellent dataset for making some good points in statistics (and other) classes. One such point might be about restriction of range. As noted by Rick, we are looking at a tiny proportion of the population defined by the very, very highest of incomes. Is it reasonable to expect any relationship with such a restricted sample/population? Again, thanks to Mike P for taking the time. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] So You Want To Be A Billionaire?
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 01-Sep-09 10:44:08 AM On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:43:36 -0700, Jim Clark wrote: Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 31-Aug-09 2:12:45 PM On Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:18:52 -0700, Jim Clark wrote: These lists, especially by themselves, do NOT allow the kinds of inferences Mike appears to make. I'm not sure I understand what kind of inferences you're referring to. ... JC: I was referring to inferences like Mike's in the next few lines. Unless you're psychic or can see the future the text you quote cannot be the inferences you were referring to in your post because these comments were made in response to your inferences comments which, of course, were posted AFTER your inferences comment. Either you have amazing powers to warp the space-time continuum or you either neglected to use the inferences I made in some prior posts or I actually hadn't made such inferences in earlier posts and you decided to use statements AFTER your inferences comment. JC: What I said was inferences Mike APPEARS to make ... for example, in drawing such conclusions as Do not get a PhD. You then chose to make those implied inferences explicit in a later message. JC: My earlier posting presented evidence that in fact PhDs are over-represented in Mike's list, being about 1% or less in the general population and 4% in the list. The percentage I've calculated from CPS 2008 (Detailed Tables) which is available at: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/educ-attn.html is 1.25% (=2,472/196,305) and this number has sampling error associated with it. Is 1.25% significantly different from 3.96% (i.e., 4/101)? Maybe, maybe not. If the proportion of people at different levels of educational attainment is same for both the richest 101 US citizens and the rest of the population, then this suggest that educational achievement has nothing to do with becoming the richest persons in the U.S., unlike the situation with, say, Nobel Laureates. If one want to say that 3.96% of a group represents an over-representation relative to 1.25%, I'll grant that but remind one about the difference between statistical significance and practical significance. JC: Assuming population p = .0125 (it would be lower in years prior to 2008) and sampling 101 people, one gets the following binomial probabilities for number of Xs (people with PhDs). px = probability of that number, cpx = cumulative probability, and upx = 1 - cpx. UPX is the relevant value. The probability of 4 or more people with phd is .009. x pxcpxupx 0 .2807 .2807 .7193 1 .3589 .6396 .3604 2 .2271 .8667 .1333 3 .0949 .9616 .0384 4 .0294 .9910 .0090 5 .0072 .9982 .0018 As to the difference between statistical and practical significance, that would be a trickier question. We know, for example, that effect size can be a misleading indicator of practical significance (as in the classic aspirin study). I guess we could do something like getting the probability of being a billionaire given PhD and no PhD, both of which would be extremely small probabilities, and then taking their ratio. If having a PhD makes it 3x (hypothetically) more likely to be a billionaire than not having a PhD, is that of practical significance? For those over 65, people not completing HS were UNDER-represented in Mike's list compared to the over 65 general population. JC is assuming that educational attainment in the group of the richest people should mirror the proportions in the general population. It is not clear to me why this would be the case given that we know that the richest people are NOT a random sample from the general population and SHOULD differ from them in systematic ways -- afterall they are the richest and should differ on a number of dimensions though educational achievement does not appear to be particularly relevant. JC: No Mike, I am TESTING the assumption that HS nongraduates are equally or over-represented among billionaires. That assumption only makes sense relative to some comparison group. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] So You Want To Be A Billionaire?
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 31-Aug-09 2:12:45 PM On Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:18:52 -0700, Jim Clark wrote: These lists, especially by themselves, do NOT allow the kinds of inferences Mike appears to make. I'm not sure I understand what kind of inferences you're referring to. ... JC: I was referring to inferences like Mike's in the next few lines. Mike: If it is reasonable to expect Nobel prize winners to have advanced academic degrees, why isn't it reasonable to expect that the richest people in a society should also have an overrepresentation of people with advanced academic degrees? ... If Ph.D.s and other advanced degrees are not overrepresented in the richest segment of a society what does that say about intellect and its cultivation and the attainment of power and influence in a society? ... Perhaps the best way of thinking about the role of education and attainment of an advanced degree is that it allows most people with educational acheivement to enter the middle class (though there are individuals for who this is not true) and maybe the lower rungs of the upper class but might actually serve as an impediment to becoming truly rich and powerful. JC: My earlier posting presented evidence that in fact PhDs are over-represented in Mike's list, being about 1% or less in the general population and 4% in the list. For those over 65, people not completing HS were UNDER-represented in Mike's list compared to the over 65 general population. So Mike's inferences from JUST the list were incorrect. Of course, even this association does not say anything about causality given people from wealthy families are more likely to go further in school AND more likely to end up wealthy themselves. Finally, I also presented links to a few of the many many sites that would show a robust association between education and income in more representative samples (sometimes populations, as in the Census). Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Spanking - an idea that won't go away
Hi I was over the limit, yesterday, so here's this ... I disagree with Michael. Field observations (unless very sophisticated) and testimonials are no substitute for the stronger forms of information gathering we call research (field observations sometimes deserve that label). There are a whole host of measurement, sampling, and design issues that students must consider in evaluating such claims as those implied by the spanking article. In addition to those I mentioned earlier, for example, there would be the need to clearly define spanking and other forms of capital punishment. There would also be sampling issues ... even if the author was right about herself and her friends, for example, are they representative of blacks in general? And what about her claim that the roots of spanking derive from slavery? If we consider other cultures that engage in spanking and they do not have a history of slavery, then it might be what Blacks and such other cultures share (rather than slavery) that is responsible for the differential behavior. The thing I try to impress on students in these discussions is that we are trying to build a complex theory (nomological network to use an older terminology) and I will often map out a crude form of the theory while we engage in these discussions (e.g., culture * spanking * child behavior) and consider alternative possibilities for the pathways. Thinking like a scientific psychologist involves generating such hypothetical causal networks, figuring out ways to evaluate the connections, and (most importantly) appreciating that without such research we cannot KNOW the true state of affairs. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca michael sylvester msylves...@copper.net 31-Aug-09 4:25:11 PM The demand for references to support statements on Tips is beginning to drive me up the wall.As if the references will give validation to statements.Baloney can still be baloney despite references.I mean to find out whether black parents spank more all what one has to do is to comparative field observations and gather testimonials. Conclusions can be very definitive that no statistical analysis is necessary. Yep,through multiple primary and secondary observations black parents do spank their kids for misbehavior and the kid may get an additional spanking by others in the hierarchical extended family. As the cross-cultural dude(in addition to other accolades) on Tips,the reason for this differential is that whites are more likely to experience guilt emotions and blacks the social emotion of shame. These are correlates are connected with the presentation of the self.In other words,black parents view misbehavior as a violation of their self-ideal of proper versus improper public and family behavior.White parents are more likely to think in terms of long terms effects and hence guilt. A white parent will take a child to Toyr R Us and that child could be throwing a row of toys to the ground and that wgite woman will tell the child Honey,why you do that? Mama loves you. This is not likely to be a response from the black parents.Interestingly enough Developmental psychologists areresponsible for invocating guilt and vague premonitions of disaster if parents become too disciplinary.And this was not help by Bettelheim who blamed parents' behavior for autism.And the guilt began. Black parents may still adhere to the adage of St.Paul Spare the rod,spoil the child. Send me nothing. Michael Sylvester,PhD --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Spanking - an idea that won't go away
Hi Again from yesterday ... already at my limit and not even 8am! As I mentioned in another post on this topic, I tend to focus on just =3D these sorts of questions implied by the article and the kinds of evidence = =3D that would address the questions. I do NOT think that we need as teachers to have answers to questions =3D before raising and discussing them. One of my primary goals is to help = =3D students to appreciate that there are such questions and that only =3D empirical evidence can answer them. No amount of anecdotal reports would = =3D carry the same weight. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Ken Steele steel...@appstate.edu 31-Aug-09 2:17:57 PM Hi Jim: I can see why this article would generate lots of discussion. Before using this opinion piece, my first question would be: Is it true? Do black parents spank their children more than white parents? Do you have references? Ken Jim Clark wrote: Hi In my culture and psych class I use an activity on spanking centered around a short magazine piece on use of spanking by Black parents. See http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark/teach/3050/Act07-spanking.pdf Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Spanking - an idea that won't go away
Hi
In my culture and psych class I use an activity on spanking centered around a
short magazine piece on use of spanking by Black parents. See
http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark/teach/3050/Act07-spanking.pdf
Take care
Jim
James M. Clark
Professor of Psychology
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca
Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com 31-Aug-09 1:00:30 PM
I've found it interesting that every year since I began teaching at the
college level (in 1993), when I ask how many of my Human Development and
Child Psychology students were ever spanked, the numbers become smaller.
In 1993 when I would ask that question, maybe one or two out of a class of
40 or 50 would say they'd never been spanked. It was so unusual that heads
would turn to check out this strange creature, and the person was often
asked, So how did your parents discipline you?
But over the years, as the number of the unspanked increased, I've found
that more and more students marvel that there are parents who did spank.
(Remember that most of these students would have been children in the early
nineties.)
It's my understanding that spanking is more commonly accepted in Southern
states - at least, according to
http://www.childinjurylawyerblog.com/2009/08/spanking_in_tennessee_and_sout_1.html,
it's still legal within many of the school systems. And a study done as
long ago as 1996, entitled Regional differences in spanking experiences and
attitudes: A comparison of northeastern and southern college students, by
Clifton Flynn, found exactly this: that students in northeastern colleges
were less likely to have been spanked and less likely to approve than
students in southern colleges. It appeared in Journal of Family
Violencejavascript:__doLinkPostBack('','ss~~JN%20%22Journal%20of%20Family%20Violence%22%7C%7Csl~~rl','');,
Vol 11(1), Mar, 1996. pp. 59-80.
Beth Benoit
Granite State College
Plymouth State University
New Hampshire
On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 1:41 PM, Michael Britt
michael.br...@thepsychfiles.com wrote:
In the latest episode of my podcast I interviewed the author of a
great parenting book: Raising Children You Can Live With. Although
the author discuss a lot of great ideas regarding how to interact with
your child, it seems that my brief thoughts regarding the
ineffectiveness of spanking is getting the most response. There's an
interesting comment on the episode from a listener who strongly feels
that spanking is needed in response to certain behaviors. You'll see
my response as well. Also, I feel there's a nice marriage I think
between behavioristic and humanistic philosophies in the author's
approach to dealing with undesirable behavior from children. Since
spanking is an experience that most students have had, the episode
could make for an interesting discussion or homework around these two
different approaches to modifying a child's behavior. If you want to
check it out:
http://bit.ly/vj4dZ
Michael
--
Michael Britt, Ph.D.
Host of The Psych Files podcast
www.thepsychfiles.com
mich...@thepsychfiles.com
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Re: [tips] Spanking - an idea that won't go away
Hi
I tend to keep the discussion pretty focused on the empirical questions implied
by the paper (are Black kids less likely than White kids to throw temper
tantrums, do Black parents use spanking more, are kids who are spanked [black
or white] less likely to throw temper tantrums) and on what research would be
necessary to answer these questions (emphasizing distinction between
non-experimental and experimental studies [surveys, parent training studies]
and strength of causal conclusions). I do NOT try to give answers to these
questions.
Most of my actual lectures are on the standard classification of parenting
styles. I could (and probably should) do a lot more with questions like
cultural differences in use of spanking (corporal punishment) beyond Black
parents, and look more intensively at literature mentioned by Beth. I do
mention faith-based groups (e.g., in Ontario a few years ago) who threaten to
leave the country when Child and Family services intends to interfere with
parental use of spanking), but not enough on other cultural groups. I also
cite examples of corporal punishment I've witnessed in Greece (my wife is
Greek), even in parents of my or later generations.
The class tends to be pretty multi-ethnic, largely due to large-scale Canadian
immigration for some time now, and that has generally produced some differences
in other sorts of experiences (direct or vicarious). For example, pretty much
every year I have several students who know of people in arranged marriages
(often their parents). Similar style of discussion (i.e., familiarity with
rather than personal experience) might work well for use of corporal punishment.
I'm also old enough to have personal knowledge of spanking in the home and at
school, and don't have any gut aversion to it as opposed to a more
intellectual one. Although it is shocking to see parents behave that way in
public (e.g., in Greece).
Take care
Jim
James M. Clark
Professor of Psychology
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca
Department of Psychology
University of Winnipeg
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3B 2E9
CANADA
Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com 31-Aug-09 1:43 PM
What an interesting article, Jim. It agrees with developmental findings
that I've read about African-American attitudes toward parenting, but
honestly, I've hesitated to discuss this in class. I have very few black
students, and worry that if I interjected this, it could be oversimplified
and misconstrued. I'd be very interested if you'd share a little of what
your students think about the article.
Beth Benoit
Granite State College
Plymouth State University
New Hampshire
On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 2:06 PM, Jim Clark j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca wrote:
Hi
In my culture and psych class I use an activity on spanking centered around
a short magazine piece on use of spanking by Black parents. See
http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark/teach/3050/Act07-spanking.pdf
Take care
Jim
James M. Clark
Professor of Psychology
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca
Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com 31-Aug-09 1:00:30 PM
I've found it interesting that every year since I began teaching at the
college level (in 1993), when I ask how many of my Human Development and
Child Psychology students were ever spanked, the numbers become smaller.
In 1993 when I would ask that question, maybe one or two out of a class of
40 or 50 would say they'd never been spanked. It was so unusual that heads
would turn to check out this strange creature, and the person was often
asked, So how did your parents discipline you?
But over the years, as the number of the unspanked increased, I've found
that more and more students marvel that there are parents who did spank.
(Remember that most of these students would have been children in the
early
nineties.)
It's my understanding that spanking is more commonly accepted in Southern
states - at least, according to
http://www.childinjurylawyerblog.com/2009/08/spanking_in_tennessee_and_sout_1.html
,
it's still legal within many of the school systems. And a study done as
long ago as 1996, entitled Regional differences in spanking experiences
and
attitudes: A comparison of northeastern and southern college students, by
Clifton Flynn, found exactly this: that students in northeastern colleges
were less likely to have been spanked and less likely to approve than
students in southern colleges. It appeared in Journal of Family
Violencejavascript:__doLinkPostBack('','ss~~JN%20%22Journal%20of%20Family%20Violence%22%7C%7Csl~~rl','');,
Vol 11(1), Mar, 1996. pp. 59-80.
Beth Benoit
Granite State College
Plymouth State University
New Hampshire
On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 1:41 PM, Michael Britt
michael.br...@thepsychfiles.com wrote:
In the latest episode of my podcast I interviewed the author of a
great parenting book: Raising Children You Can Live With. Although
the author discuss a lot of great ideas
Re:[tips] How Many Billionaires Did Your College/University Produce?
Hi The relationship is markedly nonlinear. Including a nonlinear component (b^2) in multiple regression produces a multiple R of .702. Hence number of Billionaires predicts half of variability in rankings. Or using log(bs) alone produces r = -.66. However, there is a MAJOR problem with the dataset. Only the top #bs institutions are used, and many institutions with higher rankings are ignored (e.g., usnr for UT Austin is 47). Correct analysis would include Bs and USNR for all the missing institutions. For many of these institutions, Bs would be lower and USNR lower than institutions in dataset, presumably diminishing negative r to a great extent. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 29-Aug-09 8:54:13 AM On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:55:59 -0600, Michael Smith wrote: I hope they are not implying it is an index of how good the school is. Perish the THOUGHT! I am sure that all RIGHT THINKING people would never assess the value of the education that they received simply on the basis of the amount of money such an educational opportunity allowed them to steal, er, to earn. However, since you've raised the issue of what is the relationship between school quality and the amount of money the filthiest rich issue of such accumulate, let's try to get you an answer: Below is the list of schools I provided previously, rank ordered on the basis of number of billionaires (B's) they produced and the the U.S. New World Reports Rank (USNR) reported for 2010; see: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-universities-rankings (1) Harvard (54 B's} (USNR=1.00) (2) Stanford (25 B's) (USNR=4.00) (3) U Penn (18 B's) (USNR=4.00) (4.5) Columbia (16 B's) (USNR=8) (4.5) Yale (16 B's) (USNR=3) (6) MIT (11 B's) (USNR=4) (7.5) Northwestern (10 B's) (USNR=12) (7.5) U Chicago (10 B's) (USNR=8) (10.25) Cornell (9 B's) (USNR=15) (10.25) UC Berkeley (9 B's) (USNR=21) (10.25) U of Southern Cal (9 B's) (USNR=26) (10.25) UT, Austin (9 B's)(USNR=47) and NYU (5 B's) (USNR=32) Entering this data into SPSS, a Pearson r(N=13)= -0.458, p.06 under the directional hypothesis that there should be a negative correlation between the number of B's produced by an institution and the US News World Report ranking of the institution. Note: because of the small sample size and restriction of range (e.g., not all institutions that produced B's are used), the obtained Perason r is likely to be an underestimate of the true population rho. (I've tried to attach the SPSS dataset to this post but I don't know if it will go through) So, knowing how many B's an institution produced can be used to predict the U.S. New World Report ranking given to it which one can interpret as a measure of the quality of the institution (people who disagree with USN's numbers are encouraged to discuss it with them as well as the administrators at your own institution who might use these numbers for recruiting purposes). So, don't be surprised if you hear No B's? No Mas! (see the following for one interpretation of No Mas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard-Duran_II ) Wouldn't it be awful to equate money with the quality of the school (or lack thereof for the B's that dropped out)? Indeed, it would be awful to equate the quality of a school or even the value of human life in terms of filthy lucre nonetheless is it done all of the time. This was most strikingly brought home in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorists attacks when the U.S. government tried to figure out how to compensate families who lost family members in the attacks. A simple-minded notion would be to given each family a fixed amount for each family member lost, thus valuing eack life equally. But it occurred to a number of people that such a scheme failed to recognized that we are not all equal, that the janitor who was killed would have earned less in his lifetime than a stock trader in the firm of Cantor Fitzgerald. The unrealized potential expressed in terms of the amount of money a person could earn then became the measure of the value of human life. I'll leave to the true Christians and the pragmatic capitalists to argue whether this is a reasonable way to guage the value of a human life. One might be tempted to think that the bottom line in education is the business/money aspect of education and all that happens is job training! You must be new to this whole academic teaching thing, right? Consider the following blog entry, grasshopper: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions_of_a_community_college_dean/college_prep As for NYU's peculiar status as producing dropouts that go on to become billionaires (NYU as a knack for doing this in various areas; Woody Allen dropped out of NYU), rumor has it that NYU will take these lemons and make them into lemonade with a new advertising campaign: NYU! You education will be SO
Re: [tips] So You Want To Be A Billionaire?
Hi These lists, especially by themselves, do NOT allow the kinds of inferences Mike appears to make. The list looks at (a) a tiny fraction of the relevant population (100 people or even 400) and (b) ONLY those with enough wealth to be billionaires. To illustrate the problem, consider the 4 PhDs on Mike's list (i.e., 4% of 100 billionaires). Recent statistics, such as http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/cps2007/Table1-01.csv indicate that just over 1% of the American adult population has a PhD. And presumably this figure would have been even lower in the past. Hence, PhDs are actually over-represented on the list of billionaires relative to their numbers in the general population. One would need similar and more precise figures to properly evaluate the role of education. More precise in the sense of adjusting for age because it might be less clear than in the case of PhDs what the historical figures would be. But even crude data show the dangers of making inferences about HS dropouts from the 15 on Mike's list of billionaires. To illustrate, the following table (if link works!) http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y-geo_id=01000US-qr_name=ACS_2007_3YR_G00_S1501-ds_name=ACS_2007_3YR_G00_-_lang=en-_caller=geoselect-state=st-format= shows that in 2007 16% of population 25 and older did not complete HS. But this figure increases markedly at highest age levels; a full 27% of those 65 and older did not graduate from HS. But on Mike's list, only 16% of billionaires 65 and over did not graduate from HS, far below the proportion in the general population their age. Alternatively (unless one is only interested in billionaires rather than more realistic earnings), the census provides more relevant data, or any number of other databases. Here are a few links: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/Intlindicators/index.asp?SectionNumber=5SubSectionNumber=1IndicatorNumber=106 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States#Education_and_Gender Clearly earnings increase with education, albeit with a few perturbations largely due to professional degrees. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 30-Aug-09 5:20:55 PM If you do, were are some rules based upon an analysis of the information about 400 Richest People in the United States for 2009 (actually only data from the top 101 richest people was analyzed; even my OCD has it limits): http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/54/400list08_The-400-Richest-Americans_Rank.html (1) Don't get a Ph.D. Only 4 people out of 101 have a Ph.D. and they are nowhere near the richest. 36 out of 101 have a B.A. but 15 only have a High School diploma (some apparently never attended college, others are college dropouts; NOTE: Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Whatever, who is British and not included in this data apparently dropped out of high school). There are 7 people who have indeterminate levels of education. In some cases, it is possible that some of these did not have formal schooling (though they may have had tutoring; they may have inherited the money). (2) It doesn't really matter whether you complete you education. There were 12 people who dropped out of their educational studies but the mean net worth of these people is about $15 Billion (Bill Gates, as the richest man in the world, skews things) while the 83 people who did complete their studies had a mean net worth of $8.61 Billion. (3) High School graduates are richest people in the U.S. ?? Given that most college dropouts can only claim their high school diplomas as their highest certified level of educational achievement, people with only a High School diploma have a mean net worth of $13.64 Billion. Of the top 101 richest U.S. people, those with a Bachelor's degree actually have a lower net worth of $7.83 Billion. People with a Master's degree (usually an MBA) do somewhat better with a net worth of $10.65 Billion. Folks with a JD or an MD or a Ph.D. only have a net worth of about $6.75 Billion (yes, less than a person with a B.A.). This is so depressing that I'm not going to shave for the next few days. Anyway, I've attached an SPSS system data file (not an Excel file like I did earlier) of the data I pulled off of the Forbes website. I didn't include the U.S. News ranking of colleges because, quite frankly, it doesn't seem to be relevant (I'll leave it to some other enterprising soul to do so). I'm now going to have a beer and wait for the new episode of Mad Men to air. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] A Cross-Culturally Relevant Paper
Hi I haven't had a chance to read Teo's argument / evidence, but am surprised at this given the evidence from genetic similarity studies, such as that of Cavalli-Sforza (see following link) http://www.pnas.org/content/95/4/1915/F4.expansion.html Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Stuart McKelvie smcke...@ubishops.ca 26-Aug-09 2:08 PM Dear Tipsters, I thought this might be of interest to some. Sincerely, Stuart Canadian Psychology * 2009 Canadian Psychological Association 2009, Vol. 50, No. 2, 91-97 0708-5591/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0014393 Psychology Without Caucasians Thomas Teo York University Based on historical, theoretical, and empirical reflections, it is argued that the Caucasian theory and term are obsolete in psychology. Discussing the historical origins of the term in Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's writings and the key elements to his theory, it is shown that his theory has found no corroboration and has been falsified through scientific research. Discussing current theories of the origin of humanity in Africa, the original skin colour, and the issue of degeneration, it is argued that the end of the Caucasian term in the discipline of psychology is not about political but scientific correctness. The reception of the term in different cultural contexts is reconstructed. The idea that Caucasian refers to a specific group and has no theoretical but purely descriptive meanings is rejected, as is the idea that a common sense term is a justification for scientific concepts. Suggestions for a more adequate terminology when referring to human groups are provided. Keywords: race, racism, conceptual clarity, history, theory In this article, I challenge the problematic usage of the term Caucasian in psychology. I present the original theory underlying this term; that is, the assumptions and elements of the Caucasian theory, all of which are shown to be false or misleading. I also address the continued usage of the term in North America and the reasons for the term's success. ... Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Thomas Teo, Department of Psychology, History and Theory of Psychology, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada. E-mail: t...@yorku.ca _ Floreat Labore [cid:image001.jpg@01CA265F.11BD2EC0] Recti cultus pectora roborant Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D., Phone: 819 822 9600 x 2402 Department of Psychology, Fax: 819 822 9661 Bishop's University, 2600 rue College, Sherbrooke, Qušbec J1M 1Z7, Canada. E-mail: stuart.mckel...@ubishops.ca (or smcke...@ubishops.ca) Bishop's University Psychology Department Web Page: http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psyblocked::http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy Floreat Labore [cid:image002.jpg@01CA265F.11BD2EC0] [cid:image003.gif@01CA265F.11BD2EC0]___ From: Michael Smith [mailto:tipsl...@gmail.com] Sent: August 25, 2009 6:19 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] The compassion of Braveheart Mike Palij replied to my latest email with a bunch of stuff. Phew! Suffice it to say that the entire response completely misses the only point I have illustrated in all of my posts with regard to this issue. --Mike --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Running head
Hi Has anyone ever had a manuscript rejected because of an APA style error? I haven't despite numerous violations. I wonder if we spend too much time on niceties of apa style given APA itself can't seem to get it correct, adherence does not really matter except for classwork, and clear communication is more important than style issues (I do appreciate the aspects of the APA manual that address writing clearly). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Deb Briihl dbri...@valdosta.edu 24-Aug-09 1:07:38 PM One of my coworkers contacted the APA gurus about the Running head. The sample paper is incorrect (why is this a theme?) - the running head is to be on each page to the left - the words Running head are not to be included. Deb Dr. Deborah S. Briihl Dept. of Psychology and Counseling Valdosta State University Valdosta, GA 31698 (229) 333-5994 dbri...@valdosta.edu http://chiron.valdosta.edu/dbriihl/ Well I know these voices must be my soul... Rhyme and Reason - DMB --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Running head
Hi I think this reflects badly on the editors (or perhaps there was some pre-editor screening process?), or at least on the journal unless the errors were really egregious ... no method or results section, results preceding method, absence of critical statistics (which I would not call a style issue), ... What purely style issue actually interferes with comprehension (and evaluation) of a manuscript? Wouldn't style matters be better dealt with by one line in the evaluation (accepted subject to final version that adheres to apa style, ...). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Stuart McKelvie smcke...@ubishops.ca 24-Aug-09 2:30:00 PM Dear Jim and Tipsters, Perception Psychophysics returned a paper to me unread because it did not follow APA format. Sincerely, Stuart _ Floreat Labore Recti cultus pectora roborant Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D., Phone: 819 822 9600 x 2402 Department of Psychology, Fax: 819 822 9661 Bishop's University, 2600 rue College, Sherbrooke, Qušbec J1M 1Z7, Canada. E-mail: stuart.mckel...@ubishops.ca (or smcke...@ubishops.ca) Bishop's University Psychology Department Web Page: http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy Floreat Labore ___ -Original Message- From: Jim Clark [mailto:j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca] Sent: August 24, 2009 3:26 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Running head Hi Has anyone ever had a manuscript rejected because of an APA style error? I haven't despite numerous violations. I wonder if we spend too much time on niceties of apa style given APA itself can't seem to get it correct, adherence does not really matter except for classwork, and clear communication is more important than style issues (I do appreciate the aspects of the APA manual that address writing clearly). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Deb Briihl dbri...@valdosta.edu 24-Aug-09 1:07:38 PM One of my coworkers contacted the APA gurus about the Running head. The sample paper is incorrect (why is this a theme?) - the running head is to be on each page to the left - the words Running head are not to be included. Deb Dr. Deborah S. Briihl Dept. of Psychology and Counseling Valdosta State University Valdosta, GA 31698 (229) 333-5994 dbri...@valdosta.edu http://chiron.valdosta.edu/dbriihl/ Well I know these voices must be my soul... Rhyme and Reason - DMB --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Question about research project in cognitive psych
Hi I've had mixed success with students doing on-line experiments for cognitive. See pdfs starting with Act... (for Activity) at http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark/teach/2600/ Primary problems have concerned students who say they could not get the on-line experiments to work for them. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mark A. Casteel ma...@psu.edu 22-Aug-09 3:28:45 PM Every year, I have my students replicate a classic study in the field in small groups of 2-3 students. Every year, I'm ecstatic with the amount of information they learn (as well as the experience of presenting their research to the campus community) but I also wish I could have them do research that would be more intrinsically appealing to most. We don't offer a psych major at my institution, so few of these students will pursue either cognitive or experimental psych. I've often wondered if anyone has had students try to research topics like (1) the negative effects of texting while performing other activities or (2) the influence of the presence/absence of a gun on memory for a simulated crime, without requiring working with experimental software like E-prime or PsyScope. In other words, has anyone thought of a fairly easy way that students could research a topic like this, and collect data that would be both meaningful and (to their way of thinking) more interesting? If I could provide guidance with something like this, so the students don't waste the entire semester simply coming up with a workable protocol, that would be fabulous. Any comments are welcome, including ideas for other topical issues. Thanks! Mark * Mark A. Casteel, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Penn State York 1031 Edgecomb Ave. York, PA 17403 (717) 771-4028 * --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] US Armed Forces planning to use Training in Positive Psychology to offset PSTD
Hi It appears to me that important evaluative steps are being ignored or inadequately dealt with in this proposed program. They've already decided that millions will receive the training when there is limited reason to believe the program will be effective, unless one thinks it is valid to generalize from middle and high school students to soldiers in wartime. I use the DEOMI video in my culture class (it's about the military's equal opportunity program) and again wonder about the strength of the evidence for this approach to changing race-related attitudes and behaviors. It is not that they have ignored evidence, just they have looked for it with weak (i.e., non-experimental) methods. Ironically, with so many thousands to expose to programs, it would be easy to use random selection to set up true evaluations for these programs. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Joan Warmbold jwarm...@oakton.edu 18-Aug-09 4:28:06 PM http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/health/18psych.html?em Thought this article reveals a relatively enlightened perspective in some in our armed forces. Joan jwarm...@oakton.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] News: Cash for Courses - Inside Higher Ed
Hi Is the basic problem with the way that donations (corporate or private) are normally handled? That is, someone gets to say where (all of) the money will go. I emphasize all of because is it not the case that a considerable portion of the money is coming from the public purse as a tax deduction or some such mechanism? Would not a better mechanism be that donors can specify where their portion of the money goes, but not the public share? Probably unworkable since administrators would quickly acquiesce to donor wishes in order to get the contribution. Administrators are also culpable, of course, for not being more successful at getting untied contributions from donors, and for not marketing successfully to donors the real needs of the institution. Of course, Presidents, like donors, get known for building buildings but less so for saving courses and other educational services. Above is not unique to universities ... probably applies to many charitable organizations, although one hopes that contributions go to more core functions. Ever the pessimist! Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 17-Aug-09 7:44:03 AM I can see it now: Welcome to Psy327 - Psychopharmacology, brought to you by Eli Lilly, makers of Prozac. When you're feeling down, ask your doctor about Prozac. And now on to the course... http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/17/ccsf Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Why Do Single Women Go After Married Men?
Hi I'm reminded of a study in which attractive and unattractive people were dressed in various outfits (Armani, Burger King). Women preferred less attractive men in Armani to attractive men in BK outfits. Men simply went for physical attractiveness. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA DeVolder Carol L devoldercar...@sau.edu 14-Aug-09 2:02 PM A couple of points--many women wouldn't turn down advances from Brad Pitt regardless of his marital status. His other attributes far outweigh that one. I think a married woman represents a challenge for some women--to see if she can come across as desirable even to men otherwise committed.Talk about ego-building! Ugly clothes, huh? I like that one. Even if it does presume that women are superficial... :) Carol Carol L. DeVolder, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Chair, Department of Psychology St. Ambrose University 518 West Locust Street Davenport, Iowa 52803 Phone: 563-333-6482 e-mail: devoldercar...@sau.edu web: http://web.sau.edu/psychology/psychfaculty/cdevolder.htm The contents of this message are confidential and may not be shared with anyone without permission of the sender. -Original Message- From: Robin Abrahams [mailto:robina...@yahoo.com] Sent: Fri 8/14/2009 1:59 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Why Do Single Women Go After Married Men? This is why I deliberately buy my husband ugly clothes. Robin Abrahams www.robinabrahams.com My first book, Miss Conduct's Mind Over Manners, is available now wherever books are sold! (Or if not, ask the bookseller to order more. Politely!) --- On Fri, 8/14/09, Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com wrote: From: Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [tips] Why Do Single Women Go After Married Men? To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Date: Friday, August 14, 2009, 1:56 PM Just a thought here. Might women be looking at the unmarried men and wondering why they're unmarried, and thinking there might be something less desirable about a man who's - just to pursue a stereotype here - unmarried and living with his mother? I like Mike's suggestion that married men might be seen as pre-screened. Beth BenoitGranite State CollegePlymouth State UniversityNew Hampshire On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Don Allen dal...@langara.bc.ca wrote: Hardly a surprising finding. How many women would turn down an advance from Brad Pitt because he was married? Marriage just seems to be another one of those fitness markers such as wealth or status that women use in mate selection. Once again evolution trumps morality. -Don. Don Allen Dept. of Psychology Langara College 100 W. 49th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. Canada V5Y 2Z6 Phone: 604-323-5871 - Original Message - From: Mike Palij Date: Friday, August 14, 2009 7:00 am Subject: [tips] Why Do Single Women Go After Married Men? To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Or do they? An interesting blog entry in the NY Times this week describes a study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that varied descriptions of males and females as being single or married/attached. Quoting from the blog entry: |To the men in the experiment, and to the women who were |already in relationships, it didn't make a significant difference |whether their match was single or attached. But single women |showed a distinct preference for mate poaching. When the man |was described as unattached, 59 percent of the single women |were interested in pursuing him. When that same man was described |as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent were interested. Of course, as the researchers explain, most women who engage in mate poaching do not think the attached status of the target played a role in their poaching decision, but our study shows this belief to be false. A married man, apparently, has been pre-screened, has been found passing the test for matehood, and, thus, is a desirable commodity. Gee, guys, I hadn't realized how objectified we have been for so long. I feel, what is the proper word, used? ;-) For more (or less) see the blog entry: http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/do-single-women- seek-attached-men/?em If you were really interested in the article you would locate it and read it yourself: Parker, J. Burkley, M. Who's chasing whom? The impact of gender and relationship status on mate poaching, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 45, Issue 4, July 2009, Pages 1016-1019, ISSN 0022-1031, DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2009.04.022.
RE: [tips] Why Do Single Women Go After Married Men?
Hi Clearly I've led too sheltered a life! I didn't even know what BK King masks were until googling them. To add a very slight teaching moment to this discussion, the use of a mask would definitely constitute a confounding variable to any study of appearance and attraction. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Robin Abrahams robina...@yhahoo.com 14-Aug-09 10:30 PM Well, if the men were wearing those freaky BK King masks, you can hardly blame the women. Robin Abrahams www.robinabrahams.com My first book, Miss Conduct's Mind Over Manners, is available now wherever books are sold! (Or if not, ask the bookseller to order more. Politely!) --- On Fri, 8/14/09, Jim Clark j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca wrote: From: Jim Clark j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Subject: RE: [tips] Why Do Single Women Go After Married Men? To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Date: Friday, August 14, 2009, 2:21 PM Hi I'm reminded of a study in which attractive and unattractive people were dressed in various outfits (Armani, Burger King). Women preferred less attractive men in Armani to attractive men in BK outfits. Men simply went for physical attractiveness. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca ( about:/mc/compose?to=j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca ) Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA DeVolder Carol L devoldercar...@sau.edu ( about:/mc/compose?to=devoldercar...@sau.edu ) 14-Aug-09 2:02 PM A couple of points--many women wouldn't turn down advances from Brad Pitt regardless of his marital status. His other attributes far outweigh that one. I think a married woman represents a challenge for some women--to see if she can come across as desirable even to men otherwise committed.Talk about ego-building! Ugly clothes, huh? I like that one. Even if it does presume that women are superficial... :) Carol Carol L. DeVolder, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Chair, Department of Psychology St. Ambrose University 518 West Locust Street Davenport, Iowa 52803 Phone: 563-333-6482 e-mail: devoldercar...@sau.edu ( about:/mc/compose?to=devoldercar...@sau.edu ) web: http://web.sau.edu/psychology/psychfaculty/cdevolder.htm The contents of this message are confidential and may not be shared with anyone without permission of the sender. -Original Message- From: Robin Abrahams [mailto:robina...@yahoo.com ( about:/mc/compose?to=robina...@yahoo.com )] Sent: Fri 8/14/2009 1:59 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] Why Do Single Women Go After Married Men? This is why I deliberately buy my husband ugly clothes. Robin Abrahams www.robinabrahams.com My first book, Miss Conduct's Mind Over Manners, is available now wherever books are sold! (Or if not, ask the bookseller to order more. Politely!) --- On Fri, 8/14/09, Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com ( about:/mc/compose?to=beth.ben...@gmail.com ) wrote: From: Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com ( about:/mc/compose?to=beth.ben...@gmail.com ) Subject: Re: [tips] Why Do Single Women Go After Married Men? To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu ( about:/mc/compose?to=t...@acsun.frostburg.edu ) Date: Friday, August 14, 2009, 1:56 PM Just a thought here. Might women be looking at the unmarried men and wondering why they're unmarried, and thinking there might be something less desirable about a man who's - just to pursue a stereotype here - unmarried and living with his mother? I like Mike's suggestion that married men might be seen as pre-screened. Beth BenoitGranite State CollegePlymouth State UniversityNew Hampshire On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 2:29 PM, Don Allen dal...@langara.bc.ca ( about:/mc/compose?to=dal...@langara.bc.ca ) wrote: Hardly a surprising finding. How many women would turn down an advance from Brad Pitt because he was married? Marriage just seems to be another one of those fitness markers such as wealth or status that women use in mate selection. Once again evolution trumps morality. -Don. Don Allen Dept. of Psychology Langara College 100 W. 49th Ave. Vancouver, B.C. Canada V5Y 2Z6 Phone: 604-323-5871 - Original Message - From: Mike Palij Date: Friday, August 14, 2009 7:00 am Subject: [tips] Why Do Single Women Go After Married Men? To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Or do they? An interesting blog entry in the NY Times this week describes a study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that varied descriptions of males and females as being single or married/attached. Quoting from
Re: [tips] Seeds of contemplation
Hi I would put it a little stronger than Christopher. Science strives for complete objectivity. Science provides mechanisms to identify and correct lack of objectivity (e.g., publication, replication, double blind studies, statistical tests, ...). Science thereby provides pathways to an accurate (i.e., objective) understanding of the natural world, including human behavior and experience. But the paths are often long and circuitous, which is perhaps why so many people prefer quick albeit fallible alternatives (e.g., revelation, tradition / culture, intuition, anecdotal evidence, political pundits, ...). I think we need to be cautious as scientists about giving an unduly pessimistic view of our enterprise. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 13-Aug-09 8:21:11 AM michael sylvester wrote: If scientific findings represent flawless objectivity,why do need replications? No one of significance ever said that scientific findings represent flawless objectivity. What they (should have) said is that the scientific approach is our best bet of finding out what is really going on in the world. Observation is still subject to all of the criticisms that were heaped upon it by Idealists from Plato on down to the present day (we make errors, we can be deceived, our predispositions sometimes overwhelm our senses, etc.). Replication helps us to catch some of those flaws. Science is not particularly efficient, and it is certainly not perfect. It is merely better than everything else we have tried. Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Mitchell and Jessen: Psychologists implicated in the use of torture
Hi I found the following somewhat ironic given there were legal opinions (presumably from lawyers) that the practices were in fact legal. I doubt very much that the problem of policing members of professions is unique to psychology. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D. wool...@webster.edu 12-Aug-09 11:04 AM Dear Colleagues, ... At the APA convention, Jonathan Turley (Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law, The George Washington University Law School) gave the /Lynn Stuart Weiss Psychology as a Means of Attaining Peace Through World Law Lecture/. In his presentation, he commented about the methods by which the law profession polices its own and how psychology fails to adequately address those within the profession who behave in ways that are unethical, illegal, etc. At lunch, we further discussed this issue and we explained to Jonathan the divide in psychology whereby some in the profession require a license and some do not. We also discussed that membership in organizations such as APA is entirely voluntary and that the Ethics Code for those without state licensing requirements is not enforceable. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Canadian Psychological Association and dissemination of the Rorschach test
Hi The CPA statement also overstates the case for secrecy, unless I'm misreading the statement. For example, it asks what would happen to validity if driving tests were public. To my knowledge driving tests are public and people know exactly what questions and behavior will be on the test. It is your memory for the correct answers and ability to perform the known behaviors that is being evaluated. Perhaps true of some (many?) psychological tests as well? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 11-Aug-09 8:02 AM The days of dark cabals retaining power by controlling secret knowledge may be coming to a close (yes, including psychologists and their tests). Hemeticism has had a long a storied tradition in the West (and other places too) but, unlike the old days when one could hide a sacred manuscript in the holy of holies and post a couple of burly guys with spears at the sole entrance, information flows in every direction now, nearly instantaneously. We went through much the same kind of crisis in Gutenberg's day. One can, like then, yearn for a return to the Middle Ages, and gradually become increasingly brutal and tyrannical about security (the modern equivalent of the earlier sacred), or one can adapt to the circumstances one finds oneself in and discover new methods to achieve one's aims. If psychologists insist on the former course of action, they will rapidly find themselves derided as rigid, anachronistic, and ridiculous (more so than they already are). Just a few 21st century thoughts... Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == roig-rear...@comcast.net wrote: As the topic of the publication in Wikipedia of the Rorschach ink blots and their most common answers was discussed recently on TIPS, you may be interested in the following: CANADIAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (CPA) POSITION ON PUBLICATION AND DISSEMINATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS http://www.cpa.ca/cpasite/userfiles/Documents/advocacy/2009%20CPA%20Psychological%20test%20statement%20.pdf. Miguel --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Time magazine cover story 8/17
Hi But if I convert from Christianity to Islam (or reverse), I do not make one into the other, do I? Convert appears to have multiple senses; see: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/convert Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca drna...@aol.com 10-Aug-09 12:38:58 AM Errr...I believe the word he used was convert - that is, convert fat into muscle - I don't think this is ambiguous, to convert something is to make it into something else. If he had been more careful (giving him the benefit of the doubt) or knowledgeable (less flattering interpretation) then he might have said replace. I've heard a lot of people spout off about making fat into muscle - enough to know that it is a very common misconception that I suspect he probably harbors too - based on the way it was presented. Nancy Melucci LBCC --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Copyright issues for readings courses?
Hi Some of the papers should be past copyright and available on-line. I was surprised to NOT find Pavlov represented in Project Gutenberg where, for example, one can find many of Darwin's writings. Also, Chris Greene's historical documents site may have some of the papers you use? And Chris may have clearer idea about copyright issues for older papers. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Jim Dougan jdou...@iwu.edu 10-Aug-09 12:27 PM TIPsters, I have been teaching an advanced undergraduate seminar in learning and conditioning for the last 18 years or so. It is a difficult readings based course in which students read primary-source articles beginning with Pavlov and Romanes moving right up to very recent material. The course is modeled after the type of readings-based seminar that I am sure all of us experienced in graduate school. In fact, the purpose of the course is to give students experience in the type of seminar they will likely encounter in graduate school. Traditionally I have put these readings on reserve in the library (formerly physical reserves, more recently electronic reserves). Note that the library owns copies of all the books and subscribes to all of the journals, so there should be no copyright issues. At least so I thought Recently our library has instituted what I consider to be a draconian policy toward reserve materials. Specifically, the policy places serious limits on how much material I can place on reserve - to the point that it will be difficult to continue teaching the course. To summarize, reserve materials cannot form the required reading for the course (reserves must be supplementary material), and no more than 30 such items can be used for a single course (I have 47 assigned readings, all required). In addition, no more than 20 percent of the pages of a book may be photocopied (although the entire book may be placed in reserve). The library claims that these changes are being made because publishers are getting nasty in enforcing copyrights - and the old principle of fair use is being severely curtailed. Is anyone else experiencing these problems? Any suggested solutions? -- Jim Dougan P.S. I was originally told the students could purchase an electronic course-packet - but have recently been told that the course packet itself would be too large and they won't do it... P.P.S. The other solution is to circumvent the library completely and make the PDFs available on my own website. The library warns me that I am putting myself at grave risk - implying that they might even file a complaint with the university administration. Despite the luxury of full professorship I would rather avoid that --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Gigerenzer alert: an exercise/high false positives for various diseases!
Hi Another thought ... if one took such a test and received a medical report as positive, would one have to report it as a pre-existing condition for health insurance, life insurance, or other enterprises that screen out risky characters? I'm not sure how health insurance works in the States, having access to more available Canadian healthcare. Or if you did not report it, would it be grounds for denying a later claim? To firm up the connection to teaching, in what kinds of courses could / should instructors discuss these issues? Statistics and probability? Any course that includes material on decision making, including intro, cognitive, ...? Critical thinking courses? And are our students prepared cognitively to appreciate the point? Would the best approach be to have students actually work out the frequencies (for a number of cases) and then determine the final proportion / percentage? I've done the latter over the years for lie-detector tests (same problem of false positives), but am not convinced students took the message to heart. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Joan Warmbold jwarm...@oakton.edu 14-Jun-09 5:27:19 PM As per Stephen's point about the high positive test rate for both AIDES and breast cancer, I was amazed at the high positive rate for AIDES as discussed by Stanovich. Casscells, et. al. (1978) gave a variant of the following problem to 20 medical students, 20 attending physicians and 20 house officers at four Harvard medical School teaching hospitals: /Imagine that the HIV virus that causes AIDS occurs in 1 in every 1,000 people. Imagine also that there is a test to diagnose the disease that always indicates correctly that a person who has HIV actually has it but that the test wrongly indicates that HIV is present in 5% of those tested. What is the probability that the individual actually has the HIV virus? / What answer would guess most gave, assuming that they knew nothing else about the individual's personal or medical history? The most common answer given was *95%* whereas the correct answer is approximately *2%.* Such a strong misunderstanding of the application of statistics by physicians is scary. According to Stanovich, the physicians vastly overestimated the probability that a positive result truly indicated the disease because of the tendency to overweight the case information and underweight the base rate information--i.e., only 1 in 1,000 are HIV-positive. That is, of 1,000 people, only one will actually be HIV-positive and the other 999 will be false positives, making the probability of false positives amazingly high. When we discussed this in class, it became clear that students had friends (family members, etc) who had been told they had tested positive for HIV without being told that the chances of this being a false positive a actually quite high. Instead, they were simply asked to return for another test, thinking that their chances of having the AIDS virus was fairly high as the physicians themselves apparently tend to think this is the case. And I so clearly recall my own sister when she tested positive for breast cancer and her and her husband were very worried/concerned until her physician could return from his 2 week vacation to conduct a biopsy as they were given absolutely no information about the high false positives for breast cancer via mammograms. So the idea of of using a quickie, simple test for Alzheimer's with a relatively high false positive rate would seem to be very unwise idea indeed. Come on folks, can't we see this leading to intense paranoia for folks who don't perform well on this particular test at one particular point in time? I would never recommend any type of short, quickie test for Alzheimer's' but, instead, a far more reliable series of tests, observations and interviews. Joan jwarm...@oakton.edu. Christopher D. Green wrote: Okay, without looking at Gig's books and articles, trying to do it off the top of my head: .93x13=12.09 (12 out of 13 is good) .86=(1000-13)=848.82 (849 out of 987 means 138 false alarms for every 12 hits). So, the probability of actually having Alzhiemer's based on a positive test here is only 12/138=8.69% Is that right? Now, that sounds bad, like Claudia said, but for any low-probability event like Alzheimers, you always going to have way more false alarms than hits. It's the same for HIV and breast cancer tests as well. Chris === sbl...@ubishops.ca wrote: For those of you who are Gerd Gigerenzer fans (and who isn't these days), here's an exercise for the reader involving a new screening test for Alzheimer's. Actually, feeling that one never knows when it will strike, it's just a cheap trick to get you to check my own calculations. There's a new BMJ report of a self-administered test for Alzheimer's. Takes only 5
RE: FW: [tips] I have no interest in research
Hi Is there any evidence Louis that your physicians had no interest in research early on in their medical and pre-med training? I would suspect that most physicians are indeed very interested in research and science more generally (although perhaps not in actually being researchers or basic scientists). Otherwise it is difficult to understand their excellent performance in scientific disciplines during high school and pre-med days, perhaps even before they plan to enter medicine. It is also not the case that practicing physician and medical researcher are mutually exclusive. Indeed, the two are closely intertwined at many institutions (e.g., teaching hospitals, major medical clinics, ...). As for the yellowed lecture notes, one of the characteristics of well-founded science is that it does produce truths that are unlikely to be overturned or changed. Don't engineers still learn Newtonian mechanics? Have the general principles (not specifics) of Darwinian evolution changed? When I teach statistics, I do use new tools (e.g., simulations), but the content of what I teach is largely (not entirely) unchanged from 30 years ago or more. Was the chemistry you learned (i.e., content) dated, or just the lecture notes? Given your allusion to China, how would you have felt if your condition revealed itself in China and some traditional practitioner wanted to re-align your Qi, arguing that they had no interest in research and Eurocentric medicine, preferring the time-honoured ways of Chinese tradition? First plane home? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Louis Schmier lschm...@valdosta.edu 13-Jun-09 9:11 AM Mike, (Palij), I'm not sure what you're really saying about what I said or whether you read closely what I said. I'm not disagreeing with you. My life was saved by non-researchers using the discoveries and techniques and technologies of researchers. Of course there's a causative connection. There's no argument there whether I'm an historian or otherwise. That's common sense that doesn't require a rocket scientist to understand. I'm offering my experiences and all the in-the-trenches physicians I know both professionally and personally only to offset the other Mike's gross generalizations that seem to disparage those who don't engage in the actual research to segregate people into clear cut categories of wise and unwise or proper thinking and improper thinking, independent thinkers and gullible suckers. And yeah, I'm living proof, as are millions of others, of what I'm saying. You shouldn't use the anecdotal club to disclaim what I'm saying. Again, all I'm saying is that being up on and utilizing new findings due to research is vastly different from applying such research results. Do some non-researchers ignore new findings? Are some not up on their field? Of course. So, what's new about that. In my day as a college student, we used to joke about our professors, some of whom taught chemistry and biology, about using yellowing lecture notes. And, I know some doctors like that who I wouldn't take my hamster to for treatment. And, just because I am an historian doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to research and non-research. Like Bob, I, too, engaged in extensive scholarly grant securing, research, and publication to the tune of becoming the authority in my field until 15 years ago when I changed my focus to concentrate on teaching, learning what is being learned about learning, and applying it in my ever-changing pedagogy to experiment with, adapt to, adopt, accommodate and apply new findings such that in recent brain research. I've had my say on this line. Anything else would be redundant. Got to attack the weeds in my garden that took over while I was teaching for the past month in China. Make it a good day. --Louis-- Louis Schmierhttp:/www.therandomthoughts.com Department of History Valdosta State University Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\ (229-333-5947) /^\\/ \/\ /\/\/\ \/\ / \ \__ \/ / \ /\/ \ \ /\ //\/\/ /\ \_ / /___\/\ \ \ \/ \ /\If you want to climb mountains \ /\ _/\don't practice on mole hills -/ \ --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] News: Tenure's Value ... to Society - Inside Higher Ed
Hi Not just the public ... in a 2006 Behavioral and Brain Sciences paper, Ceci et al provided empirical data that they concluded was inconsistent with the rationale often given for tenure. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA roig-rear...@comcast.net 08-Jun-09 9:47 AM This is a great ruling, but I am skeptical that it will have any signficant long-term impact given the public's negative attitude toward tenure and how widespread this attitude seems to be (no data; just my impression). At some institutions, tenure is no longer what it once was and some don't even seem to offer it anymore. My sense is that within the next 20-30 years tenure as we know it now will disapear altogether. Miguel - Original Message - From: Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Sent: Monday, June 8, 2009 9:20:51 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [tips] News: Tenure's Value ... to Society - Inside Higher Ed Hey look! Someone (besides professors) thinks tenure is a good idea! :-) http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/08/metro Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] AP IMPACT: Alternative medicine goes mainstream - Yahoo! News
Hi On the harms of alternative medicine, see http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/harmquack.html On the issue of freedom to choose, see http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/hfreedom.html They are both from Stephen Barrett's quackwatch site, a rich resource on these matters. Barrett is a physician. Hospitals, politicians, and academics who promote alternative medicine are shirking their responsibilities. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Michael Smith tipsl...@gmail.com 08-Jun-09 9:06:52 PM Just a comment. Although I surmise scientific types in general don't condone alternative medicine, being that we live in a country with personal freedoms I think that people are allowed to choose 'questionable', 'useless', or even 'dangerous' treatments if they wish. If more and more people want 'alternative medicine' then they will have it, one way or another. I think then that hospitals etc., may be responding to that desire, especially if it just makes the patient 'feel better' with no other adverse effects. --Mike On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 10:04 PM, Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.cawrote: As the evidence piles up against almost all alternative medicines, manufacturers and retailers cry all the way to the bank. http://tinyurl.com/l8gnrt Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] Cross-cultural for Tipsters (2)
Hi If you google plagiarism foreign students or plagiarism muslim students (especially the former), you will find much seemingly credible material linking plagiarism and student origins. Seemingly credible in the sense that much of it comes from the academic world, including educational research centers. Dominant view appears to link (perhaps) higher rate of plagiarism to second-language issues and to lack of academic enculturation. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Claudia Stanny csta...@uwf.edu 05-Jun-09 2:00 PM Sorry, Michael, but I think you are wrong on this. I have a very good informant who taught last year at a private Islamic school in another state. All of the students in this school are observant Moslems. She asked my advice for dealing with one student who had plagiarized on an assignment. When she confronted the student about the problem, her first response was Oh . . . my brother told me I would get in trouble for this! None of the other students felt any obligation to share their answers or work. Claudia Stanny From: michael sylvester [mailto:msylves...@copper.net] Sent: Friday, June 05, 2009 1:33 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Cross-cultural for Tipsters (2) What we call cheating may be interpreted differentially.I have noticed that among some Moslem students working out assignments together or even sharing answers or allowing other Moslem affiliates to copy is almost like a religious obligation-as if a good moslem should help another moslem.So is there a religio-cultural imperative?I taught at an institution where the chair of the Mathematics dept. told a faculty gathering that the Arab students in his class were big cheats. Michael Sylvester,PhD daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] When Mice Speak
Hi Is it possible that all brain components necessary for language (presumably there are many?) might individually be found in different species but that the unique combination necessary for language only occurs in humans? And does an association between a particular gene and specific language dysfunctions necessarily mean that the gene primarily serves a linguistic purpose? Genes important for sequential actions, for example, presumably would disrupt sequential linguistic functions (e.g., articulation) as well as other sequences of behavior that have similar demands for ordered responding. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 29-May-09 8:05 AM In the NY Times Nicholas Wade has an article on the role that a gene (FOXP2) has in language usage. He points out that this gene attracted attention when a defective version of it was found in a London family that had problems in articulation and aspects of grammar. FOXP2 is found in other species but in a somewhat different form. Chimpanzees and mice have it and Wade describes some recently published research that tansplanted the human version of FOXP2 into mice. Did the mice begin to speak? Will the IRB permit similar work with chimpanzees? Things that make you go Hm Wade's article is available at the following addresss: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/science/29mouse.html?_r=1ref=science The original research article which was published in the journal Cell by Wolfgan Enard and about 50 co-authors is available at this site: http://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(09)00378-X Hmmm, maybe language isn't such a unique human capability after all? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Texting May Be Taking a Toll on Teenagers - NYTimes.com
Hi It would be interesting to see the data on which some of these statistics are based. What is the distribution of uses like? Does a mean of several thousand suggest some people have extremely high numbers (i.e., skewed distribution like RTs)? I'm not sure what the implication (if any) is of counting sending + receiving, since each transaction is being counted twice? What is the average duration of a transaction ... does an ok really mean that much? and so on. Perhaps if a good database could be found, it would make for some interesting stats exercises. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 25-May-09 9:02:04 PM Generally speaking, I am skeptical of the popular computers-are-killing-our-children genre of news report. However, American teenagers sent and received an average of *2, 272 text messages per month* in the fourth quarter of 2008!! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26teen.html?hpw Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] What is this thing called love?
Hi Mike's hypothetical study is not too far from prior research on attractiveness of odors collected at different points in the menstrual cycle (and of faces as noted in the article). Just need to add the genetic component to the equation. http://www.livescience.com/health/060118_armpit_odor.html Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 25-May-09 8:41 AM On Mon, 25 May 2009 06:06:54 -0700, Stephen Black wrote: Answer according to a recent but apparently still unpublished study: Differences in major histocompatibility complex genes for the immune system. I can't wait for the song writers to get to work on that. http://tinyurl.com/oeyqy2 (Apparently a presentation today at the European Society of Human Genetics by Prof. Maria da Graša Bicalho of the University of Parana, Brazil). Question: since the comparison was between married couples and 152 couples chosen at random from the population and who were neither married nor having sexual relations with one another, how do we know that it isn't something about being married that altered the genes of married people? According to some people, marriage changes everything. :-) A prospective experimental study should be done. And if scents or pheromes are the basis for the attraction, then people should base desirability as a mate judgments solely on appropriately presented scent samples that are either genetically similar or different to the participant. I can see it now: Experimenter: here, sniff this cloth. Participant: okay *sniff, sniff* Experimenter: On a scale from 1 to 10 where 1 means I would never want to meet this person and 10 means I would like to spend the rest of my life with this person, how would you rate the person this smell came from? Participant: You're kidding me, right? Anybody know someone who needs a thesis topic? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Walter Mischel -- Don't!
Hi But is it not the case that the brain (somehow) must mediate the relationship between, for example, authoritative parenting and mature behavior? Assuming that people are not arguing for some mystical, nonphysical way for parenting to affect subsequent behavior, that would mean the brain somehow must have changed as a result of the parenting. And it may be that (at some point) we will be able to identify the way that it has changed (I'm not saying that we are there yet, by any means). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Joan Warmbold jwarm...@oakton.edu 21-May-09 1:43 PM Mike, I would assume an underlying third variable for both the brain differences as well as the behavioral differences. I find the tendency to use neuroimaging to explain behavior quite unscientific and illogical. When we behave in a certain way, there will always be a certain brain pattern that will be associated with that behavior pattern. But it would far more logical to assume that the behavior and the brain pattern, though occurring simultaneously, are both a result of some type of previous learning. One third variable that comes to mind is parenting techniques that provide a child with previous experiences involving the delay of gratification. That is, authoritative parenting has been shown to encourage more maturity than permissive parenting. And to become a delayer certainly demands more maturity than a non-delayer. Joan Joan Warmbold jwarm...@oakton.edu On Wed, 20 May 2009 14:43:25 -0700, William Scott wrote: A good article on Walter Mischel and his studies of self control is in this week's New Yorker magazine, titled Don't! http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer (2) It seems to me that even if one is willing to accept the belief stated in (1) above, it still is not clear what the relevance is of the neuroimaging studies that are suggested in the article. What if there are differences in delayers and non-delayers, say, in their prefrontal cortex activity? Does this imply that the prefrontal cortex activity causes one to be a delayer or a non-delayer? Or does being a delayer or non-delayer alters brain activity? Or that there is some unknown third variable that is causing both? The New Yorker article is a good, enjoyable read. The question, I think, is whether one should treat it as fiction or non-fiction. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Walter Mischel -- Don't!
Hi The longitudinal aspect of this research is exciting and novel, but it strikes me that the bulk of what is being asserted fits pretty much in the mainstream of thinking about the frontal lobes and executive functioning. The article, however, puts a very self-serving (for want of a better term) emphasis on the specific researchers involved. It is perhaps also worth noting that the earlier criticisms of personality testing, to which Mischel contributed, have been pretty much debunked (e.g., as due to the use of unreliable, single-item measures by critics). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca William Scott wsc...@wooster.edu 20-May-09 4:42:10 PM A good article on Walter Mischel and his studies of self control is in this week's New Yorker magazine, titled Don't! http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/18/090518fa_fact_lehrer Bill Scott --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] educating participants in research
Hi It certainly would be nice for all students to take research participation (and class participation and tests and life and ...) equally serious, but that is unlikely to ever be the case. I doubt, however, that slack participants have much effect. Only a few obvious ways that they could affect the results (off the top of my head): 1. Putting down same response for all items. Would affect mean of scale(s), depending on response emitted and average of responses. No effect on differences between scales administered to all participants or on different experimental conditions for within-s factors. Perhaps an effect for between-s factors, depending on proportion of such respondents, their allocation to condition, and their chosen response. Primarily noise added to between-s SSs? No effect on reliability or validity of measures? 2. Responding randomly. Would primarily add additional noise to within-group SSs (error) for between-s factor. Negative effect on reliability and validity of measures? 3. Identifying purpose of study and responding to promote or negate expected results. Probably more effort than simply participating honestly in study. There are ways to identify participants who could be excluded (as one poster suggested) or to minimize their impact. 1. For reaction times, exclude participants with too many unreasonably fast or slow trials. I think the IAT does something like this. 2. Positively and negatively worded questions? 3. MMPI and other tests have ways to catch random responding that might be used (e.g., too many conflicting responses to identical questions). 4. Easy to screen for people who do not generate variable responses. Perhaps also worth noting that if this were a serious problem, then one would NOT find predicted relationships or produce consistent results across studies. I suspect most students take the task as seriously as it merits (it is not life and death) given they are going to spend time at it and produce worthwhile data. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Blaine Peden cyber...@charter.net 06-May-09 1:47 PM Our students and faculty conduct research with participants from introductory psychology and other courses. Some participants seem to do the studies in great haste and with little sincerity and thereby raise concerns about the quality of their data. Have you developed strategies or instructional materials that explain the process and purpose of psychological research to future participants and also promotes their involvement and integrity? I welcome any comments, suggestions, or resources. thanks so much, blaine --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] They all look alike to me.....
Hi A crude familiarity explanation for the same-race bias has mixed support. Same race bias initially observed primarily on memory tasks (relevant to eye-witness testimony), but subsequently found with perceptual tasks as well. One prominent explanation now is that we fail to individuate faces of members of other ethnic groups as much as we do our own. For example, focusing on ethnic-specific features does not allow us to differentiate that face from other faces from that group as well as focusing on individuated features (i.e., characteristics specific to that particular instance). Some evidence, consistent with this model, is that people who show same-race memory bias tend to also show same-race perceptual bias. One study of latter phenomenon that I am familiar with used morphed faces with different proportion mixtures from two ethnic groups. People were better at making correct different judgments between two successive images when from their own ethnic end of the facial spectrum. This hypothesis does mix with familiarity, much in the way that Paul suggests. Basketball fans, who arguably learn to differentiate (discriminate in Paul's terms) faces of Blacks, do NOT show same-race memory bias. I don't know if anyone has done it, but the model suggests all kinds of nice studies on the effect of different biasing instructions during exposure to faces. For example, would making male/female judgments disrupt memory for faces with same-sex distractors? Light / Dark skin? Round / Oval shaped eyes? ... And could easily extend to other stimuli as well. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Paul Brandon paul.bran...@mnsu.edu 29-Apr-09 2:23 PM Jim-- Not a direct answer to your question, but Seems to me that stimulus discrimination training handles it adequately. We have more practice in discriminating between members of our own ethic group, since we see more of them than we do members of other groups (at least when we're in the majority group). Hence more discrimination training and finer discriminations. Prediction from this: Members of minority groups who interact with more members of the majority group than their own should make finer discriminations between members of the majority group. Data, anyone? On Apr 29, 2009, at 1:44 PM, Jim Dougan wrote: TIPsters Yesterday my daughter asked me the technical term for thinking that everyone in another ethnic group looks the same. I assume there is a term for it - but I don't know what it is. Anyone? -- Jim Dougan Paul Brandon 10 Crown Hill Lane Mankato, MN 56001 pkbra...@hickorytech.net --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Uneasiness with Evolutionary Psychology
Hi But another part of the just so story would be the failure to offer mechanistic explanations for the operation of evolutionary processes. Genes can account for transmission of biochemical information from one generation to next (and later) generation(s), but we are far from translating those processes into mechanistic psychological models. To take just one of Buss's examples, consider the preference for low waist-to-hip ratios. A complete explanation for this preference must somehow come up with a mechanism by which evolution could attach a preference to our perception of the complex human figure. Are we anywhere close to understanding what that model might be like (or innumerable other mechanistic models for evolutionary phenomena)? Until we can envision such a model, don't evolutionary explanations remain just so speculations? I do not attribute this lack to evolutionary psychology per se (which I generally favour), but rather to the lack of mechanistic models for many psychological phenomena. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Paul Okami kozure.ok...@verizon.net 26-Apr-09 1:27 PM Although there may have been a certain amount of this going on in the 1960s and early 1970s, evolutionary theory in psychology has become quite sophisticated over the past three or four decades, and criteria for distinguishing adaptations from by-products of adaptations or random noise are an established part of evolutionary psychology. Just-so-stories is an outmoded criticism of evolutionary psychology often leveled by people have political opposition (for some strange reason) to the theories or who simply don't know very much about them. Paul Okami - Original Message - From: Ken Steele steel...@appstate.edu To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2009 12:54 PM Subject: Re: [tips] Uneasiness with Evolutionary Psychology Hi Michael: One common concern is that some accounts of behavior may be described as just so stories, named after a group of stories by Rudyard Kipling (e.g., How the lepoard got its spots). The concern it this: If the behavior is present then the investigator assumes it is there for an evolutionary reason. The investigator then makes an attempt to describe a plausible basis for its existence as a response to some speculative set of selection pressures. Generating hypotheses is just part of the game. The issue is that the hypothesis must be falsifiable just like any other scientific hypothesis. If the hypothesis can't be falsified or otherwise empirically investigated then it becomes a just-so story. Ken Michael Britt wrote: David Buss wrote a very good summary of the main ideas and some of the recent research in the area of evolutionary psychology in the most recent edition of American Psychologist (The Great Struggles of Life, February-March 2009). It's really quite an interesting article and since I've received a number of emails asking me about evolutionary psychology I thought I would discuss the article in an upcoming podcast. In doing this I don't really want to enter into the debate over religion vs. science (though in some ways I guess it's going to be unavoidable). I do, however, want to make sure I understand the concerns/criticisms/uneasiness some people have with this area of psychology. If I understand it right, some people are concerned about this perspective because, for example, even though animals demonstrate a behavior that is in some way similar to what humans do doesn't mean that the reason animals show this behavior (which is probably related to increasing species' survival) is the same reason humans do it. We shouldn't jump to an evolutionary psychology explanation for every behavior we see. Also, even if the behavior can be shown to evolutionary roots, there may be a concern that some people might use this as an excuse to continue doing something that we, as intelligent and caring beings, should be able to discipline ourselves not to do. If I understand these two positions correctly then I think these are valid points. Feel free to expand on this if I'm not getting it correctly. What are some of the other reasons people criticize, or are uncomfortable, with this perspective (aside from the religious issue)? Thanks, Michael Michael Britt mich...@thepsychfiles.com mailto:mich...@thepsychfiles.com www.thepsychfiles.com http://www.thepsychfiles.com -- --- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. steel...@appstate.edu Professor and Assistant Chairperson Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA
Re: [tips] Relevance of science to psych work?
Hi I'm hard-pressed to know whether my leg is being pulled or not, but I'll take the bait anyway. Mike's comments are preceded by MS, mine by JC. I've taken Mike's last point first. MS: Furthermore, I think any fairly intelligent clinician can pick up some top-rated clinical research journals and figure out what clinical issues are supported or not supported by the research. And that without giving a hoot about scientific psychology. After all, it aint the inner workings of string theory. JC: It might as well be string theory if one has not learned about scientific methods and tools. And why would one bother picking top-rated clinical journals if one did not give a hoot about scientific psychology? Or would one even be able to discriminate between pop and professional psychology? And the evidence (at one time anyway) was that clinicians tend NOT to pick up and read journals to govern their practice. Why bother when they can just talk to colleagues (who don't read journals either) and when they don't give a hoot about scientific psychology anyway? MS: I think perhaps that being a reasonable and rational person is being confused with the science of psychology. To me, one needn't care about scientific psychology and still be an excellent evidenced based therapist. JC: Again, why would one bother with evidenced-based practice if one didn't care about scientific psychology? More on reason and science below. MS: For example, Gerald Peterson in his post said In the Stanovich book he argues that psychologists should offer the public two guarantees: First that claims are based on established scientific findings in psychology, and second, that applications/treatments have been developed and tested/evaluated scientifically. Ok. I think that is a good idea. But, I think I can do that without caring about psychology as a science. In fact, I can do that without any knowledge of the scientific method at all. JC: But why would you bother doing it if you did not care about psychology as a science? And how does one discriminate between well-founded and quack treatments without any knowledge of the scientific method at all. MS: Without the empirical training will I be at the mercy of the authors of the study? Of course (that is, what is beyond the bounds of an intelligent rational person being able to figure out). But we all are, because we don't have the time to investigate it ourselves and we fully depend on peer-review and the status of the journal/lab where the research comes from. JC: But Mike that assumes these things (peer review, status of journal/lab) actually matter to us. Difficult for me to see why they would matter if I don't give a hoot about scientific psychology. I'm sensing a theme here. MS: And note, we are not saying that the students don't have any training, just that they don't have any particular interest. Also, Stanovich's book and others like it are books about rational thinking not about the scientific method. JC: But above you seemed to be saying that they don't need any training? For example, you wrote without the empirical training will I be at the mercy ..., which appears to imply they don't have the empirical training? Or am I missing something? With respect to rational thinking and scientific method, one of the ways to think about science and its tools is as a repertoire of techniques for overcoming some of the native limitations of human cognition. Some are pretty obvious, such as Illusory Correlation and calculating a correlation coefficient (or chi2 or t-test or whatever). I would say there is much overlap between the domains covered by rational thinking and scientific method(s). MS: Honestly, if we had to wait for the results of experiments to catch up with life, we wouldn't be getting out of bed in the morning. JC: We're not talking about getting out of bed in the morning. We're talking about presenting oneself as an expert at helping people to overcome their personal difficulties. Moreover, it is one thing to do your best recognizing the limits of your knowledge and perhaps doing it in a tentative way and in a way that allows for evaluation (i.e., scientifically) and to push full speed ahead certain that you have solved the problem of the Holy Grail, and leaving no room for doubt or seeking confirmation. And if you're in the latter camp, of course, you're not likely to be seeking further information from clinical science since you're not missing anything important. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Critical Thinking Exercise
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 18-Apr-09 10:46:11 AM (4) It should be clear that the context, the situation, in which the interrogations were made, supported the use of torture even though historically the U.S. has opposed its use and did not accept the just following orders explanation, as shown in the Nuremberg trials. One has to ask why did people feel that if their superiors justified the use of torture it was acceptable to use torture given our history and legal precedents? Has the system become so authoritarian (i.e., one has to submit to authority no matter how morally or intellecually objectionable it is) that it no longer admits to the possibility of error on the part of the people administering it? Have the people working at lower levels, actually interrogating detainees, been selected so that they would not question authority or express dissent? What happens when the system is filled with Bruno Batta types? For more info on Bruno Batta and other individuals who were noted by Milgram, see: JC: According to an article in the NYTimes, people on the ground in some of the interrogations expressed quite strongly the view that they thought they had extracted whatever they could from the person being questioned. It was the higher powers who ordered still more aggressive techniques in the belief the person had more information to offer (it appears nothing significant was forthcoming, consistent with Mike's earlier comments about ineffectiveness of torture). Article also refers to participation of psychologists formerly employed by military. So a couple of other pieces to the exercise: (1) distance / immediacy and willingness to administer pain again a la Milgram, and (2) ethics of psychologists being involved in such activities. See NY Times and Slate pieces at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/world/middleeast/18zubaydah.html?ref=todayspaper http://www.slate.com/id/2216507/ Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Critical Thinking Exercise
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 17-Apr-09 6:54:53 AM Here's a question that one might consider when covering ethics and topics such as Milgram's obedience to authority and related issues: When is it okay to violate ethical principles and even federal and international laws? JC: When the laws are unjust or ill-founded? Once illegal for people from different races to marry. Currently illegal in some states and not others for gays to marry. As Mike goes on to note, issue is very complex. I wonder if it is better worded as having to do with where one draws line between appropriate/acceptable behavior and inappropriate/unacceptable behavior, and how external factors work into drawing that line? If one's family was being threatened to coerce unacceptable behavior from us, would we be culpable in carrying out some barbarous act? If one's country was being threatened, what is acceptable? (I realize these are not perfectly parallel, but wonder if the mind's of those endorsing torture work along these lines?) Reminds one of some of Kohlberg's moral dilemmas (steal medicine or not?). In the McDonald's incident, people (at least the manager's boyfriend) were found guilty despite attributing their behavior to obeying the policeman on the phone, as was the case with those tried at Neuremburg. Mike: P.S. As a seperate exercise, we could also ask students to review the research literature on the effectiveness of torture to elicit any useful information. If it turns out that torture produces unreliable information, what possible justification could it have? JC: Raises a quandary doesn't it? How can one properly research effectiveness of torture? Clearly awkward (to say the least) to include torture condition in the research design. Even if torture occurred outside confines of the research, would one be justified in using knowledge gained from those inappropriate (to most) actions? I understand that there is (was?) debate about whether to use knowledge generated by the clearly unethical medical research conducted by Nazis. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] naturopaths prescribing in canada
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Michael Smith tipsl...@gmail.com 13-Apr-09 4:57 PM Besides, some naturopaths are trained MD's, and if the training fits, why shouldn't you be allowed to wear the shoes? JC: An MD who was also a naturopath would already have prescription privileges. Not clear why this would justify a DN without an MD getting prescription privileges? Prescription authority could be as protected as it is, more for political than medical reasons. JC: Presumably some benefit to having trained people write prescriptions, rather than everything being over the counter. I am sure LPNs, RNs, Naturopaths, and Physicians Assistants could probably benefit everyone if they had prescription privileges given the shortage of MDs [ at least in Canada: I think they mostly go to the States 'cause o the money :) ] JC: Depends on whether you see increased consumption of drugs as a good thing for healthcare, as opposed to good for drug companies and those writing the prescriptions. I believe there was some statistic reported over the past few years where drug companies now spend more on advertising than RD, presumably due to the known economic benefits of direct-to-consumer advertising. I like the finding where patients who go to their doctor explicitly asking for Drug X are much more likely than other patients to get that drug prescribed. As to comparisons between Canada and USA healthcare, there is certainly much debate (e.g., speculations about socialized medicine and Natasha Richardson's death). One undisputed finding, of course, is that much more money is spent per capita in USA than in Canada, but without the (virtually) universal coverage found in Canada and without marked disparities between countries in many ultimate outcome measures (life expectancy, mortality). The number of doctors issue is also relevant, of course, to our recent discussions of misleading use of healthcare statistics. Would lots of doctors translate into lots of demand (from doctors) for tests that are unnecessary and perhaps even harmful (iatrogenic medicine)? All of this is incidental to the sorry growth in Complementary and Alternative Medicine, as represented here by Naturopathy. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Portuguese water dog
Hi To plug a Canadian psychologist, Stanley Coren, you can also consult his Intelligence of Dogs. The ranking (based on trainer's ratings I think) is at: http://petrix.com/dogint/ See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligence_of_Dogs I did not see Portuegese Water Dog in the list, but other sites indicate it is similar to a standard Poodle (Poodledog = Puddledog = Water Dog, according to another site). Poodle ranks 2 on the intelligence list. But Coren's own website includes an excerpt describing why an intelligent dog might not be such a good thing. See http://www.stanleycoren.com/index.htm and the Intelligence of Dogs link. The preceding could be of interest in psychological discussions of comparative psychology, intelligence, genetics, and related topics. For example, see following allusion to comprehension of language and reasoning skills by Rico, a border collie: http://www.doggienews.com/lib/technology/rico-smart-collie.htm Could also, however, raise some difficult and controversial issues related to these topics in the human context, such as those raised at following neoeugenics site: http://home.comcast.net/~neoeugenics/dogs.htm Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca William Scott wsc...@wooster.edu 13-Apr-09 6:26:46 PM see: Dog behavior: the genetic basis By John Paul Scott, John L. Fuller Published by University of Chicago Press, 1974 ISBN 0226743381, 9780226743387 Bill Scot msylves...@copper.net 04/13/09 5:53 AM Do any of you tipsters have a Portuguese water dog? Any idea as to its behavioral conditioning history particularly the amount of trials to criteria for learning new tasks? Michael Sylvester,PhD Daytona Beach,Florida --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re:[tips] Yellow Volkswagen (Was: Thinking Critically About Neuroscience)
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Michael Palij m...@nyu.edu 09-Apr-09 10:08 AM (3) I'm hoping that spring comes soon to the Great White North and some people start spending more time outside, oh, enjoying the spring weather and watching the grass grow. ;-) JC Some of us are still watching ice block rivers and cause flooding, as are (were?) our North Dakota neighbours to the balmy south of us. Happily, we live on the 5th floor of a condo, so are not in any danger of water damage. Here are some webcam links http://nd.water.usgs.gov/floodinfo/ http://www.cbc.ca/manitoba/features/flood2009/ http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/special/floodwatch/VIDEO-Rising-Red-River---day-by-day-41930687.html Oh, and to give it a psychological spin ... many examples of people putting much time and effort into helping other people protect their homes, altruism at work helping the species to survive and reproduce and pass on our altruistic genes. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] MIT Faculty Open-Access Policy
Hi There was an out in the MIT policy ... Faculty could request (from a Dean, I think) exemption from the policy with a rationale (e.g., perhaps journal will not accept those conditions?). Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA tay...@sandiego.edu 08-Apr-09 8:04 AM I'm with Marie--I too am confused about the bigger picture. And what about textbooks and ancillaries. I wrote a HUGE ancillary that I am in the process of revising and have to sign away my intellectual rights and become a contributor, not an author. If I were at MIT would it fall under that policy? If so, the publisher would not have allowed me to work on the project. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 tay...@sandiego.edu Original message Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 08:08:35 -0400 From: Helweg-Larsen, Marie helw...@dickinson.edu Subject: RE: [tips] MIT Faculty Open-Access Policy To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Sue et al I still don't understand. So MIT professors cannot publish in journals that do not agree to this arrangements? In many (most?) journals the author signs over the copyright to the journal upon publication. Will MIT will to pay the open access fee that some journals offer for the copy right to be released (in a recent publication of mine I could buy open access for $3000 - I declined). Marie Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D. Department Chair and Associate Professor of Psychology Kaufman 168, Dickinson College Carlisle, PA 17013 Office: (717) 245-1562, Fax: (717) 245-1971 http://www.dickinson.edu/departments/psych/helwegm/ -Original Message- From: Frantz, Sue [mailto:sfra...@highline.edu] Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 4:35 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] MIT Faculty Open-Access Policy The open-access movement aims to put peer-reviewed research and literature on the internet for free and remove most copyright restrictions. If an MIT faculty member publishes in a peer-reviewed journal, MIT can make that article available for free. Make as many copies as you'd like. Use it however you'd like (as long as you don't sell it for profit). For free. -- Sue Frantz Highline Community College Psychology, CoordinatorDes Moines, WA 206.878.3710 x3404 sfra...@highline.edu Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology, Associate Director Project Syllabus APA Division 2: Society for the Teaching of Psychology APA's p...@cc Committee -Original Message- From: tay...@sandiego.edu [mailto:tay...@sandiego.edu] Sent: Tuesday, April 07, 2009 1:00 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] MIT Faculty Open-Access Policy I don't understand the implications. Plain English please. Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 tay...@sandiego.edu Original message Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2009 10:33:38 -0700 From: Frantz, Sue sfra...@highline.edu Subject: [tips] MIT Faculty Open-Access Policy To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Passed by Unanimous of the Faculty, March 18, 2009 The Faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is committed to disseminating the fruits of its research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the Faculty adopts the following policy: Each Faculty member grants to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nonexclusive permission to make available his or her scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to MIT a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same. The policy will apply to all scholarly articles written while the person is a member of the Faculty except for any articles completed before the adoption of this policy and any articles for which the Faculty member entered into an incompatible licensing or assignment agreement before the adoption of this policy. The Provost or Provost's designate will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written notification by the author, who informs MIT of the reason. (Full article here: http://bit.ly/uWlsO)
Re: [tips] dangers of drinking distilled water - critical thinking article
Hi I take Beth's point about not dwelling on the MDCM, but the MDCM degree IS the MD degree. I think one thing causing some confusion is that in Canada the MD is considered an undergraduate degree. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_degree With respect to the critical thinkiing issue, then, the piece cannot be minimized because the author is not a real doctor. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca tay...@sandiego.edu 21-Mar-09 8:58:48 PM From the McGill University website (from when the link to Zoltan Rona's name took me to his credentials): The Faculty of Medicine offers a four-year undergraduate medical program leading to an M.D.,C.M. degree. (Abbreviation for Latin term: Medicinae Doctorem et Chirurgiae Magistrum). That says it all: a fancy BS degree?? Annette Annette Kujawski Taylor, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology University of San Diego 5998 Alcala Park San Diego, CA 92110 619-260-4006 tay...@sandiego.edu Original message Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:36:51 -0400 From: Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com Subject: [tips] dangers of drinking distilled water - critical thinking article To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@acsun.frostburg.edu Attached is an article sent to me by someone who also happens to sell water purifiers. There is so much wrong with it (starting with the author's alleged MD, which must be something other than the M.D. with which we're familiar), and I thought it might be new fodder for critical thinking. Beth Benoit Granite State College Plymouth State University New Hampshire --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) Early Death Comes From Drinking Distilled Water.doc (68k bytes) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] dangers of drinking distilled water - critical thinking article
Hi Here's an explanation of the degree terminology ... in fact appears to be standard MD (with a Scottish twist). http://www.premed101.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-4206.html My pessimistic nature led me to expect it might stand for something (scary) like Complementary Medicine, but not so. Of course, no one has ever seen a legitimate MD (or legitimate PhD in psychology) promote quack medicine! Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Beth Benoit beth.ben...@gmail.com 21-Mar-09 12:36:51 PM Attached is an article sent to me by someone who also happens to sell water purifiers. There is so much wrong with it (starting with the author's alleged MD, which must be something other than the M.D. with which we're familiar), and I thought it might be new fodder for critical thinking. Beth Benoit Granite State College Plymouth State University New Hampshire --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re:[tips] Weird science
Hi James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 20-Mar-09 9:30 AM (4) I can see how Jim Clark's presentation of Goldberger's testing might cause disgust in students (or most ordinary people). When he presents: | *Filth parties*: Goldberger, wife, and assistants injected with | blood from affected people and later ate scrapings from scabs, | urine, and runny feces of ill; did not get ill This is a pretty messy picture but I wonder where this description came from? Lawrence K Altman, science/medical writer for the NY Times wrote a 1999 book entitled Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine also describes Goldberger's research. Although there were injections of blood from people with pellegra, whether scrapings of stuff were eaten is subject to interpretation. Altman writes: |...Goldberger swallowed capsules contrining urine, feces, and skin |taken from patients with severe cases of pellagra. ... |On May 7, again in Spartanburg, he repeated the swallowing experimetn |on himself and five other volunteers, including his wife, Mary, the |mother of their four children, who had insisted on the privilege of |representing women as a volunteer in the experiments. ... |None of the volunteers developed pellagra. (p243-244) Mental imagery is a subjective thing but I think that swallowing a capsule with disgusting stuff might be easier to handle than, say, taking in spoonfuls of gloppy gook. JC I would have to try and track down my source, which I'm relatively sure would have been on the internet. I mention in class that material was mixed with flour into a kind of paste (which is how my source described it). Here are some sources, some of which mention capsules as Mike's quotes did and some the mixing into a dough. http://history.nih.gov/exhibits/Goldberger/docs/pellegra_5.htm http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=4821 http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/full/121/5/372 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/12/health/the-new-yorker-who-changed-the-diet-of-the-south.html?sec=health I also wondered when capsules were first used to ingest medicines, and it turns out to be quite early (certainly long before Goldberger did his studies). See (second long link is from googling medicine and history of capsules. http://www.tokai-cap.co.jp/e_capsule/history.html http://books.google.ca/books?id=VAmbWj9aK_oCpg=PA8lpg=PA8dq=medicine+%22history+of+capsules%22source=blots=e2abXsgI3nsig=O7Ryel1DMdvp5xiKExHqWOafGrUhl=enei=17LDSfXmIJOWMtPyiMAEsa=Xoi=book_resultresnum=2ct=result MP Also, it seems to me that Goldberger's research has less to do with the other studies which seem to have been selected for the incredibly bad judgment used in doing them. In contrast to the vomit doctor, Goldberger's research allowed one to reach a practical and ultimately acceptable conclusion. This research has more in common with Warren and Marshall's research on whether H. pylori is a possible cause of gastric ulcers (see: http://tinyurl.com/cwvblf ). If one needs a grossness factor, Marshall drank a beaker of H. pylori in order to show it would make him sick and could be treated with antibiotics. In 2005, Warren and Marshall got the Nobel prize in medicine for this work. So, maybe I need a goodies update. On not. JC I would disagree about the vomit doctor. Experiments do NOT always lead to the correct conclusion, but they are nonetheless preferable to other approaches to answering scientific questions. The only problem with the vomit doctor that I can see is that he derived an overly broad conclusion, that is, not contagious versus not contagious by ingestion. Interesting that Goldberger used blood injections as well. Take care Jim --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
re: [tips] Roll over, Darwin
Hi This came up on PESTs a few days ago ... I pointed out that Turkey is actually the only country surveyed a few years ago with lower belief in evolution than the USA. Here's other points Taner Edis has written much on creationism and Islam. See a recent summary at http://www.hssonline.org/publications/Newsletter2008/NewsletterJanuary2008Creationism.html There is a well-funded creationist movement in Turkey, Harun Yahya, which has borrowed extensively from American creationists. See http://www.harunyahya.com/ And of course, it was reported several years ago that the only country with lower commitment to evolution than the USA was Turkey. See http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2006/08/well-at-least-w.html Perhaps USA can take some comfort in fact that if the many less-developed nations of the world were surveyed, they would probably be even less committed to evolution than the USA and Turkey. Canada can hardly be sanguine about this matter ... Several years ago one of our major, national granting agencies (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) appeared (in many people's minds) to question evolution and put intelligent design on the same footing. See http://atheisme.ca/annonce/HAC_SSHRC_2006_09_en.html I think it is safe to say that from an international perspective, the debate about evolution is likely to continue for the next 200 years after Darwin's birth and the next 150 years after the publication of the Origin of Species. James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Jeffry Ricker jeff.ric...@sccmail.maricopa.edu 13-Mar-09 6:05:55 PM http://chronicle.com/news/article/6113/editor-of-turkish-scientific-journal- reportedly-is-sacked-for-darwin-cover-story March 11, 2009 Editor of Turkish Scientific Journal Reportedly Is Sacked for Darwin Cover Story By Aisha Labi The editor of a scientific journal published by Turkey*s state-run Scientific and Technological Research Council has reportedly been removed from her post for commissioning a March cover story on Charles Darwin to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the naturalist*s birth. The council*s vice president, who is also a member of the magazine*s editorial board, *removed the story from the journal and put an article about climate change on the cover instead,* the Turkish daily newspaper Hšrriyet reported. Dozens of university students and professors protested the council*s action outside its Ankara headquarters today, the Associated Press reported. The country*s secularists suspect the governing party, which has its roots in political Islam, is seeking to raise the role of religion and promote the Muslim version of creationism. Turkey occupies a *central position in the creationist movement* outside the United States, Hšrriyet noted in an earlier article. Turkey*s main, secular opposition party has filed a parliamentary motion over the apparent censorship, but Hšrriyet reported that the research council*s president had *left the media*s questions largely unanswered.* Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu 18-Mar-09 3:56:28 PM On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:12:03 -0700, Stephen Black wrote: Yesterday, we had a shocker in the People's Republic of Canada. Our Science Minister, (yes, our _science_ minister), with the proud title of federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, was asked whether he believed in evolution. He refused to say, replying I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate (and you just have to admire the creative syntax of that statement). You might want to take a look at the editorial in this week's Nature: |Editorial |Nature 458, 259 (19 March 2009) | doi:10.1038/458259a; |Published online 18 |March 2009 |Turkey censors evolution | |Turkey's government has done more for science than many. A row over |a censored magazine and a sacked editor could put the good work at risk. | |It has been the biggest crisis in Turkish academia since last year's lifting |of the headscarf ban in universities. Last week a portrait of Charles Darwin |was taken off the cover of the March issue of the government-backed |science magazine Bilim ve Teknik (Science and Technology) just before |it went to press. TšBTAK, Turkey's national science funding agency, |which publishes the magazine, then sacked its editor, šidem Atakuman. |Scientists, assuming censorship, are justifiably outraged and protests are |ongoing. see: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7236/full/458259a.html Anti-evolutionism: Not just for Christians anymore. -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Income Inequality correlations
Hi Nice presentation, although these effects to my knowledge are not new ones. For example with respect to mental health, see http://thecenturyfoundation.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/27/image004.gif Myers intro text has a nice graph in chapter 14 of US states and Canadian provinces showing mortality rate as a function of income equality (negative slope). All Canadian provinces are clustered in the lower right. Challenge with such correlational data is separating inequality from other correlated factors (e.g., average income). Also some nice data with respect to that, such as http://www.lib.washington.edu/subject/geography/geog342/360px-Inequality_and_mortality_in_metro_US.jpg I only looked at the chart in Chris's posting, but I think that the authors may strive too hard to make their point about inequality affecting both well-off and poor. See Section 4 of the chart. Both with respect to literacy and death rates there are clear interactions between rich vs. poor dimension and inequality categories. Specifically, poor are more markedly affected by inequality than are the rich. I agree with Chris, this makes a nice data set for discussion of lots of statistical and methods issues. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 15-Mar-09 9:38:02 PM This piece in the /Guardian/ about a new books on the social effects of income inequality will be interesting to most anyone, but especially to those of you who are teaching statistics and want to have relevant examples to use. The article is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/mar/13/inequality But perhaps more interesting is the graphic that the Guardian has produced here: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2009/03/13/inequality.pdf Of particular interest to me are the four scatterplots to the center-right of the graphic. They show quite marked correlations between income inequality in a number of countries that are highly developed (as we say) and (1) mental illness rates, (2) rates of obesity, (3) rates of imprisonment (note it is on a log scale), and (4) rates of teen pregnancy. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Antecedents of Eurocentric science
Hi There is a heated debate about science and Islam on Wikipedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_science and the debate on the talk-page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Science_in_medieval_Islam#Factual_accuracy And perhaps we as psychologists have been culpable in neglecting the origins of much of psychological knowledge in Islamic culture, at least according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_psychology There are innumerable interesting and challenging issues in these debates ... here's a few observations 1. That science is founded on multiple cultural influences, independently of where it ultimately flourished, undermines the claim that science is Eurocentric and should help us to promote it as a universal way of knowing. I'm skeptical that will be the dominant response, at least in circles where indigenous forms of science are being promoted (talk about a truism). 2. How valid are historical approaches that start out with a thesis and then seek confirming instances in the historical record? Does it matter that these instances are being found over a time period of 800 years? Given that 8 centuries (or more) intervening period, how much further along was our knowledge of the natural world from the start to the end of the period? A rich scientific tradition during this period of Islam would also make even more interesting than it already is the question of what cultural factors led to its diminishing influence and development in that part of the world. 3. Is it in fact the case that Islamic (some question this as an appropriate affiliation for many people being cited) and other non-Western influences (China, India) have been ignored in the historical record of science? I would guess this might differ markedly depending on the source (e.g., explicitly historical or history being a side issue). In any case it would be interesting to see some quantification of the neglect, especially in the historical record. (How are empirical approaches to history fairing these days, anyway?) Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca sbl...@ubishops.ca 12-Mar-09 2:02:06 PM For some reason or other, from time to time we've been preoccupied with the question of Eurocentric science, and the extent to which other civilizations, in particular African-based ones, have contributed to and advanced European science. We are not alone. _Nature_ has just reviewed two books which attempt to illuminate on this question. The books are: Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World by John Freely Science and Islam: A History by Ehsan Masood According to the reviewer of both, Yasmin Khan, It has been widely accepted that the Islamic civilization had merely a bridging role in preserving the wealth of inherited ancient Greek knowledge ready for future consumption by the West. This pervasive belief, now known to be a damaging distortion of history, is explored in two new books. However, Khan criticizes the apparently conventional view of Freely that the flow was Greek to Islam to the West, and prefers the more complex thesis of Masood that the influence was a two way street, with knowledge flowing in both directions. In particular, he notes that Islam did not merely pass knowledge along from the Greeks, but changed and improved it in significant ways. According to Khan, both authors showed an appreciation for the masterpiece of Ibn al_Haytham, the Book of Optics, which is considered one of the most influential works produced in Islamic science, representing a definitive advance beyond the achievements of the ancient Greeks in their study of light...Masood elaborates further, asserting that al-Haytham pioneered a progenitor to the modern scientific method back in the eleventh century. Al-Haytham's investigations were based on experimental rather than abstract evidence, and his experiments were systematic and repeatable, enabling him to establish empirical proof of the intromission theory of light - that vision is the result of light from objects entering the eye. Two centuries later, al-Haytham's work had a profound influence on Roger Bacon. It is a bold claim that the scientific method has its origins in Islam, but apparently a claim with merit. If I can add my own two bits, I've stumbled upon an interesting figure in the early history of chemistry, a woman known as Mary or Maria the Jewess (among other names). She lived in Alexandria some time around the third century CE. She's credited with being a founder of alchemy and of apparatus and procedures which the later science of chemistry depended on. One of them, the bain Marie is a water bath still in use today. As a Jew, a woman, and an Alexandrian, she obviously represented something other than a white, Christian, male, Eurocentric source of knowledge. Stephen Nature review (free):
RE: [tips] Does the new definition of science measure up? | Science | guardian.co.uk
Hi I think the question is complicated by the fact that people in the humanities would differ among themselves with respect to their basic epistemological goals. Certainly historically many people in literature, history, and the like sought a correct interpretation of the events they were trying to understand. Hence there would be standards (correspondence with text or historical events, coherence, ...) by which their models would be evaluated and these criteria might overlap quite a bit with those we use in science. Among such people, there would even be people who adopted empirical and quantitative methods to test their ideas. But there are also people in the humanities and some social sciences (including psychology) who have forsaken the idea of a true characterization for events. The relativistic views of such postmodernists, deconstructionists, and the like would appear to diverge from science at the very outset, leaving little room for correspondences between the two cultures. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA Claudia Stanny csta...@uwf.edu 04-Mar-09 10:48 AM I was struck by this similarity between literary close reading and scientific hypothesis testing the first time I had a serious discussion about how people in the humanities do their scholarly work. Granted, this isn't science, but I think the analysis qualifies as the same sort of evidence-based critical thinking that scientists use when evaluating a hypothesis. For those of us in science, the relevant evidence is empirical data generated from a well-designed study. For those in these other areas, the evidence is the text written by the author. The hypothesis might be something like Jane Austen uses this metaphor, literary technique, or symbolism to represent xxx. There is a similar type of hypothesis testing that historians use, with text from primary sources (diaries, newspaper articles of the time, etc) as the evidence. There are certainly differences in methodology. But I think they have a legitimate point about the use of evidence. A big difference is what counts as evidence. Claudia J. Stanny, Ph.D. Director, Center for University Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Associate Professor, Psychology University of West Florida Pensacola, FL 32514 - 5751 Phone: (850) 857-6355 or 473-7435 e-mail:csta...@uwf.edu CUTLA Web Site: http://uwf.edu/cutla/ Personal Web Pages: http://uwf.edu/cstanny/website/index.htm -Original Message- From: Marc Carter [mailto:marc.car...@bakeru.edu] Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 8:24 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] Does the new definition of science measure up? | Science | guardian.co.uk I have colleagues (I'll let you guess their areas of inquiry) who see no difference between what we do in science and what we do in literary criticism: both (they say) are arguing from evidence, and hence both should be science. I do not argue with them anymore; I simply smile and go back to eating my lunch. m --- Marc L Carter, PhD Associate Professor and Chair Department of Psychology Baker University College of Arts Sciences --- I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it the right way, did not become more complicated. -- Paul Anderson -Original Message- From: Christopher D. Green [mailto:chri...@yorku.ca] Sent: Tuesday, March 03, 2009 11:55 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Does the new definition of science measure up? | Science | guardian.co.uk The British Science Council attempts to define science. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/mar/03/science-def inition-council-francis-bacon In addition to the problem noted in the article (viz., that the definition doesn't distinguish science from many humanistic disciplines, such a history), I think the use of the term evidence here is vague. Empirical evidence might have been better. As it now stands, those who, for instance, use citations from Scripture as evidence for a claim, could also claim to be scientists under this definition. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] We get visited
Hi I don't know how the Republicans have been allowed to get away with this nonsense. I certainly hope American voters (not the Republican core, of course) are able to see through the hypocrisy of a party largely responsible for the current economic mess (and far more) now blaming the new President. As for Canada and Afghanistan, see http://icasualties.org/OEF/ByNationality.aspx Canada has experienced 108 deaths, disporportionate to our population of just over 30 million compared to USA (about 10x our size) and the UK (about 2x our size). Of course, those countries are also dying elsewhere. See http://icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx The USA by far bears the brunt of military losses in the Middle East (not considering the indigenous population). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Gerald Peterson peter...@svsu.edu 19-Feb-09 6:22:28 PM Over here the Republicans are blaming him for any problem, obstructing any initiative, and looking to any mistake as a sure sign of his political naivete and incompetence. But he is cute eh!? Now would you guys just send more troops to Afghanistan please? ;-) Gary Gerald L. (Gary) Peterson, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology Saginaw Valley State University University Center, MI 48710 989-964-4491 peter...@svsu.edu sbl...@ubishops.ca 2/19/2009 6:32 pm Hey! Skinny guy with a funny name shows up in Ottawa today, eats a beavertail, leaves. We didn't have a gun in our pocket and we were glad to see him. Woman on the street interviewed on the CBC: Interviewer: If you could say one thing to Barack Obama today, what would it be? Woman: Will you marry me? Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Lego Model of Brain??
Hi I want Lego because I plan to talk about building blocks for mechanistic models of psychological phenomena. And I think actually that the brain would be a great use of Lego ... imagine different colors for different regions of the brain. If you want to see what is possible with Lego (and a 3-D scanner and lots of patience), look at this 75 cm tall model of Mario! http://thecontaminated.com/super-mario-lego-big-size/ Unfortunately does not look like anyone has shown a similar interest in the brain. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA sbl...@ubishops.ca 17-Feb-09 10:17 PM On 17 Feb 2009 at 19:57, Jim Clark wrote: For a talk I'm doing in a few weeks for our undergraduates I want an image of the brain built with Lego. Has anyone seen such a thing? I've had no luck yet with google images. Lego seems a rather unlikely medium to portray a brain. But you might try knitted and quilted brains at the The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art. Really. http://harbaugh.uoregon.edu/Brain/index.htm Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Lego Model of Brain??
Hi For a talk I'm doing in a few weeks for our undergraduates I want an image of the brain built with Lego. Has anyone seen such a thing? I've had no luck yet with google images. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
[tips] Art Therapy (was Tips: need suggestions for a student)
Hi Without knowing much about it, I always assumed Art Therapy was a dubious specialization. Browsing some art therapy organizations and programs does not do much to relieve me of that belief (e.g., questionable education qualifications, mention of dubious ideas like Jungian psychology and psychodynamic therapy, ...). Is there validity to this generic approach to treatment of psychological disorders?? Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Department of Psychology University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9 CANADA DeVolder Carol L devoldercar...@sau.edu 16-Feb-09 9:58 AM Hi, I have a student/advisee that I am trying to help figure out some things. She is a lovely young woman who is multi-talented. She is bright and enthusiastic with a love of psychology, plus a double-major in art, plus a coaching certificate (she was set to play semi-pro basketball but a torn ACL quashed that). She wants a career that will combine all of those things. She considered clinical or counseling psych but wants to integrate the art and the movement (she also has a background in dance). She considered sports psychology but feels it's too limiting. We talked about art therapy, but she thinks that's too limiting as well. Plus, she wants to work with children. Can anyone suggest a possible career path that might combine some or all of her talents? I think she holds a great deal of promise, and I want to help her explore some options. Any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks, Carol Carol DeVolder, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Chair, Department of Psychology St. Ambrose University Davenport, Iowa 52803 phone: 563-333-6482 e-mail: devoldercar...@sau.edu rg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
RE: [tips] [tips]Regression to the mean (was Bogus treatments)
Hi Similar to Claudia's approach, I wrote an spss program to simulate regression to mean for my wife's clinical psych lectures. Define 10 groups on basis of rank of scores at time 1 (t1) and then compute t2 through t6 with specified reliability between successive times. Plotting means as function of time and rank at time 1 (the 10 groups) nicely shows convergence of extreme groups. Below is the program. Varying #r (the reliability between successive times) demonstrates that convergence to zero of extreme groups occurs more rapidly as reliability decreases. input program. loop o = 1 to 1. comp #r = .7071. comp t1 = rv.norm(0,1). comp t2 = t1*#r + rv.norm(0,1)*sqr(1-#r**2). comp t3 = t2*#r + rv.norm(0,1)*sqr(1-#r**2). comp t4 = t3*#r + rv.norm(0,1)*sqr(1-#r**2). comp t5 = t4*#r + rv.norm(0,1)*sqr(1-#r**2). comp t6 = t5*#r + rv.norm(0,1)*sqr(1-#r**2). end case. end loop. end file. end input program. rank t1 /ntiles(10) into group. glm t1 to t6 by group /wsf = time(6) /plot = profile(time*group). Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Claudia Stanny csta...@uwf.edu 09-Feb-09 12:45:19 PM I do a version of this as a demonstration of regression effects using a deck of cards or a random number generator on my calculator to measure achievement (and create a deficient group for treatment and a high achieving group for comparison based on the pretest measure) The deficient group always gets better in the post test (only takes a 30-second treatment that involves much waving of my hands) and the high achieving group shows some slippage. The effect of random error is more obvious in this demonstration. --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] alcohol and pregnancy redux
Hi I've always admired Anne Streissguth's work and often use it to illustrate multiple regression as a way to strengthen (although not definitively demonstrate) causal inferences. Here's an excerpt from: Streissguth et al (1989). IQ at Age 4 in Relation to Maternal Alcohol Use and Smoking During Pregnancy. Developmental Psychology, 25, 3-11. This study indicates that prenatal alcohol exposure is significantly related to child IQ at 4 years of age, in a relatively healthy, generally middle-class sample. Self-reported consumption of over three drinks a day on the average was associated with an average IQ decrement of almost 5 IQ points, after adjustment for a wide variety of other factors that also predict child IQ. This decrement represents an estimated tripling of the risk of subnormal intelligence (i.e., IQ 85) for a child of average background in our sample. ... 2. The statistical models referred to here as threshold models should not be regarded as biological thresholds, because other outcomes from this study have shown strong linear effects of prenatal alcohol exposure. ... Among the many control variables were several that independently predicted child IQ at age 4, at least one of which I know of no warnings about, namely aspirin use (and its significant interaction with child's gender ... I could not discern from quick read direction of this interaction or of separate gender main effect ... the two coefficients suggest effect of aspirin for one gender and no effect perhaps for other?). Antibiotic use had a similar negative effect as aspirin and alcohol. Despite the numerous (statistically) controlled variables, Streissguth correctly cautions against causal inferences and argues for interpretation in conjunction with experimental animal studies. Very nice illustration of possible confounding factors in nonexperimental studies and ways to (partially) address them. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Paul C Bernhardt pcbernha...@frostburg.edu 07-Feb-09 8:57:33 AM This is precisely the calculus my wife and I have employed over the past 7 months of her pregnancy (expecting in late March). That is, since the evidence is unclear on what is safe, but clearly none is safe, then none is the right answer. There were celebrations we attended in which we would have liked the answer to be šone glass a day is OK* but not having really good evidence to support that left us saying, *no, thank you* at parties, and using Fre alcohol free sparkling wine for New Years. -- Paul Bernhardt Frostburg State University Frostburg, MD, USA On 2/6/09 11:50 AM, DeVolder Carol L devoldercar...@sau.edu wrote: Dear Tipsters, I tried posting this on the other list (PSYTEACH) but it was rejected because it serves no purpose to carry this any further since it has strayed from the *teaching of psychology.* This list is easier, and if you*re not interested, then just delete it. I think it relates to teaching psych because I want to provide my students with what I consider valid information. So, I*m copying what I sent to the other list for what it*s worth. The question on PSYTEACH to which I am referring dealt with how much alcohol is safe during pregnancy, and whether we are using scare tactics to unnecessarily frighten people. I've been waiting to write this message because I wanted to hear back from a colleague, Dr. Jennifer Thomas, at San Diego State University. In my opinion, Jennifer is a well-respected expert in this field and is past president of the Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Study Group. I also went to grad school with Jen and remember her work with rat pups and their exposure to alcohol (that's my disclosure about potential bias, but really I'd still consider her an expert). I asked her for her opinion on acceptable levels of alcohol ingestion during pregnancy and the threshold for adverse fetal effects, and she acknowledged that there is very active debate on the topic, with the consensus in the US being somewhat different from the consensus in the UK. (The position in the US is abstinence, in the UK the accepted level is a glass per day.) In her words, The problem really is that there is so much variability in response to alcohol(genetics, nutrition, other exposures) that one cannot make a prediction of the risk for an individual and so there is NO known safe level of alcohol exposure during pregnancy. We certainly see changes with low levels of exposure with the animal models. It is more difficult to study in humans. Jennifer also pointed me to two sites, which I am including here: http://www.rsoa.org/fas.html http://www.rsoa.org/fas.html and http://www.rsoa.org/fas-Response.pdf http://www.rsoa.org/fas-Response.pdf . The second link has a reference list. My opinion remains unchanged--I still believe in complete abstinence during all phases of
Re: [tips] Massie and autism
Hi Do these estimates of heritability control for the different intrauterine environments of MZ and DZ twins? That is, MZ twins are more likely to share single placenta and chorion than DZ. I believe controls for this have been undertaken in some areas, although tremendously challenging work, as one can imagine. Stephens point still remains with respect to parental interactions, although interpretation would differ. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca sbl...@ubishops.ca 08-Feb-09 11:07:37 AM On 8 Feb 2009 at 4:00, Allen Esterson wrote: In response to Joan Warmbold's suggestion that Henry Massie, M.D. was onto something with his research in the 1970's in which he analyzed videos of the interactions between parents and children BEFORE the onset of 'autistic-like' behaviors. His analysis determined that there was a distinct lack of appropriate response to the infants' signals... snip To which question I would add: Did Massie do the same research with a corresponding number of (blind) controls to eliminate the possibility of confirmation bias in his analyses? Judging by this: http://www.childdevelopmentmedia.com/intervention-prevention/91936p.html the answer is No. There is a major obstacle to claims that parental interaction is somehow responsible or predisposes the child to autism. This is that MZ-DZ twin studies of autism have consistently shown that the heritability of autism is very high, among the highest of behavioural disorders. These studies usually have shown as well that there is only a small unshared environmental component and no contribution of the shared environment. Claims that autism is caused by the parents would require substantial input from the shared environment. For example, one of the more recent studies (Ronald et al, 2006) concludes that extreme autistic-like traits show high heritability, no shared environment, and modest nonshared environment. Their estimates vary with the type of model fitting carried out, but ranged from 0.64 to 0.92. Their summary Figure 1 shows MZ correlations around 0.8 with DZ around 0.3. Using the conventional formula of h2 = (MZ-DZ) x2 gives heritability of 1.0, which surely doesn't leave much room for parental effects. As Allen noted, it seems more plausible that the parents in Massie's study are reacting to subtle signs of autism in their children rather than creating them. It's also possible that it is genes that are responsible both for the autism of the children and the claimed unresponsive behaviour of the parents. Admittedly, Massie's proposal is kinder than Bettelheim's pernicious pseudoscience, but it still lays a heavy load on the parents. It's best to be careful with such claims. Source (for the heritability data): Ronald, A, Happe, F., Bolton, P., Butcher, L., Price, T., Wheelwright, S., Baron-Cohen, S., and Plomin, R. (2006). Genetic heterogeneity between the three components of the autism spectrum: a twin study. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 45, 691-699. Available on-line at http://web.mit.edu/autism/ronald~1.pdf Stephen - Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: sbl...@ubishops.ca 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ --- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] globeandmail.com: Professor makes his mark, but it costs him his job
Hi I think the secret to the difference (assuming there is a difference in the actual doing of assignments) is the 4 tests for Chris versus my 2 tests over an entire year. That is, students would not find out until Dec in my full-year course that they should have done the 3 assignments during the term, rather late at that point. It may also be that my assignments are substantial, and VERY time consuming over a several week period, perhaps too much so. You can see the structure of the class and assignment dates at www.uwinnipeg.ca/~clark/teach/4100. I also find it interesting that Chris cannot mark assignments because of inadequate TA times, much the situation I appear to be moving toward. How many others have experienced very low or declining levels of support for TAs? I wrote a comment last year in response to an Access document created by a committee at U of Winnipeg about how they appeared to recommend all sorts of special assistance (e.g., in student services) but never really considered increasing class room support, arguably a primary consideration in success of weaker students (I've never looked for evidence on this, but it would appear to make sense that less classroom support harms weaker students more than stronger students). I've looked occasionally at the literature on classroom size (another form of teaching support?) and success, but not recently. As I remember it was quite messy, especially after one got to 30 or so students. Take care Jim James M. Clark Professor of Psychology 204-786-9757 204-774-4134 Fax j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca Christopher D. Green chri...@yorku.ca 08-Feb-09 11:57:18 AM Jim Clark wrote: One year I decided to make the assignments voluntary (I can't remember why although I am now being taken to task for using too many TA hours for the course, and this might have been the case earlier as well ... much of TA time is spent marking assignments). Guess what? Completion of assignments dropped off precipitously! My conclusion, even strong, well-motivated students have difficulty working hard when there is NO direct consequence with respect to grades. I can only imagine what the situation would be for weaker, less motivated students. It is interesting that you say that. My experience has been somewhat different. I have never marked the weekly assignments in my stats course, mainly because there isn't sufficient teaching assistance to do so given my class size, but also because I think it gives students an opportunity to do some guided work without every mistake they make ending up in their final grade. Instead, I have the teaching assistant simply go over the assignment at the start of the next class. I cannot tell you what proportion of them do the assignments (though nearly all of them turn up to hear the TA each week). Their motivation is mainly that I tell them that the four tests throughout the year will prove rather difficult unless they have had the practice of the assignments (at a minimum). Those who don't believe me often get a shock when their first midterm test arrives and usually change their behavior. (And what of those few who are able to navigate my tests without taking the assignments seriously? More power to them.) Regards, Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J 1P3 Canada 416-736-2100 ex. 66164 chri...@yorku.ca http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ == --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
Re: [tips] Directional hypotheses (was ANOVA question)
knows the material, p should be greater than .25, and that is my alternative hypothesis. The null hypothesis is that p is less than or equal to .25 -- Joe is using the die to select response options or Joe knows nothing about what is being tested. The next one is from actual research. Richard Porter gathered shirts worn by infants in the maternity ward. He stuffed each shirt into a tube. He then presented two tubes to baby's Mom, one of which contained her baby's shirt. Mom sniffed them both and then indicated which she thought had the shirt worn by her baby. If Moms can identify their babies by olfactory cues, what is the probability that Mom will pick the correct tube on one trial? It is, of course, greater than .5. We dismiss the possibility that Mom would try to mess up the research by picking the one that is not her baby. Accordingly, the directional hypotheses tested are p is less than or equal to .5 and p is greater than .5. Cheers, Karl W. -Original Message- From: Jim Clark [mailto:j.cl...@uwinnipeg.ca] Sent: Sunday, January 11, 2009 1:17 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: RE: [tips] ANOVA question (was cross-cultural) Hi I'll take Stephen's points in reverse order, starting with Abelson, in response to my: --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
