Coherent decision analysis with inseparable probabilities and utilities

This article explores the extent to which a decision maker's probabilities can be measured separately from his/her utilities by observing his/her acceptance of small monetary gambles. Only a partial separation is achieved: the acceptable gambles are partitioned into a set of belief gambles, which reveals probabilities distorted by marginal utilities for money, and a set of preference gambles, which reveals utilities reciprocally distorted by marginal utilities for money. However, the information in these gambles still enables us to solve the decision maker's problem: his/her utility-maximizing decision is the one that avoids arbitrage (i.e., incoherence or Dutch books).     

Comparing developmental outcomes for children in care with those for other children in Canada

This study assessed the test–retest reliability and convergent validity of single items from the Assessment and Action Record (AAR), from Looking After Children (Ward, 1995). It also compared developmental outcomes of 43 children cared for by a Canadian child welfare agency and those of an approximate comparison group of 1,600 children from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (Statistics Canada, 1995). High and low reliability and validity were found for different AAR items. The children in care had worse outcomes than the comparison children on indicators of educational success and negative behaviour, but not on measures of identity, social and family relationships, or prosocial behaviour.     

A Significant Shift: A Pentadic Analysis of the Two Rhetorics of the Post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church Regarding Homosexuality

This paper argues that, since the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), there has been a significant shift in the rhetorical stance of the Roman Catholic Church toward homosexuality in which the pre-council rhetoric, which condemned both act (i.e., homosexual behavior) and actor (i.e., the homosexual) has been replaced by two distinctly different rhetorics: a moral rhetoric, which continues the Church's long-standing condemnation of homosexual acts as sins, and a pastoral rhetoric, which argues that homosexuals should be ministered to and embraced. A Burkean pentadic analysis is used to define how the two rhetorics differ from each other and from the earlier rhetoric. The three major influences (i.e., Scripture, Tradition, and Catholic theology/philosophy) that have shaped, and continue to shape, the Church's position regarding homosexuality are described. Some of the socio-political implications of this shift are emphasized.     

Circuit optimization via sequential computer experiments: design of an output buffer

In electrical engineering, circuit designs are now often optimized via circuit simulation computer models. Typically, many response variables characterize the circuit's performance. Each response is a function of many input variables, including factors that can be set in the engineering design and noise factors representing manufacturing conditions. We describe a modelling approach which is appropriate for the simulator's deterministic input–output relationships. Non-linearities and interactions are identified without explicit assumptions about the functional form. These models lead to predictors to guide the reduction of the ranges of the designable factors in a sequence of experiments. Ultimately, the predictors are used to optimize the engineering design. We also show how a visualization of the fitted relationships facilitates an understanding of the engineering trade-offs between responses. The example used to demonstrate these methods, the design of a buffer circuit, has multiple targets for the responses, representing different trade-offs between the key performance measures.     

Interactional synchrony: Genuine or spurious? A critique of recent research

In two recent articles, McDowall (1978a, 1978b) has challenged the micro-analytic work of W. S. Condon and Adam Kendon. Specifically, he has argued on the basis of his work that interactional synchrony is not a genuine phenomenon, but rather a statistically expectable noise in social interaction. In this paper, we demonstrate that McDowall's results are inconclusive because of confusion as to what constitutes interactional synchrony. We clarify these issues and place McDowall's experiments in their proper perspective.     

Micromomentary movement and the deconding of face and body cues

A new version of the Profile of Nonverbal Sensitivity Test (PONS)—a standardized test of sensitivity to nonverbal cues—was developed to determine the effects of five levels or sequences of micromomentary movement on accuracy in decoding nonverbal face and body cues, presented for 125 microseconds (msecs). The five sequences were: backward movement, partially backward movement, no movement, partially forward movement, and fully forward movement. Two versions of this test—the Test of Micromomentary Movement Effects (TOMME)—were administered to two samples of female high school and college students. The results, averaged over face and body cues, showed that as the movement sequences more closely approximated the fully forward sequence, decoding accuracy increased. These results, showing the benefits of adding properly sequenced information at split second (42 msec) exposures, not only support the findings of previous researchers that micromomentary facial affect displays may be helpful in decoding nonverbal facial cues, but also suggest that micromomentary movements may be important for decoding body cues as well.     

Specification of nonverbal behaviors for clinical assessment

Nine categories of nonverbal behavior (extremity movements, self-manipulations, facial expression, posture, orienting, gestures, voice quality/tone, speech rate/pressure, and sense of timing) were tested in a standardized role play situation of social skills. Each category was judged using a new midi-level system of assessment which permitted specification of component behaviors but allowed observers to make single ratings at the ends of videotaped episodes. The midi-level measurements were as reliable and practical as more traditional global measures of social skill and social anxiety. Midis were superior to globals (i.e., single overall ratings of skill and anxiety) in terms of predicting physiological indices of social anxiety. Voice quality/tone and sense of timing appeared to be the best predictors of criterion social skill measures and self-manipulations, extremity movements, and gestures had the highest weights in predicting criterion measures of social anxiety.     

Estimation from Zero-Failure Data

When performing quantitative (or probabilistic) risk assessments, it is often the case that data for many of the potential events in question are sparse or nonexistent. Some of these events may be well-represented by the binomial probability distribution. In this paper, a model for predicting the binomial failure probability, P , from data that include no failures is examined. A review of the literature indicates that the use of this model is currently limited to risk analysis of energetic initiation in the explosives testing field. The basis for the model is discussed, and the behavior of the model relative to other models developed for the same purpose is investigated. It is found that the qualitative behavior of the model is very similar to that of the other models, and for larger values of n (the number of trials), the predicted P values varied by a factor of about eight among the five models examined. Analysis revealed that the estimator is nearly identical to the median of a Bayesian posterior distribution, derived using a uniform prior. An explanation of the application of the estimator in explosives testing is provided, and comments are offered regarding the use of the estimator versus other possible techniques.