northwestern university, the family institute at northwestern university William Revelle northwestern university Iftah Yovel northwestern university Wen Li northwestern universityWe make theoretical comparisons among five coefficients -Cronbach's , Revelle's , McDonald's h , and two alternative conceptualizations of reliability. Though many end users and psychometricians alike may not distinguish among these five coefficients, we demonstrate formally their nonequivalence. Specifically, whereas there are conditions under which , , and h are equivalent to each other and to one of the two conceptualizations of reliability considered here, we show that equality with this conceptualization of reliability and between and h holds only under a highly restrictive set of conditions and that the conditions under which equals h are only somewhat more general. The nonequivalence of , , and h suggests that important information about the psychometric properties of a scale may be missing when scale developers and users only report as is almost always the case.

The extent to which a scale score generalizes to a latent variable common to all of the scale's indicators is indexed by the scale's general factor saturation. Seven techniques for estimating this parameter-omega hierarchical (ω h )-are compared in a series of simulated data sets. Primary comparisons were based on 160 artificial data sets simulating perfectly simple and symmetric structures that contained four group factors, and an additional 200 artificial data sets confirmed large standard deviations for two methods in these simulations when a general factor was absent. Major findings were replicated in a series of 40 additional artificial data sets based on the structure of a real scale widely believed to contain three group factors of unequal size and less than perfectly simple structure. The results suggest that alpha and methods based on either the first unrotated principal factor or component should be rejected as estimates of ω h .

Although neurotogical and physiological studies indicate a right hemisphere superiority in global processing and a left hemisphere superiority in local processing of Navon-type hierarchical letters (D. Navon, 1977), most investigations of lateralized perception in healthy participants report neither asymmetry. In 6 experiments the authors examined the influence of attentional demands, stimulus properties, and mode of response on perceptual asymmetries for global and local perception. Consistent with their theoretical predictions, asymmetries were more robust on divided- than focused-attention tasks and in response to stimuli in which local and global levels were equally salient compared with those with greater global than local saliency. Contrary to their prediction, perceptual asymmetries were not influenced by the complexity of the motor response.

No abstract

No abstract

Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) posits that individual differences in reward and punishment processing predict differences in cognition, behavior, and psychopathology. We performed a quantitative review of the relationships between reinforcement sensitivity, depression and anxiety, in two separate sets of analyses. First, we reviewed 204 studies that reported either correlations between reinforcement sensitivity and self-reported symptom severity or differences in reinforcement sensitivity between diagnosed and healthy participants, yielding 483 effect sizes. Both depression (Hedges' g = .99) and anxiety (g = 1.21) were found to be high on punishment sensitivity. Reward sensitivity negatively predicted only depressive disorders (g =-.21). More severe clinical states (e.g., acute vs remission) predicted larger effect sizes for depression but not anxiety. Next, we reviewed an additional 39 studies that reported correlations between reinforcement sensitivity and both depression and anxiety, yielding 156 effect sizes. We then performed meta-analytic structural equation modeling to simultaneously estimate all covariances and control for comorbidity. Again we found punishment sensitivity to predict depression (β = .37) and anxiety (β = .35), with reward sensitivity only predicting depression (β =-.07). The transdiagnostic role of punishment sensitivity and the discriminatory role of reward sensitivity support a hierarchical approach to RST and psychopathology. Highlights: Sensitivity to punishment positively predicts both depression and anxiety. Sensitivity to reward discriminates between them, negatively predicting depression. This pattern was observed even when directly controlling for comorbidity. Depression's effect sizes are uniquely sensitive to clinical state. Depression's effect sizes are also moderated by method of clinical assessment.

These data suggest that self-report of adherence to ADHD medications may be a useful and expedient way of assessing adherence, and that assessment and counseling about adherence may be an important part of treatment. Future research using an objective indicator of adherence is needed to follow up on these findings.

No abstract