Prompt-fading procedures are ubiquitous in instructional interventions. Two prompt-fading procedures, prompt delay and simultaneous prompting, are consistently shown to be efficacious, although few studies have directly compared the two procedures. These comparisons are warranted as the training procedures in simultaneous prompting are…

Suppose "X" and "Y" are binary exposure and outcome variables, and we have full knowledge of the distribution of "Y," given application of "X." We are interested in assessing whether an outcome in some case is due to the exposure. This "probability of causation" is of interest in comparative…

The linear dependence of age, period, and birth cohort is a challenge for the analysis of social change. With either repeated cross-sectional data or conventional panel data, raw change cannot be decomposed into over-time differences that are attributable to the effects of common experiences of alternative birth cohorts, features of the periods…

Conventional random-effects models in meta-analysis rely on large sample approximations instead of exact small sample results. While random-effects methods produce efficient estimates and confidence intervals for the summary effect have correct coverage when the number of studies is sufficiently large, we demonstrate that conventional methods…

In any meta-analysis, it is critically important to report the dispersion in effects as well as the mean effect. If an intervention has a moderate clinical impact "on average" we also need to know if the impact is moderate for all relevant populations, or if it varies from trivial in some to major in others. Or indeed, if the…

Estimating confidence intervals (CIs) for the correlation has been a challenge because the correlation sampling distribution changes depending on the correlation magnitude. The Fisher z-transformation was one of the first attempts at estimating correlation CIs but has historically shown to not have acceptable coverage probability if data were…

In the wake of the methodological developments that aim to render qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) "time sensitive", I propose a new procedure for carrying out QCA longitudinally. More specifically, I show first why longitudinal case disaggregation should be carried out with change-based intervals (CBIs) rather than with fixed…

As a measure of heterogeneity in meta-analysis, the coefficient of variation (CV) has been recently considered, providing researchers with a complement to the very popular I[superscript 2] measure. While I[superscript 2] measures the proportion of total variance that is due to variance of the random effects, the CV is the ratio of the standard…

When scores are used to make decisions about respondents, it is of interest to estimate classification accuracy (CA), the probability of making a correct decision, and classification consistency (CC), the probability of making the same decision across two parallel administrations of the measure. Model-based estimates of CA and CC computed from the…

Why do creative ideas and solutions to unresolved problems benefit from taking a break? The idea of unconscious work as an explanation is so appealing that even after reading this paper, which states clearly that unconscious work is a fantasy based on no clear theory and no clear empirical evidence, some readers will claim that we are saying the…

During timing tasks, the brain learns the statistical distribution of target intervals and integrates this prior knowledge with sensory inputs to optimise task performance. Daily events can have different temporal statistics (e.g., fastball/slowball in baseball batting), making it important to learn and retain multiple priors. However, the rules…

We propose a simple computational model that describes potential mechanisms underlying the organization and development of the lexical-semantic system in 18-month-old infants. We focus on two independent aspects: (i) on potential mechanisms underlying the development of taxonomic and associative priming, and (ii) on potential mechanisms underlying…

The limitations of Cohen's ? are reviewed and an alternative G-index is recommended for assessing nominal-scale agreement. Maximum likelihood estimates, standard errors, and confidence intervals for a two-rater G-index are derived for one-group and two-group designs. A new G-index of agreement for multirater designs is proposed. Statistical…

The basic timescales governing animal life are generally determined by body size. Pauses in naturally occurring human speech were investigated to determine if pause timescales are also sensitive to body size. Reported is an analysis of pause duration allometry in recorded interviews of 61 athletes. Pauses were divided into three classes based on…

Meta-analyses of treatment effects in randomized control trials are often faced with the problem of missing information required to calculate effect sizes and their sampling variances. Particularly, correlations between pre- and posttest scores are frequently not available. As an ad-hoc solution, researchers impute a constant value for the missing…