scholarly journals Analyzing individual differences in sentence processing performance using multilevel models

2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelley A. Blozis ◽  
Matthew J. Traxler
Author(s):  
Ivana Buric ◽  
Inti A. Brazil

Meditation generally has small to moderate effects on health and well-being, but some people experience greater benefits from meditation than others. What are the characteristics of the study participants or meditation students that lead to beneficial outcomes of meditation? This chapter adopts a multilevel approach to evaluate the evidence on the relationship between participant characteristics and individual differences in meditation outcomes across four sources of variability: personality and other psychological variables, biological variables, illness severity, and demographic factors. Research in the area is sparse and has several methodological shortcomings, thus the authors recommend the use of multilevel models and meta-regression as ways of properly incorporating the study of individual differences with other variables.


Author(s):  
Erica L O’Brien ◽  
Genesis E Torres ◽  
Shevaun D Neupert

Abstract Objectives Previous diary work indicates that older people experience more intrusive and unwanted thoughts (i.e., cognitive interference) on days with stressors. We examined additional predictors of daily cognitive interference to enhance understanding of the psychological context surrounding this link. We specifically focused on factors related to subjective experiences of aging based on studies that have related higher stress and impairments in cognition such as executive control processes (working memory) to negative age stereotypes. Consistent with these findings, we generally expected stronger stress effects on cognitive interference when daily self-perceptions of aging (i.e., within-person fluctuations in awareness of age-related losses [AARC losses]) and general aging attitudes (i.e., individual differences in attitudes toward own aging [ATOA]) were more negative. Methods Participants (n = 91; aged 60–80) on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk completed surveys on 9 consecutive days, reporting on their ATOA (Day 1) as well as their stressors, AARC losses, and cognitive interference (Days 2–9). Results Multilevel models showed that people reported more cognitive interference on days with more AARC losses. Individuals with positive ATOA also experienced less cognitive interference on days with more stressors, whereas those with negative ATOA experienced more. Discussion Both individual differences and fluctuating daily perceptions of aging appear to be important for older adults’ cognitive interference. Consistent with other work, positive ATOA protected against daily stressor effects. Further elucidating these relationships can increase understanding of and facilitate efforts to improve (daily) cognitive experiences in older adults.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-151
Author(s):  
Yesi Cheng ◽  
Jason Rothman ◽  
Ian Cunnings

AbstractUsing both offline and online measures, the present study investigates attachment resolution in relative clauses in English natives (L1) and nonnatives (L2). We test how relative clause resolution interacts with linguistic factors and participant-level individual differences. Previous L1 English studies have demonstrated a low attachment preference and also an “ambiguity advantage” suggesting that L1ers may not have as strong a low attachment preference as is sometimes claimed. We employ a similar design to examine this effect in L1 and L2 comprehension. Offline results indicate that both groups exhibit a low attachment preference, positively correlated with reading span scores and with proficiency in the L2 group. Online results also suggest a low attachment preference in both groups. However, our data show that individual differences influence online attachment resolution for both native and nonnatives; higher lexical processing efficiency correlates with quicker resolution of linguistic conflicts. We argue that the current findings suggest that attachment resolution during L1 and L2 processing share the same processing mechanisms and are modulated by similar individual differences.


2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 405-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher T. Burke ◽  
Patrick E. Shrout ◽  
Niall Bolger

The study of within-person change lies at the core of developmental research. Theory and empirical data suggest that many of these developmental processes are not linear. We describe a broad class of multilevel models that allows for nonlinear change — nonlinear mixed models. To demonstrate the utility of these models, we present a nonlinear mixed model analysis of adjustment to conjugal loss. Coming from a perspective of the individual as a regulatory system, our model predicts a faster rate of adjustment immediately following the loss and diminished adjustment as time since the loss increases, approaching an equilibrium level of well-being. This model allows us to estimate various aspects of the adjustment trajectory and individual differences in these trajectories, including multiple ways that pre- and post-loss factors can explain variability in the adjustment process. The model provides new insights into an important phenomenon that cannot be gleaned from linear models and other methods of trajectory analysis. We discuss the strengths and limitations of this type of analysis relative to other methods.


2019 ◽  
Vol 123 (6) ◽  
pp. 2248-2262
Author(s):  
Adam P. McGuire ◽  
Yvette Z. Szabo ◽  
Karly M. Murphy ◽  
Thane M. Erickson

Gratitude has been consistently linked to well-being, but its influence on health-related functioning is not well understood. Furthermore, research suggests the need to differentiate between-person and within-person effects of personality characteristics, and research on gratitude and health has not typically done so. This prospective study aimed to (1) differentiate the unique effects of trait and state gratitude on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and (2) test state gratitude as a mediator between baseline trait gratitude and subsequent HRQoL. Undergraduate participants ( N = 141) completed a trait gratitude measure at baseline and then repeated measures of weekly state gratitude and HRQoL over eight weeks. Multilevel models examined baseline trait gratitude, state gratitude averaged across the study (person aggregate) as between-person individual differences, and within-person variability in state gratitude (person-centered) as predictors of HRQoL, as well as the indirect effect of trait gratitude on HRQoL via state gratitude. Greater aggregate and person-centered state gratitude each predicted higher HRQoL. Baseline trait gratitude did not have a significant direct effect but prospectively predicted higher HRQoL via higher weekly state gratitude. Results suggest that understanding effects of gratitude on health-related perceptions requires accounting for both between-person individual differences and within-person fluctuation in state gratitude.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lin Shen ◽  
Joshua F. Wiley ◽  
Bei Bei

Study Objectives: To examine bi-directional, temporal associations between daily sleep and affect under naturally constrained (school) and unconstrained (vacation) sleep opportunities, while simultaneously incorporating both valence (positive versus negative) and arousal (high versus low) dimensions of affect. Methods: Sleep and affect were measured over 2 weeks of school and 2 weeks of vacation in 205 adolescents (54.1% females, Mage=16.9 years), providing 5231 days of data. Total sleep time (TST) and sleep efficiency were measured using actigraphy and sleep diary. High- and low-arousal positive and negative affect (PA, NA) were self-reported each afternoon. Between- and within-person sleep-affect associations were tested using cross-lagged, multilevel models. Lagged outcome, day of the week, study day, and sociodemographics were controlled.Results: Bi-directional associations between self-report sleep and affect were found on the between-person level: longer self-report TST associated with lower high and low arousal NA. Higher high arousal PA associated with longer actigraphy TST between-persons, but predicted shorter same-night actigraphy TST within-persons. Results did not differ between school and vacation. Significant within-person random effects demonstrate individual differences in daily sleep-affect associations. Conclusions: Associations differed based on sleep measurement and affect dimensions, highlighting the complex relationship between sleep and affect. Strong between-person associations between self-report sleep and affect suggest that improving either sleep or mood may benefit the other. Although overall high arousal PA was protective of sleep duration, on a day-to-day basis, higher-than-usual high arousal PA may reduce sleep duration on nights it is experienced. Further research needs to identify causes of individual differences in sleep-affect associations.


Author(s):  
Matthew J. Traxler

Understanding how and why individuals vary is an important aspect of understanding language function. In assessing literacy in deaf readers, we must supplement normative models of functioning with models that take into account how individual differences enhance or detract from skill attainment. This chapter provides a brief case for and description of multilevel models (sometimes known as hierarchical linear models) as a tool to aid research on individual differences. These kinds of models have been applied successfully to understand variability in both hearing and deaf readers. This chapter explains how multilevel models resemble and differ from other commonly applied data analysis techniques, and why they offer a better alternative than those techniques for many applications within deaf education research.


Author(s):  
Thomas A. Farmer ◽  
Jennifer B. Misyak ◽  
Morten H. Christiansen

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Ian Cunnings ◽  
Hiroki Fujita

Abstract Research in sentence processing has increasingly examined the role of individual differences in language comprehension. In work on native and nonnative sentence processing, examining individual differences can contribute crucial insight into theoretical debates about the extent to which nativelike processing is possible in a nonnative language. Despite this increased interest in individual differences, whether commonly used psycholinguistic tasks can reliably measure individual differences between participants has not been systematically examined. As a preliminary examination of this issue in nonnative processing, we report a self-paced reading experiment on garden-path sentences in native and nonnative comprehension. At the group level we replicated previously observed findings in native and nonnative speakers. However, while we found that our self-paced reading experiment was a reliable way of assessing individual differences in overall reading speed and comprehension accuracy, it did not consistently measure individual differences in the size of garden-path effects in our sample (N = 64 native and 64 nonnative participants, and 24 experimental items). These results suggest that before individual differences in sentence processing can be meaningfully assessed, the question of whether commonly used tasks can consistently measure individual differences requires systematic examination.


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