Measuring competences for democratic culture: teaching human rights through religious education

This paper aims to present research on measuring competences for democratic culture. It describes the development of a multiple-item scale that measures competences in teaching democratic citizenship and human rights through religious education. A principal component analysis based on the 135 items of the Council of Europe’s Reference framework of competences for democratic culture was carried out in two phases, in order to construct and refine the scale. The result was a 52-item scale divided into six components. This was tested for its reliability, factor structure and validity; firstly on a sample of 123, and secondly on a sample of 403 secondary RE teachers (2018-19). The research scrutinises the concept of democratic competences as being the ability to mobilise and deploy relevant values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and/or understanding. It concludes that these competences are more complex structures than has been assumed.

Sequential Generalized Likelihood Ratio Tests for Online Item Monitoring

The study presents statistical procedures that monitor functioning of items over time. We propose generalized likelihood ratio tests that surveil multiple item parameters and implement with various sampling techniques to perform continuous or intermittent monitoring. The procedures examine stability of item parameters across time and inform compromise as soon as they identify significant parameter shift. The performance of the monitoring procedures was validated using simulated and real assessment data. The empirical evaluation suggests that the proposed procedures perform adequately well in identifying the parameter drift. They showed satisfactory detection power and gave timely signals while regulating the error rates reasonably low. The procedures also showed superior performance when compared with the existent methods. The empirical findings suggest that multivariate parametric monitoring can provide an efficient and powerful control tool for maintaining the quality of items. The procedures allow joint monitoring of multiple item parameters and achieve sufficient power by dint of likelihood-ratio tests. Based on the findings from the empirical experimentation, we suggest some practical strategies for performing online item monitoring.

The Role of Measurement Error in Replicability of Psychological Findings

The role of measurement error in replicability of psychological findings has become of increasing interest, with some researchers suggesting it is critical to replicability, and others arguing that it is likely secondary to other effects on generalizability of findings. This work examined the relationship between reliability, as reflected in internal consistency indices, and effect size in published many-labs projects (313 samples from 44 studies). Among multiple-item designs, at lower reliabilities effect size was near zero regardless of reliability; at greater reliabilities (above approximately 0.80), effect size appeared to increase with reliability for some effects but not others. However, among the broader set of studies, including single-item designs, number of items was not associated with greater effect size, and in fact decreased with measure length. Results point to the importance of measurement precision in replicability of psychological findings, but also to the importance of precision per se and not proxies such as measure length.

maat: An R Package for Multiple Administrations Adaptive Testing

Multiple Administrations Adaptive Testing (MAAT) is an extension of the shadow-test approach to CAT for the assessment framework involving multiple tests administered periodically throughout the year. The maat package utilizes multiple item pools vertically scaled across grades and multiple phases (stages) within each test administration, allowing for transitioning from an item pool to another as deemed necessary to further enhance the quality of assessment.

DESCONTMARKS: Scale Development and Validation

In order to attract more tourists to visit a particular place, destination content marketing plays an important role. Tourism research has recently shown an interest in destination content marketing; especially when tourism destination is advertised. Currently, there is no scale available to measure content marketing for promoting tourism destination. The present study has two primary objectives. First, to investigate the dimension of destination content marketing in destination related context. Second, to develop and validate a multiple-item scale for measuring content marketing towards tourism destination. This study uses a rigorous scale development technique which involves three stages of scale development using 3 separate studies. The study confirms that destination content marketing scale (DESCONTMARKS) comprises of three dimensions, measured with 10 items. The implications of the destination content marketing scale for practitioners, as well as suggestions for future research are provided.

Putative role of PV and SOM interneuron subtypes in working memory

Working memory is an essential human trait required for all cognitive activities. Our previous model from \citet{mongillo_2008,mi_2017} uses synaptic facilitation to store traces of working memory. Thus memories can be maintained without persistent neural activity. A critical component of this model is a central inhibition which prevents multiple item representations from being active at the same time. We know from experimental studies that multiple genetically-defined interneuron subtypes (e.g. PV, SOM) with different excitability and connectivity properties mediate inhibition in the cortex. The role of these subtypes in working memory however is not known. Here we develop a modified model with these interneuron subtypes, and propose their functional roles in working memory. We make concrete testable predictions about the roles of these groups.

Temporary prey storage along swarm columns of army ants: an adaptive strategy for successful raiding?

While pillaging brood of other social insects, Eciton army ants often accumulate prey in piles (or caches) along their foraging trails. Descriptions scattered throughout the past 100 years link this behavior to foraging-related migration. However, no empirical work has yet investigated its adaptive value. Here we asked whether caches facilitate prey flow from foraging fronts to temporary nests (or bivouacs) in the hook-jawed army ant, Eciton hamatum. We counted workers arriving at caches with prey from foraging fronts and departing caches towards the bivouac, quantifying their prey loads. While more workers carrying single-item prey loads arrived at rather than left caches towards the bivouac, ants carrying multiple-item prey loads arrived at and departed at the same rate. This probably resulted from raiders depositing prey in safe locations and rapidly returning to the foraging front, while other workers safely transported prey to the bivouac in multiple-item loads. This cache-mediated traffic partitioning probably allows maximizing the prey collection rate, and may be a counter-adaptation to the strategies prey colonies deploy to defend their brood from army ants.

The simultaneous recognition of multiple words: A process analysis

In everyday life, recognition decisions often have to be made for multiple objects simultaneously. In contrast, research on recognition memory has predominantly relied on single-item recognition paradigms. We present a first systematic investigation into the cognitive processes that differ between single-word and paired-word tests of recognition memory. In a single-word test, participants categorize previously presented words and new words as having been studied before (old) or not (new). In a paired-word test, however, the test words are randomly paired, and participants provide joint old–new categorizations of both words for each pair. Across two experiments (N = 170), we found better memory performance for words tested singly rather than in pairs and, more importantly, dependencies between the two single-word decisions implied by the paired-word test. We extended two popular model classes of single-item recognition to paired-word recognition, a discrete-state model and a continuous model. Both models attribute performance differences between single-word and paired-word recognition to differences in memory-evidence strength. Discrete-state models account for the dependencies in paired-word decisions in terms of dependencies in guessing. In contrast, continuous models map the dependencies on mnemonic (Experiment 1 & 2) as well as on decisional processes (Experiment 2). However, in both experiments, model comparison favored the discrete-state model, indicating that memory decisions for word pairs seem to be mediated by discrete states. Our work suggests that individuals tackle multiple-item recognition fundamentally differently from single-item recognition, and it provides both a behavioral and model-based paradigm for studying multiple-item recognition.