Influence Of Nonnormality Research Articles

Unpacking “OK, Boomer”: Using Lifespan Concepts to Ease Intergenerational Conflict

With the “OK, Boomer” media exchange in late 2019, intergenerational conflict is touted as existing at an all-time high. Although the age diversity of today’s workforce is unprecedented, spanning nearly five generations of workers, generational stereotyping and its influence on the identities and experiences of those individuals is not new. In this talk, we will advocate for the role that lifespan developmental psychology can play in preparing students to enter a sometimes contentious, misrepresented multigenerational workforce. We will demonstrate the value of helping students distinguish normative age-graded, normative history-graded, and non-normative influences to better understand individual similarities and differences in developmental experiences. We will discuss research on age identity and generational identity as distinct and self-enhancing life-span processes. Finally, we will highlight the developmental barriers that must be navigated in order to foster intergenerational cohesion.

The influence of nonnormality from primary studies on the standardized mean difference in meta-analysis.

In this study we investigated the influence of data nonnormality in the primary studies on meta-analysis of the standardized mean difference (SMD) for a two-independent-group design. The bias, mean squared error, and confidence interval coverage probability of the mean effect sizes under different types of population distributions were compared. Also, the performance of the Q test was examined. The results showed that oppositely skewed distributions (i.e., distributions skewed in different directions) showed poor performance for point and interval estimates of mean effect sizes in meta-analysis, especially when the tails were pointing toward each other. The previously found adverse impacts due to nonnormality in primary studies do not disappear when primary studies with nonnormal data are meta-analyzed, even when the average sample size and number of studies are large. The results also showed that, when the tails were pointing toward each other, the Type I error rates of the Q test were inflated. We suggest that the impact of violating the assumption of normality should not be ignored in meta-analysis.

Modal Analysis of Fluid Flows: An Overview

Modal Analysis of Fluid Flows: An Overview

Selective attrition and intraindividual variability in response time moderate cognitive change

ABSTRACTObjectives: Selection of a developmental time metric is useful for understanding causal processes that underlie aging-related cognitive change and for the identification of potential moderators of cognitive decline. Building on research suggesting that time to attrition is a metric sensitive to non-normative influences of aging (e.g., subclinical health conditions), we examined reason for attrition and intraindividual variability (IIV) in reaction time as predictors of cognitive performance. Method: Three hundred and four community dwelling older adults (64–92 years) completed annual assessments in a longitudinal study. IIV was calculated from baseline performance on reaction time tasks. Multilevel models were fit to examine patterns and predictors of cognitive change. Results: We show that time to attrition was associated with cognitive decline. Greater IIV was associated with declines on executive functioning and episodic memory measures. Attrition due to personal health reasons was also associated with decreased executive functioning compared to that of individuals who remained in the study. Discussion: These findings suggest that time to attrition is a useful metric for representing cognitive change, and reason for attrition and IIV are predictive of non-normative influences that may underlie instances of cognitive loss in older adults.

Effects of Latent Variable Nonnormality and Model Misspecification on Testing Structural Equation Modeling Interactions

Interest in testing interaction terms within the latent variable modeling framework has been on the rise in recent years. However, little is known about the influence of nonnormality and model misspecification on such models that involve latent variable interactions. The authors used Mattson's data generation method to control for latent variable distributional properties, and they examined how data nonnormality and model misspecification affected latent variable interaction models in relation to varying sample sizes and different magnitudes of incorrectly constrained model parameters. The authors conducted 600 replications for each of the 54 configurations of the 4-factor completely crossed balanced deign. In general, results were suggestive of less bias under conditions of latent variable normality, large sample sizes, correctly specified models, and smaller parameters that were incorrectly constrained (i.e., misspecified). Similarly, these conditions were also found to produce better fitting models as gauged by several popular measures of model fit.

Tunnel Vision: Local Behavioral Influences on Consumer Decisions in Product Search

We introduce and test a behavioral model of consumer product search that extends a baseline normative model of sequential search by incorporating nonnormative influences that are local in the sense that they reflect consumers' undue sensitivity to recently encountered alternatives. We propose two types of such local behavioral influences that, at each stage of a search process, can manifest themselves both in which of the products inspected up to that point is deemed to be the most preferred one (the product comparison decision) and whether to terminate the search at that stage (the stopping decision). The first of these influences is that consumers respond excessively to the attractiveness of the currently inspected product, at the expense of all others (“focalism”). The second proposed behavioral influence is that consumers overreact to the difference in attractiveness between the current product and the one encountered just prior to it (“local contrast”). Converging evidence from two experiments, which combine to guarantee both high internal and high external validity, provides support for the proposed behavioral influences. Our findings demonstrate that consumers' product comparison and stopping decisions in sequential product search are jointly governed by normative principles and by the proposed local behavioral influences.

Tunnel Vision: Local Behavioral Influences on Consumer Decisions in Product Search

We introduce and test a behavioral model of consumer product search that extends a baseline normative model of sequential search by incorporating non-normative influences that are local in the sense that they reflect consumers’ undue sensitivity to recently encountered alternatives. We propose two types of such local behavioral influences that, at each stage of a search process, can manifest themselves both in which of the products inspected up to that point is deemed to be the most preferred one (the product comparison decision) and whether to terminate the search at that stage (the stopping decision). The first of these influences is that consumers respond excessively to the attractiveness of the currently inspected product, at the expense of all others (“focalism”). The second proposed behavioral influence is that consumers overreact to the difference in attractiveness between the current product and the one encountered just prior to it (“local contrast”). Converging evidence from two experiments, which combine to guarantee both high internal and high external validity, provides support for the proposed behavioral influences. Our findings demonstrate that consumers’ product comparison and stopping decisions in sequential product search are jointly governed by normative principles and by the proposed local behavioral influences.

Nonnormality estimation in projection‐type system realization methods

AbstractUsing Henrici's departure from normality as a tool, we investigate the influence of nonnormality on the spectral sensitivity of system matrices of projection‐type system realization methods. Basically, we show that the system matrix of one of these methods is diagonally similar to the system matrix of the classical Kung's method and, we then conclude that the spectral sensitivity of all methods decreases significantly under conditions that are often met or easy to impose in practice. On the basis of these results, we conclude that all projection‐type realization methods have essentially the same spectral properties as Kung's method. Furthermore, a theoretical eigenvalue error bound is derived and illustrated by numerical simulations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Corrected version of AIC for selecting multivariate normal linear regression models in a general nonnormal case

This paper deals with the bias reduction of Akaike information criterion ( AIC) for selecting variables in multivariate normal linear regression models when the true distribution of observation is an unknown nonnormal distribution. We propose a corrected version of AIC which is partially constructed by the jackknife method and is adjusted to the exact unbiased estimator of the risk when the candidate model includes the true model. It is pointed out that the influence of nonnormality in the bias of our criterion is smaller than the ones in AIC and TIC. We verify that our criterion is better than the AIC, TIC and EIC by conducting numerical experiments.

Auction fever: The effect of opponents and quasi-endowment on product valuations

The wide adoption of dynamic second-price auctions as the format of choice for Internet-based (online) transactions has created an interest in understanding how individuals behave in such environments. The current work concentrates on two dynamic effects, which we call quasi-endowment and opponent effect, and finds that these effects may result in over-bidding. The results of two experimental auctions—one involving hypothetical bids and the other real-money bids—demonstrate that bids reflect valuations that include the nonnormative influences of the two factors. Quasi-endowment and opponent effects could lead to the behaviors of repeated bidding and sniping commonly observed in second-price online auctions such as eBay.

Lifespan Psychology: From Developmental Contextualism to Developmental Biocultural Co-constructivism

Lifespan psychology has always been associated with a family of scripts about development and aging. An initial set of scripts included proposals about developmental contextualism at the macro-level (e.g., age-graded, history-graded, and non-normative influences). Recent theoretical efforts to link evolutionary and ontogenetic perspectives engendered an additional set of interrelated scripts about the nature and consequences of human development. Proposals about the biocultural architecture of the lifespan highlight its inherent incompleteness and aging-based increase in incompleteness and vulnerability. Age-related differences in the overall allocation of resources (from growth to maintenance and the regulation of loss) as well as the general-purpose mechanisms of selection, optimization, and compensation orchestrate adaptive development and aging within the constraints of the biocultural architecture. We argue that this package of conceptions converges with the notion of developmental biocultural co-constructivism and specifies the zone within which human development can be expressed.

Lifetime Achievement among the Terman Gifted Women

AbstractThis article presents an overview of work conducted by the author on the women in the Terman Study of the Gifted. The paper summarizes research on the determinants of lifetime achievement for the Terman women, including a consideration of personality, goals, and historical context. In addition, research is presented on the later-life functioning of the Terman women, with a focus on variations among the women according to achievement pattern. Finally, the women’s later-life reflections about their achievement are presented through a discussion of choices they would make differently. This work is presented from a life-span developmental perspective (Baltes, 1987), based on an assumption that there are multiple interacting influences on individual development, including both normative and non-normative influences, as well as influences of historical context.

Counseling for Normative and Nonnormative Influences on Career Development

Most theories of career development have conceptualized normative events, periods, and stages to explain how the careers of men and women unfold. This article conceptualizes career counseling as human development intervention to allow a more differentiated and comprehensive view of normative and nonnormative factors that affect career development.

Common threads, diverse solutions: Concluding commentary

In this concluding article, we summarize some of the major themes and highlight several unresolved issues. We focus first on the structure or representation of self. The major issues that emerged here were: (1) the existence and representation of a primitive, presymbolic self; (2) the existence, origins, and developmental course of multiple selves; (3) the role and representation of affect in early self. Several unifying propositions are offered both to integrate across commonalities and to demarcate theoretical differences. Next we consider functions of self, including both what self uniquely contributes to the organism and how its functions might change developmentally. We propose that the core function of self remains invariant; to define, locate, demarcate the world from a consistent perspective by organizing, integrating, and representing experiences from that vantage point. Inherent in this process, however, is the establishment of boundaries that define self with respect to the world and others. These boundaries may change with age as a function of the changing structure of self. The earliest boundaries may define for the infant the physical boundaries between self and world, followed by social and causal boundaries, then personal and psychological boundaries. In the final two sections we address issues of enactment of self in observable behavior: how do we know that the infant or young child has a self, and that the self looks like X? And we address the question of mechanisms of early self-development. Here we also suggest that insights gleaned from the study of nonnormative influences, whether biological or environmental, may shed light on our descriptions and explanations of the early self.