This article explores the extent to which listeners vary in their ability to notice, identify and discriminate variable linguistic features. With a view to improving speaker evaluation studies (SES), three types of experiments were conducted (noticing tasks, identification tasks and discrimination tasks) with regard to variable features using word- or sentence-based stimuli and focusing on three variables and their variants – (ING): [ɪŋ], [ɪn]; (T)-deletion: [t], deleted-[t]; (K)-lenition: [k], [x]. Our results suggest that the accurate noticing, identifying and discriminating of variants is somewhat higher in words than in sentences. Correctness rates differ drastically between variants of a variable. For (ING), the non-standard variant [ɪn] is more frequently identified and noticed correctly. Yet, for the variables (T)-deletion and (K)-lenition, the standard variants are identified and noticed more successfully. Results of the current study suggest that a more rigorous elicitation of identification and noticing abilities might be useful for a more complete understanding of the nature of social evaluation.

Comparing the performance of bilinguals to monolinguals can introduce bias in language assessment. One potential impact is misidentification of developmental language disorder (DLD). Nonlinguistic cognitive processing tasks may reduce assessment bias because they measure underlying DLD weaknesses without relying on linguistic stimuli. This study examined the extent to which nonlinguistic cognitive processing tasks showed bias, compared to a traditional language assessment, sentence repetition. Participants were 161 five-to-seven-year olds from diverse language backgrounds who completed nonlinguistic auditory and visual assessments of processing speed, sustained selective attention and working memory. We examined psychometric properties and performance on each task among bilingual and monolingual children. We also conducted bilingual-to-bilingual comparisons to examine performance differences by first-language typology and exposure amount. Results suggest minimal assessment bias in the nonlinguistic cognitive processing tasks, particularly in comparison to sentence repetition. Nonlinguistic cognitive processing tasks may ultimately contribute to less-biased identification of DLD in diverse populations.

This paper traces the social history of the household registration system (koseki seido) in Japan from its beginning to the present day. The paper argues that the koseki has been an essential tool of social control used at various stages in history to facilitate the political needs and priorities of the ruling elite by constructing and policing the boundaries of Japanese self. This self has been mediated through the principles of family as defined by the state and has created diverse marginalised and excluded others. The study includes social unrest and agency of these others in furthering understanding of the role of the koseki in Japanese society. The paper also contributes understanding of nationality and citizenship in contemporary Japan in relation to the koseki.

Data has become central in various activities during armed conflict, including the identification of deceased persons. While the use of data-based methods can significantly improve the efficiency of efforts to identify the dead and inform their families about their fate, data can equally enable harm. This article analyzes the obligations that arise for States regarding the processing of data related to the identification of deceased persons. Despite being drafted long before the “age of data”, several international humanitarian law (IHL) provisions can be considered to give rise to obligations which protect those whose data is used to identify the dead from certain data-based harms. However, some of these protections are based on a data protection-friendly interpretation of more general obligations, and many only apply in international armed conflict. Against this background, it is suggested that further analysis on how international human rights law and domestic or regional data protection law could help to strengthen the case for data protection where IHL does not contain specific duties to protect data would be desirable.

The posthumous identification of Argentine soldiers killed in action during the international armed conflict in the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas was the result of the Humanitarian Project Plan, an unprecedented humanitarian forensic operation carried by the International Committee of the Red Cross at the request of Argentina and the United Kingdom. As a result of respect for international humanitarian law obligations to the dead and the novel use of humanitarian forensic action to help make this possible, tombstones that once read “Argentine soldier known only to God” now bear a name, thereby assuring their families of the fundamental right to know the final fate of their loved ones. This project was originally requested by relatives of unidentified soldiers and some veterans of the war, and was agreed to and supported by the parties to the past armed conflict. Although the unidentified soldiers were not missing (as it was known that they had died on the battlefield and that they were buried with dignity in a military cemetery, although without identification), it was essential for their relatives to have their names restored and to be able to honour them in their respective graves. While this was a logistically challenging and complex forensic operation, the main challenges were not exclusively logistical and scientific, but were political and diplomatic as well. At the completion of two Humanitarian Project Plan missions, 121 Argentine soldiers originally buried without a name had been identified; one identity had been corroborated and the remains of one body that were buried in two different graves were reassociated. All families were informed.

The key requirement for GMO authorisation is the submission of analytical methods for the detection, identification and quantification (DIQ), which has proven challenging in the case of New Genomic Techniques (NGTs). Currently available non-analytical approaches, such as blockchain traceability and probabilistic analysis, while potentially useful for monitoring, are insufficient for authorisation purposes. The lack of reliable DIQ methods hinders the authorisation of NGT products and raises concerns for both organic and conventional agriculture, where the presence of NGT products goes undetected. Therefore, the existing GMO regulatory framework requires reevaluation to address the challenges posed by NGTs while ensuring compliance with the broader EU food law framework.

For simple prospects routinely used for certainty equivalent elicitation, random expected utility preferences imply a conditional expectation function that can mimic deterministic rank-dependent preferences. That is, a subject with random expected utility preferences can have expected certainty equivalents exactly like those predicted by rank-dependent probability weighting functions of the inverse-s shape discussed by Quiggin (J Econ Behav Organ 3:323–343, 1982) and advocated by Tversky and Kahneman (J Risk Uncertainty 5:297–323, 1992), Prelec (Econometrica 66:497–527, 1998) and other scholars. Certainty equivalents may not nonparametrically identify preferences: Their conditional expectation (and critically, their interpretation) depends on assumptions concerning the source of their variability.

In this note, we prove that the 3 parameter logistic model with fixed-effect abilities is identified only up to a linear transformation of the ability scale under mild regularity conditions, contrary to the claims in Theorem 2 of San Martín et al. (Psychometrika, 80(2):450–467, 2015a).

The notion of scale freeness does not seem to have been well understood in the factor analytic literature. It has been believed that if the loss function that is minimized to obtain estimates of the parameters in the factor model is scale invariant, then the estimates are scale free. It is shown that scale invariance of the loss function is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for scale freeness. A theorem that ensures scale freeness in the orthogonal factor model is given in this paper.

By reference to nominated attributes, a genus, being a population of objects of one specified kind, may be partitioned into species, being subpopulations of different kinds. A prototype is an object representative of its species within the genus. Using this framework, the paper describes how objects can be relatively differentiated with respect to attributes, and how attributes can be relatively differentiating with respect to objects. Methods and rationale for such differential ordering of objects and attributes are presented by example, formal development, and application.

For a genus Ω comprising n species of object there is a subset P ofn distinct prototypes. With respect to m nominated attributes, each object in Ω has an m-element characterization. Together these determine an n × m objects × attributes matrix, the rows of which are the characterizations of the prototypical objects. Over then species in Ω, an associated relative frequency vector gives the distribution of objects (and of their characterizations). The matrix and vector associate the objects in Ω with points in a metric space (P, δ); and it is with respect to various sums of distances in this attribute space that one can differentially order objects and attributes.

The definition of the distance function δ is generalized across kinds of difference, types of characterization, scale-types of measurement, Minkowski index ≧ 1, and any form of distribution of objects over species. Explanatory and taxonomic applications in psychology and other fields are discussed, with focus on classification, identification, recognition, and search. The Braille code and the identification of its characters provide illustration.

Conditions for removing the indeterminancy due to rotation are given for both the oblique and orthogonal factor analysis models. The conditions indicate why published counterexamples to conditions discussed by Jöreskog are not identifiable.

Probabilistic models of same-different and identification judgments are compared (within each paradigm) with regard to their sensitivity to perceptual dependence or the degree to which the underlying psychological dimensions are correlated. Three same-different judgment models are compared. One is a step function or decision bound model and the other two are probabilistic variants of a similarity model proposed by Shepard. Three types of identification models are compared: decision bound models, a probabilistic multidimensional scaling model, and probabilistic models based on the Shepard-Luce choice rule. The decision bound models were found to be most sensitive to perceptual dependence, especially when there is considerable distributional overlap. The same-different model based on the city-block metric and an exponential decay similarity function, and the corresponding identification model were found to be particularly insensitive to perceptual dependence. These results suggest that if a Shepard-type similarity function accurately describes behavior, then under typical experimental conditions it should be difficult to see the effects of perceptual dependence. This result provides strong support for a perceptual independence assumption when using these models. These theoretical results may also play an important role in studying different decision rules employed at different stages of identification training.

This paper presents some results on identification in multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models. Some MTMM models are not identified when the (factorial-patterned) loadings matrix is of deficient column rank. For at least one other MTMM model, identification does exist despite such deficiency. It is also shown that for some MTMM CFA models, Howe's (1955) conditions sufficient for rotational uniqueness can fail, yet the model may well be identified and rotationally unique. Implications of these results for CFA models in general are discussed.

We provide a framework for motivating and diagnosing the functional form in the structural part of nonlinear or linear structural equation models when the measurement model is a correctly specified linear confirmatory factor model. A mathematical population-based analysis provides asymptotic identification results for conditional expectations of a coordinate of an endogenous latent variable given exogenous and possibly other endogenous latent variables, and theoretically well-founded estimates of this conditional expectation are suggested. Simulation studies show that these estimators behave well compared to presently available alternatives. Practically, we recommend the estimator using Bartlett factor scores as input to classical non-parametric regression methods.

It is shown that problems of rotational equivalence of restricted factor loading matrices in orthogonal factor analysis are equivalent to problems of identification in simultaneous equations systems with covariance restrictions. A necessary (under a regularity assumption) and sufficient condition for local uniqueness is given and a counterexample is provided to a theorem by J. Algina concerning necessary and sufficient conditions for global uniqueness.