Chen Jing, Hale Sandra, Myerson Joel
Department of Psychology, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan 49401, USA.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2007 Jun;14(3):534-41. doi: 10.3758/bf03194103.
An a priori test of the difference engine model (Myerson, Hale, Zheng, Jenkins, & Widaman, 2003) was conducted using a large, diverse sample of individuals who performed three speeded verbal tasks and three speeded visuospatial tasks. Results demonstrated that, as predicted by the model, the group standard deviation (SD) on any task was proportional to the amount of processing required by that task. Both individual performances as well as those of fast and slow subgroups could be accurately predicted by the model using no free parameters, just an individual or subgroup's mean z-score and the values of theoretical constructs estimated from fits to the group SDs. Taken together, these results are consistent with post hoc analyses reported by Myerson et al. and provide even stronger supporting evidence. In particular, the ability to make quantitative predictions without using any free parameters provides the clearest demonstration to date of the power of an analytic approach on the basis of the difference engine.
使用大量不同的个体样本进行了差异引擎模型的先验测试（迈尔森、黑尔、郑、詹金斯和维达曼，2003年），这些个体完成了三项言语速度任务和三项视觉空间速度任务。结果表明，正如该模型所预测的，任何任务的组标准差（SD）与该任务所需的加工量成正比。该模型无需使用自由参数，仅使用个体或亚组的平均z分数以及根据组标准差拟合估计的理论构念值，就能准确预测个体表现以及快速和慢速亚组的表现。总体而言，这些结果与迈尔森等人报告的事后分析一致，并提供了更强有力的支持证据。特别是，无需使用任何自由参数就能进行定量预测的能力，为基于差异引擎的分析方法的强大功能提供了迄今为止最清晰的证明。
