Foreword
The eight papers in this Special Issue were based on presentations at the 27th meeting of the European Mathematical Psychology Group (EMPG), held in September, 1996, at the University of Padua. The EMPG meets annually in the late summer, and the local site is usually a European university with a strong representation in mathematical psychology. Mathematical psychology in Europe is mostly concentrated in Belgium, England, France, Germany and the Netherlands, although there is representation in almost all European countries. The Padua meeting was noteworthy because it is the first time that the EMPG met at an Italian university. The meeting was well attended and the program included 39 presentations with 49 author names. Presenters were invited to submit papers for the Special Issue based on their presentation, and a total of 24 papers were submitted. We include the complete program of the Padua Conference at the end of this Foreword.
The refereeing process was overseen by all four of the authors of this Foreword, and the final stages were coordinated through Professor Batchelder’s office at the University of California, Irvine. We had at least two referees for each paper, and at least one of them was an expert who did not have a submission of his or her own. The result led to only eight papers that were revised to our satisfaction; however, several others received the benefits of detailed comments by referees and are nearly ready for publication in other outlets.
The EMPG began in 1971 and has held annual open meetings ever since. It has become traditional to have a rigorously refereed outlet for some of the better papers presented at the conferences, and until recent years, that outlet has been a series of six refereed, edited books. Readers interested in gaining more knowledge about the nature of the research associated with the EMPG are invited to look into these books: Degreef and Van Buggenhaut (1984); Roskam and Suck (1987); Roskam (1989); Doignon and Falmagne (1991), Fischer and Laming (1994), and Dowling et al. (1998). In addition, the 1995 EMPG gathered in Regensburg at a meeting held in honor of R. Duncan Luce, and refereed papers from that conference were published in a special issue of the
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Journal of Mathematical Psychology (see Drosler et al., 1997).
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Corresponding author. Tel.: 11-949-824-8651; fax: 11-949-824-3733
E-mail address: [email protected] (W.H. Batchelder)
As to detailed content, we think that the papers will speak for themselves. They are representative of several rich traditions in mathematical psychology, visual perception
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(Burigana, Indow), psychophysics (Laming), classification (Unzicker, Juttner, and Rentschler), information processing (Colonius), and test theory (Cristante and Robusto, Janssens, and Schrepp). A fuller sense of these traditions can be seen from the entire conference program consisting of 39 papers, which follows.
Conference program
The conference papers are organized into the seven numbered categories below, and the invited lectures and a symposium, ’Visual space perception’, are listed last.
Measurement and scaling
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Reinhard Suck (Universitat Osnabruck) ‘A new approach to the automorphism group characterization of scale type’
Joel Michell (University of Sydney) ‘The relation between ratings of agreement and attitudes as measured by unidimensional unfolding’
Alexander Logvinenko (Queen’s University, Belfast) ‘A new approach to stochastic transitivity’
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Francesca Cristante and Egidio Robusto (Universita di Padova) ‘Assessing indepen-dence among subjects’ responses’
Eric Maris (University of Nijmegen) ‘Multiple classification latent class models’
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Nicola A. De Carlo (Universita di Padova) ‘Validation of the ‘‘One Hundred-Sum’’ scale’
Rudi Janssens (University of Brussels) ‘A Boolean approach to the measurement of group processes and attitudes’
Learning models and neural networks
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Hans Christoph Micko (Universitat Braunschweig) ‘Luce’s beta-model as an operator model with state dependent rate of learning parameter’
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Francesco Ferro Milone and Lorenzo Turicchia (Universita di Padova) ‘Non linear analysis and simulation of the EEG time series’
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Luca Stefanutti (Universita di Padova) ‘A neurocomputational method to derive modeling functions of the knowledge representation’
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Giuseppe Sartori (Universita di Padova) ‘Neural tests: the use of neural networks in the development of psychological tests’
Models in visual perception
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Stefan Kiener (Universitat Regensburg) ‘Sufficient conditions for the predictability of color discrimination by distance functions defined on color space’
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Elisabetta Xausa, Luigi Beghi and Lucia Tomat (Universita di Padova) ‘A mathemati-cal model of depth displacement with a contracting bar’
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Luigi Burigana (Universita di Padova) ‘Constraints in vision. Outline of a set-theoretical approach’
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Gunter Lehmann (Universitat Wuppertal) ‘Testing fore and background field in predicting visual length illusions’
Models and methods in psychophysics
Donald Laming (University of Cambridge) ‘Prior expectations in cross-modality matching’
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Giulio Vidotto and Egidio Robusto (Universita di Padova) ‘Simple logistic and rating models in defining the point of subjective equality’
Knowledge assessment
¨ Katja Baumunk, Cornelia E. Dowling and Cord Hockemeyer (Universitat Braunschweig) ‘Detecting inconsistent or invalid prerequisite relationships’
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Cord Hockemeyer (Universitat Braunschweig) ‘Comparing procedures for the prob-abilistic assessment of knowledge’
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Kai Alexander Quante and Cornelia E. Dowling (Universitat Braunschweig) ‘En-riched and individualized facilities for querying experts’
Martin Shrepp (Landenburg) ‘Construction of knowledge spaces by data analysis’
Choice behavior and social network models
Michel Regenwetter (McGill University, Montreal) ‘Probabilistic choice models of subset voting: a comparison’
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Adele Diderich (Universitat Oldenburg) ‘Influence of conflict on decision time and choice probability’
William H. Batchelder (University of California, Irvine) ‘Statistical models for consensus aggregation of digraph social network data’
Ece Kumbasar (University of California, Irvine) ‘Statistical models for three-way social network data’
Psychometrical models and epistemological issue
Giovanni B. Moneta (INSREM, Paris) and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (University of Chicago) ‘Models of concentration in natural environment: a comparative approach based on streams of experiential data’
David Grayson (University of Sydney) ‘Quantitative psychological science and the (unhealthy) impact of Fisherian statistics’
Vladimir Cervin (Canadian Psychological Association) ‘Fuzzy aids in practice and decision’
Special events
The conference also included two Lectures and a Symposium.
The invited lecturers were Jean-Claude Falmagne, who gave a lecture on ‘Stochastic token theory’, and Hans Colonius, who spoke on ‘Solved and unsolved problems in modeling parallel search’.
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Jan Drosler (Universitat Regensburg) ‘An n-dimensional Weber law and the con-ditions for its empirical validity’
Patrick Suppes (Stanford University) ‘Measurement style models for finite geomet-ries’
Tarow Indow (University of California, Irvine) ‘Basic features in global structure of visual space’
Albert A. Blank (College of Staten Island) ‘The precedence of iseikonic physical transformations in the analysis of binocular space perception’
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Jurgen Heller (Universitat Regensburg) ‘Assessing the geometry of visual space: the effect of oversimplifying non-geometrical assumptions’
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Karin Zimmer (Universitat Regensburg) ‘Are Tarski’s axioms of absolute geometry valid propositions in the visual laboratory?’
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Josef Lukas (Universitat Halle) ‘Is visual space constantly curved?’
We conclude by listing two important components to the organization of the conference,
The organizing and scientific committee
The Committee members included the following professors who belong to the Department of General Psychology at the University of Padova:
Luigi Burigana Egidio Robusto
Francesca Cristante Giulio Vidotto
Nicola A. De Carlo Elisabetta Xausa
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following collaborators for their efficient organization of the Conference and, in particular, their valuable assistance to Scientific Committee members during the Conference:
Dr. Stefania Mannarini Dr. Cristina Sabatucci
Dr. Luca Stefanutti Cecilia Xausa
The Rector of the University of Padova
The Head of the Department of General Psychology of the University of Padova The Head of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Padova The Foundation ‘Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo’
The TPM Publisher, Padova
References
Degreef, E., Van Buggenhaut, J. (1984) Trends in mathematical psychology. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Doignon, J.-P., Falmagne, J.-C. (1991) Mathematical psychology: Current developments. New York:
Springer-Verlag.
Dowling, C.E., Roberts, F.S., Theuns, P. (1998) Recent progress in mathematical psychology: Psychophysics, knowledge, representation, cognition, and measurement. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. ¨
Drosler, J., Batchelder, W.H., Falmagne, J.-C., 1997. Preface to special issue. Journal of Mathematical Psychology. 41, 1–2.
Fischer, G.H., Laming, D. (1994) Contributions to mathematical psychology, psychometrics, and methodology. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Roskam, E.E. (1989) Mathematical psychology in progress. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.
Roskam, E.E., Suck, R. (1987) Progress in mathematical psychology. Amsterdam: North-Holland. William H. Batchelder
University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
Luigi Burigana
University of Padua, Padua, Italy
Francesca Cristante
University of Padua, Padua, Italy
Reinhard Suck
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