The interpretation of scholars' interpretations of confidence intervals: criticism, replication, and extension of Hoekstra et al. (2014)

Hoekstra et al. (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2014, 21:1157–1164) surveyed the interpretation of confidence intervals (CIs) by first-year students, master students, and researchers with six items expressing misinterpretations of CIs. They asked respondents to answer all items, computed the number of items endorsed, and concluded that misinterpretation of CIs is robust across groups. Their design may have produced this outcome artifactually for reasons that we describe. This paper discusses first the two interpretations of CIs and, hence, why misinterpretation cannot be inferred from endorsement of some of the items. Next, a re-analysis of Hoekstra et al.’s data reveals some puzzling differences between first-year and master students that demand further investigation. For that purpose, we designed a replication study with an extended questionnaire including two additional items that express correct interpretations of CIs (to compare endorsement of correct vs. nominally incorrect interpretations) and we asked master students to indicate which items they would have omitted had they had the option (to distinguish deliberate from uninformed endorsement caused by the forced-response format). Results showed that incognizant first-year students endorsed correct and nominally incorrect items identically, revealing that the two item types are not differentially attractive superficially; in contrast, master students were distinctively more prone to endorsing correct items when their uninformed responses were removed, although they admitted to nescience more often that might have been expected. Implications for teaching practices are discussed.

The Ultimate Secrecy: Feminist Readings of Masculine Trauma in Vietnam War Literature

It is a widely acknowledged and often unquestioned fact that patriarchy and its modes of behaviour and social organization favour the appearance of trauma on the weakest (and defenceless) members of society: women. In the last decades, trauma seems to have taken the baton of typically female maladies such as 19th c. hysteria or 20th c. madness. Feminists in the 20th c. have long worked to prove the connection between the latter affections (and their reflection in literary texts) and patriarchal oppression or expectations of feminine behaviour and accordance to roles and rules. With Trauma Studies on the rise, the approach to the idea of the untold as related to femininity is manifold: on the one hand, is not trauma, which precludes telling about one’s own experience and keeps it locked not only from the others, but also from ourselves, the ultimate secrecy? On the other hand, when analyzing works that reflect trauma, one is astounded by the high number of them with a female protagonist and an almost all-female cast: in this sense, a ‘feminist’ reading is almost compulsory, in the sense that it is usually the author’s assumption that patriarchal systems of exploitation and expectations favour traumatic events and their outcome (silence and secrets) on the powerless, usually women. Often, traumatic texts combine feminism with other analytical discourses (one of the topics proposed for this panel): Toni Morrison’s study of traumatic responses in The Bluest Eye and Beloved cannot be untangled from her critique of slavery; just as much of Chicana feminism and its representations of rape and abuse (two main agents of trauma) analyze the nexus of patriarchy, new forms of post-colonialism, and the dynamics of power and powerlessness in ethnic contexts. Within this tradition that establishes the secrecies of trauma as an almost exclusively feminine characteristic, one is however faced with texts which have traumatized males as protagonists: curiously enough, most of these characters have suffered trauma through a typically masculine experience: that of war and its aftermath. By analyzing novels dealing with war veterans from Vietnam or the Second World War, the astounding findings are the frequent mixture of masculine or even ‘macho’ values and the denial of any kind of ‘feminine’ characteristics, combined with a very strict set of rules of power and hierarchy that clearly establish who is empowered and who is powerless. It is our argument that this replication of patriarchal modes of domination, which place the lowest ranks of the army in a ‘feminine’ situation, blended with the compulsory ‘macho’ stance soldiers are forced to adopt as army men (as seen, for example, in Philip Caputo’s Indian Country, Larry Heinemann’s Paco’s Story or Ed Dodge’s DAU: A Novel of Vietnam) furthers the onset and seriousness of ulterior trauma. In this sense, we can also analyze this kind of writing from a ‘feminist’ point of view, since the dynamics of über-patriarchal power established at the front at war-time deny any display of elements traditionally viewed as ‘feminine’ (such as grief, guilt or emotions) in soldiers. If trauma is the result of a game of patriarchal empowerment, how can feminist works, not only theoretical, but also fictional, overthrow it? Are ‘feminine’ characteristics necessary to escape trauma, even in male victims? How can feminist readings of trauma enhance our understanding of its dynamics and help produce new modes of interaction that transcend power and gender division as the basis for the organization of society?