at the pre-test stage, one of the important stages in language testing, items of the test are given to some language learners who are at same level as the target test takers, and through the statistical analysis of their responses, the information such as item facility and item discrimination are gained. also, unreliable and problematic items are distinguished and amended. this research tries t...

Social neuroscience suggests medial pre-frontal cortex (mPFC) as necessary for social cognition. However, the mPFC activates less to members of extreme outgroups that elicit disgust, an emotion directed toward both people and objects. This study aimed to counteract that effect. Participants made either superficial categorical age estimations or individuating food-preference judgments about peop...

There is a marked gap between the demands on forecasting and the results that numerical forecasting techniques usually can provide. It is suggested that this gap can be closed by the implementation of experts' qualitative predictions into numerical forecasting systems. A formal analysis of these predictions can then be integrated into quantitative forecasts. In the framework of possibility theo...

The communication policy of the European Central Bank attracts a lot of attention from financial markets. This paper analyses the informational content of the monthly introductory statements of the ECB president explaining interest rate decisions with regard to inflation expectations of financial market experts for the euro area from February 1999 to June 2007. Estimations are conducted for the...

Risk assessments of big and complex IT infrastructures comprise numerous qualitative risk estimations for infrastructure assets. Qualitative risk estimations, however, are subjective and thus prone to errors. We present an approach to detect anomalies in the result of risk assessments by considering information about inter-dependencies between various building blocks of IT landscapes from enter...