New Methods - Speakers and Presentations
Sunday, October 15, 1:00-2:00 p.m.
"Modeling dyadic and family processes as dynamical systems: An application to the regulation of intimacy and disclosure in marriage"Presentation outline available by clicking here.
Steven M. Boker , Associate Professor of Psychology, Notre Dame
Dr. Boker's research interests include the application of dynamical systems analytic techniques to psychological and physiological data. His contributions include methods for examining change in multivariate mixed cross-sectional and longitudinal data in particular, the Latent Differential Equations method for fitting differential equations models to multivariate multiple occasion data. Examples of his current projects include a project on "Self-regulation of Mental Health in Recent Widows" which studies the self-regulation of an omnibus self-report measure of mental health. In addition, Boker has worked extensively on the issue of "Self-regulation of Intimacy in Married Couples", in which a coupled dynamical systems analysis was performed on six weeks of daily diary data from 95 married couples.
Abstract: "Modeling dyadic and family processes as dynamical systems: An application to the regulation of intimacy and disclosure in marriage"
One way to conceptualize short term fluctuations in behavioral data is in terms of a self-regulating process. When a person's behavior is far from their preferred equilibrium, they are likely to regulate that behavior back towards equilbirium. In a family, one may expect that not only does a family member regulate his or her behavior with respect to perceived differences between his or her own equilibrium value, but also with respect to perceived displacement from equilibrium of others in the family. Coupled differential equations allow us to formalize models of this type of mutually adaptive regulation within dyads or families. We present a method for fitting such models and an example applied to daily diary data from a sample of married couples.
Selected Publications:
Boker, S. M., & Laurenceau, J-P. (2005). "Dynamical systems modeling: An application to the regulation of the intimacy and disclosure in marriage." In T. A. Walls & J. L. Schafer (Eds.), Models for intensive longitudinal data. (Chapter 9). New York: Oxford University Press.
Boker, S. M. & Wenger, M. J. (in press) Data Analytic Techniques for Dynamical Systems in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Bergeman, C. S. & Boker, S. M. (2006) Quantitative Methods in Aging Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
