Chunk #23 — Three methods to decide between latent dimensionality and latent categories — Meehl’s taxometric procedures

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Does nature have joints worth carving? A discussion of taxometrics, model-based clustering and latent variable mixture modeling.

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The different procedures derive expectations from the same premises. In case of taxonicity the premise consists of two parts: (1) the population consists of two subpopulations, a taxon and a complement group, and (2) the covariance between any two observed symptoms in the joint population is entirely due to mean differences between the taxon and complement groups. Equivalently, the covariance within each of the two groups is zero. In case of dimensionality, the premise again consists of two parts: (1) the population consists of one homogeneous group, and (2) the covariance between any two observed items is due to an underlying dimensional construct.