Predictors of sociocultural adjustment among sojourning Malaysian students in Britain

The process of cross-cultural migration may be particularly difficult for students travelling overseas for further or higher education, especially where qualitative differences exist between the home and host nations. The present study examined the sociocultural adjustment of sojourning Malaysian students in Britain. Eighty-one Malay and 110 Chinese students enrolled in various courses answered a self-report questionnaire that examined various aspects of sociocultural adjustment. A series of one-way analyses of variance showed that Malay participants experienced poorer sociocultural adjustment in comparison with their Chinese counterparts. They were also less likely than Chinese students to have contact with co-nationals and host nationals, more likely to perceive their actual experience in Britain as worse than they had expected, and more likely to perceive greater cultural distance and greater discrimination. The results of regression analyses showed that, for Malay participants, perceived discrimination accounted for the greatest proportion of variance in sociocultural adjustment (73%), followed by English language proficiency (10%) and contact with host nationals (4%). For Chinese participants, English language proficiency was the strongest predictor of sociocultural adjustment (54%), followed by expectations of life in Britain (18%) and contact with host nationals (3%). By contrast, participants' sex, age, and length of residence failed to emerge as significant predictors for either ethnic group. Possible explanations for this pattern of findings are discussed, including the effects of Islamophobia on Malay-Muslims in Britain, possible socioeconomic differences between Malay and Chinese students, and personality differences between the two ethnic groups. The results are further discussed in relation to practical steps that can be taken to improve the sociocultural adjustment of sojourning students in Britain.     

The collective past,group psychology and personal narrative: Shaping Jewish identity by memoirs of the Holocaust

Through honing its collective memory, especially after the Holocaust, the Jewish community has attempted to sustain its culture, bolster the Jewish identity of its members, and regain a resolute sense that its narrative is again proceeding. To some degree, all these aims are realized by instilling in its members the Jewish modal character structure: a psychological configuration with two contrastable entities. One chronically discomposed self-structure, defining itself as polluted and helpless, trembles with the appalling imagery of historical and imminent community disasters. The other entity believes in its unmatched capacity for reparative, socially beneficial actions. The paradigm of this psychological organization is found in many children of survivors. The memory of a tragic history abides alongside the community's hopes in the Jewish modal personality. The need to set forth and accommodate these two motifs imprints upon the Jewish "national" character many of its distinctive qualities. The designs of the Jewish community for this particularly Jewish twofold personality formation are augmented by the personal revelations of survivors. Therefore, Holocaustic testimonies are invested with a sacred aura. In measure, these recitals of the disaster with their stark images, plus the clashing affects aroused in the reader toward main characters of the narrative, dictate the way Jews define themselves in the world and the way they live. A confluence of being covertly commissioned by the Jewish community joins with the narrators' more idiosyncratic longings. Together they generate a steady stream of Holocaustic accounts. Complementary vectors drive the reader to peruse these records. The results therefrom, intimate knowledge of the disaster, plus the twofold personality motifs stamp many Jews as scions of the Holocaust.     

The duration of a brief event in the mind's eye.

A new illusion of perceived duration associated with focused spatial attention is reported. Brief flashes in attended locations were perceived to last longer than the same flashes in unattended locations. That illusion was shown to be completely independent of another illusion concerning the perceived onset of a flash, ruling out the possibility that the effect on perceived duration is derivative of a comparison between perceived onset and offset. The illusion also occurred when the event duration was composed of a temporal gap rather than a brief flash, ruling out low-level visible persistence as a basis for the illusion. Taken together, the results point to cortical connections from higher brain centers' both speeding and prolonging the visual signals occurring in lower sensory regions. Those temporal consequences could easily subserve many of the perceptual benefits ascribed to attention for spatial and intensive properties.     

The future of the voluntary agency in a mixed economy.

The growing reliance of voluntary nonprofit organizations on governmental funds ties their future to the fate of the welfare state. A mixed, three-sector, social service economy has blurred organizational differences and made a more rational division of responsibility unlikely. This article suggests that the traditional roles of voluntary agencies can still be reformulated to suggest a more realistic view of their distinctive areas of competence and vulnerability. To avoid goal deflection in the future, the author concludes that voluntary agencies must cope effectively with the dilemmas of entrepreneurialism and vendorism.     

Ripples in mental space caused by dark matters and twisted tales: Some reflections on memory,memoirs and therapeutic work

In this paper, the author reflects on the issues of memory and the writing of personal memoirs, and how this impinges on our professional work. Her title is drawn in part from the work of theoretical physicists who can hypothesise about the existence of dark matter by measuring the deformations it causes in surrounding stars and galaxies. What she suggests is that there may be limitations in keeping strictly to disciplinary boundaries, and our professional lives may defy our efforts to box them in. The opening of doors to a more extensive world of ideas is often helpful, both for psychoanalysis and for the fields which it can illuminate and by which it can also be illuminated. She uses the example of the publication and critical reception of her own memoir, Pieces of Molly to make links with our professional selves and our clinical work. She draws on the work of Freud, and other seminal thinkers in the field, as well as her own clinical work to illustrate the ways in which mental space and the memories within it can be contained and transformed over time, but also can be beset by both internal and external saboteurs.     

Women's body images: The results of a national survey in the U.S.A.

This investigation was a representative survey, conducted in 1993, of the body images of 803 adult women in the United States. Included in the survey instrument were selected subscales from the standardized Multidimensional Body-Self Relations Questionnaire, which had been used in a U.S. survey in 1985. The results indicated substantial levels of body dissatisfaction, possibly surpassing levels observed in the 1985 survey. Nearly one-half of the women reported globally negative evaluations of their appearance and a preoccupation with being or becoming overweight. Whereas age effects were minimal, significant race/ethnicity effects were found, with clearly more positive body images among African American than Anglo or Hispanic women. The social and clinical implications of the findings were discussed.     

Anatomy of a flash. 2. The 'width' of a temporal edge.

In a previous study it has been found by using the Crawford masking paradigm with spatially coextensive stimuli that the end points of even a weak flash have a strong masking effect on the probe pulse, but no threshold elevation was observed when the probe was 100 ms or longer from flash onset and offset. The relationship between the strength of a temporal edge (eg the amplitude of a sudden increase in field luminance) and the duration of masking has not been systematically investigated. In the present experiments the duration of masking produced by a step of luminance as a function of step size was measured. With steps whose amplitude was between ten and five hundred times detection threshold, the duration of masking was about constant, ie 70 and 50 ms for on-responses and off-responses, respectively. This refractory period defined the 'width' of a temporal edge. Unless two suprathreshold unidirectional luminance changes are separated by an interval exceeding the width of a temporal edge, they are perceived as a single change in brightness. A linear systems analysis led to predictions for ramp stimuli that were confirmed by experiment.     

The role of inhibition in a spreading-activation model of language production. I. The psycholinguistic perspective

Spreading-activation models of language production are only workable to the extent that they manage to solve the heat death problem, i.e., the danger that too many nodes in the network are overactive at the same time. Therefore, a delicate balance between activational and deactivational forces has to be struck. Of the three prevailing dampening mechanisms of decay, self-inhibition and other-inhibition, the latter has been selected for closer scrutiny. The key proposal of this two-part article is that activation-based models of language production cannot afford to do without an inhibitory component, in particular lateral inhibition among nodes of the same level. Psycholinguistic evidence is reviewed in an attempt to insulate inhibitory from excitatory mechanisms. Although it is difficult in normal adult language use to distinguish between the effects of excessive activation and insufficient inhibition, some patterns from language acquisition and aphasia can be shown to follow from inhibitory rather than excitatory problems, thus demonstrating the reality of inhibition. In a system of activational and deactivational forces, other-inhibition is claimed to have the excitatory mechanism of syntax as its natural opponent. It is finally argued that other-inhibition offers an explanation for some puzzling findings from the experimental literature.     

The role of inhibition in a spreading-activation model of language production. II. The simulational perspective

This is the second part of a project aimed at establishing the role of lateral inhibition in spreading-activation models of language production. While the first part (Berg &; Schade, 1992) reviewed the psycholinguistic evidence for inhibition and established that indeed inhibition takes place, this paper addresses the issue from the implementational perspective. A series of computer simulations are reported in which spreading-activation models with or without inhibition are directly contrasted. The performance of the competing models is evaluated against two sets of criteria. On the more technical side, the “heat death” and the selection problems have to be solved. That is, the target must have a high and the nontarget units a low level of activation. Additionally, there are certain empirical effects from the production literature which may serve as test cases for deciding between the rival models. The results of the simulations indicate that only the inhibition-based model proves capable of meeting all challenges. All inhibitionless variants fail in one or more respects. It is further shown that the need for the inhibitory component increases with the size of the processing network and that one well-known production model can do without lateral inhibition only at the expense of introducing a concept which resembles inhibition in its effect but cannot replace it.     

The Learning Sciences in a New Era of U.S. Nationalism

What responsibilities do researchers of learning have in the wake of Trump's election and the proliferation of far-right, populist nationalism across the globe? In this essay, we seek to prompt and engage a dialogue about the political role and responsibilities of our field at this historical moment. First, we situate the social hierarchies that were most pronounced during this election within a longer history of U.S. policies and practices. We then examine the ostensible division between research on learning and the political contexts and consequences of learning. We argue for the need to address this false chasm and build on scholarship that has demonstrated the inextricable links among learning, power, and politics. We conclude by exploring how research on learning might more meaningfully engage with the political dimensions of learning through teaching, engaged research, publishing, professional forums, and service.