Ethnic identity and its relation to personal self-esteem: a comparison of Canadian-born and foreign-born Chinese adolescents.

Ethnic identity and its relation to personal self-esteem were examined by comparing 31 Chinese adolescents who immigrated to Canada and 31 Chinese adolescents who were Canadian born. The foreign-born adolescents were more likely to identify themselves as Chinese (rather than Chinese Canadian) and to include references to their ethnicity in response to an open-ended Who Am I Questionnaire, a variation of the Twenty Statements Test (M. H. Kuhn & T. S. McPartland, 1954). For the foreign-born group only, aspects of collective self-esteem were positively related to personal self-esteem. The differences between the groups supported a contextual emphasis for associating collective self-esteem with personal self-esteem. The data were consistent with an interpretation involving collectivistic-individualistic distinctions, with the foreign-born sample being more collectivistic.     

Developing a scale of self-efficacy in personal relationships for adolescents

This study developed a scale of self-efficacy in personal relationships for adolescents and examined its reliability and the validity. The 40 items assessing tendencies theoretically linked to self-efficacy in personal relationships were administered to 344 junior and high school students. 207 high school students also were administered the Shimoda Personality Inventory. Three factors (Self-confidence in Personal Relationship, Trust in Friends, and Trust by Friends) were extracted by principal components analysis. The coefficient alpha reliabilities of these subscales were .90, .89. and .87. The validity was supported by correlations between the Total score of self-efficacy and the SPI subscales of Autistic trait -.53, Nervous Character trait -.13, Self-uncertain trait -.39, and Syntonic trait .57.     

eQuest: case study of a comprehensive online program for self-study and personal growth.

eQuest is an online program that guides participants through a variety of online activities in order to help them address some specific personal issue, as well as encourage self-insight on a broader level. These activities include locating and evaluating information, joining discussion/support groups, establishing one-on-one relationships with knowledgeable people, experimenting with different types of online communication, utilizing and evaluating online psychological tests, creating a personal web page, and experimenting with freeform browsing techniques. eQuest stimulates integrated learning by encouraging people to compare and combine what they discover in these different online activities, and to bring their online and offline lifestyles together. It includes educational/therapeutic exercises to help people prepare for and benefit from these activities. Unlike traditional forms of clinical intervention, in which a professional "does" psychotherapy with a client, the eQuest consultant assists people through the program, helps them evaluate their experiences, and encourages the integration process. Underlying all these therapeutic activities is a philosophy that advocates the therapeutic value of developing an online lifestyle and integrating it into one's offline life, while also recognizing the potential pitfalls of cyberspace.     

The family Re-Union initiative: a springboard for family-centered community building,locally and nationally

Family Re-Union is an ongoing conference series and family policy initiative launched in 1992 by Al and Tipper Gore. It has been the springboard for a new wave of family-centered community building efforts, including the development of an educational program to prepare a new generation of community builders. We summarize the history of this family-centered community building movement and discuss how it builds upon and differs from earlier approaches to community development. We describe Family Re-Union and some of the ongoing work it has fueled. And we suggest ways family professionals can take part in this work.     

Chronometric comparisons of imagery to action: visualizing versus physically performing springboard dives

Motor imagery research emphasizes similarities between the mental imagery of an action and its physical execution. In this study, temporal differences between motor imagery and its physical performance as a function of performer expertise, skill complexity, and spatial ability were investigated. Physical execution times for springboard dives were compared with visualized execution times. Results indicate that physical and visualized performance times were not identical: Their relation is a function of dive complexity and diver expertise, but not their interaction. Relative to physical time, visualization time increased with increased complexity, suggesting the involvement of capacity-limited working memory. A nonmonotonic relation was found for expertise: Unlike experts or novices, visualization time for intermediates was significantly slower than physical time. These temporal differences are most consistent with schematic differences in skill representation. Intermediates may be relatively slowed by greater amounts of nonautomatized knowledge, as compared with the automatized knowledge of experts or the sparse knowledge of novices.     

Boundary regulation in family and personal systems: Perceptions of late adolescents

Examination of boundary regulation can provide family therapists with a framework to describe both the functioning of family systems and personal systems (i.e., the intrapsychic functioning of individual family members). In the present study, late adolescents' perceptions of boundary regulation within their family systems (i.e., ratings of family health, communication, leadership, expressiveness, cohesion, and family conflict) were related to regulation of their personal boundaries (i.e., self-reported personal competence, distress, and patterns of defense mechanism use). In addition, personal system variables reliably discriminated between adolescents who described their families as psychologically healthy versus psychologically unhealthy.     

Suicide acceptability is related to suicide planning in U.S. adolescents and young adults

The association between adolescents' and young adults' attitudes toward suicide and their own suicidality across five racial-ethnic classifications was studied in a nationally representative sample of 3,301 youth ages 14 to 22 years from the National Annenberg Risk Survey of Youth. Results indicate that adolescents and young adults who most strongly believe that it is acceptable to end one's life are more than fourteen times more likely to make a plan to kill themselves as those who do not have such beliefs (p < .001). Future behavioral prevention and intervention research should take into consideration adolescents' and young adults' approval of suicide as a risk factor for taking their own lives.     

Neurology--psychiatry in Dresden from E. Kraepelin through S. Ganser to J. Suckow

The broad outline of the psychiatric-neurological care of hospitalised patients in Dresden from 1885 to 1963 is sketched, with special reference to the work and achievements of E. Kraepelin (1885), S. Ganser (1886-1913), E. Reiss (1925-1933), H. Krisch (1933-1945), and J. Suckow (1955-1963).     

Comprehension by learning-disabled and nondisabled adolescents of personal/social problems presented in text.

Four groups of 14-year-olds, differing in reading level, learning disability status, and socioeconomic status, read and retold short problem narratives and answered questions. The pattern of reporting components of the problem schema (goal/obstacles/choices) differed for problems presented with or without a statement of the character's priority for action, suggesting that including priorities adds another level of information to the problem text and changes its macrostructure. Even the poorest readers showed this sensitivity to text structure. Three of the four measures of problem representation (idea units recalled, problem-schema components reported, and error rate) reflected overall reading ability. However, the degree to which extraneous information was incorporated into problem representations did not. Learning-disabled students made more importations, and more implausible importations, than did non-disabled students. Moreover, this pattern was associated with poor problem solving. Only proficient readers showed awareness of the source of the information (text or extratext) on which their predictions were based.