Using self-evaluation to improve difficult-to-read handwriting of secondary students

We used delayed multiple-baseline and multiple-probe techniques to assess the effects of self-evaluation training on the legibility of cursive handwriting. Five secondary special education students with difficult-to-read handwriting served as participants. All participants improved the legibility of their handwriting during self-evaluation training. A systematic withdrawal of the training package demonstrated maintenance of treatment effects. For the most part, the students' handwriting remained at least 90% legible to judges following the systematic withdrawal of the self-evaluation training.     

A comparison between American and Chinese college students on suicide-related behavior parameters

Background/ObjectiveThe United States (US) and China are the two largest economies, but recent and directly comparable studies on suicide-related behaviors in the two countries are lacking. By using the Suicidal Behaviors Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R), item-level comparison was performed in assessing self-reported suicide-related behaviors between the US and Chinese undergraduates.MethodThis study involved a total of 3,185 college students aged between 18 to 24 years (1,185 US college students, and 2,000 Chinese students who were randomly selected from a large sample of 11,806 Chinese college students). Participants filled out the 4-item SBQ-R.ResultsParticipants’ responses were compared by country and sex. There was a higher overall risk of suicide-related behaviors among US students (24.3%) compared to Chinese students (17.0%). US students also reported higher lifetime attempt, past-year ideation, and lifetime threat. US female college students reported the highest suicide-related behaviors compared to other sub-groups.ConclusionsThere is a need to tailor specific interventions to alleviate college students’ suicide-related behaviors in the US and China, with a particular focus on US females.     

State and trait anxiety: A cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and Caucasian students in Canada

Chinese people immigrating to North America are subject to specific Stressors in moving to a new country, and, furthermore, these factors interact with their cultural background to produce higher levels of anxiety than are commonly believed to exist. The present study compared the responses of 60 Chinese and 60 Caucasian Canadian students to questionnaires measuring multidimensional trait and state anxiety. As predicted, the Chinese students endorsed significantly higher levels of trait anxiety for ambiguous situations and daily routines than did the Caucasians. Moreover, they were also significantly more likely than the Caucasians to rate the research situation as being ambiguous and threatening. Of all the possible background variables tested, English fluency was the single most powerful covariate that was predictive of the results, with those students who indicated a lowered English proficiency tending to score higher across all four facets of trait anxiety. As the Chinese students were also significantly more likely than the Caucasians to indicate a lower level of English fluency, the present results are supportive of the likelihood that lack of familiarity with the adopted culture and language may contribute to adjustment difficulties in Chinese immigrants.     

State and trait anxiety: A cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and Caucasian students in Canada

Chinese people immigrating to North America are subject to specific Stressors in moving to a new country, and, furthermore, these factors interact with their cultural background to produce higher levels of anxiety than are commonly believed to exist. The present study compared the responses of 60 Chinese and 60 Caucasian Canadian students to questionnaires measuring multidimensional trait and state anxiety. As predicted, the Chinese students endorsed significantly higher levels of trait anxiety for ambiguous situations and daily routines than did the Caucasians. Moreover, they were also significantly more likely than the Caucasians to rate the research situation as being ambiguous and threatening. Of all the possible background variables tested, English fluency was the single most powerful covariate that was predictive of the results, with those students who indicated a lowered English proficiency tending to score higher across all four facets of trait anxiety. As the Chinese students were also significantly more likely than the Caucasians to indicate a lower level of English fluency, the present results are supportive of the likelihood that lack of familiarity with the adopted culture and language may contribute to adjustment difficulties in Chinese immigrants. This paper is based in part on an M.A. thesis in psychology at York University by the first author under the supervision of the second author. This research was supported in part by a research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) to the second author (Grant No. 410-94-1473).     

The focusing effect of self-evaluation threat in coaction and social comparison

This article contends that the presence of a coactor leads to a focusing effect whenever this presence represents a threat or a potential threat to self-evaluation. Experiment 1 showed that attentional focusing appears in the presence of an actual (in the case of upward comparison) or potential (in the case of mere coaction) threat to self-evaluation but not in its absence (in the case of downward comparison). Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed that the presence of a coactor affects focusing because the coactor represents a potential threat and showed that introducing a threat in downward comparison can produce a focusing effect. Experiment 4 showed that removing the threat in upward comparison decreases the focusing effect. Experiment 5 confirmed that the effects observed in upward comparison are due to attentional focusing and not to an increase in effort. Contributions to social facilitation, social comparison, and attention research are discussed.     

A regulatory focus model of self-evaluation

Regulatory focus theory [Higgins, E. T. (1998). Promotion and prevention: Regulatory focus as a motivational principle. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 30, pp. 1-46). New York: Academic Press.] argues that concerns with growth and nurturance (i.e., a promotion focus) and concerns with safety and security (i.e., a prevention focus) produce different motives and perception. The current studies test whether regulatory focus also affects individuals’ strivings for self-evaluation. Specifically, we argue that a promotion or a prevention focus directs the self-evaluation process to self-esteem or self-certainty, respectively. Two studies supported this prediction by demonstrating that regulatory focus affects the strength of self-evaluation goals and individuals’ reactions to goal failure. In Study 1, we found that a promotion focus led to a stronger self-esteem goal (as measured by greater accessibility of esteem-related words), whereas a prevention focus led to a stronger self-certainty goal (as measured by greater accessibility of certainty-related words). In Study 2, a promotion failure led to lower self-esteem than a prevention failure, but a prevention failure led to lower self-certainty than a promotion failure. This research suggests an unrecognized role of nurturance and safety concerns in understanding the self-evaluation process.     

Reactions following the sudden death of a classmate

Findings from a study of adolescents grief reactions following the sudden death of a friend and a classmate are presented. The group (26 classmates) was followed up after one and nine months. Interviews and a questionnaire including the Imapact of Event Scale and the Hogan Grief Inventory were used. The general grief scores on the Hogan Grief Inventory indicated that the grief level was similar to that of adolescents who had lost siblings. The scores on the Impact of Event Scale showed a descline in distress level from 1 to 9 months. However, after 9 months about 1/5 of the students still scored above a clinical cut-off point indicating post-traumatic stress levels. Recommendations for improving help following such events are presented.     

Psychometric comparison of Chinese and English versions of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire with bilingual Hong Kong Chinese students

The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003) assesses two emotion regulation (ER) strategies: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Researchers have used the ERQ in cross-national studies, such as with participants in Hong Kong. There is inconsistency in psychometric equivalence data for the ERQ in Chinese among adults, and prior research in Hong Kong contradicted the ERQ's original factor structure (Matsumoto et al., 2008). The present study examined the factor structure, reliability and validity of a translated Traditional Chinese-ERQ and the English-ERQ with Hong Kong college students. Results revealed that both versions replicated the original two-factor structure of the ERQ (Gross & John, 2003). Evidence of the measure's convergent, discriminant and predictive validity was obtained as well. Implications for cross-cultural scale validation particularly with Hong Kong Chinese students are discussed.     

Narcissism and the self-evaluation maintenance model: effects of social comparison threats on relationship closeness

When threatened with an upward social comparison with a close other in a self-relevant domain, people may reduce either the self-relevance of the ability being compared or their perceived closeness to the other person (Tesser, 1988). Those high in the trait of narcissism may be more likely to push away others who outperform them. Participants and nominated close others completed online measures of narcissism, contingent self-worth, and relationship closeness. Subsequently, participants heard that their friend performed better (or equivalently) on a "competitive spirit" test. Participants higher in narcissism significantly reduced the closeness of their relationships after a threat but did not reduce the relevance of competitiveness to their self-worth.     

A classmate in distress: schoolchildren as bystanders and their reasons for how they act

Research has shown that bystanders more often fail to or are slower to help a victim in emergency when there are other bystanders than when there are not. The study presented in this paper is a qualitative case study with a focus on students’ own reasons why they do not help a classmate in emergency when there are other children witnessing the emergency situation in the real-life classroom case studied. Grounded theory methods were used to analyse the data. The individual conversations with the students indicated a variety of definitions of the specific distress situation when they recalled and talked about the classroom incident. During the process of the analysis seven concepts of definitions associated with passive or non-intervention bystander behaviour were constructed and grounded in the empirical material: trivialisation, dissociation, embarrassment association, busy working priority, compliance with a competitive norm, audience modelling, and responsibility transfer. Relations between these concepts of definitions were also analysed. However, this study is a first step and a first report from an ongoing study about school children as helper and bystander.     

Common future and personal responsibilities: A comparison between Italian and Burundian students

The political, social, and cultural history of a nation modulates the representations of rights and duties. The aim of this research is to compare students from two countries (Italy and Burundi) in terms of how they define their rights and duties. In the two countries, there are differences both in the legal protection of fundamental rights and in regard to material conditions, which in turn ensure the effectiveness of rights. Focus groups structured around nine questions were conducted in Burundi and in Italy. The discussions with Italian and Burundian students showed some clear differences. Although both groups speak of rights as something to be safeguarded and something that everyone is born with, Italian students do not recognize the complementarity of rights and duties and consider the latter simply as a limit and an obstacle to individual enhancement. On the contrary, Burundian adolescents seem more aware of their personal responsibilities and their role in protecting human rights.     

Independent threats and self-evaluation maintenance processes

The present study investigated the independence of Self-Evaluation Maintenance (SEM) processes and the larger self-system. SEM processes are activated whenever another's performance is made salient relative to one's own. According to the SEM model, when one is outperformed by a close other on a task high in self-relevance, self-esteem is lowered and a negative affect state is generated. When one is outperformed by a close other on a task low in self-relevance, however, self-esteem and positive affect are actually enhanced, because one can take pride in the other's accomplishments. There are many sources of threat or enhancement to self-esteem, however, that are unrelated to one's performance relative to another's. The present study, using American undergraduates as subjects, examined the impact that these unrelated self-esteem threats or enhancements might have on SEM processes, that is, whether a prior unrelated ego-threatening or ego-enhancing experience modulates the effects of SEM processes. It was expected that a prior ego-threatening experience would augment the impact of SEM variables, whereas an ego-enhancing experience would attenuate the effect. Results, however, indicated little interaction between SEM processes and unrelated threats or enhancements to self-esteem.     

A comparison of Chinese and American memories for public events

Memory for public events was compared across Chinese and U.S. participants to explore competing explanations for cultural differences in flashbulb memories. Participant recall of the canonical features of events was more detailed and more likely to include a specific time in the United States than in the Chinese reports. Vividness was positively correlated with the flashbulb memory scores only in the U.S. sample. In both cultures, emotion, national importance, and thinking about the event predicted vividness and recall of memory details. Chinese participants reported primarily disasters and social events, and their memories were more likely to include international events than U.S. participants. The U.S. participants recalled primarily political events and terrorism. These results suggest that culture has important influences on the quantity, level of detail, completeness, and vividness of autobiographical memories as well as on the types of events triggering flashbulb memories.