A review of employee evaluation procedures and a description of “high potential” executives and professionals

This article reviews standard personnel selection procedures with a focus on the personal interview, the assessment center, and standard psychological tests. A testing system is described that has been used by companies to select executives and professionals. Finally, psychological characteristics of “high potential” executives and professionals are described.     

School psychology and limited-English-proficient (LEP) children: New competencies

Children with limited-English-proficiency (LEP) and special education needs will be more numerous in the public schools of certain states. This article presents a set of competencies that are relevant to the practice of school psychology with LEP special pupils. Although the focus is on Hispanic children, the competencies apply to bilingual special education in general. They cover the following areas: second-language proficiency of the psychologist, cross-cultural awareness, assessment, knowledge of language development, skill in working with interpreters, and knowledge of bilingual education curriculum.     

The development of psychological testing in China

The Chinese have been interested in assessing individual differences for thousands of years. This article traces the development of early psychological measurements in China through to the arrival of modern psychometric techniques in the early 20th century. Following the social disruption caused by the Sino‐Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, the doctrines of the Communist Revolution and finally the Cultural Revolution forced the total abandonment of the idea of measuring individual differences. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s, however, the need for psychological measurement has been increasingly recognised, particularly because of needs in the fields of clinical and educational practice. As a result, there are now many university courses for training testing professionals. It is also important to have tests that are suitable to use in China. Simply to translate English‐language tests into Chinese may bias their results because of cultural differences, so tests should be revised in order to make their results equivalent, or new tests appropriate to their culture should be devised by Chinese psychologists. Psychological testing is now used in China in education, mental health, and, increasingly, in personnel selection. The expanding market economy means that effective processes for the selection of managers in business and industry are essential in China. As in many other scientific fields, the Chinese are making progress in psychometric testing and it is likely that psychological measurement of individual differences will make an important contribution to China's continued rapid economic progress in the 21st century.     

Independent effects of bilingualism and socioeconomic status on language ability and executive functioning

One hundred and seventy-five children who were 6-years old were assigned to one of four groups that differed in socioeconomic status (SES; working class or middle class) and language background (monolingual or bilingual). The children completed tests of nonverbal intelligence, language tests assessing receptive vocabulary and attention based on picture naming, and two tests of executive functioning. All children performed equivalently on the basic intelligence tests, but performance on the language and executive functioning tasks was influenced by both SES and bilingualism. Middle-class children outperformed working-class children on all measures, and bilingual children obtained lower scores than monolingual children on language tests but higher scores than monolingual children on the executive functioning tasks. There were no interactions with either group factors or task factors. Thus, each of SES and bilingualism contribute significantly and independently to children’s development irrespective of the child’s level on the other factor.     

中国的心理测量发展史

有关心理测量的思想起源于中国古代。但西方科学的心理测验理论与方法是20世纪初自西方传人中国的。30年的发展取得很大成绩,但道路艰辛曲折,文章分三个阶段对之作了回顾。一、最早是1915年外国学者为比较中美儿童的智力差异对广州500名小学生进行测试。同一时期,我国学者也开始自己编制测验,"小学生毛笔书法量表"是最早的标准化教育测验。廖世承和陈鹤琴1920年在南京高等师范开设测验课程,出版《心理测验法》一书,正式介绍科学的心理测验。与美国专家合作编制多种测验,1923年与美国专家合作对全国小学生进行测试,得出了三至八年级学童的年龄与班级常模,引起了教育界的注意。艾伟从1925年起致力编制中小学不同年级和学科的测验以及能力测验,还与张耀翔编制了识字测验与阅读测验等,对我国教育测验的发展做出了很大贡献。"中国测验学会"1931成立。并创办会刊《测验》有效地推动了当时测验研究的开展.1937年"七七"事变后,工作继续进行和扩展,但受战争的影响,发展上减慢了速度。二、1949年新中国成立后,由于政治上的变迁,心理测验被视为禁区,认为它违心,反动,没有人敢于问津。文化大革命中,心理学被打成伪科学,心理测验更是全盘否定了。三.文革以后,心理学恢复。而心理测验面对着既缺人力又少资料的困难。林传鼎等三位教授于1980年春举办了第一个全国性心理测验培训班,是心理测验再生的标志。此后各高等院校逐步开设心理测量学课程。通过引进各种心理测量理论,修订外国测验和逐步向自编我国测验发展,几年中取得了良好效果。1984年中国心理学会下属的‘心理测量分会’成立,1990年加入国际测验委员会(ITC)成为它的一个国家会员。1991年在南京举办了国内第一个心理测验国际性学术会议,又与台湾学者交流,建立起隔年一次海峡两岸心理与教育测量学术研讨会的协议。这些都对中国心理测验的发展都起了积极作用。80年代后期国家实行改革开放,经济转型,心理测验逐渐渗入医学、教育、企业、和组织人事部门等多种应用领域,扩大了对社会的影响。教育是其最早也是最重要的应用领域。从高考开始向各种考试、应用领域广泛扩展,取得良好效果。尤其是在人力资源、心理咨询领域,心理测验发展迅速日益兴旺。社会各界从多方面加深了对心理测量的认同,使它变成为一个相当热门的应用科学了。最后,文章从测验的数量、质量,数据处理的方法技术,测验者素质提高和法律完备等几个方面分析了存在问题并提出对今后的展望。     

PSYCHOEDUCATIONAL SERVICES FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH IN THE ORIENT: CURRENT STATUS,PROBLEMS, AND SOME REMEDIES*

Utilizing information obtained through an international survey and existing literature, patterns in the practices, research, and preparation of professionals who deliver psychoeducational services to children and youth in six Oriental countries (i.e., China, Hong Kong ¹, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand) are described. Services are provided by many professional groups. While few formal programs exist for the preparation of psychologists to work in schools, those providing such services have at least a bachelor's degree. Services commonly provided include assessment, vocational and educational guidance, counseling, parent education, and teaching. School psychological services generally are not governed by legislation or professional standards. Research tends to be applied and directed toward the construction and translations of tests and toward the needs of the mentally retarded, learning disabled, and behaviorally disordered. Ten major problems creating barriers for the delivery of psychoeducational services are identified. Three suggestions to help resolve these problems are offered.     

Medicaid: A potential source of revenue for special education

Currently, over 4.3 million children are receiving special services within the nation's schools because of physical, developmental, and educational disabilities. It is estimated that twice this number would benefit from special education services. Public Law 94–142, the Education for the Handicapped Act, offered the first real opportunity for many children with disabilities to receive special health and educational services. Public schools have become a primary setting for provision of services to these children, however, many states have encountered difficulty in procuring funding. One federally mandated source of revenue is the Medicaid program. In the fall of 1991, all state Medicaid and special education programs were asked to provide information concerning current or planned use of Medicaid funds for special education services. Responses were received from 36 states. Only 19 states reported using Medicaid funding in any capacity, and of these, only four required schools to bill Medicaid for services rendered. The majority of these programs are in the pilot stages of development. Special education services covered by Medicaid vary widely, as do reimbursement mechanisms. All 19 states allow Medicaid coverage for speech, physical, and occupational therapy. Only about half of those states provide allowances for diagnostic evaluation and assessment, while coverage for psychological services is provided by three-fourths of those states, and EPSDT screens by half of the states. Only two programs had been evaluated formally at the state and/or federal level. Medicaid remains a largely untapped source of revenue that could be used to help fund services for disabled children.     

Automated testing: Past,present and future

Over the past 15 years, a considerable body of literature has built up concerning the automation of psychological tests. Most of this research has been in the area of clinical testing, and may be unfamiliar to many of those involved in occupational assessment. However, the growth of office automation over the past few years has provided the hardware support needed for the development of automated personnel assessment techniques in industry and commerce. The present paper: (1) reviews the major developments in the field of automated testing, bringing together the literature from the clinical and occupational fields; (2) describes the potential provided by microcomputers for the development of new forms of testing; (3) outlines certain problems peculiar to automated testing; and (4) describes the possible future development of ‘expert’ personnel assessment and selection decision support systems.     

School psychology in Scotland

The development of educational psychology in Scotland has proceeded for 60 years from small beginnings in Glasgow to the provision of a psychological service covering the whole country. It comes from the belief in a well-trained teaching profession with a commitment to a public educational system for all children. The service aims to provide a psychological input to all children from birth to age 19. Legislation has given the psychological service a central role in the assessment of children who may have special educational needs and in the monitoring of the special education provided for those children. Training is shared at postgraduate level between services and the universities, with in-service training seen as the responsibility of services. The focus of work is moving from individual assessment and treatment to the consideration of social pressures and the offer of a consultation service to the educational systems.     

人事测评中的概化理论应用

概化理论是现代心理与教育测量理论之一,可应用在各种人事测评中,如表现性评价、多源评估、心理测验、结构化面试、水平测试、工作分析、评价中心等.与经典测量理论相比,概化理论应用于人事测评,表现出较强的优势,能够同时考察多种因素、确定多个维度权重等,其应用对象主要包括两大类,即企业和机构.概化理论应用于人事测评,存在应用领域、样本数据、测评效度和微观分析等问题.     

Ageism and psychological testing with elderly immigrant women

The focus on aging and ageism are fairly recent in psychology. Nevertheless, it is clear that these processes are of particular interest to many psychologists involved in psychological assessment, since both of these affect the content and the process of the assessment. In the present paper some key issues are raised regarding ageism and stereotypes of the aging held by mental health professionals and psychologists in particular. On the assumption that psychological testing with the aging is required to achieve accurate diagnoses and therapeutic interventions, some concerns about how psychological testing with the aging should proceed is presented.     

A Review of North American Selection Procedures: Canada and the United States of America

This article reviews North American selection procedures used to make employment decisions (hiring, promotion, training, layoff and demotion) within public and private organizations in Canada and the United States of America. We present the conclusions of several surveys of selection practices including those conducted by the International Personnel Management Association and the American Management Association. We summarize the literature on assessment centers, biodata, computerized assessment, education and experience criteria, individual assessment, education and experience criteria, individual assessment, integrity testing, interviews, job knowledge tests, physical and psychomotor tests and written tests. We also describe selection procedures being used for a variety of occupations from Air Traffic Controller to Telephone Operator. We conclude by describing future trends in personnel assessment in North America and predict greater collaborative research efforts between our two countries.     

Health and human services for persons who stutter and education of logopedists in East-European countries

The International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP) assessed the therapy status of fluency disorders, service opportunities, and education of logopedists (speech-language pathologists) with a mail survey in Eastern Europe. Information was collected on the following aspects: incidence, prevalence, availability of information, non-therapeutic support for persons who stutter (PWS), providers of diagnostics and therapy, cooperating professionals, therapy approaches, forms, goals, financing, early detection and prevention, training of professionals, specialization in stuttering therapy, needs for improving the situation of PWS, and problems which hinder better care. Stuttering therapy for children is available in many countries and is frequently provided by the educational system. Therapy for adults is provided best by the health services but is not satisfactorily available everywhere. Modern therapeutic approaches coexist with obsolete ones. Lack of resources, awareness, entitlement, and assessment of therapy effectiveness are pervasive problems.

Educational objectives: Readers will be able to describe and evaluate: (1) the therapy status of fluency disorders and service opportunities in various East-European countries; (2) the training of logopedists (speech-language pathologists); (3) specialization in stuttering therapy; and (4) the organizational services for PWS within the health and human service systems.     

Educational consequences of developmental speech disorder: Key Stage 1 National Curriculum assessment results in English and mathematics

Background: Children with speech difficulties may have associated educational problems. This paper reports a study examining the educational attainment of children at Key Stage 1 of the National Curriculum who had previously been identified with a speech difficulty. Aims: (1) To examine the educational attainment at Key Stage 1 of children diagnosed with speech difficulties two/three years prior to the present study. (2) To compare the Key Stage 1 assessment results of children whose speech problems had resolved at the time of assessment with those whose problems persisted. Sample(s): Data were available from 39 children who had an earlier diagnosis of speech difficulties at age 4/5 (from an original cohort of 47) at the age of 7. A control group of 35 children identified and matched at preschool on age, nonverbal ability and gender provided comparative data. Methods: Results of Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs) in reading, reading comprehension, spelling, writing and maths, administered to children at the end of Year 2 of school were analysed. Performance across the two groups was compared. Performance was also compared to published statistics on national levels of attainment. Results: Children with a history of speech difficulties performed less well than controls on reading, spelling and maths. However, children whose speech problems had resolved by the time of assessment performed no differently to controls. Children with persisting speech problems performed less well than controls on tests of literacy and maths. Spelling performance was a particular area of difficulty for children with persisting speech problems.     

Psychological assessment of children in a community mental health clinic

Collaborative and Therapeutic Assessment (TA) models (Finn & Tonsager, 1997; Fischer, 1985/1994) use psychological tests to answer client-constructed assessment questions in an understandable language, to be an intervention in and of themselves, and to initiate recommendations related to the referral. This article considers the application of Finn's TA model to an urban community psychology clinic in Oakland, California, where foster and kinship care, the child welfare system, trauma, neglect, and attachment disruptions are children's usual experience. These children hide their pain and complaints (Kelly, 1999), but show highly problematic behaviors to bewildered and frustrated caretakers, social workers, and school personnel. Their trauma, however, also often permeates the assessment data and shocks the assessor. A rationale is made for the necessity of a relational, culturally aware, systemic model in providing psychological assessment services to children and families in a community setting.     

Young Bilingual Children's Heightened Sensitivity to Referential Cues

Children growing up in a dual-language environment have to constantly monitor the dynamic communicative context to determine what the speaker is trying to say and how to respond appropriately. Such self-generated efforts to monitor speakers' communicative needs may heighten children's sensitivity to, and allow them to make better use of, referential gestures to figure out a speaker's referential intent. In a series of studies, we explored monolingual and bilingual preschoolers' use of nonverbal referential gestures such as pointing and gaze direction to figure out a speaker's intent to refer. In Study 1, we found that 3- and 4-year-old bilingual children were better able than monolingual children to use referential gestures (e.g., gaze direction) to locate a hidden toy in the face of conflicting body-distal information (the experimenter was seated behind an empty box while the cue was directed at the correct box). Study 2 found that by 5 years of age, monolingual children had mastered this task. Study 3 established that the bilingual advantage can be found in children as young as 2 years old. Thus, the experience of growing up in a bilingual environment fosters the development of the understanding of referential intent.     

No Matter How Hard You Try,Your Feet Still Get Wet: Insider and Outsider Perspectives on Bridging Diversity

Mental health practitioners have offered relatively little in response to the pervasive community violence faced by many children living in impoverished neighborhoods. The “neighborhood club” is a school‐based, short‐term, support group designed to assist children with the psychological impact of exposure to community violence. Ten “neighborhood clubs” were conducted in two public elementary schools in Detroit, Michigan. This paper reviews the implementation of a bilingual “neighborhood club,” undertaken to better serve the Spanish‐speaking Latino students in a school community. We discuss many of the rewards and challenges of conducting a bilingual, multicultural support group for children and conclude that a bilingual support group provides all children with a model that validates ethnic and cultural diversity while also building empathic bonds based on mutually‐reinforcing, common experiences.     

The effect of childhood bilingualism on episodic and semantic memory tasks

Kormi-Nouri, Moniri and Nilsson (2003) demonstrated that Swedish-Persian bilingual children recalled at a higher level than Swedish monolingual children, when they were tested using Swedish materials. The present study was designed to examine the bilingual advantage of children who use different languages in their everyday life but have the same cultural background and live in their communities in the same way as monolingual children. In four experiments, 488 monolingual and bilingual children were compared with regard to episodic and semantic memory tasks. In experiments 1 and 2 there were 144 boys and 144 girls in three school groups (aged 9-10 years, 13-14 years and 16-17 years) and in three language groups (Persian monolingual, Turkish-Persian bilingual, and Kurdish-Persian bilingual). In experiments 3 and 4, there were 200 male students in two school groups (aged 9-10 years and 16-17 years) and in two language groups (Persian monolingual and Turkish-Persian bilingual). In the episodic memory task, children learned sentences (experiments 1-3) and words (Experiment 4). Letter and category fluency tests were used as measures of semantic memory. To change cognitive demands in memory tasks, in Experiment 1, the integration of nouns and verbs within sentences was manipulated by the level of association between verb and noun in each sentence. At retrieval, a recognition test was used. In experiments 2 and 3, the organization between sentences was manipulated at encoding in Experiment 2 and at both encoding and retrieval in Experiment 3 through the use of categories among the objects. At retrieval, free recall or cued recall tests were employed. In Experiment 4, the bilingual children were tested with regard to both their first and their second language. In all four experiments, a positive effect of bilingualism was found on episodic and semantic memory tasks; the effect was more pronounced for older than younger children. The bilingual advantage was not affected by changing cognitive demands or by using first/second language in memory tasks. The present findings support the cross-language interactivity hypothesis of bilingual advantage.     

Developmental assessment, cultural context, gender, and schooling in Zambia

Multiple perspectives on the assessment of children's development at the school-community interface in rural areas of Zambia are discussed in the light of several empirical studies conducted between 1974 and 2005. A longitudinal trace study of a cohort of 46 young people born into a rural, Chewa community in Katete District found that girls' scores in early childhood on a battery of ecoculturally grounded cognitive tests correlated less well than they did for boys with two educational outcomes: number of grades of schooling completed, and adult literacy scores. Conversely, ratings of the children on indigenous conceptions of intelligence by adults familiar with the children in the context of their home village lives predicted the same outcomes better for girls than for boys. A separate, linked experiment compared the performance of 76 Katete school children with that of 84 school children in the capital city of Lusaka on the US standardized Draw-a-Person Test (DPT) and the Panga Munthu Test (PMT), an expanded version of one of the tests developed for the Zambian trace study. Analysis of the correlations among scores on these two tests, age, and teacher ratings suggests that aptitudes evident in the home and school domains are less well integrated for rural girls than for urban boys, and that for a low-income, rural population, the PMT taps the domain of home cognition better than school cognition, while the converse is true of the DPT. Implications for educational assessment in Zambia are discussed, and supportive documentation is cited from two ongoing programs of test development. The authors conclude that if educational testing is to support the process of enhancing educational equity across gender, family socioeconomic status, and residential location, its focus should be broadened to include other dimensions of psychological development such as multilingual and personal-social competencies.     

A Bilingual “Neighborhood Club”: Intervening with Children Exposed to Urban Violence

Mental health practitioners have offered relatively little in response to the pervasive community violence faced by many children living in impoverished neighborhoods. The “neighborhood club” is a school-based, short-term, support group designed to assist children with the psychological impact of exposure to community violence. Ten “neighborhood clubs” were conducted in two public elementary schools in Detroit, Michigan. This paper reviews the implementation of a bilingual “neighborhood club,” undertaken to better serve the Spanish-speaking Latino students in a school community. We discuss many of the rewards and challenges of conducting a bilingual, multicultural support group for children and conclude that a bilingual support group provides all children with a model that validates ethnic and cultural diversity while also building empathic bonds based on mutually-reinforcing, common experiences.