INTERVENTIONS TO REDUCE HIGH-VOLUME PORTABLE HEADSETS: “TURN DOWN THE SOUND!”

Two studies examined effects of interventions to reduce noise levels from portable stereo headphones. Study 1 examined the effectiveness of warning signs posted in and nearby public elevators with 567 passengers possessing a portable headphone (total N = 7,811). During a 9-day baseline, the mean percentage of headphones played at an observer-audible level was 85%. During a subsequent 6-day warning sign phase, the mean percentage of audible headphones declined to 59%, which increased to a mean of 76% during a second baseline phase (5 days). Study 2 assessed the impact of a student confederate who lowered his or her observer-audible headphone volume at the polite request of a second student confederate. Of the 4,069 elevator passengers, 433 possessed a portable headset. The mean percentage of observer-audible headphones during a 4-day baseline was 85%. Subsequently, a 5-day modeling intervention reduced audible volumes to a mean of 46%. During a second baseline phase of 4 days, the mean level was 77%, and during reintroduction of the modeling phase (9 days) the mean level was 42%. The modeling intervention was significantly more effective with women (53% compliance) than men (29% compliance).     

Group therapy with inner city hispanic acting-out adolescent males: Some theoretical observations

Group therapy with inner city Hispanic acting-out adolescent males is described as an effective psychotherapeutic modality in treating this difficult population. Topics addressed include the development of personality during adolescence, Hispanic family dynamics and gender roles, group therapy as a pseudofamily structure, stages of group development as they pertain to this population, and the group therapist's role and characteristics in the treatment situation.     

Gender and Relationship Roles in the Analects and the Mencius

In this paper I argue that the conception of gender as illustrated in the Analects and the Mencius is basically a functional one that assigns women a domestic role. I show how this conception might imply the exclusion of women from the moral ideal of chun-tzu, which would result in the further subordination of women as wives to men as husbands in the context of the Confucian role system. On the other hand, I show how the Confucian role system can have a positive influence on the status of women through its elements of reciprocity and respect. Finally, I argue that the conception itself is not justified.     

The Voting Propensity of Hong Kong Christians: Individual Disposition, Church Influence, and the China Factor

Considering China's history of unfavorable treatment of mainland Chinese Christians, the authors hypothesize that Christians in Hong Kong reflected their concern over the future protection of religious freedom during the 1995 Legislative Council election, the last election before the handover of the British colony to Chinese sovereignty. We have looked at the relative contributions of individual disposition, the China factor and church influence on the presence of Hong Kong Christians at the polling booth on election day. Our analysis found that Hong Kong Christians are subjected more to the influenceof the latter two factors. The influence of socio-economic status is relatively unimportant in determining the voting propensity of Hong Kong Christians. While both Catholics and Protestants are influenced by general church teachings, this research found that Catholic voters, are more subject to their church's organizational mobilization than Protestant voters.     

Constructing who can be Japanese: A study of social markers of acceptance in Japan

Social markers of acceptance are socially constructed indicators of adaptation (e.g., language skills or adherence to social norms) that recipient nationals use in deciding whether to view an immigrant as a host community member. This study had two objectives: (a) to distill the markers considered important by Japanese undergraduates to accept immigrants in Japanese society and (b) to test the premises of integrated threat and social identity theories by ascertaining the effects on marker endorsement of perceived immigrant threat, contribution, relative social status, and intergroup permeability. Native‐born Japanese (the term “native‐born Japanese” is used throughout this article to refer to people born as Japanese citizens—differentiating them from immigrants who are Japanese citizens naturalized after birth) from 12 Japanese universities (N = 428) completed an online survey. Marker importance ratings were factor‐analyzed, and three latent dimensions were found representing sociolinguistic, ethnic, and socioeconomic markers. Multiple hierarchical regressions discerned the main effects of immigrants’ perceived threat and contribution on social markers as well as their interactions with intergroup permeability and immigrant relative status. The results underscored perceived threat’s consistent role in increasing marker importance and suggested divergent paths to acceptance: Immigrants perceived as “low‐status” were expected to conform to sociolinguistic and ethnic markers, whereas socioeconomic markers were stressed more for “high‐status” immigrants when perceived immigrant threat increased and intergroup boundaries were considered less permeable.     

Taking Access to the Community: An Ecological Systems Framework for In‐Home Counseling With Older Adults

Bronfenbrenner's (1977) ecological systems theory is a holistic framework placing an individual in a system's context to address their concerns. This article offers a case study demonstrating use of the theory with older adults and the in‐home setting. Implications for the counseling field and future research needs are discussed.     

Are older adults in Hong Kong “living in history” in their autobiographical memories?

Transition theory posits that autobiographical memories are organized by major life transitions, which is often supported by the Living-in-History effect that occurs when people frequently refer to public events to support their date estimates of personal events. In the present study, 52 Chinese older adults in Hong Kong recalled autobiographical events using cue-word method and justified the date estimates of the events. They also reported the most important events and assessed their impacts. Results showed that participants referred to public events only when estimating the date of 5.5% of word-cued events and reported a few public events as personally important, suggesting an absence of the Living-in-History effect. Nonetheless, word-cued events and important events accumulated around major life transitions to form a transition bump; the material change that important events brought about predicted whether the important events were used to organize autobiographical memory, thereby providing new evidence for the transition theory.     

Acknowledgments 2002

Dedication

Acknowledgments 2002     

Grouping has a negative effect on both subjective contours and perceived occlusion at T-junctions

Perceived occlusion of aligned T-junctions and subjective contours at implicit T-junctions are often assumed to be related but are rarely examined with respect to common mechanisms. Using the method of paired comparison, we measured the strength of perceived occlusion at explicit T-junctions and the strength of subjective contours at implicit T-junctions (using different subjects) along the aligned edges of eight sets of inducer shapes. Sets varied in the similarity of component shapes with respect to orientation, height, width, and color. With increasing shape similarity, there was a striking decrease in both the strength of subjective contours and the strength of perceived occlusion; the correlation between these two kinds of judgments was .97. We conclude that common mechanisms underlie these two percepts and that edge alignment is a much stronger indicator of occlusion for poorly grouped than for strongly grouped inducers.     

Control of saccades in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's patients (PD) made pro- and antisaccades: In the no-delay condition, the target appeared concurrent with the GO signal. In the delay condition, the target appeared before the signal for movement. Second, we probed spatial working memory in PD. Subjects looked to the remembered locations of sequential targets. In the no-delay prosaccade condition, PD had faster reaction times, made more express saccades, and exhibited hypometria. In the no-delay antisaccade condition, PD had longer reaction times and made more direction errors. In the delay tasks, PD made more direction errors and had more difficulty withholding a movement. PD made more sequencing errors in the spatial working memory task. These findings are consistent with a basal ganglia pathophysiology influencing eye movement processing in the frontal cortex.