Close relationships between Asian American and European American college students

The authors examined attitudes and behaviors regarding close relationships between European and Asian Americans, with a particular emphasis on 5 major subgroups of Asian Americans (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Filipino Americans). Participants were 218 Asian American college students and 171 European American college students attending a culturally diverse university. The European Americans did not differentiate among the various subgroups of Asian Americans. Their attitudes regarding close relationships were less positive toward Asian Americans than toward Mexican and African Americans, a finding contrary to the prediction of social exchange theory (H. Tajfel, 1975). In contrast to the European Americans' view of homogeneity among Asian Americans, the 5 major subgroups of Asian Americans expressed a distinctive hierarchy of social preference among themselves. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research on interethnic relations involving Asian Americans.     

Moral judgment and self-reported moral events in adulthood

As part of a 13-year study of the development of reasoning about the Good Life and moral judgment, 29 middle-class, well-educated adults, ranging in age from 18 to 80 years, were interviewed twice, 4 years apart on Standard Form Moral Judgment interviews and were asked to describe their own moral events that occurred recently. Both times, the average moral judgment score on the hypothetical dilemmas was about stage 4. The reasoning in the spontaneously reported moral events was significantly lower, although the two scores were highly correlated. Difference scores between the two were not related to scores on the hypothetical dilemmas. While there were no significant gender differences in scores on the hypothetical dilemmas, there were in scores on spontaneously reported events favoring males. The philosophic quality of the reported events could be easily categorized by traditional moral-philosophic categories; about half of the events contained traditional deontic moral content (moral right); the other half contained material defined as the moral good. The context of most events was interpersonal as opposed to societal. The most frequent issue discussed concerned honesty about financial issues, particularly income tax evasion. Ways to expand the research on adult moral experience are discussed.     

On the origin of personal causal theories

Detecting the causal relations among environmental events is an important facet of learning. Certain variables have been identified which influence both human causal attribution and animal learning: temporal priority, temporal and spatial contiguity, covariation and contingency, and prior experience. Recent research has continued to find distinct commonalities between the influence these variables have in the two domains, supporting a neo-Humean analysis of the origins of personal causal theories. The cues to causality determine which event relationships will be judged as causal; personal causal theories emerge as a result of these judgments and in turn affect future attributions. An examination of animal learning research motivates further extensions of the analogy. Researchers are encouraged to study real-time causal attributions, to study additional methodological analogies to conditioning paradigms, and to develop rich learning accounts of the acquisition of causal theories.     

Implicit access to semantic information

Three experiments investigating the patient M.S.'s semantic memory are reported. Experiments 1 and 2 involved a category-membership decision task, in which M.S. was asked to determine whether a noun was a member of a specified semantic category. His performance in Experiment 1 was impaired for nouns from living categories in comparison with nouns from nonliving categories, and this impairment was especially marked for nouns of low typicality. Experiment 2 demonstrated an equivalent pattern of very poor performance to nouns of low familiarity from living categories. In Experiment 3 the effect of a category label on lexical decision was examined, using category labels as primes preceding nouns or pronounceable nonwords. Facilitation from related category label primes was found for typical and untypical members of living and nonliving semantic categories. These findings demonstrate that M.S. has impaired knowledge of the structure of living semantic categories when explicit access to this information is required (Experiments 1 and 2), but that some form of preserved category structure can be demonstrated in tasks which assess this implicitly (Experiment 3).     

Slower eating rate reduces the food intake of men, but not women: implications for behavioral weight control

This study tested a central tenet of behavioral weight control: does slower eating rate reduce food intake and positively affect appetite ratings. This study used direct behavioral observation of participants' (n=48; 25BMI35) eating behavior using Universal Eating Monitors. Food intake and ratings of "desire to eat" (collected each minute during meals) were represented as a function of time. Based on an acclimation meal, participants' eating rate was modified by instructing them to eat a bite of food when prompted by a computer, which generated three types of meals: (1) baseline (eating rate was the same as the acclimation meal), (2) reduced-rate (eating rate was reduced by 50%), and (3) combined-rate (eating rate at the beginning of the meal was identical to that of the acclimation meal, subsequently eating rate was reduced by 50%). All meals were ad libitum. Slower eating rate during the reduced-rate and combined-rate meals resulted in less food intake compared to the baseline meal for men, but not women. Ratings of desire to eat, normalized for the amount of food consumed, were lower during the combined-rate meal for men and women. Thus, this basic premise of behavioral weight control was supported for men, but not for women.     

Distinct neural correlates for two types of inhibition in bilinguals: response inhibition versus interference suppression

To examine the effects of bilingualism on cognitive control, we studied monolingual and bilingual young adults performing a flanker task with functional MRI. The trial types of primary interest for this report were incongruent and no-go trials, representing interference suppression and response inhibition, respectively. Response times were similar between groups. Brain data were analyzed using partial least squares (PLS) to identify brain regions where activity covaried across conditions. Monolinguals and bilinguals activated different sets of brain regions for congruent and incongruent trials, but showed activation in the same regions for no-go trials. During the incongruent trials, monolinguals activated the left temporal pole and left superior parietal regions. In contrast, an extensive network including bilateral frontal, temporal and subcortical regions was active in bilinguals during the incongruent trials and in both groups for the no-go trials. Correlations between brain activity and reaction time difference relative to neutral trials revealed that monolinguals and bilinguals showed increased activation in different brain regions to achieve less interference from incongruent flankers. Results indicate that bilingualism selectively affects neural correlates for suppressing interference, but not response inhibition. Moreover, the neural correlates associated with more efficient suppression of interference were different in bilinguals than in monolinguals, suggesting a bilingual-specific network for cognitive control.     

Practicing what we know: Multicultural counseling competence among clinical psychology trainees and experienced multicultural psychologists

Multicultural (MC) competence is considered a necessary skill for clinical and counseling psychologists; however, there is little to no research on the assessment of demonstrated multicultural counseling competence (DMCCC) of clinical psychology graduate students. In this study, we developed a MC assessment instrument to assess DMCCC of clinical psychology graduate students compared with MC-experienced psychologists. In addition, we assessed for differences between the endorsement of MC-appropriate strategies and actual use of these strategies in clinical practice, both by MC-experienced psychologists and clinical psychology students. Results revealed significant differences between the DMCCC of clinical psychology graduate students and MC-experienced psychologists. Significant differences also emerged between endorsement of strategies as multiculturally appropriate and likelihood of actual use of these strategies. Findings suggest that future training and competence models should incorporate participants' ability to not only identify multiculturally appropriate strategies but also use these strategies in therapy.     

When people’s judgments of learning (JOLs) are extremely accurate at predicting subsequent recall: the “Displaced-JOL effect”

Judgments of learning (JOL) made after a delay more accurately predict subsequent recall than JOLs made immediately after learning. One explanation is that delayed JOLs involve retrieving information about the target item from secondary memory, whereas immediate JOLs involve retrieval from primary memory. One view of working memory claims that information in primary memory is displaced to secondary memory when attention is shifted to a secondary task. Thus, immediate JOLs might be as accurate as delayed JOLs if an intervening task displaces the target item from primary memory, requiring retrieval from secondary memory, prior to making the JOL. In four experiments, participants saw related word-pairs and made JOLs predicting later recall of the item. In Experiment 1, delayed JOLs were more accurate than JOLs made shortly after learning, regardless of whether a secondary task intervened between learning and JOL. In Experiments 2–4, the secondary task demands increased and JOLs made shortly after learning with an intervening task were just as accurate as delayed JOLs, and both were more accurate than immediate JOLs with no intervening task (Experiment 4). These results are consistent with a retrieval-based account of JOLs, and demonstrate that the “delayed-JOL effect” can be obtained without a long delay.     

“True Religion”: Individuation,Alchemy, and Poetry

The most vital urge in every being, the urge to self-realize, is the motivating force behind the individuation process. With the internal compass of our very nature set toward self-realization, the thrust to become who and what we are derives its power from the instincts. On taking up the study of alchemy, Jung realized his long-held desire to find a body of work expressive of the psychological processes involved in the overarching process of individuation. Here, Jung saw the individual's opus in the individuation process mirrored in the opus of the alchemical procedure.

Like alchemical images, poetry can also shed light on individuation. Poetry's languages of symbol, imagery, and feeling are able to bring the concept of individuation vibrantly to life, adding nuance and conveying the numinous energy associated with an individuating experience. In this presentation, I entrust to poetry—one poem by D. H. Lawrence and several of my own—the task of bringing individuation and its underlying alchemical processes to life.