Between Two Worlds: Counseling South Asian Americans

This article examines some of the mental health issues associated with counseling South Asian immigrants in the United States. A profile of the South Asian family is developed. Its structure and values are examined in relation to those of the American counseling community.     

Simultaneous and successive syntheses and linguistic processes1

The present study investigated the relationships between simultaneous and successive modes of cognitive processing and performance on word association, ambiguities and class inclusion tasks in a sample of 60 grade three children. Simultaneous processing was significantly related to class inclusion performance and to comprehension of lexical ambiguities. There was also some evidence of a relationship between paradigmatic responding on the word association task and simultaneous processing. Successive processing was significantly related to surface structure and underlying structure ambiguities and was also involved in class inclusion performance. These results are consistent with hypotheses derived from the neurolinguistic theories of Luria and Jakobson.     

Late effects of malnutrition on cognitive competence1

Does an episode of malnutrition, leading to hospitalization, further depress the intellectual performance of children from the disadvantaged economic and social class? An attempt was made to answer this by first tracing a group of children in Colombo, Sri Lanka, who had been hospitalized for marasmus and kwashiorkor 6 to 7 years ago and comparing them on tests of cognitive functions with a group of children from their neighborhood, matched on age and sex. There were 42 index children and 42 controls in the study. Thirty-three siblings of these index children were also compared with another group of 33 age and sex-matched neighborhood children. The results showed little difference between the groups on nine tests of cognitive functions and a strong relationship between the child's years of attendance at school and the cognitive tests. It was concluded that as far as the cognitive functions measured by the present tests are concerned, an episode of severe malnutrition perhaps does not do any more harm than chronic undernutrition does to disadvataged children.     

SYLLOGISTIC REASONING AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN FROM CANADA AND SIERRA LEONE

Solution of 3-term syllogisms was examined in the context of culture and IQ. Children from elementary schools in Edmonton and Freetown were divided into high and low on the basis of their scores on Coloured Progressive Matrices. In each culture, those with higher scores on Progressive Matrices were expected to do better on syllogistic reasoning than those with lower scores. Across cultures, no difference in performance was expected. In terms of the relation of syllogistic reasoning to simultaneous and successive processing, both processes were expected to be involved in the solution of syllogisms. The results confirmed these hypotheses. It was also indicated that the children from Freetown were better than Edmonton's in syllogisms, dispelling any doubts in regard to their competence in ‘verbal’ reasoning.     

Simultaneous and successive syntheses and intelligence

Recent studies on information processing have developed an alternative model of mental abilities which constitutes an integration of Russian clinical research and North American factor analytic research. This model proposes that information may be processed in a simultaneous synthesis or a successive synthesis. The present study examines variations in these syntheses in three intelligence groups in order to identify the types of information processing characteristic of different intelligence groups. A stratified sampling of verbal and nonverbal IQ was used to select 60 boys of age 9–10 in each of three verbal IQ ranges: 71–90, 91–110, and 111–130. A battery of tests used in previous research was administered to all subjects. Multivariate analyses of variance and discriminant analyses indicated that the IQ groups differed markedly on tests used to identify simultaneous synthesis, most notably Raven's Progressive Matrices, and differed slightly less on tests of successive synthesis. Factor analyses of the test intercorrelations for each group revealed more factorial invariance across the IQ groups than had been suggested by a previous exploratory study. It was concluded that strong individual differences exist in simultaneous and successive syntheses over the major portion of the standardized intelligence range, and no high degree of specialization of information processing was characteristic of an intelligence group.     

Selecting entrepreneurial employees using a person-group fit perspective

As jobs become unstructured and collective endeavor oriented, it is increasingly being realized that work groups must become more autonomous and entrepreneurial. The selection literature is however silent on the predictive mechanisms that may be leveraged to select group members with the desired competencies. The person-group fit perspective enables us to hypothesize and demonstrate that selection instruments geared toward gauging an individual's fit within a group are likely to manifest entrepreneurial competencies and behaviors in the individual. Further, the nature of the job, in terms of the structuredness of work (task formalization) and the repetitiveness of work activities (task routinization), has a moderating impact on the relationship between overall entrepreneurial competence and selection practices. The study has implications for incorporating the principles of person-group fit into the design of job profiles.