Developing a Computer-Based TTCT: Promises and Problems*

The purposes of the present study were to examine the equivalence of paper-pencil and computer-based versions of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT), Figural Forms A and B, and to investigate the patterns of responses involved in the computer-based TTCT. The participants were 34 fifth- and sixth-grade students currently enrolled in two public schools in southern Texas. The computer-based TTCT was developed to present all the features of the paper-pencil TTCT with the additional benefits offered by computer-based testing. Means, variances, test-retest reliability, and attitudinal differences were analyzed to investigate equivalence between the paper-pencil and computer-based TTCT. Response patterns involved in the figural tasks were explored based on data collected from the computer-based test (e.g., latency, tool using patterns, correction activities). The findings of the study indicated that the results obtained from the computer-based TTCT were not equivalent with the paper-pencil version. However, additional information regarding response patterns obtained from the computer-based TTCT showed clear indication of different response tendencies among different groups of students and between the two alternate test forms (A and B).     

THE BEST AND THE REST: REVISITING THE NORM OF NORMALITY OF INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCE

We revisit a long‐held assumption in human resource management, organizational behavior, and industrial and organizational psychology that individual performance follows a Gaussian (normal) distribution. We conducted 5 studies involving 198 samples including 633,263 researchers, entertainers, politicians, and amateur and professional athletes. Results are remarkably consistent across industries, types of jobs, types of performance measures, and time frames and indicate that individual performance is not normally distributed—instead, it follows a Paretian (power law) distribution. Assuming normality of individual performance can lead to misspecified theories and misleading practices. Thus, our results have implications for all theories and applications that directly or indirectly address the performance of individual workers including performance measurement and management, utility analysis in preemployment testing and training and development, personnel selection, leadership, and the prediction of performance, among others.     

Counseling today's veterans: a program and its implications

The need for improved counseling and guidance services has emerged as one of the most crucial aspects in the myriad of problems faced by the Vietnam war era veteran. This article focuses on the interagency overseas counseling thrust launched by the federal government in 1971 and designed to mitigate the debilitating effects of the civilian reentry crisis experienced by veterans. The overseas counseling program of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, operating in Europe, the Far East, and Vietnam, was organized and formerly administered by the author and is highlighted here because of its implications for counseling and guidance.     

Mind-Body Interaction and Supervenient Causation

The mind-body problem arises because of our status as double agents apparently en rapport both with the mental and with the physical. We think, desire, decide, plan, suffer passions, fall into moods, are subject to sensory experiences, ostensibly perceive, intend, reason, make believe, and so on. We also move, have a certain geographical position, a certain height and weight, and we are sometimes hit or cut or burned. In other words, human beings have both minds and bodies. What is the relation between these? Religion often tells us that we are really embodied souls released at death from our bodily prisons. Could this be right?