Multicultural SuperVISION: A Paradigm of Cultural Responsiveness for Supervisors

The need for cultural characteristics to be addressed in supervision is discussed as a way of dealing with both opportunities and obstacles that may exist. The VISION model of cultural responsiveness is described as a practical means of supervisors exploring multicultural issues in the supervisory relationship. La necesidad de discutir las características culturales en la supervisión es presentada como una forma de tratar tanto con las oportunidades y los obstaculos que puedan existir. El modelo responsivo cultural VISION se describe como una forma practica para que supervisores exploren temas multiculturales en la relación de supervisión.     

Four Brief Studies of Relations Between Postformal Thought and Non-Cognitive Factors: Personality, Concepts of God, Political Opinions, and Social Attitudes

This is a report of four studies extending research on Complex Postformal Thought using the Postformal Thought Scale (PTS) (Sinnott 1998a, b). In Study I PTS was studied in relation to personality as conceptualized in the NEO Five Factor Model. Data from 82 participants indicated that PTS is significantly related to the Openness to Experience and the Conscientiousness factors of the NEO. In Study II PTS was examined in relation to the Concept of God Scale to answer the question whether postformal and non-postformal respondents were likely to hold different god concepts. Data from 50 participants indicated no relationship between the two measures. In Study III PTS was examined in relation to political opinions using the newly created Political Opinion Survey. Data from 50 participants demonstrated no relation between the two tests. In Study IV PTS was studied in relation to the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men Scale. Data from 112 participants indicated that PTS was related to positive attitudes toward lesbians and gay men. Current conceptualizations of PTS development are used to interpret these findings.     

Open risk assessment

As criminal justice actors increasingly seek to rely on more evidence-informed practices, including risk assessment instruments, they often lack adequate information about the evidence that informed the development of the practice or the tool. Open science practices, including making scientific research and data accessible and public, have not typically been followed in the development of tools designed for law enforcement, judges, probation, and others. This is in contrast to other government agencies, which often open their processes to public notice and comment. Lack of transparency has become pressing in the area of risk assessment, as entire judicial systems have adopted some type of risk assessment scheme. While the types of information used in a risk tool may be made public, often the underlying methods, validation data, and studies are not – nor are the assumptions behind how a level of risk gets categorized as “high” or “low.” We discuss why those concerns are relevant and important to the new risk assessment tool now being used in federal prisons, as part of the First Step Act. We conclude that a number of key assumptions and policy choices made in the design of that tool are not verifiable or are inadequately supported, including the choice of risk thresholds and the validation data itself. Unfortunately, as a result, the federal risk assessment effort has not been the hoped-for model for open risk assessment.     

Youth at Risk: In Search of a Definition

The term youth at risk has been defined in numerous ways. A review of these definitions, their perspectives on predisposing conditions, and the implications for counseling are discussed.     

The binding pool: A model of shared neural resources for distinct items in visual working memory

Visual working memory (VWM) refers to the ability to encode, store, and retrieve visual information. The two prevailing theories that describe VWM assume that information is stored either in discrete slots or within a shared pool of resources. However, there is not yet a good understanding of the neural mechanisms that would underlie such theories. To address this gap, we provide a computationally realized neural account that uses a pool of shared neurons to store information about one or more distinct stimuli. The binding pool model is a neural network that is essentially a hybrid of the slot and resource theories. It describes how information can be stored and retrieved from a pool of shared resources using a type/token architecture (Bowman & Wyble in Psychological Review 114(1), 38–70, 2007; Kanwisher in Cognition 27, 117–143, 1987; Mozer in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 15(2), 287–303, 1989). The model can store multiple distinct objects, each containing binding links to one or more features. The binding links are stored in a pool of shared resources and, thus, produce mutual interference as memory load increases. Given a cue, the model retrieves a specific object and then reconstructs other features bound to that object, along with a confidence metric. The model can simulate data from continuous report and change detection paradigms and generates testable predictions about the interaction of report accuracy, confidence, and stimulus similarity. The testing of such predictions will help to identify the boundaries of shared resource theories, thereby providing insight into the roles of ensembles and context in explaining our ability to remember visual information.