Guidance in a New Ancient Land

The Republic of China is developing its guidance programs energetically and rapidly. The Chinese Guidance Association, a young but vigorous professional association, is devoted to research and development of China's student and industrial personnel programs. This APGA sister association has taken long strides ahead in the past eight years through organization of experimental school and college guidance programs, counselor education, development of tests, and distribution of vocational information materials. It has an ambitious and promising “five-year development plan” blocked out for the period 1966–71.     

Students' experience of the transition from school to tertiary college

The experiences of a group of students as they transferred from school to tertiary college at 16 were investigated. A number of issues are highlighted in relation to the transition period. In particular, a distinction is drawn between the curriculum-related aspects and the personal/social aspects of the students' concerns. Implications of the research findings for both policy and practice in post-16 education are discussed in the context of a recent HMI Report on the pastoral curriculum for the 13-19 age-group     

The fleeting gleam of praise: cognitive processes underlying behavioral reactions to self-relevant feedback

We propose that a preference for favorable social feedback (i.e., self-enhancement) requires only that feedback be characterized as favorable or unfavorable but that a preference for self-confirming feedback (i.e., self-verification) is based on a more elaborate set of cognitive operations that requires both the characterization of feedback and a subsequent comparison of that feedback to a representation of self stored in memory. Study 1 set the stage for testing this hypothesis by showing that depriving people of processing resources interfered with their tendency to access their self-conceptions. In Studies 2 and 3, participants who were deprived of resources preferred the favorable, self-enhancing evaluator, whereas control participants displayed a preference for the self-verifying evaluator, even if that evaluator was relatively unfavorable.     

Group Wrongs and Guilt Feelings

Can it ever be appropriate to feel guilt just because one's group has acted badly? Some say no, citing supposed features of guilt feelings as such. If one understands group action according to my plural subject account of groups, however, one can argue for the appropriateness of feeling guilt just because one's group has acted badly - a feeling that often occurs. In so arguing I sketch the plural subject account of groups, group intentions and group actions: for a group to intend (in the relevant sense) is for its members to be jointly committed to intend that such-and-such as a body. Individual group members need not be directly involved in the formation of the intention in order to participate in such a joint commitment. The core concept of joint commitment is in an important way holistic, not being reducible to a set of personal commitments over which each party holds sway. Parties to a group intention so understood can reasonably see the resulting action as "ours" as opposed to "theirs" and thus appropriately respond to the action's badness with a feeling of guilt, even when they themselves are morally innocent in the matter. I label the feeling in question a feeling of "membership guilt." A number of standard philosophical claims about the nature of guilt feelings are thrown into question by my argument.     

BURHOE AND SHAPLEY: A COMPLEMENTARITY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. The development of Ralph Wendell Burhoe's philosophy of religion and science occurred in the shadow of the continuing dialogue about the place of science in American society. Like his friend and mentor, Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley, Burhoe was distressed and intrigued by the troubled postwar relations between science and religion. Unlike Shapley, however, Burhoe sought to create a new modernism, a blend of religion and science that would allow each to develop and complement the other.     

Coalescent argumentation

Coalescent argumentation is a normative ideal that involves the joining together of two disparate claims through recognition and exploration of opposing positions. By uncovering the crucial connection between a claim and the attitudes, beliefs, feelings, values and needs to which it is connected dispute partners are able to identify points of agreement and disagreement. These points can then be utilized to effect coalescence, a joining or merging of divergent positions, by forming the basis for a mutual investigation of non-conflictual options that might otherwise have remained unconsidered. The essay proceeds by defining and discussing argument, position and understanding. These notions are then brought together to outline the concept of coalescent reasoning.     

The ombudsman for research practice

We propose that institutions consider establishing a position of “Ombudsman for Research Practice”. This person would assume several roles: as asounding board to those needing confidential consultation about research issues — basic, applied or clinical; as afacilitator for those wishing to pursue a formal grievance process; and as aneducator to distribute guidelines and standards, to raise the consciousness regarding sloppy or irregular practices in order to prevent misconduct and to promote the responsible conduct of research. While there are compelling features to this position, many complex issues need to be considered and resolved. We invite readers to respond to questions we raise in the text.     

Attributional patterns and perceptions of math and science among fifth-grade through seventh-grade girls and boys

A culturally and economically diverse group of fifth to seventh graders (n = 361) from Boston-area public schools rated their perceptions for liking and difficulty of core academic subjects, including math and science, and their attributions for explaining performance on a math test. Inconsistent with earlier work, girls and boys reported similar perceptions of core subjects, with all students reporting a relatively high liking of math and science. Girls' and boys' attributional patterns for success in math were somewhat consistent with earlier findings, but not their attributions for lack of success. Observations of the math and science classrooms in the study indicated that most teachers, aware of gender equity issues, attempted to teach their students in a gender-fair manner. This factor may account for differences between current findings and those from past studies.Special thanks to Dr. Adele Wolfson for her advice and support. Thanks also to Dr. Lee Cuba and Lillian Sun for their assistance with statistical analyses; to Dr. Beth Hennessey for help with the measure; to Drs. Ken Hawes, Barbara Beatty, and Susan Reverby for connections into schools; to Dr. Martha Pott for suggestions on the original document; to the teachers and principals who granted permission to conduct the research; and to the student participants. Appreciation is also extended to an anonymous reviewer for insightful comments.     

Comparison between Oral and Written Spelling in Alzheimer's Disease

Written and oral spelling were compared in 33 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and 25 control subjects. AD patients had poorer spelling results which were influenced by orthographic difficulty and word frequency, but not by grammatical word class. Lexical spelling was also more deteriorated than phonological spelling. Moreover, oral spelling was more impaired than written spelling in AD patients, whereas no difference was present between oral and written spelling of controls. Analysis of spelling errors showed that, for controls, errors were predominantly phonologically accurate in both spelling tasks. Significantly, AD patients produced more phonologically accurate than inaccurate errors in written spelling, whereas these errors did not differ in oral spelling. In contrast to controls who produced more constant than variable responses in oral and written spelling, AD patients made more variable responses (words correctly spelled in one task but incorrectly in the other) and they showed many instances of variable errors (different misspellings from one spelling task to the other). Two stepwise regression procedures showed that written misspellings were specifically correlated with language impairment, whereas oral spelling errors were correlated with attentional and language disorders. These results suggest that AD increases the attentional demands of oral spelling process as compared to written spelling. This dissociation argues, either for a unique Graphemic Buffer in which oral spelling requires more attentional resources than written spelling or for the hypothesis of separate buffers for oral and written spelling.