Reinventing the University: From Institutions to Communities of Higher Education

This article responds to three questions: What if the primary mission of the university is to (i) nourish the intellect, (ii) commit to the sacredness of all life, and (iii) foster spirituality? Responses examine multiple forms of literacy, instruction that is ecologically valid and thus oriented toward the unity of knowledge, and teaching as a moral activity. The suggestion here is that meaningful reform will emphasize education of the whole person in relation to the physical, symbolic, and social environments. Curricula focused on forms of representation, modes of treatment, and syntactic structure, adaptive understandings, constructed meanings, critical thinking, real problems, connected knowing, creativity, inspiration, service learning, and the development of declarative procedural and poetic knowledge are discussed.     

What’s in a name? Lexical knowledge drives infants’ visual preferences in the absence of referential input

Seventeen-month-old infants were presented with pairs of images, in silence or with the non-directive auditory stimulus ‘look!’. The images had been chosen so that one image depicted an item whose name was known to the infant, and the other image depicted an image whose name was not known to the infant. Infants looked longer at images for which they had names than at images for which they did not have names, despite the absence of any referential input. The experiment controlled for the familiarity of the objects depicted: in each trial, image pairs presented to infants had previously been judged by caregivers to be of roughly equal familiarity. From a theoretical perspective, the results indicate that objects with names are of intrinsic interest to the infant. The possible causal direction for this linkage is discussed and it is concluded that the results are consistent with Whorfian linguistic determinism, although other construals are possible. From a methodological perspective, the results have implications for the use of preferential looking as an index of early word comprehension.     

Constrained maximum likelihood estimation of two-level covariance structure model via EM type algorithms

In this paper, the constrained maximum likelihood estimation of a two-level covariance structure model with unbalanced designs is considered. The two-level model is reformulated as a single-level model by treating the group level latent random vectors as hypothetical missing-data. Then, the popular EM algorithm is extended to obtain the constrained maximum likelihood estimates. For general nonlinear constraints, the multiplier method is used at theM-step to find the constrained minimum of the conditional expectation. An accelerated EM gradient procedure is derived to handle linear constraints. The empirical performance of the proposed EM type algorithms is illustrated by some artifical and real examples.This research was supported by a Hong Kong UCG Earmarked Grant, CUHK 4026/97H. We are greatly indebted to D.E. Morisky and J.A. Stein for the use of their AIDS data in our example. We also thank the Editor, two anonymous reviewers, W.Y. Poon and H.T. Zhu for constructive suggestions and comments in improving the paper. The assistance of Michael K.H. Leung and Esther L.S. Tam is gratefully acknowledged.     

Verbal Strategies for Seeking Help in Organizations1

The verbal strategies used to frame requests for help are integral to the help-seeking process. Drawing on politeness theory, it was predicted that gender, power, and norms affect usage of verbal strategies in seeking help, and verbal strategies predict interpersonal outcomes. Two studies showed that: (a) individuals used more strategies under collectivistic than individualistic norms; (b) under individualistic norms, men used more strategies when seeking help upward, and women used more strategies when seeking help laterally; and (c) those who used more strategies provided higher quality information, and were perceived more favorably by others. These results suggest that verbal strategies not only reflect important relational and contextual factors, but also serve multiple social functions.     

Multidimensionality of Youth Psychopathic Traits: Validation and Future Directions

The seven articles featured in this Special Section on “Child Psychopathic Traits for Specifying Conduct Disorder” collectively prosecute an important tension in the field: despite evidence that psychopathic traits in children, adolescent, and adults are multidimensional, callous-unemotional (CU) traits have evolved to nearly eclipse the construct of youth psychopathic traits. That is, does inclusion of grandiosity and impulsivity, and related psychopathic constructs improve predictive models? Employing a rich array of methods, these studies converged to suggest that using the entire constellation of psychopathic traits significantly improved predictions of key criteria. Crucially, predictions were consistent across development, multiple external criteria, and diversely recruited samples (e.g., community, incarcerated). From a developmental psychopathology framework (Cicchetti 2008), I synthesize the theoretical and empirical implications of these studies and offer perspectives on future directions. In particular, there is an urgent need to elucidate mechanisms from psychopathic traits to important clinical, public health, and functional outcomes; identification of potential causal processes is necessary to establish the validity of psychopathic traits and to ultimately innovate intervention and prevention efforts.     

Partner aggression in high-risk families from birth to age 3 years: associations with harsh parenting and child maladjustment

Aggression between partners represents a potential guiding force in family dynamics. However, research examining the influence of partner aggression (physically and psychologically aggressive acts by both partners) on harsh parenting and young child adjustment has been limited by a frequent focus on low-risk samples and by the examination of partner aggression at a single time point. Especially in the context of multiple risk factors and around transitions such as childbirth, partner aggression might be better understood as a dynamic process. In the present study, longitudinal trajectories of partner aggression from birth to age 3 years in a large, high-risk, and ethnically diverse sample (N = 461) were examined. Specific risk factors were tested as predictors of aggression over time, and the longitudinal effects of partner aggression on maternal harsh parenting and child maladjustment were examined. Partner aggression decreased over time, with higher maternal depression and lower maternal age predicting greater decreases in partner aggression. While taking into account contextual and psychosocial risk factors, higher partner aggression measured at birth and a smaller decrease over time independently predicted higher levels of maternal harsh parenting at age 3 years. Initial level of partner aggression and change over time predicted child maladjustment indirectly (via maternal harsh parenting). The implications of understanding change in partner aggression over time as a path to harsh parenting and young children's maladjustment in the context of multiple risk factors are discussed.     

Comparing Four Methods of Integrating Parent and Teacher Symptom Ratings of Attention-deficit/hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Although parents and teachers are valid informants in the assessment of childhood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), there is relatively little systematic research on how these ratings should be optimally combined. We compared four methods of ADHD assessment to determine how well they identified impaired children: (1) parent only, (2) teacher only, (3) parent or teacher (‘or rule’), and (4) parent and teacher (‘and rule’). We obtained parent and teacher ratings of ADHD from the Disruptive Behavior Disorder Rating Scale on 232 5- to 10-year-old children (69% male; 47% Caucasian) with (n = 121) and without (n = 111) ADHD. We used receiver operating characteristic curves (ROC) and seemingly unrelated regression analyses (SUR) to evaluate how accurately each method identified categorically- and dimensionally-defined measures of functional impairment. Parent ratings of ADHD optimally identified globally impaired children based on categorical and dimensional measures. However, teacher ratings of ADHD most accurately identified children who were negatively regarded by peers using categorical, but not dimensional, measures. No ADHD assessment method effectively identified children with academic difficulties. Although multiple informants are valuable in the assessment of ADHD, no single method was consistently superior in identifying impaired children across domains. We consider alternative assessment strategies in ADHD as well as other potential factors that may contribute to modest agreement among informants.