The impact of information from similar or different advisors on judgment

People rely on others’ advice to make judgments on a daily basis. In three studies, we examine the differential impacts of similarity between the source of that advice and the person making the judgment in two settings: judging others’ behavior and judging one’s own actions. We find that similarity interacts with the target of the judgment. In particular, information received from a different advisor is more heavily weighed than from a similar advisor in judging others’ actions, but information from a similar advisor is more heavily weighed than from a different advisor in judging one’s own. We provide two potential explanations for this interaction, difficulty of the judgment and informativeness of the advice. Our analyses show a moderated mediating role of informativeness and difficulty in the relationship between the advisor’s similarity by judgment type interaction and advice use.     

The Effects of Reading Racetracks on the Sight Word Acquisition and Fluency of Elementary Students

The effectiveness of using the reading racetrack drill and practice intervention on the sight word acquisition and fluency of 15 elementary students was examined in two separate experiments. A multiple baseline design across participants was used. The participants were 15 third and fourth-grade students attending a public (n =10) or parochial (n =5) elementary school. Participants included children receiving special education services in a resource room, services for learning difficulties, and those in a general classroom setting. Reading racetracks IS a novel approach which employ error correction, timing, and drill and practice procedures. This strategy also utilized drill and practice probe sheets that resemble an automotive racetrack. The results indicated that during the reading racetrack intervention all of the participants more than doubled their correct rate in oral reading. There was also a marked decrease in the number of errors made by each of the participants in this study. The implications of employing reading racetrack procedures for practitioners are outlined.     

Externalizing and personalizing biases in persecutory delusions: the relationship with poor insight and theory-of-mind

The presence of externalizing bias (EB) for negative events together with personalizing bias (PB) (a bias to blame others rather than circumstances) may jointly constitute a vulnerability to develop persecutory delusions (PDs). Whereas EB purportedly serves to defend a vulnerable self-concept by avoiding negative self-attributions and might therefore exacerbate poor insight, PB may reflect cognitive deficits, including theory-of-mind impairment. We investigated these proposals in 34 schizophrenic patients with a history of PDs and 21 healthy controls. Patients with moderate- to severe-PDs and patients without a current PD showed excessive EB which was, surprisingly, absent in patients with mild persecutory delusions (mild-PDs). That EB might wax and wane with fluctuating delusional intensity was interpreted in accord with a new dynamic model of attribution self-representation cycles. As predicted, EB exacerbated poor insight. However, counter to predictions, theory-of-mind impairment did not increase PB, which was marked in all participants, whether clinical or non-clinical; instead, theory-of-mind impairment was also correlated with poor insight. Our findings indicate multiple pathways to poor insight, one of which is a theory-of-mind difficulty, impairing the capacity to simulate other perspectives for the purpose of critically evaluating one's own beliefs and circumstances.     

Effects of sex of listener and of stutterer on ratings of stuttering speakers

Attitudinal surveys relating to stutterers show conflicting evidence as to how stutterers are perceived. Studies have not addressed the question of possible sex differences as a determining variable in the rating of stuttering speakers. This study found a significant effect of the sex of the rater, with male subjects rating stuttering speakers less favorably on a number of personality dimensions than female raters.     

Reading direction shifts visuospatial attention: An Interactive Account of attentional biases

A growing amount of evidence confirms the influence of reading and writing habits on visuospatial processing, although this phenomenon has been so far testified mainly as a lateralized shift of a single behavioral sign (e.g., line bisection), with lack of proof from pure right-to-left readers. The present study contributed to this issue by analyzing multiple attentional and motor indexes in monolingual Italian (i.e., reading from left-to-right), and monolingual (i.e., reading from right-to-left) and bilingual Israeli (i.e., reading from right-to-left in Hebrew but also from left-to-right in English) participants' visuospatial performance. Subjects were administered a computerized standard star cancellation task and a modified version in which English letters and words were replaced by Hebrew ones. Tasks were presented on a graphics tablet, allowing recording of both chronometric and spatial parameters (i.e., measured in (x, y) vector coordinates). Results showed that reading direction modulated the on-line visuomotor performance (i.e., left-to-right vs. right-to-left shifts) from the beginning (i.e., first mark) to the end of the task (i.e., spatial distribution of omissions and subjective epicenter). Additionally, the spatial bias observed in a computerized line bisection task was also related to the participants' habitual reading direction. Overall, the results favor the proposal of an Interactive Account of visuospatial asymmetries, according to which both cultural factors, such as the directional scanning associated with language processing, and biological factors, such as hemispheric specialization, modulate visuospatial processing. Results are discussed in light of recent behavioral and neuroanatomical findings.     

Portrayals of Global Health Worker Migration in Canadian Print News Media: Domestic Concerns vs. Global Awareness

The global migration of physicians and nurses has implications for health human resources in both source and recipient countries. Of particular concern to academics and policy experts is the “brain drain” of health professionals from under-resourced nations to developed countries, which promote immigration of physicians and nurses to solve their own health worker shortages. How does the general public in these destination countries understand and respond to concerns over migration and immigration of health professionals? This understanding is likely to be influenced in large part by how the issues are portrayed in the news media. News media treatment of this issue was explored by surveying news articles; newspaper columns/editorials; and op-ed pieces; and letters to the editor published in four prominent Canadian newspapers between May 2004 and January 2009, a time frame that included two federal elections in which physician immigration was highlighted as a political issue. Despite the prominence among academics of concern over the brain drain of physicians and nurses from developing countries to Canada and other Western nations, this issue received little attention in print news media discussions, which focused on domestic physician shortages and the role of international medical graduates in filling Canadian needs. While recent federal elections brought concerns about immigrant physicians into the political spotlight in Canada, they did so by focusing on Canadians' health care provision needs to the exclusion of promoting a broader, global awareness that the immigration of health professionals to developed nations such as Canada exacerbates global health disparities.     

Professional Counseling in Taiwan: Past to Future

Because of the recent introduction of a licensure law, professional counseling has grown rapidly in Taiwan after decades of slow development. The authors provide a historical review of the development of professional counseling in Taiwan and discuss the current status and future trajectory of professional counseling in Taiwan.     

Bilingual vocabulary size and lexical reading in Italian

In the present study we investigated how the vocabulary size of English–Italian bilinguals affects reading aloud in Italian (L2) modulating the reader's sensitivity to lexical aspects of the language. We divided adult bilinguals in two groups according to their vocabulary size (Larger — LV, and smaller — SV), and compared their naming performance to that of native Italian (NI) readers. In Experiment 1 we investigated the lexicality and word frequency effects in reading aloud. Similarly to NI, both groups of bilinguals showed these effects. In Experiment 2 we investigated stress assignment – which is not predictable by rule – to Italian words. The SV group made more stress errors in reading words with a non-dominant stress pattern compared to the LV group. The results suggest that the size of the reader's L2 lexicon affects the probability of correct reading aloud.     

Creativity at the Crossroads: Pragmatic Versus Humanist Claims in Education Reform Speeches

Obama's, and other policymakers’, speeches claim that creativity—the ability to derive novel, excellent and relevant ideas and products—is a valuable student asset for the 21st century, but why? Two types of rhetorical appeals to long-held educational values in these speeches are examined: pragmatic claims about student creativity focus on economic recovery, which implies a need to teach and research the link between creativity, academic success and workforce preparation. In contrast, humanist claims about student creativity emphasize a teaching and research agenda of promoting self-realization, cultural identity formation, and aesthetic learning principles, which include empathy and emotional awareness in addition to cognitive aspects of creative thinking and problem solving. These rhetorical appeals are examined in light of education reform and directions in art education.