RESPONSE STYLE AND CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS OF RATING SCALES AMONG EAST ASIAN AND NORTH AMERICAN STUDENTS

Abstract— This report examines cross-cultural differences in response style regarding the use of rating scales Subjects were high school students 944 from Sendai (Japan), 1,357 from Taipei (Taiwan), 687 from Edmonton and Calgary (Canada), and 2,174 from the Minneapolis metropolitan area and Fairfax County, Virginia Responses to fifty-seven 7-point Likert-type scales were analyzed The Japanese and Chinese students were more likely than the two North American groups to use the midpoint on the scales, the U S subjects were more likely than the other three groups to use the extreme values Within each cultural group, endorsement of individualism was positively related to the use of extreme values and negatively related to the use of the midpoint These small, albeit statistically significant, differences in response styles generally did not alter cross-cultural comparisons of item means.     

乳头体对海马齿状回习得性长时程突触增强的影响

用高频电脉冲刺激大鼠乳头体（ＭＢ）,可一过性抑制由刺激穿通纤维（ＰＰ）诱发的海马齿状回（ＤＧ）群体锋电位（ＰＳ）。训练作业前先刺激ＭＢ,导致ＤＧ的习得性长时程突触增强（ＬＤＬＴＰ）的形成显著延缓,相应地延缓了条件性饮水反应的建立。电刺激ＭＢ对ＰＰ─ＤＧＰＳ的这种抑制作用在训练所产生的ＰＳ增大达最高水平时显著减弱,刺激ＭＢ对ＬＤＬＴＰ的保持及相应地对条件反应的巩固没有明显影响。结果表明ＭＢ对ＤＧＬＤＬＴＰ的形成有抑制性调制作用。     

Pioneers of Multicultural Counseling: A Conversation With Clemmont E. Vontress

This article presents an interview conducted with Dr. Clemmont E. Vontress, a pioneering scholar in the field of multicultural counseling. In this interview. Dr. Vontress reflects on his long and distinguished career and the evolution of multicultural counseling as professional discipline.     

Accreditation Standards for University and College Counseling Centers

The accreditation standards outlined in the article are used by the International Association of Counseling Services, Inc., as the basis for the formal accreditation of college and university counseling programs throughout the United States and Canada. They reflect the program elements and practice standards that are deemed essential in a counseling center that provides high-quality services to students.     

Client Cognitive Responses as a Function of Quality of Counselor Verbal Responses

This study examined the relationship between high and low quality counselor responses in four response modes and client cognitions. Twenty-one university students participated in two sessions of brief counseling that included high and low quality counselor responses in paraphrasing, questioning, reflection of feeling, and self-disclosure. After each counseling session, participants used Kagan's (1975) interpersonal process recall method to report their cognitions in response to these counselor responses. Results indicated that the participants had more favorable cognitions toward the counselor associated with high quality counselor paraphrasing and reflection of feeling responses. Participants' cognitions directed toward themselves did not differ in response to any of the four high and low quality counselor responses. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Sensorimotor synchronization: Motor responses to pseudoregular auditory patterns

Musically trained and untrained subjects (N=30) were asked to synchronize their finger tapping with stimuli in auditory patterns. Each pattern comprised six successive tonal stimuli of the same duration, the first of which was accented by a different frequency. The duration of interstimulus onset intervals (ISIs) gradually increased or decreased in constant steps toward the end of the patterns. Four values of such steps were used in different trials: 20, 30, 45, and 60 msec. Various time-control mechanisms are hypothesized as being simultaneously responsible for subjects’ incorrect reproduction of the internal temporal ratios of the stimulus patterns. The mechanism of assimilation (of a central tendency) led subjects to enforce a regular (isochronous) structure on the patterns. The influence of other time-control mechanisms (distinction, subjective expression of an accent, sequential transfer) was expressed mainly in differences between intertap onset intervals (ITIs) and the corresponding ISIs at the beginning of the patterns. The duration of the first two ITIs was in the majority of the trials in an inverse ratio to the ratio of the respective ISIs. The distortions resulting from the timing mechanisms concerned were more pronounced in the performance of nonmusicians than in that of musicians.     

The ecological context of family ministry: the cambridge model revisited

Family ministry in the local church occurs in an ecological context characterized by a diversity of family types. A viable ministry to families must be able to address this diversity at different levels within the social system: the types of nuclear and extended families within the congregation; the type of congregation itself considered as a family; and the minister's own family type. A comprehensive family typology is needed to conceptualize this notion. The Cambridge model of closed, open, and random families, created by David Kantor and William Lehr, is summarized and then applied to an understanding of the ecology of family ministry.     

Victim-Blaming and Society-Blaming Scales for Social Problems

Until now, no general scales have been available for measuring victim or society blaming. This constraint has been an impediment to policymaking with regard to those who are affected by social problems. Four scales were constructed: stable victim-blaming scale, unstable victim-blaming scale, stable society-blaming scale, and unstable society-blaming scale. Based on the results of the preliminary exploratory factor analysis and the reliability coefficients, the unstable society-blaming scale was deleted from further analysis. Then, a confirmatory factor analysis using the LISREL 7 program was conducted to evaluate the parameter estimates of the scale items and examine the construct validity of the 3 scales. The scales were judged to have construct validity with satisfactory reliability.     

Individual and age-related differences in children’s working memory

The purpose of this study was to investigate the degree to which age-related and individual differences in children’s working memory (WM) are due to a general or task-specific capacity system. Experiment 1 correlated children’s (N=146; age range 5–19 years) verbal and visual-spatial working memory performance with various intelligence and achievement measures. The results supporting a general system were that (1) visual-spatial and verbal WM measures were significantly intercorrelated with and without age partialed out and (2) both verbal and visual-spatial WM measures were significantly correlated with diverse achievement and intelligence measures. Experiment 2 compared three age groups (N=192; 7-, 10-, and 13-year-olds) on working-memory performance tasks under initial, enhanced (cued), and maintenance conditions. The results supporting a general capacity system were that (1) age-related performance differences in WM were found on all conditions and not isolated to specific processes, (2) the maintenance measures (high-load condition) predicted the variance better in age-related performance than process measures, and (3) although individual differences in WM performance reflected two independent operations, these operations produced similar correlations to achievement within age groups. Overall, the results support a general capacity explanation of age-related and individual differences in children’s WM performance.     

Attentional Focus of Students with Hyperactivity During a Word-Search Task

Mirrors have been used to focus attention to aspects of the self (e.g., to known strategies, standards). We hypothesized that this could be important for students with hyperactivity/inattention, who typically direct attention outward to external novelty. In this study, we administered a partially solvable word puzzle to 43 middle school students, with and without hyperactivity/inattention, in the presence and absence of a mirror, counterbalanced for condition and form order. Differences between students with hyperactivity/inattention and comparisons in accuracy were found only in the no mirror condition. Furthermore, the beneficial effect of the mirror for children with hyperactivity/inattention was most pronounced for those who looked at the mirror. Findings were interpreted in terms of their potential to remedy the production deficits of these children.