A political economy approach to understanding the economic incorporation of Chinese sub-ethnic groups

This paper outlines the economic experiences of Toronto’s Chinese, 80% of whom are immigrants mostly arriving in the last two decades. Based on the 1996 census data, labour market participation and economic performance of various. Chinese sub-groups were compared. The findings contribute to an understanding of how selective immigration policies and world geopolitical changes can account for differences in economic adaptation and integration of sub-ethnic groups.     

Sex differences in response to physical and nonphysical instigators

One hundred and twenty subjects competed in a reaction-time task similar to that of Taylor (1967). Subjects were randomly assigned to a white noise, fine, or control condition. In the fine and noise conditions programmed opponents administered increasing provocation to subjects over a series of 24 trials. Control subjects were not provoked. As predicted, males retaliated with higher levels of noise than did females, while there were no sex differences in the fine condition. Contrary to prediction, sex of opponent had no effect. Subjects in all conditions tended to view the task as competitive but to devalue their opponent only in the noise condition. The prevalent assumption of female passivity in the face of instigation was rejected. Instead a dichotomy was proposed that while females are less likely than males to reciprocate to physical provocation, they are just as likely to respond to provocation of a nonphysical nature.Parts of this article were presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, September 1975. Critical comments by Edward Donnerstein and Arnold Kahn on an earlier draft of this article are gratefully acknowledged.     

Accessing lexical ambiguity: Effects of context and dominance

Summary The paper examines the effects of sentential context and frequency of meaning (dominance) on the lexical access of ambiguous words. Two experiments were carried out using Swinney's (1979) cross-modal paradigm. The sentential contexts were constructed in such a way as to make salient the most characteristic features of either the dominant (Experiment 1) or the secondary (Experiment 2) meaning of the ambiguous word. The claim was that if context is sufficiently constraining selective access of the congruent meaning can be obtained. Consistent with this prediction, context biasing the dominant meaning facilitated lexical decision only on target words related to the dominant meaning. When context biased the secondary meaning, both context and dominance produced a facilitation effect.The research reported here was supported by grants from the Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione (fondi 40%) and the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche     

The zone of potential development: implications for intelligence testing in the year 2000

The emphasis of this paper is the practice and interpretation of intelligence testing of educable retarded children. The current and future state of intelligence testing are in terms of three criteria: their predictive, diagnostic and remedial functions. In the first section we consider individual testing formats within a framework of Vygotsky's theory of potential development and the underlying assumptions of that theory concerning task analysis and transferring of training. In section two, we consider the social nature of the testing situation and the degree of contextual support provided for the learner. In the final section we consider Neisser's distinction between academic intelligence and everyday thinking with particular reference to the life adjustment of mildly retarded citizens     

Free recall in boys of normal and poor reading levels as a function of task manipulations

Free recall of reading disabled boys, ages 9 to 11 years, was compared with that of boys showing no reading difficulty. During a baseline trial, poor readers recalled less items and tended to show less recall organization than normals. Recall and category clustering in a second trial were highest following a manipulation designed to produce semantic encoding of items and lowest when children were required to focus on items' physical features. In a condition requiring free sort prior to recall, reading disabled boys failed to organize or study as effectively as normals. Rather than lacking the ability to use semantic relations as a strategy for grouping items, the reading disabled had difficulty in spontaneously generating effective study techniques.     

The practices of existential psychotherapists: development and application of an observational grid

Within the major therapeutic paradigms, observational instruments have been developed to assess orientation-specific interventions or processes. However, to date, no such instrument exists to assess existential practices. Recent research indicates the key practices of existential therapists, and forms an empirical basis on which to develop an observatory grid. This paper describes the development of such a grid, and its exploratory testing with eight clients of four Portuguese existential psychotherapists. A total of 32 sessions were observed and both speaking turn and whole-session analysis showed that it was feasible to assess existential therapy using the instrument, although psychometric findings recommend further refinement of the tool. Session-rating data suggest that the chief practices applied by existential therapists were relational, followed by the use of hermeneutic interventions and reformulations. Interventions based on phenomenological and existential assumptions were observable in practice but limited in frequency. Further refinements and developments of the observational grid, together with additional research – using a range of therapists from different schools of existential therapy – are recommended.     

Depression,Confidence, and Decision: Evidence Against Depressive Realism

This research examined how retrospective self-assessments of performance are affected by major depression. To test the validity of the depressive realism versus the selective processing hypotheses, aggregate posttest performance estimates (PTPEs) were obtained from clinically depressed patients and an age-matched comparison group across 4 decision tasks (object recognition, general knowledge, social judgment, and line-length judgment). As expected on the basis of previous findings, both groups were underconfident in their PTPEs, consistently underestimating the percentage of questions they had answered correctly. Contrary to depressive realism, and in partial support of the selective processing account, this underconfidence effect was not reduced but modestly exacerbated in the depressed patients. Further, whereas the PTPEs of the comparison group exceeded that expected on the basis of chance alone those of the depressed individuals did not. The results provide no support for the depressive realism account and suggest that negative biases contribute to metacognitive information processing in major depression.The results reported in this paper are based on an extension of the MSc dissertation of Tiffany Fu, conducted in partial fulfillment of the degree of MSc in Research Methods in Psychology, University of Reading, 2003