A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION

A cross-cultural study of psychological differentiation of Canadian and Pakistani high school students was undertaken to examine the nature of psychological differentiation in relation to differences in age/grade, gender, and academic programs. The study involved 707 Canadian students from grades 6, 8, 10, and 12; and 349 Pakistani students from grades 8, 9, 10, and 12. The Group Embedded Figures Test was employed as a measure of the field-dependence-independence cognitive style. Analyses of data included two-way and three-way analyses of variance to determine the effects of grade, gender, and academic program upon GEFT scores. Differences in psychological differentiation between high school students in the two cultures were discussed in terms of Berry's eco-cultural model.     

Occupational therapy in neurology--report of experiences from a university clinic

Starting from particularities in rehabilitation of neurological patients and by means of special criterions, the authors report on their own experiences in organizing occupational therapy in the neurologic department of a Medical Academy. Beside the requisite of a "therapy maintaining and restoring function", problems of resistance to stress and condition of the patient play a substantial part. Operational therapy within the group-specific situation provides necessary social communication to the neurologic patient, too.     

Cue depreciation: when word fragment completion is undermined by prior exposure to lesser fragments

The ability to think of a previously studied item has often been shown to be impaired when, in one way or another, the extraitem context is changed from study to test. In a series of five experiments, such impairment is induced in a somewhat different way. A fragment (e.g. r-i--rop) of a just-studied word (raindrop) is shown to be less readily completed if it is presented bit by bit (r------p, r----r-p, r-i--r-p, r-i--rop) rather than all at once (Experiments 1, 3, 4, and 5). No such effect is found if the word has not been studied beforehand (Experiments 2, 3, 4, and 5). This pattern of results occurs even when fragments of studied and nonstudied words occur in the same test and under conditions in which subjects cannot tell whether a given fragment is of a studied or nonstudied word (Experiments 4 and 5). In addition, for words that have been studied beforehand, the impairment is shown to increase systematically with the number of steps involved in the presentation of the word fragment (Experiment 3) and also to persist when the time allowed for completion of the final version of the fragment is increased from 4 s to a full minute (Experiment 5).     

The process of scapegoating in a neonatal nurses' group

This paper reviews the literature on scapegoating, elaborating on the underlying mechanisms before describing the process of scapegoating as it occurred in a neonatal nurse support group. Illustrative vignettes are used to discuss how scapegoating was used by group members to avoid painful feelings arising from their care of extremely ill infants. Group process is related to the stages of the group's development as feelings were addressed more directly and the need to use scapegoating as a defense decreased.     

METAANALYSES OF VALIDITY STUDIES PUBLISHED BETWEEN 1964 AND 1982 AND THE INVESTIGATION OF STUDY CHARACTERISTICS

Review and metaanalyses of published validation studies for the years 1964-1982 of Journal of Applied Psychology and Personnel Psychology were undertaken to examine the effect of (1) research design; (2) criterion used; (3) type of selection instrument used; (4) occupational group studies; and (5) predictor-criterion combination on the level of observed validity coefficients. Results indicate that concurrent validation designs produce validity coefficients roughly equivalent to those obtained in predictive validation designs and that both of these designs produce higher validity coefficients than does a predictive design which includes use of the selection instrument. Of the criteria examined, performance rating criteria generally produced lower validity coefficients than did the use of other more "objective" criteria. In comparing the validities of various types of predictors, it was found cognitive ability tests were not superior to other predictors such as assessment centers, work samples, and supervisory/peer evaluations as has been found in previous metaanalytic work. Personality measures were clearly less valid. Compared to previous validity generalization work, much unexplained variance in validity coefficients remained after corrections for differences in sample size. Finally, the studies reviewed were deficient for our purposes with respect to the data reported. Selection ratios, standard deviations, reliabilities, predictor and criterion intercorrelations were rarely and inconsistently reported. There are also many predictor-criterion relationships for which very few validation efforts have been undertaken.     

Catamnestic surveys on somato-psychosocial development in childhood and adolescence of patients with unipolar depressive and bipolar manic-depressive psychoses

The somatic and psychosocial development of 80 subjects with manifest affective-phasic psychoses is studied retrospectively and compared with that of an identically sized control group consisting of neuropsychiatrically healthy subjects. Statistically significant differences were found particularly in the answers to questions dealing with social situation and social adaptability. Achievement at school and vocational qualifications were lower among the parents of the patients than among those of the healthy subjects. Characteristic features of the patients' childhood and adolescence were transient depression, often for no apparent cause, and maladaption, and vocational wishes were fulfilled less often than among the controls. The patients experienced greater difficulty in settling in to a new group due to their contact difficulties.     

Redundancy analysis for qualitative variables

Redundancy analysis (also called principal components analysis of instrumental variables) is a technique for two sets of variables, one set being dependent of the other. Its aim is maximization of the explained variance of the dependent variables by a linear combination of the explanatory variables. The technique is generalized to qualitative variables; it then gives implicitly a simultaneous optimal scaling of the dependent, qualitative variables. Examples are taken from the Dutch Life Situation Survey 1977, using Satisfaction with Life and Happiness as dependent variables. The analysis leads to one well-being scale, defined by the explanatory variables Marital status, Schooling, Income and Activity.The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policies of the Netherlands Central Bureau of Statistics.     

Jung’s Psychoid Monism

Jung’s final psychoid theory of archetypes was an additional attempt to find a solution to the philosophical problem of how to relate mind and matter. In the following essay Jung’s solution is summarized by a set of 17 theses, and Jung’s philosophy will be called psychoid monism. According to psychoid monism, what ultimately and primarily is, is the psycho-physically neutral domain of instinctual experience. The origin of this view can be traced back to Post-Kantian German Idealism (Schopenhauer, Schelling, Hölderlin), and a systematization of the view requires a dialectic approach and, in particular, contradiction-tolerant dialectic logic.     

Scepticism About Scepticism or the Very Idea of a Global ‘Vat-Language’

This paper aims to motivate a scepticism about scepticism in contemporary epistemology. I present the sceptic with a dilemma: On one parsing of the BIV (brain-in-a-vat) scenario, the second premise in a closure-based sceptical argument will turn out false, because the scenario is refutable; on another parsing, the scenario collapses into incoherence, because the sceptic cannot even save the appearances. I discuss three different ways of cashing out the BIV scenario: ‘Recent Envatment’ (RE), ‘Lifelong Envatment’ (LE) and ‘Nothing But Envatment’ (NBE). I show that RE scenarios are a kind of ‘local’ sceptical scenario that does not pose a significant threat to the possibility of perceptual knowledge as such. I then go on to consider the more radical (or global) LE and NBE scenarios, which do undermine the possibility of perceptual knowledge of an ‘external’ world by positing that it is conceivable that one has always been envatted and, hence, trapped in a ‘global’ illusion. I start by assuming that we could be in such a scenario (LE or NBE) and then spell out what we would need to presuppose for such scenarios to be capable of being actual. Drawing on some central insights from Wittgenstein’s anti-private language considerations, I show that the truth of a global scepticism would presuppose the possibility of a private ‘vat-language’, a notion that cannot be rendered coherent. But, if so, then neither can the sceptical scenarios that presuppose such a conception.