Adaptation of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV (WISC-IV) for Vietnam

Intelligence testing is used for many purposes including identification of children for proper educational placement (e.g., children with learning disabilities, or intellectually gifted students), and to guide education by identifying cognitive strengths and weaknesses so that teachers can adapt their instructional style to students’ specific learning styles. Most of the research involving intelligence tests has been conducted in highly developed Western countries Yet the need for intelligence testing is as or even more important in developing countries. The present study, conducted through the Vietnam National University Clinical Psychology CRISP Center, focused on the cultural adaptation of the WISC-IV intelligence test for Vietnam. We report on (a) the adaptation process including the translation, cultural analysis and modifications involved in adaptation, (b) present results of two pilot studies, and (c) describe collection of the standardization sample and results of analyses with the standardization sample, with the goal of sharing our experience with other researchers who may be involved in or interested in adapting or developing IQ tests for non-Western, non-English speaking cultures.     

Recruiters' Assessment and Use of Social Capital in Résumé Screening1

An experiment was conducted with undergraduate business students to investigate how human resource (HR) recruiters use social capital conceptualized as friendship between applicants and the recruiter in screening résumés. Results showed that social capital influenced recruiters' assessment of applicants above and beyond human capital. In addition, the influence of friendship ties in applicant assessment was more prominent among female HR recruiters than among male recruiters. Implications for researchers and practitioners are discussed in the context of employee selection.     

Authorship Ethics: Issues and Suggested Guidelines for the Helping Professions

The authors review the literature and explore common ethical dilemmas related to publishing research. Varying standards are presented to assist professionals and students in their publication endeavors. Joint research collaboration in many graduate programs is encouraged and appears inevitable. Joint research activities may involve student–faculty collaboration or professional peer collaboration. Although many helping professions have ethics codes that address publication issues, there is no standard among them regarding the issue of authorship. Although it appears necessary to follow minimal codes of ethics regarding authorship, consideration of suggested guidelines and aspirational ethics may enhance the professional growth of mental health professionals and students in mental health programs.     

Gender differences in egalitarian behavior and attitudes in early childhood

It is axiomatic that human females are more egalitarian than males. However, surprisingly little empirical research exists that empirically assesses this stereotype. We created two studies designed to objectively examine egalitarian behavior in 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children. In Study 1 we compared the egalitarian behavior and attitudes of American girls versus boys by tabulating the extent to which each gender awarded the same number of stickers to, and liked to the same degree, two puppets. One puppet followed the child's instructions or actions while the other did not during a drawing task in which the child played the roles of leader and peer. In the peer role, girls exhibited more egalitarian behavior than boys. In Study 2, French‐Canadian children were shown two drawings by unknown peers—one messily and one neatly colored—, then asked to distribute stickers to each peer's drawing. Again, girls exhibited more egalitarian behavior than boys. Results suggest the origins of gender differences in egalitarian behavior occur early in life and merit further investigation.     

Naming,race, and white supremacy in the teaching of religion and Islam: Incorporating intersectional interventions

The need to confront issues of race and white supremacy in our teaching of religion is critically important, but through the pedagogical convention of naming, we take the first step in inviting our students to understand the hows and whys of it. I will explore the ways that Charles Long's theory of signification and counter‐signification can be pedagogically deployed to incorporate intersectional interventions in the teaching of religion in America, specifically in the case of an Islam in America course.     

Dyslexia: the articulatory hypothesis revisited

Articulatory disorders have been associated with developmental phonological dyslexia in the literature. However, very few information is available about the articulatory movements involved in speech production in dyslexic children. This study uses aerodynamic/acoustic data to explore how dyslexic children produce bilabial stops in French (/b, p/) within a sentence where they occurred in two positions and in three vowel environments. Average durations of articulatory closure and release were calculated in 10 phonological dyslexic children and two groups of age-matched and reading age-matched controls. Moreover, deviation from a standard pronunciation of the same material was evaluated separately by blind examiners. Our results reveal differences in the timing of the articulatory movements between dyslexics and normal controls, as well as more deviations from the target consonant for the dyslexics than for the controls. These observations are consistent with recent findings pointing to a general deficit in fine motor control in dyslexia.     

Environmental enrichment modifies the PKA-dependence of hippocampal LTP and improves hippocampus-dependent memory

cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) is critical for the expression of some forms of long-term potentiation (LTP) in area CA1 of the mouse hippocampus and for hippocampus-dependent memory. Exposure to spatially enriched environments can modify LTP and improve behavioral memory in rodents, but the molecular bases for the enhanced memory performance seen in enriched animals are undefined. We tested the hypothesis that exposure to a spatially enriched environment may alter the PKA dependence of hippocampal LTP. Hippocampal slices from enriched mice showed enhanced LTP following a single burst of 100-Hz stimulation in the Schaffer collateral pathway of area CA1. In slices from nonenriched mice, this single-burst form of LTP was less robust and was unaffected by Rp-cAMPS, an inhibitor of PKA. In contrast, the enhanced LTP in enriched mice was attenuated by Rp-cAMPS. Enriched slices expressed greater forskolin-induced, cAMP-dependent synaptic facilitation than did slices from nonenriched mice. Enriched mice showed improved memory for contextual fear conditioning, whereas memory for cued fear conditioning was unaffected following enrichment. Our data indicate that exposure of mice to spatial enrichment alters the PKA dependence of LTP and enhances one type of hippocampus-dependent memory. Environmental enrichment can transform the pharmacological profile of hippocampal LTP, possibly by altering the threshold for activity-dependent recruitment of the cAMP-PKA signaling pathway following electrical and chemical stimulation. We suggest that experience-dependent plasticity of the PKA dependence of hippocampal LTP may be important for regulating the efficacy of hippocampus-based memory.     

A functional naturalism

Synthese - I provide two arguments against value-free naturalism. Both are based on considerations concerning biological teleology. Value-free naturalism is the thesis that both (1) everything is,...