Book Reviews

Abstract

This article reports on a comparison of the views of teachers in Italy and the United Kingdom on their profession in relation to other professions. Common constructs about their profession are discussed for each national group, followed by a commentary on the similarities and differences between the groups related to their embedding culture. For example, both groups perceive teachers as having much in common with social workers and the clergy in terms of high demand for emotional involvement and creativity, while both express concern over low income for effort conjoined with erosion of professional autonomy. This latter concern is more pronounced in the data from Italy, reflecting the more centralized control of curriculum, a policy only currently being initiated in the United Kingdom

Although we are sympathetic to the reservations of Yorke (1987) about their utility in the study of teachers' thinking (as noted in Pope [1981] and Denicolo [1985]), we found the grid procedure to be a useful vehicle for exploring the issues in this study. Thus we have avoided treating the grid data in an essentially positivistic manner and did use notes made during the conversations that occurred during grid completion to shed light on the personal meaning to the participant of the words used to denote each construct. Within this article the details of personal meanings of each participant are omitted, although the analysis and discussion took account of these, since our particular goal here is to present the group data for the two countries.

The focus had been on the teachers' constructs regarding the teaching profession. The same data could be used to illuminate their views on any of the professions discussed in the study. In addition to developing insights into teachers' thinking about their profession, the study helped to strengthen the developing spirit of international collaboration in research in teacher education from the perspective of personal construct psychology.     

Reducing cognitive complexity in a hypothetico-deductive reasoning task

The confusion/non-consequential thinking explanation proposed by Newstead, Girotto, and Legrenzi (1995) for poor performance on Wason's THOG problem (a hypothetico-deductive reasoning task) was examined in three experiments with 300 participants. In general, as the cognitive complexity of the problem and the possibility of non-consequential thinking were reduced, correct performance increased. Significant but weak facilitation (33-40% correct) was found in Experiment 1 for THOG classification instructions that did not include the indeterminate response option. Substantial facilitation (up to 75% correct) was obtained in Experiment 2 with O'Brien et al.'s (1990) one-other-THOG classification instruction. In Experiment 3, a revised version of O'Brien et al.'s pre-test problem format also led to substantial facilitation, even with the use of the standard three-choice THOG classification instruction. These findings are discussed in terms of Newstead et al.'s theoretical proposal and possible attentional factors.     

ELSI Priorities for Brain Imaging

As one of the most compelling technologies for imaging the brain, functional MRI (fMRI) produces measurements and persuasive pictures of research subjects making cognitive judgments and even reasoning through difficult moral decisions. Even after centuries of studying the link between brain and behavior, this capability presents a number of novel significant questions. For example, what are the implications of biologizing human experience? How might neuroimaging disrupt the mysteries of human nature, spirituality, and personal identity? Rather than waiting for an ethical agenda to emerge from some unpredictable combination of the concerns of ethicists and researchers, the attention of journalists, or after controversy is sparked by research that cannot be retracted, we queried key figures in bioethics and the humanities, neuroscience, media, industry, and patient advocacy in focus groups and interviews. We identified specific ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) that highlight researcher obligations and the nonclinical impact of the technology at this new frontier.     

Stammering and therapy views of people who stammer

This study used a postal questionnaire to seek the views of adults who stammer concerning the effect of stammering on their lives, the speech and language therapy and other remedies they have tried, and their hopes for speech and language therapy in the future. The 332 returned questionnaires indicated that stammering had the greatest adverse effect on school life and occupation. Speech and language therapy had been helpful to many, but the nature of the benefits and specific therapies used were not cited in many responses. An emergent theme in unhelpful therapy was the dissatisfaction that arises when individual needs are not met. In the future, people want help in controlling stammering and in developing coping strategies. The desire for timely and effective therapy for children, ongoing help and for group or intensive work has implications for service organization and therapist's skills. The survey highlights the need for therapists and clients to negotiate therapy aims and procedures that are clearly defined, appropriate to individual needs, achievable, and, if possible, recorded and measured. EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES: The reader will learn about and be able to list (1) the areas most and least affected by stammering, (2) the therapy approaches respondents had found helpful, and (3) other remedies that tried to help stammering.     

Reliability and validity of the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale

To investigate the reliability and validity of the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS), 28 youth aged 6 to 17 years with Tourette's syndrome (TS) participated in the study. Data included clinician reports of tics and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) severity, parent reports of tics, internalizing and externalizing problems, and child reports of depression and anxiety. All children participated in a 2nd YGTSS administration by the same rater 48 days later. Good internal consistency and stability were found for the YGTSS scores. YGTSS scores demonstrated strong correlations with parent-rated tic severity (r = .58-.68). YGTSS scores were not significantly related to measures of clinician ratings of OCD severity (r = .01-.15), parent ratings of externalizing and internalizing behavior (r = -.07-.20), and child ratings of depression (r = .02-.26) and anxiety (r = -.06 -.28). Findings suggest that the YGTSS is a reliable and valid instrument for the assessment of pediatric TS.     

AN EVALUATION OF LABELING-THEN-DOING WITH MODERATELY HANDICAPPED PERSONS: ACQUISITION AND GENERALIZATION WITH COMPLEX TASKS

We conducted two experiments in which moderately mentally retarded persons were trained first to label and then to enter characters into a computer, calculator, or checkbook (label-then-do) within a multiple baseline design. In Experiment 1, 5 young adults were trained to enter statistical programs into computers in an office setting. Following training, all subjects' use of verbal labels and key-entry skills generalized across tasks (programs) and settings (offices and computer terminals). In Experiment 2, 3 junior high school students were trained with self-labeling procedures to complete a key-entry task and to balance a checkbook. The performance of all students generalized across tasks and settings, and the use of labels generalized for 2 of the students. Results are discussed relative to mediated generalization and to establishing verbal control over behavior.     

Toward a theory of apractic syndromes

Theoretical development on human motor behavior has occurred largely independently of data on pathological movement disorders. This paper represents an initial attempt to interface findings from studies of apraxia and those of normal motor behavior with a view to formulating a common theoretical framework. Such an integration may ultimately aid in understanding the nature of skill acquisition and provide insights into the organization of motor systems. Three putative theoretical models of movement control are discussed with reference to apractic syndromes. The most commonly accepted view—the hierarchy—possesses properties such as linear transitivity and unidirectionality of information flow that render it inadequate in explaining functional plasticity in the central nervous system. The heterarchy, which incorporates reciprocity of function and circular transitivity, is a more likely candidate but suffers from an inability to regulate the degrees of freedom of the system. Our favored candidate is the coalition model which embodies heterarchical principles, but in addition, offers a solution to the problems of degrees of freedom and context for motor systems. Evidence is reviewed from apraxia of speech and limbs in terms of a coalitional style of control and an experimental approach, consonant with coalitional organization, is developed. We promote the claim that an understanding of apractic behavior—and perhaps motor systems in general—will benefit when clinicians and experimenters embrace a theory of context and constraints rather than a theory of commands as is currently in vogue.     

Some relationships between adaptation and electromyographic activity at laryngeal and masseter sites in stutterers

Cumulative integrated electromyographic (EMG) activity was recorded from laryngeal and masseter sites from ten stutterers during a five trial oral adaptation sequence. Results showed more activity at the laryngeal site than the masseter site. While significant reductions in EMG activity were not found, patterns were shown to be related to the subjects' dysfluency patterns over trials. Results were interpreted as suggesting that reduced muscle activity and adaptation (when they occur) are artifacts of other behavioral modifications resulting from overt motor practice.     

Coding processes in preselected and constrained movements: effect of vision

Three experiments were conducted in which visual information was manipulated either at the endpoint or during preselected, subject defined and constrained, experimenter-defined movements. In Experiments 1 and 2 the subject's task was to reproduce the movement in the absence of vision. Augmenting the terminal location of the criterion movement with vision had no differential effect on reproduction in Experiment 1, although preselected movement accuracy was significantly superior to constrained. Providing vision throughout the criterion movement in Experiment 2 not only failed to improve the accuracy of constrained movements but decreased reproduction performance in preselected movements. In Experiment 3 procedures were adopted to control the allocation of the subjects' attention during the criterion movement. The subjects reproduced by vision alone, movement alone, or with both visual and movement information available. When subjects were informed of the modality of reproduction prior to criterion presentation, they were able to ignore concurrent input from vision and attend to movement information. In the absence of precues visual information was spontaneously attended. The data were interpreted as contrary to closed-loop assumptions that additional information necessarily enhances the strength of a motor memory representation. Rather, they can be accommodated in terms of Posner, Nissen and Klein's (1976) theoretical account of visual dominance and serve to illustrate the importance of selective attention effects in movement coding.