Incentives, Inequality and Self-Respect

Rawls argues that ‘Parties in the original position would wish to avoid at almost any cost the social conditions that undermine self-respect’. But what are these social conditions that we should so urgently avoid? One evident candidate might be conditions of material inequality. Yet Rawls seems confident that his account of justice can endorse such inequalities without jeopardising citizens’ self-respect. In this article I argue that this confidence is misplaced. Unequalising incentives, I claim, jeopardise the self-respect of those least advantaged—at least under a Rawlsian schema—by undermining the very processes by which Rawls hopes to make distributional inequalities and self-respect compatible. I begin by setting out Rawls’s distinct account of self-respect before moving to describe how Rawls expects the difference principle to support citizens’ in this regard. I then draw upon GA Cohen’s distinction between ‘strict’ and ‘lax’ interpretations of the difference principle to argue that the presence of unequalising incentives undermines both the direct and indirect support that the difference principle can offer to citizens’ self-respect. As such, I claim that Rawls must either weaken his endorsement of unequalising incentives, or risk violating his ‘prior commitment’ to avoiding social conditions harmful to citizens’ self-respect.     

Differential item functioning in an international 360-degree assessment: Evidence of gender stereotype,environmental complexity,and organizational contingency

This research used logistic regression to model item responses from a popular 360-degree-for-development survey used in a leadership development programme given to middle and upper level European managers in Brussels. The survey contained 106 items on 16 scales. The model used gender of ratee and rater group to identify items that exhibited differential item functioning (DIF). The rater groups were self, boss, peer, and direct report. The sample consisted of 356 survey families where a survey family consisted of a matched set of four surveys: one self, one boss, one peer, and one direct report. The sample contained 88% male and 12% female raters. The sample contained 1424 total surveys. The procedure for flagging items exhibiting differential functioning used effect size computed from Wald chi-square statistics rather than statistical significance, resulting in fewer flagged items. One item exhibited rating anomalies due to the gender of the ratee; 55 items exhibited DIF attributable to rater group. The apparent effect of the DIF was small with each item. An examination of the maximum likelihood parameter estimates suggested the rater group DIF was the result of either hierarchical complexity or organizational contingency. The DIF due to gender conformed to prior expectations of gender-related stereotypical interpretations. This research further suggested that DIF due to environmental complexity or organizational contingency could be a naturally occurring phenomenon in some 360-degree assessment, and that the interpretation of some 360-degree feedback could need to include the potential for such DIF to exist.     

Stress and quality of life in international and domestic university students: cultural differences in the use of religious coping

Studying overseas entails a number of transitions and challenges, and the present study investigated the strategies international university students use to cope with stressors. Previous research suggests that international students may be more likely than domestic students to draw on religion/spirituality as a source of dealing with stress, but the direct links between stress, religious coping and quality of life are yet to be documented explicitly. A sample of 679 university students in New Zealand completed the quality of life scale WHOQOL-BREF with an additional WHOQOL module used to assess spiritual, religious, and personal beliefs (SRPB). The students also completed the Perceived Stress Scale and the Brief COPE inventory. Irrespective of stress levels encountered or whether participants were international or domestic students, Asian students were more likely to use religious coping strategies than European students. Unlike European students, Asian students’ use of religious coping was effective in improving psychological and social quality of life. The findings also provide support for the main effects hypothesis of religion/spirituality. The present study demonstrates that cultural factors play an important role in the manner in which individuals maintain mental health and quality of life.     

Imageability and body–object interaction ratings for 599 multisyllabic nouns

We collected imageability and body–object interaction (BOI) ratings for 599 multisyllabic nouns. We then examined the effects of these variables on a subset of these items in picture-naming, word-naming, lexical decision, and semantic categorization. Picture-naming latencies were taken from the International Picture-Naming Project database (Szekely, Jacobsen, D’Amico, Devescovi, Andonova, Herron, et al. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 247–250, 2004), word-naming and lexical decision latencies were taken from the English Lexicon Project database (Balota, Yap, Cortese, Hutchison, Kessler, Loftis, et al. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 445–459, 2007), and we collected semantic categorization latencies. Results from hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that imageability and BOI separately accounted for unique latency variability in each task, even with several other predictor variables (e.g., print frequency, number of syllables and morphemes, age of acquisition) entered first in the analyses. These ratings should be useful to researchers interested in manipulating or controlling for the effects of imageability and BOI for multisyllabic stimuli in lexical and semantic tasks.     

Redressing the balance—involving children in family therapy

This paper argues that family therapists have tended to ignore the problem of how to engage children in family therapy, and it presents a number of techniques specifically aimed at involving children in therapy. The socio-historical context of childhood is discussed and its implications for therapists examined. A number of visual techniques are then described, illustrated by case examples. These serve the function of addressing the whole family system on a number of levels and involving children fully in the process of therapy.     

Functional localization in the brain with respect to syntactic processing

This report describes some recent examinations of the ability of aphasic patients to construct syntactically governed dependency relations in real time. The data show that Wernicke's patients can link the elements of dependency relations in the same way as neurologically intact subjects, even for sentences that they do not understand. Broca's patients, by contrast, are shown to be unable to create such links, even for sentences that they do understand. These data underline the isolability of this stage of syntactic analysis and they suggest that comprehension limitations statable in syntactic terms can be traced to changes in cortically localizable processing resources.     

Effects of memory load in a word-naming task: Five failures to replicate

Paap and Noel’s (1991) recent demonstration that increased memory load facilitates naming of low-frequency irregular words has been taken as strong support for dual-route theories of word naming (e.g., Coltheart, 1978). Others, however, (Jared, personal communication, March 1993; Strain, personal communication, April 1993) have been unable to replicate this effect. In the present research, five different attempts were made to determine the crucial experimental conditions required for successful replication of the Paap and Noel findings. None of these experiments produced results at all similar to those reported by Paap and Noel. A number of explanations for these failures to replicate, in terms of individual differences between Paap and Noel’s subjects and the present subjects, were evaluated. Most of these explanations were not supported by the data. The present results call into question the generalizability of the Paap and Noel findings and, hence, the strength of support they provide for dual-route theories.     

Genograms in counselling practice: Constructing a genogram (part 2)

In Genograms in counselling practice: a review (part 1), recent literature on the use of genograms was reviewed and the efficacy and utility of genograms in counselling practice was examined. This paper outlines how a family genogram is constructed in a counselling setting. An approach to introducing the relevance of a genogram to the client is described as is the method of gathering and using information. The therapeutic use of genograms is also discussed.     

Classwide Peer Tutoring: Effects on the Spelling Performance and Social Interactions of Students with Mild Disabilities and Their Typical Peers in an Integrated Instructional Setting

The effectiveness of Classwide Peer Tutoring (CWPT) to enhance the spelling performance and social interactions of three typical students and three students with mild disabilities was investigated. The classroom ecology was measured using the New Code for Instructional Structure and Student Academic Response (NCISSAR). Social interactions were assessed using the Multiple Option Observation System for Experimental Studies (M.O.O.S.E.S.). Spelling performance was measured by weekly pre-posttests. Using an ABAB single-subject design, results indicated that CWPT resulted in: (a) gains in the spelling accuracy of all students (up to 49%), (b) increases of students' duration of positive social interactions (up to 86%), and (c) high satisfaction ratings for both the students and the teacher. Comparisons between typical students and students with mild disabilities during CWPT suggested no differences in their duration of social interactions. Furthermore, the mean spelling accuracy of the students with mild disabilities was comparable to the spelling accuracy of the typical students (91% vs. 96%, respectively). Implications of the findings for the inclusion of students with mild disabilities in general education settings are discussed.     

Psysquash: a program for the analysis of PsyScope data files

Many experiment-running programs generate output files that require selection, reduction, and formatting of the raw data before the numbers are suitable for input into statistical packages. PsySquash is a Macintosh program for the selection, organization, and summary of the tabular data that are produced by a widely used freeware data acquisition system, PsyScope. PsySquash serves as a bridge between PsyScope’s output data format and the input formats required by common statistical packages such as SAS, SPSS, and SuperAnova. An extension of PsySquash is proposed for use with arbitrary tabular data.