The Past Guides the Future: Implementing the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies

The authors describe the ways in which the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC; Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, & McCullough, 2015) can be viewed from a human rights framework and as the latest iteration in the long history of the multicultural and social justice counseling competency movement. MSJCC implementation and integration are explored, and recommendations for innovating the MSJCC are described.     

Demonstrating detail in investigative interviews—An examination of the DeMo technique

Attaining an uninterrupted free report (FR) is at the heart of best practice investigative interviewing guidance. However, witnesses/victims do not naturally provide detailed accounts. Techniques have been developed to counter-act this, such as a report everything (RE) instruction. This research examined the relative effectiveness of an addition to the RE component, a demonstration of the level of detail, using a behavioural exemplar, by describing an innocuous object; the Demonstration for More detail (DeMo) technique. Participants (N = 61) watched a mock crime video and asked to recall it using one of three instructions: (a) basic FR as the control, (b) RE instruction and (c) RE instruction plus DeMo technique. Participants who were given the DeMo technique recalled more details than both the control and RE groups. Accuracy rates were similarly high across all conditions. The implications of using the DeMo technique within an investigative interview are discussed.     

Does interference between self and other perspectives in theory of mind tasks reflect a common underlying process? Evidence from individual differences in theory of mind and inhibitory control

Theory of mind (ToM), the ability to understand that other agents have different beliefs, desires, and knowledge than oneself, has been extensively researched. Theory of mind tasks involve participants dealing with interference between their self-perspective and another agent’s perspective, and this interference has been related to executive function, particularly to inhibitory control. This study assessed whether there are individual differences in self–other interference, and whether these effects are due to individual differences in executive function. A total of 142 participants completed two ToM (the director task and a Level 1 visual perspective-taking task), which both involve self–other interference, and a battery of inhibitory control tasks. The relationships between the tasks were examined using path analysis. Results showed that the self–other interference effects of the two ToM tasks were dissociable, with individual differences in performance on the ToM tasks being unrelated and performance in each predicted by different inhibitory control tasks. We suggest that self–other differences are part of the nature of ToM tasks, but self–other interference is not a unitary construct. Instead, self–other differences result in interference effects in various ways and at different stages of processing, and these effects may not be a major limiting step for adults’ performance on typical ToM tasks. Further work is needed to assess other factors that may limit adults’ ToM performance and hence explain individual differences in social ability.

     

Academic competence and affect self-concepts in elementary school students: Social and dimensional comparisons

Social Psychology of Education - Academic self-concepts are important correlates and predictors of successful scholastic learning. According to the internal/external frame of reference (I/E)...     

Relating print and speech: the effects of letter names and word position on reading and spelling performance

From an early age, children can go beyond rote memorization to form links between print and speech that are based on letter names in the initial positions of words (Treiman & Rodriguez, 1999; Treiman, Sotak, & Bowman, 2001). For example, children's knowledge of the name of the letter t helps them learn that the novel word TM is pronounced as team. Four experiments were carried out to determine whether letter names at the ends of words are equally useful. Four- and five-year-olds derived little benefit from such information in reading (Experiments 1 and 3) or spelling (Experiment 2), although adults did (Experiment 4). For young children, word-final information appears to have less influence on reading and spelling performance than does word-initial information. The results help delineate the circumstances under which children can go beyond a logographic approach in learning about print.     

Dissociation of explicit and implicit timing in repetitive tapping and drawing movements

Four experiments explored the hypothesis that temporal processes may be represented and controlled explicitly or implicitly. Tasks hypothesized to require explicit timing were duration discrimination, tapping, and intermittent circle drawing. In contrast, it was hypothesized that timing control during continuous circle drawing does not rely on an explicit temporal representation; rather, temporal control is an emergent property of other control processes (i.e., timing is controlled implicitly). Temporal consistency on the tapping and intermittent drawing tasks was related, and performance on both of these tasks was correlated with temporal acuity on an auditory duration discrimination task. However, timing variability of these 3 tasks was not correlated with timing variability of continuous circle drawing. These results support the hypothesized distinction between explicit and implicit temporal representations.     

Action-based and vision-based selection of input: Two sources of control

In the first part of this paper we review evidence suggesting that there exists a mechanism that selects input on the basis of its similarity to the required action. This response-based input selection differs from the more established space- and object-based input selection in that it is not constrained by the structure of the input. Our evidence suggests that the two-choice Stroop effect is caused by this response-based selection mechanism. By contrast, it is known that the flanker effect is determined by the space- and object- based selection mechanisms. We explore whether the conflict resolution of the Stroop and flanker tasks is different as well by embedding these two tasks in a PRP (Psychological Refractory Period) paradigm. We show that the Stroop and the PRP effects are additive whereas the flanker and the PRP effects are underadditive, suggesting that the processes in charge of the conflict resolution in the Stroop and the flanker tasks are indeed different. We discuss possible reasons for this difference, and discuss possible ways in which the response-based mechanism can be implemented in information processing models.     

Variability and detection of invariant structure

Two experiments investigated learning of nonadjacent dependencies by adults and 18–month–olds. Each learner was exposed to three–element strings (e.g., pel–kicey–jic) produced by one of two artificial languages. Both languages contained the same adjacent dependencies, so learners could distinguish the languages only by acquiring dependencies between the first and third elements (the nonadjacent dependencies). The size of the pool from which the middle elements were drawn was systematically varied to investigate whether increasing variability (in the form of decreasing predictability between adjacent elements) would lead to better detection of nonadjacent dependencies. Infants and adults acquired nonadjacent dependencies only when adjacent dependencies were least predictable. The results point to conditions that might lead learners to focus on nonadjacent versus adjacent dependencies and are important for suggesting how learning might be dynamically guided by statistical structure.     

Psychiatric patient- and informant-reported personality: predicting concurrent and future behavior

The authors investigated the criterion and incremental validity of personality reports from psychiatric patients and knowledgeable informants in predicting patient substance use, social and risky behaviors, and psychological distress. Patient and informant reports of patient personality and behavior were collected from an adult psychiatric sample (N = 94). Hierarchical regressions indicated that patient reports of personality accounted for significant variance in both concurrent (17%-42%) and future behavior assessed 1 year later (17%-40%). Informant reports contributed significantly to the prediction of several behaviors and most strongly to social behaviors. Behaviors were predicted equally well by self-reports and informant reports in prospective as in concurrent regressions. Thus, both patient and informant reports of personality contribute importantly to prediction of behavior, and predictive ability is stable across time.     

The path analysis controversy: a new statistical approach to strong appraisal of verisimilitude

A new approach for using path analysis to appraise the verisimilitude of theories is described. Rather than trying to test a model's truth (correctness), this method corroborates a class of path diagrams by determining how well they predict intradata relations in comparison with other diagrams. The observed correlation matrix is partitioned into disjoint sets. One set is used to estimate the model parameters, and a nonoverlapping set is used to assess the model's verisimilitude. Computer code was written to generate competing models and to test the conjectured model's superiority (relative to the generated set) using diagram combinatorics and is available on the Web (http://www.vanderbilt.edu/quantmetheval/downloads.htm).