Ethnic Identity and Discrimination: An Exploration of the Rejection-Identification Model in Arab American Adolescents

Research examining the rejection-identification model of ethnic identity in Arab American adolescents is scarce. This exploratory study investigates various factors in relation to a sample of 60 Arab American adolescents’ (aged 12–18 years) ethnic identity including discrimination and academic and global self-concepts. Ethnic identity was measured using the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure, which is composed of two factors including Affirmation/Belonging and Ethnic Search. The Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents was used to measure academic and global self-concepts. In addition, the lead author developed a questionnaire asking participants to self-report whether either they or another Arab student they knew had been treated badly or differently because of their ethnicity. Discrimination experience and Affirmation/Belonging were significant predictors of scholastic competence, while Affirmation/Belonging was the sole significant predictor in Global Self-Worth. High levels of ethnic identity in the area of Affirmation/Belonging seemed to play a protective role in global self-concept in the face of discrimination. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Social-cognitive factors influencing success on college entrance exams in South Korea

We investigated the influence of social-cognitive factors on students' success on college entrance exams in South Korea. Subjects were 291 college freshmen attending either a prestigious or a less prestigious college. They completed a self-report questionnaire assessing perceived parental control, fear of failure, anxiety, self-efficacy, and time management skills. The results showed that parental psychological control had debilitating effects and self-efficacy had facilitating effects on the performance on the college entrance exam for all students. Fear of failure positively influenced the performance of the students in the less prestigious college but not in the more prestigious college. In addition, comparison of the two colleges revealed that students attending the prestigious college used better time management skills than students attending the less prestigious college. Further, students in the prestigious college tended to be from families with a higher SES level than students attending the less prestigious college. Information is provided to students, parents, and teachers regarding alternative methods for preparing for college entrance exams.     

Haptic roughness perception of linear gratings via bare finger or rigid probe

The magnitude of perceived roughness was haptically estimated as subjects freely explored linear gratings with either the bare finger or a rigid stylus-shaped probe. A considerably expanded range of ridge and groove width was investigated, relative to the extant literature. The four experiments collectively indicate that, for both finger and probe-end effectors, the variance in the estimates of perceived roughness was predominantly predicted by a single parameter: groove width. The functions relating perceived roughness to groove width increased over a narrow band relative to the full range of values, then flattened. These data have archival values for models of roughness perception involving both direct and indirect touch.     

In search of subtypes of Chinese developmental dyslexia

The dual-route model offers a popular way to classify developmental dyslexia into phonological and surface subtypes. The current study examined whether this dual-route model could provide a framework for understanding the varieties of Chinese developmental dyslexia. Three groups of Chinese children (dyslexics, chronological-age controls, and reading-level controls) were tested on Chinese exception character reading, pseudocharacter reading (analogous to English nonword reading), novel word learning, and some phonological and orthographic skills. It was found that Chinese exception character reading and pseudocharacter reading were highly correlated and that orthographic skills was a better predictor of both Chinese exception character and pseudocharacter reading than was phonological skills. More than half (62%) of the children in the dyslexia sample were classified as belonging to the surface subtype, but no children were classified as belonging to the phonological subtype. These results suggested that the lexical and sublexical routes in Chinese are highly interdependent or that there may be only one route from print to speech as suggested by the connectionist models. Chinese dyslexic children generally are characterized as having delays in various phonological and orthographic skills, but some, such as those identified as surface dyslexics in the current study, are more severely impaired.     

Asyntactic thematic role assignment by Mandarin aphasics: a test of the Trace-Deletion Hypothesis and the Double Dependency Hypothesis

This study examines the comprehension patterns of various sentence types by Mandarin-speaking aphasic patients and evaluates the validity of the predictions from the Trace-Deletion Hypothesis (TDH) and the Double Dependency Hypothesis (DDH). Like English, the canonical word order in Mandarin is SVO, but the two languages differ in that the head noun precedes the relative clause in English, but it follows the relative clause in Chinese. According to the Default Principle as stated in the TDH, the word order discrepancy will make subject relative clauses more difficult to comprehend for Mandarin agrammatics than object relative clauses, but the DDH predicts that agrammatic patients from the two languages have the same pattern of selective deficits. The results of this study support the prediction of the TDH.     

Design, Development, and Evaluation of an Interactive Simulator for Engineering Ethics Education (SEEE)

Societal pressures, accreditation organizations, and licensing agencies are emphasizing the importance of ethics in the engineering curriculum. Traditionally, this subject has been taught using dogma, heuristics, and case study approaches. Most recently a number of organizations have sought to increase the utility of these approaches by utilizing the Internet. Resources from these organizations include on-line courses and tests, videos, and DVDs. While these individual approaches provide a foundation on which to base engineering ethics, they may be limited in developing a student’s ability to identify, analyze, and respond to engineering ethics situations outside of the classroom environment. More effective approaches utilize a combination of these types of approaches. This paper describes the design and development of an internet based interactive Simulator for Engineering Ethics Education. The simulator places students in first person perspective scenarios involving different types of ethical situations. Students must gather data, assess the situation, and make decisions. This requires students to develop their own ability to identify and respond to ethical engineering situations. A limited comparison between the internet based interactive simulator and conventional internet web based instruction indicates a statistically significant improvement of 32% in instructional effectiveness. The simulator is currently being used at the University of Houston to help fulfill ABET requirements.     

Development of the Real-Time Subjective Emotionality Assessment (RTSEA) system

A new Real-Time Subjective Emotionality Assessment (RTSEA) system was developed for this study. The system is composed of two parts: an emotionality input and evaluation parts. An experiment was conducted in order to investigate the effectiveness of the RTSEA system. The present study compared Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) with the RTSEA by presenting 28 subjects with pictures that aroused either positive or negative emotion. Following the experiment, a subjective assessment using a questionnaire was given to the same subjects. According to the correlation coefficients, changes of the RTSEA had strong correlations with the changes of the GSR. Also, the questionnaire results showed marked similarity to the average responses of the RTSEA. In conclusion, the most remarkable characteristic of the present system is that it not only assesses the average emotionality when stimuli are presented, but also shows the trend of change in emotionality over time.     

The SF-36 Among Cambodian and Vietnamese Refugees: An Examination of Psychometric Properties

Among traumatized Cambodian (N=90) and Vietnamese (N=94) refugees attending a psychiatric clinic, the study examined the validity and psychometric properties of the Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF-36), a measure of self-perceived mental and physical health. In both patient samples, all eight SF-36 scales displayed excellent internal consistency (item-scale correlations and Cronbach's α). But, similar to other studies of Asian samples, (a) the Vitality (VT) scale did not separate from the Mental Health (MH) and General Health (GH) scales, as evidenced by item-scale and interscale correlations, and (b) the VT scale loaded as strongly (Vietnamese sample) or more strongly (Cambodian sample) than the MH scale on the so-called Mental Factor in a two-factor solution of the eight scales (with the GH scale also loading heavily on the same factor).