CONCEPTS OF INTELLIGENCE: A COMPARISON OF CHINESE GRADUATES FROM CHINESE AND ENGLISH SCHOOLS IN HONG KONG*

The present study investigated the concepts of intelligence of two groups of Hong Kong Chinese university students. They differed in the secondary schools from which they graduated, one followed the Chinese system and the other the English system. These two groups were otherwise similar in age, academic achievement, and racial background. Subjects were asked to rate items selected from four popular intelligence tests in terms of their relevance to measuring intelligence and perceived difficulty. The relevance ratings were taken as reflections of the group's concept of intelligence. Factor analysis revealed two major factors and several minor factors underlying the relevance ratings of the two groups. The major ones were Non-verbal and Verbal reasoning skills, and the minor ones were Social, Numerical, and Retrieval skills. The Non-verbal reasoning skill was rated equally relevant by the two groups of subjects and was considered as the most relevant skill to measuring intelligence. The Verbal reasoning and Social skills were next, followed by the Numerical skill with the Retrieval skill being the least relevant. The Chinese-school group tended to rate the Verbal reasoning skill to be less relevant than did the English-school group. These findings were attributed to the mental effort involved in solving each type of task and to the differences in school instruction.     

采用构造玩具教学对幼儿创造力发展的影响

本研究采用自然实验法,探索采用构造玩具、进行启发儿童想象力的教学对发展幼儿创造力的作用。被试为50名均龄4岁8个月的寄宿幼儿园儿童,教学中纳入的变量为四种方法:(1)模仿-改进法;(2)改变模仿对象法;(3)模仿生活原型法;(4)改造生活原型法。控制班只采用模仿法进行教学。经过七个月的实验教学后,实验班儿童的一般智力和创造力都明显超过了控制班。测验资料证明,幼儿的一般智力占创造力之间,有0.4左右的正相关。     

Dimensions of lexical coding in Chinese and English

Phonology and orthography are closely related in some languages, such as English, and they are nearly unrelated in others, such as Chinese. The effects of these differences were assessed in a study of the roles of phonemic, graphemic, and semantic information on lexical coding and memory for Chinese logographs and English words. Some of the stimuli in the two languages were selected such that the natural confounding between phonemic and graphemic information in English was matched in the set of Chinese words used. An initial scaling study indicated that this attempt to equate degree of phonemic-graphemic confounding was successful. A second experiment used a recognition memory task for English and Chinese words with separate subject groups of native speakers of the two languages. Subjects were to select one of a pair of test words that was phonemically, graphemically, or semantically similar to a word on a previously studied list. Differences in the dimensions of lexical coding in memory were demonstrated in significant Stimulus Type by Decision Type interactions in the recognition data. Chinese-speaking subjects responded most rapidly and accurately in the graphemic recognition task, whereas performance was generally equivalent in all three tasks for the English-speaking subjects. Alphabetic and logographic writing systems apparently activate different coding and memory mechanisms such that logographic characters produce significantly more visual information in memory, whereas alphabetic words result in a more integrated code involving visual, phonological, and semantic information.     

Attitude accessibility,attitude-behavior consistency,and the strength of the object-evaluation association

Two experiments were conducted in order to examine the accessibility of attitudes from memory as a function of the manner of attitude formation. The findings of the first experiment indicated that subjects could respond more quickly in a response-time task to inquiries about their attitudes when the attitudes were based upon direct behavioral experience with the attitude objects than when they were based upon nonbehavioral experience. It was suggested that, relative to indirect experience, behavioral experience may facilitate the attitude formation process and increase attitude accessibility once the attitude is formed. A second experiment found support for both of these notions. Two additional experiments indicated that repeated association of the attitude object and the attitudinal evaluation enhanced both attitude accessibility and attitude-behavior consistency. It was suggested that the strength of the object-evaluation association is a critical determinant of accessibility, which, in turn, acts as a central factor in the process by which attitudes affect later behavior. It was further suggested that the manner of attitude formation affects attitude-behavior consistency because direct experience produces a stronger object-evaluation association and, hence, a more accessible attitude than does indirect experience.     

Developmental differences in the role of detail in picture recognition memory

Two experiments assess the effect of the amount of physical detail in pictures on picture recognition memory. Children and adults were presented simple and complex line drawings. A “same-different” recognition test followed in which the distractor items were original pictures from the presentation phase with the amount of physical detail altered. For second- and fourth-grade subjects, recognition sensitivity, measured in terms of d′, was similar for pictures in the simple and complex presentation conditions. For adults, however, recognition sensitivity was greater for pictures in the simple than complex presentation condition. This finding with adults was replicated in Experiment 2. Interpretations of this age difference in picture memory processing are discussed, as well as the constraints imposed by various dependent measures used in picture memory studies.     

Israeli adolescents and military service: encounters

Problems of mental health during combat activities are well documented in Israel (Dasberg, 1976). Much less attention has been paid to the problems of the young soldier who enters army life in Israel. This paper delineates some areas of friction and vulnerability between the worlds of the youth and the military. These encounters are systematized into groups, creating the "Binary Model." This model, based on the authors' experience as clinicians in the I.D.F. Central Mental Health Clinic, helps in locating and treating young soldiers in crisis situations.     

恒河猴和鸽子对空间构型的辨别和初级抽象概括的比较实验研究

六只恒河猴和七尽鸽子用作实验动物。实验目的是试图比较它们对不同空间构型的辨别和概括能力。首先训练它们辨别一对组成成份相同但其空间排列不同的构型。然后用其它排列变化的刺激测验它们。共使用了三个系列的刺激物,即不同颜色、不同形状、不同大小组。结果表明恒河猴能对不同的空间构型进行概括但鸽子仅能依靠局部线索进行反应。并且,刺激物的形状和大小因素的相互作用对作业有显著影响,其它因素均无影响。     

机器理解古汉语的初步探索

本文介绍一个理解古汉语的计算机系统——SUACH。实验材料是两个古汉语的小故事。该系统对课文进行句法和语义分析,并把它译成现代汉语。系统也能回答某些词在不同上下文中的句法功能和意义。 汉语与西方语言不同。前者没有词形变化。人们不能根据词的形态来判定一个名词的格或一个动词的时态。汉语语法也不能很好地解释这一点。文中提出和讨论了一些计算机理解古汉语的临时规则。     

北京地区儿童内外倾向人格特征的研究

本研究使用艾森克人格问卷(少年),测试在校儿童370人,发现:男孩的外倾性和倔强性高于女孩,而女孩的情绪性和掩饰高于男孩;儿童的情绪性、外倾性和倔强性都有随年龄而增加的趋势,自身隐蔽和掩饰则随年龄减少;从量表统一关系分析:精神质低的儿童较多,精神质和神经质都低的也多;与前人文献相比,现在男孩的冒险性和女孩的社会活跃性较为明显。