The Cultural Adaptation of the Youth Quality of Life Instrument-Research Version for Latino Children and Adolescents

We reviewed the Spanish translation of the Youth Quality of Life Instrument-Research Version (YQOL-R) and culturally adapted the measure with Puerto Rican and Mexican American children and adolescents. The YQOL-R is a self-reported measure that includes four domains: Sense of Self, Social Relationships, Environment, and General Quality of Life. A total of 10 focus groups were conducted with children aged 9 to 11, adolescents aged 12 to 17, their parents, and mental health providers. Five focus groups were conducted in San Diego, California and five in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Eligible participants were recruited from children’s outpatient psychiatry clinics. We followed an iterative and recursive process in reviewing changes and modifications to the instrument using a bilingual committee and a Multi National Bilingual Committee. Greater semantic, content, and technical equivalence of the Spanish and English versions for the YQOL-R was achieved for the two largest U.S. Latino subgroups: Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans. The cultural adaptation process revealed several important issues regarding the measurement of quality of life in different age groups. Additional items for school, relationships (both family and friends) and spare time suggested the need for a future children’s version of the instrument. For the adolescents, additional items were suggested in the areas of sexuality, intergenerational conflict and acculturative stress.     

Enabling Interactive Exploration of Cultural Heritage: An Experience of Designing Systems for Mobile Devices

Interaction design of mobile systems is a complex activity because it requires considering new usability and user experience aspects in order to exploit the peculiar characteristics of mobile devices, such as their pervasive and ubiquitous nature. This paper discusses issues about designing, developing and evaluating mobile systems. Italy has a rich cultural heritage, and the focus in this study is on the design of systems that enable interactive exploration of historical sites, not only for enhancing the user experience but also for learning purposes. The experience of the researchers at the Interaction, Visualisation and Usability lab, University of Bari, Italy, in designing a mobile learning system, called Explore!, which supports young students learning ancient history during a visit to archaeological parks, is reported. The evaluation of Explore! through systematic field studies shows that the adopted approach is able to transform the visit to archaeological parks into a more complete and culturally rich experience.     

Person-organization fit: Testing socialization and attraction-selection-attrition hypotheses

Using the socialization and attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) frameworks, this study examined the relation between employees’ work values and their organization’s values (person-organization fit). With a two year time interval, 140 respondents participated in a longitudinal study. After entry, socialization served to enhance homogeneity. The work values underwent small changes and the perception of fit with the organization grew. Despite high retention rates results confirmed the attrition effect. Results indicated that the lower the perceived match between own and organizational values at entry, the more likely it was that someone left the organization over time. We concluded that socialization as well as attrition mechanisms were present at the same time.     

Thresholds for color discrimination in English and Korean speakers

Categorical perception (CP) is said to occur when a continuum of equally spaced physical changes is perceived as unequally spaced as a function of category membership (Harnad, S. (Ed.) (1987). Psychophysical and cognitive aspects of categorical perception: A critical overview. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A common suggestion is that CP for color arises because perception is qualitatively distorted when we learn to categorize a dimension. Contrary to this view, we here report that English speakers show no evidence of lowered discrimination thresholds at the boundaries between blue and green categories even though CP is found at these boundaries in a supra-threshold task. Furthermore, there is no evidence of different discrimination thresholds between individuals from two language groups (English and Korean) who use different color terminology in the blue-green region and have different supra-threshold boundaries. Our participants’ just noticeable difference (JND) thresholds suggest that they retain a smooth continuum of perceptual space that is not warped by stretching at category boundaries or by within-category compression. At least for the domain of color, categorical perception appears to be a categorical, but not a perceptual phenomenon.     

Family Focused Treatment for Patients with Bipolar Disorder in Turkey: A Case Series

Family-focused therapy (FFT) is a 9-month, 21-session structured psychoeducational treatment for bipolar disorder. Several US-based studies have documented its efficacy as adjunctive to medication for depression stabilization and relapse prevention. However, FFT has never been applied outside of the United States. The objective of this case series is to explore the applicability of FFT in a non-Western culture. Ten patients with bipolar disorder and their family members attended the 9-month FFT as adjunctive to pharmacotherapy in an outpatient specialty clinic in Izmir, Turkey. Patients improved in Global Assessment of Functioning Scores and Clinical Global Impression Scores from pre- to posttreatment. Case studies are given, which illustrate the differences between Western and non-Western families coping with bipolar disorder. FFT was easily applied to a Turkish sample with few changes in format or focus. Adaptations included substitution of oral for written therapeutic tasks or homework assignments. Randomized controlled trials are needed to test the clinical effectiveness of FFT and other psychosocial interventions in non-Western cultures.     

Cultural chameleons and iconoclasts: Assimilation and reactance to cultural cues in biculturals’ expressed personalities as a function of identity conflict

Bicultural individuals vary in the degree to which their two cultural identities are integrated versus conflicting—Bicultural Identity Integration (BII). Past research on attribution biases finds that BII influences the way that biculturals shift in response to cultural primes: integrated biculturals shift assimilatively, whereas conflicted biculturals shift contrastively. Proposing that this reflects assimilation versus reactance responses, we tested whether it extends to shifts in self-perceived personality. In two experiments with Asian-American participants, we found that BII influences the direction of cultural priming effects (assimilation versus contrast) on the personality dimensions of need for uniqueness (Experiment 1) and extraversion (Experiment 2). As hypothesized, high BIIs shifted in a culturally assimilative direction, perceiving the self as more uniqueness-seeking and extraverted following American versus Asian priming, whereas low BIIs shifted in the reverse direction. Implications for research on bicultural identity, priming, personality, organizational and consumer behavior are discussed.     

The Nestor effect: Extending evolutionary developmental psychology to a lifespan perspective

We extend an evolutionary perspective of development to the lifespan, proposing that human longevity may be related to the experience, knowledge, and wisdom provided by older members of human groups. In addition to the assistance in childcare provided by grandmothers to their daughters, the experience of wise elders could have served to benefit kin as well as members of the immediate group, and thus been the target of natural selection. We refer to the fitness-enhancing effect of cumulative and integrative knowledge of some members of a group as the Nestor effect, after the oldest member of the group of Greek kings in the siege of Troy. Furthermore, we argue that the contributions of such Nestors resulted in cultural innovations that in turn may have promoted care and respect for the elderly. This bidirectional effect makes culture both the product and producer of longevity.     

Toward an intersectional understanding of violence and resilience: An exploratory study of young Southeast Asian men in Alameda and Contra Costa County, California

There is a nascent, but growing, literature on Southeast Asian youth violence that focuses on the role of acculturation, portraying violence as a problem of maladaptation. However, scholars overlook the ways in which violence holds meaning for the youth who experience it and how violence may be related to racial and gender identity formation. We conducted a qualitative study with young Southeast Asian men to elicit the role violence plays in their understanding of what it means for them to be Southeast Asian and male. We conducted focus groups and semi-structured individual interviews with an ethnically diverse group of 21 young Southeast Asian men 13–17 years of age from Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, California. Data were analyzed using the extended case method approach. Our findings illustrate that violence and engagement with community-based organizations are situational tools that these young Southeast Asian men use to navigate their social contexts in an attempt to be resilient in ecological contexts marked by alienation and discrimination, as well as to construct accepted and successful racial and gender identities. Furthermore, we found that their actions were guided by gendered codes of conduct, such as a “code of the street.”     

“We Never was Happy Living Like a Whiteman” : Mental Health Disparities and the Postcolonial Predicament in American Indian Communities

In the context of increasing attention to disparities in health status between U.S. ethnoracial groups, this article examines the dilemma of divergent cultural practices for redressing disparities in mental health status in American Indian communities. Drawing upon an ethnographic interview with a tribal elder from a northern Plains Indian reservation, a prototypical discourse of distress is presented and analyzed as one exemplar of the divergence between the culture of the clinic and the culture of the community. Situated in the context of continuing power asymmetries between tribal nations and the U.S. federal government, the implications of this cultural divergence for the efforts of mental health professionals, practitioners, and policymakers are identified as a predicament that only the conventions and commitments of a robust community psychology have the potential to resolve.     

Effects of relational uncertainty in heightening national identification and reactive approach motivation of Japanese

This study investigated whether relational uncertainty poses uncertainty threat, which causes compensatory behaviours among Japanese. We hypothesised that Japanese, as collectivists, would perceive relational uncertainty to pose uncertainty threat. In two experiments, we manipulated relational uncertainty, and confirmed that participants exhibited compensatory reactions to reduce aversive feelings due to it. In Study 1, we conducted direct comparison between relational uncertainty, independent self‐uncertainty and control conditions. The results revealed that participants who were instructed to imagine events pertaining to relational uncertainty heightened national identification as compensation than did participants in the control condition, but independent self‐uncertainty did not provoke such effects. In Study 2, we again manipulated relational uncertainty; however, we also manipulated participants' individualism‐collectivism cultural orientation through priming, and the analyses yielded a significant interaction effect between these variables. Relational uncertainty evoked reactive approach motivation, a cause for compensatory behaviours, among participants primed with collectivism, but not for individualism. It was concluded that the effect of uncertainty on compensatory behaviour is influenced by cultural priming, and that relational uncertainty is important to Japanese.