Improving adolescents' standardized test performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat

Standardized tests continue to generate gender and race gaps in achievement despite decades of national attention. Research on “stereotype threat” (Steele & Aronson, 1995) suggests that these gaps may be partly due to stereotypes that impugn the math abilities of females and the intellectual abilities of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students. A field experiment was performed to test methods of helping female, minority, and low-income adolescents overcome the anxiety-inducing effects of stereotype threat and, consequently, improve their standardized test scores. Specifically, seventh-grade students in the experimental conditions were mentored by college students who encouraged them either to view intelligence as malleable or to attribute academic difficulties in the seventh grade to the novelty of the educational setting. Results showed that females in both experimental conditions earned significantly higher math standardized test scores than females in the control condition. Similarly, the students—who were largely minority and low-income adolescents—in the experimental conditions earned significantly higher reading standardized test scores than students in the control condition.     

管理胜任特征与工作绩效关系研究

本研究以情景评价为基础,对管理胜任特征与工作绩效间的关系进行了探讨。结果表明：管理胜任特征在职位层次和性别上存在显著差异;管理胜任特征指标对工作绩效维度的预测效应不同,关系胜任特征是人际促进和工作奉献的有效预测指标,问题解决特征主要对任务绩效和人际促进有预测力．而诚信责任特征则更多的影响管理者的工作奉献。研究为理解管理胜任特征与绩效间的关系提供了实证支持。     

The effects on the predictive variance of a new subject’s score for a new test

Abstract: It is often required to predict the scores or their variations under interest. Ishii and Watanabe (2001) investigated, in the context of psychological measurement, the Bayesian predictive distribution of a new subject’s scores for tests and subjects’ scores for a new test. In this paper, the Bayesian posterior predictive distribution of a new subject’s scores for a new parallel test were considered. And the effects of the number of subjects, the number of the tests, and the test reliability were investigated. Then, it was found that, under assumptions that (co)variance parameters are known, the predictive variance of a new subject’s score for a new test was equal to the predictive variances of the new subject’s scores for the existent tests. It was also found that the effect of the number of subjects was relatively large and the effect of the number of tests was relatively small, when a new subject’s scores for existent tests were not observed.     

Identifying a Reordering of Rows and Columns for Multiple Proximity Matrices Using Multiobjective Programming

This paper is concerned with a problem where K (n×n) proximity matrices are available for a set of n objects. The goal is to identify a single permutation of the n objects that provides an adequate structural fit, as measured by an appropriate index, for each of the K matrices. A multiobjective programming approach for this problem, which seeks to optimize a weighted function of the K indices, is proposed, and illustrative examples are provided using a set of proximity matrices from the psychological literature. These examples show that, by solving the multiobjective programming model under different weighting schemes, the quantitative analyst can uncover information about the relationships among the matrices and often identify one or more permutations that provide good to excellent index values for all matrices.     

略论智力测验发展的现状与趋势

智力是心理学的重要研究领域之一,智力测验的发展也有近百年的历史。受智力理论和测验理论发展的影响,当代智力测验的发展呈现出一些新特点和新趋向。     

Testing the significance of the successive components in redundancy analysis

In this paper we study the interrelationships between two sets of data measured on the same subjects via redundancy analysis. We consider redundancy analysis from an inferential point of view. Under the hypothesis of multinormality, tests of significance are obtained for each successive redundancy component so that only the significant factors are retained for prediction purposes. An example illustrates the method. The authors would like to thank the Editor and the referees for their helpful comments. This research has been partly financed by NSERC (Canada).     

幽门螺杆菌诊断方法评价

诊断幽门螺杆菌（Hp）感染有侵入性和非侵入性两类方法。前者需通过胃镜取胃粘膜活检,包括快速尿素酶试验（RUT）、病理组织学检查、细菌培养及基因检测等;非侵入性方法包括尿素呼气试验（UBT）、血清Hp抗体测定及Hp粪便抗原检测等。各种检测方法的敏感性及特异性不一,适用范围也不同,选择合适的检测方法需结合Hp感染特点、检测条件及费用情况等。     

Single landmark learning in rats: Sex differences in a navigation task

In Experiments 1 and 2, rats were trained in a Morris pool to find a hidden platform located some distance away from a single landmark. Males learned to swim to the platform faster than females, but on test trials without the platform, males, unlike females, spent less time in the platform quadrant of the pool in the second half of each test trial than in the first. They also showed greater persistence in searching in the platform quadrant over a series of extinction trials. In Experiments 3a and 3b, the problem was made easier by locating the platform closer to the solitary landmark. Now males and females learned to swim to the platform equally rapidly, and both stopped searching in the platform quadrant in the second half of each test trial. Experiment 4 ruled out the possibility that males´ shorter latencies to find the platform in Experiment 2 were due to their swimming faster than females.     

Studies on antiviolent and “normal” communities

Limited preliminary studies have provided identification of several communities in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, that successfully control major interpersonal violence without formal police and judicial apparatus of the sort customary in industrial societies, even though these antiviolent towns are surrounded by others showing a “normal” level of violence. Because the antiviolent places share biological inheritance, culture, language (Zapotec and Spanish), climate, ecology, poverty, boundary disputes, and abundant use of alcohol with their neighbors, such factors may be discarded as determining either violence or antiviolence. The antiviolent communities do differ from their neighbors, however, in showing a near absence of “machismo,” contrasting practices in child rearing, very few close friendships linking adults of the same sex, and a much stronger social role for women. First results from trials of psychological tests are highly congruent with ethnographic observations.     

An empirical look at the Defence Mechanism Test (DMT) Stimulus effects

Based on a sample of non-clinical subjects (N=74) the study examines the Defence Mechanism Test (DMT) by focusing on when perceptual distortions, called ‘signs of defence’ in DMT terminology, occur (distribution in exposure duration), which part of the picture is involved (distribution in localisation), and which ‘signs’ go together (using correlation and factor analyses). The results disclosed that the occurrence of perceptual distortions (‘signs of defence’) was related to exposure duration (some ‘defences’ are more frequent at brief exposures, some others at longer exposure durations), and to localisation on the picture. The location of misperceptions to the central person (hero) or the peripheral person (pp) of the picture was the major explanatory principle for the distribution of ‘signs’ on factors. Rather than capturing psychodynamic defence mechanisms, which is the theoretical basis of the test, the analyses imply that the DMT seems to measure misperceptions which are a function of the localisation of persons on the stimulus picture and of exposure durations.