THE INFLUENCE OF INFORMATION AND DAILY CONTACT ON CHILDREN'S ATTITUDES TOWARDS APHASIC CHILDREN

Summary . The influences upon attitudes towards aphasic children were studied when ordinary children (ages 9–14) were given explanations of, and contact with, children with motoric aphasia. Subjects were 191 elementary school pupils. In one group no explanation about aphasia was given, and no contact with aphasic children was maintained. In a second group, an explanation was given but no contact was maintained. In the third group, a special class of aphasic children was incorporated within the ordinary school. As a result, daily contact between the ordinary and the aphasic children was maintained. A questionnaire for measuring attitudes towards aphasic children was built and its test-retest reliability was found to be 0.91 (df=37, P<001). The attitude scores were analysed by analysis of variance. A significant main effect of treatment method was found (F (2, 173) = 5.38, P<005). As hypothesised, the attitudes of children exposed to daily contact were less negative than those of children exposed to explanation only. The attitudes of children who were exposed neither to explanation nor to contact were the most negative. A significant main effect of age was found (F (2, 173)= 10.84, P<001). It was revealed, as hypothesised, that attitudes towards aphasic children were more negative in younger children than older ones, and only the attitudes of the 13- to 14-year-old children were in the positive region. A significant interaction between age and treatment method was also found (F (4, 173) = 3.81, P<005). The contact was found to be most effective with the youngest children. The implications of the findings for the general question of attitude formation in children and for the specific question of aphasic children's rehabilitation were discussed.     

Global self-evaluations and perceived instability of self in early adolescence: A cohort longitudinal study

A cohort longitudinal design with four adjacent cohorts of students ( n = 1689) followed over two years was used to study key issues identified in the research literature on the development of self-evaluations in early adolescence. There was no clear relationship between age/grade and self-evaluations. We found no support for a "stressful periods" hypothesis with respect to self: Possible changes were very gradual and quite small. However, there was a consistent "relative age" effect implying that younger students within a grade had more negative self-evaluations. There were small but consistent sex differences in self-evaluations in favor of the boys; more detailed analyses of very negative self-evaluations suggested that the early adolescent years are the period in which a sex difference in depression related symptomatology begins to emerge. Finally, the usefulness of some kind of effect size measure and advantages and problems associated with a cohort longitudinal design were discussed.     

USING THE UNMATCHED COUNT TECHNIQUE (UCT) TO ESTIMATE BASE RATES FOR SENSITIVE BEHAVIOR

Many areas of personnel research are "sensitive." We provide an empirical assessment of the unmatched count technique (UCT) to determine the base rate for a number of proscribed behaviors for professional auctioneers. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical application of a UCT technique in organizational studies. Advantages of the UCT are discussed including: (a) a more accurate estimate of the base rates for sensitive behavior, (b) absolute anonymity to subjects, (c) "legal immunity" to the researcher, and (d) facilitation of complete disclosure to subjects with no deception.     

Multiculturalism and Rehabilitation Counselor Training: Recommendations for Providing Culturally Appropriate Counseling Services to American Indians With Disabilities

American Indians exhibit health-related problems at younger ages, as compared with the general population. They also have a disproportionate number of deaths related to alcoholism, accidents, homicides, pneumonia, influenza, diabetes mellitus, and tuberculosis as compared with the general population. In terms of mental health, depression and adjustment reactions are common problems, with the suicide rate among American Indian adults being more than twice as high as that for the general population. This article delineates specific steps necessary to successfully recruit and retain American Indians in counselor training programs, proposes a curriculum for training counselors to effectively provide services to American Indians with disabilities, and discusses the responsibility of counselor educators to concern themselves with the “job placement” of their graduates. En comparación con la población engeneral, los indios americanos tienen problemas de salud a edades más jovenes y tienen un número de mortandad deproporcionada debida al alcoholismo, acidentes, homicidios, neumonía, gripe, diabetes mellitus, y tuberculosis. En terminos de salud mental, reaciones a depresión y adaptación son problemas comunes, con la media de suicidios superior al doble de la cifra para la población general. Este artículo delinea medidas específicas que son necesarias para atraer y retener indios americanos en programas de entrenamiento de consejería, propone un programa para entrenar consejeros para el suministro eficaz de servicios a indios americanos incapacitados, y discute la responsabilidad de los educadores de consejeros para implicarlos en la búsqueda de un empleo para sus graduados.     

The Opportunity Structure: Implications for Career Counseling

Traditional career counseling methods are based on the assumption that matching clients' interests, values, abilities, and aptitudes to a suitable occupation will result in opportunities for self-actualization and personal expression. However, vocational psychology tends to neglect a critical extra-individual factor: the nature of the opportunity structure. True career choice may be the experience of only a small proportion of clients. Vocational psychology has focused almost exclusively on individuals to the neglect of social, economic, and political realities.     

The Boring

This article discusses the aesthetic concept of boringness, of which there has been relatively little philosophical discussion, especially along its objective, nonpsychological dimensions. I begin by confronting skepticism about the validity of judgments about boringness and rebut suggestions to the effect that these judgments are inevitably compromised by mistakes or vices of the audience. The article then develops an account focused on certain kinds of reasonable expectations we form in a given aesthetic context. I go on to confront the question of whether boringness is inevitable given the internal imperatives of works of art and illustrate the discussion with Richard Wagner's Ring cycle. Although I focus on art, I conclude by drawing some connections with the boring in everyday life.