Comparability of the WISC and the WISC-R in normal children of divergent socioeconomic backgrounds

WISC and WISC-R IQs of two groups of normal ten-year-old children from divergent socioeconomic backgrounds (N = 36) were compared in a counterbalanced research design. Generally, all WISC mean IQs were higher than the WISC-R mean IQs for both groups of children. Significantly higher WISC IQs were obtained on the Verbal and Full Scales of the low socioeconomic group and on the Performance and Full Scales of the high socioeconomic group. Correlations between tests for Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale IQs were.95,.79, and.91 for the low socioeconomic group, and.84,.57, and.87 for the high socioeconomic group. Although practice effects did not appear to significantly affect IQs of the low socioeconomic group, various practice effects were observed in the high socioeconomic group. Negative effects were observed for both WISC and WISC-R on the Verbal Scale, whereas positive effects were observed on both Performance and Full Scales in this group. Analysis of simple effects reveals that WISC and WISC-R IQs did not differ significantly upon first administration, but were significantly different upon second administration. Conclusions were drawn that while WISC-R yields a lower IQ estimate than WISC for children of lower ability, results were not so clear for the children of higher ability, due to practice effects which disproportionately favor increases on WISC IQs upon second administration. The greater practice effects found on the WISC have implications for comparisons of the two tests in counterbalanced research designs. Simple randomized or treatment-by-levels design may be more useful in comparisons of the WISC and the WISC-R because of the bias introduced by counterbalanced designs.     

Predicting student self-concept,anxiety, and responsibility from self-evaluation and self-praise

Nineteen elementary teachers were observed for the frequency with which they modeled self-praise for their students and taught their students to praise and evaluate themselves. Measures of student self-concept, anxiety, and achievement responsibility were taken at the end of the year. It was found that teacher modeling of self-praise correlated negatively with boys' selfconcept and positively with girls'. Teacher encouragement of students to praise other students correlated positively with boys' anxiety and negatively with girls'. Teacher modeling of self-praise and teacher encouragement of students to praise other students were the best predictors of self-concept.     

Examiner scoring of ambiguous WISC-R responses

Fabricated test protocols were used to study how effectively examiners agree in scoring ambiguous WISC-R responses. Clinical and school psychologists (N = 62) and graduate students (N = 48) scored WISC-R Similarities, Comprehension, and Vocabulary responses obtained in a group administration procedure. From over 15,000 responses obtained, only unusual, atypical, or ambiguous responses were selected; 726 responses were scored, with 11 groups of 10 raters each scoring 66 responses. Considerable scoring disagreement occurred. Unanimous agreement (within each group of 10 raters) was found on only 13% of the responses, while 80% of the raters agreed on 44% of the responses. Rates of scoring agreement were not related to level of rater experience, but were related to specific subtests. Higher rates of agreement were found on the Similarities and Comprehension subtests than on the Vocabulary subtest for both experienced and inexperienced raters. The results suggest that even with the improved WISC-R manual, scoring remains a difficult and challenging task.     

Biculturalism and self-construal

Evidence on the dimensionality of self-construal points to the coexistence of both an independent and an interdependent self-image. Drawing on conceptualizations of the acculturation process, this study is a preliminary examination of the distinctiveness of four hypothesized self-construal patterns: Bicultural, Western, Traditional, and Culturally-alienated. Different types of individuals, having experienced varying amounts of cultural contact and having made different choices in adjusting to cultural groups, might portray distinctive self-construal patterns. Especially intriguing was the notion that those with a well developed sense of interdependence and a well developed sense of independence could be described as bicultural. To test this, persons from four a priori identified groups were selected to represent the four patterns of self-construal. We predicted that on a measure of self-construal, the mean scores of the respondents in the four groups would differ in strength with the bicultural experience group, in particular, exhibiting both a high independent and a high interdependent score on a measure of self-construals. Our hypotheses were supported. In terms of independent self-construal, the Bicultural and Western groups scored significantly higher than the Traditional and Alienated groups. For the interdependent self-construal, the Traditional and Bicultural groups scored significantly higher than the Western and Alienated groups. The bicultural group was the only group to score significantly higher on both types of construals. The availability of both types of self-construal would likely facilitate communication and adaptive behaviors for persons interacting in multiple cultures.