Bauman and Kropf (1979) surveyed assessment professionals who were working with persons with visual impairments (that is, those who were blind or had low vision) to quantify their use of and satisfaction with measures of, among other things, cognitive ability. Their survey revealed the dominance of the Wechsler scales and some ambivalence associated with the use of existing tests, thus pointing to the need to "develop something better" (p. 261). From their data, Bauman and Kropf concluded that "[assessors] are trying everything and satisfied with almost nothing. Research is needed!" (p. 261). This article reports on a study that was a limited replication of Bauman and Kropf's study, to determine whether and to what extent the situation has improved.Current assessment practice demands both dynamic and psychometric approaches, with norm-referenced tests requiring adequate representation of the demographic and sensory characteristics of the examinee in the norming sample (Bradley-Johnson, 1994;Bradley-Johnson & Ekstrom, 1999). These demands are empirically founded. Performance on nonverbal cognitive tasks differs as a function of visual status and history (

Nonverbal/spatial tests are unavailable for persons with visual impairments, despite decades of documented need and developmental effort. Because past tactile analogs of block design (BD) tests have not been widely accepted, known BD test parameters were compared across visual and tactile designs to assess the applicability of the test across modalities. Contrary to expectations, edge-cueing of designs with no perceptual cohesiveness (PC) improved tactile and visual performance. The expected PC by cueing and field independence (FI) by PC interactions were found for visual, but not tactile, BD. Uncued tactile designs elicited more errors, tending to occur closer to the center of the designs. These data suggest that visual and tactile BD performance cannot be interpreted similarly. Differences may be due to to modality-specific demand for various encoding and recoding abilities. The standing model is expanded to account for cross-modality differences in BD performance by including both rotation and block segregation.

Three-dimensional haptic matrices were pilot-tested as a nonvisual measure of cognitive ability. The results indicated that they correlated with convergent measures, with emphasis on spatial processing and that the participants who described items “visually” completed them more quickly and accurately and tended to have become visually impaired more recently than the other participants.

On the basis of previous research on self‐construals, the theory of reasoned action, and persuasive communication, the authors hypothesized that individual, behavioral‐focused information would be more effective in increasing help‐seeking intention among college students in the United States, whereas relational, normative‐focused information would be more effective among college students in Thailand. Results partially supported these predictions, suggesting that different information can enhance help‐seeking intention across cultures. En la investigación previa en el auto‐construals, la teoría de la acción razonada, y de comunicación persuasiva, los autores formaron una hipótesis que el individuo, la información enfocado‐conductista sería más efectiva en aumentar la intención de buscar ayuda entre estudiantes colegiales en los Estados Unidos, mientras que la información relacional y enfocado‐normativo sería más efectiva entre estudiantes colegiales en Tailandia. Los resultados sostuvieron parcialmente estas predicciones, sugiriendo que la información diferente puede aumentar la intención de la busca de ayuda a través de culturas.

The authors investigated ethnicity, self‐construal, and distress among African American and Asian American college students. African American students expressed more salient independent self‐construals, whereas Asian American students expressed more salient interdependent self‐construals. As hypothesized, among African American participants, distress was positively related to interdependent self‐construal and negatively associated with independent self‐construal. Contrary to prediction, the same pattern was found for Asian American participants. Multicultural clinical practice implications are presented.