Bulletin Number Two 1982

Intelligence is an important and controversial topic in contemporary Psychology. Are standardized assessment procedures developed in the West, such as the test item shown in the picture, valid and relevant cross-culturally? Dr. M. Bond is also interested in cross-cultural studies and has put forward his findings in social concepts like ‘equity East and West', the self- concept of the Chinese, and ethnic affirmation. Industrial and management Psychology research is another area in which Dr. Ting is interested. She studies how the cultural and social factors in Hong Kong and other Asian cities affect motivation and management patterns. More basic experimental researches are carried out by Dr. K. L. Kong. He studies grasshopper's spectral sensitivity, wavelength discrimination and light adaptation. Dr. Kong is also conducting a research on automation speech recognition. By using electronic pathway to simulate the brain structure of speech recognition, he has established a new research model. Although the research is still at an early stage, it holds promises of high theoretical and practical values. In Professor I. M. Liu's numerous researches, we can see an emphasis on the study of language, learning and thinking. As a more detailed account of his research interest is available in his Profile, I won't elaborate on them here. Our new colleague, Dr. P. Cheng, engages herself in studying perception ，l earning and reasoning. Integrality and separability in perception, mistakes often committed in the process of cognitive reasoning and their corrective measures are some of the areas she is particularly interested in. So you see, our staff do have a wide spectrum of research interests. A Wide Range of Career Possibilities Q. Can a collective profile be delineated of our students? A. We cannot draw a very distinct profile for minor students because of the limited number of courses they take. The number of students minoring in Psychology approached three hundred during each of the past few years. Quite a few of them had wanted to major in Psychology, but we were unable to offer a major programme then. Our minor students were mostly in the Social Science Faculty majoring in Social Work or Sociology. Besides them, we also draw heavily from the English Department in the Arts Faculty, and the Biology Departmen t in Science. In the Faculty of Business Administration, over thirty students came to our minor programme last year. This year, most of our seventeen potential majors studied science subjects in secondary school. They scored very good results in the matriculation examination. Q. Why do students take Psychology? What are the attractions? A. Psychology is in itself a very interestin g discipline. It is in many ways related to questions we ask in our daily life. Students take Psychology because they want to understand behaviour, human beings, and especially themselves. Their main interest initially centres around problems related to what they see and feel everyday. That's what we gather from our interviews with students. After getting to know the various basic processes and methods of investigation, their interest in the subject generally begin to broaden. And for students who get involved in our staffs researches, the subject becomes even more interesting to them. Q. Are there any special requirements for students who wish to take Psychology? A. As a department in the Social Scienc e Faculty, we follow the entry requirements of the Faculty and select students on the basis of their interest and aptitude. As an undergraduate programme, we support the basic philosophy of a liberal education. What we are aiming at in our major programme is to help student s develop powers of systematic, empirical, and rational analysis and judgment, and apply in life what they have learnt. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS 11