Children's reasoning about the causes of human behavior

Three studies examined young children's ability to predict how certain internal and external conditions affect behavior. Study 1 included 136 children from early preschool, late preschool, kindergarten, and second grade. A forced choice procedure revealed that even the youngest group could predict the effect of various internal-personal causes (e.g., interest, intelligence) and external-situational causes (e.g., rewards, adult pressure). Older preschoolers and second graders considered these internal causes more powerful than these external causes. With the same procedure, in Study 2 the 16 preschoolers predicted that both physical characteristics (e.g., strength, energy level) and the internal-personal characteristics of Study 1 affect performance in athletic activities. In addition, they considered the physical causes more important. Study 3 examined more complex types of causal reasoning. Younger preschoolers responded randomly but older preschoolers combined two causes to create a greater effect than one cause and used an external cause to enhance, rather than discount, an internal cause. The discussion focused on the cognitive development underlying developmental differences in the ability to predict behavior on the basis of one or two causes.     

An examination of the Fishbein-Ajzen behavioral-intentions model's concepts and measures

The Fishbein-Ajzen behavioral-intentions model is designed to represent the effect of attitudes and subjective norms on behavioral intentions. The model has been used in a variety of contexts, and evidence for its validity flows largely from its generally good performance in predicting behavioral intentions. However, the manner in which these concepts are defined and operationalized appears to make it inappropriate for those seeking to distinguish between personal and normative reasons for engaging in a behavior. Additional problems were found in the hypothesized relationship between the more global normative construct and its underlying components.     

Hemispheric function and linguistic skill in the deaf

The nature of hemispheric processing in the prelingually deaf was examined in a picture-letter matching task. It was hypothesized that linguistic competence in the deaf would be associated with normal or near-normal laterality (i.e., a left hemisphere advantage for analytic linguistic tasks). Subjects were shown a simple picture of a common object (e.g., lamp), followed by brief unilateral presentation of a manually signed or orthographic letter, and they had to indicate as quickly as possible whether the letter was present in the spelling of the object's label. While hearing subjects showed a marked left hemisphere advantage, no such superiority was found for either a linguistically skilled or unskilled group of deaf students. In the skilled group, however, there was a suggestion of a right hemisphere advantage for manually signed letters. It was concluded that while hemispheric asymmetry of function does not develop normally in the deaf, the absence of this normal pattern does not preclude the development of the analytic skills needed to deal with the structure of language.     

Socially mediated fear reduction in rodents: Distraction,communication, or mere presence?

Two studies investigated why the presence of conspecifics reduces open-field fear. In Experiment 1 rats paired with another experimentally naive rat were not less fearful than alone controls. However, rats paired with a partner who had been preexposed to the open field exhibited fewer fear responses than alone controls. Since preexposed companions appeared to initiate more social interactions than nonpreexposed companions, it was argued that the preexposure effect could be the result of preexposed companions distracting actor rats from threatening stimuli. Experiment 2 tested this explanation by pairing socially sated or socially deprived rats with a socially sated or socially deprived companion. In accord with a distraction hypothesis, pairing two socially deprived rats produced the greatest fear reduction effects and also led to more social interaction than pairing socially sated rats. Alternative explanations involving conditioning and communication are discussed.     

Divergent influences of private and public self-consciousness in a compliance paradigm

A study was conducted to test the reasoning that two types of dispositional self-consciousness would be associated with two different influences on compliance behavior. The study utilized a paradigm in which subjects are induced to make incorrect responses on a perceptual task by means of simulated group pressure. Based upon results of previous research, the following predictions were made: that private self-consciousness—the disposition to be conscious of one's thoughts, feeling, and covert self-aspects—would be inversely correlated with compliance; and that public self-consciousness—the disposition to be conscious of one's social self-aspects—would be positively correlated with compliance. The data from the study provided support for both of these predictions. Discussion centers on the theoretical implications of these findings.     

A disconfirmation of the quantitative identity-quantitative equivalence sequence

Sixty-four kindergarten children received tests of quantitative identity and quantitative equivalence for the conservations of number and continuous quantity. Two types of identity trials were included: a standard version using a single stimulus, and a modified version which paralleled the equivalence task in its use of two stimuli. In addition, half of the children were asked two questions on each trial (one preceding and one following the transformation), whereas half were asked only the post-transformation question. Neither the number of stimuli used nor the number of questions asked had any effect on performance. In contrast to some previous reports, tests of quantitative identity were no easier than tests of quantitative equivalence. It was concluded that the identity-equivalence décalage, if it exists at all, is less important than previous authors have claimed.     

On the ethics of psychological research

Three philosophical positions on the nature of ethics were examined and contrasted within the context of psychological research: (a) teleology, which involves the balancing of the costs and benefits associated with an action as a means of developing general ethical rules; (b) deontology, which involves the rational adherence to rigid, universal rules that hold irrespective of the situation or consequences; and (c) skepticism, which involves denying the ability to apply universal rules and asserting the individuality of moral codes. Two experiments investigated the degree to which judgments of the ethicality of psychological research are affected by the consequences of the research and judge's ethical ideology. Subjects judged experiments that investigated obedience to an authority as generally less moral and more threatening to the participants' dignity and welfare when the proportion of total obedience was high rather than low. The proportion of participants (10 vs 40%) who were described as “psychologically upset” by the research did not affect moral judgments. These results were obtained across two different obedience situations (Milgram's study and a Watergate study) and different subject populations (high school and college students, males and females). As suggested by philosophers, a judge's ethical ideology determined how the perceived benefits and costs of the research were correlated with moral judgments. Teleologists weighed scientific benefits heavily, deontologists weighed participants' costs heavily, and skeptics weighed both heavily.     

Children's and adults' integration of information about noise and interest levels in their judgments about learning

This study examined developmental changes in the understanding of distractibility. It focused on how information about both interest level and noise level are used to form judgments of how many items a hypothetical child would learn. A total of 112 subjects from grades K, 2, and 5 and college age used a rating scale to judge the amount of learning in situations generated by a factorial combining of three levels of interest and three levels of surrounding noise. Children at all ages, even kindergarteners, used both noise and interest information in making their judgments. Interest level influenced judgments much more than noise level at all ages, but this imbalance waned somewhat with increasing age. The rules for combining noise and interest were more complex at the older ages. The discussion focused on interpretations of the subjects' belief that interest level heavily influences attentiveness.     

Social insulation, self-complexity, and social attraction: A theory chain

In a theory chain extending Byrne's theory of social attraction, links are described between breadth of social interaction and complexity of the self-concept as well as between complexity of the self-concept and social attraction. In the first series of studies, it was shown that communication-handicapped adolescents and physically handicapped children, as well as terminally ill patients, indicate lower self-complexity. In a second series of studies, it was found that persons with more complex self-concepts identify more closely with others, perceive themselves as more similar to objectively dissimilar others, and are more popular sociometrically.     

Interpersonal congruency,attitude similarity,and interpersonal attraction

To examine relationships among interpersonal congruency, attitude similarity, and interpersonal attraction, the present study required pairs of subject to rate their attraction to each other in response to two proportions of similar attitudes orthogonally varied with two treatments of interpersonal congruency. Findings showed that attitude similarity determined attraction when congruency was uncontrolled, but that similarity and attraction were unrelated within the two congruency treatments. Additional correlational analyses suggest that different judgments of the accuracy of other's perceptions of oneself accompany previous findings on attitude similarity and attraction, and it is proposed that interpersonal attraction may be understood in terms of stabilizing processes postulated by the theory of interpersonal congruency.     

Recognition and discrimination of emotional faces and pictures

In order to learn whether patients with right-hemisphere disease (RHD) had a deficit in their ability to discriminate and comprehend emotional faces and pictures, we studied nine patients with RHD, nine patients with left-hemisphere disease (LHD), and nine controls. The subjects were presented with six picture tests that comprised either emotional faces or emotional scenes. Their task was either to denote (name or choose) an emotion or to discriminate (same, different) between two faces or emotions. Patients with RHD performed significantly worse than subjects with LHD when asked to discriminate between faces, to discriminate between emotional faces, and to name emotional scenes. There was also a trend for the RHD group to be more impaired than the LHD group when asked to name the emotional face or choose the emotional face. Except for the facial and emotional discrimination tests, the LHD patients also performed worse than controls.     

Let's pretend: The role of motoric imagery in memory for sentences and words

A number of theories suggest that for young children, concepts should have an important motoric (or sensory-motor) component. A levels-of-processing theory is proposed which predicts that processing on motoric imagery should facilitate memory for both isolated words and for sentences. Experiment 1 examined the effects of motoric enactment (viz., pretend play) of sentences on memory for the sentences. Motoric imagery facilitated memory for both children (5 to 7 years of age) and adults, though, contrary to expectations, the effects were weaker for the children than for the adults. Further, it was found that motoric imagery affected the initial acquisition, but was not important as a retreival cue. Experiment 2 examined the effects of motoric imagery on free recall of lists of unrelated words. Under these conditions, motoric imagery facilitated memory for both children (7 to 9 years of age) and adults equally; in contrast, visual imagery instructions had no effect on memory. These results indicate that motoric imagery may facilitate memory under conditions in which visual imagery has no effect. Theoretical implications are explored for previous experiments on pretend play which suggest that training for pretent enactment can facilitate cognitive development.     

Relative efficacy of different encoding structures and judgment topics in a cued-recall task

Existing research on the relative efficacy of the self as an encoding structure applies more to the self as an object than as a cognitive structure that guides the organization of incoming information. In order to provide a task that would be more directly relevant to encoding, subjects were asked to watch an interview of a resident assistant (RA) candidate by the housing department and to attend throughout to how similar the candidate's presentation was to the one they themselves or a typical RA would have given in the situation. Furthermore, judgments of similarity were divided into personality, ability, and nonverbal style. The dependent variable was a surprise cued-recall task, administered 20 min after the videotaped interview had ended. Consistent with prediction, subjects instructed to encode from a self-perspective exhibited better recall than those instructed to encode from a typical RA perspective. Also, as predicted, subjects who judged personality or ability similarity recalled more of the interview than those who judged nonverbal style similarity. Enhanced recall from the self-encoding perspective was consistent across all three types of judgments (personality, ability, nonverbal style), suggesting that the self is an efficient processing structure across a variety of diverse judgment topics.     

Cardiac orienting responses of 6- and 16-week-old infants

Since previous data suggested that the magnitude of orienting evidenced by cardiac deceleration increased over the first 16 weeks of life, 6- and 16-week-old infants were compared on various characteristics of orienting: habituation, dishabituation, and magnitude of deceleration to stimulus offset as well as to stimulus onset. Neither the change in stimulus following habituation trials nor the stimulus offset produced a large enough response to confidently evaluate age differences suggested by the data. Stimulus onset elicited a pronounced deceleration which for the two age groups was of equivalent magnitude on initial trials and declined similarly with stimulus repetition. It was suggested that similarity of the two age groups on these parameters was due to control of state within a narrow alert range, and that, in general, younger infants are less likely than older infants to show orienting when conditions for orienting are marginal.     

Impact of adults' appeals for sharing on the development of altruistic dispositions in children

Third- and fourth-grade boys and girls (mean age 7 years, 10 months) were directly instructed to share half their winnings from a bowling game under one of three types of verbal appeal: a power assertive appeal emphasizing punitive consequences for noncompliance, an inductive appeal emphasizing the child's potential contribution to the well being of another person, or a neutral appeal. While they complied with this request, half the children were monitored by television camera; the other half were not. A measure of generalized sharing (noninstructed sharing under anonymous conditions) was then collected. It was predicted that generalized sharing would be greater for children who had heard the inductive appeal than for children who had heard the power assertive appeal and would be greater for children who had shared without television surveillance than for children who had shared under survellance. As predicted, generalized sharing was highest among children who had received the inductive appeal. However, prior surveillance depressed noninstructed sharing only for girls who had received the power assertive appeal. There was one additional and unexpected finding: when children were asked to reinforce themselves for having shared in the instructed sharing phase, boys who had shared in compliance with a power assertive appeal indulged themselves more than children in any other condition.     

Individualized learning environments: Intra- and interpersonal consequences

This study examines the effects of individual goal structures on the intra- and interpersonal behavior of 120 fourth-grade children. Each group of four children was introduced to one of two individualized learning programs: (a) workbook materials color-coded according to level of difficulty (allowing implicit comparisons among children as to progress), and (b) materials not coded according to difficulty (discouraging comparisons). In both learning programs, children worked individually (at story writing) and were rewarded for the work. Results indicate that boys, but not girls, who were rewarded equally for doing good work in an individualized setting but who start and end at a lower step than other more frequently took away a toy from those peers with whom they compared themselves than did boys who were rewarded equally for good work and where there were no comparisons. Boys as a group, regardles of condition, gave more prize tickets to themselves than to others and gave more prize tickets to themselves than girls gave either to themselves or others. Both boys and girls appear to adopt the evaluations of their work given by the experimenter and appear to be influenced thereby in later prized-giving to themselves and to others.     

An empirical investigation of self-esteem as a composite construct

Three measures of chronic self-esteem, plus four measures developed to assess situational components of self-esteem (task-specific self-esteem and social self-esteem), were administered to 238 undergraduates at a large, urban university and a community college in the southeastern United States. Evidence for a composite construct of self-esteem was found. Results also indicate task-specific self-esteem correlates as high as .42 (p < .01) with chronic self-esteem and as high as .76 (p < .01) with social self-esteem. Task-specific self-esteem was found to be a better predictor of grade point average than chronic or social self-esteem. Suggestions are made for further research on the situational components of self-esteem to extend current findings.