Children''s self-initiated approach to spiders

Seventeen school children were invited to stay in the presence of a harmless spider for 4 minutes under instructions which were designed mildly to encourage touching the spider but which left open a clear alternative of not touching. Subjects confronted the spider in dyads which differed in composition in terms of fear-level and sex of subjects. The main finding was that boys did not show any more approach when paired with girls, thus confirming previous negative findings in this regard. Other findings were that boys showed more approach than girls, level of fear interacted with sex of subject, and ‘fearless’ but not ‘fearful’ subjects showed more approach with repeated experience.     

Gender and Sex-Role Influences on Children''s Self-Esteem

This study examined direct and moderating influences of gender and sex-role orientations on children's general self-esteem. Moderating influences of these variables on the prediction of self-esteem were examined with respect to two sets of competence beliefs regarding school achievement: perceived capacities and perceived strategies for doing well in school. One hundred nineteen fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade children were assessed using the Perceived Competence Scale for Children (Harter, 1982), the Multidimensional Measure of Children's Perceptions of Control (Connell, 1985), and the Children's Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Hall & Halberstadt, 1980). Correlational and hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that upper elementary schoolchildren's general self-esteem is (a) marginally related to biological gender, with boys showing a slight advantage; (b) significantly related to masculinity and androgyny; and (c) predicted more strongly by perceived capacities to do schoolwork in girls than in boys, and by perceived (lack of) strategies for academic success in nontraditionally sex-typed children than in traditionally sex-typed children. Of the two nontraditionally sex-typed groups, androgynous children were found to have more positive school competence beliefs than were undifferentiated children.     

Conditional theories

This paper introduces conditional logic, that is, a variant of free logic where the existence condition of a function is defined by a formula of the formal language. Syntax and semantics are developed. A completeness theorem is given.     

Children''s understanding of belief and disconfirming visual evidence

Data from 3- to 5-year-old children show that even the youngest have an understanding that a story character cannot think an object is in a box when the character looks into the empty box. This understanding is, however, limited to the case where children share the same visual perspective with the character. When visual perspectives are different the relevant knowledge develops shortly after 4 years at about the time that children master the false belief task. These results are interpreted as young children using an implicit constraint that “think” cannot be applied in view of disconfirming visual evidence. This implicit knowledge becomes explicit and, thus, perspective independent with some delay.     

学龄前儿童关于图画作者意图的认知发展

通过两可形状图、两可动作图和局限视野图三个实验,考察了3-6岁儿童对图画作者意图与其作品问关系的认知发展.结果表明:3-6岁儿童对图画作者意图的理解能力随年龄增长逐渐提高;儿童的知觉经验、社会经验以及图画作品的知觉信息完整性均影响儿童对图画作者意图的认知.     

Developmental Changes in Children''s Ethnic Preferences and Social Cognitions

An experiment was carried out to examine developmental changes in children's ethnic preferences and social cognitions to assess predictions drawn from sociocognitive theory and social identity theory. Two hundred and seventy Anglo-Australian children participated, with equal numbers of 8-, 10-, and 12-year-old children being drawn from one of three types of school that differed in its level of ethnic mix. The children listened to a story about an in-group Anglo-Australian boy and an out-group Vietnamese boy, each of whom displayed equal numbers of ethnic stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent traits. Each story character also displayed a positive and a negative behaviour. The results revealed that, as they increased in age, the children remembered more of the in-group versus out-group story character's stereotype-inconsistent versus stereotype-consistent traits and that they increasingly disliked the in-group story character, whereas they liked the out-group story character. In addition, the in-group and out-group story characters' negative behaviours were attributed to internal and external causes, respectively, whereas their positive behaviours were attributed to external and internal causes, respectively. The greater support for social identity versus sociocognitive theory revealed by these findings is discussed.     

Taking theories seriously

This paper defends scientific realism, the doctrine that we should interpret theories as being just as ontologically committing as beliefs at the observational level. I examine the character of observation to show that the difference in interpretation suggested by anti-realists is unwarranted. Second, I discuss Wilfrid Sellars' approach to the issue. Finally, I provide a detailed study of recent work by Bas van Fraassen. While van Fraassen's work is the focus of the paper, the conclusions are far broader: That a wide family of anti-realist views (of which van Fraassen's is only one) is problematic and unmotivated and hence to be rejected.     

First-order modal theories

This paper is part of a general programme of developing and investigating particular first-order modal theories. In the paper, a modal theory of propositions is constructed under the assumption that there are genuinely singular propositions, ie. ones that contain individuals as constituents. Various results on decidability, axiomatizability and definability are established.I should like to thank the members of a metaphysics seminar at Irvine, and Peter Woodruff in particular, for several helpful discussions on the topic of this paper.     

Children''s Memory and Source Monitoring of Real-Life and Televised Events

It is theoretically and practically important to know whether children confuse memories of different events to which they have been exposed. In two studies, children aged 4 and 10 years watched two related events; one event was live and the other was a video recording. Half of the children watched a video that was similar to the live event, and the remaining children watched a video that was dissimilar. One week later, children in the similar condition confused the two events more than those in the different condition when freely recalling (Experiments 1 and 2) and in response to focused questions (Experiment 1). The 10-year olds reported more information than the 4-year olds and were more accurate overall, confusing the events less than the 4-year olds. When the events were presented 1 day after each other (Experiment 2), the reports were more inaccurate than when the events were separated by a 2-day interval, but this did not affect the number of times the events were confused. The results suggest that mere exposure to similar events in different media can contaminate memories, and the findings are discussed in relation to children's source monitoring and eyewitness memory.     

Note on excitation theories

Offner's demonstration of the excitation time equivalence, for all currents, of the theories of Hill and Rashevsky is here extended to a more general case which includes both. It is found that any system of this general type may be replaced by an equivalent one of the Rashevsky type, thus effecting considerable simplification in the mathematical detail.The author is indebted to Mr. Alvin Weinberg of the Dept. of Physics, University of Chicago, for verifying the computations.     

Lay theories of rape

This study examined ‘la’ theories of rape and compared them to numerous academic theories. One hundred and thirty subjects-52 male, 78 female-completed two questionnaires, one regarding attitudes/beliefs to rape in general, the other on the possible causes of the crime. Factor analysis revealed five factors in the attitude/belief items: Subjects generally perceived the rape victim as moral, responsible, and unprovoking; the rapist was perceived as a repressed delinquent. Subjects agreed with two of the six explanation factors, seeing rape as resulting from a desire for aggression induced by societal factors. The rapist was believed to be a psychopath. Lay theories did not correspond to any formal academic rape model or explanations. Beliefs about the causes of, and attitudes to rape, correlated highly. Age was the greatest determinant of perspective; older subjects believed more in victim precipitation. Suggestions are made for further research in this comparatively neglected area.