Children's judgment and recall of causal connectives: A developmental study of “because,” “so,” and “and”

The present study examined the acceptability judgments and recall performance of children aged 6,9, and 11 years with sentences expressing psychological cause-effect relations. Thirty-two sentences containing because medially, because initially, so, and and were generated from four clause pairs. Both probable and improbable event orders were used. The results indicated that children preferred because to so or and for statements of psychological causality. However, on both tasks, first and third graders frequently failed to attend to the temporal ordering specified by each sentence construction. The younger children also tended to judge all sentences acceptable, suggesting that they were concerned only with the probable association of event pairs, and not with the usual order of the events. Order of mention strategies did not occur in any group, suggesting that they arise only when children cannot make interpretations based on probable order of events. The data also indicated that the recall task is an unreliable index of rules for comprehension and production.This article is based on research conducted by the first author as partial fulfillment of the Ph.D. requirements for the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin.     

“Paramount reality” in Schutz and Gurwitsch

Conclusion Both Schutz and Gurwitsch describe reality as having a manifold character: Schutz speaks of multiple realities and Gurwitsch of orders of existence. Both hold that one realm of reality has a privileged status compared to the others: common everyday experience. However, in spite of this apparent convergence in their views, a closer reading of their various works reveal the important difference in what they understand under common everyday experience.For Schutz, it is the world of social action, characterized by him as paramount reality because of the constitutive processes of the experiences of time, space, sociality and meaning involved in action. For Gurwitsch, the realm of common everyday experience represents the counterpart and the origin of the constructed realm of science: therein lies its status of paramount reality. But what it really refers to is not ordinary experience, as most of his statements suggest, but pre-predicative experience, wherefrom the categories of the natural sciences, namely space and time, originate. Gurwitsch speaks of this pre-predicative experience, which he also calls primordial experience, as being essentially perceptual experience. However, he limits perceptual experience to sensory perception, leaving out the symbolic, social and action-related components of perception and becomes thus inconsistent with his adherence to the dismissal of the constancy hypothesis in his field theory of consciousness. The dismissal of the constancy hypothesis implies the recognition of the appresentational structures involving symbols, action and Others as inherent components of every perception. Schutz disagrees with Gurwitsch's reduction of the life-world Erlebnisse to sensory perception and this issue becomes the core of their debate on the phenomenon of paramount reality.     

Integration,interruption and processing rate in visual backward masking

Summary The identification of a briefly presented test stimulus is impaired when the test stimulus is followed by a masking stimulus consisting of random contours. Two theories have been proposed to account for this effect (backward masking by visual noise). According to interruption theory, the time which is available for test stimulus processing is limited by the onset of the masking stimulus. According to integration theory, test stimulus and masking stimulus are combined in a single percept where the test stimulus is degraded by the contours of the masking stimulus. A review of the methods used to decide between the two theories permits the conclusion that backward masking by visual noise requires a two-factor theory: integration for short (less than about 100 msec) and interruption for long test stimulus-masking stimulus asynchronies. It is shown that evidence for interruption can only be obtained when processing load is used as a converging operation. Finally, some approaches to the measurement of processing rate under backward masking are discussed.

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Zusammenfassung Die Identifizierbarkeit eines tachistoskopisch dargebotenen Testreizes wird durch nachfolgende Exposition eines aus Zufallskonturen bestehenden Maskierreizes beeinträchtigt. Zur Erklärung dieser Maskierung durch visuelles Rauschen wurden zwei Theorien formuliert. Gemäß der Unterbrechungstheorie wird die zur Verarbeitung des Testreizes verfügbare Zeit durch die Darbietung des Maskierreizes verkürzt; gemäß der Integrationstheorie werden Test- und Maskierreiz in eine gemeinsame zentrale Repräsentation verwandelt, in der das Testreizäquivalent von den Maskierreizkonturen überlagert wird und dadurch eine Qualitätsminderung (degradation) erfährt. Die zur Entscheidung zwischen den beiden Theorien verwendeten Methoden werden analysiert, mit dem Ergebnis, daß die Maskierung durch visuelles Rauschen eine Zwei-Faktorentheorie erfordert: Integration für kurze (kleiner als ca. 100 msec) und Unterbrechung für lange Testreiz-Maskierreizintervalle. Es wird gezeigt, daß Unterbrechungseffekte nur dann nachgewiesen werden können, wenn die Belastung des informationsverarbeitenden Systems (processing load) als konvergierende Operation eingeführt wird. Schließlich werden Ansätze zur Messung der Geschwindigkeit der Informationsverarbeitung unter Maskierungsbedingungen referiert.

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Preparation of this report was facilitated by International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship No. F05-TW-1794 from the Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Md., USA. The helpful remarks of Dr. A. O. Dick are appreciated.     

Stereotyped connotations of masculine and feminine names

This study was designed to provide a basis to understand better antifeminine stereotyped attitudes that occur in association with a stimulus no more informative about a person than her first name. College students, mostly freshmen and sophomores, ascribed connotative meanings to common and uncommon masculine and feminine first names while imagining either real or ideal persons. The results from 48 subjects disclosed that the semantic dimension of potency (e.g., strength and bravery) is likely to be a fundamentally important connotation associated more with masculine names than with feminine names. Two findings very much supported this conclusion. Thus, the potency dimension was the only one of five dimensions of semantic meaning that: (a) yielded any masculine-feminine difference in the ideal condition, and (b) showed a disfavorable connotation for feminine names in comparison to masculine names in either the real or ideal condition.     

Six-year-old children's understanding of sentences adjoined with time adverbs

The adjoining of clauses with temporal links is the basis for many sentences that convey sequence of events. The present study attempts to delineate 6-year-old children's (N=30) understanding of the meaning sequences imparted by sentences adjoined with after, before, and until. Their performance of the meaning sequence for each of 24 carefully constructed sentences is compared to an adult model. Analysis of the results (using a Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Signed Rank Test) indicated that: (1)Ss understood sentences adjoined with after according to an adult model more frequently than before adjoined sentences (P<0.01); (b) Until adjoined sentences with a negative marker in the main clause were understood according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences with no such negative element, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01; (3)Ss understood before adjoined sentences according to an adult model more often than until adjoined sentences, but the difference was not significant at a=0.01. In general, the results indicated that 6-year-olds have not yet completed development of an adult grammar with respect to adjoining clauses with temporal links, after, before, and until.     

Patterns of paralexia: A psycholinguistic approach

A sample of the literature on acquired dyslexia is reviewed with special reference to the nature of paralexic errors. Linguistic studies of six cases of dyslexia are presented, with appropriate neurological and psychological details; there are two cases of each of three hypothesized types of impairment, visual dyslyxia, surface (grapheme-phoneme) dyslexia, and deep (syntactico-semantic) dyslexia. Finally, a scheme for acquired dyslexia is proposed and related to the error patterns observed in normal adult readers and in children learning to read; our approach to lexical look-up is one that the diagram makers may have found sympathique.This is a revised version of paper presented at the International Neuropsychology Symposium, Engelberg, Switzerland, June 1971.     

Treating the “Wise Baby”

In a previous examination of Ferenczis concept of the Wise Baby (1996), I had noted both its applications and its limitations in the analytic treatment of an unusually intelligent adult. Ferenczis concepts of the origin of intellect in trauma and of the wise baby have often left the indistinct impression of being interrelated phenomena. In this paper, I regard as arguable the notion that very high intelligence is pathological when it is precocious. This return visit to the territory of the wise baby extends Ferenczis ideas about the origin and use of the intellect to include a consideration of what may constitute effective treatment for those who suffer from giftedness.Judith E. Vida, M.D. edits On the Arts for this journal. She is a Founding Member and Faculty of the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, CA, a member of both American and International Psychoanalytic Associations, and of the Sándor Ferenczi Society of Budapest. Her private practice is in Pasadena, CA.Address correspondence to Judith E. Vida, 301 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Suite 406A, Pasadena, CA 91105, USA; e-mail: jvida@spence.net     

From I: A/M to “Who am I?”—Aggregation/Massification and Trauma-Based Affects and Object Relations in Groups: A Response to Earl Hopper

Hopper's portrayal of the fourth basic assumption of Incohesion: Aggregation/Massification has two components: (1) a revision of Turquet's theory of BA Oneness to incorporate the polarity of aggregation and massification stemming from annihilation anxiety; and (2) a conception of the difficult patient as having an encapsulated psychosis. Hopper's theory of the encapsulated psychosis offers an important but incomplete perspective in explaining borderline and narcissistic pathology, as well as psychological trauma. In this response to Hopper, I suggest that the fourth assumption is in fact a still more primitive state of boundary opening and closing. I also see a need to differentiate trauma as such from borderline pathology, and further hold that the relationship between Hopper's British Independent theory and trauma theories based on dissociation needs to be clarified.     

Redundancy as a facilitator in the learning of complex verbal forms

A principle to account for mastering of complex linguistic forms was proposed. A total of 149 4- to 6-year-old children were tested to determine whether experience with redundant features (e.g., the word first) in the sentence facilitated later comprehension of equivalent nonredundant sentences expressing temporal order (before, after). The data showed that sentences were scalable as proposed, and that redundancy as a temporal marker facilitated later comprehension, but only for relatively low levels of complexity. Different findings by different experimenters highlight how apparently minor variations in experiments can result in different conclusions about comprehension strategies when one generalizes from studies that use subjects still acquiring language.This research was supported in part by a National Institute of Education grant, Project No. 4-470     

An educational-therapeutic group for drug and alcohol abusing combat veterans

Vietnam veterans have had a high incidence of substance abuse, resulting from attempts to control posttraumatic symptoms. Their recovery from drug and alcohol dependency has meant involvement in treatment for resolution of posttraumatic symptoms. The author found that the addition of a short-term educational-therapeutic group experience, focusing on the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, was helpful for the participants. They worked-through important war-related experiences via the following phases: (1) Breaking through detachment and establishing control over disruptive symptoms, (2) Revealing experiences of death and dehumanization (3) Describing the internal death of self experience, and (4) Beginning the grief response.     

Semantic organization in deaf and hearing subjects

Hierarchical cluster analysis of data from the sorting of noun words was used to compare semantic structures in 63 profoundly deaf and 63 hearing adolescents. In the first study, performance differed only for a set of words referring to sounds, where deaf persons have no experience, and not for a set of common noun words and pictures. In the second study, differences between matched sets of high- and low-imagery words were comparable for 63 deaf and 63 hearing subjects. It is concluded that deaf subjects manifested abstract hierarchical relations and were not dependent on visual mediators or hindered by the absence of acoustic mediators.This investigation was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Research Grant NS-09590-03 from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke and in part by a Faculty Research Grant from Bowling Green State University.Portions of Study 1 were previously reported at the Eighty-first Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Montreal, 1973.     

Metapsychiatry and the Elusive Truth of Being

The legacy of the spiritual teachings of Dr. Thomas Hora (a training analyst at Blanton-Peale), known as Metapsychiatry, is introduced and its approach to and definition of a variety of spiritual terms and ideas is explained. The primacy of the distinction between reality and experience is presented, and the tools for discerning the difference, the two intelligent questions, are described. Brief clarifications of the nature of God, illusion, suffering, love, meditation, and enlightenment are offered, and the meaning of the elusiveness of the truth of being is identified.     

A further analysis of the affective meanings associated with male and female sex-trait stereotypes

This study was concerned with the qualitative differences in the male and female sex-trait stereotypes. Previous research employing the item pool of the Adjective Check List (ACL) had indicated no relationship between the stereotype loading of the adjectives and their favorability ratings. In the present study, university students rated the ACL items for strength and activity, and these ratings were used to demonstrate that the male stereotype was appreciably stronger and more active than the female stereotype. It was found that the strength ratings were highly correlated with both activity and favorability ratings which were, themselves, unrelated. It was concluded that the principal qualitative difference between the stereotypes lay in the connotations of activity and passivity associated, respectively, with the male and female stereotype traits, and that any assertion of greater social desirability for the male stereotype was based on its greater activity and not, as is often supposed, on its greater favorability.     

On a certain class ofm-address machines

Conclusion It follows from the proved theorems that ifM =Q, (whereQ={0,q ₁,q ₂,...,q }) is a machine of the classM _F then there exist machinesM _i such thatM _i(1,c)=M (q _i,c) andQ _i={0, 1, 2, ..., +1} (i=1, 2, ..., ).And thus, if the way in which to an initial function of content of memorycC a machine assigns a final onecC is regarded as the only essential property of the machine then we can deal with the machines of the formM ={0, 1, 2, ..., }, and processes (t) (wheret=1,c,cC) only.Such approach can simplify the problem of defining particular machines of the classM _F , composing and simplifying them.Allatum est die 19 Januarii 1970     

If “good managers” are masculine,what are “bad managers”?

Little research has been conducted on ineffective behavior or bad characteristics of managers as contrasted with effective behavior or good characteristics. This study examines the perceived characteristics of bad managers as well as good managers. In contrast to a stereotypical view of the good manager as masculine, bad managers were seen by business students as low in both masculinity and femininity, or in nonstereotypical terms. Results were not affected by the relative social desirability of masculine and feminine characteristics.This study was supported by a grant from the University of Connecticut Research Foundation. An earlier version of the article was presented at the 11th Annual Meeting of the American Institute for Decision Sciences, New Orleans, November 1979.     

Development of Gender Differences in Children's Responses to Animated Entertainment

This study examined gender differences in children's responses to animated scenes from an action adventure versus a sad film, and to animated previews of a prototypical male versus female movie. Females were more likely than males to express sadness in response to the sad scene, and gender differences in intensities of sadness increased with age. Children were much more likely to stereotype the male preview as most liked by other boys, whereas the majority of children perceived the female preview as liked by either gender equally. In terms of enjoyment of the male and female previews, gender differences in enjoyment of the male preview were apparent only among children who perceived the film as more appealing to boys, and gender differences in enjoyment of the female preview were apparent only among children who perceived the film as more appealing to girls. Implications for children's programming are discussed.     

Evolutionary psychology,biology, and cultural evolution

Evolutionary approaches to behavior, so far from indicating that human behavioral patterns must be universal and wired, actually provide us with good reasons for expecting cultural diversity and good tools for showing how it might develop. Even gender-role related behavior may be very plastic. Highly macho male behavior may be an adaptation to dangerous ecological and economic constraints. Similarly, homicide rates differ massively from culture to culture and may be under the control of specificable ecological and economic constraints.Adapted from a symposium talk given at the annual meeting of the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, October 13, 1990, Buffalo, New York. David Buss, Nancy Cantor, and Claude Steele made helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.     

Moral Responsibility, Determinism, and the Ability to do Otherwise

In his classic paper, The Principle of Alternate Possibilities, Harry Frankfurt presented counterexamples to the principle named in his title: A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise. He went on to argue that the falsity of the Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP) implied that the debate between the compatibilists and the incompatibilists (as regards determinism and the ability to do otherwise) did not have the significance that both parties had attributed to it -- since moral responsibility could exist even if no one was able to do otherwise. I have argued that even if PAP is false, there are other principles that imply that moral responsibility entails the ability to do otherwise, and that these principles are immune to Frankfurt-style counterexamples. Frankfurt has attempted to show that my arguments for this conclusion fail. This paper is a rejoinder to that reply; I argue that he has failed to show this.     

Tomboys and sissies: Androgynous children?

Psychological studies of masculinity-femininity in children have paralleled those done with adults, which often consider deviations from masculinity for males and femininity for females as abnormal and perhaps pathological. Children who demonstrate cross-sex behaviors, however, may become androgynous adults whose cross-sex behaviors mean flexibility, not pathology. This study had two purposes: (1) to identify potentially androgynous children as those labeled by their peers as tomboys and sissies; (2) to compare personality characteristics of androgynous children with those of peers. Subjects were 312 elementary school children in a midwestern city. Results indicate that the labels tomboy and sissy are not necessarily indicators of androgynous children, but important social behaviors are related to the labels. For males, the possibility of frustrated creativity was raised.     

O pojęciu zdania analitycznego

Rezultaty przedstawione w pracy niniejszej pokrywaj si czciowo z wynikami osignitymi przezR. Wójcickiego w pracy:Analityczne komponenty definicji arbitralnych. Studia Logica, t. XIV. Dotyczy to gównie rezultatów zawartych w czci pierwszej. Chciabym podkreli, i wyniki R. Wójcickiego uzyskane zostay cakowicie niezalenie od rezultatów przedstawionych w pracy obecnej.Allatum est die 16 Aprilis 1962