Humphreys's attenuated test of Spearman's hypothesis

Humphreys's test of Spearman's hypothesis (viz., that the size of the standardized black-white differences on various psychometric tests is positively related to the tests' loadings on g, the general intelligence factor) is methodologically weak. It is based on comparison of a fairly representative sample of the black population of U.S. school children with a highly selected sample of the white school population, representing the lowest 15 to 20% of whites in socio-economic status (SES). A fair test of the hypothesis requires that the black and white samples should not be selected on any g-correlated variable, such as SES. Selection attenuates and distorts the relationship between tests' g loadings and the magnitude of the standardized mean black-white differences on the tests. Other unorthodox conditions in Humphreys's study, such as performing factor analysis on the test-score means of various arbitrary demographic groups instead of on individual test scores inflates tests' g loadings and biases the test of Spearman's hypothesis by restriction of reliable variance in g loadings. Humphreys's study cannot be considered a proper replication of Jensen's examination of Spearman's hypothesis in 11 different studies comprising 74 different tests, which consistently bears out Spearman's hypothesis.     

The relationship between father absence and children's social problem solving competencies

Predictions of deficits in children's social problem-solving competencies due to early and continuing father absence were investigated. To test these predictions, equal numbers of father-present and father-absent third graders matched on a number of variables were assessed on measures of social problem-solving performance. In Phase 2 of the study, half of the children from the father-absent category received a 15 week intervention programme which was conducted by adult male trainers to provide structured practice in social problem solving. Results demonstrated that father-absent treatment subjects, compared to father-absent control subjects, improved their social problem-solving skills significantly. Despite improvement due to intervention, social problem-solving scores for father-absent treatment subjects were still below those for father-present control subjects. Educational and developmental implications of the findings were discussed.     

The development of children's problem solving in a gears task: A problem space perspective

I examined two contexts of development in children's problem solving: (1) the macro-context of different age cohorts (8–9 vs 11–12 years of age); and (2) the micro-context of an approximately one-hour experimental session. Twenty subjects (even divided across sexes and these two age groups) were individually presented a collection of variously sized gears, a board onto which these gears could be easily attached and rotated, and a knob. Each subject was asked to find all solutions, in which two marked gears were turning the same way, and to represent these solutions graphically. Subjects applied four different problem spaces to the task: the Euclidean, the Kinematic, the Dynamic, and the Topological. The Arithmetic Modifier could be applied to any of these problem spaces, resulting in a numerical characterization of the gear constructions and/or production strategies. The 11–12's tended to shift problem spaces adaptively; the 8–9's seldom did so. Analysis of the pathways of transition between the problem spaces revealed a complex picture of partial or complete incorporation, and substitution.     

A cognitive-behavioral analysis of parental facilitation of children's social-cognitive problem solving

The present study used a case study framework to examine ways in which parental belief systems and parental teaching strategies interact to enhance children's social-cognitive problem solving and school adjustment. The focus of the investigation was to examine the robustness of several postulated typologies of interrelationship among the key variables, as well as antecedents and consequences of means-ends problem solving exhibited by children. Four intact families with second grade children were observed in the home as they participated in discussion and decision making concerning problematic social situations. The data suggested these major points: Parental behavior was generally consistent with their beliefs; parents could most effectively elicit means-ends verbalizations from children through direct questioning; families differed in the extent to which children's inputs into family decision making were valued and the degree of interparental discord concerning beliefs and strategies. The latter points suggest a reconceptualization of how parental variables can be linked to the development of social-cognitive and behavioral competence in children. Specific implications for theory and recommendations for research are discussed.     

Sorting out what's in a word from what's not: Evaluating Clark's Semantic Features Acquisition theory

The Semantic Features Acquisition theory of semantic development which is due to E. Clark (e.g., 1973b) is reviewed and evaluated against the recent experimental literature, with special reference to the acquisition of English antonyms. The review critically examines the three major ontogenetic principles of Clark's theory in light of numerous recent findings, many of which are at variance in some major way with predictions from the theory. In many instances, new data are available which call into question previous findings. A recurrent problem has been that children's comprehension task performance is confounded with their response biases which are specific to the linguistic and nonlinguistic contexts in which the lexical terms are presented. Methodological implications are discussed, with recommendations for employing the logic of converging operations.     

Why Mikey's right and my key's wrong: The significance of stress and word boundaries in a child's output system

The systematic errors children make in the course of phonological development, like adult production errors and adult phonological processes, can provide evidence of language production mechanisms. A detailed investigation of the environments in which velar stops are fronted by a phonologically delayed child reveals that fronting is dependent on both word stress and word boundaries; that it shows lexical exceptions; and that it occurs in output only. This distribution suggests that the child has output lexical representations which are independent of input lexical representations, and that the fronting error occurs in these output representations. It also suggests that prosodic features are crucial to the identification of articulatory features within these representations. Such an analysis has implications for theories of lexical access, and for the development of lexical access in children.     

Children's visual descriptions

The aim of the experiments described below was to elucidate aspects of children's mental representations of what they see, through studying their drawings of simple geometric forms when copying from standard models. Two specific questions were studied: (a) Do children produce symbolic representations based, as in machine perception, on decomposition of the visual object into features or properties, subsequently reaggregated to a greater or lesser degree, rather than attempts to copy the visual appearance of the model? The answer was affirmative, though the phenomenon is relatively rare, (b) Does a child's drawings of simple geometric drawings improve if he can watch an adult do the same drawings first? This has been asserted in the literature and bears on the question of static versus procedural representation. In a sample of 499 drawings made by children aged from 2½ to 5 years we showed that such an effect is absent or very small.     

A Plumber's friend in need is a Plumber's friend indeed

In response to the critique of Gaes, Quigley-Fernandez, and Tedeschi (Journal of Research in Personality, 1978, 12, 189–192) it was acknowledged that the cell Ns were incorrect as originally reported, and the weakness of a postexperimental division of subjects was reaffirmed. Emphasis was placed on the comparability of a simple rating scale and an elaborate bogus pipeline in measuring attraction. The need for determining the way in which the bogus pipeline functions prior to its uncritical adoption in any given experimental situation was stressed as a point of agreement.     

Critique of Scarr and Weinberg's IQ adaption study: Putting the problem in perspective

In the first part of this article, Scarr and Weinberg's results are compared to those of similar studies and there is found to be considerable congruence despite the uniqueness of the Scarr and Weinberg sample. This comparison provides a perspective for understanding some of the problems raised by Scarr and Weinberg. The second part looks to the future and suggests that the major contribution of behavioral genetics in psychology may be to increase our understanding of the environment. Examples supporting this prediction are the concepts of genotype-environment interaction, genotype-environment correlation, environmental variance between and within families, and the “structure” of environmental influences in behavior.     

Parents' and preschool children's choices of disciplinary childrearing methods

Forty preschoolers individually were shown a videotape containing six 30-second scenes depicting common parent/child conflicts. The children were asked to tell the experimenter what they would do if they were the parent on the tape, and what their own parents would do if this happened at home. In addition, 15 mothers of these children were selected randomly to view the same scenes and to indicate their choice of conflict resolution methods. Taped responses of parents and children were then coded as verbal/physical coercion or no coercion. Results indicated that preschoolers tended to choose disciplinary actions in accordance with their perceptions of their parents' manner of dealing with the same situation, and also revealed a high congruence between parent and child on consequences for discipline. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the development of childrearing methods at an early age and the intergenerational transmission of family violence.     

The effects of setting similarity on children's learning of the transverse patterning problem

A group of 15 fourth-graders were given training on the transverse patterning problem, a task consisting of three different geometric forms presented in pairs. Three other groups of 15 fourth-graders each received training on problems containing the same geometric forms, along with either one (color or size) or two (color and size) additional nonspatial dimensions varying among the settings comprising the different cue-cue patterns. Contrary to a prediction derived from Croll's (1967) extension of Spiker's (1963) theory of discrimination learning, none of the Ss solved the basic transverse patterning problem, nor was there any improvement in performance on this problem after 90 trials. Consistent with predictions derived from Spiker's theory, it was found that the addition of one nonspatial dimersion resulted in solution, and that the greater the number of nonspatial dimensions present, the better the learning.     

Parent's report of stress and articulation oscillation as factors in a preschooler's dysfluencies

Recently, one focus of research on dysfluency and stuttering seems to be on the preschooler. One goal of such research should be to determine what factors in the child's language system and what factors in the social environment may put the child at risk for developing dysfluencies and stuttering. The following is a parent's account of the occurrence of dysfluencies in a preschooler. Emphasis is on a language phenomenon that might be labeled “articulation oscillation” and on apparent social environmental stress.     

On coalition formation in simple games: A mathematical analysis of Caplow's and Gamson's theories

In this paper, we propose a theory of coalition formation in simple games. The process of coalition formation is modeled as an abstract game. Two solutions of abstract games, the core and the dynamic solution, are used as the predictions of our model. Two classical theories of coalitions in sociology due to Caplow and Gamson are reformulated in a more general and mathematical setting. These theories are then analyzed using the techniques of our theory.     

Violence in children's animated television

Pairs of cartoon episodes which did and did not meet the National Association of Broadcaster's Code for Violence were rated by college students and children on a series of scales to evaluate level of violence and of enjoyment. The results indicated that the Code has been ineffective in reducing levels of rated violence; however, entertainment value has decreased.     

Children's understanding of conversational principles

Sixteen preschool, first-, and third-grade children were presented with short stories ending with a verbal statement by a story character. Two alternative ending statements were provided. One alternative violated a postulate (H. P. Grice, 1975, in P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics (Vol. 3), New York: Academic Press) or a reasonable request condition (D. Gordon & G. Lakoff, 1971, Conversational postulates, papers from the seventh regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, University of Chicago, Department of Linguistics), while the other alternative did not. The child's task was to choose the “funny or silly“ ending, i.e., the violation. Data analysis showed that 100% of the third-graders, 83% of the first-graders, and 19% of the preschoolers performed with significant (P < .02) accuracy. These results suggest that children's understanding of conversational principles improves considerably between preschool and first grade. There were no significant differences among four types of conversational principles examined.     

Children's comprehension of complex sentences

Four tasks were given to children from 4–12 to test their comprehension of complex sentences containing main verbs taking underlying sentences as their complements (Sally knew that she was early). In an imperatives task, very young children interpreted only the complement verb and ignored the complex verb. In a short-term memory task, sentences with two negations usually lost the second not in recall. In direct questioning and anomaly-detection tasks, children tended to make pragmatic inferences and excessively depend on knowledge about the world, as opposed to linguistic information. Overall results showed that even sixth graders had not yet attained adult-level comprehension of complex sentences.     

Children's comprehension of comparative forms

Children aged from 3.5 to 5.5 years were tested on their comprehension of the terms taller, shorter, more, and less in five types of sentences: truncated, explicit standard, expanded explicit standard, two-dimensional second-clause subject noun, and two-dimensional second-clause subject pronoun. Many childen performed poorly on less and shorter in truncated sentences; the presence of explicit comparative cues did not improve these children's performance. Children who performed perfectly on truncated sentences still had difficulty understanding two-dimensional comparisons, especially those with a second-clause subject pronoun. These children interpreted only the first clause of the second-clause subject pronoun sentences. The results suggest that many children are capable of understanding two-dimensional comparisons, but perform poorly on the second-clause subject pronoun sentences because of uncertainty about the referent of the pronoun.     

Children's use of perceptual set

The effects of perceptual set and of “sequential visual noise” on the identification of briefly exposed pictures were examined in 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults. Subjects were asked to indicate whether a brief target matched a standard. The standard picture was presented either before the target picture (to establish a set) or after the target. The target was presented either alone or last in a series of six brief pictures (i.e., in noise). Adults and 8-year-olds were at ceiling when the target was presented alone, but set facilitated their identification of the target in noise. The 5-year-olds benefited from set both when the target was presented alone and when it was presented in noise. These findings suggest that set for a specific target picture functions similarly at all ages.