Mothers' control strategies in dyadic mother/child conversations

Conversations combine the exchange of messages with the interchange of the speaker/ listener role. These discourse features were reflected differentially in the language used by mothers and children engaged in dyadic play situations. Differences in the speech patterns of the mothers and children indicated the type of reciprocity engendered by the mothers' social and didactic control strategies. Mothers tended to ensure the maintenance of the conversation and the interchange of the speaker/listener role. The children showed a stronger interest in topic in various ways. The interval of 12 months between the two recording sessions produced certain changes in discourse patterns. These included a decline in the tendency to initiate new topics, and a move toward greater cohesiveness was postulated. Relationships between aspects of mothers' and children's speech were also examined.Some of the work reported in this article was undertaken while the author was in receipt of a postdoctoral award from the Social Science Research Council, London.     

Mental rotation as a mediator for sex-related differences in visualization

This study was designed to analyze whether Mental Rotation (MR) played a role as a mediating variable for sex-related differences in Visualization (VZ). Two psychometric tests measuring MR and VZ were applied to a representative sample of 309 males and 390 females in their last year of high school. Three non-zero correlations between sex and MR, sex and VZ, and MR and VZ were found, and the effect of sex on VZ was eliminated when MR was introduced as a covariable. When three subgroups of different VZ ability were made by dividing up the VZ distribution by the first and third quartiles, sex-differences were only found for the high-scorers group, for which previous results were replicated. Results clearly indicate that MR is a plausible mediator variable for sex differences in VZ when such differences do exist. Theoretical, methodological and practical consequences of these results are discussed.     

Qualitative and quantitative differences and patterns of variability in disfluencies emitted by preschool stutterers and nonstutterers during dyadic conversations

Disfluencies produced by 24 young stuttering and nonstuttering boys (4 to 5 years old) interacting in three dyadic sessions were analyzed. Each child interacted with his own mother, an unfamiliar mother of a stutterer, and an unfamiliar mother of a nonstutterer. Significant quantitative and qualitative differences were found in the number and types of disfluencies emitted by the two groups of children. Stuttering children with more severe disfluency problems differed quantitatively from those with less severe problems. Total frequency of disfluency was highly consistent for both groups of children. Only two disfluency types (tense pauses and whole-word repetitions) showed significant variability across sessions. This research demonstrates the feasibility of differential diagnosis of young stuttering children.     

Age-related differences in acquisition of perceptual-motor skills: working memory as a mediator

Aging is associated with reduced performance on information processing speed, memory, and executive functions tasks. Although older adults are also less apt in acquiring new perceptual-motor skills, it is unclear whether and how skill acquisition difficulties are associated with age-related general cognitive differences. We addressed this question by examining structural relations among measures of cognitive resources (working memory) and indices of perceptual-motor skill acquisition (pursuit rotor and mirror tracing) in 96 healthy adults aged 19-80 years of age. Three competing structural models were tested: a single (common) factor model, a dual correlated factors model, and a hierarchical dual-factor model. The third model provided the best fit to the data, indicating age differences in simple perceptual-motor skill are partially mediated by more complex abilities.     

Gender and developmental differences in children's conversations

Extending work on childhood gender differences by J. Block (“Assimilation, Accommodation and the Dynamics of Personality Development,” Child Development, 1982, 53, 281–295) and J. H. Block (“Differential Premises Arising from Differential Socialization of the Sexes: Some Conjunctures,” Child Development, 1983, 54, 1335–1354), the present research investigated assimilative and accommodative discourse devices in the speech of 24 preschool children (12 boys and 12 girls) and 24 middle-childhood youngsters (12 boys and 12 girls) in each of grades 3 and 6. Boys' discourse, regardless of age, contained more accommodative devices. Girls' discourse, regardless of age, contained more assimilative devices. Age effects were apparent; older children, regardless of gender, used more discourse devices of both kinds than younger children.     

Imitation as a dyadic interchange pattern

Abstract.— Imitation was considered one pattern of interactional behavior adopted by children. Forty-eight firstgrade children were paired with experimenters, who first gave instructions for imitation, attention, or for joint or isolate play and later behaved identically toward all the children. Children who received instructions either to copy or to simply pay attention watched and then copied the adults. The other children played with the adults, or played alone and ignored the adults, as expected. Later in a standard phase, children continued to attend and copy if they had initially received explicit instructions to copy, but not if they had gotten instructions only for attention. Children given comparison instructions shifted on some measures, but followed many initial patterns. The implications for interactional patterning in imitation and other recurrent situations were discussed.     

Gender differences in parent-child conversations about past emotions

In this study, we examined the emotional content of parents’ conversations about past events with their 40-month-old children. Subjects were 24 white middle-class children and their mothers and fathers. At separate home visits, each parent independently engaged the child in conversation about three events that parent and child had experienced together only once before. Mothers and fathers talked about emotional aspects of events in similar ways, but they both used a greater number and variety of emotion words with daughters than with sons. Parents also mentioned sad aspects of events more with daughters than with sons. Implications of the differential socialization of emotion for boys and girls are discussed.     

Toward a situational analysis of gender differences in aggression

The present study explored the notion that frustration in situations congruent with traditional sex roles will elicit higher levels of aggression from both women and men than will frustration in sex-role incongruent situations. In a 2×2 design, female and male undergraduates read a feminine or masculine vignette describing an individual prevented by a classmate from practicing for an examination in dance or body-building exercises. Subjects in gender-congruent conditions perceived the examination as more important and advocated more aggressive responses than did subjects in gender-incongruent conditions. Males were significantly more aggressive than females only in the masculine situation; in the feminine situation, this difference was reduced or eliminated. The implications of these results for the interpretation of apparent sex differences in aggression are discussed.The present research was supported by Canada Council Grant S76-0344 to the second author and was conducted while the first author was supported by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship. The authors wish to thank Ann Werner for help in preparing and pilot testing the materials. This article was presented as a paper at the Association for Women in Psychology Conference in Dallas, March 8–11, 1979.     

Identification variability as a measure of loudness: an application to gender differences.

It is well known that discrimination response variability increases with stimulus intensity, closely related to Weber's Law. It is also an axiom that sensation magnitude increases with stimulus intensity. Following earlier researchers such as Thurstone, Garner, and Durlach and Braida, we explored a new method of exploiting these relationships to estimate the power function exponent relating sound pressure level to loudness, using the accuracy with which listeners could identify the intensity of pure tones. The log standard deviation of the normally distributed identification errors increases linearly with stimulus range in decibels, and the slope, a, of the regression is proportional to the loudness exponent, n. Interestingly, in a demonstration experiment, the loudness exponent estimated in this way is greater for females than for males.     

Coping as a mediator of emotion

There is widespread conviction among health care professionals that coping affects emotion. Yet theory and research have traditionally emphasized the effects of emotion on coping. The present research addresses this imbalance by evaluating the extent to which coping mediated emotions during stressful encounters in two Caucasian, community-residing samples. Subjects' recently experienced stressful encounters, the ways they coped with the demands of those encounters, and the emotions they experienced during two stages of those encounters were assessed repeatedly. The extent to which eight forms of coping mediated each of four sets of emotions was evaluated with a series of hierarchical regression analyses (of residuals). Coping was associated with changes in all four sets of emotions, with some forms of coping associated with increases in positive emotions and other forms associated with increases in negative emotions.     

Grounding as a facilitator in Anglo-Canadian and Mainland Chinese conversations

This study examined whether a short training in grounding strategies could improve intercultural communication. Forty intercultural dyads (Anglo-Canadians and Mainland Chinese) were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Prior to their conversations the experimental groups received 10–15 min training on grounding while the control groups received no training. The trained dyads performed significantly better than the untrained dyads in grounding, speaker presentation and listener recall, thus documenting that the 10–15 min training on grounding was fruitful in improving intercultural communication. Grounding training may open a new avenue for reducing intercultural miscommunication, thus improving information transmission.     

Individual differences and cross-situational consistency of dyadic social behavior

A new theoretical analysis of individual differences and cross-situational consistency of behavior is proposed. The authors hypothesized that the social behavior of mice (Mus musculus) is determined by individual differences among animals in behavior emitted (i.e., actor effects), in behavior elicited from social partners (partner effects), and by unique responses of one animal to another (relationship effects). Each effect represents a distinct facet of individual differences with different psychological meaning; likewise, the cross-situational consistency of each effect has a distinct psychological meaning. Individual differences in behavior emitted were observed, and these actor effects were consistent longitudinally. Individual differences in behavior elicited from social partners were observed, and these partner effects were also consistent longitudinally. Unique responses to specific social partners also determined behavior but were inconsistent longitudinally. The theoretical importance of reconceptualizing the concepts of individual differences and cross-situational consistency in behavior is discussed. ((c) 2005 APA, all rights reserved).     

Marital satisfaction as a function of dyadic gender-role constellations

Abstract

Forty-eight married couples completed Snyder's Marital Satisfaction Inventory and were also categorized with the Bern Sex-role Inventory as androgynous, gender role congruent, gender role incongruent, or undifferentiated. Analyses of variance showed that androgynous couples featured more wives who were dissatisfied regarding child issues. Data are also presented for differential patterns for the individual marital satisfaction indices. Results are compared to data on individual gender-role determinants and are conceptualized in terms of gender-role and communication theory.     

Gender, gender relations, and the social dynamics of children's conversations

The authors investigated the effects of gender on the social dynamics and outcomes of conversations involving 120 children (mean age = 8 years 7 months). Children were taught particular values for different shaped counters and placed in same-gender or mixed-gender pairs with children who were taught different values. Pairs were asked to add the counters together to make a total of 100. Conversations were coded in terms of communication acts and simultaneous speech acts. Boys used more controlling acts overall and more negative interruptions in mixed-gender pairs. Girls used more affiliating acts. All children used more collaborative communication in same-gender pairings. Children whose perspective dominated used more controlling and comparatively fewer affiliating acts. When children reached a compromise, conversations were more collaborative.     

Affect as a mediator of attributional egotism

A three-stage model of the relationships among achievement outcomes, outcome-related affect, attribution, and emotion is tested in two studies. It is suggested that success and failure elicit positive and negative affective states due to prior conditioning. These affective states then lead to an attribution process that serves to defend and enhance self-esteem. Next, emotional labels are chosen that are consistent with the affective states and the attributions. Two studies were designed to test the proposed relationships among achievement outcomes, affective states, and attributions. In the first study, subjects received information indicating that they were strongly or mildly aroused as a result of receiving outcome feedback on an achievement task. The results indicated that low arousal reduced egotistical attributions to internal factors. In the second study, subjects either succeeded or failed on an achievement task. Half of the subjects were provided with an opportunity to misattribute the arousal elicited by their outcomes to an irrelevant source. Subjects in the misattribution condition made less egotistical attributions to external factors than subjects who were given no opportunity to misattribute their arousal. The results of both studies suggest that outcome-related affect mediates the relationship between outcomes and attributions in achievement situations.     

Meaningfulness as a mediator of subjective well-being

In a sample of 347 university students and community residents, measures of meaningfulness, self-esteem, internal locus of control, positive social relationships and optimism were given to predict subjective well-being, i.e., measures of happiness, life satisfaction, and affect balance. Correlations, canonical correlations, and structural equation modeling supported the hypothesis that meaningfulness is a significant mediator between personality variables and subjective well-being.     

Proprioceptive feedback as a mediator in interlimb timing

Prior findings regarded as evidence for proprioceptive feedback as a mediator in interlimb timing can also be interpreted as evidence for motor outflow because they came from research that had subjects make voluntary movements, and such movements allow for both feedback and outflow to operate. The present study was designed to resolve this controversy by determining if these findings could be replicated with passive movements which allow for feedback, but not outflow, to operate. The interlimb timing task studied was one where subjects made the timing response with their right hand while moving their left arm during the 1.5-sec interval to be timed. Three groups of 16 male college students performed 50 trials of the right-hand response with knowledge of results, under one of three left-arm conditions: (a) passive movement, (b) voluntary movement, and (c) no movement. The results indicated that the findings were replicated with passive movements and this was interpreted as support for the involvement of proprioceptive feedback in interlimb timing.     

Cross-generational stability of gender differences in sexuality

A sample of 4767 people (roughly representative of Britain) replied to a sex questionnaire issued within the pages of a National newspaper. Respondents were divided into two broad age-groups (above and below thirty) in order to assess the impact of the women's movement on traditional gender differences basic to the so-called ‘double standard’. Men emerged as markedly more interested in casual encounters and sexual variety than women, and there was no sign at all that this difference has diminished among the modern generation. An analysis of reported sexual difficulties indicated that young people have gained little benefit from all the sex manuals and advice that are available today: the problems persist in exactly the same proportion as with the older generation. Of particular interest was the frequency with which women in both age-groups reported boredom and disinterest in sex as problematic.