Sex-role acquisition: In search of the elephant

Social learning and cognitive-developmental theories of sex-role acquisition have yet to receive clear and unequivocal research support. While it is apparent that sex-typing of interests and behaviors does occur in early childhood, we are at a loss to explain the mechanisms involved. A model of sex roles as rules is presented, which attempts to analyze the acquisition of sex roles as similar to the process of pattern recognition in vision and speech. Social learning theory can help to account for how the child acquires the distinctive features of sex-role patterns, while cognitive-developmental theory points to the categories that are essential in this process.The generous support of the Grant Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.     

Dibs: In search of self

Abstract

Some ten years ago, while I was training towards ordination as a minister in the Church of England, close friends in the village where I lived took me to a talk given by Michael Jacobs to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of CCC, the Cambridgeshire Consultancy in Counselling, on whose training course my friends, Jenny and David, were then studying.     

In perfect harmony: synchronizing the self to activated social categories

The self-concept is one of the main organizing constructs in the behavioral sciences because it influences how people interpret their environment, the choices they make, whether and how they initiate action, and the pursuit of specific goals. Because belonging to social groups and feeling interconnected is critical to human survival, the authors propose that people spontaneously change their working self-concept so that they are more similar to salient social categories. Specifically, 4 studies investigated whether activating a variety of social categories (i.e., jocks, hippies, the overweight, Blacks, and Asians) increased associations between the self and the target category. Whereas Studies 1 and 2 focused on associations between stereotypic traits and the self, Studies 3 and 4 examined self-perceptions and self-categorizations, respectively. The results provide consistent evidence that following social category priming, people synchronized the self to the activated category. Furthermore, the findings indicate that factors that influence category activation, such as social goals, and factors that induce a focus on the interconnectedness of the self, such as an interdependent vs. independent self-construal, can impact this process. The implications of changes to the working self-concept for intergroup relations are discussed.     

In search of remembrance: evidence for memory in visual search

Observers searched for a target among distractors while the display items traded places every 110 ms. Search was slower when the target was always relocated to a position previously occupied by a distractor than when the items remained in place, showing the importance of memory for locations in a visual search task. Experiment 2 repeated a previous study in which items could move to any location within the display, but used a larger range of set sizes than tested in the earlier study. A cost in search times to relocating items was found at the larger set sizes, most likely reflecting that the probability that the target would replace a distractor increased witht he set size. The findings provide strong evidence for the role of memory for locations within trials in a visual search task.     

Subset selective search on the basis of color and preview

In the preview paradigm observers are presented with one set of elements (the irrelevant set) followed by the addition of a second set among which the target is presented (the relevant set). Search efficiency in such a preview condition has been demonstrated to be higher than that in a full-baseline condition in which both sets are simultaneously presented, suggesting that a preview of the irrelevant set reduces its influence on the search process. However, numbers of irrelevant and relevant elements are typically not independently manipulated. Moreover, subset selective search also occurs when both sets are presented simultaneously but differ in color. The aim of the present study was to investigate how numbers of irrelevant and relevant elements contribute to preview search in the absence and presence of a color difference between subsets. In two experiments it was demonstrated that a preview reduced the influence of the number of irrelevant elements in the absence but not in the presence of a color difference between subsets. In the presence of a color difference, a preview lowered the effect of the number of relevant elements but only when the target was defined by a unique feature within the relevant set (Experiment 1); when the target was defined by a conjunction of features (Experiment 2), search efficiency as a function of the number of relevant elements was not modulated by a preview. Together the results are in line with the idea that subset selective search is based on different simultaneously operating mechanisms.     

In search of ambiguity

A study of the time required for Ss to perceive the two meanings of ambiguous sentences, supports the following conclusions: (I) Perception time (PT) is a function of the type of ambiguity, three of which are defined in this study. (2) A similar relative function was obtained for thePT in sentences with more than one ambiguity and for sentences with only a single ambiguity. (3) ThePT for finding a single ambiguity in such multiply ambiguous sentences was significantly longer than in singly ambiguous sentences. (4) When one of the interpretations of certain types of ambiguous sentences is less likely than the other (where likeliness is defined in terms of the number of Ss perceiving that inter-pretation first)PT is high. (5) Complexity of the surface and underlying structures (which are defined in transformational grammar) is an important determinant of thePT for surface and underlying structure ambiguities, respectively.     

In search of depth

Four experiments designed to investigate a visual search task are reported. In each experiment, subjects searched for either a two-dimensional shape rotated in depth among frontal-parallel distractors or a frontal-parallel shape among distractors that were rotated in depth. The principal independent variable was search-set size. In addition, over the four experiments, a variety of spatial arrangements and two axes of rotation in depth were sampled. The chief aim of the experiments was to adduce evidence bearing on the attentional demands of searching for depth. The slopes of the reaction-time (RT) functions were taken as diagnostic. Experiments 1–3 exhibited positive slopes for the RT-set-size function. These slopes appear to be due to a conscious adoption of a serial search strategy by the subjects. When this tendency was suppressed by the procedures of Experiment 4, the slope of the RT-set-size functions did not differ significantly from zero. We conclude that, in agreement with the findings of other studies, slant-in-depth can be detected preattentively.     

In search of templates

This study reflects a recent shift towards the study of early stages of expert memory acquisition for chess positions. Over the course of 15 sessions, two subjects who knew virtually nothing about the game of chess were trained to memorise positions. Increase in recall performance and chunk size was captured by power functions, confirming predictions made by the template theory [Cogn. Psychol. 31 (1996) 1; Memory 6 (1998) 225; Cogn. Sci. 24 (2000) 651]. The human data were compared to that of a computer simulation run on CHREST (Chunk Hierarchy and REtrieval STructures), an implementation of the template theory. The model accounts for the pattern of results in the human data, although it underestimates the size of the largest chunks and the rate of learning. Evidence for the presence of templates in human subjects was found.     

In search of miracles

The movie The Third Miracle invites theological reflection on miracles, sainthood, and faith. A movie filled with Lutheran themes of unmerited grace and blessings of the ordinary life, the story line follows a Catholic priest tasked with exploring the authenticity of reported miracles associated with a lay woman and a bleeding statue. Faith and miracles are shown in their ordinariness, easily missed without the eye of faith, and sainthood is juxtaposed with the expected and unexpected vis‐à‐vis motherhood.     

In search of origins

Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. 2 vols. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 1987–1991. Vol. 1, pp. 575. Vol. 2, pp. 736. ISBN vol. 1 0–8135–1276‐X, 0–8135–1277 (paperback); vol. 2 0–8135–1583–1, 0–8135–1584‐X (paperback). Price: $17.95 per volume.     

In search of depth

Four experiments designed to investigate a visual search task are reported. In each experiment, subjects searched for either a two-dimensional shape rotated in depth among frontal-parallel distractors or a frontal-parallel shape among distractors that were rotated in depth. The principal independent variable was search-set size. In addition, over the four experiments, a variety of spatial arrangements and two axes of rotation in depth were sampled. The chief aim of the experiments was to adduce evidence bearing on the attentional demands of searching for depth. The slopes of the reaction-time (RT) functions were taken as diagnostic. Experiments 1-3 exhibited positive slopes for the RT-set-size function. These slopes appear to be due to a conscious adoption of a serial search strategy by the subjects. When this tendency was suppressed by the procedures of Experiment 4, the slope of the RT-set-size functions did not differ significantly from zero. We conclude that, in agreement with the findings of other studies, slant-in-depth can be detected preattentively.     

Making faces: testing the relation between child behavior problems and mothers' interpretations of child emotion expressions

We examined the relations between preschool boys' behavior problems and mothers' interpretations of children's emotion expressions. A sample of 31 mothers of oppositional boys and 28 control mothers responded to standard stimuli depicting child emotional reactions to maternal control attempts; mothers were instructed to think of the stimuli as either (a) their own child or (b) an unfamiliar child. Mothers of oppositional boys were more likely to generate negative interpretations than were control mothers when thinking of their own children; however, this difference did not generalize to the explicitly unfamiliar child condition. Mothers of oppositional boys demonstrated negative and comparison mothers demonstrated positive interpretive tendencies toward their own children. Findings suggest that child emotion cues may trigger biased maternal cognitions even in the absence of child misbehavior.     

In search of dominance: the case of the missing dimension

Some previous researchers have found that affect can be described in terms of two dimensions (pleasure and arousal), while others have noted three dimensions are needed (pleasure, arousal, and dominance). The competing claims were tested by creating stimuli with factors previously demonstrated to elicit responses of arousal or dominance, asking respondents to rate the stimuli, and contrasting correlations between ratings and the stimulus factors. Under the two-dimensional theory, the planned contrasts should be zero, while under the three-dimensional theory, the planned contrasts should be nonzero. Results supported the three-dimensional model.