Children's understandings of the attributes of life

Previous investigations of children's understandings of the life concept have focused on their classifications of the life status of familiar objects. In this study, we attempted to examine more directly the processes by which children infer life status by examining their reasoning about unfamiliar objects. In Experiment 1, 4- to 11-year-olds and adults were asked to name attributes of living things to establish which attributes they associated most closely with life. Children age 7 and younger most often named attributes true only of animals but not of plants; older children more often named attributes true of both animals and plants. However, movement was the single attribute cited most frequently by children of all ages tested. In Experiment 2, 4- to 11-year-olds and adults were presented information about attributes of imaginary objects on a distant planet and were asked to infer if those objects were alive. Again, young children relied relatively heavily on qualities true only of animals but not of plants, whereas older children relied more on attributes true of both plants and animals. Also as before, movement was viewed as indicative of life at all ages tested. In Experiment 3, we examined the hypothesis that children discriminate among different types of motion and that the types of motion they associate with life are in fact typical of living things. Children ranging from age 5 through 11 were found to discriminate among different types of motion and to infer that objects were alive only when they showed the types of motion typical of living beings. The results of Experiment 3 allowed interpretation of seemingly conflicting results that have arisen in previous studies, as well as in Experiments 1 and 2 of the present study.     

Dimensions of impulsiveness

A factor-analysis of 95 items concerned with impulsivity identified eight major components, namely, concentration, decision-making, thinking, money, excitement, temper, future orientation, and complexity.     

Dimensions of the group environment scale

Student teachers in yearlong mental health consultation groups completed Moos's Group Environment Scale (GES) and three semantic differential ratings of their satisfaction with the group experience. Factor analysis of the GES yielded four dimensions, the first two corresponding to Moos's hypothesized dimensions of Relationship and System Maintenance/System Change. Intercorrelations of factor composite scores with the differential ratings provided concurrent validity evidence for the factored dimensions. Results were interpreted as supporting a multidimensional rather than unidimensional structure for the GES.     

Sexuality and the Dimensions of Power

Power, many scholars agree, is intrinsic to the relationships between sexuality, individual experience and social dynamics. Beyond this basic agreement, though, writers and researchers have adopted different foci. This article critically reviews several approaches to the power–sex relationship, and suggests that four readily discernable but interlaced dimensions of power operate upon the sexual: definitional, regulatory, productive and unequal. As a number of examples from the literature show, these ideal typical forms twist and interweave in both theory and practice. I suggest that to be mindful of all four facets of power and their interrelationships is to account for multiplicity, and to avoid the reductive characterizations that have sometimes characterized academic writings on power and sexuality. In this way, both theory and research in the area of human sexuality can be more thoroughly conceptualized.     

Dimensions of metaphor

Two rating studies examined several dimensions of metaphorical sentences. A pool of 260 metaphors was constructed, all in the form “(noun phrase) is/are (noun phrase).” In Study 1 all of the items, and in Study 2, 98 of the items were evaluated on ten scales presumed to be important to the comprehension or interpretation of metaphors: semantic relatedness of the subject and predicate, comprehensibility, imageability, imageability of the subject (topic), imageability of the predicate (vehicle), degree of metaphoricity, metaphor goodness, ease of interpretation, number of alternative interpretations, and felt familiarity of the metaphoric ground. Both experiments revealed the rated dimensions to be highly interrelated, but some analyses allowed evaluation of alternative predictions based on current theoretical approaches to metaphor quality and interpretation. The results indicated consistent but mixed support for the general poisitions under consideration as each appeared to have strong and weak areas of applicability. The interrelationships among the scales are discussed, together with implications of the findings for current theories and future metaphor research.     

Dimensions of mind

In their papers for this issue, Sterelny and Sutton provide a dimensional analysis of some of the ways in which mental and cognitive activities take place in the world. I add two further dimensions, a dimension of manipulation and of transformation. I also discuss the explanatory dimensions that we might use to explain these cases.     

Personality attributes of ultramarathoners

The Self-Motivation Inventory (SMI) and four subscales from the Philosophies of Human Nature were given to 50 male ultramarathoners who were matched for age and sex with runners who had never raced any distance longer than 10 miles, and with a group of nonrunners. No significant personality differences were obtained among the three groups. Experienced ultramarathoners were Significantly. more skeptical about the goodness of human nature than inexperienced ones.