Influence of sex-role identity on two indices of social anxiety

The present study was conducted to determine the relationship between sex-role identity and two measures of self-reported social anxiety. The Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI), Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SAD), and Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE) were administered to 23 male and 26 female undergraduate students. Generally, sex role was associated with social anxiety for women, but not for men. Androgynous women reported the least anxiety, sex-role stereotyped women reported a moderate amount, and undifferentiated women reported the most anxiety of all groups. Results were interpreted in light of conflicting hypotheses of androgyny rather than masculinity being associated with greater adjustment and the value of a situational analysis of behaviors associated with sex-role orientation.     

The role of visual and semantic codes in object naming

Three experiments investigated the effects of familiarity, practice, and stimulus variability on naming latencies for photographs of objects. Latencies for pictures of objects having the same name decreased most with practice when the same picture was always used to represent a given object (Condition Ps-Ns), less if different views of the same object were used (Condition Pv-Ns), and least if pictures of different objects having the same name were used (Condition Pd-Ns). In all cases, however, the effect of practice was significant. The savings in naming latency associated with practice on Conditions Ps-Ns and Pv-Ns showed almost no transfer to condition Pd-Ns, even though the same responses were being given before and after transfer. However, practice on Condition Ps-Ns transferred completely to Condition Pv-Ns. Name frequency affected latency in all conditions. The frequency effect decreased slightly with practice.These results are related to several alternative models of the coding processes involved in naming objects. It is concluded that at least three types of representation may be necessary: visual codes, nonverbal semantic codes, and name codes. A distinction is made between visual codes that characterize two-dimensional stimuli and those that characterize three-dimensional objects.     

Case-like categories in children: The actor and some related categories

Case categories were investigated using a method in which pictures are presented accompanied by a sentence describing the scene: Preschool children learn to put tokens on the objects in the pictures according to the role each object plays in the scene as described. Generalization trials explore what the children include within the various roles. Children rapidly learn to associate tokens with case-like categories during the training phase, and readily transfer to new stimuli in generalization trials. The experiments demonstrate that children have a broad Actor category. The Actor “does” the action, and Actors are not necessarily animate. However, animacy is a class property of stimuli to which the children were very sensitive. There was evidence that User and Instrument are subcategories of Actor that are differentiated only when a sentence contains both. The data also suggest a Locative category, and Patient as a category of the grammatical object. Finally, the children appeared to treat subjects of predicate adjectives as a separate category, here called the Subject of Attribution, distinct from Actor, and functionally independent of objects of transitive verbs.     

The role of inference in children's comprehension and memory for sentences

In a series of studies, young children often failed to construct and remember inferred relationships which they were capable of understanding. A cued recall procedure was employed to assess the relative effectiveness of implicit and explicit word prompts for sentence memory. The implicit cues were much less effective than the explicit cues for 6–7 yr old children while the cue types did not differ for 11–12 yr olds. Instructions to imitate the actions described by the sentences eliminated the memory difference for the young children. Developmental improvement in spontaneous inferential operations and intentional plans to remember are mechanisms which appear to yield an elaborated memory representation and greater access routes through indirect and implied relationships.     

Latent inhibition and learned helplessness in children: Similarities and differences

Four experiments used a common set of procedures to investigate the occurrence and the generalization of learned helplessness (LH) and latent inhibition (LI) in 10- to 11-year-old children. In Experiment 1, preexposure to response-outcome independence impaired performance (i.e., LH) on two subsequent tests: The first was similar to the preexposure situation, the second was not. Moreover, LH occurred whether preexposure involved positive or negative feedback. On the other hand, noncontingent stimulus preexposure did not impair subsequent performance, i.e., LI was not obtained in the first experiment. Experiment 2 replicated the LH findings of Experiment 1: LH occurred following preexposure to response-independent feedback, regardless of whether that feedback was positive or negative, and LH generalized to a situation that was different from the preexposure situation. In addition, the stimulus preexposure procedures of Experiment 2 were embedded in a “masking” task and, under these conditions, LI was obtained. Nevertheless, LI did not generalize to a testing situation that was different from the preexposure situation. Experiment 3 demonstrated that noncontingent stimulus preexposure impairs performance relative to a nonpreexposed control group, that the effect is dependent upon masking, that masking alone produces no performance decrement, and that LI is, indeed, stimulus specific. In Experiment 4, preexposure to response-outcome independence impaired subsequent performance on similar and dissimilar tests whether feedback was consistently positive, consistently negative, or randomly positive and negative over trials. In addition, stimulus preexposure produced LI only under conditions of masking and even then, LI was not evident in novel test situations. The results are discussed in terms of common and different mechanisms underlying the LI and LH phenomena.     

A response set analysis of developmental differences in children's moral judgments

The study tested the hypotheses that 1) children may not adopt a moral response set when faced with moral dilemmas and 2) their knowledge of what constitutes a moral constellation of behaviors may differ from that of adults and may lead to developmental differences. To test these hypotheses, the study examined children's responses to a multiple choice moral dilemmas questionnaire under neutral instructions, instructions to answer as a good child or as a bad child. Subjects in fourth and seventh grade were asked whether a story hero would transgress and were required to justify their answers. In addition, questions regarding affective reactions to transgressions, confessions, and due punishment were asked. Fourth grade children answering in the good child instructions condition tended to give significantly different responses than under neutral instructions, while seventh grade subjects did not tend to differentiate between these two instruction conditions. While adult theories of morality would predict a differentiation between good and bad child instructions, on some of the measures no differences were found between good and bad child instructions. The implications of these results for cognitive-developmental theory were discussed and a general framework for interpreting the data was offered.     

Imagery and associative memory in children

Second and sixth graders, ages 7–8 and 11–12, respectively, were presented with lists of pairs of nouns. They were asked to represent each pair in memory as a single interactive image, as two separate images, or by a control procedure. After presentation of the pairs, the children were tested either by cued or noncued recall. The difference between the interaction condition and the other conditions appeared in recall measures which reflect pairwise organization in memory (cued recall, pair recall, conditional recall probabilities, and χ²) to a much greater extent than in measures of individual item recall. The results were interpreted as supporting an imagery-organization hypothesis.     

Memories of Morocco: The influence of age,schooling, and environment on memory

To what extent are models of memory general, in that they may be applied to children or to other cultural groups? In an attempt to answer this question, two experiments were undertaken in Morocco to investigate various cultural and experiential antecedents to memory development. A total of 384 children and young adults, ranging in age from 6 to 22 years, were tested in a design that contrasted schooled and nonschooled children in urban and rural environments. Three additional groups of subjects—Koranic students, Moroccan rug sellers, and University of Michigan students—were also studied because it was hypothesized that each might have particular “culture-specific” memory skills as a function of previous experience.A serial short-term recall task was used in Experiment I. Results showed that the recency effect or short-term store was generally invariant with age or experience. Control processes appeared to be a function of age, but only when coupled with schooling, and, to a lesser extent, urban environment. In Experiment II, a continuous recognition memory task was given with black and white photographs of Oriental rugs as stimuli. Forgetting rates were generally invariant with age and experience, while the acquisition parameter seemed to vary as a function of specific cultural experiences. Data from the three additional groups were useful in supporting the hypothesis of culture-specific memory skills.From Experiments I and II, and previous research, it was hypothesized that structural features of memory (e.g., short-term store and invariant forgetting rates) may be universal, while control processes or mnemonics in memory are probably culture-specific, or a function of a variety of experiential and cultural factors that surround the growing child.     

Student self-selection for specializations in engineering

The general hypothesis that students self-selecting themselves for different occupational fields differ in relevant values and interests was tested for specializations within engineering. Industrial engineers were found to be different in work values and in their image of their subfield from students of other engineering specializations. The study concludes that in terms of type of student selecting engineering, the profession cannot be treated as an undifferentiated entity. It is suggested that in future research engineering students may be regarded as relatively homogenous with respect to work values only if their area of specialization is duly considered.     

Field dependence/independence and mental capacity: A developmental approach

In this study we tested a central theoretical assumption of J. Pascual-Leone's (1970, Acta Psychologica, 32, 301–345) model of cognitive development, that same-age field-dependent and field-independent children have the same developmental mental capacity. The study was conducted on a very heterogeneous population, regarding both social class and age, to allow for a large variance of performance scores. The theoretical assumption was strongly supported.     

Visual tracking and existence constancy in 5-month-old infants

Visual fixation and cardiac deceleration for 36 infants 20–24 weeks old were recorded during three kinds of events in which objects moving on a linear trajectory were temporarily occluded by a screen: (1) a familiar object appeared on both sides of the screen; (2) a novel object appeared on both sides of the screen; and (3) a novel object appeared to change to a familiar one behind the screen. Infant attention was related to novelty and familiarity of objects and there was no evidence of behavior reflecting the expectancy that a stable object continued to exist behind the screen. These findings are in conflict with those of previous tracking studies and the discussion focuses upon explanations for this discrepancy.     

Recognition memory in mentally retarded persons

The continuous recognition memory of retarded and normal subjects was assessed. The stimuli were magazine pictures, arranged so that lags of up to 250 pictures occured. The overall performance of the retarded subjects was poorer, in terms of hit rate or d′. However, the differences were present at 0 lag and the slopes of the forgetting curves were similar in both groups. It was concluded that differences between these subjects were due to a perception related process and not to memory.     

Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading

A model of information processing in reading is described in which visual information is transformed through a series of processing stages involving visual, phonological and episodic memory systems until it is finally comprehended in the semantic system. The processing which occurs at each stage is assumed to be learned and the degree of this learning is evaluated with respect to two criteria: accuracy and automaticity. At the accuracy level of performance, attention is assumed to be necessary for processing; at the automatic level it is not. Experimental procedures are described which attempt to measure the degree of automaticity achieved in perceptual and associative learning tasks. Factors which may influence the development of automaticity in reading are discussed.     

Development of comprehension of “or”: Evidence for a sequence of competencies

Comprehension of various usages of “or” was investigated in children 5–6, 7–8, and 9–10 years old, and in college students. One task used imperatives containing “or.” and investigated the set union interpretation. In a second task, one puppet asserted a statement and another puppet contradicted it: subjects were asked whether both could be right, and whether one had to be right. A third task investigated the truth conditions for disjunctions. The fourth task presented reasoning problems that tested principles of inference involving “or.” It was found that all age groups, even the youngest, could make the logical inferences involving “or.” All age groups could also perceive contradictions, but subjects were less than unanimous that one of the puppets contradicting each other had to be right. Sensible truth judgments for disjunctions began to develop around 7–8 years. Set union was elicited in only a few adults. In general, except when it indicates set union, “or” is understood substantially earlier than the current literature suggests. Logical inference is one of the first uses in which children become competent, suggesting that the basic meaning of “or” is given by inference forms for reasoning with alternatives, not by truth conditions.     

On the formation of personal space and self-boundary structures in early human development: The case of infant stranger reactivity

Personal space and self-boundary are, respectively, sociological and intra-psychological concepts that refer to a complex of behavioral and subjective events between and within individuals. While there are large bodies of literature concerned with each of these concepts, literature that cuts across many disciplines of study, there has never been an integration of these concepts around specific human developmental issues. The present article focuses upon human infancy as a period in which both personal space and self-boundary phenomena can be observed. Developmental links between personal space and self-boundary phenomena in infancy and adulthood are outlined and discussed.     

Fairness and preference

Two equity models were evaluated by fitting them to subjects' judgments of the fairness of payment distributions to “self” and “other” under hypothetical work situations. Neither the E. Walster, G. W. Walster, and E. Berscheid (Equity: Theory and Research, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1978) equity formulation nor Harris' (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1976, 12, 194–209) linear model adequately accounted for the fairness judgments regardless of whether self worked more or less than other. Subjects also were asked to indicate their most preferred payment distributions and these preferences were significantly different from the fairness judgments. Results suggested that fairness judgments were influenced by a bias in the direction of overpayment to self.     

Commitment to work in immigrants: Its functions and peculiarities

It was assumed that in order to cope with the crisis of immigration, immigrants would have low expectations regarding their vocational future while maintaining a high commitment to work. The meaningfulness and the centrality of work (as components of the commitment to work), work values, and work attitudes were tested in samples of 74 immigrants, of 66 old-time white-collar employees, and of 35 ongoing executives, by means of the semantic differential technique and by a projective personality test. An adaption of Eysenck's neuroticism test was also administered. Immigrants evaluated career and work-related objects in a less positive manner in comparison with the other samples, but scored higher in work centrality and job involvement, and held more positive attitudes toward authority figures in the place of work. No significant differences in neuroticism were found.