A content and correlational analysis of seven locus of control scales

Seven locus of control scales—two designed for adults and five for children—were administered to about 200 adolescents. A content analysis revealed very little overlap between the scales which had practically no effect on the correlations between them. Correlations between the five children’s locus of control scale scores were highly significant, and nearly all greater than .50, but the two adult scales showed very little significant correlations either with each other, or any of the children’s scales. A number of demographic variables were correlated with total scale scores of which age was the most significant. The results are discussed in terms of the multidimensional nature of the concept, psychometric evaluation of locus of control beliefs in different age groups and the specificity of the concept in general.     

Memory for information about nuclear power: A test of the selective recall hypothesis

To test the selective recall hypothesis, nearly 60 subjects read a report of approximately 500 words presenting both pro- and anti-attitudes to nuclear technology. Two hours prior to this they completed the Nuclear Attitudes Questionnaire. Subjects were given free and cued recall tests approximately five minutes after reading the report. The results partially supported the selective recall hypothesis, paticularly with respect to the free recall of anti-nuclear information. Results are discussed in terms of the recent work on selective memory effects.     

Anthropology and the theory of medicine

Instead of presupposing reality as the “realists” do, a genetic theory of knowledge attempts to understand scientific knowledge through the psychological origins of both the concepts, and the operations on which these concepts are based. Adopting the viewpoint of genetic epistemology, the envisaged theory of medicine will have to perform a threefold task: (1) A revision and reformulation of the psycho-physical problem and the development of a model for the living body; (2) A revision of our views concerning the relationship between humans and the inanimate and animate environment; and (3) The development of a concept for the construction of individual reality and its consequences for the patient-physician relationship.     

Global supervenience and belief

Global supervenience of beliefs about physical states of affairs on such states has strongly counter-intuitive consequences about what beliefs we can nomologically hold. This is an argument against a global supervenience of all mental properties on physical ones, and, since that is implied by strong supervenience, also against that as the preferred materialist thesis.     

Neonatal finger and arm movements as determined by a social and an object context

What kind of hand and finger movements are newborn infants preoccupied with, and how are these movements organized and controlled? These questions were studied in two experiments under three conditions: a social condition, in which the mother (in expt 1) or the experimenter (in expt 2) sat face to face with the infant; an object condition, in which a ball moving slowly and irregularly was presented to the infant; and a baseline condition (in expt 1) without ball or mother present. The size of the ball and the distance to it was chosen so that it approximately corresponded to the visual angle of the head of the model. Twenty-six neonates participated in the study ranging from 2 to 6 days of age at the time of observation. All infants were in an alert, optimal awake state during the experiments. The infants' finger movements were scored from video recordings. The result revealed a large variety of relatively independent finger movements. It was found that finger movements differed both in quantity and quality between the three conditions. There were many more finger movements in the social condition than in the object and baseline conditions. In addition, there were relatively more transitional finger movements and flexions of the hand in the social condition, and relatively more thumb-index finger activity and extensions of the hand in the object condition. Finally, the arms were more often forward extended in the object condition than in the social condition. The results support the notion that neonates show different modes of functioning towards people and objects.     

Gender Role Stereotyping in Advertisements on Two British Radio Stations

The portrayal of men and women in two differentsamples of British radio advertisements was examined. Itupdated an earlier British study (Furnham &Schofield, 1986) which was recently replicated in Australia (Hurtz & Durkin, 1997). Onehundred advertisements from each of two London basedradio stations were content analyzed into eightcategories referring to the central figure of thecommercial; credibility, role, location, arguments, reward,product, accent and narrator. On both radio stationswomen were significantly more likely to be portrayedpromoting products for self-enhancement and with bodily health and domestic products, and food.There was only one significant difference in portrayalbetween the two stations, suggesting somegeneralizability of these findings. The results arediscussed in terms of development and maintenance ofgender role stereotyping in different aspects of themedia.