Behavioral disordered children's conceptions of moral,conventional, and personal issues

This study employed a series of sorting tasks with 22 normal and 20 children with behavioral disorders (BD) to determine whether BD children discriminate among three classes of social actions viewed by normal children as distinct. These categories are (1) the moral (actions having intrinsic effects upon the rights or well-being of others), (2) the conventional (actions whose propriety is determined by social consensus), and (3) the personal (actions whose propriety is a matter of individual prerogative). Findings were that although BD children distinguished among the three forms of behavior, they differed with normals in the classifications of specific acts and in the reasons given for act classifications. Chief among these differences was the finding that BD children were less likely than normals to identify acts as within their personal domain.We wish to thank Mary Confray, Denise Jaffe, and Christopher Pellikan for their help with the data collection. Thanks are also due to Diana Algminas of the Proviso Area Exceptional Children's Program, Ted Lawrence of the West Suburban Association for Special Education, and Wayne Thorne of the Board of Education District No. 89 (Maywood and Melrose Park, Illinois) for the cooperation of schools in their respective districts. We wish also to thank Mark Oberlander and Ronald Brown for their suggestions regarding identification of the BD sample. Portions of these data were presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Los Angeles, April 1981.     

Perspectives in psychology

The Psychological Record -     

Philosophie en Cultuur

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

A COGNITIVE-STYLE APPROACH TO CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH1

Styles cognitifs et recherches ‘interculturelles. — L'utilisation, dans les recherches interculturelles, des données, concepts et méthodes relevant du “style cognitif” (mode de fonctionnement caractérisant un individu dans ses activités perceptives et intellectuelles) présente un grand nombre d'avantages méthodologiques. Comme le démontrent les nombreuses études qui ont été consacrées à un style cognitif privilégié qui correspond à la dimension “global-articulé”, les styles cognitifs sont fondamentaux dans L'étude du développement; ils peuvent être mesurés par des techniques objectives; les tests utilisables peuvent être appliqués avec validité et ils ont un sens pour des populations qui sont de niveau mental tout à fait différent; ils ont été conçus en relation avec des manières particulières d'élever les enfants, de telle sorte qu'ils peuvent servir à identifier les résultats de ces méthodes dans L'étude comparative des schèmes de socialisation. Les mêmes relations entre les premières expériences familiales et les différences inter-individuelles au long du continuum “global-articulé” qui avaient été originellement observées dans des milieux occidentaux, L'ont été également dans des milieux non occidentaux. De plus, on a trouvé dans le style cognitif modal de certains groupes non occidentaux, les différences qu'on avait pu prédire sur la base des différences observées dans la manière d'élever les enfants. La fréquence des différences dues au sexe en matière de style “articulé” ou “global” dans un grand nombre de cultures, amène à penser que L'étude du rôle que joue le sexe dans le développement cognitif pourrait être une voie féconde pour la recherche interculturelle.     

Temporal and interactional effects in short-term storage

The operation of temporal and interactional processes in short-term storage was studied under conditions which require that information about all items presented be stored and the relative retention of all be evaluated concurrently, but preclude further interference after presentation by testing or retrieval effects. Random sequences of twelve two digit numbers from a known set of thirteen were presented visually at 1, 2, or 4 per sec. for full interval and .25 sec. presentation durations to 15 Ss who reported the missing number that was not presented from the set. For 1/sec. full duration presentations the missing scan serial position error distribution shows a linear decrease in errors from first through last presented items. As rate of presentation increases there is a linear increase in total errors, a linearly increasing primacy effect, and an increase of errors over at least the last half of the sequence such that the error distribution remains linear with the same slope. These findings are compatible with the operation of time dependent interactional and perceptual processes in short-term storage but not with autonomous decay.     

Predicting effectiveness of bayesian classification systems

A model is presented for evaluating potential effectiveness of a Bayesian classification system using the expected value of the posterior probability for true classifications as an evaluation metric. For a given set of input parameters, the value of this complex metric is predictable from a simply computed row variance metric. Prediction equations are given for several representative sets of input parameters.     

Predictive Indices of the GATB

The study reported here investigated the use of the General Aptitude Test Battery for identification and counseling of students in vocational and academic clases in Ohio secondary schools. Frequency distributions of the GATB aptitude scores were developed for 4,000 ninth- and tenth-grade boys and girls. A multiple regression analysis was performed using the aptitude scores of the GATB as the independent variables, and point hour ratio and single subject grades at the end of one year as the dependent variables. Freshmen and sophomore grade-point average separately and in combination were the criteria used to determine the predictive ability of the aptitudes of the GATB. The GATB was useful in the predictive role for ninth- and tenth-grade achievement in most of the areas studied.