Attractiveness in young children: Sex-differentiated reactions of adults

Attractiveness ratings of 50 children aged 12–38 months were investigated in relation to adult socializing agents' behavior toward the children in their homes and play groups and their attitudes toward the children. Attractiveness scores were derived from 43 judges' ratings of facial photographs of the children. The same children were observed in play groups with female care givers; 40 of them were also observed in their homes with their parents. Play-group care givers rated the children for likability, tractability, and peer relations. Parents rated their attitudes toward giving routine care to their child. Attractiveness scores were not correlated with any adult attitude measures. Girls' attractiveness scores were positively correlated with their attempts to communicate in home and play group, and with mothers', fathers', and care givers' instructional responses, but negatively correlated with passive behavior in the home and with mothers' positive reactions. Boys' attractiveness scores were negatively correlated with passive behavior in the play group; no other significant correlations were found in the data for boys.     

Is there coherence among the cognitive components of gender acquisition?

This study examined the relationships among five measures that assess various cognitive components of the child's acquisition of gender. At around 2 years of age, children were given a task assessing their ability to accurately label as a boy or a girl some head-and-shoulders pictures of boys and girls. At 4 years of age, these children were given tasks measuring (1) the degree to which they found gender a salient parameter of categorization, (2) the amount of gender-related knowledge they could display (SERLI-SRD), (3) the degree to which their preferences were gender-typed (SERLI-SRP) and (4) the accuracy of their memory for gender-typed information. There was no consistent pattern of relationship among the children's scores on these five tools for measuring gender acquisition. Our findings suggest that gender is a multidimensional construct in children's development, and thus these results challenge the undimensional manner in which gender is repeatedly addressed in developmental theory and research.This research was funded in part by a federal biomedical research grant (No. 2507RR07080) awarded to the first author from the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon, and by Grant No. RO1HD175751 from the National Institute of Child Development awarded to the third author.We wish to thank Margo Lane, Rachel Robertson, Jacqui Oucalt, Laura Baker, Dale Roberts, and the teachers, parents, and assistants of the Child Research Laboratory at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon, for their invaluable contribution to this research.     

Friendship patterns of overseas students: A functional model1

The respondents were 30 foreign students at the University of Hawaii (6 each from Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand), and 6 host national (American) students, balanced for sex. The subjects identified their 5 best friends, and the 5 people with whom they spend most of their time. The subjects were then presented with a list of 15 activities, and identified a preferred companion for each of the situations. The data were used to test a functional model of the academic sojourn, which predicts that foreign students will belong to three social networks, in descending order of salience: a) a conational network whose function is to affirm and express the culture of origin; b) a network with host nationals, whose function is the instrumental facilitation of academic and professional aspirations; and c) a multinational network whose main function is recreational. The results confirmed the existence, predicted differential function, and salience hierarchy of these three social networks, and reconciled previous conflicting reports regarding the social relations of foreign students.     

Quality of Life and Autonomy in Emerging Adults with Early-Onset Neuromuscular Disorders

Emerging adulthood is an important period in the development of one's identity and autonomy. The ways in which identity and autonomy are viewed by emerging adults and how they impact quality of life (QoL) in individuals with early-onset neuromuscular conditions is not yet known. This study focused on understanding and exploring relationships between self-perceptions of emerging adulthood, autonomy, and QoL. Five previously validated measures were incorporated into an online survey and distributed to young adults with early-onset neuromuscular conditions and unaffected controls. Topics explored included individuals' views regarding their overall QoL, disease-specific QoL, components of emerging adulthood, and autonomy. We found that a sense of higher disease impact was associated with a lower Overall General QoL. Additionally, perceptions of key autonomy factors "negativity" and "instability" were uniquely associated with Overall General QoL in the case group as compared to controls, whereas "attitudinal autonomy" (attaining the ability to plan and follow through with goals) was important to this age group regardless of health status. The specific factors of emerging adulthood and autonomy that were significantly correlated with Overall General QoL can be used for developing targeted counseling and interventions to improve QoL for individuals and their families.     

College Cheating Thirty Years Later: The Role of Academic Entitlement

This research reports on a thirty-year follow-up study of academic dishonesty, often referred to as college cheating. The present study examines the role of academic entitlement as a predictor of college cheating. A sense of entitlement is regarded as a primary characteristic of today’s millennial students, those born between 1980 and 2000. However, previous research has never investigated the role of academic entitlement on college cheating. Instead, previous research has mostly favored neutralization as a theoretical explanation for academic dishonesty. The results indicate that, even though reports of college cheating have decreased over time, academic entitlement is a significant predictor of cheating in college.     

Measurement of agency, communion, and emotional vulnerability with the Personal Attributes Questionnaire

Factor analytic studies of the 24-item Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Spence & Helmreich, 1978) have reported inconsistent results, and a previous confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) indicated inadequate fit for factors corresponding to Masculinity, Femininity, and Masculinity-Femininity scales. In this research, we used CFA in a college sample (N = 382) to evaluate the 3-factor model, and we revised scales by eliminating 6 misspecified items. The revised model fit well in another college sample (N = 230). We renamed the revised scales Agency, Communion, and Emotional Vulnerability. In relation to Five-factor theory, Emotional Vulnerability and Communion correlated well with Neuroticism and Agreeableness, respectively, and Agency had moderate correlations with Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. Psychometric results in the context of current theory suggest that Agency (Masculinity) may not be a fully adequate measure of the agency construct.     

Early changes in muscle activation patterns of toddlers during walking

Early locomotor behavior has been the focus of considerable attention by developmentalists over several decades. Few studies have addressed explicitly patterns of muscle activity that underlie this coordination pattern. Our purposes were to illustrate a method to determine objectively the onset and offset of muscle firings during early walking and to investigate the emergence of patterns of activation of the core locomotor muscles. We tested eight toddlers as they walked overground at walking onset (max. of 3-6 independent steps) and after three months of walking experience. Surface electrodes monitored activity of the gastrocnemius, tibialis anterior, quadriceps, and hamstrings. We reduced EMG signals to a frame-by-frame designation of "on-off," followed by muscle state and co-contraction analyses, and probability distributions for each muscle's activity across multiple cycles. Our results clearly show that at walking onset muscle activity was highly variable with few, if any, muscles showing recurring patterns of behavior, within or among toddlers. Variability and co-activation decreased with walking experience but remained inconsistent, in contrast to the significant increase in stability shown for joint coordination and endpoint (foot placement) parameters. We propose this trend emerges because of the high number of options (muscle combinations) available. Toddlers learn first to marshal sufficient force to balance and make forward progress but slowly discover how to optimize these resources.