Interpretation of instructions: A source of individual differences in analogical reasoning

Two studies were conducted to identify individual differences in the effect of instruction on strategies used to solve figural/numerical analogies. In Study 1, students aged 9, 11, 13, and 19 years were given incomplete instructions and then were assessed for (a) consistent use of an appropriate rule for solving analogies and (b) the type and number of stimulus attributes that are incorporated in those analogical rules. Use of an analogical rule increased with age and corresponded to higher scores on a psychometric test of reasoning within each age group. In Study 2, analysis of verbal protocols was used to identify the strategies of some 9- and 11-year-olds who showed a peculiar pattern of responding in Study 1. These children attended to relevant attributes but used systematic nonanalogical rules to solve problems. When provided with more specific instructions, most of these children adopted an analogical rule but failed to incorporate relevant attributes. Results indicate that selection or construction of task-relevant solution strategies from incomplete instructions may partially account for differential performance on tests of analogical reasoning.     

Effects of Pay Expected on Pay Received: The Confirmatory Nature of Initial Expectations1

Previous research suggests that women have lower pay expectations and a lower sense of personal entitlement with respect to pay than similarly qualified men (cf. Major & Konar, in press; Major, McFarlin, & Gagnon, 1984). The present research examined, in two liking simulation experiments, the impact of a job applicant's pay expectations and gender on starting salary offers, hiring recommendations, and evaluations made by management students. Results of both experiments indicated that, given identical applicant qualifications, the higher the salary requested by an applicant, the higher the salary he or she was offered, regardless of the applicant's gender. However, women with moderate pay expectations were offered significantly more money (Experiment 1) and were significantly more likely to be hired (Experiment 2) than were men with moderate expectations. Amount of pay expected had no impact on other evaluations of the applicant. The role that gender differences in pay expectations may play in perpetuating nonperformance-related pay differences between women and men is discussed.     

Male Partners' Appraisals of Undesired Pregnancy and Abortion: Implications for Women's Adjustment to Abortion

The impact of men's attributions for pregnancy and expectations for coping with abortion on their partner's post-abortion adjustment was examined. Men's and women's attributions and coping expectations were assessed in a sample of 73 couples prior to obtaining a first-trimester abortion of an undesired pregnancy. Women's depression was assessed 30 minutes post-abortion. Partners did not differ in their coping expectations or attributions of the pregnancy to chance, situation, another person, or their own behavior, but men blamed the pregnancy more on their own character than did their partners. Male partner's coping expectancies affected women's adjustment only if the women themselves had low coping expectancies. Among women with low coping expectancies, those accompanied by partners who also had low coping expectancies were the most depressed. Men's attributions were unrelated to their partner's adjustment.     

Figurative understanding of pictures and sentences

Figurative language use involves the appropriate relatings of normally discrepant domains of knowledge. The present study determined whether college students could match a picture of the literal content of a proverb with a one-sentence target scenario which instantiated an interpretation of the proverb. More specifically, the subjects chose between a target scenario and a foil scenario designed to be a poorer instance of the interpretation. The results indicated that the subjects were successful despite the wide discrepancy in literal meaning between the pictures and scenarios. Supporting studies determined that this finding could not be attributed to response (scenario) bias or to certain characteristics of the pictures or of the scenarios alone. Apparently, the all important interaction between these materials induced the subjects to construct abstract ideas which served to relate the materials figuratively. Idea construction was heuristically described as involving analogic processes.The research was supported, in part, by a grant from the University Research Council of the University of Cincinnati to K. Voegtle.     

What Makes Susie Cry? A Symptom-Context Study of Family Therapy

The aim of this investigation was to examine the context of recurrent crying episodes during family therapy sessions. We tested the relative contribution of social versus individual intrapsychic variables within a 10-session, videotaped, structural family therapy. Segments of therapy before crying episodes when compared with control (non-crying) segments were found to have higher levels of the following variables: involvement with others in the room, rejection, and concern about supplies. Two family variables were also higher before crying episodes: family discussion about patient, and patient receives hostility. A stepwise discriminant function analysis using these variables indicated that family discussion about the patient was most important in signaling onset of crying. The results are discussed in terms of individual and family theories of symptom formation as illuminated through this case study.     

Intergroup Interaction and Self-Disclosure1

Two studies were designed to test hypotheses concerning self-disclosure during initial interactions with ingroup or outgroup strangers. Based on intergroup anxiety theory it was predicted that ingroup members would disclose less to outgroup strangers than to ingroup strangers. One study involved interaction with handicapped and nonhandicapped confederates and one involved interaction with Caucasian and Black confederates. It was found that on some dimensions there was less self-disclosure to outgroup than ingroup strangers during initial interactions. Additional data suggested that high levels of public self-awareness and perceived dissimilarity also reduced some aspects of self-disclosure.     

Reaction times for comparisons of successively presented visual patterns: Evidence for serial self-terminating search

Two-choice classification RTs were collected for eight conditions designed to vary the number of comparisons necessary between one or two visual patterns in perception and one or two in short-term memory (STM). Overall RT data supported both a serial self-terminating and parallel self-terminating model with distributed search times, while rejecting corresponding exhaustive models. Precise predictions for the parallel model proved difficult to derive; however, the serial model predicted the fine detail of the data surprisingly well. RTs suggested that Ss searched through all stimuli in memory first and that stimuli in both memory and perception were searched from right to left. Comparison times between identical stimuli were estimated to be longer than comparison times between different stimuli. Error rates increased with the number of hypothesized comparisons; predicted error rates, based on independence of rates within stages, also increased but failed to predict the empirical error rates very well.     

Objective and subjective complexity measures for a new population of patterns

A method of generating two-element matrix patterns having varying degrees of internal constraint is described. The method was used to generate a set of 9 × 9 matrix patterns of black and white squares in approximately equal proportion, ranging from very simple to very complex. Three sets of objective complexity measures were developed, the first two within,the framework of information theory and the third based on symmetry and grouping of identical elements. Multiple regression between the objective measures and subjective complexity scale values obtained in three separate experiments indicated that one of the information measures was uniformly superior in predicting subjective complexity.     

Farm women/farm work

The lack of documentation of women's farm work makes it difficult to assess women's contributions to farm businesses. A survey of farm women in western Canada showed that while younger women were more likely to have a farm work role, they also saw more barriers to farm work than older women. Variations in women's farm work may be a result of cohort differences in socialization for farm work, of farm cycle, or of family cycle. Incorporation of off-farm and household work into the analysis of women's contributions to the farm business is suggested as a more comprehensive method of assessing their work involvement.This research was funded by The Research Council of Alberta Farming for the Future.