Understanding “because”: How important is the task?

The causal connective because requires the order of clauses within a sentence to violate the order of events in the real world; i.e., effect because cause is correct. Children's (4, 6, and 8 years of age) ability to comprehend because was explored in a series of four studies. The first, a replication with variations of existing studies, assessed children's ability to judge as anomalous sentences in which the order of clauses is reversed. Comprehension of impersonal sentences is better than of sentences derived from narratives of their own experiences, although children do poorly at this task until age 8. However, results of study 2 suggest that children's poor understanding of task requirements is partly responsible, since increased task instructions and modeling led to significant improvement in the ability of preschoolers to judge sentences as anomalous. In the third study, children named the cause event after being told a causal sequence (involving either psychological or physical causality) of the form: Event A, Event C (effect) because Event B (cause), Event D. Comprehension of physical causality sequences is superior, but again, only 8-year-olds showed good performance. In Study 4, children were asked to find the cause event in four-clause sequences of the same form as in Study 3, but memory props were added in the form of pictures of events A, B, and D. Near perfect performance was shown by all children. Overall, comprehension studies of because are judged to be rife with methodological problems, and memory demands are seen to be particularly important.The authors wish to thank Lynn Anne Pye for her contributions to Study 4, which formed part of her undergraduate honors degree research, as well as F. Michael Rabinowitz for his comments and statistical aid. This research was supported by NSERC grant A7911 to the senior author.     

Written language acquisition after left or right hemidecortication in infancy

When written language is acquired in only one hemisphere because of hemidecortication in infancy, the left hemisphere is superior to the right at using morphophonemic rules to read and spell unfamiliar words, and at exploiting the structure of sentence units to achieve rapid reading of meaning in prose. The ability to learn names for logographs, however, is better in the right hemisphere than in the left. The greater mastery of written language in the left hemisphere is a result, not of an enhanced facility for making cross-modal associations between sounds and signs, but of a superior access to the morphophonemic rule system and the higher-order textual constraints of English.     

The “Flash” System: A Field Study of Altruism1

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an experimental automated highway-help system for stranded motorists (the Flash system). Direct and indirect helping behavior rates as a function of the race and sex of supposedly stranded drivers on the Flash-equipped highway were compared to helping rates on a comparable, non-Flash-equipped highway. The results indicated that the automated system produced (a) higher overall helping rates and (b) higher helping rates for white persons, with type of help (direct or indirect) interacting with confederate sex.     

Gender role stereotyping in children's literature: An update

The impact of gender role stereotyping in children's literature has been examined in numerous studies over the past two decades. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the sex bias portrayed in picture books is still as prevalent as in the past. In particular, we were interested in whether the frequency of males and females in pictures and their characterizations had changed. One hundred and fifty children's picture books were analyzed for gender role content. It was found that while the frequency of males and females depicted in the stories had indeed become more evenly distributed over the past 50 years, the roles played by males and females have changed in a more subtle way. Girls are now being pictured in more instrumental activities, but are as passive dependent as 50 years ago. Boys are occasionally shown as passive dependent today, but are no less instrumental than 50 years ago. The findings suggest that increased effort is needed on the part of publishers and authors to provide children with literature that more closely parallels the roles of males and females in contemporary society.Preparation of this article was supported in part by a Faculty Grant from Monmouth College awarded to the second author.     

On the gender differential use of listener responsiveness

It is argued that claims of gender differences in back channel behavior should not be uncritically accepted; there are limitations in previous research that make such acceptance questionable. The frequency of back channel behavior was examined over a portion of the early life span (Grades 4 and 9, and college). Twenty-minute structured conversations of 90 dyads (30 male, 30 female, and 30 mixed gender) were scored for eight types of back channels. There was a nonsignificant dyad gender effect for all measures, indicating that back channel frequency did not vary across dyads of different gender composition. The Age × Dyad Gender interaction was significant for only one of the eight back channel types, indicating that age had little effect on the gender-related use of back channel behavior. Although females produced more of some types of back channels than males, there was no difference in back channel frequency between males and females in opposite-gender interaction for any of the eight measures. We conclude that wholesale acceptance of gender differences in back channel behavior is not warranted.     

The sex-role egalitarianism scale: A measure of attitudes toward equality between the sexes

Two parallel forms of the Sex-Role Egalitarianism Scale (SRES) were developed. Each form includes 19 items representing each of five domains of adult living: marital roles, parental roles, employee roles, social-interpersonal-heterosexual roles, and educational roles. To determine the psychometric characteristics of the scales, 367 persons were tested, including police, senior citizens, business undergraduates, and psychology undergraduates. Reliability estimates for domain and total scores ranged from .81 to .97. Correlations between social desirability and SRES scores ranged from –.03 to +.18. Preliminary evidence of validity was derived from the confirmation of two a priori hypotheses: (a) Women scored more egalitarian than men, and psychology students scored more egalitarian than business students; (b) Both student groups scored more egalitarian than senior citizens and police.This research was supported by a Faculty Research and Creative Endeavors Grant from Central Michigan University. A portion of this paper was presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Detroit, April 1981. The authors wish to thank Ann Carey, Tom Blair, and Larry Dennis for their computer assistance.Copies of the Sex-Role Egalitarianism Scale may be obtained from Carole A. Beere, Department of Psychology, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan 48859.     

Imagery ability and the identification of fragmented pictures and words

High and low imagery individuals completed two paper-and-pencil identification tasks involving fragmented pictures and fragmented words. Although a trend was present for spatial measures of imagery ability to correlate more highly with picture than with word identification, high imagers nevertheless surpassed low imagers on both tasks. An interpretation emphasizing the spatial-imaginal demands of both tasks is suggested. Significant correlations between word identification and some verbal measures, as well as self-reported imagery, may have resulted from the differential priming of verbal and imaginal strategies following subtle procedural changes in the two experiments described.     

Generational differences in work values between parents and children and between boys and girls across grade levels 6, 9, 10, and 12

A cross-sectional comparison of school children in grades 6, 9, 10, and 12 and their parents was made to examine changes in work values and the relationship between children's and their parents' work values as a function of age and sex. Discriminant function analyses revealed support for hypothesized differences in children's values and for the convergence of sex differences in values at later ages. Results also confirmed that at earlier ages there is greater similarity in values between children and their like-sexed parent but older (grade 12) boys and girls are most similar to their fathers. These findings confirm and expand the results of earlier research.     

Sex-role stereotypes: Issues of attitudinal changes

Systematic study of current sex-role beliefs has been aided by the development of the Sex Role Stereotype Questionnaire. This inquiry explored the assumption that the sex-role stereotypes of school counselors, tested seven years after the development of the questionnaire, would differ substantially from the norming samples. The data analysis revealed that the majority (three-quarters) of the behavioral characteristics viewed as stereotypic by the original samples were not seen by male and female school counselors or by either the male or female counselor independently as differentiating men and women.