Deep agraphia

A case of agraphia is documented which resembles in every respect the pattern of results obtained in deep dyslexia. Pronounceable pseudowords could not be written to dictation while concrete nouns were more accurately transcribed than abstract nouns. Verbs and functions words were written very poorly and oral spelling was impaired. In addition, semantic paragraphias were present. In contrast to the deficit observed in writing, no such impairment was found for reading. It is concluded that writing can occur without phoneme-grapheme conversion and that codes generated for reading are functionally distinct from codes generated for writing.     

Long-term predictive validity of the WPPSI: An 11-year follow-up study

As part of a longitudinal study, a control group of 85 children were tested on the WPPSI at 5$\text{1}\text{2}$ years and the WISC-R at 16$\text{1}\text{2}$ years. Educational attainment was also assessed in adolescence. Data are presented illustrating the long-term predictive validity of the WPPSI. The Full Scale IQs on the two tests intercorrelated +0.86.     

Male teacher effects on young children: A theoretical and empirical consideration

The argument has been frequently made that an increase in the number of male teachers working at the early school levels would reduce the number of school-related problems for boys. This argument is evaluated in the context of two major theories of sex-role development, the social learning and cognitive developmental theories, and the results of an examination of the studies of children's performance and development in relation to teacher's gender. The hypothesis that male teachers reduce boys' problems in school does not receive much support empirically or theoretically.This work was supported by a grant from the Quebec Department of Education to the first author.     

Behaviors associated with “good” and “poor” outcomes in a simulated career decision

What career decision-making procedures enable people to make decisions that yield consequences congruent with their own values? The 40 “best” (most congruent) and 40 “worst” decision makers on the Career Decision Simulation were compared in a sample of 148 community college students. No significant differences appeared in the amount of double checking, number of occupations and information sources checked, amount of information collected, decision time required, and the proportion of information sought about high values. The “best” decision makers, however, were significantly more persistent in immediately seeking more information about an occupation that seemed to match one of their most important personal work values. Following a values-guided search appears more effective than simply searching exhaustively.     

Personal computers and behavioral observation: An introduction

Some fundamental aspects of observational data are outlined, and some basic issues in implementation of small computers in observational research are discussed.     

MULTIVARIATE ASSESSMENT OF CONFLICT IN DISTRESSED AND NONDISTRESSED MOTHER-ADOLESCENT DYADS

A battery of measures was used to assess conflict between mothers and young adolescents (females and males, 11 to 15 years of age). Two groups of families, one composed of a distressed clinical sample (N = 38), the other a nondistressed normative sample (N = 40), participated. The assessment battery included retrospective judgments, frequency estimates, self-monitored home recording, and tape-recorded discussion of a home problem. Content of assessment measures tapped aspects of parental control, decisionmaking, self-reported interaction behavior, arguments, interaction behavior rated by independent “blind” observers, frequency and anger-intensity of specific problematic issues, and perceptions of positive and negative behaviors of the other family member. Based on univariate analyses, 21 of the 26 defined variables discriminated significantly in the predicted direction. Maternal and adolescent reports of behavior and independent ratings of tape-recorded interaction emerged as strong and consistent discriminators. Stepwise multivariate discriminant analysis provided successful classification of 100% of the families based on the inclusion of nine variables. In a cross-validation sample, 84% of the families were correctly classified. Implications for systematic outcome research as well as clinical application are discussed.     

I. Validity of WISC-R factor scores in predicting achievement and attention for four sociocultural groups

The predictive validity of WISC-R factor scores was examined with samples from the four sociocultural groups of Anglo, Black, Chicano, and native American Papago. The Full Scale IQ and Verbal Comprehension (VC) factor scores were significantly better predictors of achievement as measured by teacher ratings and the Metropolitan Achievement Test. The Perceptual Organization and Freedom from Distractibility (FD) factor scores were also significantly related to achievement, but at a lower level than Full Scale and VC. The correlations of the WISC-R and achievement measures were nearly the same for three of the four groups (exception was native American Papago). The relationship of the FD factor score to ratings of attention was statistically significant, but relatively low. Cautions in interpreting FD as a measure of attention were recommended due to overlap of distributions and low proportion of variance in attention accounted for by FD.