University of Alberta norms of relative meaning frequency for 566 homographs

For many models of lexical ambiguity resolution, relative frequency of the different meanings of homographs (words with more than one meaning) is crucial. Although several homograph association norms have been published in the past, none has involved a large number of subjects responding to a large number of homographs, and most homograph norming studies are now at least a decade old. In Experiment l, associations to 566 homographs were collected from an average of 192 subjects per homograph. Frequency of occurrence for the three most common meanings is reported, along with the corresponding associates, and a measure of the overall ambiguity of each homograph. Homographs whose meanings differed in part of speech were more ambiguous overall than homographs whose different meanings belonged to a single grammatical class. Homographs whose pronunciation depended on meaning (heterophones) were no more ambiguous than nonheterophones, and word frequency was unrelated to overall ambiguity. Estimates of homograph balance across different norming studies were compared, and homographs with two meanings of approximately equal relative meaning frequency (balanced homographs) and homographs with one clearly dominant meaning (polarized homographs) were identified. In Experiment 2, reliability of meaning categorizations was measured for a subset of the homographs in the first experiment. Meaning categorizations were shown to be highly reliable across raters.     

The diagnosis and cure of garden paths

We propose that, for the human parser, recovery from garden paths consists in repairing the structure built so far, rather than reparsing the input. The difficulty of a repair is attributable not to the cost of effecting the structural alterations but to the cost of deducing which alterations are needed. The parser must diagnose its error in order to correct it. The error is signaled by an input word that is incompatible with the current structure; this is the symptom from which the diagnosis must be made. If the error is transparently clear from the nature of the symptom, recovery is easy; but sometimes the necessary reasoning is obscure, and then the diagnosis is unsuccessful and the garden path persists. Unlike other repair models, the diagnosis model needs no special mechanism for revising garden path analyses. The garden path recovery device is the same machine as the first-pass parser, merely set into emergency mode. When faced with a breakdown the parser does not stop its normal activities and enter a new mode of reasoning to detect what went wrong. It simply continues to parse, attaching the problematic input item in the least ungrammatical way it can, despite the conflict with previously built structure. This conflict is productive; it provokes adjustments to the existing structure. In successful cases, one adjustment leads to another until a stable state is reached, at which point the original error will have been eliminated. Examples suggest that the parser gives more weight to syntatctic than to pragmatic acceptability; only a syntactic clash between the input and the existing structure sets the adjustment process in motion.     

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.     

Leaders as eponyms: Individual and situational determinants of ruler eminence

The eponymic theory of leadership maintains that the eminence of rulers depends on their utility as historical labels without regard for their personal attributes. The explanatory scope of this interpretation was tested, for methodological reasons, on a sample of 342 European hereditary monarchs. In support of eponymic theory: (a) About two-thirds of the variance in leader eminence can be ascribed to the number of significant events occurring during the leader's tenure in office; (b) events with positive and negative social valence carry approximately equal and positive weight; (c) events over which the leader exerts considerable control have about the same weight as those over which personal control is virtually nonexistent; and (d) the effects of epochcentric bias and reign span are mediated by the number of significant events. But qualifying eponymic theory: (a) Eminence is not determined solely by the event tabulations (e.g., leader frame is a J-curve function of intelligence and a U-curve function of morality); (b) the number of events is not exclusively accounted for by reign span; and (c) reign span is not solely a function of life span (e.g., reign span is a positive linear function of assessed leadership). The results endorse a form of the theory in which some provision is made for intellectual and personality factors.     

Tigers are something else: A case for family play

This paper is an attempt to bridge the two worlds of family therapy and filial play therapy, introducing the complementary idea of play in therapy. Family play therapy challenges the idea that play is only useful in the treatment of children. Clinical examples are given and uses of play are discussed, including evaluation, play as a therapeutic tool, and the development of themes. The authors believe that therapists who are willing to be playful offer their clients a new world of therapeutic experiences.     

Effects of sex-linked situations and sex composition on cooperation and style of interaction

One hundred and sixteen undergraduates were randomly assigned to same-sex and mixed-sex dyads. They interacted face-to-face in four different role-playing situations, half of which were female linked and half male linked. These situations were structured to give the participants mixed motives toward each other. Results indicate that sex composition and sex appropriateness of the situations affected the style of interaction more than cooperation. In both the same- and mixed-sex dyads, division of task and maintenance between group members occurred. In mixed-sex dyads, males were task oriented, and females maintenance oriented; presumably, sexual identity was used to make this division. In the same-sex dyads, the distribution of task and maintenance behaviors was worked out in the interaction. Participants rated themselves more knowledgable and were more competitive in female-linked situations than in male-linked ones. Under the conditions of the experiment, sex of the participant and sex composition of the dyad were not found to affect cooperation.     

Invention and discovery among the sciences: a P-technique factor analysis

This paper explores how discoveries and inventions in nine scientific disciplines cluster over time in Western culture. The transhistorical sample consisted of 12,761 major scientific contributions tabulated into 44 time-units (full, half, and quarter centuries) extending from 800 B.C. to 1900 A.D. A factor analysis was executed on the correlations among the nine measures after partialing out third-order polynomial time trends. Three orthogonal factors appeared: concrete (chemistry, physics, and biology), abstract (astronomy and mathematics), and applied (technology, geography, and geology) clusters. Medicine loaded moderately on the concrete and abstract clusters. Three types of explanations were discussed-personological, interpersonal, and sociocultural-with suggestions for how they might be tested.     

Applying an occupational classification to the work histories of young men and women

Holland's occupational classification was used to analyze the work histories of a national representative sample of young men and women ages 14 through 24. Hypotheses tested were concerned with the psychological orderliness of occupational changes, the relationship between occupational experiences and aspirations, and the relationship between consistent occupational codes and the stability of work histories. The analyses supported the usefulness of the occupational classification for organizing the work histories of both young men and young women. For both sexes, the classification reflected regular patterns of job changes. The category of a person's earlier job was an efficient predictor of a person's subsequent jobs; likewise, the category of a person's current job forecasted the category of his vocational aspiration. The consistency of an occupational code was also related to job stability for whites but not for blacks.