The Significance of Parents' Evaluations of their Own School for their Educational Attitudes

The study set out to examine parents' evaluations of the school they had attended and the role of these evaluations in the formation of parental attitudes towards education. A group of vocationally educated (N = 343) and a group of academically educated (N = 231) parents were asked to think back to their primary school days and evaluate the functioning of their school; they were also requested to indicate their opinions on a set of attitude statements and to predict their preschool-aged child's future direction in secondary education. The parents' evaluation of their schools averaged at satisfactory, with the highest grade given to the quality of the instruction and the lowest grades to the giving of encouragement and the capability of taking individual needs into consideration. The school evaluations were organized by the school generation and, in particular, by the educational position of the subject, so that those parents who had gone to the (new) comprehensive school and those who were university-educated gave more positive evaluations of their schools than did those who had gone to the (old) folk school and those who were vocationally educated. The critical educational attitudes corresponding to the educational position of the academically educated parents were enhanced if their evaluation of their own school was negative, whereas the positive educational attitudes corresponding to the educational position of the vocationally educated parents were enhanced if their evaluation of their own school was positive. With the vocationally educated parents, their school evaluation also organized their prediction of their child's secondary education: a positive evaluation raised and a negative evaluation lowered the likelihood of vocational education as the predicted alternative.     

Development of cognitive averaging: when light and light make dark

In two experiments we studied developmental changes in reasoning about intensive quantities. In contrast to previous studies, color--an intensive quantity that is readily perceivable--was chosen as stimulus material. Children between 6 and 12 years of age and adults predicted the mixture intensity of pairs of liquids with different intensities of red color, the liquid volumes in the two source glasses either being the same (Experiment 1) or different (Experiment 2). The data show that cognitive averaging in this domain develops late and slowly. An extensitivity bias, a strong tendency to use rules (adding in particular) that hold for extensive but not for intensive quantities, predominated up to the age of 12 years and was not totally absent in adults. Contrary to common expectation, children's use of the correct averaging rule became more likely when an extensive quantity, volume, was also varied and thus the task increased in complexity.     

A search for parenting style: a cross-situational analysis of parental behavior

Cross-situational stability in parents' emotional warmth and guidance was studied by observing parents (N = 77, M age = 38 years) with their school-aged child in 2 dyadic problem-solving situations and in a family discussion concerning a moral dilemma. The observational data were coded by independent observers using dimensional ratings and dichotomous frequency counts as the 2 coding procedures. These procedures yielded a similar pattern of findings. Parents tended to behave consistently across situations, although the type of situation did affect the amount of emotional warmth and guidance manifested by the parent. Stability was further analyzed by means of structural equation modeling to test whether variance in parents' emotional warmth and guidance across situations was attributable to a generalized parenting style factor. A Parenting Style factor was identified that reflected the parents' child-centeredness; this factor explained, in part, parental behavior within each situation, although contextual factors also contributed to situation-specific variations from task to task.     

Using temporal information to construct, update, and retrieve situation models of narratives

Four experiments explored how readers use temporal information to construct and update situation models and retrieve them from memory. In Experiment 1, readers spontaneously constructed temporal and spatial situation models of single sentences. In Experiment 2, temporal inconsistencies caused problems in updating situation models similar to those observed previously for other dimensions of situation models. In Experiment 3, merely implied temporal order information was inferred from narratives, affecting comprehension of later sentences like explicitly stated order information. Moreover, inconsistent temporal order information prevented the creation and storage in memory of an integrated situation model. In Experiment 4, a temporal inconsistency increased processing time even if readers were unable to report the inconsistency. These results confirm the significance of the temporal dimension of situation models.     

Walking or talking? Behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of action verb processing

Brain activity elicited by visually presented words was investigated using behavioral measures and current source densities calculated from high-resolution EEG recordings. Verbs referring to actions usually performed with different body parts were compared. Behavioral data indicated faster processing of verbs referring to actions performed with the face muscles and articulators (face-related words) compared to verbs referring to movements involving the lower half of the body (leg-related words). Significant topographical differences in brain activity elicited by verb types were found starting approximately 250 ms after word onset. Differences were seen at recording sites located over the motor strip and adjacent frontal cortex. At the vertex, close to the cortical representation of the leg, leg-related verbs (for example, to walk) produced strongest in-going currents, whereas for face-related verbs (for example, to talk) the most in-going activity was seen at more lateral electrodes placed over the left Sylvian fissure, close to the representation of the articulators. Thus, action words caused differential activation along the motor strip, with strongest in-going activity occurring close to the cortical representation of the body parts primarily used for carrying out the actions the verbs refer to. Topographically specific physiological signs of word processing started earlier for face-related words and lasted longer for verbs referring to leg movements. We conclude that verb types can differ in their processing speed and can elicit neurophysiological activity with different cortical topographies. These behavioral and physiological differences can be related to cognitive processes, in particular to lexical semantic access. Our results are consistent with associative theories postulating that words are organized in the brain as distributed cell assemblies whose cortical distributions reflect the words' meanings.     

Sehen, Sichtbarkeit und empirische Forschung

Vision, Visibility, and Empirical Research. In general, natural scientists use the concept of observation in a liberal way: they talk of observing electrons, DNA, or distant quasars. Several philosophers of science have recently argued for a similar use of the concept of observation: they have claimed that the important aspects of scientific research can only be properly reconstructed in accordance with how this term is actually used in science. With reference to an example from astronomy, I point out that the proposed generalisation of the concept of observation leads to undesirable consequences. I argue that a differentiated conceptual framework is required in order to give an adequate account of the varieties of scientific experience. Thus, the appropriate starting point for distinguishing these various scientific research practices should not be the generalised scientific conception of observation, but instead distinctly different uses of the term observation drawn from ordinary language. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Visual perception in 'low vision'

'Low vision' has an international classification as an impairment of vision that is defined by loss of visual acuity and the size of the visual field. Functional classification that would depict capability to use vision in different activities has not yet been agreed upon. Abnormal visual information leads to changes in visual perception, and brain-damage-related visual impairment may alter or prevent one or several cognitive visual functions. Abnormal visual perception opens a window into brain mechanisms that the psychophysicists otherwise do not have. Together with clinicians, psychophysicists can help visually impaired persons to understand the nature of their disability by thoroughly studying the nature of the altered image and the profile of cognitive visual functions.     

Book reviews

Classical Probability in the Enlightenment. LORRAINE DASTON, 1988. Princeton, Princeton University Press. xviii + 423 pp., US$19.95 (paperback). ISBN 0–691–08497–1, 0–691–00644‐X (paperback)

Following Form and Function: a Philosophical Archaeology of Life Science. STEPHEN T. ASMA, 1996. Evanston, IL, Northwestern University Press. xiii + 232 pp., price not available

Concepts and Methods in Evolutionary Biology. ROBERT N. BRANDON, 1996. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. xiv+221 pp., $US59.95 (hardback), $Can 27.50 (paperback). ISBN 0–521–49545–9 (hardback), 0–521–49888–0 (paperback)

The Completeness of Scientific Theories: on the Derivation of Empirical Indicators within a Theoretical Framework: the Case of Physical Geometry. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, Volume 53. MARTIN CARRIER, 1994. Dordrecht, Kluwer. xviii + 248 pp., price not available. ISBN 0–7923–24757 (hardback)

The Philosophy and History of Molecular Biology: New Perspectives. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Volume 183. SAHOTRA SARKAR (Ed.), 1996. Dordrecht, Kluwer. 264 pp., $US127. ISBN 0–7923–3947–9

Awareness: What it is, What it does. CHRIS NUNN, 1996. London and New York, Routledge. price not available. ISBN 0–415–13227–4     

Menstrual Knowledge and Taboo TV Commercials: Effects on Self-Objectification among Italian and Swedish Women

Despite menstruation being a physiological phenomenon in women’s life, social research has highlighted that there are still many taboos, also conveyed by advertising, which prevent an open discourse on the topic and can have negative impacts on women’s well-being. The present study examined the influence of the exposure to existing TV advertisements for sanitary napkins depicting menstruation as a taboo on self-objectification in women from Italy (n = 160) and Sweden (n = 159). To do so, we also investigated the moderating role of menstrual knowledge in this relationship. Our findings showed that in the Italian sample, exposure to the taboo TV commercial led to more self-objectification especially for participants with lower knowledge of menstruation. These effects did not occur for their Swedish counterparts, showing no differences in self-objectification when women were exposed to the taboo advertisement. The present results are discussed in light of cultural differences in sexual and menstrual education between the two countries. Theoretical and practical implications are drawn.     

Comparison of the distortion of probability information in decision under risk and an equivalent visual task

Decision makers typically overweight small probabilities and underweight large probabilities. However, there are recent reports that when probability is presented in the form of relative frequencies, this typical pattern reverses. We tested this hypothesis by comparing decision making in two tasks: In one task, probability was stated numerically, and in the other task, it was conveyed through a visual representation. In the visual task, participants chose whether a "stochastic bullet" should be fired at either a large target for a small reward or a small target for a large reward. Participants' knowledge of probability in the visual task was the result of extensive practice firing bullets at targets. In the classical numerical task, participants chose between pairs of lotteries with probabilities and rewards matched to the probabilities and rewards in the visual task. We found that participants' probability-weighting functions were significantly different in the two tasks, but the pattern for the visual task was the typical, not the reversed, pattern.