Children's understanding of class inclusion hierarchies: the relationship between external representation and task performance

Three experiments were designed to investigate children's understanding of class inclusion hierarchies and to determine whether such understanding may be related to children's ability to construct external representations for information that was hierarchical in nature. Understanding of hierarchies was studied through tasks designed to demonstrate children's ability with subset/superset classification and knowledge of asymmetric and transitive relations. Children were asked to construct their own external representations for passages containing information that could be represented hierarchically. It was hypothesized that the quality of children's external representations would be related to their ability to respond to questions related to the passages. Children's responses to questions, as well as their external representations, suggested that children as young as second grade have substantial understanding of hierarchical relations. Although the external representations were constructed in drawing, written, or structured modes, the data revealed a strong relationship between the quality of children's external representations and their performance on question tasks requiring both recognition and reasoning. Finally, children understood the relationships expressed in tree diagrams and could construct such diagrams to respond to questions. Implications of the findings, particularly as related to note-taking skills, and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Gender orientation and emergent leader behavior

Two studies compared the effects of masculinity and femininity on rater and ratee evaluations of emergent leader behavior in mixed- and same-sex groups. Data were collected in two consensus-seeking studies using the same procedures; only the gender composition of the task groups was changed. The first study was composed of 39 female and 21 male students in 15 mixed-sex groups, and the second study included 96 female students in 22 same-sex groups. Masculinity and femininity were measured with the Bem Sex Role Inventory [L. Bem, (1974) The Measurement of Psychology Androgyny, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol. 42, pp. 155–162]. Contrary to research and theory, masculinity was not associated with peer-rated leadership, yet femininity was correlated with two measures of self-rated leadership.     

Adolescents' Possible Selves and Their Relationship to Global Self-Esteem

Recent research indicates that adolescent girls'self-esteem is lower than that of boys, and adolescence has been identified as a particularly problematic period for female self-esteem. However, many studies use global self-esteem measures that mask important differences within the domains of self-concept that contribute to self-esteem. Further, some self-esteem measures assess components of male self-esteem but overlook aspects of female self-esteem. The possible selves approach was used to identify categories of adolescent male and female self-concept that correlate with self-esteem. Subjects were 212 high-school students. The sample was primarily (96%)Caucasian. Results indicate that female self-esteem is related to perceived likelihood of hoped-for and feared possible selves in multiple domains, whereas male self-esteem is related only to the likelihood of one domain of hoped-for possible selves.     

Transfer between vision and haptics: Memory for 2-D patterns and 3-D objects

Explicit memory tests such as recognition typically access semantic, modality-independent representations, while perceptual implicit memory tests typically access presemantic, modality-specific representations. By demonstrating comparable cross- and within-modal priming using vision and haptics with verbal materials (Easton, Srinivas, & Greene, 1997), we recently questioned whether the representations underlying perceptual implicit tests were modality specific. Unlike vision and audition, with vision and haptics verbal information can be presented in geometric terms to both modalities. The present experiments extend this line of research by assessing implicit and explicit memory within and between vision and haptics in the nonverbal domain, using both 2-D patterns and 3-D objects. Implicit test results revealed robust cross-modal priming for both 2-D patterns and 3-D objects, indicating that vision and haptics shared abstract representations of object shape and structure. Explicit test results for 3-D objects revealed modality specificity, indicating that the recognition system keeps track of the modality through which an object is experienced.     

Simulating naturalistic demands for speeded judgment

Responses to speeded judgment (e.g., “shoot/don’t shoot”) situations in naturalistic environments are influenced by many variables and psychological processes. We describe a custom-built simulator with head- and eye-tracking capabilities for basic and applied research on speeded decision making. The system allows the user to project life-sized, time-coded, videotaped, or computer-animated scenarios on a screen to collect reaction-time, shot-accuracy, and eye-movement data. An initial experiment is also reported to demonstrate the utility of the system for studying factors that affect speeded judgment under naturalistic situations.     

Four probability-preserving properties of inferences

Different inferences in probabilistic logics of conditionals preserve the probabilities of their premisses to different degrees. Some preserve certainty, some high probability, some positive probability, and some minimum probability. In the first case conclusions must have probability 1 when premisses have probability 1, though they might have probability 0 when their premisses have any lower probability. In the second case, roughly speaking, if premisses are highly probable though not certain then conclusions must also be highly probable. In the third case conclusions must have positive probability when premisses do, and in the last case conclusions must be at least as probable as their least probable premisses. Precise definitions and well known examples are given for each of these properties, characteristic principles are shown to be valid and complete for deriving conclusions of each of these kinds, and simple trivalent truthtable tests are described for determining which properties are possessed by any given inference. Brief comments are made on the application of these results to certain modal inferences such as Jones may own a car, and if he does he will have a driver's license. Therefore, he may have a driver's license.     

Assumptions underlying psychological testing

Tests purporting to reflect the learning aptitudes of school children differ much more than generally is recognized. However, error in assesing such learning aptitude inheres much more in the users of the tests than in the tests themselves. Assumptions fundamental to such assessment, or even testing, are considered. It is particularly important that the assessor, or tester, constantly be sensitive to the nature of the relationship between the psychological demands of test items or tests and the learning demands confronting the child. Even tests that generally are grossly or crudely used often can yield psychoeducationally meaninful information if their results are differentially perceived in terms of the light they throw on the psychological operations fundamental to learning, “process,” as contrasted with that thrown on the results of the functioning of such operations, “product.”