The development of English speech patterns of a 7-year-old Polish-speaking child

The silent period hypothesis was investigated by examining the speech development of AO, a Polish-speaking child, who emigrated to the U.S. at age 7 years, 5 months, and placed in the second grade of a rural Missouri school district in which there was no instruction of English as a second-language. AO was observed for 6 years, 8 months, in order to study the development of his English speech patterns. During this interval, recordings were made of five sentences produced by AO at five different age points and with recordings from a control group of native and nonnative speakers were rated by native American speakers. AO's accent showed a gradual decline during the first year of residence, receiving a rating of near-native speech. By age 14 years, 6 months, he was rated as having native speech performance. Observations of his language, social, and school development indicated that AO remained essentially silent during the first 6 months, using two- and three-word sentences only when necessary, that his social development was normal, and that his school achievement was not impeded by his placement in the grade level appropriate for his age. The conclusion was reached that AO's silent period experience contributed significantly to his development of English speech patterns.     

Situation and Personality Correlates of Psychological Well-Being: Social Activity and Personal Control

Two studies that examined the correlates of peoples′ reports of their own psychological well-being are reported (Ryff, 1989). In Study 1, extraverts reported better psychological adjustment than introverts, especially when they completed the questionnaires with no one else present. Need for social approval and the sex of the participant were unrelated to self-reports of well-being. Satisfaction with social activities, especially activities involving friends and parents, predicted psychological well-being but the frequency of social activity did not. Completing questionnaires in the presence of friends led to better self-assessments of well-being than completing them in the presence of strangers. In Study 2, internal locus of control, high desire for control, and being female, as well as perceived control over the testing situation, were found to predict reports of better psychological adjustment. It is suggested that future research on self-assessments of psychological well-being focus on: (a) the interaction effects of personality and situational variables; (b) the difference between seeking social interaction and seeking social approval: (c) the distinction between platonic and romantic relationships, and; (d) changes in the correlates of psychological well-being throughout the life-cycle.     

Exploring University Counselors' Perceptions of Distinctions Between Gifted Black and Gifted White Students

This study examined the perceptions of a sample of university counselors relative to social, cultural, and psychological barriers to achievement among gifted Black and gifted White students. Ninety-three counselors at institutions of higher education throughout the nation participated in the study by responding to a mailed survey questionnaire. Comparisons were made relative to counselors' demographic variables (ethnicity, gender, multicultural training, and geographic locale). The results indicate that the university counselors sampled disagreed with or were undecided about the special dilemmas confronting gifted learners. Moreover, most counselors perceived that gifted Black and gifted White students experience social, cultural, and psychological problems in the same way. The study concludes with recommendations for university counselors working with gifted students in general and gifted Black students in particular     

The Negotiated Allocation of Benefits and Burdens: The Impact of Outcome Valence, Contribution, and Relationship

This laboratory study investigates negotiated allocations of benefits and burdens. We compare both the distributive and integrative aspects of negotiation to determine whether benefits and burdens are allocated according to the same norms of distributive justice and how well negotiators integrate their interests. We hypothesize that the distribution of resources depends on the valence of the resources and negotiators′ relative contributions to those resources. We also expect that the efficiency of agreements depends on the valence of resources, the negotiators′ contributions, and the time horizon of their relationships. Results support the hypotheses. Equity is more commonly used to allocate burdens than benefits; agreements for allocating burdens are less integrative than those for benefits; and agreements are more efficient when relationships are long term and subjects contribute unequally to the resources being allocated than when they contribute equally or relationships are short term. We discuss these results in terms of Taylor′s (1991) hypothesis about the asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events.     

Argument and alternative dispute resolution systems

Alternative dispute resolution occurs outside the litigation process. The alternative dispute resolution (ADR) movement in North America has emphasized viable alternatives to the litigation framework, such as arbitration, mediation, med-arb, multi-party facilitation, non-legal negotiation, mini-trials, administrative hearings, private judging (renta-judge), fact finding, and moderated settlement conferences. This essay addresses argument in the dominant alternatives: arbitration, mediation, and multi-party facilitation. Prior to comparing argument in these ADR systems, each will be briefly described.     

The bisection of a spatial interval by the pigeon

Pigeons pecked two response keys to move a white dot until it was equidistant from two other dots on a screen. Continuous records of dot position showed the effects of reinforcement and stimulus parameters upon the accuracy with which the dot was positioned. The method may prove useful for studying the perception of distance in non-human organisms.     

Effect of contingent and non-contingent social reinforcement on the cooperative play of a preschool child

The effect of adult social reinforcement on the cooperative play of a five-year old girl in a preschool setting was assessed under two conditions: (1) presented randomly throughout the school day, and (2) presented contingent on cooperative play. Only in the latter condition was a significant change in cooperative play observed.     

Response patterning during stimulus generalization in the rat

Nine rats were trained to bar press in the presence of a clicking sound of 6.67 cps (S(D)) for 1-min variable-interval food reinforcement randomly alternated with a clicking sound of 20 cps (S(Delta)) signifying extinction. After a criterion of 90% of total responses in the presence of the S(D) was obtained, a generalization test was administered, including values of 6.67, 10.00, 13.33, and 20.00 cps, with responses in the presence of the S(D) continuing to be reinforced during testing. The test yielded a gradient of response strength with rate highest in the presence of the S(D) and decreasing with increasing distance from this value. An interresponse time (IRT) analysis of responding during generalization testing revealed no systematic differences in modal IRT category or in median IRT to the different test stimuli. Mean IRT was lowest in the presence of the S(D) and increased systematically with increasing distance from this value, supporting the hypothesis that the generalization gradient of response rate is primarily the result of an increasing proportion of "long" IRT responses to stimuli increasingly distant from the S(D).     

Agreement of parent and teacher rating scales with comprehensive clinical assessments of attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity

Forty-one clinic-referred children were given the DSM-III diagnosis of attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity (ADD/H) based on structured diagnostic interviews of the child and mother and on two teacher and two parent rating scales. The degree of agreement between diagnostic classification of ADD/H based solely on criterion scores on each rating scale and classification based on the comprehensive clinical assessments that included use of the same rating scaleswas assessed by comparing the ratings of the 41 children with ADD/H to those of 47 clinic-referred children given other diagnoses or no diagnosis. The accuracy of classification was highly similar across scales. Increasing the cutoff score increased the acing true positives. Using the point of intersection of these two curves to choose the optimal cutoff scores resulted in 70–75% accurate classification and 25–30% misclassification of children given clinical diagnoses of ADD/H. This rate of misclassification suggests that rating scales alone should not be used to classify ADD/H for most clinical and research purposes, especially because the method of comparison used in this study favored finding a high degree of correspondence.