Age Expectations of Behavioural Autonomy in Hong Kong,Australian and American Youth: The Influence of Family Variables and Adolescents' Values

Tenth and 11th grade students from Hong Kong (N = 141), Australia (N = 155), and the United States (N = 155) completed questionnaires about the age at which they expected to achieve behavioural autonomy and about their family environments and values. In general, Hong Kong youth had later expectations for autonomy; described their families as less accepting-engaged and less structured; placed less value on individualism, outward success, and individual competence, and more value on tradition, prosocial, and well socialised outcomes. However, in all three cultures, age expectations for behavioural autonomy showed similar patterns of association with family environments and values as revealed by parallelism of regression planes. Expectations for later autonomy were associated with perceptions of parental monitoring, a demanding family environment, low levels of autocratic parenting, and with youths' de-emphasis of individualism, individual competence and outward success. In regression analyses the family environment and values scores reduced by 62% the influence attributed to culture.     

Traditionality of children's interests as related to their parents' gender stereotypes and traditionality of occupations

This study tested the common hypothesis that parents' gender stereotypes, maternal employment status, and the traditionality of parents' occupations, are associated with the traditionality of children's vocational interests. The traditionality of preschool children's (n=113) interests was examined by an instrument developed for the current study. Parents were administered the Attitudes toward Women Scale, and traditionality of their occupations was assessed. Only the traditionality of the mothers' occupations significantly correlated with the traditionality of the interests of both boys and girls. Other variables tested, as well as their interactions, were not found to show such relationships. The results were discussed in terms of the function of the role model in gender identity development and vocational schema modification.We thank Rachel Karniol for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.     

Determination of visual figure and ground in dynamically deforming shapes

Figure/ground assignment - determining which part of the visual image is foreground and which background - is a critical step in early visual analysis, upon which much later processing depends. Previous research on the assignment of figure and ground to opposing sides of a contour has almost exclusively involved static geometric factors - such as convexity, symmetry, and size - in non-moving images. Here, we introduce a new class of cue to figural assignment based on the motion of dynamically deforming contours. Subjects viewing an animated, deforming shape tended to assign figure and ground so that articulating curvature extrema - i.e., "hinging" vertices - had negative (concave) contour curvature. This articulating-concavity bias is present when all known static cues to figure/ground are absent or neutral in each of the individual frames of the animation, and even seems to override a number of well-known static cues when they are in opposition to the motion cue. We propose that the phenomenon reflects the visual system's inbuilt expectations about the way shapes will deform - specifically, that deformations tend to involve rigid parts articulating at concavities.     

Does prime modality influence morphological processing?

Facilitation among morphologically related words generally is impervious to the prefixed or suffixed structure of primes and targets. A notable exception arises, however, when both primes and targets are suffixed. More specifically, when primes are auditory and targets are visual, facilitation for a suffixed target (e.g., payment) is absent when it follows a prime (e.g., payable) that is morphologically related and suffixed (Marslen-Wilson, Tyler, Waksler, & Older, 1994). To account for null facilitation (viz., the "suffix-suffix" effect), Marslen-Wilson and his colleagues posit inhibitory links between suffixes of morphological relatives. The present study assesses the generality of the "suffix-suffix" effect. When morphological facilitation is assessed relative to an orthographically related baseline, suffixed primes facilitate derivationally as well as inflectionally related morphological targets when primes are visual as well as auditory in both the lexical decision and naming tasks. The present findings call into question lexical models that posit inhibitory links between suffixes of morphological relatives.     

The processing and representation of Dutch and English compounds: peripheral morphological and central orthographic effects

In this study, we use the association between various measures of the morphological family and decision latencies to reveal the way in which the components of Dutch and English compounds are processed. The results show that for constituents of concatenated compounds in both languages, a position-related token count of the morphological family plays a role, whereas English open compounds show an effect of a type count, similar to the effect of family size for simplex words. When Dutch compounds are written with an artificial space, they reveal no effect of type count, which shows that the differential effect for the English open compounds is not superficial. The final experiment provides converging evidence for the lexical consequences of the space in English compounds. Decision latencies for English simplex words are better predicted from counts of the morphological family that include concatenated and hyphenated but not open family members.     

Sentence processing in children with early unilateral brain injury

This study examined how children use word order and animacy cues to determine the agent of the action in an on-line sentence-comprehension task. The subject group included 15 children, 5-12 years old, with brain injury incurred prior to the age of 2 months; 12 had left hemisphere (LH) damage and 3 had right hemisphere (RH) damage. The comparison group included 141 children, 5-10 years old, who were at the appropriate grade for age. The task required children to listen to sentences composed of two noun phrases (N) that varied in terms of animacy and a verb phrase (V) and then to indicate the agent of the action. Three word orders were presented: NVN, VNN, and NNV. Measures included the proportion of trials in which the first noun was selected (choice) and reaction time. Word order and animacy significantly influenced choice. The effect of subject group approached significance for choice. Word order and age influenced reaction time. The children with LH injury and two children with RH injury showed a developmental delay in choosing the appropriate N as agent; one child with RH injury had mature responses. The overlapping performance of children with LH and RH injury suggests that delays in the development of sentence comprehension strategies are more likely related to reliance on a smaller than usual neural network rather than to congenital specialization of the LH.     

Individual Differences in Substance Preference and Substance Use

Using H. J. Eysenck's (1957, 1967) theory of temperament, this study examined the relationship between drug preference, drug use, and personality among incarcerated inmates. Analysis indicated a general preference for marijuana and alcohol over 8 other commonly used drugs across different personality types. Theoretical and clinical implications are offered.