Issues in the psychological assessment of preschool children

This article discussed two issues relating to assessment of preschool children: (1) whether assessments of children of this age should be attempted, and (2) the issue of what is a “good” assessment. The general impression from a review of the literature and from personal experience is that preschool assessment is desirable and can be useful, but only under conditions which avoid labeling and attempt to circumvent and reduce the problems of reliability and validity, taking into consideration the interacting variables of the child, the task, and the setting.     

An interpersonal relations and group process approach to affective education for young children

Early childhood education programs need to emphasize affective growth and effective interpersonal skills for young children. Teachers have a significant influence on children's affective disposition toward themselves and school. They must be provided with skills to develop children's emotional growth and their interpersonal relations skills. This article attempts to stimulate school psychologists to determine whether their teachers have the competencies necessary to produce positive pupil growth and to train those teachers who lack these skills. A brief review of research on selected aspects of teacher behavior is presented. Specific teacher behaviors related to desired affective growth in young children are discussed. The final section presents in-service training program components; a system for observation, analysis of teacher behavior, and feedback; and the steps in providing an in-service program.     

Fact and fantasy: The effects of internally generated events on the apparent frequency of externally generated events

As John Locke pointed out, there are at least two sources of the contents of the mind: events that occur in the world and events that originate in the mind. Memory, as a record of experience, should contain information from both sources. The present studies investigated memory for the frequency of externally and internally generated events. Individual items were presented to subjects varying numbers of times and tested varying numbers of times. Later, subjects were asked to estimate the frequency of both types of events. Experiment 1 showed that internally generated events influenced the judged frequency of externally generated events and vice versa. The first of these was called the IFE effect and the second the IFI effect. Experiment 2 indicated that the IFE effect was greater when tests consisted of overt, as compared to covert, recall trials. The results were discussed in terms of a model for storing and using occurrence information which would account for both our ability to discriminate between and our tendency to confuse internally and externally generated memory representations.     

Naming and locating simultaneously and sequentially presented letters

Two letters varying in level of confusability were presented either simultaneously for 75 msec or sequentially for 75 msec each in adjacent retinal locations. The retinal locus of presentation varied from trial to trial, and subjects both identified and located the presented letters. Identification accuracy was higher on nonconfusable than on confusable letter pairs in the simultaneous condition, but not in the sequential condition. This result is interpreted as support for the notion that inhibition between similar or identical features shared by confusable letters occurs only when letters are presented simultaneously. A relative position effect, with performance on the peripheral letter higher than on the central letter, was found for simultaneously and second sequentially presented letters, but not for first sequentially presented letters. This result is interpreted in terms of the assumption that feature perturbations, with foveal perturbations more likely than peripheral perturbations, affect simultaneously and secondpresented letters, but not first-presented letters. The pattern of results for relative location accuracy showed many of the same effects as identification performance. A model assuming location errors reflect feature transpositions is outlined and is able to account for the absolute and relative location results and the correlation between relative location and identification accuracy.     

Alteration of shock aversion thresholds during the menstrual cycle

Aversion thresholds for electrical shock were obtained from 5 males, 6 females who were taking oral contraceptives, and 12 females who were not. All subjects were volunteers from introductorylevel psychology courses. Measures were repeated 3 times per week for 5 weeks. Males and females taking oral contraceptives showed no cyclic fluctuations in threshold. The other female group had significant (p < .025) fluctuations in threshold, from a maximum at ovulation to a minimum 1 week after the onset of the menses.     

Extracting identity and location information from briefly presented letter arrays

The effect on identification and location of briefly presented targets (letters and blanks) of number of targets, retinal location, and direction and distance of simultaneously presented targets is investigated. In three different conditions, one, two, or three targets are presented on a trial with the location of targets varying from trial to trial. A model is proposed to describe identification and location performance in the one-letter condition. This model distinguishes between two sets of parameters, perceptual parameters and decision parameters, and assumes that in terms of these parameters, identification and location are independent processes. The perceptual and decision parameters of the model, estimated by assuming that these parameters are linearly related to retinal location, indicate that retinal location has a different effect on the decision parameters for both identification and location than on the perceptual parameters. Variables affecting the performance decrements found when multiple letters are presented are evaluated in terms of models stated for the multiple letter conditions. Estimates of the effects of distance from the fixation point and inter-letter distance indicate that, as both of these variables increase, performance decreases. In the three-letter condition, a serial position effect is found, with performance on center letters being relatively poor. A peripherally presented letter is found to have a large detrimental effect on performance, and the effect increases as interletter distance increases. Location of correctly identified targets follows many of the same patterns as identification performance in the multiple letter conditions. In addition, there is a tendency for incorrectly located targets to be moved foveally and to move to positions occupied by other targets on the trial. The possibility of a limited-capacity attention mechanism operating in the present experiment is discussed.     

Training in the use of double-function terms

Twenty first-, second-, and third-grade chidren were tested, trained, and retested in their use of double-function words (e.g.,hard, deep, bright). Children first understand such words as they refer to inanimate objects, then to people in a physical sense, and last to people in a psychological sense. Wide variations in initial understanding and trainability of double-function words occurred. It is easier to train children to understand a double-function words as applied to a person in a physical sense than in a psychological sense. Words with tactual referents (sweet, warm, dry, cold, hard) are understood earlier than words with visual referents (bright, crooked, sharp, deep) but words with visual referents show greater gains after training. Several possible explanations of these results are discussed.     

The Impact of Case Characteristics and Prior Jury Experience on Jury Verdicts1

An archival analysis of records from 206 criminal cases was used to evaluate the impact of personal and situational factors on jury verdicts. In particular, we evaluated whether repeated jury service produced bias in jurors that was sufficient to affect jury decisions. A variety of case characteristics and indices of prior jury experience was examined for their relative impact on trial outcomes. Several of the case characteristics were related to verdicts, but the personal characteristics were not. Although more than half of the juries contained experienced jurors, juror experience had little influence on verdicts in either major or subsidiary analyses. However, there was a slight tendency for small juries with large proportions of experienced jurors to convict. This result is consistent with data from Kentucky; a meta-analysis across the two data sets indicates that it is a reliable finding. The results have implications for the determination of jury size. We suggest that future research examine the possibility that increasing jury size may reduce the influence of an individual's bias by providing a balance of other jurors with no or offsetting biases.     

Effects of semantic and cheremic context on acquisition of manual signs

In two experiments, sign-naive subjects acquired the meanings for manual signs of American Sign Language by learning to respond with the English word equivalents when signs were presented. The results showed that when the signs on a to-be-learned list were related to each other in handshape configuration (cheremically similar), they were more difficult to acquire than when semantically similar. Whether the similar signs were grouped together during presentation or were separated by other dissimilar signs had no effect on the number of signs correctly acquired. These results were the same for the identical signs learned in the cheremically or semantically similar contexts as for the fists as a whole. The results have implications for teaching sign language to hearing adults.