A Child of the Empire: British Sociology and Colonialism, 1940s–1960s

British sociology was established as an academic discipline between 1945 and 1965, just as the British Empire was gearing up for a new phase of developmental colonialism backed by the social and other sciences. Many parts of the emerging sociological discipline became entangled with colonialism. Key themes and methods in sociology and the staff of sociology departments emerged from this colonial context. Historians have tended to place postwar British sociology in the context of expanding higher education and the welfare state, and have overlooked this colonial constellation. The article reconstructs this forgotten moment of disciplinary founding and explores three of the factors that promoted colonial sociology: the Colonial Social Science Research Council, the so‐called Asquith universities, and the social research institutes in the colonies; and the involvement of sociologists from the London School of Economics in training colonial officials.     

Item Selection for the Development of Short Forms of Scales Using an Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm

This article presents the use of an ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm for the development of short forms of scales. An example 22-item short form is developed for the Diabetes-39 scale, a quality-of-life scale for diabetes patients, using a sample of 265 diabetes patients. A simulation study comparing the performance of the ACO algorithm and traditionally used methods of item selection is also presented. It is shown that the ACO algorithm outperforms the largest factor loadings and maximum test information item selection methods. The results demonstrate the capabilities of using ACO for creating short-form scales.     

Kinesthetic Recall And Information Bold>Reduction Activity

2 experiments are reported in which interpolated motor activity requiring either information reduction (1.86 bits) or no reduction was compared to a control to examine their effects on kinesthetic retention. Exp. 1 used an independent groups design and found only absolute error to increase over the delay intervals. Information reduction activity did not affect kinesthetic retention and there was increasing negative error for longer movements, with positive response sets for short movements and negative response sets for long movements. Exp. 2 replicated the retention interval conditions using a within-Ss design. No difference between conditions was found for either absolute or algebraic error, but an effect of Retention Intervals was found for absolute error. For both studies, the Interpolated Activity X Retention Interval interaction failed significance. No evidence was found to support interference or available processing capacity expalanation for the loss of retention.     

Index for Volume 20

Sixteen adult subjects served in an experiment in which the writing of six unfamiliar graphemes was practiced. To investigate the learning process, we analyzed the absolute and relative changes of movement time of the first three consecutive segments as a function of practice. The results showed that movement time of all three segments decreased. This decrease was significantly less in the first segment than it was in the second and third segment, however. We interpret these effects of practice, from an information-processing viewpoint, as follows: (a) Initially separate response segments become integrated in more comprehensive response chunks, and (b) the preparation of later segments of the grapheme is realized more and more during the real-time execution of the initial segment. The results further revealed that these learning effects were more pronounced in graphemes composed of familiar segments than in graphemes that contained unfamiliar segments. Finally, it turned out that similarity between initial and final segments hindered the writing speed of the first segment; the effect of similarity was independent of the above-mentioned effects of practice. The latter effect is interpreted as confirming evidence for the view that the preparation of later segments of a grapheme is reflected by changes of movement time of the first segments of a grapheme.     

Effects of Spatial and Motor Demands in Handwriting

Four experiments were conducted to study response programming in handwriting tasks. Twelve right-handed subjects wrote acoustically presented words and phrases, and their handwriting was digitally recorded. Changes in latency, movement time, trajectory length, and pen pressure were studied as a function of response complexity (i.e., word length, complexity of initial letter, and spacing distance). The lengthening of the spatiotemporal parameters preceding the more complex structures is interpreted to be a reflection of the effects of mental load. The results further indicate that the choice of a programming strategy is dependent on the structural complexity of the task. Writing pressure decreased as a function of increased sequence length. The findings support a hierarchical model of handwriting.     

Math Anxiety,Mother's Education,and the Mathematics Performance of Adolescent Boys and Girls: Evidence from the United States and Thailand

ABSTRACT

In this study, I investigated the relationship of mathematics performance to math anxiety, mother's education, and gender. A secondary analysis was conducted using nationally representative samples of 13-year-old children in the United States (N = 4,091) and Thailand (N = 3,613) collected as a part of the Second International Mathematics Study (Garden, 1987). Separate ANOVAs (Math Anxiety × Mother's Education × Gender) were run within each country using a 40-item math performance test as the dependent variable. Math anxiety has an inverse relationship with mathematics performance in the United States (r = ?.24) and in Thailand (r ?. 14). The relationship between math anxiety and mathematics performance is significant in both countries after controlling for previous achievement, mother's education, and gender, although the data suggest that there is a three-way interaction between math anxiety, mother's education, and gender in Thailand.     

The Significance of the Fluctuations Experienced in Observing Ambiguous Figures and in Binocular Rivalry

This study investigated predictions from Mednick's remote associates theory as to unusualness of response in a word association task as a function of remote associational ability (high or low scores on the RAT), the nature of the verbal stimulus (flat or steep hierarchy words), and the serial position of the response. Ss were Ohio high school students. Although high RAT scorers gave significantly less unusual responses overall than did low RAT scorers, results were interpreted as generally supportive of the theory. Low RAT scorers moved more rapidly to less frequent responses than did high RAT scorers, later responses were more infrequent than earlier responses in the sample tested, and while word-type did not in itself determine unusualness of response, it did interact with the other variables in a manner consistent with the theory.     

Book Notes

Abstract

Identification of Book Reviewers for this Number. Samuel J. Brandenburg is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Economics in Clark University. James B. Hedges is Assistant Professor of American History in Clark University. George Humphrey is Professor of Philosophy in Queen's University, Ontario.

The Normal Mind: an Introduction to Mental Hygiene and the Hygiene of School Instruction. By William H. Burnham, Ph.D., New York, Appleton, 1924.

The Mentality of Apes. By Wolfgang Köhler. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., 1925. pp. 342.

The Growth of the Mind. By Kurt Koffka. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, Inc., 1924. pp. 383.

The Mental Growth of the Pre-School Child. By Arnold Gesell. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1925. pp. 447.

Instinct, Intelligence and Character. By Godfrey H. Thomson. New York, Longmans, Green and Co., 1925. pp. 282.

Mental Growth of Children in Relation to the Rate of Growth in Bodily Development. By Buford Johnson. New York, E. P. Dutton & Company, 1925. pp. 160.

Vocational Self-Guidance. By Douglas Fryer. Philadelphia, J. P. Lippincott Co, 1925. pp. 385.

The Story of Human Progress. By Leon C. Marshall. New York, Macmillan Company, 1925. pp. 548.

Educating for Freedom. By Edward O. Sisson. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1925. pp. x, 225.     

Scores of Spanish-Speaking Children on Repeated Tests

Abstract

(Burrow, T. The Biology of Human Conflict. New York: Macmillan, 1937. Pp. 435.) Reviewed By William Galt

(Wheeler, R. H. The Science of Psychology. New York: Crowell, 1940. Pp. 436.) Reviewed By David G. Ryans