Development: Compared to what?: Contrast effects in age-comparative paradigms

Recent controversies about judgment competence of preschool and adolescent children are considered as being a possible product of contrast effects. That is, perceived abilities of children of a given age group may depend on the ages of the other subjects in the experiment. An experiment was done to test the possibility of contrast effects in age-comparative experiments. One group of subjects read about three experimental tasks in which 6-year-old children performed better than 4-year-olds. A second group read about 6-year-olds performing worse than 8-year-olds on the same tasks. Performance levels of 6-year-olds were the same on the two forms. For each task subjects rated the competence of each of the two age groups on the task and predicted the performance of the two groups on a related task. Undergraduate subjects' competence ratings and predictions were higher for 6-year-olds when compared to 4-year-olds than when compared to 8-year-olds. Psychology graduate students showed the same contrast effect for predictions but not for competence ratings. The results are discussed in terms of potential biases in age-comparative methods in developmental psychology.     

Behaviorism and Unity in Psychology

The defining feature of behaviorism is that it works with publicly observable stimuli and responses. One version, stimulus-response behaviorism, predicts responses from stimuli or situations. Another version, response-response behaviorism, predicts targeted responses from other responses. Unobservable mental states are intervening variables—hypothetical constructs if they have postulated material existence—that mediate these relationships. Cognition, affect, and reaction tendency are the major conceptual categories in this psychology. Its basic axioms state that behavior is (a) a function of enduring potentials for and temporary instigation to action, (b) controlled by excitation and inhibition, and (c) a blend of coping in situations in which organisms have control and adaptation in situations in which control is lacking. This view offers the hope of bringing unity to psychology.     

Reducing stereotype threat by blurring intergroup boundaries

The authors aimed to establish whether interventions designed to reduce intergroup bias could be applied to the stereotype threat domain. In three experiments, the hypothesis was tested that blurring intergroup boundaries would reduce stereotype threat. In the first study, it was found that female participants who thought about characteristics shared between the genders tended to show less preference for stereotypical female careers than did participants in the baseline condition. In Experiment 2, participants who thought about overlapping characteristics answered more math questions correctly compared to a baseline group and participants who thought about differences between the genders. In Experiment 3, a specific threat manipulation was included. Participants who completed the overlapping characteristics task before receiving the threat completed significantly more math questions correctly than did participants in the baseline and threat conditions. The findings support the idea that interventions designed to reduce intergroup bias can be applied successfully in the reduction of stereotype threat.     

Observing emotion in infants: facial expression,body behavior,and rater judgments of responses to an expectancy-violating event

Eleven-month-old European-American, Japanese, and Chinese infants (ns = 23, 21, and 15, respectively) were videotaped during baseline and stimulus episodes of a covert toy-switch procedure. Infants looked longer at the object during the expectancy-violating event (stimulus episode) but did not produce more surprise-related facial expressions. American and Japanese infants produced more bodily stilling during stimulus than baseline, and American infants also produced more facial sobering. Naive raters viewing both episodes could correctly identify the expectancy-violating event. Rater judgments of surprise were significantly related to infants' bodily stilling and facial sobering. Judgments of interest were related to cessation of fussing. Thus, observer judgments of infant emotions can be systematically related to behaviors other than prototypic emotional facial expressions.     

Parents Explain More Often to Boys than to Girls During Shared Scientific Thinking

Young children's everyday scientific thinking often occurs in the context of parent-child interactions. In a study of naturally occurring family conversation, parents were three times more likely to explain science to boys than to girls while using interactive science exhibits in a museum. This difference in explanation occurred despite the fact that parents were equally likely to talk to their male and female children about how to use the exhibits and about the evidence generated by the exhibits. The findings suggest that parents engaged in informal science activities with their children may be unintentionally contributing to a gender gap in children's scientific literacy well before children encounter formal science instruction in grade school.     

Jewish Attitudes toward Intermarriage

This paper explores attitudes toward intermarriage among American Jews. After an introduction of the basic findings about attitudes toward intermarriage in the general sample, we present the differences between the major American Jewish denominations in this respect. A correspondence analysis of intermarriage attitudes and the denominational factor shows the typical attitude profiles characterizing groups according to current denomination and the denomination in which they were raised. We then go on to show how much of this denominational effect is related to the influence of Jewish education, age, and marital status on attitudes toward intermarriage. Finally we consider all three sets of factors together in a multiple regression analysis of attitudes toward intermarriage, in order to determine the net or independent effects of each of these influencing factors. We show that intermarriage attitudes are a compromise between two forces: the strength of Jewish identity, as reflected in denominational affiliation, and Jewish education; and the exigencies of the mate selection process, as reflected in age, marital status, and proximity to other Jews. Data are based primarily on the 1991 New York Jewish Population Survey.     

A Behavioral Study of Regularity,Irregularity and Rules in the English Past Tense

Opposing views of storage and processing of morphologically complex words (e.g., past tense) have been suggested: the dual system, whereby regular forms are not in the lexicon but are generated by rule, while irregular forms are explicitly represented; the single system, whereby regular and irregular forms are computed by a single system, using associative connections; and a system whereby phonological rules relate both regular and irregular past to present tense forms. Two reaction time experiments investigated the production of the past tense in English in response to the auditory presentation of the present tense of the verb. The first experiment addressed the methodology of presenting regulars and irregulars in blocked form as in a previous study (Jaeger et al. in Language 72:451–497, 1996). Blocked presentation results showed longer RTs for the elicitation of irregular pasts than for regular pasts; however, there were no differences between regular and irregular elicitation when the presentation was randomized, indicating that it is rules that are being primed. The second experiment tested whether the response time advantage found for blocked regular verbs in the first experiment might also extend to irregular verb forms exhibiting the same sub-regularity (e.g., sing-sang may prime ring-rang). Results showed a trend towards slower RTs when past tense forms from different sub-regularities follow one another, suggesting interference between one sub-regularity and another.