A possible genetic basis of accuracy in personality perception

An analysis was conducted to assess whether individuals are more accurate in perceiving those personality characteristics of other' that have a larger genetic component. Adult monozygotic (MZ) twins (63 pairs) and same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins (35 pairs) completed the Personality Research Form-E (PRF) and the Sibling Evaluation of Personality Characteristics (SEPC) which consists of 20 sets of adjectives corresponding to the 20 trait scales of the PRF. Subjects also evaluated their co-twin with the SEPC. Self-other agreement correlations were then correlated with the heritability estimates of the PRF traits calculated on the same twin sample. The results suggest that accuracy in perceiving the co-twin's personality does increase with the heritability component of the personality dimension.     

Parents' gender-based attitudes toward marital roles and child rearing: Development and validation of new measures

Factor analysis of 18 Likert-type items dealing with gender stereotypes about family roles was conducted and yielded two measures: one focused on marital roles and one focussed on child rearing. Respondents were parents of children in the third and fourth grades of a large industrialized city in the Midwest. The sample included 364 families equally divided between middle and lower class with 23% African American and 77% European American. For both scales, more stereotyped scores were obtained by parents who were lower in social status, less educated, full-time homemakers, African Americans, and fathers. Parents' scores related to a separate measure of children's stereotypes and the marital-role attitudes related to actual roles reported by family members. Daughters whose parents obtained less stereotyped scores had a more internal locus of control, showed a trend toward more independent coping skills, and—in the middle class—obtained higher scores on achievement tests.This research was supported by Grant No. 91-1437-91 from the William T. Grant Foundation.     

A preliminary scale to measure connected and separate knowing: The Knowing Styles Inventory

The present investigation reported the development and validation of the Knowing Styles Inventory (KSI), a scale to measure connected and separate knowing [M. F. Belenky, B. M. Clinchy, N. R. Goldberger, and J. M. Tarule (1986), Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and Mind New York, Basic Books]. In Study 1, principal components analyses for samples of females (N = 300) and males (N = 253) yielded two components, Connected and Separate Knowing. Studies 2 and 3 focused on females exclusively. The results indicated adequate test—retest reliability and internal consistency for both components. Additionally, Connected Knowing was positively correlated with empathic concern, perspective-taking, social desirability, and the femininity factor of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Separate Knowing was positively correlated with the masculinity factor of the BSRI and negatively correlated with social desirability. Suggestions for future research were presented.The authors wish to thank Jill Mattuck Tarule for the insight that she offered in the early stages of this project, and they wish to acknowledge the contribution of Nicole Bressler who participated in item development.     

CONSTRUCT ACCESSIBILITY AND THE MISATTRIBUTION OF AROUSAL:

Abstract— Schachter and Singer (1962) showed that people search the immediate environment for emotionally relevant cues to label and interpret unexplained physiological arousal We investigated how unobtrusively activated cognitions and physiological arousal interact to produce emotional experience when the immediate environment is devoid of relevant cues Subjects were primed with positive, negative, or neutral concepts They then either exercised or sat still and, either immediately or after a delay, rated their emotional state Consistent with what Schachter and Singer found, subjects in the exercise, delayed-rating condition, who lacked an obvious explanation for their arousal, made the most extreme affective self-ratings, which were consistent with the valence of the primed concepts These subjects apparently interpreted their residual arousal in terms of the primed concepts Subjects in the exercise, immediate-rating condition, who had an explanation for their arousal (i e, the exercise), were not influenced by the primes Subjects in the no-exercise condition showed typical priming effects, with prime-consistent self-ratings that decayed over time Implications for emotion formation, misattnbution of arousal, and cognition are discussed     

Is Speech Arrest during Wada Testing a Valid Method for Determining Hemispheric Representation of Language?

Background and objective: The intracarotid amobarbital procedure, or Wada test, is the method of choice to determine hemispheric representation of language, and is routinely used in the presurgical evaluation for intractable epilepsy. Some investigators perform comprehensive language assessments, but others base language lateralization solely on speech arrest. This study sought to determine whether speech arrest alone during Wada testing provides valid data regarding language lateralization. Methods: The subjects (previously reported) were 21 patients evaluated for intractable epilepsy, who underwent language lateralization by Wada testing and functional MRI (FMRI). For each patient, language representation was determined by calculating: (1) a Wada laterality index based exclusively on speech arrest; (2) a Wada laterality index based on comprehensive language assessment; and (3) an FMRI laterality quotient. Correlation coefficients and categorical classifications were analyzed. Results: There was no significant correlation between the Wada laterality quotient derived from duration of speech arrest and either the comprehensive Wada language laterality score (r= .35,p= .12) or FMRI language laterality score (r= .32,p= .16). Categorical classification as left, right or bilateral language also showed marked discordance between speech arrest and the other two methods. Conclusion: Duration of speech arrest during Wada testing is not a valid measure of language dominance.     

Social-Cognitive and Behavioral Correlates of Aggression and Victimization in Boys' Play Groups

A contrived play group procedure was utilized to examine the behavioral and social-cognitive correlates of reactive aggression, proactive aggression, and victimization via peers. Eleven play groups, each of which consisted of six familiar African-American 8-year-old boys, met for 45-min sessions on five consecutive days. Social-cognitive interviews were conducted following the second and fourth sessions. Play group interactions were videotaped and examined by trained observers. High rates of proactive aggression were associated with positive outcome expectancies for aggression/assertion, frequent displays of assertive social behavior, and low rates of submissive behavior. Reactive aggression was associated with hostile attributional tendencies and frequent victimization by peers. Victimization was associated with submissive behavior, hostile attributional bias, reactive aggression, and negative outcome expectations for aggression/assertion. These results demonstrate that there is a theoretically coherent and empirically distinct set of correlates associated with each of the examined aggression subtypes, and with victimization by peers.     

Academic Gender Bias and Women's Behavioral Agency Self-Efficacy

The relationship between academic gender bias and female students' agentic self-efficacy expectations was examined. Agentic self-efficacy expectations was defined as an individual's beliefs about her ability to successfully engage in proactive educational and career facilitative behaviors. Participants included 67 full-time junior and senior undergraduate women enrolled in traditional, nontraditional, and gender-neutral majors. Results revealed that perceived academic gender bias was significantly predictive of agentic self-efficacy expectations, above and beyond the contributions of sex role attitudes, gender concentration of major, and race/ethnicity. Implications for women's career development and future research are discussed.     

Spontaneous startle activity in newborn infants

Spontaneous startles have been reported to occur most frequently in quiet sleep, less frequently in active sleep and drowse, and relatively nonexistent in the waking states. These findings may be a result of a focus on infants whose prenatal histories reflect a restricted range of the conditions to which normal newborns are exposed. The present study examined the spontaneous startle behavior of 30 newborn infants characterized by high numbers of obstetric complications and by indicators of prenatal malnutrition, but within the range of normal, healthy newborns. In this sample, startles were not limited to the sleep and drowse states. Because individual differences in a number of neonatal behaviors have been related to autonomic nervous system (ANS) functioning, the different pattern of spontaneous startles observed in this sample may be related to the functional integrity of this system.     

Direct versus indirect response-reinforcer relationships in teaching autistic children

One possibility suggested by the literature for maximizing the efficiency of behavior modification procedures concerns the relationship between target behaviors and their reinforcers. Therefore, in this experiment three severely autistic children were taught a total of six new target behaviors (in a multiple baseline design) employing two different response-reinforcer relationships: (1) those where the target behaviors were a direct part of the response chain required to procure a reinforcer (e.g., opening the lid of a container to obtain a food reward inside the container); and (2) those where the target behavior was an indirect part of the chain leading to the reinforcer (e.g., the therapist handing the child a food reward after the child had opened the lid of an empty container). In all cases, the results showed rapid acquisition only when the target behavior was a direct part of the chain leading to the reinforcer. The results are discussed in terms of several possible conceptualizations concerning efficient reinforcement contingencies, and in terms of their implications for teaching autistic children.This investigation was supported by U.S. Public Health Service Research Grants MH 28210 and MH 28231, and by U.S. Office of Education Research Grant G007802084 from the Bureau for the Education of the Handicapped. Portions of the results described in this article were discussed in a presentation at the 13th Annual AABT Convention in San Francisco, 1979. The authors are particularly grateful to Andrew Egel, Roberta Elman, Janis Costello, and Karen Britten, for their helpful comments, and to Jody Fisher and Gina Richman, for their assitance in the data collection.