Children's assumptions about the generalizability of sex-typed abilities

Children (mean age = 103 months) were provided with information about the relative abilities of two stimulus children at a specific activity. They then were asked to predict which child would likely be superior at a second highly related activity. The two stimulus children were either same sex or opposite sex, and the activities in each pair were sex typed as male or female. The design was a 2 (sex of subject) × 2 (age of subject) × 4 (stimulus pair—MM, FF, MF, FM) × 2 (sex type of activities) mixed design, with sex of subject and age of subject as the between-subjects factors. Each child responded to 32 instances, representing four replications of eight possible combinations. The dependent variable was the child's choice of the initially superior child or initially inferior child as better at the second activity. The prediction was that children would be less likely to assume that superiority could generalize to a second activity if the initial superiority contradicted sexstereotyped expectations. This result would indicate that sex stereotypes interfere with inferences processes, supporting a scehmatic model of sex stereotyping. The results were consistent with the prediction. Compared to a baseline condition in which sex stereotypes were not relevant, children were less likely to choose the initially superior child when the sex stereotype had been violated, and more likely to select that child when it had been confirmed.     

The effects of test anxiety, sex of subject, and type of verbal reinforcement on maze performance of elementary school children

The purpose of this study was to account for children's performance in an educational setting by evaluating individual difference factors and the subjects' differential responsivities to social reinforcement The child subjects performed on Porteus mazes, which were viewed as complex, stress-inducing tasks They were differentiated in terms of sex and test anxiety levels. Each child received the same number of noncontingent reinforcements, which consisted of either verbal praise or verbal criticism or no feedback The data yielded significant triple interaction effects among anxiety, sex, and social reinforcement for the time and error scores on the mazes The data were discussed in terms of their implications for remediating performance in educational settings and their support for the theoretical conception of test anxiety as a chronic drive state The authors concluded that the extrinsic, motivating effects of verbal reinforcement can be reasonably characterized, but only if one attends to individual differences among those subjects being reinforced.     

The number of ways to label a structure

It has been observed that the number of different ways in which a graph withp points can be labelled isp! divided by the number of symmetries, and that this holds regardless of the species of structure at hand. In this note, a simple group-theoretic proof is provided.This work was supported by Grant MH 10834 from the National Institute of Mental Health.     

Toward a new conceptualization and operationalization of risk perception within the genetic counseling domain

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it provides an historical overview of studies of risk, risk perception, and decision making under risk within the genetic counseling domain. Second, it proposes an alternative conceptualization and operationalization for the study of risk perception. The conceptualization involves probability, adversity, incompleteness, and ambiguity. Prior studies of risk perception focus on the recurrence risk and operationalize risk perception by asking for interpretations of the magnitude of the probability of the outcome. Their focus is on the probability of a particular outcome. We formulate the problem in terms of a gamble and suggest that risk perception be operationalized in terms of the riskiness of the gamble. Our focus is on the riskiness of a decision option which entails two or more outcomes.     

Type of academic training and causal attributions for social problems

To provide evidence of the effects of academic training on causal attributions, university students in social science, commerce and engineering were compared at different points of their training in terms of their explanations of poverty and unemployment. Results of cross-sectional analyses showed no field differences in causal attributions at the beginning of the first academic year but significant differences at the end of the year, with social science students blaming the system more than commerce or engineering students. Longitudinal analysis showed that, within a six-month interval, the causal attributions of the students changed significantly as a function of their field of study. Differential employment prospects, while not accounting for the effects of academic training, were found to be related to attributional change. These results confirm the hypothesis that causal attributions are affected by socialization in a particular culture and that exposure to the culture of the social sciences reinforces a system-blame ideology. The implications of these findings for theories of the attribution process and theories of intergroup relations are discussed.     

Husserl's debate with Heidegger in the margins of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics

Husserl received from Martin Heidegger a copy of his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics in the summer of 1929 not long before Husserl had determined to reread Heidegger's writings in order to arrive at a definitive position on Heidegger's philosophy. With this in view, Husserl reread and made extensive marginal comments in Being and Time and Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. This essay by the translator of the remarks in KPM offers some historical background and comment on the importance of the remarks in KPM and attempts to describe Husserl's counterposition to Heidegger on six issues that divided the two major twentieth century philosophers.