Gender-Typed and Non-Gender-Typed Category Awareness in Toddlers

Thirty toddlers (15 boys, 15 girls) participatedin a sequential touching task to examine their awarenessof own-sex and other-sex gender-typed, andnongender-typed, categories. Twenty-, 24-, and28-month-olds' awareness of gender-typed and non-gender-typedcategories were tested with contrasts of masculine,feminine, ball, and block categories. Toddlers' accuracyat labeling sex was also measured. Toddlers' patterns of touching to both nongender-typed (balls,blocks)and gender-typed (masculine toys, feminine toys)categories exceeded chance. Consistent with genderschema theory and research, boys and girls showedgreater than chance patterns of sequential touching toown-sexgender-typed category items, but notto other-sexgendertyped ones. Contrary to predictions, toddlers whocould accurately label sex (i.e., gender label) did not demonstrate greater sequential touchingof masculine or feminine gender-typed category itemsthan toddlers who could notgender label. Results suggesttoddlers possess greater awareness of gendertyped categories, particularly own-sex gender-typedones, than previously suggested. Additionally, toddlers'awareness of gender-typed categories does not appearrelated to their abilities to label accurately the sexes.     

Fast and slow namers: benefits of segmentation and whole word training.

Poor readers in Grade 2 (mean age 7 years 7 months) were categorized into fast and slow namer groups based on their performance on a Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) task. The fast and slow groups were then trained to read words using 3 different training regimes: one that taught onset/rime segmentation, one that taught phonemic segmentation, and one that used whole word repetition. The main results were that the slow namers acquired the words more slowly across experiences than the fast namers, irrespective of training condition, but they were particularly disadvantaged when trained with word-level units. Unlike beginning nonreaders, poor Grade 2 readers showed poorer retention following onset/rime training compared with phoneme or word level training, even when final level of learning was controlled. Further, they showed the best generalization to reading new words and nonwords following phoneme training and the worst following whole word training, even when final level of acquisition was controlled. The data are related to the P. G. Bowers and M. Wolf (1993, Reading and Writing, 5, 69-85) double-deficit hypothesis and to the specific deficits associated with early reading failure.     

High and low gender schematic children's release from proactive interference

Thirty-seven 4–5 year-old predominantly white children from moderate SES households, identified as high and low gender schematic, completed a Release from Proactive Interference task (RPI) comprised of drawings of same-sex gender-typed toys and animals. The RPI task assesses spontaneous comprehension, encoding, and short-term recall of items from two categories of information. As predicted, high gender schematic children demonstrated significantly greater patterns of release from proactive interference than low schematic children. Specifically, high and low schematic children's patterns of recall following a shift from same-sex gender-typed toys to animals differed significantly, suggesting that gender roles are a more salient and influential information processing dimension to high than low gender schematic children. Results add to data validating the present measure of gender schematicity and its ability to differentiate individual differences in the salience of gender roles to young children. Results also corroborate and expand on theory and research describing the impact and consequences of individual differences in the salience of the gender role dimension on the information processing of high and low gender schematic children.Completion of this project was facilitated, in part, by an Academic Challenge Award from the University of Toledo. This support is gratefully acknowledged. Special thanks to Narina Nightingale for her comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article, and to Stephanie Sellers at the University of Toledo, and to Ashley Lyster at the University of Wyoming for their data collection efforts and to the faculty, children, and parents of the Loving Tree Preschool and the Gateway School, both of Toledo, Ohio, and the University of Wyoming Child Care Center, and especially to Director Mark Bittner for his assistance with this research. A shorter version of this article was presented at the annual meetings of the Western Psychological Association, Phoenix, Arizona, April 1993.To whom reprint requests should be addressed at Department of Psychology, University of Wyoming, P. O. Box 3415, Room 135 Biological Sciences Bldg, Laramie, WY 82071-3415.     

Computer-aided protocol analysis of writing processes

With increased interest in process analysis of writing has come an expanded role for computers. Records of written and verbal protocols are made by capturing keystrokes and speech, playing them back on videotape, and then coding, second by second, the duration, frequency, and effort of various writing subprocesses as they unfold. In this paper we introduce a new approach to analyzing think-aloud and resource allocation protocols in writing research and describe how analyses of them can add to current models of writing.     

Moral education: An act-utilitarian view1

In this essay, I distinguish two significant act-utilitarian theories of moral education: the traditional rule of thumb view and the Harian intuition view. I argue that there are problems with the traditional view and that an act-utilitarian ought to adopt a version of the Harian view. I then explain and respond to a major objection to the intuition view given by Bernard Williams. Williams argues that the system of moral thought which the Harian view advocates we teach is inherently unstable and is certain to undermine itself. I argue that there is reason to expect a great deal of stability in this system.I wish to thank Richard Brandt, William Frankena and R.M. Hare for their conversation on this and other topics and for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the Association for the Philosophy of Education and the Northwest Philosophy conference for the opportunity to read and discuss versions of the essay.     

The life of order and the order of life: Eric Voegelin on modernity and the problem of philosophical anthropology

This paper was delivered to The Eric Voegelin Society at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, in Atlanta, Georgia, between 31 August–3 September 1989.     

Gender schemas and the salience of gender: Individual differences in nonreversal discrimination learning

Sixty-seven 3–6-year-old children, identified as gender schematic and aschematic, completed a nonreversal discrimination learning task. This task permits examination of children's abilities to attend selectively to particular dimensions of a multidimensional stimulus. Gender typing and size of stimulus were the relevant target dimensions. Gender schematic children required significantly more trials to criterion when the shift was from sex type to size of stimulus, and significantly fewer trials to criterion when the shift was from size to sex type of stimulus, than did aschematic children. Gender aschematic children's performance was relatively unaffected by type of stimulus dimension. Results support predictions of the differential salience of the gender dimension to gender schematic and aschematic children.     

Self-Deception and Moral Responsibility

The self‐deceived are usually held to be moral responsible for their state. I argue that this attribution of responsibility makes sense only against the background of the traditional conception of self‐deception, a conception that is now widely rejected. In its place, a new conception of self‐deception has been articulated, which requires neither intentional action by self‐deceived agents, nor that they posses contradictory beliefs. This new conception has neither need nor place for attributions of moral responsibility to the self‐deceived in paradigmatic cases. Accordingly, we should take the final step toward abandoning the traditional conception, and drop the automatic attribution of responsibility. Self‐deception is simply a kind of mistake, and has no more necessary connection to culpability than have other intellectual errors.