Sex differences in parental directives to young children

This study investigated how children learn sex-associated strategies for requesting action. We compared the directives which mothers and fathers address to their 2 1/2- to 5-year-old children. Ten children, 5 boys and 5 girls, engaged separately with each parent in a construction task. Fathers produced more directives than mothers and tended to phrase them as imperatives (e.g., Put the screw in) or as highly indirect “hints” (e.g., The wheel's going to fall off) more often than mothers, who relied more on relatively transparent indirect forms (e.g., Can you put the screw in?). There were no differences in the form of the directives addressed to girls and boys, nor were there any cross-sex effects. Parental modeling, rather than differential socialization of girls and boys, appears to be the mechanism by which children learn to request action in sex-associated ways.     

The effect of a commercial game on children's block design scores on the WISC-R IQ test

Two experiments investigated the extent to which 10-year old children's scores on the WISC-R Block Design subtest were affected by prior experience with a specific commercial game that involved blocks and matching patterns. Experiment 1 found that 12 10-year old children who happened to have experience with the particular commercial game scored approximately three scaled score points higher on the WISC-R Block Design subtest than 24 matched children without game experience. In Experiment 2, 24 children who did not have prior experience with this particular commercial game were randomly assigned either to a Game condition (involving two 15-minute sessions with the game) or to a No-Game condition (which involved no further game experience). Children in the Game condition subsequently increased their WISC-R Block Design scores more than children in the No-Game condition. Taken together, the experiments indicate that relatively brief interactions with a commercial game can cause a significant improvement in children's performance on an IQ subtest.     

Parents' reactions to finding out that their children have average or above average IQ scores

The parents of 41 children who had been given an individually-administered intelligence test were contacted approximately 19 months after testing. The sample included 20 parents who had learned their child had an Average IQ (children'smeanIQ = 100.8) and 21 parents who had learned their child had an Above Average IQ (children'smeanIQ = 130.0). Parents of Average IQ children were less accurate in their memory of test results, and they and their children experienced fewer positive consequences from IQ testing than Above Average children and their parents. Children with Above Average IQ experienced extremely low frequencies of sibling rivalry, conceit or pressure, and they and their parents experienced increased pride and/or self-confidence as a result of the IQ testing. The results as a whole suggest that parents of Average IQ children may need more psychological support during the parent informing process than parents of Above Average IQ children.     

Inductive generalization in 9- and 11-month-olds

Using little models, we showed 9- and 11-month-old infants events in which animal or vehicle properties were demonstrated, such as a dog drinking from a cup or a car giving a ride. The infants were tested on imitation of these properties on the same exemplars as used for the modeling, on generalization to other exemplars from the same domain, and on generalization to exemplars from an inappropriate domain. Infants generalized the properties broadly to both typical and novel exemplars within the appropriate domain, and rarely to exemplars from the inappropriate domain. It is concluded that at least by 9 months infants have formed global concepts of animals and vehicles that control the way infants learn the characteristic properties of these classes.     

The effects of alphabetic-reading competence on language representation in bilingual Chinese subjects

Summary The metaphonological abilities of two groups of bilingual Chinese adults residing in the Netherlands were examined. All subjects were able to read Chinese logograms, but those in the alphabetic group had, unlike those in the non-alphabetic group, also acquired some competence in reading Dutch. In Experiment 1, strong, significant differences between the two groups were obtained in the task of deleting the initial consonant of a Dutch spoken pseudo-word and also in a task consisting of segmenting a sentence into progressively smaller fragments, but there was no difference in a rhyme-nonrhyme classification task with pairs of Dutch words. In the latter task, the subjects in the two groups performed at a near-ceiling level. In Experiment 2, a significant difference was obtained again for the consonant-deletion task and no difference with an initial syllabic-vowel-deletion task, but the non-alphabetic subjects performed at a significantly lower level than the alphabetic subjects in the rhyme-judgement task. Taken together, these results are consistent with the earlier evidence that learning a non-alphabetic orthography does not promote awareness of the segmental structure of utterances. On the other hand, they confirm, for a population of Chinese readers, the conclusion drawn earlier from work with illiterate subjects that explicit instruction is more critical for the development of segmental representations of language than of representations of higher levels such as those of rhymes and syllables.     

IN-HOME GENERALIZATION OF SOCIAL INTERACTIONS IN FAMILIES OF ADOLESCENTS WITH BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS

The effects of a three-phase family communication program were evaluated. In the skill-teaching phase, family members were taught reciprocal social communication skills in a clinic setting. During the skill-review phase, each family member practiced the skills in their homes with the teacher. During the home-based family conference phase, each family was taught to use a structured format to resolve current family issues using their newly acquired skills. In-home parent-youth interactions were observed during a series of 1-hr sessions that involved directed and nondirected situations. Evaluation included a multiple baseline design across skills during the skill-teaching phase and a multiple baseline design across families for the family conference phase. Although the procedures of the skill-teaching phase resulted in parent-adolescent dyads learning to use the skills in the teaching setting, competent use of the skills in the home was not observed until the family conference phase was implemented. These results suggest the importance of home-based intervention if changes are to be obtained at home.