The development of aggression in toddlers: A study of low-income families

The effort by developmental psychopathologists to understand the etiology of antisocial behavior has resulted in several significant findings. First, aggressive behavior is highly stable from early childhood into adolescence and adulthood. Second, parental factors including rearing practices and parental psychopathology, are correlated with childhood behavior problems. It was the aim of the present study to examine the correlates and stability of aggressive behavior in a sample of toddlers from low income families. Eight-nine mother-child dyads (52 boys and 37 girls) were observed in laboratory assessments when the child was 18- and 24-months old. Frequency and pervasiveness of aggression were coded from videotapes. Familial criminality, maternal depressive symptomatology, child noncompliance, and difficult child temperament were examined as contributors to the prediction of aggression in toddlers. Stability of aggression was moderate, especially for aggression occurring in low-stress situations. While there were few sex differences in the frequency and stability of aggression, there were marked differences in the correlates and predictors of aggression. Gender-specific, interactional models of the development of aggression are proposed.This study was supported by grants to Daniel Shaw and Joan Vondra from the following organizations within the University of Pittsburgh: the Mental Health Clinical Research Center for Affective Disorders, the Office of Child Development, the School of Education in conjunction with the Buhl Foundation, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Portions of this paper were presented at the Meeting for the Society for Life History Research, Philadelphia, April 1992. The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Julie Alley, Jodi Chusta, and Kevin Cosley for their invaluable assistance in behavioral coding. Special thanks is given to the mothers and children who participated in this research.     

Teaching the Rescorla-Wagner model using STELLA-II

Although the Rescorla-Wagner model is widely taught in learning courses, most textbooks present a simplified version that does not contain all of its parameters. On the basis of Rescorla and Wagner 1972) and the Turbo PASCAL program by Lachnit, Schneider, Lipp, and Kimme! (1988), we created a simulation using STELLA-II, an icon-based program by High Performance Systems, Inc. We argue that this simulation facilitates teaching the complete Rescorla-Wagner model. Using trans-switching (Kimmel & Ray, 1978; Lachnit, 1986; Murrin & Kimmel, 1986) as an example, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the STELLA-II version of the Rescorla-Wagner model as a heuristic tool.     

Women who farm: A preliminary portrait

Nearly 500,000 women are engaged in farm work. Although the majority are unpaid family workers, in recent years greater proportions are in salaried and managerial positions. In-depth interviews with farming women in Baca County, Colorado, however, suggest that wage classification has negligible predictive value in explaining a woman's attitude toward farm work. Satisfaction with doing men's work depends on early socialization experiences and the degree to which a woman adopts the traditional female value system. The relevance of a masculinity—femininity dimension to distinguish women with career versus homemaking proclivities is demonstrated.An earlier version of this article was presented at the New Horizons for Women in Work and the Professions Panel of the Sociologists for Women in Society sessions at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York City, August 28, 1976.     

Volunteerism as an aspect of women's work lives

Results of a mail survey of 292 female volunteers, aged 23–44, indicate that the role of volunteer work may be that of consciously chosen primary work, a supplement to primary work, or a vehicle for entry or return to employment. The three roles are associated with differences in relationship to the labor market, satisfactions sought, nature and amount of volunteer work done, satisfaction, involvement, commitment, and plans for continued membership. The survey instrument incorporated the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire, which was evaluated for its applicability to a volunteer population.     

Age-related increases in the effects of automatic semantic activation.

Automatic semantic activation was assessed in a version of the flanker task, in which nominally irrelevant words were presented above and below a target word. The category membership of the flanking word was consistent, inconsistent, or neutral with respect to the target word. Older adults showed greater inhibition and equivalent facilitation in the time taken to classify the target words than did younger adults in 2 of 3 experiments, in contrast to previous findings. The present results are generally consistent with 3 dominant perspectives in cognitive aging: the complexity hypothesis, environmental support, and the inhibition-deficit view. Manipulation of the overall magnitude of the flanker effect produced results most consistent with the inhibition-deficit view that older adults are less able to inhibit automatic processes than are younger adults. Some problems with the inhibition-deficit view are also discussed.     

Effects of adult age on structural and operational capacities in working memory

Eight experiments were conducted in which young adults and older adults were asked to report the latest value of 1 of several continuously changing numeric or spatial variables. Accuracy of reporting the current value of the target variable was lower with increases in the number of potentially relevant variables and with increases in the number of required processing operations. Young and older adults exhibited similar effects of the number of potentially relevant variables (hypothesized to be sensitive to the structural capacity of working memory) and of the number of required processing operations (hypothesized to be sensitive to the operational capacity of working memory), but older adults were generally less accurate than young adults.