Early judgments of semantic and syntactic acceptability by children

Judgments of the acceptability of correct, word order reversed, and semantically anomalous sentences were elicited from 2- and 3-year-old children in a game played with hand puppets. All of the sentences used were simple imperatives and each child was asked to correct those he called wrong. Performance on the judgment task was correlated with each child's mean length of utterance and with his comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences. Only the linguistically most advanced children were able to make a significant number of appropriate judgments and corrections of reversed word order imperatives. Less developed children could appropriately judge and correct semantically anomalous but not incorrect word order imperatives. The importance of semantic as opposed to syntactic factors in children's judgments of the acceptability of sentences is stressed.This research was supported in part by PHS Grant HD-02908 from the National Institute of Child Health and Development. Roger Brown is the principal investigator.     

Nonsuicidal physically self-damaging acts in adolescents

To determine the frequency and correlates of nonsuicidal physically self-damaging acts in 12–14 year olds, a two stage epidemiologic survey with a self-administered questionnaire (N=3283) followed by a psychiatric interview of a subsample of the adolescents and their parents (N=444) was used. Prevalence estimates of interview validated nonsuicidal physically self-damaging acts were 2.46% in males and 2.79% in females. Significant relationships were found between nonsuicidal physically self-damaging acts and suicidal ideation, major depression and undesirable life events. Data suggest that physically self-damaging acts occur at substantial rates during early adolescence. The strong correlation between nonsuicidal self-destructive acts and both suicidal ideation and major depression clarifies prior conflicting reports in the literature and suggests that a history of self-damaging acts should be taken into consideration when evaluating for possible depression and suicide risk.     

Effect of Server Posture on Restaurant Tipping1

The effect of server posture (standing vs. squatting) on the size of tip left by restaurant customers was examined in two naturalistic experiments. In these studies, squatting down next to the tables increased servers’ tips from those tables. Both the practical implications of this effect and its similarity to other nonverbal effects on tipping are discussed.     

Transformation in Counselling

The view is put forward that counselling appears to be undergoing a transformation which renders the old distinction between counselling and therapy no longer meaningful or practical. This transformation reflects the psychic backdrop of our times; it has come about because the needs of people seeking help, as well as the needs of those counselling, have altered and developed. Increasingly, clients are acknowledging the need for radical change which involves exploration of all levels of their being. This transformative work, a moving across inner barriers and coming into wholeness, necessarily involves active awareness of spirit. Thus it is no longer possible to be a client-centred counsellor without being willing to address the spiritual dimension ofhuman-beingness.     

Maintaining social identity in a mixed-gender setting: Minority/majority status and cooperative/competitive feedback

This study tested the applicability of Tajfel and Turner's (1986) Social Identity Theory (SIT) to cooperative behavior in a mixed-gender setting. SIT suggests that as a “socially subordinate” group in a male-dominated society, women, when their gender is in the numerical minority, will engage in social competition in an attempt to enhance social identity. However, gender-based socialization may encourage men toward competition and women toward cooperation, regardless of group gender composition. In this study, male and female subjects were assigned to a six-person mixed-gender group in which their gender was either in the numerical minority or majority, and performed an interactive task under either cooperative or competitive feedback. An interaction of sex and feedback showed males in the cooperative feedback condition responded more competitively than did males in the competitive feedback condition, while females were equally cooperative in both feedback conditions. Feedback also interacted with the numerical ingroup/outgroup gender balance. While competitive feedback elicited little variation in subjects' responses across the ingroup/outgroup balance variable, the cooperative condition elicited greater competition from subjects in the numerical minority and greater cooperation from those in the numerical majority. Results were interpreted as partial support for SIT, while stressing the need for further investigation into gender as a unique influence on intergroup behavior.     

Developing local lifelong guidance strategies

The background, rationale, methodology and outcomes of a project on developing local lifelong guidance strategies in four areas are outlined. The main components of the strategies developed in the four areas are analysed, and a number of issues relating to the process of strategy development are addressed. Much of the lack of coherence at local level stems from lack of coherence at national policy level: implications for national policy are examined. Finally, implications for parallel work in other localities are explored.     

WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY DISSOCIATES LEXICAL AND SENTENTIAL CONTEXT EFFECTS

Abstract— Semantically associated and unassociated word pairs were embedded in normal meaningful sentences and in sentences that were semantically anomalous throughout The influence of lexical context was isolated via comparison of responses to the second words of the associated and unassociated pairs. The influence of sentence-level context was isolated by comparing responses to the same words in the two sentence types Subjects of high, medium and low working memory capacity (as evaluated by the reading span test) showed modulations of event-related brain potentials in response so lexical context. In contrast, only the high- and medium-capacity groups were responsive to purely sentence-level semantic context. The results demonstrate that sentential context influences the processing of words in intermediate sentence positions at normal reading speeds but that the on-line utilization of this context is more demanding of working memory than single-word contexts.     

BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY: JOHN LOCKE AND MALCOLM X ON THE RIGHT TO REVOLUTION*

Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in the stormy, controversial and bold young captain. And we will smile. And we will answer and say unto them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did he ever touch you? Did you have him smile at you? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did, you would know him and if you knew him you would know why we must honor him.     

“My big sister the town supervisor”: Family leadership training is not just for boys

This study investigates gender similarity in the effects of birth order upon political leadership. Town supervisors were the leaders studied as there are a considerable number of women who attain this level of leadership. Questionnaires about birth order and family size were gained from 66 women who were town supervisors in New York State in 1992, and compared to a randomly selected sample of 57 male town supervisors. It was found that women as well as men town supervisors were more likely to have been first born in their families. However, whereas gender does not apparently influence the relevance of birth order for leadership, it clearly does exert an influence on the level of political leadership attained. Women town supervisors gained their positions in towns that were considerably smaller than the towns led by the male supervisors. Discussion concerned the nature of family experiences that contribute to leadership training, including those that may be different for girls and boys. Further research is needed to clarify barriers to female assertion of political leadership at more senior levels, because as this study shows, female leadership is being trained in families.