Sequencing strategies in children 18–24 months: Limitations imposed by task complexity

Researchers have generally reported that very young children lack the orderly, sequential approach to tasks that characterizes skilled action. This study questions that assumption by investigating to what extent deficits in sequencing are a function of task complexity (type and number of elements), and to what extent sequencing ability is tied to competent task performance. Three tasks—the Lock Box, Pegboards, and Object Grouping—were each presented in two forms, varying only in number of elements. Participants were 38 children between 18 and 24 months of age. The Denver Developmental Screening Test was also administered to all children. When number of task elements increased, there was a dramatic decrease in orderliness of approach. Type of task served to exaggerate or minimize these effects. However, irrespective of task complexity, children used a consistent pattern of organization, generally two or three sequential movements. This strategy, though serving well for tasks of limited dimensions, was inadequate for tasks with more than four or five elements. Sequencing skills, as well as other aspects of performance, were significantly correlated with Denver scores. Results suggest that exceeding the limits of young children's organizing abilities may obscure actual capacities. The role of task complexity in the performance of young children is discussed as it relates to developmental processes, clinical assessment, and teaching.     

How high school students view women: The relationship between perceived attractiveness,occupation, and education

The proportion of women seeking advanced degrees in the sciences and engineering was no greater in the 1970s than it was in the 1920s. This study seeks to determine if the stereotype of an unattractive professional woman is a factor in dissuading young women from pursuing careers in these fields. Twenty slides of women were rated by 301 male and female high school students for attractiveness, occupation, and educational background. There was a positive correlation, significant at the .001 level, between women perceived to have taken traditionally masculine courses, those perceived to have careers in professions generally viewed as masculine, and those perceived to be more physically attractive. The formerly held stereotype of the studious, career-oriented girl who is unattractive appears to be changing and should not discourage high school girls from seeking academic excellence.     

Effects of age,stimuli, and category recognition factors in children's inquiry behavior

One hundred twenty-eight children of average intellectual ability from grades K, 1, 2, and 5 (ages 6, 7, 8, and 11, respectively) were administered a 20-questions task involving the presentation of 24 stimulus pictures and a forced-choice post-test. The four-factor design included four grade levels, two stimulus conditions (basic-level and superordinate), and two instruction conditions (cueing and non-cueing) for boys and girls. Results indicated older children generated more efficient questions, all children in the Cued-instruction condition asked more constraint-seeking questions in the Basic-level condition than in the Superordinate condition on the 20-questions task, and all children in the Basic-level condition selected more efficient questions in the post-test forced-choice task than in Superordinate condition. It was concluded that even younger school-age children will generate efficient constraint-seeking questions when Basic-level stimuli are used and when children are cued.     

Holland's theory and non-college-degreed working black and white women

The main concern of this study was to investigate differences between black and white American women employed in traditional female occupations who took the Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) and the Self-Directed Search (SDS). The VPI and the SDS were administered to 110 black and white non-college-degreed workers in three occupations (laboratory technicians, sales clerks, and clerk-typists) corresponding to three of Holland's environmental categories (Investigative, Enterprising, and Conventional). In general, the findings for the three VPI and SDS scales and for these six occupational groups are mixed. On the SDS scales, findings indicate that black and white women in the same occupation seem to be far more similar than different. On the scales of the VPI, however, white and black women in the same occupation seem to be more different than similar.     

PARENTAL INFLUENCES ON CHILDREN'S EATING BEHAVIOR AND RELATIVE WEIGHT

We investigated the relationship between selected parent behaviors, child mealtime behavior, and infant relative weight. Subjects were 7 male and 7 female children varying in age from 12 to 30 months (mean = 23.9 months). Each subject and parents were observed during the dinnertime meal on two occasions using the BATMAN (Bob and Tom's Method of Assessing Nutrition). The children spent 58% of the mealtime eating. They spent very little time making active decisions about what and how much they ate (food requests = 2% of the time; food refusals = 1% of the time). We found significant correlations between child relative weight and (a) parental prompts to eat (r = .81, p < .001), (b) parental food offers (r = .51, p < .05), and (c) parental encouragement to eat (r = .82, p < .001). Thus, the present study suggests a relationship between certain parental variables and the relative weight of their children.     

Body esteem, eating attitudes, and gender-role orientation in three age groups of children

The purpose of this study was to assess body esteem, eating attitudes, and gender-role orientation in three age groups (first, third, and fifth graders). The first graders were interviewed individually; the third and fifth graders completed a questionnaire in a group setting in which the questions were read aloud to set a pace and help those who may have had difficulty reading. All children completed the Children’s Sex Stereotypes Measure, the children’s version of the Eating Attitudes Test, and the Body Esteem Scale. It was hypothesized that children as young as six or seven do understand the connection between eating and body weight, that a proportion of children do experience eating and weight concerns, and that feminine children are most likely to experience such concerns. The results demonstrated that children, as early as first grade, were indeed engaging in eating disordered behaviors and expressing dieting and weight concerns. The children appeared to understand the connection between eating and weight, and body esteem was found to be significantly lower in the fifth than the third graders. However, feminine children were not more likely to exhibit eating disordered behaviors. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 1993 meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Arlington, VA.     

Realismbei Frege: Reply to Burge

Frege is celebrated as an arch-Platonist and arch-realist. He is renowned for claiming that truths of arithmetic are eternally true and independent of us, our judgments and our thoughts; that there is a third realm containing nonphysical objects that are not ideas. Until recently, there were few attempts to explicate these renowned claims, for most philosophers thought the clarity of Frege's prose rendered explication unnecessary. But the last ten years have seen the publication of several revisionist interpretations of Frege's writings — interpretations on which these claims receive a very different reading. In Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge attempts to undermine this trend. Burge argues that Frege is the very Platonist most have thought him — that revisionist interpretations of Frege's Platonism, mine among them, run afoul of the words on Frege's pages. This paper is a response to Burge's criticisms. I argue that my interpretation is more faithful than Burge's to Frege's texts.     

Organization of the bilingual lexicon: Categorical versus alphabetic cuing in Russian-English bilinguals

The mechanism by which Russian native speakers store and retrieve Russian and English words from lexical memory was investigated in two experiments in which fluency of retrieval was compared for categorical and alphabetic cues. We hypothesized that fluency in Russian would be higher for categorical cues but that fluency in English would be higher for alphabetical cues because native language words would have been stored by meaning, while second-language words would have been stored according to dictionary usage. Subjects retrieved more Russian than English words with categorical cues, but their retrieval was the same for the two languages with alphabetic cues. In addition, fluency was greater overall with alphabetical than categorical cues. We attributed the greater fluency in Russian with the categorical cues to the early age at which the concepts were acquired, which made them more accessible in the native language. These findings support the idea that access codes for words may vary depending upon how they are originally learned.This research was supported by Research Grants AFOSR 89-0442 and F49620-92-J-0119 from the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research to Joan Gay Snodgrass. We are indebted to an anomymous reviewer for constructive comments on an earlier version of this article.     

Childhood Psychosocial Predictors of Adulthood Smoking,Alcohol Consumption,and Physical Activity1

This study prospectively addresses whether aspects of the childhood home environment (SES and parental divorce) and personality are predictive of smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity in middle adulthood. Subjects were 972 males and females who participated in the Terman Life-Cycle Study. Results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that childhood unconscientiousness, cheerfulness, and parental divorce predicted adult smoking. Childhood unconscientiousness and sociability predicted adult alcohol consumption. Physical activity was predicted by a higher energy/activity level in childhood. Results suggest that the previously found associations between childhood characteristics and health-related behaviors over shorter periods are not simply reflective of early experimentation with such behaviors, but may be indicative of long-term lifestyle patterns.