Saccadic eye movements and reading difficulties

Saccadic eye movements of 14 children with reading difficulties and of 14 normal readers were compared before and after the problem readers underwent a seven month individual tutoring program. At pretesting the problem readers showed a rate of eye movements that was markedly lower than that of the normal readers whose rate they attained and surpassed at completion of the remedial reading program. Results are discussed in terms of the presumed function of saccadic eye movements and their relation to reading, attention, and information gathering.This study was supported by grant OEG-2-2-2BO24 from the National Institute of Education. The valuable assistance of Mark J. Fischer and the help of Sandra Armel, Steven Rayack, and Betty White are gratefully acknowledged. Dr. Lowey, of the Three Village School District and particularly Mr. Hanrahan, Principal of Main Street School, greatly facilitated our work and we are most grateful.     

On metric multidimensional unfolding

The problem of locating two sets of points in a joint space, given the Euclidean distances between elements from distinct sets, is solved algebraically. For error free data the solution is exact, for fallible data it has least squares properties.     

A generalized solution of the orthogonal procrustes problem

A solutionT of the least-squares problemAT=B +E, givenA andB so that trace (EE)= minimum andTT=I is presented. It is compared with a less general solution of the same problem which was given by Green [5]. The present solution, in contrast to Green's, is applicable to matricesA andB which are of less than full column rank. Some technical suggestions for the numerical computation ofT and an illustrative example are given.This paper is based on parts of a thesis submitted to the Graduate College of the University of Illinois in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Ph.D. degree in Psychology.The work reported here was carried out while the author was employed by the Statistical Service Unit Research, U. of Illinois. It is a pleasure to express my appreciation to Prof. K. W. Dickman, director of this unit, for his continuous support and encouragement in this and other work. I also gratefully acknowledge my debt to Prof. L. Humphreys for suggesting the problem and to Prof. L. R. Tucker, who derived (1.7) and (1.8) in summation notation, suggested an iterative solution (not reported here) and who provided generous help and direction at all stages of the project.     

Psychological Distress among Immigrant Adolescents: Culture-specific Factors in the Case of Immigrants from the Former Soviet Union

Studies investigating the effects of immigration on the psychological wellbeing of adolescents have produced variable and inconclusive results: some identify immigrant adolescents as a group of risk whereas others fail to demonstrate higher psychological distress in this group of adolescents. It is suggested in the present paper that cultural factors active in specific ethnic groups of immigrants may in part account for this inconsistency. The present study explores the psychological distress of immigrant adolescents from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in Israel. The respondents were 560 university students (250 females and 310 males) who had immigrated to Israel from the FSU since 1989. The present report relates to one of the instruments applied in the study: the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI). Mean BSI scores of the respondents were significantly higher than those of Israeli adolescents and in some categories higher than the American norms. A high percent of the immigrant respondents have reported severely troubling symptoms; however no significant differences were found between the BSI scores of FSU immigrants in Israel and their peers in the FSU. The findings are discussed in light of some sociocultural characteristics of society in the FSU.     

Effect of syntactic role and syntactic prominence on letter detection

Participants read passages and circled instances of a target letter. They made more correct detections onthe when it was an adverb than when it was a definite article, when it occurred in a subject than in an object phrase, and when it was preposed than when it occurred normally. These results suggest that syntactic role affects letter detection even when meaning is controlled, and that giving greater syntactic prominence (i.e., salience or emphasis) affects letter detection even when both meaning and syntactic role are controlled. These findings pose a challenge to both the structural account of letter detection and the processing time account.     

PREDICTING GENDER-ROLE ATTITUDES IN ADOLESCENT FEMALES

The contribution of ability, agency, and parental factors to the prediction of gender-role attitudes was investigated in a sample of 409 adolescent females enrolled in a private, college-preparatory high school. Results indicated that ability and agency were predictive of gender-role attitudes, whereas parental factors were not significant contributors. Recommendations for further research examining the etiology of gender-role attitudes are provided given the critical connection between gender-role attitudes and success in occupational and interpersonal areas for young women.     

Children's wishes

The three wishes of group-tested school children, individually tested problem children, and individually tested nonproblem children were collected and categorized. Overall, there was considerable similarity in the types of wishes made by children across groups. Clear differences in wishes did occur as a function of sex, age, and socioeconomic level, suggesting the influence of cultural and developmental factors. It was concluded that wishes alone are not a good indicator of psychopathology and that the context within which they are elicited has little bearing on their content.