Vocational role choice in second- and sixth-grade children

In a replication of two investigations reported by Looft (1971a, 1971b), 40 second- and sixth-grade male and female students were interviewed concerning their desired and expected vocational aspirations. In contrast to Looft's findings, no significant sex differences were found for either grade level in (a) the number of different (nonoverlapping) vocations nominated or (b) the number of subjects changing initial vocational role choices. When the issue of traditionality of vocational choice (i.e., vocations socially identified with the sex of the subject) was examined, it was found that half of the sixth-grade females interviewed nominated nontraditional vocations (e.g., basketball player, police officer). It was observed further that males in both the second- and sixth-grade samples overwhelmingly nominated traditional vocations. Contrary to Looft's interpretation, the findings suggest that although goals associated with the women's liberation movement (e.g., changes in sex-role expectations) are not demonstrated clearly in the vocational aspirations or expectations of young children, they may be reflected in the aspirations of adolescent females.     

Quantifiers and question answering in young children

Two hypotheses were tested about how young children answer questions with the quantifiers all and some: (a) that children use syntactic cues in determining which noun phrase is quantified, and (b) that children evaluate a some-statement as part of evaluating an all-statement. To test these hypotheses, the same group of 60 4- to 7-year-olds were asked four contrasting types of quantitative questions. The results indicated that children can use syntactic cues under some presentation conditions. However, there was no evidence for an asymmetry between the all-and some-questions. A model of how young children might answer quantitative questions was then considered.     

Childrens' perceptions of parental expressiveness

While the literature suggests that males are less emotionally expressive than females, the issue has been informed by little systematic research. This article investigates the differences between sons' and daughters' perceptions of their mothers' and fathers' expressiveness of several emotions, both verbally and nonverbally. Using a sample of 1,245 students the dependent variable, perceived expressiveness of parents, was determined from responses to a 16-item Likert-type Perceived Parental Expressiveness Scale (PPES). It was hypothesized that fathers would be perceived to be less expressive than mothers. T tests were used to determine whether the mean differences are significant. The data indicate that fathers are perceived as less expressive of all emotions except physical anger. The ramifications of these findings for sex-role learning are discussed.The research reported in this paper is part of National Institute of Mental Health Grant No. 22156-01, The Inexpressive Male (Jack Balswick, Principal Investigator), University of Georgia. The authors wish to thank Dr. Charles W. Peek for his assistance in the revision of this article.     

Suprathreshold binocular interactions for grating patterns

Binocular interactions of suprathreshold grating patterns have been investigated using a reaction time measure of contrast detection. Simple reaction times were determined for monocular and binocular viewing conditions over a contrast range from .63 to near threshold. The results from all subjects showed binocular summation for contrast levels near threshold, but there was considerable variation across subjects for contrast levels above threshold. Some subjects showed summation over the entire contrast range, but other subjects showed either binocular inhibition or binocular facilitation for some range of contrast levels. The pattern of binocular interaction for a given subject was consistent for several spatial frequencies. The differences in types of interaction between subjects, the variation in magnitude of binocular interaction with contrast level for each subject, and the data from experiments involving stimulation of noncorresponding retinal areas show that the binocular interactions found for suprathreshold stimuli cannot be accounted for on the basis of probability, and must, therefore, result from physiological interactions between the two eyes. These interactions have been investigated further under conditions of (1) induced fixation disparity, (2) horizontal gratings, and (3) orthogonally oriented gratings.     

The effects of delayed and displaced visual feedback on motor control

Developments in television technology have made possible new approaches to the study of the role of visual feedback in motor control. In two experiments using a special videodisc recording and playback system, the effects of delaying for 66 msec a subject's view of his own hand during a target-directed movement was investigated. The observed effects of such visually delayed feedback compared to spatially distorted feedback produced by prisms led to three major conclusions: (a) despite the behavioral similarity (overshooting) induced by the two kinds of altered feedback, the role of each in the visual-motor control loop is different; (b) adaptation to and the after effect of the two kinds of altered feedback are based on different control mechanisms (c) the processing and use of visual information in hand control requires less time than previous experiments have indicated.     

Cortical stimulation and speech timing: A preliminary observation

Audio recordings of the speech of seven patients receiving cortical stimulation during epilepsy surgery were acoustically analyzed, and duration measurements of the sound /s/ under stimulation and nonstimulation conditions were compared. It was found that in the dominant hemisphere, stimulation tended to significantly increase the duration of /s/; but not all stimulation sites were comparably affected. Stimulation of frontal lobe locations was also observed to more frequently result in durational increases than when temporal or parietal sites were stimulated. However, for sites affected, the actual magnitude of durational increase was comparable among the three lobes.     

Attitudes Toward Male Oral Contraceptives: Implications for Models of the Relationship Between Beliefs and Attitudes1

Four factors (effectiveness, health risks, cost, and convenience) were orthogonally manipulated in a 3 × 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design to determine their relative importance in influencing attitudes toward and intentions to use male oral contraceptives. The experimental design also permitted a test of the assumption of additivity underlying expectancy-value models of attitude and the assumption of absence of context effects. Results were consistent with expectancy-value models of the relationship between beliefs and attitudes. In addition, it was found that health risks and effedtiveness, in that order, were the most important factors influencing receptivity to male oral contraceptives, with the effects of cost and convenience being mediated by these two factors. Sex differences in attitudes toward male oral contraceptives were also observed.     

Performance of dyslexic children on speech perception tests

Several researchers who have compared the performance of dyslexic and normal-reading children on a variety of different tasks have suggested that dyslexic children may have subtle deficits in the phonemic analysis of spoken as well as written language. Thus it is of interest to know how children who have extraordinary difficulty learning to read can perform explicity auditory-phonetic tasks. Seventeen dyslexic children (10 years of age) and a group of 17 controls were administered tests of identification and discrimination of synthesized voiced stop consonants differing in place of articulation. These were tests of the type used to study categorical perception in adults, adapted for use with young children. Significant differences between dyslexics and controls were found in both kinds of tasks; the pattern of identification and discrimination differences suggests an inconsistency in the dyslexics' phonetic classification of auditory cues. A significant relationship was found between reading level and speech discrimination.