The effects of attention-directing training on recognition memory task performance of three-year-old children

Thirty-eight 3-year-old children served as subjects in an investigation of recognition memory in which schematic faces differing only in the orientation of the eyes were employed as stimuli. A pretest was administered to all children, after which the two experimental groups received training in either attention to the distinctive feature of the training stimuli (also schematic faces) by means of a matching task, or in labeling the faces according to how they looked (sleepy, happy, sad, mad) and in using the labels to perform a matching task. After the training session all children were given a posttest on recognition memory of the faces. The verbally trained group obtained significantly higher scores on the posttest than either the feature or control groups. These results indicate that although the children were able to discriminate the faces, evidenced in their ease of performance on the training tasks, they were not able to use this knowledge unless given training in attaching labels to the stimuli, which enabled them to store the information for later use. Results are discussed in light of Gibson's (1969) theory of the developmental interrelations of cognitive processes.     

Parental Visitation of the Institutionalized Retarded

An inverse relationship was found between the number of parental visits an institutionalized retarded child received and the distance of the parental home from the institution. When the natural parents were living together, the retarded child was shown to receive more visits than when the child's parents were separated or one parent was deceased. Single mothers were found to be living significantly closer to the facility than single fathers. Single fathers appeared to put more effort into visiting, since they visited just as often as the mothers, but had to travel further distances than the mothers to do so. Visitation frequency followed a curvilinear pattern, decreasing uniformly from 20–60 miles (from 0–20 miles visitation frequency is uniform), and then leveling off.     

The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes

Evidence from four studies demonstrates that social observers tend to perceive a “false consensus” with respect to the relative commonness of their own responses. A related bias was shown to exist in the observers' social inferences. Thus, raters estimated particular responses to be relatively common and relatively unrevealing concerning the actors' distinguishing personal dispositions when the responses in question were similar to the raters' own responses; responses differing from those of the rater, by contrast, were perceived to be relatively uncommon and revealing of the actor. These results were obtained both in questionnaire studies presenting subjects with hypothetical situations and choices and in authentic conflict situations. The implications of these findings for our understanding of social perception phenomena and for our analysis of the divergent perceptions of actors and observers are discussed. Finally, cognitive and perceptual mechanisms are proposed which might account for distortions in perceived consensus and for corresponding biases in social inference and attributional processes.     

A digital encoder for field recording of behavioral,temporal, and spatial information in directly computer-accessible form

Digitorg is an inexpensive, portable, field-operable event recorder for recording both behavioral and spatial information in real-time on audiotape. Its capacity is 256 codes. Behavioral information is recorded by pressing buttons on a keyboard and spatial information is recorded by touching a magnetic wand to a paper map overlying a matrix of switches. The audiotape recordings are played through a simple interface into a small computer, producing a permanent record of the time and identity of each event. The record is then available for analysis. Digitorg is discussed in relation to the general value of analyzing spatially differentiated behavior sequences.     

The perception of stop consonant voicing by Spanish-English bilinguals

The performance of Spanish-English bilinguals in two perception tasks, using a synthetic speech continuum varying in voice onset time, was compared with the performance of Spanish and English monolinguals. Voice onset time in speech production was also compared between these groups. Results in perception of bilinguals differed from that of both monolingual groups. Results of bilingual production in their two languages conformed with results obtained from each monolingual group. The perceptual results are interpreted in terms of differences in the use of available acoustic cues by bilingual and monolingual listeners of English and Spanish.     

Invariance of the weight parameter in information integration

The relative effect of each informational dimension in an information integration task is a joint function of its weight and the range of values over which it is varied. A method is developed for separating these two factors. Weights obtained by this method were compared across variations of stimulus range. Subjects rated the performance of students on the basis of midterm exam scores and final exam scores. For some subjects, the range of scores on the final exam was twice that on the midterm and the reverse was true for other subjects. An averaging model was shown to describe the results, and weights did not differ for different stimulus ranges. This was true for each of two instructional conditions: one in which a particular weighting strategy was prescribed and one in which there was no prescribed weighting. Students who were instructed to use a 2∶1 weighting were found to assign more than twice as much weight to the final as to the midterm.     

A comparison of the predictive validity of typical and maximal personality measures

Most personality tests are based on concepts assessing typical performance, and tests of this sort have not been generally successful in predicting criterion behaviors with useful levels of efficiency. Ability tests, which call for maximal performance, have been much more successful as predictors of criterion outcomes. Following a model derived from ability tests, predictors requiring separate typical and maximal self-reports of emotional expressivity were compared to measures of typical and maximal emotional expression in the laboratory. For angry expression, self-reports of maximal expressivity tended to outpredict self-reports of typical expressivity for both typical and maximal laboratory measures of angry expression. Although similar trends were observed for elation, the advantage of maximal self-report measures over typical self-report measures was negligible. Results were discussed in terms of both experimental and clinical implications.     

Patterns of self-disclosure in homosexual and heterosexual college students

Two hypotheses concerning self-disclosure were investigated and confirmed in the present study, comparing homosexual and heterosexual college students. The first hypothesis was that self-disclosure, as measured by the Jourard Self-Disclosure Questionnaire, would be positively correlated with psychological femininity. The second hypothesis was that homosexual males and heterosexual females would exhibit similar patterns of high disclosure and femininity. No significant differences were found in total disclosure between homosexuals and heterosexuals, although homosexuals disclosed less to father, and more to friends than to parents. The conclusion was that psychological femininity and masculinity are more important than biological sex in determining self-disclosure.     

Processing strategies in the acquisition of relative clauses: universal principles and language-specific realizations

In this study we present a cross-linguistic analysis of the strategies used by Korean, Japanese and English-speaking children in processing sentences with relative clauses. The results of an experiment on the comprehension of relative clauses in Korean are reported and compared with prior research on the acquisition of relative clauses in Japanese and English. In our experiment on Korean, 6-year-old children acted out sentences with left-branching and center-embedded relative clauses in two matrix word orders, SOV and OSV, and two intonation conditions, “clear” (syntactically motivated) and “list” intonation. The findings provide strong evidence for a basic left-to-right processing strategy and significant roles for a canonical sentence strategy and for a parallel function strategy in the comprehension of relative clauses in Korean. Intonation had a significant role as a parsing cue in center-embedded sentences; error analysis revealed the over-extension of strategies appropriate for processing simple and conjoined sentences. A rank ordering of sentence types based on the predictions of the available processing strategies was found to predict the obtained order of difficulty in comprehending sentences with relative clauses in Korean, Japanese, and English quite accurately. We propose that an adequate cross-linguistic account of relative clause comprehension must be based upon an integrated view of multiple universal processing strategies, whose application will depend upon language-specific structural properties of relative clauses and upon the developmental stage of the child.     

Can a Supportive Workplace Impact Employee Resilience in a High Pressure Performance Environment? An Investigation of the Chinese Banking Industry

Resilience is one of the positive emotions that will enhance employees’ ability to cope in adverse conditions, such as work intensification, organisational change, and work stress. Despite growing research interest in the employee resilience area, there is limited knowledge of the process through which critical social support at workplaces, such as supportive leadership and co-worker support, affects employees’ ability to cope in challenging situations. This study, underpinned by the theory of conservation of resources and social cognitive theory, examines the role of supportive leadership and co-worker support in employee resilience, and how this may be moderated by work pressures in the context of the Chinese banking industry. Using a sample of 2,025 Chinese banking workers, we tested four hypotheses. Our findings demonstrate that supportive leadership and co-worker support are positively associated with employee resilience. High work pressure moderates the relationship between both supportive leadership and co-worker support and employee resilience, such that the relationship between these conditions is stronger when perceived performance pressure is high. Our study raises important implications for both the theoretical development of employee resilience and for management practices with respect to fostering employee resilience in organisations.