THE DEVELOPMENT OF KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING WRITTEN ARITHMETIC: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY

This study is concerned with the manner in which Western mathematics is assimilated by children raised in traditional African cultures. It was predicted that after an initial period of difficulty in learning school arithmetic, African children (Baoulé and Dioula from the Ivory Coast) acquire basic concepts, develop invented strategies, and make errors similar to those of American children. Further, it was predicted that Dioula children, since they are members of a commercial culture, perform at a somewhat higher level than the Baoulé, members of a farming culture which does not seem to stress computational activity. To investigate these hypotheses, American, Baoulé, and Dioula children at two age levels were given a variety of arithmetic problems involving basic skills (e.g., reading numbers), number knowledge (e.g., place value), and calculational abilities (e.g., written computation). The results showed that, in general, older African and American children (fifth- and sixth-graders) were quite similar in all respects. The only large and significant differences occurred in the case of younger children (second- and third-graders). At this level American children generally performed at a higher level than Africans, as predicted, and Dioula occasionally at a higher level than Baoulé, also as predicted. At the same time, qualitative aspects of African and American children's performance were similar: for example, both groups made the same types and proportions of errors in written calculations. The results generally support the hypotheses and can be explained in terms of both educational and cognitive factors.     

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.     

Medication effects in the classroom: Three naturalistic indicators

Hyperactive and comparison boys participated in 5-week summer enrichment programs that included classroom activities and structured assessments of peer interaction patterns. During the 3rd and 4th weeks of these programs, a double-blind, methylphenidate-placebo crossover design was implemented within the hyperactive group. Three heterogeneous indicators of everyday behaviors were obtained: number of negative incidents noted by staff, quality of handwriting, and number of times the teacher called the boys' names aloud in the classroom. Medication effects emerged for each of these indicators. When hyperactive boys were taking placebos, they were involved in more negative incidents, their handwriting was poorer, and their names were called more frequently than when the boys were taking methylphenidate. Interrelationships among the measures suggest moderate cross-situational generality of medication responsiveness. Discussion focused on the bandwidth of medication effects and the need to examine the social ramifications of child treatments.This research was supported in part by NIMH grant 29475 and NIDA grant 01070. We gratefully acknowledge the participation of the data coders and the many summer school staff. Special thanks go to Mike Berlin, Barry E. Collins, and Sharon Dotemoto. Methylphenidate and placebo were supplied by Ciba-Geigy, Summit, New Jersey.     

The effects of stem length and directions on sentence completion test responses

In an investigation of the effects of stem structure and direction set on sentence completion responses, 160 undergraduate males were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: Rotter ISB with "feelings" instructions, Rotter ISB with "speed" instructions, Sacks SCT with "feelings" instructions, Sacks SCT with "speed" instructions. Eight clinical judges derived hypotheses from the completed protocols; two judges evaluated each protocol. Interjudge reliability was measured by Pearson product-moment correlations and percents of agreement. There was a significant effect for amount of stem structure; the structured Sacks SCT stems yielded more clinical hypotheses. Structured stems also elicited significantly more feeling words. No significant effect was found for instructional set, nor was there a significant relationship between stem structure or instruction set and the numbers of words in completions.     

Orthogonal dimensions of individual and group forms of the Rorschach

Most dimensional analyses of traditional Rorschach scoring categories have either failed to control for differences in total R or have done so by introducing a nonstandard mode of administration. Consequently, the results of such studies may be either distorted or of questionable relevance to more typical situations. The present analyses, which compared both group and individual forms of the Rorschach administered to large samples (over 500 each) of male medical students, controlled for differences in total R by using residualized scores from which the linear effects of R had been partialled. The factor-analytic results are expressed in terms of seven easily interpretable factors (including total R), five of which are similar across forms, and simple formulas for deriving norm-referenced factor scores from the data of individual test administrations are provided.     

The perspective of evil in understanding and treating child abuse

This paper places the problem of child abuse in the perspective of evil. In so doing it calls into question the amoral assumptions of social science and human services. The current social science paradigm paradoxically dismisses evil as a real factor in the world, despite its concern for indisputably moral issues such as child abuse. The practical advantages of a perspective incorporating evil are several. Among them are a more realistic appreciation of the need for mechanisms of social control in preventing abuse, the role of confession and conversion, and the role of pastoral care as a support system for families.     

Determinants of competitive performance expectancies of young male athletes1

Although performance expectancies have been shown to be important mediators of achievement behavior, few specific determinants of personal expectancies have been identified, the ecological validity of previous results is limited, and factors influencing group performance expectancies have not been determined. Therefore, the purpose of this field study involving 11- and 12-year-old male soccer players was twofold. First, we examined specific intrapersonal and situational factors influencing players' pregame personal and team performance expectancies. Second, we investigated the effects of winning and losing a competitive soccer game on players' postgame team expectancies involving a hypothetical rematch with the identical opponent. The pregame findings revealed that (a) the intrapersonal factors of ability and self-esteem were related to personal performance expectancies while competitive trait anxiety was not, and (b) the situational factors of past win-loss record and a prior game win or loss against the same opponent influenced team performance expectancies. The postgame findings revealed that future expectancies were affected by the interactive effects of game win-loss and self-esteem.     

On the {↔, ∼} -reduct of the intuitionistic consequence operation

The intuitionistic consequence operation restricted to the language with (equivalence) and (negation) as the only connectives is axiomatized by means of a finite set of sequential rules of inference.To the memory of Professor Roman Suszko