References for motor tasks--gender differences across age in motor performance: a meta-analysis

In 1985 we published a meta-analysis of gender differences across age in motor performance in Psychological Bulletin, but it did not include an indexing of each motor task to the references from which it was obtained. This paper provides a table listing the 20 motor tasks and the references from which data for each task were taken. The range of tasks was from fundamental movements (e.g., catching, jumping, running, throwing) to motor fitness (e.g., agility, arm hang, balance, grip strength) to perceptual-motor abilities (e.g., anticipation timing, fine eye-motor coordination, pursuit-rotor tracking, reaction time). The arm hang was represented in the fewest papers (n = 2) while the dash and long jump were most frequently referenced (n = 21).     

Differential visual field-interhemispheric transfer: can it explain sex and handedness differences in lateralization?

104 men and women were tested for visual field-hemispheric transfer of spatial information on a dot-localization task. Right-handed subjects showed significant improvement when stimuli were presented to the left visual field of the right hemisphere (LVF-RH) after practice on the same task presented to the right visual field of the left hemisphere (RVF-LH) first. No improvement was found when the task was presented in the reverse order (LVF-RH first followed by RVF-LH). It was concluded that, for right-handers, transfer of spatial information to the right hemisphere is facilitated while transfer to the left hemisphere is inhibited. Left-handed subjects demonstrated no significant improvement in either condition, suggesting inhibition or lack of transfer of spatial information in either direction. No sex differences were found in either right-handed or left-handed subjects. The findings suggest that there may be different mechanisms underlying the similarities in functional lateralization of women and left-handers.     

In search of the false-uniqueness phenomenon: fear and estimates of social consensus

An examination of the social perception literature yields little evidence for the false-uniqueness phenomenon (Valins & Nisbett, 1972), the perception that one's attributes are more unique than is the case. In contrast, the tendency for individuals to project their own characteristics onto other people and assume that more people are like themselves is a robust phenomenon. One reason researchers may not have found false uniqueness is that they have not looked at the accuracy of consensus estimates. A close look at the results of Tabachnik, Crocker, and Alloy (1983) and Sanders and Mullen (1983), who did assess accuracy, suggests that people possessing undesirable attributes over-estimate consensus, whereas people holding desirable attributes underestimate consensus. The latter pattern is a form of false uniqueness. In this study we looked at the accuracy of social consensus estimates in the context of psychological fears. A sample of subjects filled out an abbreviated version of a fear survey and made estimates of consensus. The results showed that both high- and low-fear respondents overestimated the incidence of high fear among their peers, but high-fear subjects were more inaccurate in their estimates. A false-uniqueness effect was found on the part of low-fear subjects, as they tended to underestimate the incidence of low fear among their peers. These findings are consistent with a motivational interpretation that emphasizes the individual's need to justify or normalize stigmatized behavior and to bolster perceived self-competence.     

Social support versus companionship: effects on life stress, loneliness, and evaluations by others

In recent years, much interest has focused on delineating and contrasting specific functions of social relationships that contribute to psychological well-being. Five studies contrasted the roles of companionship and social support in buffering the effects of life stress, in influencing feelings of loneliness and social satisfaction, and in affecting others' judgments. Study 1 analyzed data from a community survey and found that companionship had a main effect on psychological well-being and a buffering effect on minor life stress, whereas social support had only a buffering effect on major life stress. Studies 2, 3, and 4 analyzed data from two college student samples and a different community survey to evaluate how companionship and social support contributed to relationship satisfaction and feelings of loneliness. The results of these studies indicated that companionship was the strongest predictor of these dimensions of social satisfaction. Study 5 used an experimental design to test the hypothesis that a deficit of companionship elicits more negative reactions from others than does a deficit of social support. This hypothesis received partial support. Considered together, the results of these studies suggest that companionship plays a more important and more varied role in sustaining emotional well-being than previous studies have acknowledged.     

Psychosocial characteristics of preschool siblings of handicapped and nonhandicapped children

This project examined psychosocial characteristics of 24 preschool-aged siblings of handicapped children in relation to a control group of 22 siblings of nonhandicapped children. Subjects were matched on family size and income, sibling age, birth order, sex, age spacing, and marital status of their parents. Results indicated no statistically significant differences between groups of children on measures of perceived self-competence and acceptance, understanding of developmental disabilities, empathy, and child care responsibility. Significant group differences were found where brothers of handicapped children were rated by their mothers as being more depressed and aggressive than brothers of nonhandicapped control children. Sisters of handicapped children were rated by mothers as being more aggressive than sisters of nonhandicapped children. Sisters of handicapped children and brothers of nonhandicapped children had significantly fewer privileges and more restrictions on their home activities than other groups. Results are discussed in relation to previous research on older silbings of handicapped children and the general literature on family stress and childhood disability and disease. The importance of examining sibling functioning via multiple measures of child behavior is stressed.The authors are grateful to the children and families who participated in the project. The assistance of Dr. Ricardo Barrera, Christine DiBlasio, Lisa Kaye, Paola Bellabarba, Jeanne Logozzo, Donna Motley, Jennifer Harter, and Tina Meisell is also gratefully acknowleged. This project was funded by Grant Number G008300345 from the U.S. Department of Education.     

The principle of charity and the problem of irrationality (translation and the problem of irrationality)

Common formulations of the principle of charity in translation seem to undermine attributions of irrationality in social scientific accounts that are otherwise unexceptionable. This I call the problem of irrationality. Here I resolve the problem of irrationality by developing two complementary views of the principle of charity. First, I develop the view (ill-developed in the literature at present) that the principle of charity is preparatory, being needed in the construction of provisional first-approximation translation manuals. These serve as the basis for explanatory accounts and associated refinements in the translation manual. In developing such explanatory accounts, the principle of charity is no longer constraining. Thus, the principle of charity applies only in the early stages of constructing translation manuals, and there is no problem of irrationality in the later stages of constructing translation manuals. Second, I reduce the principle of charity, where it does apply, to a special case of what I call the principle of explicability: so translate as to attribute explicable beliefs and practices to the speakers of the source-language. I show that the appropriate formulation of the principle of charity counsels just what the principle of explicability requires in the early stages of social scientific investigation.I am grateful to Robert Barrett, Roger Gibson, and Paul Roth for their generous assistance.     

The effects of commitment to threats and promises upon bargaining behaviour and outcomes

The course of bargaining is determined in part by interdependent individuals exchanging messages so as to influence other's behaviour, and thereby to increase the likelihood of achieving outcomes consistent with their own goals. The communication of threats and promises are two major message strategies that are employed to influence the behaviour of others in a bargaining relationship. The present study examines the effects of players' level of commitment to these forms of message strategies upon behaviour in a duopoly bargaining task. Past research has oprationalized commitment in terms of the consistency with which an individual has followed through on threats or promises in the past. In the present research, Becker's (1960) concept of a side-bet is employed to provide an alternative means for defining and manipulating commitment. A side-bet obtains when either a threatener or a promiser posts a valued resource, say a bond, which they forfeit if they do not follow through on their stated threat or promise. The main expectations of the present study were that increased commitment to threat meassages would lead to more competitive behaviour and outcomes within a duopoly bargaining task, whereas increased commitment to promise messages would produce more cooperative behaviour and outcomes. Partial support for these major expectations, as well as confirmation of a number of secondary expectations, was obtained.     

Separate verbal memory and naming deficits in attention deficit disorder and reading disability

In this study, verbal memory and naming abilities were investigated in reading disabled (RD) and control children who were characterized according to the presence or absence of attention deficit disorder (ADD). Results indicate that deficits in learning and memory for recently acquired information occur as a function of ADD rather than RD while deficits in naming are specific to RD rather than ADD. We conclude that ADD is a major source of additional and separate cognitive morbidity in RD children.     

On comprehension of active/passive sentences and language processing in a Polish agrammatic aphasic

This paper presents the results of a study of active/passive sentence comprehension by a Polish-speaking agrammatic aphasic. The patient showed good performance on canonically ordered active and passive structures, but performed poorly on inverted variants. The systematically normal and deviant comprehension patterns observed are accounted for by normal interpretative strategies applied to syntactic structures built around verbs with reduced inflectional morphology. The differences between our Polish data and the English data discussed in the literature are explained by the fact that Polish possesses a richer derivational verb morphology. The interpretation of inverted sentences demonstrates the importance of S-V-O word order preference. Our analysis draws upon the notion of grammatical functions to explain the data.