Five points and a lament about Range and Cotton's "Reports of assent and permission in research with children: illustrations and suggestions

This comment responds to an article by Range and Cotton (1995) on reporting of parental permission and child assent procedures in published articles for 4 psychology journals. Issue is taken with the assumptions, methodology, interpretations, and implications of listing researchers in the Range and Cotton article. There is no evidence researchers failed in their ethical obligations or that children were put at risk. Reporting permission/assent in publications is not an ethical requirement. Listing researchers as "failing" to do something not part of an ethical code is lamentable. Too many unfortunate implications and problems can be derived from Range and Cotton's analysis and conclusions.     

Factors Affecting the Career Aspirations of Asian Americans

The authors compared the career considerations of a group of Asian American college students (52 men and 72 women) with a comparison group of Caucasian students (95 men and 151 women) using an Occupations List. The results revealed that Asian American students were more likely to have considered Investigative occupations and less likely to have considered Enterprising and Conventional occupations than were the Caucasian students. There were also differences in the career considerations of the two racial groups in terms of the prestige level and gender traditionality of the occupations. The implications of the findings for theory and practice are discussed.     

Meaning dominance norms for 120 homographs

Over the past two decades, homographs have been used in psychological experiments aimed at testing a variety of theoretical issues concerning memory and language. Often, such research requires prior knowledge of the dominance relations among various meanings of the homographs. Previously available homograph meaning norms are limited because they are now more than 10 years old, and they have typically reported only the two most dominant meanings even though many homographs have three or more common meanings. This paper presents normative data on 120 homographs from a relatively large, heterogeneous sample of subjects (N = 100). Meaning dominance was assessed by having subjects write the first definition that came to mind for each homograph. Definition responses were grouped by similarity, and the resulting meaning categories were verified against dictionary meaning classifications. The number of distinct meanings varied from two to six for the homographs investigated, and frequency of response is reported for all definition categories.     

Monitoring running-wheel movement using a serial mouse and an IBM-compatible system

A running-wheel-movement-detection system is described for use with an IBM-compatible system and a serial mouse. It is an adaptation of a system developed for use on a Commodore 64. The IBM-compatible system provides obvious advantages in speed, memory, data storage, and programming ease over the earlier Commodore 64 system.     

The course of aggression in first-grade children with and without comorbid anxious symptoms

We studied the course of aggressive behavior in an epidemiologically defined sample of first graders with and without comorbid anxious symptoms. Our primary purpose in doing so was to understand whether the stability of aggression in young children was attenuated or strengthened in the presence of comorbid anxiety. Previous studies of older children and adolescents had produced equivocal findings in this regard. Data on anxious symptoms were obtained through an interview of the children, whereas aggressive behavior was assessed through the use of a teacher interview and peer nominations. Assessments were performed in the fall and spring of first grade. In contrast to children classified as aggressive alone in the fall of first grade, boys and girls classified as aggressive and anxious in the fall of first grade were significantly more likely to be classified as aggressive in the spring in terms of teacher ratings and/or peer nominations of aggression. Thus our findings suggest that the link between early and later aggression may be strengthened in the presence of comorbid anxious symptoms, rather than attenuated. Future studies are needed to identify the mechanisms by which the course of aggression is influenced by the presence of comorbid anxiety.The writing of this paper was supported by the following National Institute of Mental Health grants: Epidemiologic Prevention Center for Early Risk Behavior (P50 MH38725); Periodic Outcome of Two Preventive Trials (1RO1 MH42968). The authors would like to thank the Baltimore Public City School System and the children and parents who participated in this study.     

Is cluttering a motor disorder?

A 15-year-old-boy was referred on account of a fluency disorder that was not thought to be stuttering. The problems of the lack of an adequate definition of cluttering are discussed along with the inherent problems of providing a wide-based assessment of this client group. Assessments were conducted on the motoric, linguistic, and intellectual abilities of this client, and the findings are discussed.     

Associations between nonparental care experience and preschooler's emotion regulation in the presence of the mother

This study tested predictions concerning the associations between children's nonparental care experiences and emotion regulation. It involved 53 participants (21 girls and 32 boys) of preschool age and their mothers. The children's care experiences ranged from those who were raised exclusively at home to those who had nonparental care experience beginning in early infancy. The participants were observed in a laboratory playroom, and their mothers were asked to complete questionnaires regarding their children's care histories and their current care situations. The children with extensive nonparental care backgrounds were found to be more likely to use self-directed emotion regulation behaviors when faced with a mildly frustrating situation. In the same situation, the children who had experienced minimal nonparental care were found to be more likely to use other-directed emotion regulation behaviors. Additionally, the children who had experienced care settings with large numbers of children in each care group or who had experienced many caregiver changes were more likely to use self-directed emotion regulation behaviors, whereas those who had experienced settings with smaller care groups and fewer caregiver changes were more likely to use other-directed emotion regulation behaviors.     

On the time course of negative priming: Another look

In two experiments, the pattern of persistence of negative priming effects across delay intervals of 500 and 2,500 msec was assessed using a within-subjects, random sequencing of delays. Neill and Valdes (1992; Neill, Valdes, Terry, & Gorfein, 1992) have argued that a within-subject experimental design is required for decay of negative priming to be seen, in contrast to results reported elsewhere (e.g., Tipper, Weaver, Cameron, Brehaut, & Bastedo, 1991) showing stable negative priming effects across delays. In neither experiment was substantial evidence of decay detected, raising questions for the notion that suppression necessarily declines across brief temporal intervals and for the assertion that episodic retrieval is the sole source of negative priming.     

Children's responses to stories with male and female characters

The sex of the main character was varied in six children's stories which were then read by fourth, sixth and eighth graders. The children answered four questions about the stories. Both boys and girls responded more positively to the questions “Would you like to be (character's name?)” and “Would you like to do the things (character's name) did?” when the main character was a male. Boys preferred stories about males, and this preference increased with grade level. A preference for stories about females was marginally significant only for the older girls. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.