Prospective Prediction of Alternative High School Graduation Status at Emerging Adulthood1

Most studies that examine the prediction of graduation status among teens have examined those who attend regular high schools. The present study reports the prediction of high school graduation status 5 years later among 646 youth who attended alternative (continuation) high schools at baseline. Those youth at baseline who: (a) reported less intention to use soft drugs (cigarettes, alcohol, or marijuana) during the next year; (b) suffered relatively few drug‐related consequences during the last year; (c) were relatively less likely to have carried a weapon (knife or gun) in the last year; (d) reported feeling relatively hopeful about the future; and (e) were older were more likely to self‐report having graduated continuation high school 5 years later. These results suggest that the consequences of drug use, not drug use per se, other illegal behavior, and a sense of well‐being are important predictors of graduation among groups of high‐risk teens. Problem behavior and resiliency theories are offered as potential explanations of these findings.     

Perception of female and male success in the united states and third world nations

This study tested the proposition that the success of an intelligent female in the third world is attributed more to ability and less to nonability factors than the success of her male counterpart. To this end, subjects from developing nations attributed the success of an American or third world male or female of average or high intelligence to ability, effort, luck, and task ease. Results indicated that subjects attributed the success of the intelligent third world female more to ability and less to luck than the success of the comparable male. In addition, gender differences were found which indicated that under some circumstances the success of the female more than that of the male is attributed to task ease.     

Behavioral assessment of psychiatric inpatients and normal controls across different environmental contexts

Objectively defined, publicly observable behaviors were time sampled for hospitalized psychiatric patients and normal controls in three distinct environmental contexts: lunch time, free time, and gym time. The behaviors sampled included body activity, extremity activity, proximity, social interactions, participation, visual scanning, laughing/smiling, and idiosyncratic behavior. Patient behaviors were recorded during both a drug-free baseline period and a subsequent medication period. The data suggest that consistent and reliable differences between patients and normals in most behaviors can be observed and that environmental context is an important determinant of these differences. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for assessment procedures and treatment decisions.These investigations were supported in part by State of Illinois Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Grants RD836-13 and RD622-02 to the first author. The cooperation of the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute staff is gratefully acknowledged.     

The Myth of Man the Hunter, Man the Killer and the Evolution of Human Morality

Since the discovery of the first man-ape, many have assumed that the earliest humans were hunters and that this was associated with a "killer instinct." The myth of "man the hunter" was repeated in the 1960s in anthropology texts and popular literature. In the 1970s it was adopted by sociobiologists to explain human nature. "Man the hunter" is used to explain not only human biology but also human morality. The morals described, however, often reflect ancient beliefs and appear to be new ways of justifying old morality codes. The newest version of this myth is presented in a recent book, Demonic Males . I will discuss various accounts of this myth and the evidence used to justify them, and will specifically critique the arguments presented in Demonic Males .     

Picture-word differences and conceptual frequency judgments

Recent evidence suggests that while pictures are more easily recognized, discriminated, associated, and recalled than their corresponding verbal labels, this is not the case in concept acquisition/utilization tasks. If such evidence is interpreted in terms of a "frequency theory" perspective, one would expect the typically obtained frequency judgment differences between pictures and words to be reduced if "conceptual" frequency judgments are required. This expectation was confirmed in three experiments.     

A neuronal model of vowel normalization and representation

A speculative neuronal model for vowel normalization and representation is offered. The neurophysiological basis for the premise is the "combination-sensitive" neuron recently documented in the auditory cortex of the mustached bat (N. Suga, W. E. O'Neill, K. Kujirai, and T. Manabe, 1983, Journal of Neurophysiology, 49, 1573-1627). These neurons are specialized to respond to either precise frequency, amplitude, or time differentials between specific harmonic components of the pulse-echo pair comprising the biosonar signal of the bat. Such multiple frequency comparisons lie at the heart of human vowel perception and categorization. A representative vowel normalization algorithm is used to illustrate the operational principles of the neuronal model in accomplishing both normalization and categorization in early infancy. The neurological precursors to a phonemic vocalic system is described based on the neurobiological events characterizing regressive neurogenesis.     

Emotional and developmental aspects of human figure drawings in predicting school readiness

It was hypothesized that the combined use of Koppitz' developmental and emotional scores can improve the prediction of school readiness from children's Human Figure Drawings (HFD) when compared with each measure separately. The relationship of SES to HFD scores was also investigated. Multiple regression analysis was used with four factors—developmental score, emotional score, sex of the child, and SES of the school— to derive comparative correlations to test the hypotheses and to create a prediction equation to estimate the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT) scores of 141 kindergarten students ages 5 to 6 years representing three SES levels. Hit rate data were also presented. The results showed that the correlation for the combined developmental and emotional scores with the MRT score was not different than their separate correlations with the MRT. The SES factor was found to be significantly correlated (p < .01) with both developmental and emotional scores. The best single variable predictor of MRT scores was SES. The application of Bayes' Theorem of probability to the hit rate data showed that the nonreadiness predictions yielded by the developmental score, emotional score, and their combination are not better than chance predictions. Thus, it was found that Koppitz' developmental or emotional scoring systems are not viable screening instruments.