Gender Role Stereotyping of Parents in Children’s Picture Books: The Invisible Father

Previous studies reveal the reinforcement of gender stereotypes by picture books children read during the formative years. In these books, boys tend to be portrayed as active leaders, and girls as passive followers. Women and girls are under-represented. Men often exhibit career skills, and women perform traditional tasks in the home. Even when careers are nontraditional, personality characteristics and other qualities and behaviors are often stereotypical. Previous researchers emphasized the narrowly defined roles of women and children in picture books. In this study, we focused on the representation of mothers and fathers, and examined whether men are stereotyped as relatively absent or inept parents. A content analysis of the gender roles exhibited in 200 prominent childrens picture books demonstrated that fathers are largely under-represented, and, when they do appear, they are withdrawn and ineffectual parents. Further research could establish whether seriously deficient models of fatherhood in childrens literature affect the incidence of present, caring fathers in society.     

States of awareness across multiple memory tasks: obtaining a "pure" measure of conscious recollection

Four experiments were conducted to examine the nature of recollective experience across different explicit memory tests. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the proportion of retrieved items that were given Remember responses were equivalent across free recall, category cued recall, category plus letter cued recall, and recognition memory tests unlike the result reported by Tulving [Can. Psychol. 26 (1985) 1]. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that Remember judgments are influenced by both conceptual and perceptual variables not only in the recognition task but in other explicit memory tasks as well. Taken together, the empirical evidence from this study demonstrates that explicit memory performance is accompanied by different states of awareness not only in recognition but also across other memory tasks including free recall.     

Feeling textures through a probe: effects of probe and surface geometry and exploratory factors

Vibratory roughness perception occurs when people feel a surface with a rigid probe. Accordingly, perceived roughness should reflect probe and surface geometry, exploratory speed, and force. Experiments 1 and 2 compared magnitude estimation of roughness with the bare finger and two types of probes, one designed to eliminate force moments, under the subject's active control. Experiments 3 and 4 varied speed under passive control. Log magnitude was consistently a quadratic function of log spacing between elements in the surface. The location of the function's peak was related to the drop point--that is, the spacing at which the probe can just drop between elements--which is affected by probe tip diameter, element height, and speed. Other parameters of the quadratic were affected by probe type and speed.     

Children's working-memory processes: a response-timing analysis

Recall response durations were used to clarify processing in working-memory tasks. Experiment 1 examined children's performance in reading span, a task in which sentences were processed and the final word of each sentence was retained for subsequent recall. Experiment 2 examined the development of listening-, counting-, and digit-span task performance. Responses were much longer in the reading-and listening-span tasks than in the other span tasks, suggesting that participants in sentence-based span tasks take time to retrieve the semantic or linguistic structure as cues to recall of the sentence-final words. Response durations in working-memory tasks helped to predict academic skill and achievement, largely separate from the contributions of the memory spans themselves. Response durations thus are important in the interpretation of span task performance.     

A case of collective responsibility: who else was to blame for the Columbine high school shootings?

Two studies examined perceptions of collective responsibility for the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Collective responsibility refers to the perception that others, besides the wrongdoers themselves, are responsible for the event. In Study 1, the authors assessed perceptions of the shooters' parents and their peer group (the Trenchcoat Mafia), whereas Study 2 tested perceptions of collective responsibility across a range of groups. In both studies, perceptions of a target group's entitativity predicted judgments of collective responsibility. This relationship was mediated by two situational construals that justify applying collective responsibility: responsibility by commission (encouraging or facilitating the event) and responsibility by omission (failing to prevent the event). Study 2 also determined that perceptions of authority predicted judgments of collective responsibility for the Columbine shootings and was mediated by inferences of omission. Future directions in collective responsibility research are discussed.     

Mortimer Adler,Paulo Freire,and Teaching Theology in a Democracy

In view of the current attention being given to “practices,” this paper argues that Mortimer Adler and Paulo Freire have developed pedagogical practices that are relevant for the task of teaching theology in a democracy. Emphasizing the connection between education and democratic life, both reject a facile relativism or pragmatism, on the one hand, and an uncritical adherence to either a traditionalist or revolutionary agenda, on the other. Indeed, both present their pedagogies not simply as a means for advocating certain types of religious and ethical practice (whether traditional or revolutionary) but as a means for critically examining those practices in light of the truth and justice – and for believers, the reality of God – they presuppose. This essay examines precisely how they do this and what their relevance might be for the teaching of theology in a democracy where the co-existence of competing religious and ethical claims is a given.     

Why did it happen to me? Social cognition processes in adjustment and recovery from criminal victimisation and illness

This article reviews the theoretical framework and empirical evidence for the hypothesised relationship between self-blame attributions and psychological adjustment. In doing so, an argument is presented that poses an alternative interpretation to that which is widely accepted regarding the complex relationship between blame attributions, perceived control, self-esteem, and recovery. A number of fundamental issues concerning the assumptions underlying Janoff-Bulman’s model are identified and explored. In particular, attention is given to the importance of distinguishing perceived control from likelihood of recurrence, and perceived control from outcome expectancy. Finally, the possibility that attributions may not play as fundamental a role in adjustment as first thought is considered, and future lines of enquiry are identified.