Teacher ratings of children's problem and competence behaviors: Normative and parametric characteristics

Teacher-rated adjustment differences among young elementary school children from (a) a recent sample and a 1974 cohort, and (b) urban/suburban, male/female, and grade-level subgroups were examined. A problem behavior checklist (Classroom Adjustment Rating Scale) and a school competence measure (Health Resources Inventory) for 974 children from 5 urban and 5 suburban schools were completed by 101 first- to fourth-grade teachers. Children from the more current cohort were rated as significantly more maladjusted than those from the earlier sample on 8 of 10 adjustment variables. In the recent sample, girls and suburban children evidenced a greater number of school competencies and fewer problem behaviors than boys and urban children, respectively. The implications of these findings for the future use of the teacher rating scales are discussed.     

Variations on the Ramsey test: More triviality results

The purpose of this note is to formulate some weaker versions of the so called Ramsey test that do not entail the following unacceptable consequenceIf A and C are already accepted in K, then if A, then C is also accepted in K. and to show that these versions still lead to the same triviality result when combined with a preservation criterion.     

Negative implications of fragmented public perspectives toward local alcohol programs

Strengthening local alcohol programs so as to emphasize primary prevention is an active concern among mental health professionals; yet interventions intended to achieve this aim have produced only modest shifts in program orientation in most communities. An analysis of data obtained from those active in local affairs in a small community, using Q-sort techniques, suggested that contrasting perspectives toward alcohol abuse as a social problem may stand as an unseen barrier to relevant change.     

Conceptual pragmatism

The paper puts forward the thesis of conceptual pragmatism: that there are pragmatic choices to be made between distinct but similar concepts within various contexts. It is argued that this thesis should be acceptable to all who believe in concepts, whether the believers are platonists, realists or anti-realists. It is argued that the truth of the thesis may help to resolve many long-standing debates, and that in any case it will lead to an extension of philosophical method. The paper then briefly considers the concepts of belief and desire as a case-study, and argues for the recognition of the practical reasoner's stance (to stand alongside Dennett's intentional stance), relative to which we should select concepts of belief and desire which are broadly cartesian.I am grateful to the following for their help (varying from detailed comments and criticisms on earlier drafts, to general advice and encouragement): David Archard, Simon Blackburn, Jack Copeland, Dan Dennett, Susan Levi, Christopher McKnight, Derek Parfit, Michael Slote, Tim Williamson, and Crispin Wright.     

Detecting “cracks” in mental health service systems: Application of network analytic techniques

This paper argued that problems of coordination and integration of community mental health systems are best approached from a network perspective in which all linkages between agencies are considered simultaneously. Structural coordination and integration can be assessed through the analysis of these linkages. The utility of this approach was demonstrated by deriving a typology of system "cracks" from network analytic constructs. A network analysis of a community mental health service network was then generated to illustrate how these cracks can be empirically identified. It is suggested that mental health planners will find both the network analytic approach and the typology of cracks useful for addressing problems of coordination and integration.     

Eyeheight-scaled information about affordances: a study of sitting and stair climbing

Previous work has shown that both the perceived and actual critical (maximum) heights of surfaces that afford "sitting on " and "climbing on" can be expressed as constant proportions of each actor's leg length. The current study provides evidence that these judgments of critical action boundaries are based on an existing source of size and distance information that is already scaled with reference to the actor's eyeheight. In Experiment 1 changes in judgments of "perceived eyeheight" (an index of the intrinsic scalar) as a function of viewing distance were shown to be highly correlated with changes in the maximum height that was perceived to afford sitting on or climbing on. In Experiments 2 and 3 observers wore 10-cm blocks and made judgments about whether the heights of various surfaces afforded sitting or climbing. The use of eyeheight-scaled information as the basis for their estimates predicted the obtained pattern of errors in these judgments. With a modicum of experience wearing the blocks, however, observers were able to retune accurately their critical action boundary to a degree that would not have been predicted from their consistent overestimation of the height of the block on which they were standing. These results have implications for understanding how observers obtain information about their specific action boundary.     

Gender,sex roles,and attitudes toward war and nuclear weapons

The observation that men are usually more supportive of war than women had led several authors to suggest that masculinity plays a causal role in the decision to make war and stockpile nuclear arms. In order to examine the relationship between sex role orientation and attitudes towards war and nuclear weapons, gender and measures of sex role orientation were used to predict three attitudes about nuclear weapons and the use of military force. Two specific and two classes of hypotheses regarding the possible relationships among these variables were tested: masculinity, femininity, Masculinity × Femininity interaction, and Gender × Sex Role Orientation hypotheses. The results provided limited support only for the femininity hypothesis—that attitudes toward war are associated with feminine traits. However, neither masculinity nor femininity was found to be the only mediators of the gender/war attitude relationship, indicating that sex role orientation (and especially masculinity) should be given less emphasis when trying to explain the relationship between gender and attitudes toward war.The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments of Douglas Kenrick, Nancy Russo, and an anonymous reviewer on a earlier version of this paper.     

Completion norms for 40 three-letter word stems

This is a report of the completion responses for 40 three-letter word stems (e.g., ABO) produced by 100 undergraduate students at the University of California at San Diego. The report includes a list of the different words that were written as stem completions, their frequency of occurrence as completions, and their frequency of occurrence in English according to published norms. This list of materials is useful for the construction of completion tests for future investigations of direct priming phenomena, and it may provide an important covariate in the analysis of performance on completion tests. Preliminary analyses of the results reveal three primary factors that determine overall performance on a stem-completion test: word frequency, word length, and meanings per word. Analyses of the completions produced for each individual word stem, however, reveal that usually only one of these factors makes a significant contribution to performance.     

Of beasties and butterflies: Evidence for the stability and domain-specificity of individual differences in categorization

Previous research has failed to demonstrate unambiguously the relative stability across time and consistency across tasks of individual differences in categorization, or categorization breadth The present study of categorizing behavior in college students assesses breadth at each of four points in time over a six-week period Results are consistent with an interpretation of breadth as a highly stable individual difference variable, but one that is constrained by the nature of the stimulus sets employed High stability coefficients were observed for each of two redundant tasks In contrast, cross-task consistency indices were generally low Personality correlates of breadth were similarly weak and inconsistent Several variables are suggested that may attenuate the generality of categorization breadth The existence of multiple styles of categorization is discussed