Reasons for Reason-giving in a Public-Opinion Survey

This paper explores why respondents to a telephone public-opinion survey often give reasons for answering as they do, even though reason-giving is neither required nor encouraged and it is difficult to see the reasons as attempts to deal with disagreement. We find that respondents give reasons for the policy claims they make in their answers three times as frequently as they give reasons for value or factual claims, that their reasons tend to involve appeals to personal experience, and that they often talk about their thought processes, especially when the evidentiary stakes are high. We then explore several ways of explaining these findings. We suggest that one useful approach is to see the reason-giving in the survey interviews as deliberative, reflexive argumentation of the sort described as `critical thinking. We further suggest that the reason such argumentation is often conducted out loud in the interviews, rather than internally, is that it functions in the service of rhetorical ethos, in particular the need to display the fact that one is human, with human autonomy and agency. Doing this may be particularly important in contexts such as anonymous survey interviews in which people are at risk of being treated like machines.     

Object perception in 5-month-old infants of clinically depressed and nondepressed mothers

Five-month-old infants of clinically depressed and nondepressed mothers were familiarized to a wholly novel object and afterward tested for their discrimination of the same object presented in the familiar and in a novel perspective. Infants in both groups were adequately familiarized, but infants of clinically depressed mothers failed to discriminate between novel and familiar views of the object, whereas infants of nondepressed mothers successfully discriminated. The difference in discrimination between infants of depressed and nondepressed mothers is discussed in light of infants' differential object processing and maternal sociodemographics, mind-mindedness, depression, stress, and interaction styles that may moderate opportunities for infants to learn about their world or influence the development of their perceptuocognitive capacities.     

The Flynn effect puzzle: A 30-year examination from the right tail of the ability distribution provides some missing pieces

The Flynn effect is the rise in IQ scores across the last eighty or more years documented in the general distribution of both industrialized and developing nations primarily on tests that require problem solving and non-verbal reasoning. However, whether the effect extends to the right tail (i.e., the top 5% of ability) remains unknown. The present study uses roughly 1.7 million scores of 7th-grade students on the SAT and ACT as well as scores of 5th- and 6th-grade students on the EXPLORE from 1981 to 2010 to investigate whether the effect operates in the right tail. The effect was found in the top 5% at a rate similar to the general distribution, providing evidence for the first time that the entire curve is likely increasing at a constant rate. The effect was also found for females as well as males, appears to still be continuing, is primarily concentrated on the mathematics subtests of the SAT, ACT, and EXPLORE, and operates similarly for both 5th and 6th as well as 7th graders in the right tail. These findings help clarify the nature of the effect and may suggest ways that potential causes can now be more meaningfully offered and evaluated.     

Changing industry to continuous operations: Different strokes for different plants

A survey method was designed to evaluate the effect of shift work on industrial workers and to develop recommendations for 7-day around-the-clock production work systems. A Work-Sleep Survey was then offered to 2,340 hourly and salaried workers at four plants. Each plant was in the rubber and plastic products industry and on 5-day around-the-clock operations using permanent shifts. Of the total workers, 90.38% responded to the survey. The results agree with the findings of a previous survey, offered to workers through their unions, using many of the same survey items. The plants were found to differ in worker demographics, habits, and preferences. This survey method is helpful as an aid for the design and evaluation of shift-work systems tailored to specific worker and plant requirements.     

Touch by Intrusive and Withdrawn Mothers with Depressive Symptoms

Interaction behaviours of 88 adolescent mothers with depressive symptoms and their 3-month-old infants were videotaped and coded for different types of touch. The ‘depressed’ mothers were classified as intrusive, withdrawm or good by one observer and another observer coded rough tickling, poking, tugging and pulling as negative touch behaviours and gentle stroking and rubbing as positive touch behaviours. The mothers with depressive symptoms were more likely to touch their infants in a negative way and more likely to be classified as intrusive.