Social and life skill competence in potential early school-leavers

Competencies in social and life skills of a group of students expecting to leave school at the end of Grade 10 in Australia is compared with groups expecting to continue. Academic performance and skills were also assessed. The results of the study indicated that the potential early school-leavers were disadvantaged both socio-economically and academically. But, surprisingly, the findings indicated that they were not significantly different from the other two groups of students targeted in the study in terms of their social and life skills. The results imply that potential early leavers in school populations may be unnecessarily disadvantaged because school programmes, in concentrating on a narrow range of cognitive skills, do not build on personal competency skills already possessed by students of all levels of ability. Whilst this is the case, potential early school-leavers will be likely to continue to be disaffected and disadvantaged educationally.     

Psychological conceptions of randomness

This article presents a critique of the concept of randomness as it occurs in the psychological literature. The first section of our article outlines the significance of a concept of randomness to the process of induction; we need to distinguish random and non-random events in order to perceive lawful regularities and formulate theories concerning events in the world. Next we evaluate the psychological research that has suggested that human concepts of randomness are not normative. We argue that, because the tasks set to experimental subjects are logically problematic, observed biases may be an artifact of the experimental situation and that even if such biases do generalise they may not have pejorative implications for induction in the real world. Thirdly we investigate the statistical methodology utilised in tests for randomness and find it riddled with paradox. In a fourth section we find various branches of scientific endeavour that are stymied by the problems posed by randomness. Finally we briefly mention the social significance of randomness and conclude by arguing that such a fundamental concept merits and requires more serious considerations.     

Visual control of movement patterns and the grammar of action

In this experiment adult subjects copied three types of material (letters, reversed letters and geometric shapes) with and without sight of the hand and the writing trace. Without vision the number of movement segments decreased and the sequence and direction of movements were altered. This means that subjects did not use a fixed stored representation to produce items nor did they obey the rules of Goodnow and Levine's (1973) grammar of action. When spatial location is made more difficult by the removal of vision, movement production is simplified to reduce the number of relocations required. The use of consistent directions of movement depends on the ability to use visual control of spatial location.     

Preventive group psychotherapy for at-risk infants and their mothers

There is increased evidence that infants who receive poor quality social stimulation from their primary caregiver are at risk for later developmental difficulties. This paper describes a preventive intervention for mother-infant dyads exhibiting impaired patterns of social interaction. An impaired relationship with the primary caregiver has been found to be associated with social and emotional deficits in early childhood as well as with significant psychopathology in adulthood. The intervention consisted of group treatment of mothers and their infants. Each group session has 4 subsections which, together, were directed towards improving the mothers' ability to relate in a stimulating and nurturant manner to their children. Types of intervention included didactic instruction, modeling, and interpretation of the infant's behavior. Qualitative data suggested that the group intervention has positive effects on the mother-infant dyads.     

Gender Differences in Self-Serving Attributions About Sexual Experiences1

Two studies investigated sex differences in attributions about sexual experiences. Subjects were asked to provide causal explanations for satisfying and unsatisfying past experiences. Men were expected to display a greater self-serving bias than women. This hypothesis was supported for unsatisfying but not for satisfying experiences. In both experiments, males were found to blame their partners more for unsatisfying experiences than females. Males used self-serving attributions, assigning more responsibility to the partner than to themselves (Experiment I), whereas women displayed self-derogatory attributions, attributing negative outcomes more to themselves than to their partners (Experiment II). Furthermore, self-derogatory attribution patterns were correlated with unsatisfactory sexual histories in women but not in men. Implications for the treatment of sexual dysfunctions via reattribution training are discussed.     

PERSONAL SPACE AMONGST ARABS AND AMERICANS*

Personal space zones were examined amongst Arab and American university students by jointly varying degree of acquaintanceship and sex of subject. Overall, there were few differences between Arab and American males. Arab females, however, showed dramatic differences in comparison to American males and females and to Arab males. Arab females kept male friends very far away relative to female friends. Indeed, male friends were kept almost as far away as male strangers.     

The Attitudes Toward Women Scale for Adolescents (AWSA): A study of reliability and validity

This study describes the development of the Attitudes Toward Women Scale for Adolescents (AWSA), an instrument based on the short form of the Spence-Helmreich Attitudes Toward Women Scale (AWS). The AWSA has been tested in four samples of adolescents. Internal consistency estimates and test-retest stability indicated high reliability. Hypotheses formulated to test the construct validity of the scale were largely supported. AWSA permits the examination of how boys' and girls' attitudes toward women influence the life paths that adolescent girls begin to pursue.This research was supported by grants to A. Petersen from the Spencer Foundation, the National Institute of Mental health (MH 30252/38142), and the Judith Baskin Offer Fund.     

Attributes and roles assigned to characters in children's writing: Sex differences and sex-role perceptions

This research examined the creative writing of 180 elementary school children for evidence of sex difference and sex-role perceptions. Stories were analyzed for frequency of male and female characters, attributes, and roles. Writers were equally divided by sex and into three age groups—grades 1–2, 3–4, and 5–6. Results suggest that the total number of characters, roles, and attributes was equivalent. However, the distribution of male and female characters, roles, and attributes differed with male and female writers. Female writers included significantly more female characters and assigned more attributes and roles to these characters. Nevertheless, in the stories of both male and female writers, there was a predominance of male characters and assignment of attributes and roles to male characters. The findings support the development and implementation of a nonsexist curriculum.     

Gender and the phonology of north American first names

This study elicited given and preferred first names from 222 females and 267 male respondents to investigate potential sex-associated features in the structural characteristics of names. Female given names were found to manifest significantly more sounds and syllables, more frequently vary the position of stressed syllable, and more often conclude in a vowel or sonorant sound than male names. In comparison with given names, both female and male preferred names moved in the direction of a potentially ideal structure consisting of a monosyllable that ends in a consonant. The rate of the shift was much less pronounced for female than for male preferred names.The authors would like to thank Bruce Boling for serving as reliability coder.