LINKAGES BETWEEN WOMEN'S PROVIDER-ROLE ATTITUDES, PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING, AND FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS

The primary aim of this investigation was to examine the extent to which the meanings women attach to their provider-role responsibilities are differentially related to their psychological well-being and family relationships and to the division of labor in the home. The sample included 43 dualearner and 50 single-earner families. In home interviews, wives reported on role overload, depression, satisfaction with the marriage, and attitudes regarding women's and men's roles. Their children completed two measures assessing daily hassles and their relationship with their mother. Reports of daily involvement in household work were obtained from wives and husbands during four telephone interviews. Discriminant function analyses indicated that aspects of women's psychological well-being and marital and parent-child relationships and of the division of labor discriminated women in four different provider groups: maidsecondary providers, ambivalent coproviders, coproviders, and homemakers. Wives who were ambivalent about their provider responsibilities tended to report higher levels of depression and overload and significantly lower marital satisfaction. Wives who saw their employment as secondary to that of their husbands reported relatively higher levels of depression and overload but also the highest levels of marital satisfaction.     

Race effects on students' track mobility in high school

Race effects on track mobility are hypothesized on the basis of racial differences in initial track placement, learning opportunities, course preferences, and academic guidance. Race differences in patterns of track mobility are observed in a large, longitudinal survey that follows students from ninth through twelfth grade. Initial track placements and changes in track over the school year and between school years are described. Multivariate analyses associate race with the likelihood of changing track and the direction of the track change. Black students are less likely than white students to move to Honors and advanced tracks in Mathematics but more likely than whites to move from the Basic to the Regular track in English. Black students are considerably more likely than whites to drop out of the tracking system in English and Mathematics, except for black students in Advanced English and in Honors and Advanced Mathematics. The results of this study point to tracking as an organizational characteristic of schools that can provide students with unequal access to the curriculum and, therefore, to learning opportunities by race. Close monitoring of track changes is recommended to insure that tracking promotes the academic achievement of all students. This research was funded by Grant #R117E10139-01 from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement and by National Science Foundation Grant No. RED-9311800. The author is grateful to these agencies for their support as well as to Warren Kubitschek for his contribution to the data analysis and to Ann Power for research assistance.     

Inconsistency of mothers' feedback and toddlers' misbehavior and negative affect

The general hypothesis that mothers' inconsistent discipline can cause children to misbehave was examined. Mothers, who were otherwise engaged in a telephone conversation, were instructed to respond to toddlers' inappropriate demands for attention with either consistent reprimands or with one of a variety of inconsistent strategies. Reprimanding half of the child's demands and providing positive attention to the rest of the demands resulted in high rates of both demands for mothers' attention and children's negative affect. Reprimanding half the children's demands and ignoring the other demands did not have deleterious effects nor did reprimanding and attending to the same demand half of the time and ignoring the other demands. Thus, clear, positive feedback for inappropriate demands is a type of inconsistent discipline that can cause normal toddlers to become terrible twos.This paper was based on the doctoral dissertation of the first author. We thank Zvi Strassberg for his constructive editorial feedback.     

Curriculum bias in standardized tests of reading decoding

This study examined overlap between four basal reading programs and the phonetic analysis subtest of three standardized achievement measures. Raw scores, percentages of items correct, grade equivalents, and percentile scores were computed for a hypothetical student who had mastered all grapheme-phoneme correspondences taught at each grade level. The results indicated that (a) programs differed in the number and sequence of phonics skills taught; (b) percentile and grade-equivalent scores differed across programs at each grade level for a given test; and (c) the proportion of grade-equivalent scores falling at or above expected grade levels differed across tests for a given program (range of 29%–71%). The implications for selecting and interpreting standardized measures of reading decoding are discussed.     

Adherence to the Super Woman ideal and eating disorder symptoms among college women

The degree to which three components of the Super Woman construct of femininity [C. Steiner-Adair (1986) “The Body Politic: Normal Female Adolescent Development and the Development of Eating Disorders” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 14, pp. 95–114], valuing physical appearance, striving for success in multiple roles, and insecure parental attachment, are related to eating disorder symptoms was examined for a sample of 156 college women (84% white, 6% African American, 6% Asian, 3% Latina, 1% another race). Canonical analysis yielded three significant roots, suggesting a complex relationship between components of the Super Woman model and eating disorder symptoms. The first root supports the hypothesized relationship between the three components of the Super Woman model and eating disorder symptoms. The second root suggests that striving for success, when accompanied by a context of secure parental attachment, is positively associated with measures of social competence. The third root highlights the contribution of an emphasis on physical appearance to weight concern, dieting, and bulimic behavior.     

A developmental perspective on reading dysfunction: Accuracy and rate criteria in the subtyping of dyslexic children

Children referred with specific reading dysfunction were subtyped as accuracy disabled or rate disabled according to criteria developed from an information processing model of reading skill. Multiple measures of oral and written language development were compared for two subtyped samples matched on age, sex, and IQ. The two samples were comparable in reading fluency, reading comprehension, word knowledge, and word retrieval functions. Accuracy disabled readers demonstrated inferior decoding and spelling skills. The accuracy disabled sample proved deficient in their understanding of oral language structure and in their ability to associate unfamiliar pseudowords and novel symbols in a task designed to simulate some of the learning involved in initial reading acquisition. It was suggested that these two samples of disabled readers may be best described with respect to their relative standing along a theoretical continuum of normal reading development.     

Soft tissue anatomy of the tongue and floor of the mouth: An ultrasound demonstration

Ultrasound technology has not been used extensively in the study of normal and abnormal oral physiology and speech. Features such as soft tissue detail, real-time motion display, and subject safety make ultrasound ideal for imaging the tongue and the floor of the mouth. This study demonstrates visualization of the muscles of the tongue and floor of the mouth for a normal subject using ultrasound imaging. By employing submandibular transducer placement of real-time sector scanners, tongue anatomy and motion were continuously visualized in sagittal or coronal planes. In addition to the entire tongue surface, much of the intrinsic anatomy was identified including: the genioglossus, geniohyoid, mylohyoid, and digastric muscles; fascial boundaries such as the median fibrous septum, floor intermuscular septum, and paramedian septums; and the hyoid bone. A tongue excised from a human cadaver was scanned using ultrasound and dissected to confirm the anatomy seen in the live tongue. Tongue surface shape and configuration of the intrinsic tissue structures were observed and compared for the phonemes /k/, /u/, and /i/. Anatomical landmarks in the resting and speaking tongue are discussed as well as applications in the fields of speech science and speech pathology.     

Children's perceptions of major positive and negative events and factors in single-parent families

A study was designed to tap children's perceptions of the divorce situation as opposed to adults' perceptions of the child's response to the parental divorce. Subjects were 75 boys and 75 girls from mother- and father-headed families. Using an individual structured interview procedure children were encouraged to reconstruct both positive and negative dimensions of their interactions with the custodial parent. Through factor analyses of the contents of interviews four negative and two positive factors involving 20 specific items were identified in the children's perceptual data. Subsequently, chi-square analyses were done to compare differences in girls' and boys' perceptions between and across father- and mother-headed families. Results are discussed in terms of their relationship with the existing literature and their clinical and educational relevance to children, single parents and professionals.     

Converting an electronic calculator into a combination stopwatch-calculator

A method for adding electronic stopwatch capabilities to a calculator is described. An integrated circuit (NE555) is used for a time base. The circuit drives an opto-isolator or light-emitting diode that operates a photocell. The opto-isolator or photocell substitutes for a switch closure to increment the calculator in .10-sec intervals.