MORE ON THE STRUCTURE OF MALE ROLE NORMS

This study assessed the structure of a widely used measure of masculinity ideology, the Male Role Norms Scale (Thompson & Pleck, 1986), using data from four samples of male college students (total N= 656) at two large, public universities (one Midwestern, one Eastern-Central). Exploratory factor analysis suggested a four-factor model best fit the data in the exploratory sample (sample 1; N = 210). The four factors were Status/ Rationality, Antifemininity, Tough Image, and Violent Toughness. A series of confirmatory factor analyses on a validation sample (samples 2, 3, and 4; N = 446), tested four models based on theory (i.e., Brannon, 1976) and previous research (i.e., Thompson & Pleck, 1986). Results from Study 1, our exploratory analysis, indicated that the four-factor model derived from the exploratory sample in Study 1 provided the best fit for the validation sample data of all models tested and also provided a good fit in absolute terms, according to several model-data fit indices. Implications for the assessment of masculinity ideology and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Role of Secondary Stressors in the Parental Death–Child Distress Relation

This study examined the psychological consequences and secondary stressors associated with death of a parent. The sample (N = 116) consisted of 26 youths who had lost a parent to homicide, 45 youths who had lost a parent to natural death, and 45 nonbereaved youths. Youngsters completed face-to-face interviews, while their guardians completed measures assessing the children's functioning. Results based on both child and guardian reports indicated that parental death was associated with an increase in secondary stressors, regardless of the mode of death. Findings based on guardian reports also revealed that parental death was related to increased internalizing distress, and that parental death due to homicide was related to increased externalizing distress. Furthermore, secondary stressors mediated the parental death–child distress relation such that parental death led to an increase in stressors, which in turn led to increased child distress. Implications for secondary and tertiary preventive interventions are discussed.     

Situational and Dispositional Determinants of Managers' Satisfaction

This study examined the main and interactive effects on satisfaction of managers' functional position and disposition, measured by two inversely related indices of work orientation—instrumental, or desiring job security and financial rewards from work, and expressive, or desiring self-actualization and achievement from work (O'Reilly, 1977). Results indicated that both situational and dispositional factors affect satisfaction. Managers in process-oriented functions (e.g., Personnel, Sales) were significantly more satisfied than those in outcome-oriented functions (e.g., Production, Operations). Managers with strong and unambiguous orientations (high expressive/low instrumental or high instrumental/low expressive) were more satisfied than managers with strong, but potentially conflicting orientations (high instrumental/high expressive) or weak orientations (low instrumental/low expressive). There was also a personality-situation interaction, suggesting the feasibility of a congruency model in explaining managers' satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications for career choices and managerial development are discussed.     

Levels of causal understanding in chimpanzees and children

We compare three levels of causal understanding in chimpanzees and children: (1) causal reasoning, (2) labelling the components (actor, object, and instrument) of a causal sequence, and (3) choosing the correct alternative for an incomplete representation of a causal sequence. We present two tests of causal reasoning, the first requiring chimpanzees to read and use as evidence the emotional state of a conspecific. Despite registering the emotion, they failed to use it as evidence. The second test, comparing children and chimpanzees, required them to infer the location of food eaten by a trainer. Children and, to a lesser extent, chimpanzees succeeded. When given information showing the inference to be unsound - physically impossible - 4-year-old children abandoned the inference but younger children and chimpanzees did not. Children and chimpanzees are both capable of labelling causal sequences and completing incomplete representations of them. The chimpanzee Sarah labelled the components of a causal sequence, and completed incomplete representations of actions involving multiple transformations. We conclude the article with a general discussion of the concept of cause, suggesting that the concept evolved far earlier in the psychological domain than in the physical.     

Participative work as an influence on human development

A number of business and industries in the United States and Europe have been experimenting with ways to involve more employees in organizational decision-making and problem-solving activities. Although the goal of such experiments in participative work is usually to improve productivity and enhance morale, there is evidence that working in such firms enhances adult development. This article reviews this evidence, focusing on how the experience of working in a participative milieu affects the individual in ways that are manifested off the job—in the family and community. Suggestions are made for future research that would involve developmental psychologists in helping work organizations experiment with planned social change.     

TIME DELAY: A TECHNIQUE TO INCREASE LANGUAGE USE AND FACILITATE GENERALIZATION IN RETARDED CHILDREN

Institutional breakfast-serving procedures were manipulated to assess what effect changes in that aspect of the environment would have on requests for food. During baseline, six severely retarded children were required to pick up their food trays and return to their seats. The first manipulation, delaying the giving of the food tray for 15 seconds, served as a cue to evoke meal requests by three of the six children. Two of the remaining three required a model of an appropriate meal request (i.e., “Tray, please.”) at the end of the 15-second delay before they began requesting their meals. To evoke meal requests from the sixth child, an intensive training procedure, consisting of massed trials of delay and modeling, was required. Three different probes were administered to assess generalization across the people serving the meals, across mealtimes, and across both people and mealtimes. Typically, generalized responding in these new situations could be prompted by use of the 15-second delay procedure. Functional aspects of the delay procedure and its potential usefulness for evoking speech and facilitating generalization are discussed.     

The genesis and use of exemplar vs. prototype knowledge in abstract category learning

Accurate classification of new exemplars in an abstraction paradigm may be due to their similarity to old exemplars rather than to abstract category (or prototype) knowledge. In the present study, subjects received initial training on a two-category problem before being transferred to a task in which half of the exemplar-response pairs had their responses reversed while the remaining half of the pairs were unchanged. When transfer occurred with no delay and involved old exemplars, more errors occurred for changed than for unchanged pairs. This result implies the use of exemplar-specific rather than abstract category knowledge. However, when transfer was delayed by 24 or 72 h, errors occurred equally often for changed and unchanged pairs. This result suggests that exemplar-specific knowledge is no longer used. Since subjects were still able to accurately classify exemplars prior to the transfer task at these delays, some form of abstract category knowledge is implicated.     

Category-structure effects in picture comparisons

Subjects indicated for a series of trials whether or not two pictures of common objects were from the same category. Reaction time (RT) was recorded. The pool of stimuli used in the series of trials consisted of two pictures representing each of several categories. Half were S categories, members of which were similar; the other half were D categories, which had dissimilar members (this variable is termed category structure). In Experiments 1 and 3, the similarity manipulation defining category structure was based on the concept of basic level categories (Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, & Boyes-Braem, 1976). In Experiment 2, category labels were homonyms, and the two members of S or D categories represented one or two senses of the labels, respectively. The principal finding was an effect of category structure (faster RT on trials using stimuli from S categories rather than D categories). These results are interpreted in terms of a model that postulates the use of semantic codes in the task, even on trials where the two stimuli are physically identical.     

The possible causes of the sex ratio in stuttering and its implications

The incidence of stuttering has always been reported to be higher in males than in females. Possible causes of the unequal sex ratio include various ascertainment biases, incomplete reporting, social role differences, X-linked inheritance, or a combination of environmental and genetic elements. Each of these factors has been examined against data collected in the large family study of stuttering, and all but one have been eliminated. Only the gene-environment interaction hypothesis can be supported by the data. Statistical analysis confirms that the sex effect in stuttering is real and supports a threshold model for the sex difference. We conclude that the possibility of differences between males and females must be considered in any etiological research in stuttering.