Distinguishing between conduct problem and emotionally disturbed students in secondary school: a five-instrument discriminant analysis

Five instruments, the Differential Test of Conduct and Emotional Problems, Louisville Behavior Checklist, Personality Inventory for Children, 16 PF Test, and Tennessee Self-concept Scale, were given to differentiate between 50 conduct problem and 48 emotionally disturbed students assigned in public school to secondary level classes for the severely emotionally handicapped. Discriminant analysis of each test's rate of classification germane to both a pre-assessment categorization as conduct problem vs emotionally disturbed and a post-assessment classification as no problem vs conduct problem vs emotionally disturbed vs combined problem is presented. The analysis indicated that the Differential Test of Conduct and Emotional Problems, Louisville Behavior Checklist, and Personality Inventory for Children can, with variable effectiveness, significantly classify adolescents into groups using such pre- and post-assessment information.     

Differential effects of priming at the encoding and judgment stage

Two experiments investigated whether the direction of priming effects depends on the processing stage at which the individual links the prime to a trait that is applicable to the evaluation of an ambiguously described target person. In line with previous research, it is hypothesized that assimilation effects will emerge when primes are processed in terms of a trait concept that is applicable to the encoding task. However, when the primes are not processed in applicable trait terms, they may still affect subsequent Judgments if the individual recalls the prime when judging the target along a trait dimension. In this case, the primes may serve as an anchor, resulting in contrast effects. Two experiments, in which subjects were primed with names of prototypically nice or hostile famous individuals under instructions that did or did not prompt subjects to process the prime in applicable trait terms, supported these hypotheses. Implications for the emergence of priming effects in everyday social interaction are discussed.     

Influences of semantic and syntactic context on open- and closed-class words

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded as subjects read semantically meaningful, syntactically legal but nonsensical and random word strings. The constraints imposed by formal sentence structure alone did not reduce the amplitude of the N400 component elicited by open-class words, whereas semantic constraints did. Semantic constraints also eliminated the word-frequency effect of a larger N400 for low-frequency words. Responses to closed-class words exhibited reduced N400 amplitudes in syntactic and congruent sentences, indicating that formal sentence structure placed greater restrictions on closed-class words than it did on open-class words. However, unlike the open-class results, the impact of sentence context on closed-class words was stable across word positions, suggesting that these syntactic constraints were applied only locally. A second ERP component, distinct from the N400, was elicited primarily by congruent closed-class words.     

Effects of an intervention program for pregnant adolescents: Educational outcomes at two years postpartum

Examined postpartum effects of a school-based intervention program for pregnant adolescents. Interviews were conducted with 102 innercity black, low-income, school-aged mothers who had attended the program, and their academic and medical records were reviewed. For teenagers who had been poor students prior to becoming pregnant, a strong linear effect was found for duration of program attendance: with sufficient time in the program, poorer students became indistinguishable from better students in educational success. Most of the better students were educationally successful at 2 years postpartum, independent of their length of time in the program. For all students, longer durations of postnatal intervention were predictive of lower likelihood of subsequent childbearing. Numerous academic, medical, social, and demographic variables were ruled out as possible confounding factors that might have produced the positive educational outcomes for poorer students. The results suggest that adolescents who appear to have minimal academic promise prior to their pregnancy are nevertheless very responsive to school-based intervention.     

“Double Trouble”: An Introduction

This piece sets the scene for the inaugural addresses by Rosi Braidotti and Selma Sevenhuijsen which follow and provides background information on the history of women's studies in the Netherlands.     

Within-compound associations between the context and the conditioned stimulus

Three experiments were conducted to test for the presence of associations between contextual cues and the nominal conditioned stimulus (CS) in fear conditioning. Rats were given tone-footshock pairings and were tested for their fear of the nominal CS, the tone, in a different context. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that rats given nonreinforced exposure to the training context following conditioning were less fearful of the CS. Experiment 3 indicated that additional footshock presentations in the training context following conditioning produced greater fear of the CS. In both procedures postconditioning treatments designed to directly alter only the associative strength of the training context yielded parallel changes in the conditioned response to the CS. These data suggest that within-compound associations are formed between the context and the CS during classical conditioning.     

Mentally retarded individuals outperform college graduates in judging the nonconservation of space and perimeter

Most adults of average and superior intelligence incorrectly assume that in a two dimensional figure two attributes, area, and perimeter, are locked in a fixed relationship such that if one remains unchanged so does the other. Consequently, when they correctly conserve one attribute during shape transformation, they incorrectly conserve the other. Mentally retarded individuals assume no such fixed relationship but depend exclusively on perceptual information. Although this dependence adversely effects their judgment of conservation, it allows them to correctly judge the changed state of the nonconserved attribute.     

Letter naming time,digit span,and precocious reading achievement

In two 6-month longitudinal studies of intellectually advanced preschool children, letter naming time and backward digit span were moderately good predictors of concurrent reading achievement (PIAT Reading Recognition Score). None of the remaining measures in a battery of standard cognitive indices, including Stanford-Binet MA, was associated with reading achievement. The results of cross-lagged correlation analysis of data from one of the two samples suggested that individual differences in time to access name codes for visual stimuli predict, but are not a consequence of, individual differences in reading achievement. The results of the cross-lagged analysis for the second sample were inconclusive. As a whole, the results are consistent with findings from other populations indicating that both short term memory span and efficiency of retrieval from long term memory are related to reading ability. The results also indicate, however, that the relationship between retrieval efficiency and reading achievement in precocious readers cannot be described by extrapolation of threshold estimates from the performance of older, unselected groups of readers.     

Remembering plurals: Unit of coding and form of coding during serial recall

Subjects were required to recall lists of six words which had been presented visually in sequence. One or two of the words might be plural nouns. A substantial number of errors occurred in which the plural form became detached from its original root. This is taken as evidence for a morpheme-based code as opposed to a unitary word code. A significantly high proportion of these errors maintained the form of the plural ( /S/, /Z/ or (ЪZ/) which is considered evidence for a primarily phonological coding of the plural morpheme. There is however a suggestion that on some occasions the plural is coded morphemically—i.e., in a way which does not distinguish between the various plural endings.     

Belief and Values in the Nuclear Debate1

A questionnaire was administered to 47 participants attending a workshop on nuclear energy shortly after publication of a report on a proposed nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Supporters and opponents of the proposed development differed markedly in their estimates of its possible consequences, and of the relative importance of these consequences. They also differed in their endorsement of pro- and anti-nuclear lobbies, and the factors which they felt contributed most to the “quality of life”. Overall, pro-nuclear subjects appear to place emphasis on the economic benefits of nuclear energy, while anti-nuclear subjects appearad more concerned with social and political risks, and regraded alternative energy sources as more viable. It is concluded that an analysis of such attitudinal differences requires a consideration not only of differences in beliefs, but also of differences in belief salience.