Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Attitudes Toward Sexist/Nonsexist Language

Despite documented, negative effects of sexist language, some people still strongly oppose inclusive language. Their attitudes need study, but existing measures of attitude lack comprehensiveness or validity. This paper reports construction and validation of the 42-item Inventory of Attitudes Toward Sexist/Nonsexist Language (IASNL), which is based on a conceptual framework related to beliefs about language, recognition of sexist language, and willingness to use inclusive language. Four studies tested the IASNL's content validity (9 content experts, 329 other participants), construct validity, and reliability (31 advocates of inclusive language, 298 additional respondents). Cronbach alphas were high and validity measures were strong. Two short forms of the IASNL were also created—the IASNL-General and the IASNL-Sport. The IASNL-General is in the Appendix.     

Ethical androcentrism and maternal substance addiction

In this paper, I argue that bioethics suffers from a masculinist approach--what I call "ethical androcentrism." Despite the genesis of other legitimate approaches to ethics (such as feminist, narrative, and communicative ethics), this masculinist tradition persists. The first part of my paper concerns the problem of ethical androcentrism, and how it is manifest in our typical ways of "doing" bioethics (as teachers, ethicists, policymakers, and medical practitioners). After arguing that bioethics suffers from a masculinist ethic, I consider the case of maternal substance addiction to show how this ethic negatively affects the treatment of pregnant addicts. I argue that by treatment maternal substance addiction from an androcentric approach, we fail to serve both pregnant addicts and their fetuses; furthermore, we misrepresent the intentional state of pregnant substance addicts and label them "prenatal abusers." If maternal substance addiction is to be ethically addressed--and if pregnant substance addicts are to be effectively treated--we cannot tacitly accept an androcentric ethic.     

Group Discussion as Affected by Number of Alternatives and by a Time Limit

This study examines whether the task-related discussion in problem-solving groups is affected by the number of decision alternatives being considered and/or by the imposition of a decision deadline. Drawing from research on individual decision makers, it was first predicted that the number of alternatives would have an inverse effect on the quantity and quality of group discussion: as the number of alternatives increases, the proportion of information mentioned and the repetition of that information should decrease. Second, it was predicted that a deadline would have a direct effect on quantity: as the deadline gets shorter, a smaller proportion of facts will be mentioned, and mentioned facts will be repeated less often. Results supported the first hypothesis; however, deadlines were found to have a more complex relationship with discussion than was hypothesized. Evidence was also obtained for a "surface evaluation" explanation of how groups narrow the choice set, as was support for the notion that severe deadlines increase the rate of work-related activity within the group. The results are interpreted within an attentional focus framework.     

The interaction of home environment features and their relation to infant competence

This investigation examined the relation between features of the home environment (HOME Scale) and domains of development (Griffiths Scales) in 6-month-olds. The sample consisted of 155 families with diverse demographic characteristics who were part of a larger study. Data were analyzed using hierarchical multiple regression. More favorable eye-hand development was associated with more availability of appropriate play materials. The interaction of appropriate play materials and maternal involvement was related to both social and hearing-speech development. For the infants who had high exposure to appropriate play materials, social and hearing-speech development was more optimal if their mothers were highly involved with them. The analyses were conducted separately for low (n = 87) and middlelhigh (n = 55) socioeconomic status groups from the sample. Partial replication of the interaction effect was present for the middle/high group, but not for the low group. Findings support the importance of examining interaction as well as additive effects of the impact of early environment for relatively large samples in which there is a diversity of experiences.     

A Contextualized Approach to Patient Autonomy Within the Therapeutic Relationship

Some authors have advanced a contractual model to protect patient autonomy within the therapeutic relationship. Such a conception of the physician–patient relationship is intended to serve both parties by respecting patients' choices and preserving physician integrity. I critique this contractual view and offer an alternative, feminist contextualized approach to autonomy within the therapeutic relationship. This approach places the physician-patient relationship within a larger social context, and indicates the many social inequalities that render insupportable the notion of physicians and patients as contracting equals.     

Listen First: Dialogic Research Ethics With Caribbean Signing Communities

Successful research of Caribbean signed languages and deaf communities involves negotiating complex communication ethics toward both people and languages. In this article, I ground a call for ethical listening to Caribbean deaf and signing communities in sociolinguistic research that investigated deaf community and sign language boundaries in the Caribbean. I argue that a dialogic ethic that privileges listening is foundational for ethical research with Caribbean deaf and signing communities by discussing two ethical challenges that were central to understanding their narrative ground: the communicative construction of categories of linguistic membership and advocacy of social justice and human rights.     

Hemi-retinal attention under conditions of color rivalry

Human Ss viewed stimulus arrays of color patches such that two instances of color rivalry were simultaneously present. That is, two patches of different color were present, one each in each of the left halves of the two ocular fields, and at the same time, rival patches were also present in the two right halves. As would be expected, binocular percepts often corresponded to predominance of one or the other of the two eyes. On other occasions, however, Ss reported percepts which indicated simultaneous predominance of the nasal halves or, more often, of the temporal halves of the two retinas.     

Further comments on the evidence for post-retinal storage

A critical re-examination of the perceptual reports given in the experiments described by Haber and Nathanson reveals confirma-tion of the essential elements of the phenomena previously reported by Parks. Specifically, it is argued that a moving stimulus viewed through a narrow stationary opening gives rise to percepts containing more stimulus information than is, in fact, available to the eye at any instant.     

Rehearsal of visual and auditory stimuli while shadowing.

Memory trigrams were presented by one of three methods: visual-concurrent (all three letters appeared simultaneously), visual-successive, and auditory-successive. During the 12-sec retention interval, subjects shadowed and reported their rehearsals and mnemonic associations via switches. On trials without associations, recall performance was interpreted as support for the hypothesis that the form of rehearsal is related to presentation modality. However, the frequency and temporal patterning of the rehearsals over the retention interval were virtually identical for all three presentation conditions, suggesting that the "control processes" were relatively independent of both method of presentation and modality of rehearsal. Most importantly, these data in combination with earlier data suggest that the efficiency of each rehearsal was also independent of those same factors, in each case quite comparable to that of a concurrent visual stimulus.