A developmental study of destereotyping and androgynous activity preferences of tomboys,nontomboys, and males

A study of 210 fourth, sixth, eighth, and tenth graders and adults was conducted to determine developmental trends in both destereotyping of traditionally gender-typed activities and preferences for those activities, and to compare activity preferences of tomboys with other females and with males at different ages. Tenth graders destereotyped less than the other age levels. Additionally, female subjects destereotyped traditionally boys' activities more than girls' activities and more than male subjects. Although nontomboys and boys showed a preference for gender-traditional activities, tomboys preferred traditional girls' and boys' activities equally. Self-defined tomboys do not reject traditionally female activities; instead, they expand their repertoire of activities to include both gender-traditional and nontraditional activities. It is suggested that girls who are able to transcend gender-role behavior in childhood may be the ones who will grow into androgynous adult women.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Social psychology, ‘marital rape exemptions’, and privacy

A 50-state statutory search revealed that variations exist in marital rape exemptions throughout the United States. States handle the question of marital rape in one of three ways: (1) by abolishing the exemption for husbands; (2) by qualifying the exemption; or (3) by allowing the exemption. Although marital rape is a topic that has been largely ignored by social psychology, it is an area ripe for psycho-legal analysis. Possible relationships between social psychology, marital rape exemptions, and privacy are discussed against a background of a psychological jurisprudence.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

Group aggregates and individual reliability: The case of verbal short-term memory

Two experiments examined the generalizability of the effects of word length and phonological similarity with visual and auditory presentation in immediate verbal serial ordered recall. In Experiment 1, data were collected from 251 adult volunteers drawn from a broad cross-section of the normal population. Word length and phonological similarity in both presentation modes significantly influenced the group means. However, 43% of the subjects failed to show at least one of the effects, and the likelihood that effects appeared was highly correlated with verbal memory span. In Experiment 2, 40 subjects of the original sample were retested, 20 of whom had failed to show one or more effects in Experiment 1. Whether or not an effect had appeared for individual subjects on the first test session was a poor predictor of whether the effect would appear on retest. Finally, an analysis of subject reports demonstrated that the patterns of experimental data could be accounted for in part by the strategies that subjects reported using, and the effect of strategy was independent of the effect of span. The implications of these findings for theories of verbal short-term memory are discussed.     

Interactive presentation in multitrial free recall

This paper explores whether free recall performance and organization can be facilitated using computer-controlled interactive presentation, where stimulus presentation on Trial N+1 depends on the individual subject’s prior recall history. A series of experiments investigated the effects of two types of response-contingent presentation order manipulations and of selective tagging manipulation designed to highlight the presentation of previously nonrecalled items. An initial experiment using 20-word lists showed no differences among groups, due to a ceiling effect. Two subsequent experiments, using longer lists (30 and 40 words), found that recall and subjective organization were increased by selective tagging and by presentation orders that preserved the subject’s prior order of recall. The results demonstrate that subjects’ previous recall histories contain information that can be used to facilitate recall. The potential of other interactive manipulations is discussed.