Frequency of measurement and data utilization as factors in standardized behavioral assessment of academic skill

A study was conducted to investigate the effects on students' spelling achievement of variations in teacher assessment procedures. Teachers measured student spelling performance at a constant level of task difficulty using different measurement frequencies and different rules to interpret the data. Each teacher wrote two consecutive 3-week goals for improved spelling performance for two sets of 100 spelling words and then measured student performance either daily or weekly by dictating randomly selected words from each 100-word list. Teachers were trained to apply either a predetermined set of decision rules or their own judgment to the data to decide if the spelling program they had implemented for the student was effective. Ineffective programs were changed or modified. Results indicated that daily measurement was significantly more effective than weekly measurement in increasing spelling achievement and that, under certain conditions, decision rules were more effective than teacher judgment in determining when to make program changes or modifications.This research was conducted pursuant to Contract 300-77-0491 between the Bureau of Education for the Handicapped (now called Special Education Programs) and the University of Minnesota Institute for Research on Learning Disabilities.     

Life and job satisfaction: Is the job central?

The nature of the causal relationship between life and job satisfaction in a sample of males and females working in a variety of jobs was investigated. Results suggest that the life satisfaction causes job satisfaction hypothesis is more tenable than the reverse.     

Clinical psychologists' attitudes to lesbians

This study begins the process of examining clinical psychologists' competence in dealing with lesbian clients by assessing their attitudes to lesbians and lesbianism. Attitudinal questionnaires were sent to 200 chartered clinical psychologists and 69 (34.5%) were returned. Respondents displayed generally positive attitudes, with only two out of 12 attitudinal items failing to attract attitudinally positive responses from more than three-quarters of the sample. Yet, because of the possible unrepresentativeness of the sample and the potentially tenuous attitude–behaviour link, it is recommended that consideration of lesbian issues should be explicitly addressed in clinical psychology training.     

Smile when you call me that!: The problems with punishing hate motivated behavior

During the last several years, many jurisdictions have enacted laws meant to punish behavior motivated by racial hatred or other forms of bigotry. The actual impact of these laws is probably largely symbolic. These laws, which are often called “hate crime” laws, have a number of problems. Hate crime laws may violate the constitution, but this problem can usually be avoided through careful drafting. More importantly, there are a number of practical and policy problems with hate crime laws; not only are these crimes difficult to identify, but they involve the problematical consideration of the offender's motive. In addition, social scientific theories suggest that the laws may actually increase bigotry and disempower minorities. For these reasons, it is recommended that policy-makers explore other means of reducing bigotry.     

Gendered Reason: Sex Metaphor and Conceptions of Reason

Reason has regularly been portrayed and understood in terms of images and metaphors that involve the exclusion or denigration of some element—body, passion, nature, instinct—that is cast as “feminine.” Drawing upon philosophical insight into metaphor, I examine the impact of this gendering of reason. I argue that our conceptions of mind, reason, unreason, female, and male have been distorted. The politics of “rational” discourse has been set up in ways that still subtly but powerfully inhibit the voice and agency of women.     

The overjustification effect

After reviewing the literature on overjustification (defined as any situation in which an external reinforcer is tied to an activity that would have been performed without that reinforcer), it was concluded that reattribution cannot adequately account for response decrements following the removal of reinforcers. An alternative explanation was proposed involving the concept of “reward contrast,” in which it is argued that individuals compare their actual or expected outcomes following a response with previous outcomes. When this comparison is favorable, the response is strengthened; when unfavorable, the response is weakened. Based upon the notion of reward contrast, an experiment was performed in which 16 albino rats were permitted to wheel-run for 33 days. After 11 acquisition and 5 baseline days, rats in the experimental group were reinforced for running at their baseline rate, while control rats continued to run for no reinforcement. Following 5 days of reinforcement, experimental animals were put into extinction. As hypothesized, albino rats displayed typical over-justification effects during extinction. As also hypothesized, these effects were temporary, with a gradual return to baseline over repeated extinction trials.     

Midlife Educational,Career, and Family Outcomes of Women Educated at Two Single-Sex Colleges

We examined midlife educational, career, and family outcomes of women who attended prestigious women's colleges in the 1960s. One college had a coeducational learning environment (CLE), the other was a single-sex environment (SLE). We hypothesized that in CLEs, exposure to men's standards of achievement might have resulted in greater educational and career status outcomes but more discrimination; in SLEs, there might have been fewer opportunities to engage with men intellectually, which could lead to lesser educational and career status outcomes, but the environment might have felt more supportive. Graduates of both colleges were very accomplished 30 years after graduation; however, those who had experienced a CLE reported more sexism and more active involvement in the women's movement than SLE graduates.