Native American women and agriculture: A Seneca case study

This study examines the impact of European invasion on the mode of production, household lives, and ideology of one group of Native American women, the Seneca. Seneca women had high public status, a balanced division of labor, ownership of the land, and control over the means of agricultural production. The power derived from their role in production and the social institutions which had developed from this production were difficult to destroy, despite the efforts of missionaries, government, and reformers. The effects of disease, war, and the market economy on the Seneca women are specifically examined. Also described are attempts to impose the ideology of individualism and nuclear household patterns on the Seneca by withdrawing women from production outside the home and establishing male ownership of private property.Criticism by many women helped the development of this article at different stages. Anthropologists Bea Medicine and Peggy Sanday, women historians at Arizona State University, and community women in Phoenix all made valuable contributions to its evolution.     

ON THE EINSTELLUNG EFFECT IN PROBLEM SOLVING: Some critical remarks

Objections are raised to Luchins' interpretation of the Einstellung effect and his negative evaluation of this effect. It is proposed to shift the emphasis from behavior to perception. The subject does not develop a 'bad' habit, but acts according to the specific type of problem which the experienced situation seems to present. Two types of problems are distinguished: whole problems, in which the critical problems in the Einstellung experiments are perceived as application situations, and part problems, in which the critical problems are perceived as problems in their own right.     

Race, social class and ability patterns on the WISC-R

The national standardization sample of whites and blacks on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—Revised (WISC-R) was the basis for a detailed analysis of the psychometric nature of racial and social class differences on the original 13 subscales of the WISC-R. The profiles of subtest scores of whites and blacks were compared directly and also after the racial groups were statistically equated on Full Scale IQ (FSIQ). Under the latter condition, the races differ only very slightly, although significantly, on some of the subtests, in ways generally contrary to popular expectations. The profile of white-black differences on the WISC-R subtests is markedly different, and negatively correlated with, the profiles of social class differences within each racial group, indicating that the pattern of racial differences is not explainable in terms of the difference in the average socio-economic status (SES) of blacks and whites. A Schmid-Leiman orthogonalized hierarchical factor analysis yields virtually identical factor structures and highly congruent factor loadings on the subtests for whites and blacks. Analysis of factor scores shows that by far the largest proportion of the variance between races is attributable to the general factor (g) common to all the subtests, whereas the group factors (verbal, performance and memory) contribute only minutely to the interracial variance. Hence the white-black differences on the diverse subtests of the WISC-R, and in the Full Scale IQ, are interpreted primarily as a difference in Spearman's g, rather than as differences in the more specific factors peculiar to particular content, knowledge, acquired skills or type of test. However, some slight but significant differences in patterns of ability also occur that are independent of g.     

Reaction time,evoked brain potentials,and psychometric g in the severely retarded

Measurements derived from reaction time (RT), movement time (MT), and an index of neural adaptability (NA) derived from averaged evoked potentials are significantly related to each other as well as to g factor scores extracted from a battery of 15 psychometric tests in a sample of 54 severely retarded adults. The RT-MT and NA variables show a shrunken multiple R of .64 (p < .001) with psychometric g.     

Spatial learning in the rat: impairment induced by the thiol-proteinase inhibitor, leupeptin, and an analysis of [3H]glutamate receptor binding in relation to learning

Rats were given continuous intraventricular infusion of saline or the thiol-proteinase inhibitor leupeptin, via subcutaneously implanted osmotic minipumps, while being trained on a spatial learning water task using spaced trials. Leupeptin caused overnight forgetting during training, but performance eventually reached asymptote in both groups. A retention test conducted 48 h later to assess spatial memory revealed no significant group differences, but did cause, in saline-treated rats only, a disruption of subsequent retraining back to the correct spatial location. The groups showed no differences in Cl-dependent [3H]glutamate receptor binding to hippocampal or entorhinal cortex membranes subsequent to training. In a second experiment, normal rats trained on the same task also showed no differences in Cl-dependent [3H]glutamate binding relative to rats exposed to the water task but given random spatial position training and handled controls. The results are discussed in relation to the hypothesis of Lynch and Baudry (Science (1984) 224, 1057-1063) that a calcium-dependent thiol proteinase is involved in memory formation through its ability to modify glutamate receptor distribution and dendritic spine shape.     

The Structure of Affect in a Non-Western Culture: Evidence for Cross-Cultural Comparability

We investigated the structure of affect in the Filipino culture and compared our results to those in Western studies. Four samples of students (ns = 397 to 530) rated their mood for today, the past week, or in general, using near-comprehensive sets of Filipino mood adjectives. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a hierarchical model of affect and the cross-cultural comparability of self-report mood dimensions (i.e., higher-order Positive and Negative Affect, plus specific affects corresponding to hypothesized universal or basic emotions). The results were more consistent with biological theories of affect than a strong social constructivist perspective.     

Features of Interview Questions Associated with Attenuation of Symptom Reports

Previous studies have suggested that discrepant reporting in a test–retest reliability paradigm is not purely random measurement error, but partly a function of a systematic tendency to say no during retest to questions answered positively at initial testing (attenuation). To examine features of interview questions that may be associated with attenuation, three raters independently assessed the structural and content features of questions from the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (version 2.3) and linked these to data from a test–retest reliability study of 223 community respondents (parent and child reports). Results indicated that for both parent and youth reports, item features most strongly associated with attenuation were (a) being a stem question (asked of all respondents, regardless of any skip structure); (b) question placement in the first half of the interview; (c) question length; (d) question complexity; or (e) requiring assessment of the timing, duration, or frequency of a symptom. Findings may be explained by participants' conscious efforts to avoid further questions or by their learning more about the nature and purpose of the interview as they gain more experience; alternatively, findings may represent a methodological artifact of structured interview design.     

Developmental seizures induced by common early-life insults: short- and long-term effects on seizure susceptibility

The immature brain is highly susceptible to seizures induced by a variety of insults, including hypoxia, fever, and trauma. Unlike early life epilepsy associated with congenital dysplasias or genetic abnormalities, insults induce a hyperexcitable state in a previously normal brain. Here we evaluate the epileptogenic effects of seizure-inducing stimuli on the developing brain, and the age and regional specificity of these effects.     

Adaptive Dynamics of the Leg Movement Patterns of Human Infants: II. Treadmill stepping in Infants and Adults

Infant treadmill steps have many temporal and kinematic similarities to adult walking. Kinematic similarities can result from different patterns of underlying torque, however. In this study, we used inverse dynamics to compare the patterns and contributions of active (muscle) and passive (gravity and motion-dependent) torques in the swing phase of treadmill stepping in 7-month-old infants and adults. Results indicated that adults consistently used muscle torque to initiate and terminate swing, but that passive torques accounted for leg motion during most of the swing phase. Infants, in contrast, displayed multiple patterns of torque contributions during swing. In the most frequently occurring infant pattern, muscle torque remained flexor throughout swing and joint reversals were due to the dominant passive gravitational torque. The kinetic data suggest that the temporally and kinematically similar treadmill steps produced by adults and infants do not emanate from a unique set of neural commands to the muscles, but from a flexible interplay between multiple internal as well as external elements. These data suggest that the intrinsic dynamics of the human system provide a medium out of which, given a supportive context, stable patterns can emerge spontaneously. During development, voluntary controlled movement patterns must build on these intrinsic dynamics.