Salient Consequences,Cultural Values,and Childbearing Intentions1

In this study of childbearing intentions, 163 young married women were interviewed using measures derived from Fishbein's behavioral intentions model. Unlike most research testing Fishbein's theory, in which fixed alternative modal belief measures have been employed, in the present study open-ended measures of consequence salience were used. The finding that different consequences of childbearing are salient for those who intend versus those who do not intcnd to have a child raises questions about earlier research using fixed alternative methods. In contrast with the results of earlier studies, intender/non-intender differences in the evaluation of childbearing outcomes were also found. Statistically significant correlations between childbearing intention and religiosity, sex-role traditionalism, and affluence values were reduced to a statistically non-significant level when the model's attitudinal and normative predictors were controlled by partial correlation. Analyses of indirect effects indicate that religiosity and sex-role traditionalism were largely mediated through the motivation to comply with husband's childbearing preference.     

Women who do and women who don't,join the women's movement: Issues for conflict and collaboration

The women's movement as a social movement with intentions to create social change has had a cyclical history of appearance and disappearance. At its periods of reemergence, “backlash” reactions also occur. This paper deals with the women's movement in this context. Using a social movement analysis, it considers the possibility of success in creating social change, given that powerful groups of women oppose it. There is a renewed interest in antifeminism since the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment. Questions that arise: (1) Why do some women become feminists and others antifeminist? (2) What are the characteristics of social movements and the backlash that would explain these differences and lead to possible reconciliation? The material that forms the empirical basis of this paper is drawn from 24 feminists and antifeminists in five countries who wrote according to a structured outline about their relationship to the women's movement. Contributors differed in background, age, race, sexual preference, and life-style. Through their stories the issues that both separate and unite women emerge—issues such as abortion, men, motherhood, and the family. Surprising similarities emerge between those supposedly on different “sides” of the fence, and it becomes evident that no clear dividing line does exist, but rather a complex interweaving of the issues, experiences, and difficulties of being “woman.”     

Arranging a residential environment for the developmentally disabled to generate and maintain verbal behavior

A specialized residential unit was assembled at a state residential facility for mentally retarded residents in order to provide services for individuals who lacked functional speech but who were capable of learning manual signs. Program development focused on four areas. First, a routine was designed to engage residents in functional training activities throughout the day. Second, opportunities to teach signed verbal behavior within all components of the routine were identified. Third, structured training sessions were developed to augment training within normal daily living activities. Fourth, multiple staff training strategies were initiated. Initial outcome data indicate that signing skills of both staff and residents improved.     

Artifact and Barber's model of hypnosis: A logical-empirical analysis

Two studies examined the relevance of artifact to Barber's model of hypnosis. Study I analyzed subjects' perceptions of instructions employed by the paradigm and demonstrated strong social pressure in the model's task motivational set not present in its standard set of hypnotic induction instructions. Study II coped with the artifact by applying the standard methodology of the model but employing a set of modified hypnotic instructions equivalent in constraint to the task motivational set. Results for 88 subjects indicated a possible behavioral consequence of the artifact variable involving an interaction between type of instruction and ease of hypnotic test item; individual differences in suggestibility also appeared to discriminate conditions with respect to the artifact in question. Collectively, results indicate that the major inference drawn from the paradigm regarding the expendability of the concept of trance should be accepted with caution.     

Categorical and schematic organization and the development of retrieval strategies

This study investigated the effects of schematic and categorical organization on young children's recall. Preschool and kindergarten children recalled either a taxonomic list or a story in one of two presentation conditions: an alternate condition, in which the material was presented, children recalled it and the procedure was repeated, or a successive condition in which the material was presented twice and children recalled it twice. Although preschool children's story recall was well organized, their list recall was poorly organized, and organization did not increase over recall trials in either presentation condition. In contrast, kindergarten children's recall of both the story and the list was well organized, and their recall was better organized on the second recall trial than on the first in both presentation conditions. These results are discussed in terms of the development of retrieval strategies during the preschool years/     

Effects of training in rapid decoding on the reading comprehension of adult ESL learners

We report an experimental investigation of the effects on comprehension of increasing the decoding speed of three adult learners of English as a Second Language (ESL). Participants were taught to read lists of 25 difficult words in isolation until they could read the entire list at a mean rate of not more than 1.5 secs per word. They were then asked to read passages containing these words. Decoding speed and accuracy measures, for both the word lists and passages, and passage comprehension measures, were obtained. In a temporally contiguous within-subjects repeated trials reversal design, decoding training on isolated words was shown to be associated with significant increases in decoding speed and accuracy both in isolation and context, and improvements in the participants' comprehension. With all participants rate and accuracy gains in context were maintained in the final reversal phase, though the comprehension score gains did not. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for a decoding sufficiency hypothesis.     

Effects of Suntan on Judgements of Healthiness and Attractiveness by Adolescents1

The present study sought to explore the relationship between level of suntan and perceptions of healthiness and attractiveness. The sample consisted of 191 students with a mean age of 14 years from five Victorian secondary schools. Subjects were presented with a series of slide pairs of models and asked to indicate the healthier and more attractive stimulus model in each pair. Systematically varied independent variables were: tan level (4 levels: no tan, light, medium, and dark tan), attire (swimwear and casual), sex of model, and sex of subject. Judgements of healthiness and attractiveness were moderately related to each other, the same judgement being made two thirds of the time. Results indicate that a medium tan is perceived as healthiest and most attractive, and “no tan” is perceived as both least healthy and attractive. Generally, darker tans were judged relatively more healthy and more attractive for judgements of male models, judgements of models who wore swimwear, and overall by subjects who desired a dark tan. Sex of subject affected judgements of attractiveness but not healthiness, with male subjects seeing darker tans as more attractive than female subjects. These findings confirm that perception of both healthiness and attractiveness are affected by level of suntan. That suntans have these attributes is a barrier to skin cancer control campaigns designed to encourage reduced exposure to the sun, although the lower level of preferences for the darkest tan level is reassuring.     

Memories of Mickey Mouse: Young children recount their trip to disneyworld

What young children remember and how long they retain such information are crucial issues for the study of young children's memory. In this research, these issues were examined by asking children who visited Disneyworld at 37 or 49 months of age to recall their experience. Half of the children were interviewed 6 months after their trip, and the remaining children were interviewed after 18 months. Surprisingly, there were no effects for age or retention interval on the amount children recalled; all children recounted a great deal of accurate information about their Disneyworld experience. However, older children's reports were more detailed than younger children's, and older children tended to recall more information spontaneously than did younger children. Finally, there is some suggestion that children who talked about their Disneyworld experience more frequently with their families subsequently recounted more information during the memory interview. Implications for these findings are discussed.     

As time goes by: Sixth graders remember a kindergarten experience

In this research we compared kindergarten children's immediate recall of a class field trip to a museum of archaeology on the same day of the trip to their recall 6 weeks later, 1 year later and 6 years later. Not surprisingly, children remembered less about this event over time. However, what children did recall was recalled as accurately and in as much detail 6 years after the trip as immediately after the trip. Most striking were the effects of cueing on memory over time. Without specific cues the event was forgotten by almost all of the children after 1 year, but with cues, 87 per cent of the children could recall details of the event even after 6 years. The set of ‘core’ activities which all children tended to recall on all recall trials were those activities that made this particular event distinctive. However, with increasing time since experiencing the event, children's recall tended to become more reconstructive and inferential. Thus, forgetting in autobiographic memory seems to involve three processes: decreases in amount recalled, changes in accessibility, and changes in memory content.