Modification of cooperation and aggression through teacher attention to children's speech

Two experiments were performed in the naturalistic setting of a preschool classroom in order to assess the effects on children's social behavior of nonevaluative teacher attention to children's cooperative or aggressive speech. In Experiment 1, teachers attended to the children's spontaneous cooperative speech for two weeks. Observation of the children's free-play behaviors revealed an increase over baseline levels in both verbal and physical cooperative behaviors as well as a decrease in both verbal and physical aggressive behaviors. In Experiment 2, teachers attended first to the children's spontaneous aggressive speech for one week and then switched their attention to the children's cooperative speech for a second week. Teacher attention to aggressive speech in the first week led to an increase over baseline levels in the children's verbal aggressive behavior as well as a decrease in both verbal and physical cooperative behaviors; however, physical aggression remained unchanged. Teacher attention to cooperative speech in the following week served to reverse the effects of the first week's treatment. The findings were discussed in terms of the sequential relationship between verbal and nonverbal components of cooperative and aggressive social behaviors and the teacher's role in modifying children's performance on these behaviors in the classroom.     

Parental Visitation of the Institutionalized Retarded

An inverse relationship was found between the number of parental visits an institutionalized retarded child received and the distance of the parental home from the institution. When the natural parents were living together, the retarded child was shown to receive more visits than when the child's parents were separated or one parent was deceased. Single mothers were found to be living significantly closer to the facility than single fathers. Single fathers appeared to put more effort into visiting, since they visited just as often as the mothers, but had to travel further distances than the mothers to do so. Visitation frequency followed a curvilinear pattern, decreasing uniformly from 20–60 miles (from 0–20 miles visitation frequency is uniform), and then leveling off.     

The “false consensus effect”: An egocentric bias in social perception and attribution processes

Evidence from four studies demonstrates that social observers tend to perceive a “false consensus” with respect to the relative commonness of their own responses. A related bias was shown to exist in the observers' social inferences. Thus, raters estimated particular responses to be relatively common and relatively unrevealing concerning the actors' distinguishing personal dispositions when the responses in question were similar to the raters' own responses; responses differing from those of the rater, by contrast, were perceived to be relatively uncommon and revealing of the actor. These results were obtained both in questionnaire studies presenting subjects with hypothetical situations and choices and in authentic conflict situations. The implications of these findings for our understanding of social perception phenomena and for our analysis of the divergent perceptions of actors and observers are discussed. Finally, cognitive and perceptual mechanisms are proposed which might account for distortions in perceived consensus and for corresponding biases in social inference and attributional processes.     

The relationship between the motive to avoid success and vocational choice

This study examined, for 221 black and white male and female college students, the relationship between the Motive to Avoid Success (M_−s) and: (a) sex and race; (b) congruency, consistency, and differentiation of occupational choice; and (c) occupational aspirations. M_−s was assessed by a recent scoring system for verbal TAT cues and occupational choice patterns were analyzed by the Self-Directed Search. The results showed a significant sex difference on M_−s. High M_−s, in white females predicted well defined, sex-role stereotyped, and low occupational aspirations, but for white males it predicted high aspirations. No significant results were found for black males, and M_−s in black females seemed to be related to economic well-being.     

Marital satisfaction,job satisfaction,and task distribution in the homemaker job

Several facets of the homemaker job were analyzed in terms of the dynamic relationship between husband and wife. Seventy-one husband and wife pairs completed a questionnaire which assessed satisfaction with the homemaker job, marital satisfaction, distribution of responsibility for homemaker tasks between husband and wife, and other variables. Wives' satisfaction with the homemaker job was found related to the degree to which husbands assumed responsibility for homemaker tasks and to the husbands' attitudes toward women in general. Wives' marital satisfaction was found related to the interaction of wives' employment status (job holder or full-time homemaker) and satisfaction with the homemaker job. Directions for future research in this area were suggested.     

Encoding specificity and unidirectional associates in cued recall

The first of two experiments confirmed the earlier findings of Humphreys and Galbraith (1975), that under silent-study encoding instructions, words assessed as strong elicitors of target words are effective extralist retrieval cues, whereas words assessed as weak elicitors are not. In the second experiment, predictions from the encoding specificity principle were confirmed with respect to the effectiveness of forward and backward retrieval cues in recall. Contrary to the conclusions of Humphreys and Galbraith, forward and backward unidirectional associates were equally effective as retrieval cues, provided subjects engaged in associative encoding (generated associations to the target words) at storage.     

Reflection-impulsivity in normal and behavior-disordered children

The primary index of reflection- impulsivity is Kagan's Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFF), which yields both a latency and an error score. To evaluate further the construct validity of these measures, both the latency and error scores of 9- and 15-year-old normal and acting-out behavior-disordered children were compared. Young behavior-disordered children were found to be more impulsive than the other groups on the MFF error measure. No differences occurred on the MFF latency measure. This result is consistent with previous findings with normal children in supporting the construct validity of the MFF error score and raising questions about the construct validity of the MFF latency score. Findings were inconsistent with Kagan's assertion that normal children become more reflective with age. The older behavior-disordered children were more reflective on the error measure than the younger behavior-disordered children and had equivalent error scores to both age groups of normals. This finding suggested a lag in the development of reflection in behavior-disordered children.The authors wish to thank Dr. Kenneth C. Molkner for his valuable assistance in obtaining subjects and for his kind support.     

Development of an on-line problem-oriented system for the evaluation of mental health treatment services

Current on-line assessment applications are limited to mimicking instruments designed for paper and pencil. The development of an instrument designed specifically for on-line technology is described. The instrument provides research data on treatment effectiveness, clinical information for treatment planning, and management information for resource allocation.     

A digital encoder for field recording of behavioral,temporal, and spatial information in directly computer-accessible form

Digitorg is an inexpensive, portable, field-operable event recorder for recording both behavioral and spatial information in real-time on audiotape. Its capacity is 256 codes. Behavioral information is recorded by pressing buttons on a keyboard and spatial information is recorded by touching a magnetic wand to a paper map overlying a matrix of switches. The audiotape recordings are played through a simple interface into a small computer, producing a permanent record of the time and identity of each event. The record is then available for analysis. Digitorg is discussed in relation to the general value of analyzing spatially differentiated behavior sequences.     

The perception of stop consonant voicing by Spanish-English bilinguals

The performance of Spanish-English bilinguals in two perception tasks, using a synthetic speech continuum varying in voice onset time, was compared with the performance of Spanish and English monolinguals. Voice onset time in speech production was also compared between these groups. Results in perception of bilinguals differed from that of both monolingual groups. Results of bilingual production in their two languages conformed with results obtained from each monolingual group. The perceptual results are interpreted in terms of differences in the use of available acoustic cues by bilingual and monolingual listeners of English and Spanish.