An exploration of women's expectations of effective male and female leadership

University women (N=188) of varying ages (19–53) and work experience described their behavioral expectations of an effective male and female leader for levels of Consideration, Initiating Structure, Role Assumption, and Production Emphasis. In line with a sex role congruency view, it was hypothesized that an effective female leader would be expected to exhibit higher levels of Consideration behaviors, while an effective male leader would be expected to exhibit more Initiating Structure, Role Assumption, and Production Emphasis behaviors. The results provided only partial support for the sex role congruency hypothesis since an effective female leader was expected to exhibit higher levels of Consideration as well as higher levels of Initiating Structure. No sex differences were detected for Role Assumption or Production Emphasis behaviors. Further, while many similarities were noted among the women in their views of effective leadership, there were also systematic age-related differences among the women in their expectations, particularly with regard to their views of effective female leadership.Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association, Orlando, Florida, March, 1986.     

The relationship between expertise and visual search strategy in a racquet sport

The visual search characteristics of 15 expert and 16 novice badminton players were recorded as they performed a film test designed to assess their anticipatory cue usage. Experts were found, from the film task, to be able to pick up earlier advance information than novices and this appeared to be related to their reliance upon the arm, in addition to the racquet, as a source of anticipatory information. These differemces in information-extraction, however, were not matched by differences in visual search characteristics with the location, duration and sequence of the novices' fixations on the film display being indistinguishable from those of the experts. It is concluded therefore that the major source of expertise-related differences in sport perception is not the visual search (or reception) strategy per se but rather the use to which the received information is subsequently put. Some experimental and practical implications of the observed discrepancy between visual orientation and information-extraction are considered and the normal search strategy adopted in badminton by both expert and novice players is described in some detail.     

A systemic approach to the treatment of depression with only one family member present

The purpose of the present article was to demonstrate a systemic treatment of depression for a 70 year-old woman. In this treatment, other family members were unavailable, but a family therapy systems perspective was used throughout. Results of the demonstration ABAB single case design and two year followup were suggestive of treatment effectiveness in decreasing depression. The need for additional replication of the study was noted.     

Effects of methylphenidate on inhibitory control in hyperactive children

This study investigated the effects of methylphenidate (MPH) on inhibitory control in hyperactive children. A double-blind, placebo-control, within-subject (crossover) design was used in which 12 children, between 6 and 11 years of age, were each tested four times in each drug condition: 0.3 mg/kg and 1.0 mg/kg of methylphenidate, and placebo. Dependent measures included (a) the probability of inhibiting responses to a primary choice reaction time task given a stop signal, on the Stopping Task, and (b) response latency and errors on the Matching Familiar Figures Test (MFFT). MPH improved the efficiency of the central inhibitory mechanism by speeding the inhibitory process, thereby affording the children greater control over their actions and enabling them to increase the probability with which they inhibited responses given a stop signal. MPH increased response latency but did not reduce errors on the MFFT, and observation of the children's task performance highlighted the interpretive problems associated with this task. Performance on both tasks was better at a dosage of 1.0 mg/kg than at 0.3 mg/kg.     

Attitude accessibility,attitude-behavior consistency,and the strength of the object-evaluation association

Two experiments were conducted in order to examine the accessibility of attitudes from memory as a function of the manner of attitude formation. The findings of the first experiment indicated that subjects could respond more quickly in a response-time task to inquiries about their attitudes when the attitudes were based upon direct behavioral experience with the attitude objects than when they were based upon nonbehavioral experience. It was suggested that, relative to indirect experience, behavioral experience may facilitate the attitude formation process and increase attitude accessibility once the attitude is formed. A second experiment found support for both of these notions. Two additional experiments indicated that repeated association of the attitude object and the attitudinal evaluation enhanced both attitude accessibility and attitude-behavior consistency. It was suggested that the strength of the object-evaluation association is a critical determinant of accessibility, which, in turn, acts as a central factor in the process by which attitudes affect later behavior. It was further suggested that the manner of attitude formation affects attitude-behavior consistency because direct experience produces a stronger object-evaluation association and, hence, a more accessible attitude than does indirect experience.     

Understanding quantified categorical expressions

A model of categorical inference (Revlis, 1975b) claims that a conversion operation participates in the encoding of quantified, categorical expressions. As a consequence, a reasoner is said to interpret such sentences as “All A are B” in a way that permits it to also be the case that “All B are A.” The present study examines this conception of encoding using a sentence-picture verification task. In two experiments, students were asked to judge whether one of five possible Euler diagrams was true or false of a categorical expression (e.g., All A are B, No A are B, Some A are B, Some A are not B). Verification errors support a three-stage verification model whose major component is access to a “meaning stack” representing the progressive analysis of categorical relations; at the top of that stack is a converted reading of the input sentence. These findings have implications for current conceptions of categorical inference and semantic retrieval.     

Language performance on visual processing tasks in right hemisphere lesion cases

Seven language tests were constructed or adapted to assess the performance of three groups of 10 right-handed adult subjects: a right hemisphere lesion (RHL) group, a left hemisphere lesion (LHL) group, and a neurologically normal (NN) control group. Both the LHL and RHL groups produced poorer scores than the NN group on six of the seven tests. On two of the six significant tests, the RHL performed more poorly than the NN group. Analyses of words uttered during an oral story telling test indicated that the RHL group told significantly fewer complete stories using significantly more nouns, adjectives, and conjunctions than the NN group. On a 7-point scale, three judges rated the overall communication abilities of the RHL group as having “mild problems,” a significantly different rating than the ratings of the LHL and NN groups. The findings suggest that underlying visual spatial and perceptual deficits may be accompanied by clearly recognizable language differences in certain subjects.     

Binocular interaction of orientation and spatial frequency channels: Evoked potentials and observer sensitivity

The interaction between size and orientation feature processing in the human visual system was investigated. Both observer sensitivity (d’ss) and the visual evoked potential (VEP) to test gratings flashed to one eye were investigated as a function of the nature of a continuously presented suppressing grating viewed either by that same eye or the opposite eye. The test and suppressing gratings were varied both in bar width (9′ss vs. 36′ss) and orientation (vertical vs. horizontal). The continuous grating intra- and interocularly suppressed the monocular VEPs to the flashed grating, the specificity of the suppression depending on the latency at which VEP amplitude was measured. VEP amplitude measured at early latencies (100–125 msec) was suppressed primarily when the flashed and continuous gratings were the same orientation, regardless of size. Starting at about 200 msec, and thereafter, VEP amplitudes were suppressed when the continuous bars were either the same orientationor size as the flashed bars. Late latencies, starting at 220 msec, and thereafter, were suppressed primarily when the bars in the two gratings were the same orientation and size. The reduction in observer sensitivity (d′ss) paralleled the changes found in the late VEP measures. These effects were evident under both the intraocular and interocular suppressing conditions. This pattern of VEP suppression, measured across eight points in the VEP waveform, was interpreted as indicating the existence of a sequence of channels that are specific first to a particular grating orientation, then to either a particular grating spatial frequency or orientation, and finally to the conjunction of a particular orientation and spatial frequency. Both sequential and parallel feature processing appears to take place in the human visual cortex, with grating orientation being encoded earlier than grating size.