Salivary testosterone and self-report aggressive and pro-social personality characteristics in men and women

Measures of salivary testosterone and the personality dimensions of aggression and pro-social behavior were obtained in 306 (155 male and 151 female) university students. Each participant provided two samples of saliva and completed ten self-report personality scales from multiple inventories. A factor analysis of the personality scales produced two factors, an aggression factor and a pro-social behavior factor. Men averaged five times the amount of salivary testosterone as women (99 pg/ml vs. 18.5 pg/ml) and rated themselves as more aggressive and less nurturant. Within each sex, testosterone was positively correlated with aggression and negatively correlated with pro-social personality. Structural equation modelling analyses suggested that a direct effect model best described the relationship between salivary testosterone and the latent personality dimensions of aggression and pro-social behavior. © 1996 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Midline and off-midline tongue and right- and left-hand vibrotactile thresholds of stutterers and normal-speaking individuals

Vibrotactile thresholds for 7 male stutterers and 7 normal-speaking men (age range for both groups = 19 to 32 yr.) were obtained from the right, midline, and left sides of the lingual dorsum, and the thenar eminences of both hands. The stutterers showed slightly higher (less sensitive) mean thresholds than the normal speakers for all three lingual test sites. This was not the case for the thresholds obtained from both hands. The preliminary data suggest that oral peripheral sensory integrity might be somewhat different for stutterers than for normal-speaking individuals.     

Comparison of Life Styles of Honors,Non-Honors Women

This study compares the after-college life styles of participants in a college honors program with a control group of women who were not college honors students in order to determine the effects of a college honors program on life roles after college. The 81 participants of this study represent 93 percent of women who participated as college freshmen and during their ensuing college years in a study to determine the effects of an honors program on students while still in college. The results of the current study—the first contact with the women since they left college—illustrates the differences between the present life roles of these two groups of women in the areas of family involvement, careers, education, and community participation. The results show significant differences between honors and non-honors subjects in career-orientation and in commitment to their field of study and to the university at which they studied.     

Reliability coefficients as a function of individual differences induced by a learning process assuming identical organisms

In this article we show that a particular mathematical learning model, the Bower-Trabasso (1964) concept identification model taken together with an assumption of independence of replicate measurements, implies the existence of substantial and statistically significant performance differences across individuals. The individual differences in turn imply a sizeable reliability coefficient. These results contradict naive intuition, for this model (like many other mathematical models of learning) assumes that all individuals begin the experiment with identical parameter values for the process under study. Thus at least one such model has the characteristic of implying the generation of individual performance differences among originally identical organisms.Examination of data from an experiment by Cotton shows that the Hoyt reliability coefficient under classical test theory, a lower bound for the (composite) reliability of total scores for a series of trials, increases with the number of trials analyzed and exceeds the corresponding theoretical values implied by the Bower-Trabasso model. An experiment by Levine was also analyzed because its use of blank trials between feedback trials permitted direct calculation of composite reliability (or more properly stated composite consistency). For this experiment, the theoretical development just discussed (Case I) was used together with Restle's hypothesis selection model specialized to include a local consistency assumption, the so-called P₂ model of Gregg and Simon (Case II). Moderate conformity of empirical and theoretical reliabilities was found, with discrepancies between observed and predicted values usually being smaller with Case II. However, the Hoyt reliability coefficient is not a lower bound for composite reliability in Case II, because composite reliability is underestimated when identical stimuli are not used for comparable trials.Despite the Bower-Trabasso assumption of no initial differences, it seems reasonable to attribute the difference between predicted and obtained reliabilities to preexisting individual differences. Implications of the tentative conclusion that individual differences in concept identification performance are attributable to a combination of preexisting differences and differences induced in a current task are discussed briefly.     

Child Compliance and Congruity between Verbal and Nonverbal Maternal Communication — A Methodological Note

This paper is a report of a study of congruity between verbal and nonverbal maternal communication with sons during two 30-minute sessions. The instructions to the mothers varied for the two sessions by increasing the time the mother was asked to spend on a brain teaser game and by decreasing the number of play materials available for the sons in the second session. The two sessions were videotaped through a one-way mirror and rated independently for maternal verbal and nonverbal communicaiton and child compliance. Mothers differed for the two sessions in their communication with their sons. The study demonstrated that maternal nonverbal communication, as well as verbal communication, can be reliably measured through use of videotape recording.