Family dances and the rhythms of intimacy

Over time each couple evolves its own repetitive, rhythmic patterns of loving, fighting, etc. This dance is picked up by the couple's children and becomes kinesthetic, rather than intellectual, knowledge of how to be in an intimate relationship. For each new generation of couples, making one dance out of two is the unspoken challenge to a marriage. Often mates do not fit into each other's dance, do not know the right moves, and thus remain rhythmically unfamiliar to one another, making it difficult to live in comfortable intimacy.It is possible to quickly and graphically represent these family dances in a therapy session. From the dances of the family of origin to the current dance of a couple, the impact of the rhythmic patterns of intimacy can be seen. The objective of performing a couple's family dance is to bring the rhythmic patterns into awareness and to develop a powerful metaphor for use throughout therapy.Sandra Watanabe-Hammond, BS, OTR, a co-founder of the Boston Family Institute and a faculty member of the Family Institute of Chicago, also is in private practice in Chicago at 253 E. Delaware Place and at 2 Pine Circle, Urbana, IL.     

Growth functions for rapid remembering

Children between ages 9 and 13 were tested for recognizing and remembering words from 6- and 12-word lists. Opportunities for using deliberate mnemonics were severely restricted. Developmental functions showed different growth patterns for remembering the items in a short list than for remembering order, and different patterns for storing items from a long list than for retrieving them. However, none of these functions was parallel to the growth function of rapid word recognition. This absence of parallel growth contradicted a hypothesis that memory develops when item recognition develops. The data suggested, instead, that modest but reliable gains in rapid processes of storage and retrieval contribute to memory development during middle childhood.     

Clogs in the bogus pipeline: Demand characteristics and social desirability

Jones and Sigall (1971) have advocated the use of a pseudophysiological monitoring device (the bogus pipeline) as a procedure to measure the “true” feelings of experimental subjects. A comparison of the bogus pipeline and a paper-and-pencil scale as measures of attraction indicated that the monitoring device is affected by experimenter demands among high social desirability (SD) subjects (p < .03) while the simple rating scale is not. Attraction to a stranger was determined solely by attitude similarity for high SD subjects using the paper-and-pencil measure and for low SD subjects in both measurement conditions. Use of the bogus pipeline in the typical attraction experiment thus would seem to be contraindicated. These results were discussed with respect to Ostrom's (1973) criteria of relative sensitivity and functional comparability of measurement techniques.     

From evolution to Larry P., or what shall we do about IQ tests?

IQ tests are a dilemma in that great morality play. “Who Shall Enjoy Society's Privileges?” Legal authorities battle over IQ tests as heroes or villians. The stages are courts around the nation jammed with plaintiffs whose test scores were used to reject them from desired educational and occupational positions or whose scores exceeded those of others who were selected for desired positions on nonintellective bases. Larry P. Bakke, and Griggs are but a few of the plaintiffs whose names may become household words in the late '70s. Judges know little about the technical construction of IQ tests, their appropriate use and interpretation, and about the underlying issues of inequality that bring the adversaries to court. But the judges will decide how, when, and for whom IQ tests may be used to make life decisions.     

A comparison of French and American environmental behaviors,knowledge, and attitudes12

Matched samples of French (N = 56) and American (N = 112) adults were administered surveys assessing environmental behavior (recycling), knowledge, and attitudes, as well as more general attitudes and personality traits. While minimal differences were observed in recycling, the relationships of this behavior with other variables indicated differing conceptions between cultures. The Americans' environmental attitudes were more pro-ecological, were more internally consistent, and were more likely to be related to environmental behavior and knowledge and other attitudinal and personality variables. It was suggested that knowledge may act as a mediating variable between attitudes and behavior.     

A comparison of adult males' and females' interactions with girls and boys

The verbal interactions of adult males and females with trained girl and boy confederates were compared in an unstructured and an immediately following structured situation. Women did not respond differently based on the child's gender in either situation, while men spoke more and used longer mean length of utterances with the boys than with the girls in the unstructured situation. In the structured situation males did not respond differently to girls and boys, speaking more to both than did females. Correlations between the number of words spoken in female-child pairs were higher, suggesting a greater reciprocity of interaction, than for male-child pairs in both situations. The results are seen as reflecting the outcome of differential sex-role socialization for men and women, especially with respect to children, with females socialized to relate with others and men to need to dominate others.     

TEACHER-VERSUS PEER-MEDIATED INSTRUCTION: AN ECOBEHAVIORAL ANALYSIS OF ACHIEVEMENT OUTCOMES

In three experiments, we compared the effects of instructional arrangements that varied in: (a) teacher versus peer mediators, (b) methods used, (c) levels of student academic responding generated, and (d) content taught and tested. Instructional arrangements (i.e., tasks, structure, teacher position, teacher behavior) and students' levels of academic responding were measured by an observation system which served as an index of the independent variables. Students' accuracy on weekly spelling, arithmetic, and vocabulary tests and pre- and post-standardized achievement tests (Experiments 2 and 3 only) were the dependent variables. Results indicated that the classwide peer tutoring, compared to the teacher's procedure, produced more student academic responding and higher weekly test scores, regardless of treatment order or subject matter content (Experiment 1). The four lowest performing students in each class, in particular, benefited from peer tutoring, often performing as well as the other students. These findings were replicated in Experiments 2 and 3 wherein content taught/tested was also manipulated. Standardized test score gains were higher in those areas in which peer tutoring was used longest. Issues related to the functional analysis of instruction and achievement gain are discussed.