Gender-Related traits and helping in a nonemergency situation

In prior research, mostly on helping in emergeicies, individuals' scores on expressivity (or femininity) generally have been unrelated to helping, whereas instrumentality (or masculinity) scores frequently have been significantly related to assisting. In two studies, we examined the relation of expressivity and instrumentality to willingness to help in a nonemergency situation in which the other's need was unambiguous; moreover, we assessed possible mediators of relations. Expressivity was positively related to amount of helping, and this relation appeared mediated by sympathetic responsivity. Masculinity was not significantly related to helping, although it was marginally, negatively related to assisting in one study. The findings are discussed in relation to those in related research.     

Personal Characteristics,Job Performance,and Absenteeism of Public School Teachers1

Personal characteristics and job performance were examined as potential predictors of absenteeism for a professional occupational group. Data on 152 public school teachers demonstrated that sex and independence contributed unique variance to the prediction of absenteeism. Furthermore, the interaction terms of sex with independence, with the ability to control anxiety, and with performance rating significantly added to the variance explained in absenteeism. Implications of the present results are discussed as well as suggestions for future research.     

USING PARENTS AS THERAPISTS TO EVALUATE APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR OF THEIR CHILDREN: APPLICATION TO A TERTIARY DIAGNOSTIC CLINIC

We conducted a preliminary analysis of maintaining variables for children with conduct disorders in an outpatient clinic. Eight children of normal intelligence between the ages of 4 and 9 years were evaluated during 90-min sessions. The children's parents conducted the assessments by varying task demands (easy and difficult) and parental attention (attention and no attention) within a multielement design. The assessment focused on appropriate child behavior and was conducted to formulate hypotheses regarding maintaining contingencies. Results demonstrated that the children's appropriate behavior varied across assessment conditions and, for 7 of the 8 children, occurred at a higher rate during one condition than during other conditions. In addition, treatment integrity data demonstrated that parents were able to implement the procedures as intended. The recommended treatments were rated as being both effective and acceptable to parents for up to 6 months following the evaluation. Our results extend previous studies of functional analytic procedures conducted by trained experimenters with severely handicapped children in more controlled settings.     

USE OF NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT IN THE TREATMENT OF SELF-INJURIOUS BEHAVIOR

Behavioral assessment procedures were used to determine the maintaining conditions of self-injury exhibited by 2 children with severe multiple handicaps. For both children, negative reinforcement (escape from grooming activities) was determined to be the maintaining reinforcer for self-injury (hand/arm biting) within an alternating treatments design. The treatment packages involved the use of negative reinforcement (brief escape from grooming activities) contingent upon a behavior that was incompatible with self-injury (reaching and pressing a microswitch that activated a prerecorded message of “stop”). Treatment was evaluated with a reversal design for 1 child and with a multiple baseline across grooming activities for the 2nd child. The treatment led to a marked decrease in self-injury for both children. At follow-up, high rates of self-injury were reported for the 1st child, but low rates of self-injury and an increase in task-related appropriate behavior were observed for the 2nd child.     

Relational frameworks for recall in young and older adults

Recent research indicates the presence of an age-related visual processing deficit, for which the elderly may attempt to compensate through the use of relational information. This hypothesis was tested, using the category superiority effect as a model system. In studies of young adults, the category superiority effect has been shown to be confined to relatively abstract stimulus materials, such as verbal items, and to be absent for pictures. However, it was predicted that a category superiority effect would be present in elderly adults both for verbal and for pictorial stimuli, since the elderly would be expected to utilize category information to compensate for imagerie deficits. This prediction was confirmed, consistent with the hypothesis advanced above. It was further suggested that the establishment of a prior framework for recall, based on relational information, would reduce this effect significantly. This prediction was also confirmed. This research was supported by Grant AGI 1605, National Institute on Aging, and by a grant from the School of Natural Sciences, California State University, Fresno.     

The assessment of empathy in early childhood

In much of the literature on empathy in young children, researchers have assessed empathy with the FASTE (Feshbach and Roe Affective Situations Test for Empathy). Consequently, much of the literature on early affective responsiveness and the role of empathy in prosocial development is dependent on the validity of the FASTE. However, examination of the literature on gender differences in young children's empathy has suggested a methodological flaw in picture/story techniques such as the FASTE; children's responses to these instruments appear to vary as a function of the interaction of sex of experimenter with sex of subject. In the present study, we empirically examined the effects of sex of experimenter on children's responses to the FASTE. Eighty preschool children were randomly assigned by sex to four male and four female experimenters and were administered the FASTE. Children scored higher when interviewed by a same-sex experimenter, especially if only the stories that the children comprehended (the happy/sad episodes, not the anger or fear episodes) were examined. The implications of the findings for interpreting the literature on children's empathy (especially gender differences in empathy) are discussed.     

Sex differences in the relationship of height to children's actual and attributed social and cognitive competencies

In three studies, the relationship of children's height to both (a) adults' attributions regarding the children and (b) preschoolers' social and cognitive competencies were examined. Sex differences were consistent with stereotypic conceptions. In the first two studies, mothers of preschool children rated photographs of toddlers varying in height on a variety of social and cognitive abilities. The mothers also assigned punishment to the children for hypothetical transgressions. In Experiment 1, mothers rated the large boys as more competent than the average-sized and small boys (even when effects of mothers' perceptions of the children's ages were covaried). In Experiment 2, involving female stimuli, mothers rated small girls as being less able (especially less independent) than average-sized or tall girls. While the effect of height on mothers' attributions was still evident when the effects of perceived age of the children were covaried, the pattern of results was less clear. Mothers assigned more punishment to tall girls (but not tall boys) than to small girls regardless of perceptions of age. In Experiment 3, height was associated with boys', but not girls', competence on tasks of logical ability and boys' sociometric nominations of whom they prefer to play with (significant for girls, marginally significant for boys). Height was not highly correlated with peers' perceptions of competence. The implications of the research for the socialization process are discussed.The authors wish to express their gratitude to the parents, teachers, and children at the Child Study Laboratory, Students' Child Center, Palo Alto Preschools, and Tempe Preschool. The authors would also like to thank Michael Gunzelman, Michelle White, Julie Mankowski, Marsha Kaplan, and Melissa Rook for their able assistance in data collection.