Approval versus achievement motives in seventh-grade girls

Eighty seventh graders played a computer-programmed two-choice probability game in one of four conditions: with reinforcement for choosing the more probable response, with reinforcement for choosing the less probable response, with a silent experimenter, or alone. Children receiving reinforcement for the less probable response experienced a conflict between approval and achievement since choices which increased approval in this condition decreased success in the task. Across all conditions, girls chose the more probable response significantly more often than boys, indicating that girls did not sacrifice achievement for the sake of approval. Finally, girls did not reduce their efforts to achieve when working alone even though there was no opportunity for social approval, and did not express lower success expectancies than the boys even though these were measured anonymously.The authors wish to extend their appreciation to the teachers at Emerson School, Oak Park, Illinois, and to Ms. Glada O. Vaughn, principal, and Ms. Sandra Northrup Nowak, assistant principal, for their cooperation in carrying out this research.     

DIRECTIONS IN HISTORICISM: LANGUAGE, EXPERIENCE, AND PRAGMATIC ADJUDICATION

Abstract. This article examines the current affirmation within theology of historicism, with its assumption that the historical realm, broadly construed, is the only arena of human activity and knowledge and its repudiation of traditional forms of foundationalism and correspondence theories of truth. The essay performs this task by analyzing the work of Gordon Kaufman and William Dean, setting forth their commonly shared historicism, pragmatism, and constructivist approaches to theology, as well as their differences concerning nonlinguistic dimensions of experience. The essay also focuses on the move by both thinkers to include nature in their understanding of history and to offer biocultural interpretations of human existence.     

Visual comparison of words and random letter strings: Effects of number and position of letters different

Memory & Cognition - Ss classified tetragrams as either “same” or “differen”. Stimuli were either words or consonant strings. In the case of different pairs, the number...     

Rorty's critique of foundationalism

Summary and conclusion Rorty's critique concentrates on one aspect of foundationalism: the claim that nonpropositional sensory awareness serves as the basis for propositional justification. This claim is an essential component of classical foundationalism, though not necessarily of the more moderate versions of foundationalism that have been proposed. Thus even if it were a successful critique it would tell against only one type of foundationalism. But nothing in Rorty's argument provides any reason to doubt the plausibility of a classical foundationalist explanation of why sensory awareness justifies ordinary nonbasic propositions. Even classical foundationalism, then, remains untouched by Rorty's critique.     

Varying temporal location of a conditioned stimulus in heart rate conditioning ofMacaca mulatta

The several functions that a stimulus can assume were investigated in a Pavlovian conditioning procedure. The subjects were six rhesus monkeys; the response under observation was heart rate. The conditioning began with a temporal separation of zero between a signal and a regularly repeating electric shock; the signal was then moved to a series of earlier locations in the inter-shock interval. After six sessions at each location, two sessions followed in which only the shock was delivered periodically. The findings included: (1) A two-phased conditioned cardiac rate response seen at the first location became more multiphasic and irregular during longer intervals between signal and shock; (2) the location where the conditioned response peaked became increasingly variable as the signal was moved back, but this variability maintained a constant proportion to the signal-shock interval; and, (3) heart rate during a presignal period, and during a comparable period in shock only sessions, was generally deceleratory early in training and acceleratory thereafter. Sessions with the signal showed heart rate in the presignal period to have become acceleratory earlier in training than sessions with shock only. The data pertain to stimulus control over heart rate as a function of: (A) the temporal proximity of a signal to an aversive stimulus; and, (B) the presence or absence of the signal. The use of appropriate response units in cardiac conditioning is also discussed.     

Person,setting, and interaction contributions to nursery school social behavior patterns1

Within a nursery school environment, 8,930 behavioral observations were taken on 17 preschool children in six settings over a two-month period. Two different data analysis techniques were used. The aggregate analysis showed that person, setting, and interaction all contributed significantly to behavior patterns. The setting was significantly stronger than person. The individual analysis found that subjects' median Person Pattern values were correlated significantly and negatively with IQ and age, suggesting that younger children and those with lower IQ's had more consistent behavior across different settings. This was also true of children who had been at the school more than one year. Implications for predicting behavior were discussed, noting the need to study person and setting relative to one another for particular behaviors in different categories of environments.     

Parenting Disruptive Preschoolers: Experiences of Mothers and Fathers

This study examined parental functioning and interactions with young children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), with emphasis on differences between mothers and fathers in their responses to their child and in their unique contributions to the prediction of child disruptive behavior. Participants were 53 3- to 6-year olds with ODD who presented for treatment with two parents. Mothers reported more severe disruptive behavior and higher parenting stress than fathers. During parent-child interactions, mothers showed more responsiveness than fathers, even though children were more compliant during interactions with fathers. Regression analyses showed that fathers' parent-related stress was predictive of both mothers' and father's reports of disruptive child behavior; mothers' marital satisfaction was predictive of behavioral observations of child compliance with both mothers and fathers. This study revealed several important differences in the experiences of mothers versus fathers of disruptive children and indicates the importance of including the father in the child's assessment and treatment.     

Context and Perceptual Salience Influence the Formation of Novel Stereotypes via Cumulative Cultural Evolution

We use a transmission chain method to establish how context and category salience influence the formation of novel stereotypes through cumulative cultural evolution. We created novel alien targets by combining features from three category dimensions—color, movement, and shape—thereby creating social targets that were individually unique but that also shared category membership with other aliens (e.g., two aliens might be the same color and shape but move differently). At the start of the transmission chains each alien was randomly assigned attributes that described it (e.g., arrogant, caring, confident). Participants were given training on the alien‐attribute assignments and were then tested on their memory for these. The alien‐attribute assignments participants produced during test were used as the training materials for the next participant in the transmission chain. As information was repeatedly transmitted an increasingly simplified, learnable stereotype‐like structure emerged for targets who shared the same color, such that by the end of the chains targets who shared the same color were more likely to share the same attributes (a reanalysis of data from Martin et al., 2014 which we term Experiment 1). The apparent bias toward the formation of novel stereotypes around the color category dimension was also found for objects (Experiment 2). However, when the category dimension of color was made less salient, it no longer dominated the formation of novel stereotypes (Experiment 3). The current findings suggest that context and category salience influence category dimension salience, which in turn influences the cumulative cultural evolution of information.