But can she command a ship? Acceptance of women by peers at the coast guard academy

The integration of women into the military, mandated by legislation in 1976, was problematic at first; several studies suggested that women were not welcomed by their colleagues. Peer acceptance is an important issue for the Coast Guard, since female officers are not officially discriminated against in duty assignments. Results of this current study, which assessed whether or not male Coast Guard cadets' attitudes have changed over time, suggest that males have become more tolerant of the idea of women in the military, and especially, that male cadets' perception of their female peers becomes more positive over time. The results are discussed in terms of Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory.This article is a revision of a paper presented at the 92nd annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Canada, August 1985.     

Speech competence of children vulnerable to psychopathology

Verbal productivity and cohesion and reference patterns of children of schizophrenics (N=23), unipolars (N=43), bipolars (N=38), and normals (N=53) were assessed using the Rochester and Martin (1979) evaluation system. Children of all offspring groups could be discriminated from one another, with children of schizophrenics showing the most deviant speech performance across all dependent measures. Children of schizophrenics were less verbally productive and had poorer patterns of cohesion between ideas than children of normals. In addition, they produced more unclear and ambiguous references to previously mentioned ideas than did children of normals. The consistency of deviance and performance on specific dependent variables in these children at risk for schizophrenia was similar to the speech performance of thought-disordered schizophrenics. Possible explanations for these similarities were discussed and evaluated.This research was supported by grant number MH21145 from the National Institute of Mental Health and by funds from the William T. Grant Foundation. The authors would like to thank Lina Jandorf for her invaluable assistance in data collection and scoring.     

The sex-typing of adult and child behavior in toy sales

In order to investigate sex-stereotyping pressure in toy sales, a field experiment was conducted in which students approached 134 sales persons in 67 retail outlets, asking for help in selecting a toy for a niece or nephew, age 5. The results indicated that toy sales advice serves primarily to reinforce traditional sex-role expectations. Overall, salespersons gave more sex-stereotyped than neutral responses, and their responses did not vary by retail setting (specialized vs. department/chain stores) or the age of the salesperson. As expected, more stereotyped responses were received by male than by female buyers, especially when both sought suggestions for a male child. The results were consistent with the hypothesis that salespersons hold stereotyped conceptions of adult socialization practices and channel interaction in ways that behaviorally confirm these stereotypes. A number of other findings are presented and discussed.     

Determinants of the rod-and-frame effect: Role of organization and subjective contour

In Experiment 1, performance on a conventional (full) rod and frame was compared with that on three other displays. These included a closure condition in which only the corners of a luminous frame were present, a subjective contour condition in which the rod was seen against ablack square subjective surface, and a pattern condition in which four luminous disks were arranged to form the corners of a square pattern. In all cases, a square-like form was perceived. The rod-and-frame effect (RFE) was greatest on the full frame, which differed significantly from all the rest. Closure produced the next greatest influence, while the responses to subjective and pattern conditions did not differ from each other. Experiment 2 showed that a subjective frame was no more effective than the subjective surface of Experiment 1, and verified the importance of 90-deg corner elements in the rod-and-frame display. The conclusion drawn was that equivalent form organizations are not sufficient to produce equivalent levels of the RFE, but certain luminance-difference contours appear to be essential.     

Book reviews

Machine Intelligence. Edited by N. L. Collins and D. Michie. Edinburgh: Oliver & Body. 1967. Pp x + 278. 63s.

Mechanisms of Animal behavior. By P. R. Marler and W. J. Hamilton III. London and New York: Wiley. 1966. Pp. xi + 740. 113s.

Animal Behaviour: A Synthesis of Ethology and Comparative Psychology. By Robert A. Hinde. London: McGraw-Hill. 1966. Pp. x + 534. 84s.

Manual of Psychophysiological Methods. Edited by P.H Venables and Irene Martin. Amsterdam: North-Holland publishing Co. 1967. Pp ix + 557. £4 10s. od.

The Senses. By Lowenstein. London: Penguin Books. Pelican Original. 1966. Pp. 217. 5s.

Human Spatial Orientation. By I. P. Howard and W. B. Templeton. London and New York: Wiley. 1966. Pp. 553. 84s. net.

Attention: An Enduring Problem in Psychology. Edited by Paul Baskan. London: van Nostrand. Insight book No. 34. 1966. Pp. iv + 225. 14s. $1.75.

Amnesia. Edited by C. W. M. Whitty and O. L. Zangwill. London: Butterworths. 1967. Pp. x + 217. 64s.

Brain Function. Volume III: Speech, Language and Communication. Edited by Edward C. Carterette, UCLA Forum in Medical Sciences. No. 4. University of California Press. London: Cambridge University press. 1967. Pp. xiii + 279. 96s.

Annual review of Psychology. Volume 18. Edited by P. R. Farnsworth, O. McNemar and O. McNemar. Palo Alto, California: Annual Reviews Inc. 1967. PP. 606. $9.00 ($8.50 in U.S.A.).

Contemporary Approaches to Psychology. Edited by H. helson and W. bevan. Princeton, New Jersey and London: Van Nostrand Company. 1967. Pp. xii + 596. £5 16s.

The Hypnotic Investigation of Dereams. By C. scott Moss. London and New York: Wiley. 1967. Pp. xi + 290. 60s.

The Dynamics of Behavior Development: An Epigenetic View. By Zing-Yang Kuo. Random House Studies In Psychology (Consulting Editor, L. J. Stone) New York: Random House. 1967. Pp. xii + 240. $2.45.

Self-Evaluation: Concepts and Studies. By James C. Diggory. London and New York: Wiley. 1966. Pp. xiii + 477. 80s.

The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour. by Michael Argyle. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. 1967. Pp. 223. 4s. 6d.

The Causes of Behaviour II. Second edition. Edited by Judy F. Rosenblith and Wesley Allinsmith. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. 1966. Pp. xv + 608. $6.95.     

Some effects of discriminable goal-box conditions on the learning of a successive discrimination

In an attempt to confirm and extend a previous reslt, rats were trained on two tasks where a signal delivered at the start of each trial indicated which of two paths through a maze would be rewarded. In Experiment I both paths led to the same goal-box, and it was found that performance was better when the state of the goal-box was different on trials with each of the two signals. In Experiment II the two paths led to spatially separated goal-boxes. It was found that when the states of the two goal-boxes were discriminably different but the state of each of them remained the same from trial to trial, performance was better than when their states varied irregularly. It is suggested that these results have interesting implications for theories of behaviour.