Life structure decisions: Factors related to career-marriage priorities in college youth

The present research conceptualizes life structure, or the pattern of life, as the ordering of priorities among competing alternatives. Intentions to emphasize career, marriage, or both were investigated for college students. Variations in these intentions were seen as resulting from differences in two classes of variables: (a) the perceived consequences of emphasizing the alternative; and (b) perceived normative pressures. A subjective probability model of the relationship between beliefs and behavioral intentions was used as a framework for determining the importance of these factors. The considerations identified as most likely to have a direct impact on life structure dealt primarily with interpersonal relations, particularly marriage and family. In general, the data suggested that the subjective probability model may be useful for further understanding of life structure decisions.     

Reading deficits in learning disabled children

The purpose of this study was to determine whether LD children exhibited problems in the processes of attention, memory, or syntactical awareness when decoding written prose. Eighteen LD children and 18 normal controls were matched for initial word recognition skills. Subjects were then trained to read a list of individual words to criterion. Subsequently, they were tested on their ability to decode the same words in paragraph form, presented both immediately after training, and then again one week later. Half the children read paragraphs following standard English syntax, while the other half read a syntactically scrambled version of the same paragraph. The results indicated that a major contributing factor in the reading (decoding) difficulties demonstrated by the LD children derived from problems of acquisition and retrieval from long-term memory storage. The results were discussed in terms of their implications for the developmental lag theory of learning disabilities.     

Stress-management training: Evaluation of effects on school psychological services

School psychologists participated in a cognitive-behavioral stress-management training program. The data showed decreases in self-reported anxiety and increases in job satisfaction of school psychologists as a result of the training. In addition, teacher satisfaction with school psychological services increased after participation in teacher inservice workshops generated as a result of training the school psychologists.     

Human figure drawings of gender-problem children: A comparison to sibling,psychiatric, and normal controls

The Draw-a-Person test was used to evaluate a number of questions regarding children referred for potential problems in their gender-identity development (N = 36). Sibling (N = 31), psychiatric (N = 23), and normal (N = 30) children served as comparison groups. The major results included the following: (1) The gender-referred children were more likely to draw an opposite-sex person when requested to "draw a person" than were the other three groups; (2) the gender-referred children who drew an opposite-sex person were more likely to play with opposite-sex toys and dress-up apparel on a free-play task than were the gender-referred children who drew a same-sex person; (3) the gender-referred children drew taller opposite-sex persons than same-sex persons; (4) using Koppitz's (1968) criteria, the normal children had a smaller proportion of emotional disturbance indicators in their same-sex drawings than did the other three groups. These findings were discussed with regard to psychometric and interpretive issues in the assessment of children with atypical gender-role behavior.     

Written spelling deficit of Broca''s aphasics

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of the written spelling deficit manifested by Broca's aphasics. Four spelling tests were given to eight Broca's aphasic patients. Analysis of misspelling errors led the investigators to conclude that Broca's aphasics do not spell phonically, but rather adhere exclusively to a visual/orthographic strategy. Possible cognitive deficits underlying the spelling problem are identified. The written spelling deficit is related to other features of the syndrome of Broca's aphasia, and finally, speculations are offered concerning the neurological substrate of written spelling in Broca's aphasic patients.     

RELEASE FROM PI: Comparison of traditional and computer modules in an experimental psychology laboratory

RELEASE FROM PI is a computer-controlled participatory module designed for use by students in laboratory sections of an experimental psychology course. It allows the student subjects to trace their recall performance across sets of four lists when the fourth list changes in physical characteristics or semantic category. The performance of students participating in this computer module was compared with that of students receiving a traditional procedure with a human experimenter. All other aspects of the laboratory session were equated as much as possible. The recall data showed that the traditional procedure produced better recall and greater release with a semantic shift. However, both methods resulted in roughly equivalent learning (as measured by multiple-choice questions) and student evaluation ratings. Implications for the use of computers in instruction and research are examined.     

Reconceptualizing of the overjustification effect: A template-matching approach

The paper reviews traditional attributional explanations for the over-justification effect in task motivation, isolates their weaknesses, and proposes an alternative account based on the notion that individuals process task information schematically. It is proposed that task information relating to motivation is interpreted by cognitive schema or “templates,” which identify tasks as being either instrumental or expressive in nature. When the expressive template is evoked, the task is perceived to be playlike and is experienced as inherently motivating. When the instrumental template is evoked, the task is perceived as a means to an end and task motivation results from the perceived value of the task for attaining intrinsic and/or extrinsic rewards. Structural characteristics of these templates are proposed. According to this account, overjustification effects occur when the perceived characteristics of tasks change such that the expressive template is replaced by the instrumental template and expressive motivation is transformed into instrumental motivation.     

Does the autistic child have a metarepresentational deficit?

This study examines the claim that autistic children lack a “theory of mind” because of an inability to metarepresent. We argue that if autistic children have a “metarepresentational” deficit in Leslie's (1987, 1988) sense of the term, then they should have difficulty not only with mental representations such as false beliefs, but also with external representations such as photographs. Autistic children's understanding of photographic representations was tested using Zaitchik's (1990) task. This task is modelled on the false belief task (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985: Wimmer & Perner, 1983) but involves “false” photographs where a photographic representation does not conform with the current state of the real world. Like Zaitchik (1990) we found that normal 3 and 4-year-olds found this task as difficult as the false belief task. In sharp contrast, however, the autistic children in our study passed the photograph task but failed the false belief task. As both tasks require the ability to decouple, this evidence challenges the view that autistic children lack “metarepresentational” ability in Leslie's sense. However, the results leave open the question of whether autistic children have a metarepresentational ability in the different sense of the term intended by Pylyshyn (1978), that is, representing the relationship between a representation and what it represents.     

Self-Efficacy,Perceptions of Success,and Intrinsic Motivation for Exercise1

A number of investigators have attempted to identify the determinants of continued participation in exercise regimens. Within a social cognitive framework, the present study examined the relationships among self-efficacy cognitions, perceptions of success, and multidimensional intrinsic motivation in the exercise domain. Multivariate analyses of variance indicated that highly efficacious individuals were more intrinsically motivated toward aerobic dance than were their less efficacious counterparts. However, multiple regression analyses revealed both perceptions of success and self-efficacy to account for significant variance in intrinsic motivation at both the composite and dimensional levels. Moreover, perceptions of success were considerably stronger predictors than were efficacy cognitions. The results are discussed in terms of the need for multiple measures of perceived success, the employment of longitudinal designs to determine the direction of causality among these variables, and possible implications for adherence issues.