Effects of gender composition and group status differences on member perceptions of group developmental patterns,effectiveness, and productivity

This field study sought to ascertain whether all female or female dominated work groups, all male or male dominated work groups, and mixed sex work groups varied systematically in member perceptions of group developmental patterns, effectiveness, and productivity. The study also sought to determine whether high versus low status groups differed significantly on these variables. One hundred seventy-one work groups participated in the study. The results suggested that member perceptions of group functioning were more similar than different. Where significant differences were noted, group status, as opposed to gender composition, seemed to account for these differences in perception.     

Text Comprehension Training for Disabled Readers: An Evaluation of Reciprocal Teaching and Text Analysis Training Programs

Forty-six reading disabled adolescents were randomly assigned to one of three 25-hr instructional programs. Two programs provided training in expository text comprehension, and a third offered training in academic problem solving and organizational and study skills (an alternative treatment control). One reading comprehension program was designed to remediate a deficient knowledge base, forcing disabled readers to elaborate and further process new text knowledge, focusing on both specific informational content in a text and knowledge of text structure per se. The second program was patterned after the Palincsar and Brown (1984) reciprocal teaching techniques and focused on training four text comprehension strategies used by skilled comprehenders. Both the “knowledge-base” and the “strategy” training approaches were associated with significant improvement in disabled readers' comprehension skills, although training effects did not generalize across all aspects of reading comprehension performance. Strategy-trained readers applied the trained strategies with equal success on instructed and uninstructed text materials, providing strong evidence of transfer of learning. Knowledge-base readers also demonstrated successful transfer of specifically trained procedures (semantic mapping, text analysis) to unfamiliar text. In both programs, the best outcomes were obtained when specific strategies and operations were targeted for training.     

Academic Gender Bias and Women's Behavioral Agency Self-Efficacy

The relationship between academic gender bias and female students' agentic self-efficacy expectations was examined. Agentic self-efficacy expectations was defined as an individual's beliefs about her ability to successfully engage in proactive educational and career facilitative behaviors. Participants included 67 full-time junior and senior undergraduate women enrolled in traditional, nontraditional, and gender-neutral majors. Results revealed that perceived academic gender bias was significantly predictive of agentic self-efficacy expectations, above and beyond the contributions of sex role attitudes, gender concentration of major, and race/ethnicity. Implications for women's career development and future research are discussed.     

Purity and danger in the solar temple

Based on research conducted in Québec, this study explores the shape of the social life, apocalyptic ideology and authority structure of the Ordre du Temple Solaire (OTS) or Solar Temple within the framework of Mary Douglas's typology of ‘group and grid’. The pollution fears and purity rituals of this controversial new religious movement are analysed as an important factor in their decision to orchestrate a religiously‐motivated mass suicide/homicide, explained in their suicide documents as a ‘transit’ (a magical feat of soul travel) to the Star Sirius. Douglas's insights into how the human body becomes a ‘natural symbol’ for small, persecuted groups, mirroring the social body and the vulnerability of its exits and entrances vis‐à‐vis the surrounding culture, are applied to the alternative patterns of sexuality and parenting in the OTS. It is suggested that the magical aspect of the mass suicide expressed a concern for purity and for protecting the boundaries of their community. It is also suggested that the ritual homicides in Morin Heights resemble the ‘witch‐hunts’ characteristic of Douglas's ‘small society’ that conceives of itself as the perfect, impermeable vessel.     

Movement as an emergent form: Its structural limits

The purpose of this paper is to view the structure of goal-directed movement as an emergent property of a system interacting with its surround. Principles of the genesis of form are presented and arguments offered to extend these concepts to the analysis of human movement. Movement is viewed as a dynamic form having structural limits which define its functionality or its potential in solving a particular motor problem.The morphology of the system, and its experience with external objects and the field of external forces are considered to be the primary factors determining the emerging form of a movement. These interacting factors and their influence on the structural limits of a movement are discussed in detail. While the degree of effectiveness may vary, it is suggested that the structure of the movement tends towards efficiency and represents the current problem-solving capacity of the individual at any one point in time. Coordination of a system is thus viewed as a reflection of the individual's ability to integrate its internal states and processes with external demands.Lastly, goal-directedness, as a characteristic of living systems, is believed to provide the basis for defining the morphological, biomechanical and environmental constraints which are relevant to the task. The role of the task and the intentionality of the system in its goal-directedness and organization of movement is explored.The framework for viewing movement offered in this paper is enhanced by philosophical arguments and supported by evidence from the arts and the physical, biological and behavioral sciences. It is intended to encourage the reader to re-examine ideas, reflect on movement in a unique way and to generate questions regarding the underlying mechanisms and synergies supporting the emergence of movement in compliance with the factors that constrain it.     

TRAINING PRESCHOOL CHILDREN TO RECRUIT NATURAL COMMUNITIES OF REINFORCEMENT1

Four normal and four deviant children aged four-to-six years were taught to judge the quality of their academic work in a preschool classroom, and to prompt or cue their teachers to comment about the quality of that work. When these skills did not generalize spontaneously to other teachers in concurrent natural situations, generalized responding was taught by the experimenter, in multiple-baseline design across subjects. This generalization programming enabled the children to contact a sometimes dormant, but readily available natural community of teacher praise and reinforcement, i.e., to recruit an increase in cued praise and schedules of praise for their good work. These behaviors may be important to young children who find themselves bereft of attention in classrooms.     

More on the measurement of spontaneous alternation

Still and MacMillan (1977) suggested the negative of the Phi coefficient (- φ) as a measure of free-trial spontaneous alternation. This new index is compared with the Adjusted Alternation Ratio (AAR), previously developed by Manning (1973b). It is concluded that there are many situations in which the AAR is a more useful measure. Other issues in assessing spontaneous alternation noted by Still and MacMillan are discussed.