Social perspective-taking and teacher ratings of peer interaction in hyperactive boys

Hyperactive and matched control boys at two age levels were compared on teacher ratings of peer interaction and three measures of social perspective-taking. The teachers' ratings of peer interaction discriminated between the hyperactive children and their controls. In addition, a significant interaction effect indicated that teachers rated the older hyperactive group as more deviant with peers than both their younger hyperactive counterparts and their age-matched controls. In a structured laboratory setting, the hyperactive children did not differ from control children on the three measures of social perspective-taking. The perspective-taking measures did, however, show differences across age groups. Implications for treatment are examined.The research reported in this paper is based on master's thesis submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pittsburgh by the first author. The authors are indebted to Dr. C. Keith Conners for his assistance in recruiting hyperactive subjects and to Drs. Alex Siegel and Carl Barenboim for their critical evaluations regarding this investigation. Appreciation is expressed to the staff, teachers, parents, and students of the Forest Grove Elementary School for their cooperation.     

Situational Cues and Crime Reporting: Do Signs Make a Difference?1

Two field studies were conducted to assess the effect of signs describing how to report a shoplifting on bystander intervention to a staged theft. In the first study, signs providing directions and one of three rationales for reporting had a small effect on attitudes toward reporting and no effect on intervention. In the second study, a definition of the situation as a shoplifting by a confederate had a strong influence on subjects reporting, but presence or absence of signs describing how to report had no impact. Differences between interpersonal and nonpersonal influences are described, and implications for informational campaigns to increase crime reporting are discussed.     

Ratings of the auditory and visual similarity of consonants: Implications for research

A set of rating data was collected which compared the visual similarity of consonants to the auditory similarity of the same letters. Analysis of the rating patterns raises important questions about the use of similarity data in drawing conclusions about mode of memory coding in a variety of situations.     

Vowel recognition: Inferences from studies of forward and backward masking

The recognition of brief vowels was studied in forward and backward masking tasks. In a series of experiments in which both target and mask parameters were systematically varied, two populations of subjects were identified. The majority (Nonmaskers) evidenced little masking at any interstimulus interval, while relatively fewer subjects (Maskers) evidenced backward masking (but not forward masking) over a 100-200 ms interval. Increasing target set size systematically increased masking for the Maskers but not for the Nonmaskers. Adding white noise to the targets increased the extent of masking for both groups. These results suggest (1) that masking does not impose a substantive constraint on vowel perception in running speech, and (2) that multiple strategies may exist for vowel recognition.     

THE GENERALIZATION EFFECTS OF PARENT TRAINING ACROSS STIMULUS SETTINGS

Five parents of nonverbal children were trained in two home settings to modify antecedents and consequences to their children's vocalizations. Generalization effects of the parent training on both the parent's and children's behaviors under different stimulus conditions were investigated using multiple-baseline designs. Increases in parent prompting and reinforcing their children's vocalizations generalized only minimally to a new setting in the home where parent training had not occurred. Child increases in vocalizations produced by the parents in the training settings did generalize to this new setting in the home. There was minimal generalization of child vocalizations to a free-play setting at school. In a formal speech session conducted by a behavior specialist at school, only one child showed definite increases in acquisition rate as a function of the parents starting to train the sound at home.     

The use of visual and name codes in scanning and classifying colors

The effect of incongruent color words on speed of classifying ink colors was measured in visual scanning tasks and in card sorting tasks. In both cases, little or no interference effects were noted when the classification allowed focusing on a single ink color or a set of highly similar colors (adjacent hues). Substantial interference occurred when the task required grouping of three dissimilar colors (nonadjacent hues). These findings suggest that the relative efficiency of name and visual codes in making perceptual classifications is largely dependent upon the memory requirements imposed by the task.     

A sensitive period for the acquisition of a nonnative phonological system

Immigrants who had learned English at various ages and who had been in the United States for various amounts of time were judged for degree of accent in English. It was found that age at arrival was a strong predictor of degree of accent, while length of stay had very little effect. Other practice and motivational factors were related to accent only by virtue of their correlation with age at arrival. It was suggested that a sensitive period exists for the acquisition of a nonnative phonological system.This article was adapted from a doctoral dissertation for the Department of Psychology and Social Relations, Harvard University, 1973 (unpublished), which was supported by NSF Grant No. GS-36263 and the Radcliffe Institute.     

Society,self, and mind in moral philosophy: The scottish moralists as precursors of symbolic interactionism

Many of the concepts central to symbolic interactionism were anticipated by the eighteenth century Scottish moralists. The symbolic-interactionist and Scottish moralist orientations both hold that society alone engenders uniquely human qualities, self arises through sympathetic interaction, and mind and self reconstruct their environments. George H. Mead's conception of thought as internal dialogue between the “I” and “me” aspects of the self and his notion of the “generalized other” were foreshadowed by some of the Scottish moralists, particularly Adam Smith. These schools differ, though, in their treatments of emotion, communication, political structures, and the origin of sympathy.     

Interpreting idioms

Immediate comprehension processes involved in the interpretation of idiomatic expressions were investigate. Idioms like bury the hatchet were used in sentential contexts that (1) biased the listener toward a literal interpretation, (2) biased the listener toward a figurative interpretation, or (3) left the interpretation ambiguous between the literal and figurative readings. In control sentences, the final words of the idioms were used in nonidiomatic expressions. Listeners monitored the sentences for specified targets. In all cases, the target words were the final words of the idiomatic phrases. The listeners were instructed to detect words that were identical to cue words, that rhymed with the cue words, or that were members of semantic categories specified by cue words. Thus, hatchet was cued with either hatchet, ratchet, or a tool. Reaction-time latencies from the onset of the targets to the listeners' responses were obtained. Identity, Rhyme, and Category matches were detected more rapidly in all three idiomatic contexts than in the nonidiomatic controls. These results suggest that idioms are automatically processed as discrete lexical entries, and that previously observed reaction time advantages for figurative expressions may reflect integrative processes rather than retrieval of meaning.This research was supported by PHS Training Grant T32 MH 15134-02 from the National Institute of Mental Health. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, August 1981.