A meta-analytic review of gender variations in children's language use: talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech

Three sets of meta-analyses examined gender effects on children's language use. Each set of analyses considered an aspect of speech that is considered to be gender typed: talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Statistically significant average effect sizes were obtained with all three language constructs. On average, girls were slightly more talkative and used more affiliative speech than did boys, whereas boys used more assertive speech than did girls. However, the average effect sizes were either negligible (talkativeness, d=0.11; assertive speech, d=0.11) or small (affiliative speech, d=0.26). Larger effect sizes were indicated for some language constructs depending on either the operational definition of the language measure, the method of recording, the child's age level, the interaction partner (adult or peer), group size, gender composition, observational setting, or type of activity. The results are interpreted in relation to social-developmental and social-constructionist approaches to gender; these views are presented as complementary--rather than competing--meta-theoretical viewpoints.     

Expectancies for Sexually Abused Children: Evidence of Perceiver Bias

We investigated perceiver bias in relation to children labeled as sexually abused. Building on recent research indicating that adults perceive children with such a label as having more behavioral problems and lower achievement, we replicated and expanded upon an earlier study. We tested undergraduate students (N = 699), who judged a six-year old child's aggressive behavior in vignettes that varied on severity of the aggressive behavior, child gender, and family history (sexually abused, mother dying of cancer, normal). Perceiver bias was related to family history label for internalizing behavior problems and competence issues and child gender for internalizing behavior problems and externalizing behavior problems. Implications for educators and practitioners are discussed as well as routes for future research.     

Nodality effects during equivalence class formation: An extension to sight-word reading and concept development

Three students with moderate disabilities were taught to read and match-to-sample sight words comprising stimulus sets based upon the four food groups. We taught students conditional discriminations within four four-member sets using a single-sample/four-comparison procedure. Students were taught A-B, B-C, and C-D conditional discriminations for each of the four potential stimulus classes. Subsequent probes tested for relations based upon symmetry and one-node and two-node transitivity. The performances for all students indicated that symmetric relations emerged before one-node transitive relations, and that one-node transitive relations emerged before two-node transitive relations. These results are consistent with a pattern of responding, referred to as a "nodality effect," in which relations with fewer nodes are demonstrated prior to the demonstration of relations with a greater number of nodes. These results extend this area of research to sight-word reading for students with moderate disabilities.     

Collaboration in Business Schools: A Foundation for Community Success

Business schools are often thought of as being accountable for the individual student’s personal development and preparation to enter the business community. While true that business schools guide knowledge development, they must also fulfill a social contract with the business community to provide ethical entry-level business professionals. Three stakeholders, students, faculty, and the business community, are involved in developing and strengthening an understanding of ethical behavior and the serious impacts associated with an ethical lapse. This paper discusses the ways the business schools may enhance the student’s ethical knowledge and understanding, and proposes a roadmap that business schools may use to develop or strengthen a strong ethical culture. The authors, Leland Horn and Michael Kennedy, are third year doctorate of management students at Colorado Technical University, 4435 North Chestnut Street, Colorado Springs CO 80907.     

Spatiotemporal competition and task-relevance shape the spatial distribution of emotional interference during rapid visual processing: Evidence from gaze-contingent eye-tracking

People’s ability to perceive rapidly presented targets can be disrupted both by voluntary encoding of a preceding target and by spontaneous attention to salient distractors. Distinctions between these sources of interference can be found when people search for a target in multiple rapid streams instead of a single stream: voluntary encoding of a preceding target often elicits subsequent perceptual lapses across the visual field, whereas spontaneous attention to emotionally salient distractors appears to elicit a spatially localized lapse, giving rise to a theoretical account suggesting that emotional distractors and subsequent targets compete spatiotemporally during rapid serial visual processing. We used gaze-contingent eye-tracking to probe the roles of spatiotemporal competition and memory encoding on the spatial distribution of interference caused by emotional distractors, while also ruling out the role of eye-gaze in driving differences in spatial distribution. Spontaneous target perception impairments caused by emotional distractors were localized to the distractor location regardless of where participants fixated. But when emotional distractors were task-relevant, perceptual lapses occurred across both streams while remaining strongest at the distractor location. These results suggest that spatiotemporal competition and memory encoding reflect a dual-route impact of emotional stimuli on target perception during rapid visual processing.     

An exploration into the influence of academic and social values, procrastination, and perceived school belongingness on academic performance

The results of a structural equation model showed that a tendency to procrastinate, assessed early in college students’ first term, was positively related to social values, assessed as concerns over social exclusion, but was negatively related to academic task values and grade goal-setting. The results suggest that procrastination may be a partial mediator of the influence of academic and social values on perceived school belongingness. In addition, the tendency to procrastinate had a direct negative relationship with self-regulatory self-efficacy and perceived school belongingness and was positively related to perceived stress near the end of the term. There was also a statistically significant negative total effect of procrastination on performance-approach and mastery-approach goal orientation and end-of-term grade point average (GPA). Statistically significant positive total effects of performance-approach and mastery-approach achievement goal orientations on GPA were found. However, while a statistically significant direct positive effect of performance-approach orientation on GPA was found, a direct relationship between mastery-approach orientation and GPA was not statistically significant.     

Maltreated and Comparison Adolescents’ Recollections of Lifetime Residences: Relationship to Delinquency and Marijuana Use

This study of child welfare-affiliated maltreated youth (n?=?216) and comparison youth (n?=?128) from the same community (age M?=?18.21, SD?=?1.42) examined: 1. whether child/caregiver characteristics and maltreatment status were associated with lifetime number of residences; and 2. whether child/caregiver characteristics, residences, and maltreatment status were associated with delinquency and marijuana use. Maltreatment status, ever living with a nonparent caregiver, and being older were associated with more residences during childhood. More residences and male sex were associated with person offense delinquency and marijuana use. It is important to help caregivers who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods, especially families with child welfare involvement, understand the behavioral consequences of a high number of residences during childhood and adolescence and provide support for stable long-term housing.     

Viewpoint and orientation influence picture recognition in the blind

In the first three experiments, subjects felt solid geometrical forms and matched raised-line pictures to the objects. Performance was best in experiment 1 for top views, with shorter response latencies than for side views, front views, or 3-D views with foreshortening. In a second experiment with blind participants, matching accuracy was not significantly affected by prior visual experience, but speed advantages were found for top views, with 3-D views also yielding better matching accuracy than side views. There were no performance advantages for pictures of objects with a constant cross section in the vertical axis. The early-blind participants had lower performance for side and frontal views. The objects were rotated to oblique orientations in experiment 3. Early-blind subjects performed worse than the other subjects given object rotation. Visual experience with pictures of objects at many angles could facilitate identification at oblique orientations. In experiment 5 with blindfolded sighted subjects, tangible pictures were used as targets and as choices. The results yielded superior overall performance for 3-D views (mean, M = 74% correct) and much lower matching accuracy for top views as targets (M = 58% correct). Performance was highest when the target and matching viewpoint were identical, but 3-D views (M = 96% correct) were still far better than top views. The accuracy advantage of the top views also disappeared when more complex objects were tested in experiment 6. Alternative theoretical implications of the results are discussed.