Development of sex biases in children: 40 years later

Children in grades 2–10 (200 of each sex) assigned desirable and undesirable traits to girls or boys. Half the subjects had an additional option of both sexes. Children in all grades assigned more desirable traits to their own sex and more undesirable traits to the opposite sex, in line with Smith (1939). Both sexes became less positive toward their own sex and more positive toward the opposite sex with increasing age. This pattern also had characterized girls in Smith's study, whereas, boys had shown the opposite pattern. Beginning in the sixth grade, girls were more apt than boys to assign desirable traits to their own sex. Availability of the “both sexes” option decreased stereotyping, especially in girls.     

Parent and Teacher Ratings in the Assessment and Prediction of Antisocial and Delinquent Behaviors

ABSTRACT Subjects consisted of a sample of two cohorts of approximately 100 boys each whose behaviors were rated by their parents and teachers. Criterion variables included antisocial behavior, based on parent, child, teacher, and interviewer reports, and delinquency, based on parent and child reports in addition to cumulative arrest data taken from juvenile court records. The data suggest that mothers are focused on the daily, irritating behaviors of their sons. Teachers, on the other hand, appear to focus on a relatively small number of items (e.g., child physically attacks others, associates with deviant peers), and thereby provide ratings that are better predictors of delinquency and arrest. When the mothers' ratings were constrained to include only items that were salient for teachers, their predictive validity coefficients approached the magnitude of the teacher coefficients.     

Prepulse inhibition of the startle eyeblink as an indicator of temporal summation

The inhibition of the human startle eyeblink response was assessed in three experiments in which the duration of the prepulse was manipulated. In all cases, inhibition of startle was more pronounced as prepulse duration increased from 6 to 50 msec. Inhibition of startle amplitude for single prepulses was not significantly different from that for paired prepulses (Experiment 1), but inhibition was more pronounced as prepulse intensity increased (Experiment 3). Varying the interval between prepulse offset and startle-stimulus onset had no significant effect on inhibition (Experiment 2). These data demonstrate the sensitivity of startle inhibition to prepulse duration, and suggest that this response system can be used to evaluate early temporal summation in the auditory system.     

Rationally developed fake-good and fake-bad scales for the Jesness Inventory

Develops two validity scales for the Jesness Inventory using a rational approach: a fake-good scale, Lie (L); and a fake-bad scale, Overt Symptomatology (OS). Effectiveness was assessed using 293 male delinquents classified as fake-good, fake-bad, or honest based on a matched-pair MMPI-A. L was moderately effective in detecting the fake-good set, and OS tentatively effective in detecting the fake-bad set. Both correlated well with their MMPI-A counterparts. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive power, negative predictive power, and overall effectiveness data were reported. The L scale and OS scale were related to race but differences were less than 1 raw score point. L was unrelated to age. OS was related to age, with younger children showing more willingness to admit to symptomatology. Age-based modified T-score norms were developed for the newly constructed scales using 1142 male and 360 female delinquents. ages 13–18.