Mary McLeod bethune and the education of black girls

Traditional definitions of feminism do not hold for some black women like Mary McLeod Bethune who had to overcome the dual burdens of race and sex in order to build a school for black girls in the racially tense South during the early part of the 20th century. Ever a pragmatist, Bethune seized the opportunity offered by the rhetoric of domesticity and certain stereotypical views of blacks in order to advance the higher cause of uplift and self-sufficiency for black women through education.     

HyperCard administration of a block-design task

HyperCard (Atkinson, 1987) is a new development environment for the Macintosh that shows promise for use in psychological research and testing. In this paper, we discuss the development of HyperCard stackware with which a block-design task similar to that of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) can be administered. The reliability and validity of the computerized block-design task was evaluated by administering both the computerized task and the WAIS-R subtest to college undergraduates. Results indicated that the computerized task’s reliability compared favorably with that of the WAIS-R subtest. Validity coefficients were equivocal; although an elapsed-time measure showed moderate correlation between the tasks, the numbers of designs correctly completed in each condition were not significantly correlated.     

Teaching students to model neural circuits and neural networks using an electronic spreadsheet simulator

An electronic spreadsheet simulator can be used to enable students to conduct simulated microelectrode recording experiments. In addition, it can be used both to let students explore the operation of models of hypothetical neural networks and to let them design and develop their own neural models.     

Correlates of adult and child perceptions of social competency

In this study, the relationship between two commonly used measures of social competency, peer ratings of perceived status and adult ratings of assertiveness, were examined. In Phase I, high and low sociometric status children were videotaped responding to a series of role-play scenes; performance on these scenes was then rated retrospectively by adults for overall assertiveness. In Phase II, a second group of children who were unfamiliar with the videotaped children observed the taped scenes and provided ratings of likability, intelligence, working together, and attractiveness. In general, results revealed that children and adults differed in their ratings of the videotaped children. Further, boys used different cues in their ratings than did girls. More specifically, the sociometric status of girls was related to perceived attractiveness, whereas the sociometric status of boys was more closely related to perceived intelligence. Such findings suggest that children and adults look for and use different cues in their judgments. Given these differences, it is concluded that child and adult ratings should not be used interchangeably in the assessment of, and evaluation of, social competency in children.Portions of this research were supported by a grant from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services.     

References for motor tasks--gender differences across age in motor performance: a meta-analysis

In 1985 we published a meta-analysis of gender differences across age in motor performance in Psychological Bulletin, but it did not include an indexing of each motor task to the references from which it was obtained. This paper provides a table listing the 20 motor tasks and the references from which data for each task were taken. The range of tasks was from fundamental movements (e.g., catching, jumping, running, throwing) to motor fitness (e.g., agility, arm hang, balance, grip strength) to perceptual-motor abilities (e.g., anticipation timing, fine eye-motor coordination, pursuit-rotor tracking, reaction time). The arm hang was represented in the fewest papers (n = 2) while the dash and long jump were most frequently referenced (n = 21).     

Book Reviews

The Psychological Record -     

Implications of memory and language dysfunction in the naming deficit of senile dementia

Young normals, elderly normals, and patients with either mild-to-moderate or severe senile dementia of the Alzheimer type (SDAT) were administered several tests of language function and remote memory. On all of the language tests examined, elderly normals exhibited a mild, nonsignificant performance decrement relative to the young normals. Advanced SDAT patients were markedly impaired on all of the tests. Early dementia patients were most impaired, relative to aged normals, on tests of object naming, category instance fluency, and remote memory. The deficit was smaller on the WAIS vocabulary subtest, on selecting the name of a visually presented object, and on recalling the function of an object. Early SDAT patients were least impaired in selecting the picture of an object after its name had been provided and in selecting objects that belong to a specified functional category. The results are consistent with the notion that the language dysfunction in early SDAT is due to a deficit in semantic memory function in which general, categorical information remains available whereas information about specific attributes becomes less accessible. The object naming test might be useful in the assessment of treatment effects upon SDAT because of its sensitivity and specificity to dementia, its high face validity, and its independence of recent memory.