Experimental design as a source of sex bias in social psychology

In order to determine whether there is evidence for sex bias in experimental design, abstracts of 312 experiments on interpersonal attraction and 244 experiments on aggression which used only male or only female subjects were coded according to types of variables studied. Results indicate that when females are subjects in experiments the independent variable manipulation is less likely to involve the active treatment or arousal of the subject and the dependent variable measurement is less likely to involve the active behavior of the subject, than when male subjects are used. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for how sex differences should be studied.Portions of this article were presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, New Orleans, September 1974. The authors would like to thank Howard Ehrlichman for his valuable comments.     

BELIEFS ABOUT THE CONSEQUENCES OF MATERNAL EMPLOYMENT FOR CHILDREN

A 24-item scale was developed to measure Beliefs about the Consequences of Maternal Employment for Children (BACMEC), including beliefs about both benefits (13 items) and costs (11 items). Studies of five samples ( n = 375) demonstrate that the total BACMEC scale and its subscales are highly reliable and have good convergent, divergent, and con-current validity. Scores on the Costs Subscale predicted greater sex-role traditionalism, women's employment status (not employed), and an older age of child at which mother's employment was deemed acceptable. Benefits scores predicted women's employment status (employed) and work hours (longer), younger age of child when maternal work is accept-able, and greater support for policies to aid working parents. The scales were not susceptible to a social desirability bias. Suggestions are provided for the use of the BACMEC scale in future research concerning employment and families.     

Evaluating Career Structures: An Essential Input to Effective Career Management and Counselling

Careers take place within the structures of jobs and career paths which organisations evolve over time. Career opportunities for individuals are largely determined by the factors which influence the dynamics of these structures. Simple techniques exist for picturing career structures and interpreting recent career patterns. Numerical models are well established which estimate future career opportunities. Although career patterns are changing, the effective use of internal labour markets is of increasing importance. Those involved in managing careers or counselling individuals should be better informed in this area and use information to tailor career moves and development activity to the reality of where and when career opportunities are likely to be available.     

The effect of enactment upon sentence imitation in preschool children

Preschool children imitated two matched lists of sentences varying in length, in syntactic complexity, and in semantic complexity. Sentences on one list were acted out with toys prior to imitating them. For 3-year-olds, enactment increased retention of all sentential variables: number of words, number of frames, number of propositions, and syntax. For children younger than 3 years, enactment increased only the number of words retained, while for children older than 4 years, enactment had a minimal effect on all sentential variables. In a second experiment, prior enactment had long-term effects on the degree to which children's spontaneous stories about the toys resembled the previous sentences that they had been given to imitate. Long-term effects, however, did not extend to retention of syntax. Enactment appears to increase both young children's interest in a sentence imitation task and the amount of semantic encoding in which they engage. Its effect, however, is mediated by the degree of mastery of relevant linguistic rules.Some of these data were presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Detroit, April 1983. The authors would like to thank Lorraine Chiasson, Judith Codd, and Susan Saba for their assistance with the data analysis.     

The relation between gesture and language in aphasic communication

Effective communication in aphasia depends not only on use of preserved linguistic capacities but also (and perhaps primarily) on the capacity to exploit alternative modalities of communication, such as gesture. To ascertain the capacity of aphasic patients to use gesture in their spontaneous communication, informally structured interviews were conducted with two Wernicke's aphasics and two Broca's aphasics, as well as with four normal controls. The performances of the patient groups were compared on the physical parameters of gesture, the points in the communication where gestures occurred, and several facets of the semantics and pragmatics of gesture. Generally speaking, the gestures of the aphasics closely paralleled their speech output: on most indices, the performance of the Wernicke's aphasics more closely resembled that of the normal controls. Wernicke's aphasics differed from normals in the clarity of their language and gestures: While individual linguistic units were often clear, the relation among units was not. In contrast, the Broca's aphasics equaled or surpassed the normal controls in the clarity of their communications. The results offer little support for the view that aphasic patients spontaneously enhance their communicative efficacy through the use of gesture; these findings can, however, be interpreted as evidence in favor of a “central organizer” which controls critical features of communication, irrespective of the modality of expression.     

A bidimensional model of pitch in the recognition of melodies

Pitch can be conceptualized as a bidimensional quantity, reflecting both the overall pitch level of a tone (tone height) and its position in the octave (tone chroma). Though such a conceptualization has been well supported for perception of a single tone, it has been argued that the dimension of tone chroma is irrelevant in melodic perception. In the current study, melodies were subjected to structural transformations designed to evaluate the effects of interval magnitude, contour, tone height, and tone chroma. In two transformations, the component tones of a melody were displaced by octave intervals, either preserving or violating the pattern of changes in pitch direction (melodic contour). Replicating previous work, when contour was violated perception of the melody was severely disrupted. In contrast, when contour was preserved the melodies were identified as accurately as the untransformed melodies. In other transformations, a variety of forms of contour information were preserved, while eliminating information for absolute pitch and interval magnitude. The level of performance on all such transformations fell between the levels observed in the other two conditions. These results suggest that the bidimensional model of pitch is applicable to recognition of melodies as well as single tones. Moreover, the results argue that contour, as well as interval magnitude, is providing essential information for melodic perception.     

Palatability of food as a factor influencing obese and normal-weight children''s eating habits

The type and amount of food leftover from school lunches by normal-weight and obese elementary school children was examined for its similarity to the pattern reported by Krassner et al. (1979) in a study of normal-weight and obese college students. In this study 102 observations of children between the ages of 9–11, were taken over eight lunch periods in their school cafeteria. Overall, the normal-weight children left only slightly more food uneaten than did the obese children. However, when food palatability was examined, it was found that normal-weight children left over twice as much palatable food as did obese children. Children did not differ on the amount of unpalatable food left uneaten.

These results suggest that Krassner et al.'s observation that obese adults leave less food on their plates may be extended to children and, further, that like obese adults, obese children may be more influenced by the palatability of food than their normal-weight peers.     

Social networks and college drinking: probing processes of social influence and selection

This study used a three-wave panel design (N = 119 complete cases for all waves) to test for social influence and selection in the relation of college students' heavy drinking and that of their social networks. Evidence emerged for both social influence and selection, leading the authors to probe more specialized issues related to each. Results regarding social influence revealed, further, that greater presence in the network of individuals that the focal respondent considered "drinking buddies" was predictive of one's own later drinking, controlling for potential confounds. Network demographic characteristics associated with a "risky" (i.e., heavy-drinking) network also were documented. An additional finding, important for selection, was that wave-to-wave change in average network drinking appeared to result primarily from network members with different drinking levels being added to and dropped from the network. Findings are discussed in the context of the recent renaissance in social-network research.     

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) immediately generalize the uncertain response

Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) have learned, like humans, to use an uncertain response adaptively under test conditions that create uncertainty, suggesting a metacognitive process by which human and nonhuman primates may monitor their confidence and alter their behavior accordingly. In this study, 4 rhesus monkeys generalized their use of the uncertain response, without additional training, to 2 familiar tasks (2-choice discrimination learning and mirror-image matching to sample) that predictably and demonstrably produce uncertainty. The monkeys were significantly less likely to use the uncertain response on trials in which the answer might be known. These results indicate that monkeys, like humans, know when they do not know and that they can learn to use a symbol as a generalized means for indicating their uncertainty.