Order of Attainment of the Mental Structures for Five of Piaget's Logical,Infralogical, and Formal Tasks

This study explored the relationship between illegitimate birth and cognitive development among 513 boys on probation. Prior research has shown that being part of a single-parent household leads to diminished verbal capacities and often puts a child in greater danger of abuse and neglect. Frequent abuse is thought to lead to the enhancement of visual and spatial skills relative to verbal skills through a process of “frozen watchfulness”. I hypothesized that illegitimate boys from one-parent homes would have greater verbal-performance discrepancy scores than would boys from other combinations of birth status and family structure. These boys had the lowest verbal IQ and highest performance IQ scores and, hence, the largest discrepancy. These boys also suffered the highest degree of abuse and neglect of all four birth status/family structure combinations studied.     

Psychometric Evidence of a Multidimensional Measure of Prosocial Behaviors for Spanish Adolescents

Prior theories and scholars rarely distinguished between distinct forms of prosocial behaviors (i.e., actions intended to benefit others) and most scholars operationalize prosocial behaviors as a global construct. Furthermore, stringent tests of psychometric properties of prosocial behavior measures are rare, especially in countries other than the United States. The present study was designed to examine the structure and functions of a multidimensional measure of prosocial behaviors in youth from Spain. Six hundred and 66 adolescents (46% girls; M age = 15.33 years, SD = 0.47 years) from Valencia, Spain, completed the Prosocial Tendencies Measure-Revised (PTM-R), measures of sympathy, perspective taking, and a global measure of prosocial behavior. Results showed that the hypothesized 6-factor structure of the PTM-R had good fit, the best fit model as compared to alternative models, and that there were several unique patterns of relations between specific forms of prosocial behaviors and sympathy, perspective taking, and the global measure of prosocial behavior. Furthermore, although there were significant gender differences in some forms of prosocial behaviors, the structure of the PTM-R was equivalent across gender. Discussion focuses on the implications for theories and measurement of prosocial behaviors.     

On the Theories and Problems of Adolescence

Temptation behavior was studied in four groups of elementary school children (control, please-experimenter, competition, please-experimenter/competition) in an attempt to assess the influence of intangible incentives upon resistance to temptation. The results indicated that the frequency of transgression in both young and old males was unrelated to the experimental manipulations. Female Ss, on the other hand, while unresponsive to “experimenter warmth,” exhibited a much higher incidence of cheating when given a competitive set. This was true of both young and old females. The implications of these findings for research using measures of resistance to temptation are discussed.     

Family Functioning and Psychological Well-Being,School Adjustment,and Problem Behavior in Chinese Adolescents With and Without Economic Disadvantage

Using an indigenously developed measure of family functioning, the author examined the association between family functioning and adolescent adjustment in 1,519 Chinese adolescents. Results showed that family functioning was significantly related to measures of adolescent psychological well-being (existential well-being, life satisfaction, self-esteem, sense of mastery, general psychiatric morbidity), school adjustment (perceived academic performance, satisfaction with academic performance, and school conduct), and problem behavior (delinquent and substance abuse behavior). Family functioning was generally more strongly related to measures of adolescent adjustment for adolescents with economic disadvantage than for adolescents without economic disadvantage.     

Assessment of Commitment to Equal Opportunity Goals in the Military

The purpose of this study was to contrast two methods of assessing commitment to equal opportunity (EO) goals. Students training at the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) to be military EO advisors were the subjects of the study. The validity and reliability of DEOMI's measure of EO commitment, the Interpersonal Skills Development Evaluation (ISDE), were assessed. Slides were used to present cue words associated with various categories, including EO issues (e.g., discrimination and racism), to the DEOMI students. The students rated their association of these cue words with their current concerns and the emotional arousal evoked (two variables related to goal commitment; cf. Klinger, 1988). Students were then asked to recall as many of these words as they could. Although the ratings and the free-recall scores for the EO words were correlated with each other (support for the word-rating approach to measuring EO commitment), they were not significantly correlated with students' ISDE ratings. Other problems of validity and reliability for the ISDE are discussed.     

The Constancy of the Stanford-Binet IQ from Three to Five Years

Kindergarten and first-grade children giving nonintentional moral judgments were divided into three equated groups (Ns = 6), in each of two studies. Two groups performed with models (adult or peer) giving intentionality responses, with the third a control. During training, three Ss and three models in a group performing alternately were given social reinforcement for intentionality responses to Piaget-type stories. On an immediate posttest, both training groups in each study showed significant intentionality response gains from pretest and significantly exceeded their control group (ps < .05), while not differing significantly from each other. In study #2, a delayed posttest showed similar training durability for both training groups; both increased nonsignificantly in intentionality responses, continuing to exceed the controls (ps < .05).     

The demotion of alpha‐homo sapiens: Consciousness,punctuated equilibrium,and the laws of the game

The result of using Eigen and Winkler's LIFE/DEATH GAME to integrate Rashevksy's social physics and Rapoport's mathematical game theory, synchrony removes the arbitrariness from problems of ethics. It focuses on the primary conflicts between strategies that optimize individual survival and those that optimize survival of groups. According to synchrony, cooperation is an optimal strategy, not because cooperation conforms to some ethical pattern, but because the evolution of our technical societies has made the alternatives to cooperation potentially lethal at all levels of human interaction. Eigen and Winkler offer hypercycles as a possible method of resolving problems that conventional wisdom has labeled “irreconcilable differences.”

Combined with the findings of clinical psychologist Paul Meehl and cultural anthropologist Magoroh Maruyama, Eigen and Winkler's LIFE/ DEATH GAME indicates that a pattern of reasoning, called Alpha‐H, is not only a formidable obstacle to cooperation, it threatens contemporary societies with extinction through violent conflicts, social upheavals economic collapse or all three together.

The Demotion of Alpha‐H argues that an inability to deal constructively with change and/or diversity is Alpha‐H's fatal flaw. And the removal of gender bias toward opponent processes reasoning is a crucial step toward correcting it. The key concept is the LIFE/DEATH GAME.     

On Some Affinities of Morin’s Complex Thinking with That of Chinese Classic Philosophy

Morin (1921) founded the complex mode of thinking in order to remedy the defects of the Western classic simple mode of thinking. In doing so, he approached to some degree the mode of thinking inherent to the Eastern civilization. This article elucidates that for some principles of Morin's complex thinking, such as correlation of opposites, recursive causality, and union of unity of multiplicity, there were similar ideas in Chinese classic philosophy. This shows that the complex paradigm of thinking, in a certain point of view, will be the fusion of Western and Eastern cultural factors. Besides, in integrating his theory of complexity with the reality of our time to find out solutions to the issues of globalization, Morin has become one of the representative thinkers of the planetary age of humankind.     

Setting Generalization during Self-Reinforcement with Educationally Handicapped Children

Eight educationally handicapped boys ranging in age form 10 to 11 years old and described as the worst behavior problems in their class participated in a series of single-subject studies carried out in their self-contained classrooms. Three served as target subjects, using self-reinforcement procedures to increase their sustained on-task behavior in a treatment setting; five served as generalization subjects. Data were collected in three settings within the self-contained classroom; an early morning treatment setting, a late morning generalization setting, and an afternoon generalization setting. The three target subjects averaged a 51% increase over their baseline median levels of sustained on-task behavior in the treatment setting. They averaged 84% and 96% generalization to the late morning and afternoon generalization settings, respectively. These results demonstrate that self-reinforcement can produce setting generalization of treatment effects in the absence of prior externally determined reinforcement. Evidence for subject and subject-setting generalization was also obtained.     

Self-Management Training With Families of Insulin-Dependent Diabetic Children:

In a control group design with a multiple baseline across behaviors component, insulin dependent diabetic children and their parents were trained in self-managment. Parents and children conducted behavior change projects related to diabetes health care and a metabolic measure of diabetes control was obtained. When compared with control subjects, self-managment subjects reported a large decline in diabetes related family conflict and an increase in compliance with the medical regimen. These changes were maintained at six month follow-up. Both experimental and control subjects exhibited signficant improvements on the metabolic measure of diabetes control. Implications of these findings are discussed.