The concept of development in contextualism

Contextualism, a world view or paradigm which suggests the role of social, cultural, and historical change in individual development, became the focus of increasing interest throughout the 1970s. Nevertheless, despite the suggestion that contextualism offered a new philosophical position from which to derive concepts and theories of development, criticism occurred because it was believed that the dispersive nature of contextualism obviated the formulation of a useful definition of development. We review the characteristics of the contextual paradigm and argue for a principled integration (as opposed to an eclectic one) between selected features of contextualism and of organicism. The former approach offers a dispersive view of the nature of variables involved in development and the latter provides an integrative one. We attempt to forge a probabilistic epigenetic, or developmental-contextual, paradigm for the study of human development, one which relies on the concept of integrative levels and which conceives of the causal variables of development as interacting in a temporally probabilistic manner.     

Children's developmental understanding of ethnicity and race

Research on children's development of ethnic cognition from preschool through adolescence was reviewed. This review was based on research conducted on (a) children's ethnic cognition, (b) children's social-cognitive development, (c) children's understanding of a variety of social status, and (d) Quintana's model of children's understanding of ethnicity. Four developmental levels were described: Integration of affective and perceptual understanding of ethnicity (level 0), literal understanding of ethnicity (level 1), social and nonliteral perspective of ethnicity (level 2), and ethnic-group consciousness and ethnic identity (level 3). For each developmental level, applied implications were discussed.     

Emotional disturbances and their interaction with neuropsychological deficits

The interaction and relationships between neuropsychological tests (which are principally oriented to intellectual and cognitive abilities) and tests of personality and emotional status are complex, but nevertheless important in the clinical assessment of brain-damaged persons. Are indications of emotional disturbances to be expected as a direct consequence of brain damage? If so, how can the indications of emotional disturbances be differentiated from results obtained with psychiatrically disturbed (non-brain-damaged) subjects? Some authors have presumed that emotional disturbances, such as depression, acute anxiety, etc., in their own right cause impaired performances on neuropsychological tests, whereas other authors have proposed that brain damage predisposes the individual to demonstrate evidence of emotional disturbances. If emotional disturbances cause impairment on neuropsychological tests, why is it that so many emotionally disturbed persons without brain damage tend to perform normally on neuropsychological tests? This review of relevant publications considers (1) different general approaches to these questions and their implications for neuropsychology, (2) evidence of differential sensitivity to brain damage of neuropsychological and emotional instruments, (3) the sensitivity and specificity of self-assessments and complaints of head-injured subjects, (4) MMPI findings among head-injured subjects and in interaction with neuropsychological measurements, and (5) principles and guidelines that may be of value in clinical application of findings reported in the literature.     

Occupational knowledge and career development in adolescence

In an effort to extend our knowledge of career development, two indices of career maturity were investigated in a sample of 6029 high school seniors sampled from 57 Texas public school districts. The study investigated both the degree to which late adolescents choose occupations whose educational requirements match their stated educational goals and the degree to which students' vocational interests are compatible with their occupational choices. The correlations between educational plans and educational requirements of the chosen occupations were .41 or less. Of the subjects who claimed to have at least considerable understanding of their first choice career, only about half planned to achieve the amount of education appropriate to enter that occupation. Subjects' perceptions of how well they understood their occupational choices were also negligibly related to the compatibility of their vocational interests and their career choices. Although educational understanding and interest compatibility both contribute to realism of occupational choices, the correlation between these two indices of career maturity accounted for less than 1% of the variance.     

A life-span,life-space approach to career development

A career is defined as the combination and sequence of roles played by a person during the course of a lifetime. These roles include those of child, pupil or student, leisurite, citizen, worker, spouse, homemaker, parent, and pensioner, positions with associated expectations that are occupied at some time by most people, and other less common roles such as those of criminal, reformer, and lover. A Life-Career Rainbow is presented as a means of helping conceptualize multidimensional careers, the temporal involvement in, and the emotional commitment to, each role. Self-actualization in various roles, role conflicts, and the determinants of role selection and of role performance are discussed. The use of the Rainbow in career education and in counseling is briefly considered.     

Attention of 4-month infants to discrepancy and babyishness

A set of four facial stimuli derived from the Bolton standards of craniofacial development representing a human male at 6 months, 3, 8, and 18 years of age were used in a test of Lorenz's concept of babyishness and of the discrepancy hypothesis. Each 4-month-old subject was habituated to a criterion with one of the four stimuli and then presented with one of the four as a new stimulus. The design and analysis permitted the response to a new stimulus to be broken down into a component attributable to the physical characteristics of the new stimulus and a part attributable to its discrepancy from the familiar standard. The data revealed longer looking at the infant facial stimulus, but no difference in a rating of affect accompanying fixation. This lent partial support to the babyishness concept for infant subjects. Both fixation and affect increased monotonically with magnitude of discrepancy. The increasing rather than curvilinear result presumably derived from the failure of these stimuli (which were common to the infant's experience) to generate extreme levels of subjective uncertainty.     

A developmental study of semantic elaboration and interpretation in recognition memory

Two experiments examined semantic elaboration and interpretation in recognition memory of 4-year-olds and college students. Subjects were presented pictures of color-specific and non-color-specific items, and then tested for their recognition of the chroma of the items. In Experiment 1, one-half of the presentation items were black and white and one-half colored, and testing always involved one black and white and one colored choice. In Experiment 2, all of the presentation items were colored, and testing always involved two colored choices. In both studies, the pattern of results of the two age groups was similar. Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that recognition judgments were based on representations that were elaborated with preexperimentally acquired semantic color information, and Experiment 2 also indicated that recognition judgments were based on representations that contained interpretive information about the appropriateness of the colors of the items. The results were considered to support and extend the view that when young children and adults share a common knowledge base, they are likely to engage in similar and extensive semantic processing.     

A theory of careers encounters sex: Reply to Holland (1976)

This paper is the third in a series beginning with a report (by the authors) of research on the application of Holland's theory of careers to women and men. Holland's response, “The Virtues of the SDS …” is considered, in particular, research he cites on the effect of the Self-Directed Search (SDS) on counselees and his advocacy of raw score reports of personality patterns. The widely divergent career options suggested to men and women by SDS raw scores are noted and misunderstandings concerning the implications of Holland's assessment procedures for his theory are discussed. Holland's defense of raw score reports of personality characteristics is found wanting, especially in light of the support provided for his theory by normed scores.     

Reading skill and the minimum distance principle: A comparison of listening and reading comprehension

Experiment I compared the listening and reading comprehension of sentences which follow the Minimum Distance Principle, e.g., John tells Bill to bake the cake, and of those which do not, e.g., John promises Bill to bake the cake. Third, fourth, and fifth graders were tested. Support for Chomsky's Stage analysis of mastery of the Minimum Distance Principle was found for the listening but not for the reading task. Reading skill level was found to be positively correlated with Stage and a significantly better predictor of promise performance than was age or IQ. Experiment II investigated the effect of the composition of the experimental presentation list on performance by comparing comprehension when the list contained only promise or tell sentences with that obtained when the list contained both types of sentences. For half the subjects, performance differed as a function of the list composition: Implications of these findings for the assessment of the development of language competence are discussed.