Effects of cooperative,competitive, and individualistic sets on performance in children's groups

Four instructional sets were employed in a study of task performance in triads of first- (age 7 years) and third-grade (age 9 years) children: promotive (equal rewards given to each participant for 12 trials); individualistic (rewards given in proportion to individual performance for 12 trials); contrient-promotive (winner take all for 6 trials followed by equal rewards for 6 trials); and contrient-individualistic (winner take all for 6 trials followed by proportional rewards for 6 trials). Performance under the promotive condition was superior to performance in the other conditions during the first half of the session. Promotive conditions improved performance during the second half of the session in triads that had received contrient instructions earlier but not to levels reached under continuous promotive conditions. Results are discussed in relation to theories of cooperation and competition.     

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.     

Infants' response to facelike patterns: Developmental changes between 10 and 15 weeks of age

Infants at two age levels were shown six patterns which represented three levels of stimulus complexity and two types of organization, facial and nonfacial. Ten-week-old infants showed a preference for the higher levels of complexity but acted as though they were oblivious to the type of organization which was imposed on the elements within the stimulus patterns. Fifteen week olds also showed increased attention to the higher levels of complexity. In addition, at the older age level differential responding was greater for stimuli which varied concomitantly in both facial resemblance and complexity (Facial organization) than for those which varied only in complexity (Nonfacial organization). The present results agree with those of previous studies in suggesting that there is a change between the ages of 10 and 15 weeks in the dimensions which underlie infants' response to facelike patterns.     

Facilitative effects of forgetting from short-term memory on growth of long-term memory in retardates

Competing explanations of the beneficial effect of spacing in retardate discrimination learning were tested. Three-trial multidimensional (“junk”) problems were presented concurrently to educable retardates with MAs over 8 years. The spacing interval spearating Trials 1 and 2 was filled with either zero, four, or eight interpolations, the interpolations being either trials on similar junk problems or repetitions of a single, well-learned dot-pattern discrimination. The principal findings were that: (1) while short-term retention of junk problems (as measured by Trial 2 performance) suffered greater interference from similar junk interpolations than from dot-pattern interpolations, long-term learning (as measured by a delayed Trial 3) was superior following the highly interfering junk problems; and (2) spacing facilitated learning only following highly interfering interpolations. These results are inconsistent with consolidation and rehearsal theories but support the prediction of the Sperber. Greenfield, and House (Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1973, 99) spacing model that forgetting from short-term memory facilitates retardate learning.     

Parafoveal identification during a fixation in reading.

This paper deals with the extent to which the perceptual span in reading differs as a function of grammatical categories. Subjects read short passages of text and their eye movements were monitored as they did. Irregularities were entered into the text in the subject, verb, or object location of active sentences. Eye movement data were analyzed to determine how far from these various locations the readers were aware of the irregularities. Although there were no differences due to the different parts of speech employed, there was evidence that the perceptual span varied at different locations in text. It was found that readers seldom fixated between sentences and when they did, they were obtaining little information from parafoveal vision.     

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.     

Hierarchical planning disability in the drawings and constructions of a special group of severely aphasic children

A small group of severely receptive aphasic children who appear to be suffering from a rare aphasic syndrome that has been referred to in the literature as "acquired aphasia with convulsive disorder in children" was tested on drawing and construction tasks which tap hierarchical planning abilities. Although they could draw and construct a complex figure when using a serial method, they could not do so when required to use hierarchical planning in building up the model in terms of its subunits. Their scores reflecting hierarchical ability were significantly lower than those of age-matched profoundly deaf and normal children. The nature of this disability is discussed and its effects noted on tasks in other modalities. It is argued that neither an auditory deficit theory nor a short-term memory deficit theory is adequate to account for the observed disabilities. Individual differences in the group were noted. It was also found that a smaller percentage of developmentally expressive aphasic children evidenced the hierarchical planning disability. It is concluded that a primary hierarchical planning disability in some aphasic children can account for some aspects of their linguistic disabilities and for disabilities on other nonlanguage and nonauditory tasks.     

A Chinese perspective on Kohlberg's theory of moral development

This essay uses the Chinese culture as an example to underline the culturally specific contextual problems regarding Kohlberg's theory of moral development and to point to a new direction for cross-cultural research in this area. The Western view of man as an autonomous being who makes free and rational choices as a moral agent is clearly reflected in Kohlberg's stages of moral development as well as his methodology. The Confucian view of man as an integral part of an orderly universe with an innate moral sense to maintain harmony is quite different. Further, the preferred mode of resolving human conflict in China is reconciliation and collective decision making rather than individual choice, commitment, and responsibility as in the West. In the light of these fundamental differences in the two cultural traditions, an alternative to Kohlberg's theory is suggested.