Neutralizing sexist titles in Holland's Self-Directed Search: What difference does it make?

Sex-role stereotyping in the linguistic structure of Holland's Self-Directed Search (SDS) was examined. A revised SDS was constructed involving the removal of all masculine-toned terminology from the items and test-taking instructions, as well as the affixing of the letters M/F and F/M to all occupational titles and terms commonly perceived as gender specific. Subjects were 266 lower division female students at a large state university; 133 subjects completed the standard SDS and 133 completed the revised form. Following SDS assessment, subjects rated their inventory with respect to perceived sexual equality. Comparison variables included: daydreams, occupations' scores, summary codes, and subsequent occupational choices. Occupational choices at each stage of the assessment process were classified as nontraditional or traditional choices for women. Results indicated that across all indices derived from the standard and revised versions of the SDS, there were no significant differences in these subjects' performance. The subjects did perceive the two inventories differently, with subjects completing the standard SDS viewing it as slightly less equitable.     

Generalization effects of social skills training in chronic schizophrenics: An experimental analysis

Social skills training was administered to three (one male and two female) chronic schizophrenic patients in a Partial Hospitalization Service. Treatment consisted of instructions. feedback and modeling, and was administered in 25. 26 and 31 sessions, respectively, for the three patients. Target behaviors were identified for each patient based on his/her responses to role-played interactions involving male and female partners in situations requiring commendatory or hostile assertion. Five to seven target behaviors were selected for each subject and were treated sequentially in a multiple baseline format. Skills training was highly successful for the two female patients but was only partially effective for the male patient. Two forms of generalization measures were included, indicating that the effects of training generalized from trained to untrained, and trained to novel role-played interactions. Follow-up assessments for the two female patients indicated that most of the effects persisted over 8–10-week post-treatment periods.     

Peripheral information extraction: A developmental examination of reading processes

Three experiments examining the information extraction processes are presented. In Experiments I and II, adults and children were presented paragraphs to read and search for specified targets, respectively. Two types of typographical (spatial) manipulations were used: case of the letters within the paragraphs was as normally experienced, or in alternating upper and lower case letters. Spacing between words was either as normal, filled with a neutral symbol, or absent. The response measures were reading and search speed in words per minute. Sensitivity to case (word shape) and space (word boundary) increased as a function of experience and was different for reading compared with search. In Experiment III subjects were asked to judge whether briefly presented pairs of letters were the same or different. Retinal (spatial) location was varied from trial to trial; dependent measure was reaction time. Results showed a developmental progression in response time with complex interactions. Theoretical interpretations of these data are discussed in support of the initial stage of Hochberg's peripheral to cognitive search guidance model.     

Effects of postresponse visual stimuli on visual discrimination learning in the rhesus monkey

To learn more about the mechanism (or mechanisms) involved with postresponse stimulus processing during discrimination learning, a series of studies was conducted with monkeys to determine why the combined relevant and irrelevant stimuli impair learning more than irrelevant stimuli appearing alone. It was found that: (a) the greater size and complexity of the combination of stimuli were not responsible for the greater deficit, while the presence of the relevant stimuli (S^D and S^Δ) within the stimulus combination apparently was; (b) the more similar the postresponse irrelevant stimuli were to the relevant stimuli the greater the deficit that resulted; and (c) monkeys that had earlier learned to discriminate the relevant and irrelevant features of a combination showed no learning impairment when this same stimulus combination was later presented after the response during a new learning problem. These results were interpreted as evidence that: (1) processes associated with learning a discrimination problem do not end with the execution of a choice response; (2) postresponse stimuli produce greater impairment in discrimination learning when they are distorted versions of the relevant stimuli; and (3) the impairment resulting from postresponse irrelevant stimuli occurs primarily when this misinformation is processed and misperceived as being relevant to learning the discrimination problem.     

Component processes of an overt rehearsal strategy in young children

The locus of facilitation due to rehearsal was investigated in three experiments with first-grade children. Several different overt acquisition strategies in a four-item sequential memory task were compared, including ordered repetition, item repetition, item labeling, and free strategy conditions. Experiment 1 showed that ordered repetition yields most of the facilitation due to rehearsal, and Experiment 2 demonstrated that the facilitation cannot be attributed to spaced practice. Experiment 3 showed that retrieval practice during study may improve memory performance but that the facilitation due to ordered repetition and retrieval practice is relatively short term. Mere repetition and labeling were not found to be significant component processes of rehearsal in any of the experiments. These results were discussed in terms of their relevance to rehearsal training studies and a differentiation between maintenance and elaborative rehearsal.     

Attitude polarization as a function of thought and reality constraints

It was suggested that thought changes cognitions to be more consistent with one's initial attitude direction and, therefore, results in attitude polarization. Specifically, it was predicted that polarization would be highest under thought with reality constraints absent, followed by thought with reality constraints present, followed by distration. During the first period of each of two trials, some of the 144 subjects were distracted from thinking about a preselected painting, others thought about the painting while viewing it, and others thought about it in its absence. Subjects were redistributed across the same three conditions for a second period. They then indicated their feelings about the painting. In the original study as well as a partial replication, females behaved as predicted: Thought with reality constraints absent produced the most polarization, followed by thought with reality constraints present, followed by distraction. In both the original study and the replication there was no systematic trend for the males. The theoretical implications of the female results and the sex differences were discussed.     

Language acquisition following hemidecortication: Linguistic superiority of the left over the right hemisphere

The language development of three 9- and 10-year-old children possessing only a right or a left hemisphere was studied. Surgical removal of one brain half antedated the beginning of speech, so each child has acquired speech and language with only one hemisphere. Different configurations of language skill have developed in the two isolated hemispheres: phonemic and semantic abilities are similarly developed but syntactic competence has been asymmetrically acquired. In relation to the left, the right brain half is deficient in understanding auditory language, especially when meaning is conveyed by syntactic diversity; detecting and correcting errors of surface syntactic structure; repeating stylistically permuted sentences; producing tag questions which match the grammatical features of a heard statement; determining sentence implication; integrating semantic and syntactic information to replace missing pronouns; and performing judgments of word interrelationships in sentences. Language development in an isolated right hemisphere, even under seizure-free conditions, results in incomplete language acquisition.     

Influence of linguistic complexity,rate of presentation,and interphrase pause time on auditory-verbal comprehension of adult aphasic patients

Among the variables affecting comprehension of linguistic stimuli by aphasic subjects are syntactic complexity and processing time. Comprehension performance of 15 aphasic adults was studied while altering the rate of speech presentation and varying the pause time between the major phrases within sentences of increasing grammatical complexity.Simple Active Affirmative Declarative Sentences, Negative, and Passive sentences were presented (1) at the rate of 150 words per minute (wpm) with 1-sec interphrase pause time (IPT); (2) 150 wpm with no pauses; (3) 120 wpm with 1-sec IPT; (4) 120 wpm with no pauses added.Performance was seen to vary with increasing syntactical complexity and as a function of processing time. Greater comprehension was seen with active affirmative than negative; greater with passive affirmative than with active negative. Clinical implications are discussed. Subjects demonstrated greater comprehension when sentences were presented at slower than normal rate; addition of interphrase pause time intervals aided comprehension. Combining slower rate of presentation and IPT intervals provided greatest increase in auditory processing time and showed concomitant increase in comprehension performance.