Test anxiety and reaction time for matching decisions

Subjects selected by test-anxiety level were presented pairs of words and asked to make judgments of physical identity, acoustic matching, or taxonomic category membership. Experiment 1 varied type of judgment between subjects; in Experiments 2 and 3, each subject made all three decisions. There was no consistent support for the hypothesis that, relative to low-anxiety subjects, high-anxiety subjects would show a more pronounced decrement in reaction times for semantic decisions than for nonsemantic decisions.     

Development of the appearance-reality distinction

Young children can express conceptual difficulties with the appearance-reality distinction in two different ways: (1) by incorrectly reporting appearance when asked to report reality (“phenomenism”); (2) by incorrectly reporting reality when asked to report appearance (“intellectual realism”). Although both phenomenism errors and intellectual realism errors have been observed in previous studies of young children's cognition, the two have not been seen as conceptually related and only the former errors have been taken as a symptom of difficulties with the appearance-reality distinction. Three experiments investigated 3- to 5-year-old children's ability to distinguish between and correctly identify real versus apparent object properties (color, size, and shape), object identities, object presence-absence, and action identities. Even the 3-year-olds appeared to have some ability to make correct appearance-reality discriminations and this ability increased with age. Errors were frequent, however, and almost all children who erred made both kinds. Phenomenism errors predominated on tasks where the appearance versus reality of the three object properties were in question; intellectual realism errors predominated on the other three types of tasks. Possible reasons for this curious error pattern were advanced. It was also suggested that young children's problems with the appearance-reality distinction may be partly due to a specific metacognitive limitation, namely, a difficulty in analyzing the nature and source of their own mental representations.     

Self-reported likelihood of sexually aggressive behavior: Attitudinal versus sexual explanations

The present study compared the relative effectiveness of sexuality variables versus attitudes hypothesized to be rape-supportive in the prediction of “likelihood to rape” (LR) and “likelihood to use sexual force” (LF) measures. This research was guided by the suggestion that understanding the variables which underlie LR and LF may shed light on the factors which cause some men to actually commit acts of violence against women. The results were inconsistent with viewing rape as primarily caused by sexual frustration or sexual maladjustment, since sexuality variables were generally not predictive of LF or LR. In contrast, a variety of rape-supportive attitudes and beliefs such as blaming the victim for her rape or viewing sexual violence as sexually arousing to women were successful predictors of both LF and LR. These data were interpreted as supporting theories of rape which consider cultural, socially transmitted attitudes about women and rape to be psychological releasers for sexual aggression. The findings also supported the notion of an “aggression toward women” continuum, rather than a conceptualization of rape as a discrete, isolated phenomenon with its own determinants.     

The relationship between treatment exposure times and changes in stuttering frequency during contingent stimulation

Four adult stutterers were exposed to 60 consecutive minutes of verbal contigent stimulation. In each session subjects spoke until a stuttering frequency stability criterion was met (baserate) followed by 60 min of exposure to the word wrong presented contingently upon each instance of stuttering. The data were analyzed according to changes in stuttering which occured following 20, 40, and 60 min of treatment exposure. The results revealed that stuttering frequency was reduced for all subjects during all three 20-min segments of the treatment condition. The only significant reductions in stuttering frequency, however, occured within the first 20 min of treatment.     

Racial differences in intelligence: The importance of the executive system

The race-IQ controversy arose at a time when psychometric views of intelligence dominated. Little attention was paid to more process-oriented models in spite of the fact they provide alternative perspectives on the causes of individual differences in problem-solving. We hypothesized that much of the IQ spread commonly observed between black and white children can be attributed to differences in components of their executive systems, including the knowledge base, control processes, and metacognitive states. To test this possibility, black and white children who differed significantly on fluid and crystallized intelligence were tested on multiple tasks reflecting components of the executive systems as well as on perceptual efficiency tasks. Striking group differences were observed in metamemory, stragegy use, and general knowledge, but few reliable differences were found in perceptual efficiency. Regression analyses showed that different factors predicted fluid and crystallized intelligence, with metamemory predicting the latter but not the former. An implication of these findings has potential educational significance: training directed at executive skills, introduce at an early age, might elevate learning and problem-solving skills in black children, thereby reducing racial differences in crystallized intelligence.     

Voice initiation and termination time in stuttering and nonstuttering children

Voice initiation time (VIT) and voice termination time (VTT) was measured in seven stuttering and eight nonstuttering children ranging in age from 4 yr, 6 mo to 6 yr, 10 mo. The experimental task was the production of /a/ in response to a 1000-Hz pure tone. Voice initiation time was defined as the period of time elapsing between the onset of the auditory stimulus and the onset of the subject's response of /a/, as displayed on an oscilloscope. Voice termination time was defined as the latency between termination of the stimulus tone and the point at which the oscilloscopic signal decreased by 90%. No statistically significant differences were found between the two groups with respect to either VIT or VTT. In addition, no apparent relationships were present among VIT, VTT, or stuttering severity.     

Public Opinion and Political Philosophy: The Relation between Social-Scientific and Philosophical Analyses of Distributive Justice

This paper considers the relation between philosophical discussions of, and social-scientific research into popular beliefs about, distributive justice. The first part sets out the differences and tensions between the two perspectives, identifying considerations which tend to lead adherents of each discipline to regard the other as irrelevant to its concerns. The second discusses four reasons why social scientists might benefit from philosophy: problems in identifying inconsistency, the fact that non-justice considerations might underlie distributive judgments, the way in which different principles of justice can yield the same concrete distributive judgments, and the ambiguity of key terms. The third part distinguishes and evaluates three versions of the claim that normative theorising about justice can profit from empirical research into public opinion: that its findings are food for thought, that they amount to feasibility constraints, and that they are constitutive of normatively justified principles of justice. The view that popular opinion about justice has a strongly constitutive role to play in justifying principles of distributive justice stricto sensu is rejected, but it is argued that what the people think (and what they can reasonably be expected to come to think) on distributive matters can be an important factor for the political theorist to take into account, for reasons of legitimacy, or feasibility, or both.     

Effects of relative nurturance and social power on observational learning and imitation

Preschool children observed two models, one of whom (controller of resources) controlled rewards dispensed to the child and to the other model (rival consumer of resources). The nurturance of the controller was varied in terms of his relative generosity towards the subject and rival consumer. Controllers were imitated to a greater extent than consumers only when the controller had been more nurturant to the child than to the rival consumer. Imitation of the controller and consumer were affected differently by the various conditions of nurturance, but children's learning of each model's behaviors were affected similarly by the conditions. The learning and imitative performance of each model's behaviors were uncorrelated, and imitation of one model did not correlate with imitation of the other. However, the learning of the two models' behaviors was highly correlated.     

Motivational bases in mixed-motive interactions: The effects of comparison levels

The relationship between reward level and the basic motives which underlie strategic choices (competitive and noncompetitive) in a mixed-motive game was examined from two theoretical perspectives. The “regret” interpretation proposed by McClintock and McNeel was compared to an approach based upon Thibout and Kelley's concept of comparison level (CL). Two independent variables, CL and Reward, were manipulated by varying the payoff rates in two playing series of the MDG. Initially, 50 iterations were played for high (4¢ per point) or low ($\text{1}\text{5¢}$ per point) incentive to provide subjects with outcomes upon which to base their CL's. The Reward manipulation was introduced in 150 subsequent trials of the game with subjects playing for 8¢ or 1¢ per point. The results show that the absolute magnitude of reward did not influence the extent of cooperative or competitive behavior. On the other hand, the magnitude of reward relative to CL was significantly associated with the degree of cooperative behavior—supra-CL outcomes yielding a higher frequency of cooperative behavior than infra-CL outcomes.