The effect of reinforcement for global or analytic strategies on the performance of reflective and impulsive children

Second and sixth grade impulsive and reflective children were administered a conceptual style task with a modification that children were reinforced specifically for either global or analytic processing. Results indicated that both reflectives and impulsives were capable of offering either a global or analytic hypothesis under appropriate reinforcement. Results were interpreted as indicating the relevance of motivational factors to reflection/impulsivity and cognitive style.     

Critical flicker frequency and intelligence

Tests of verbal intelligence (Concept Mastery Test) and nonverbal intelligence (Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices) showed nonsignificant zero-order correlations and a nonsignificant multiple correlation with critical flicker frequency (CFF), in 100 university students. Age-partialled correlations were even lower, and corrections for attenuation and restriction of range yielded unimpressive results. It was concluded that CFF has a negligible relationship to psychometric intelligence and is probably a poor tool in the investigation of the nature of g.     

Social comparisons with siblings made by adolescents with a learning difficulty

Social comparisons and the family environment are important antecedents of self-esteem. In this study the self-esteem and perceptions of stigma of 50 adolescents with a mild-moderate learning difficulty were measured. The self-esteem and stigma scores were factor-analysed to produce five factors: Positive self; Social competence; Being different; Anxiety; and Work competence. Social comparisons made by the adolescents between themselves and their siblings were also measured. Most adolescents 'preferred' (chose more often and gave high scores to) older same-sex siblings while younger opposite-sex siblings were the least preferred (were chosen less often and derogated). An explanation for these findings is suggested in terms of defensive social comparisons due to the loss of self-esteem in having a younger sibling ‘overtake’ the adolescent on developmental milestones, and in the tendency for non-handicapped pre-pubescent children to derogate the opposite sex during gender identity formation. This explanation is supported by the finding that the adolescents with younger siblings scored higher on the Anxiety factor than those who compared themselves with older siblings. Those with younger same-sex siblings were the most anxious. There was also a tendency for adolescents with siblings to score lower on one of the factors than adolescents with no sibling. The discussion raises the questions of how to deal with social comparisons within the family and how to talk to the child with mild learning difficulties about his or her handicap.     

RALPH WENDELL BURHOE: HIS LIFE AND HIS THOUGHT

Abstract. This third installment in David Breed's intellectual biography of Ralph Wendell Burhoe focuses upon the impact of his thought on the Unitarian Universalist Association and that group's role in Burhoe's career. Dana McLean Greeley, elected president of the American Unitarian Association in 1958, was a key figure in Burhoe's eventual participation in the project, "The Free Church in a Changing World." Burhoe's emphasis on the need for doctrine that could communicate religious wisdom in terms of science stood in tension with free-church tradition. Nevertheless, the section of the project's final report, titled "Theology and the Frontiers of Learning," largely accepted Burhoe's program for a new natural theology based on science. This project brought Burhoe's program to the attention of the denomination and led to the invitation in 1964 from Malcolm Sutherland, on behalf of Meadville/Lombard Theological School in Chicago, of which he was president, for Burhoe to implement his program in the new curriculum of that school. Burhoe accepted.     

Structures and strictures: Some functional limitations on the course of cognitive growth

A functional (as opposed to structural) theory of intellectual development is presented, and used to generate specific performance models for Piagetian tasks involving the control of variables. On the basis of these models, it is concluded that intelligent, field independent 7- and 8-year-olds should be able to acquire the control of variables scheme, even though they have not yet acquired either conservation of weight or the combinatorial system. Preliminary data (n = 52) are presented to support this conclusion. They are discussed with regard to Piaget's formal theory of intellectual development, and the functional limitations of development on learning.     

Developmental differences in frequency judgments of words and pictures

Children in kindergarten, third, and fifth grades were presented a list of either pictures or words (with items presented for varying numbers of times on the study trial). In both picture and word conditions, half of the Ss estimated how many times each item had been presented (absolute judgments) and the other half judged which of two items had occurred more often on the study trial (relative judgments). The primary finding was that while frequency judgment performance improved with age for both pictures and words, there was relatively greater improvement for pictures (i.e., the picture-word difference increased with age). These results lend strong support to the frequency theory of discrimination learning and, in particular, may be useful in accounting for effects associated with age and with age by stimulus mode interactions.     

"Square-wave stimuli" and neonatal auditory behavior: some comments on Ashton (1971), Hutt el al. (1968) and Lenard et al. (1969)

Recent work reporting neonatal auditory responses to complex tones generated by applying electrical square-wave stimuli to loudspeakers is reviewed with reference to the nature of the acoustic stimulus. Attention is particularly drawn to the harmonic structure of such tones in relation to the nonlinear frequency response of small loudspeakers. A $\text{1}\text{3}\text{-}\text{octave}$ band analysis of some “square-wave tones” is given to illustrate the difficulties of interpreting the results of work using such complex stimuli. The findings of the previous studies are ascribed essentially to differences in the stimulus bandwidth, rather than to differences in audiofrequency, and difficulties apparently generated by using differences in stimulus bandwidth as the sole explanation are at least partially resolved.     

A developmental study of pronouncing responses in the discrimination learning of words and pictures

Subjects at three age levels were administered picture pair or word pair discrimination lists. They pronounced or pointed as a method of choice, and they pronounced or pointed at the correct item (or remained silent) during rehearsal. The results indicated that with picture pairs, pronunciation facilitated learning as a method of choice and a type of rehearsal in nursery school Ss. For fifth grade and college Ss, there was no significant difference between pronouncing and pointing as a method of choice. However, spoken rehearsal was superior to control performance for fifth grade Ss. College Ss performed equally well in the control and pronouncing conditions, but pointing during rehearsal produced significantly more errors than pronouncing. Word pairs produced no significant pronunciation effects. These results were discussed within an internalization of speech perspective.