Development of social role understanding

The concepts of social roles and role intersections have been used to explain adults' social competence. However, children's social competence in terms of developing role concepts has not been systematically delineated. After a brief review of the few developmental studies that have been performed in this area, a systematic developmental sequence of role understanding in children from 1 to 13 years of age is discussed and a method for assessing such sequences is described. The sequence, which was based on K. W. Fischer's (1980, Psychological Review, 87, 477–531) construction-inclusion model of conceptual skill development, was tested in several studies using two sets of social roles and tasks and was found to be highly scalable and age related. The significance of role concept development is also discussed as it relates to the development of social competence in other domains.     

Ego development in perspective: Structural stage,functional phase,and cultural age-period models

Ego development is emerging as one of the more important areas of research in developmental psychology. This paper presents a structural stage approach to ego development and distinguishes it from two other models of ego development, which are termed functional phases and cultural ages. Two subtypes are also delineated within the structural stage approach—a monodomain and a multisubdomain—and the latter is argued for. These concepts are then illustrated through an analysis of four prominent ego development theories—those of Robert Selman, Robert Kegan, Jane Loevinger, and Erik Erikson. The important similarities and critical differences of the theories are clarified, which enables the authors to present a summary integration.     

Recall failure following successful generation and recognition of responses by alcoholic Korsakoff patients

Amnesic Korsakoff patients and controls were presented with twelve words, each shown individually in the presence of a weak associate. They were then asked to freely associate to 12 other words that were strong associates of the to-be-remembered (TBR) words. The Korsakoff patients generated, and were able to recognize, as many of the TBR words as the controls. Yet, in spite of this recognition ability, these same patients were subsequently unable to recall the critical TBR words when the weak cues were again presented. A follow-up study found that the same recognition results could be obtained with Korsakoffs months after initial presentation suggesting that the patients might initially have “recognized” the most highly associated words simply because they represented the most probable choices. Intermediate association prompts failed to generate correct responses. It was hypothesized that the Korsakoff patients cannot restructure their semantic associative hierarchy during input in such a way as to become sensitized to other than the strongest associates as prompts during recall.     

Positron brain imaging--normal patterns and asymmetries

Regional brain physiology was investigated in 11 normal resting right-handed subjects using positron emission tomography. Cerebral blood flow was studied in all subjects. Cerebral oxygen metabolism was studied in six subjects, and cerebral glucose metabolism was also studied in one subject. In five subjects, physiological activity was higher in left frontotemporal regions than right. These findings may be related to structural cerebral asymmetries or to activation of brain language centers.     

Mental capacity,mental effort,and cognitive style

This study tests the relationship between two theoretical models of human attentional capacity: Pascual-Leone's mental capacity and Kahneman's mental effort. It was found that significant and positive correlations exist between the empirical measures of the above constructs, and the relationship is demonstrated via construct validation by showing that the two constructs relate in the same manner to the subject's cognitive style (i.e., field-dependence/independence).