Development: Compared to what?: Contrast effects in age-comparative paradigms

Recent controversies about judgment competence of preschool and adolescent children are considered as being a possible product of contrast effects. That is, perceived abilities of children of a given age group may depend on the ages of the other subjects in the experiment. An experiment was done to test the possibility of contrast effects in age-comparative experiments. One group of subjects read about three experimental tasks in which 6-year-old children performed better than 4-year-olds. A second group read about 6-year-olds performing worse than 8-year-olds on the same tasks. Performance levels of 6-year-olds were the same on the two forms. For each task subjects rated the competence of each of the two age groups on the task and predicted the performance of the two groups on a related task. Undergraduate subjects' competence ratings and predictions were higher for 6-year-olds when compared to 4-year-olds than when compared to 8-year-olds. Psychology graduate students showed the same contrast effect for predictions but not for competence ratings. The results are discussed in terms of potential biases in age-comparative methods in developmental psychology.     

The Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment: A comment on Elardo and Bradley's review

The published and unpublished research pertaining to Caldwell's Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) inventory was recently reviewed by R. Elardo and R. H. Bradley (Developmental Review, 1981, 1, 113–145). Their review was unfortunately deficient in a number of respects. For example, certain methodological issues bearing on the interpretation of the available data were either unrecognized or dismissed without adequate consideration. In addition, some of the data in the studies cited which contradicted or clouded their conclusions were omitted. An extension and reanalysis of the conclusions reached by Elardo and Bradley in light of recently published studies which were not included in their review, and data not discussed in the studies which were reviewed, is provided. Methodological problems are highlighted, and directions for future research are suggested.     

论社会科学的重要性--兼论淄博齐文化大市建设与社会科学的关系

社会科学的重要性越来越被人们发现和重视,在我国更是如此。社会科学对于一个国家、一个地区的经济和文化等方面的发展,特别是经济发展到一定程度以后,其巨大作用将日益凸显出来。我国是具有悠久历史文化传统的国家,这些悠久历史文化传统源于我国各个地方地域文化,是这些地域文化的有机统一。从社会科学的各个角度挖掘和研究这些历史文化遗产,无疑能够增加这些地区的文化底蕴,从而增强这些地区的社会和经济发展的后劲。社会科学意义重大,它是我们党领导人民取得胜利的重要法宝;它是我们党领导人民进行社会主义建设的重要法宝;它还是我们党领导人民进行改革开放的重要法宝。     

Gerstmann syndrome without aphasia: a longitudinal study

A case of "pure" and complete Gerstmann syndrome resulting from a focal vascular lesion in the posterior parietal area of the left hemisphere and not associated with aphasic disorder or general mental impairment is described. The initial symptom presentation of this patient supported the concept of the autonomous nature of the Gerstmann aggregate but longitudinal findings suggested that these symptoms did not in fact represent a coherent syndrome.     

Aphasic adults' understanding of complex adverbial sentences

Twelve aphasics with relatively preserved auditory comprehension were tested for their understanding of four adverbial sentence types expressing the temporal order of events. The relative effects of order of mention, adverbial choice, and adverbial clause placement on subjects' comprehension were investigated. Only adverbial choice was significant with aphasics producing more errors of temporal order on after than before sentences. Subjects' error patterns were not similar to those of children acquiring language. The results are discussed with respect to the theory of lexical marking and the regression hypothesis.     

Lexical decision for open- and closed-class words: failure to replicate differential frequency sensitivity

Bradley and her colleagues (D. C. Bradley, Computational distinctions of vocabulary type, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1978D. C. Bradley, M. E. Garrett, &; E. B. Zurif, in D. Caplan (Ed.), Biological studies of mental processes, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980) have reported a marked difference in frequency sensitivity between open- and closed-class words on a lexical decision task. This effect was obtained with normal subjects, but not with Broca's aphasics. Their results have already influenced experimental and theoretical investigations of syntactic processing. However, in three lexical decision experiments with normal subjects, modeled on those of Bradley et al., we failed to find such a theoretically interesting difference between the two classes. Instead, both classes showed similar reaction time frequency sensitivity for word frequencies less than approximately 316/million (H. Kucera &; W. N. Francis, Computational analysis of present-day English, Providence, RI: Brown Univ. Press, 1967, count); above 399/million, the closed class had an almost-flat function of reaction time versus the logarithm of the frequency, while the open class may have had too few members for meaningful assessment. Because reaction time may be a nonlinear function of log frequency, and because there is relatively little overlap between the frequency ranges of the two classes, comparisons of the members of the two classes which might straddle the function's inflection point must be made with extreme caution.     

Distraction,attentional conflict,and drivelike behavior

Two studies provide evidence supporting a distraction-conflict view of social facilitation effects. Study 1 demonstrated that presence of an audience produced drivelike effects on the latency and vigor of a motor response. This effect, however, only occurred when attending to the audience caused attentional conflict. Study 2 demonstrated that in a two-task setting, attentional conflict, resulting from having to choose which task to work on, led to poorer performance on a complex copying task (p < .01, one tailed) and a larger percentage of dominant responses on J. L. Cohen and J. H. Davis' (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973, 27, 74–85) hidden word task (p < .04, one tailed), relative to a yoked control. Study 2 is consistent with earlier reports that choice heightens drivelike effects, while Study 1 indicates that attentional conflict contributes to social facilitation phenomena.     

Dimensions of adolescent career development: A multi-instrument analysis

Dimensions of adolescent career development were assessed by several well-established, objectively scored instruments. Attention was given to the correlations between measures of academic achievement and career development. Correlations among 19 scales administered to 237 eleventh graders revealed three clusters of converging scale pairs, labeled “Certainty,” “Decision-Making,” and “Activity.” Four orthogonal factors were identified and given the following heuristic labels: “Cognitive Resources for Decision-Making,” “Decision-Making Style,” “Systematic Involvement in Career Decision-Making,” and “Decision-Making Stage/Certainty.” Results are discussed in relation to practical problems of instrument selection and score interpretation and in the context of theories of adolescent career development.