Affordances and infant learning: A reply to Horowitz

We reply to three major points made by F. Horowitz (1983, Developmental Review, 3, 405–409) in her commentary on the ecological approach to infant knowing presented by E. Goldfield (1983, Developmental Review, 3, 371–404). We first clarify the relation between perceiving and acting from an ecological perspective, and distinguish between affordances as environmental properties scaled to the perceiver/performer and representations as mental structures. We then present a critique of the process of association offered by Horowitz as an explanation of infant learning. Association fails to specify the constraints on what is learned, while the ecological process of noticing affordances, presented by Goldfield, considers such constraints. We conclude by presenting operational criteria for measuring affordances and evidence that perception is scaled to the perceiver/performer.     

The Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler: Toward an Adlerian vocational theory

Within the past couple of decades, the Individual Psychology of Alfred Adler has become increasingly popular among consultants, educators, and psychotherapists alike. The approach also has gained the attention of several vocational researchers, and some vocational investigations on Adler's theory have appeared. Unfortunately, such empirical studies have been all too few, seemingly because no articulated framework exists of an Adlerian vocational theory. In this article, an Adlerian vocational theory is proposed. Specific hypotheses and corollaries, each derived from the substantive base of Individual Psychology, are presented and explained.     

Dissonance motivation: Its nature,persistence, and reinstatement

This paper examines whether arousal is a necessary component of the motivation to reduce dissonance. Alternative responses to attitude-behavior inconsistency include attitude change, explaining the behavior by a consonant cognition (i.e., low choice), and attributing the dissonance-induced state to an alternative source, such as the purported side effects of an ingested “drug.” For conditions in which there are few consonant cognitions (i.e., high choice), a comparison of different “drug” conditions in which attitude change does or does not occur was expected to clarify which components of the dissonance-induced state mediate attitude change. Attitude change occurred in high choice conditions where the “drug” was described as pleasant, but not in high choice conditions where the “drug” was described as unpleasant or in a low choice condition. In addition, when the “drug” was descibed as arousing there was, if anything, more attitude change than when the “drug” was described as nonarousing. These results suggest that unpleasantness and not arousal per se is the motivating factor in dissonance reduction. The effects of the passage of time and reinstating the counterattitudinal behavior on the alternative responses to attitude-behavior inconsistency were also examined. Subjects returned 2 weeks later, stated their attitudes, recalled their original counterattitudinal essay, and again stated their attitudes. Although there was a general decrease in attitude change during this period, the pattern of attitude change remained basically the same. Attitude change following reinstatement increased from its original level only in those conditions where it had been initially attenuated through misattribution or a consonant cognition.     

Less is not more: Further observations on nonlinguistic strategies

In an attempt to clarify the role of nonlinguistic preferences in children's responses to the words more and less, children 3–4 years of age were administered three tasks. Two of these required the child to indicate which of two arrays had more or less items, as instructed; the third task required the child to point to any one of two arrays. Children consistently selected the arrays with more items on all three tasks. The present finding of a response bias necessitates a reinterpretation of earlier studies of more and less. The results are discussed in terms of the full and partial semantics hypotheses as articulated by E. Clark.     

Commitment,ego-involvement,and resistance to attack

Subjects with initially extreme or moderate positions (based on a median split) recorded a consonant speech under public, private, or no commitment and later received a strong, mild, or no attack on their position. Extremes were more ego-involved in terms of wider latitudes of rejection, narrower latitudes of non-commitment, and greater resistance to attack, relative to moderates. Commitment had no effect for extremes, suggesting a ceiling effect on changes in the latitudes and resistance to attack for initially high levels of ego-involvement. For moderates, commitment resulted in narrower latitudes of noncommitment, wider latitudes of rejection (greater rejection of discrepant positions), and greater resistance to attack, suggesting that commitment may elevate ego-involvement with the issue. Commitment and ego-involvement may increase the salience of one's attitude position in later situations, thereby increasing the probability of attitudeconsistent behavior.     

Ethnography of an auto body repair class: Some implications for cultural transmission

This paper is a study of an ethnography of an auto body repair class in a postsecondary technical school. The class provides the students with the auto body repair skills. The students also learn employer/worker relationships and worker/worker relationships. The students learn their skills by doing them. They learn the role of a worker by being in a situation which simulates an auto body shop situation.     

A study of the “central life interests” and “work attachments” of male and female workers

This paper reports the results of a survey undertaken to investigate the overall central life interests and attachments to work of a sample of 1112 male and female employees of six Southern California manufacturing firms. The major conclusions suggested by this study are three. First, male employees have a slight tendency to be more work oriented in their overall central life interests than female employees. Second, female employees tend to be more strongly attached to extrinsic work features than male employees. Third, male-female differences in occupational status and perceived mobility opportunities probably account for gender differences in overall central life interests but these variables do not account for the tendency for women to be more strongly attached than men to extrinsic work features.     

Computer tomographic localization, lesion size, and prognosis in aphasia and nonverbal impairment.

Computerized tomography scans (80) were used to localize infarcts in 70 patients. Twenty-three aphasics were scanned within 35 days from onset, 39 beyond a year, and 18 were nondominant cases. Aphasics were also grouped according to test scores obtained within 35 days of scan. Chronic global aphasics have larger lesions than persisting Broca's aphasics. The area of persisting Broca's aphasia is similarly anterior but larger than that of recovered motor aphasia. Anomic aphasics evolve from Broca's and Wernicke's types with differing localization. Lesion size correlated with severity and recovery, and comprehension among the subtests.