The relationship of participation in school activities to abilities and interests in a high school student sample

Participation in school activities is hypothesized to be related to the multiple abilities and interests of high school students. The Ball Aptitude Battery (yielding 14 ability scores), Holland's Vocational Preference Inventory, and a biographical information blank (to obtain information about participation in 53 extracurricular activities) were administered to over 900 high school seniors of both sexes. Correlational and multiple regression analyses showed different patterns of activity participation to be related to different abilities and interests. The degree of relationship was generally low, generally higher for the males than for the females, and higher for interests than for abilities. Activity correlates of abilities differed for the sexes, but activity correlates of interests tended to be similar. This suggests that the same ability can result from differential participation in activities, but the same interest develops from similar activities.     

Inconsistency and rank preservation

Conditions for rank preservation in a positive reciprocal matrix that is inconsistent are provided. Three methods of deriving ratio estimates are examined: the eigenvalue, the logarithmic least squares, and the least squares methods. It is shown that only the principal eigenvector directly deals with the question of inconsistency and captures the rank order inherent in the inconsistent data.     

Generational differences in work values between parents and children and between boys and girls across grade levels 6, 9, 10, and 12

A cross-sectional comparison of school children in grades 6, 9, 10, and 12 and their parents was made to examine changes in work values and the relationship between children's and their parents' work values as a function of age and sex. Discriminant function analyses revealed support for hypothesized differences in children's values and for the convergence of sex differences in values at later ages. Results also confirmed that at earlier ages there is greater similarity in values between children and their like-sexed parent but older (grade 12) boys and girls are most similar to their fathers. These findings confirm and expand the results of earlier research.     

Verbal contingent stimulation of stuttering in laboratory and home settings

The effect of verbal contingent stimulation for stuttering behaviors was examined during changes of stimulus delivery mode and experimental setting. In Experiment I, contingent stimuli were delivered in the laboratory setting with the experimenter and subject in a face-to-face arrangement versus presentations by the experimenter from a control room via a headset arrangement. In Experiment II, contingent stimulation of stuttering was examined in the laboratory and home setting. Findings revealed that stuttering frequency was reduced in all conditions of both experiments. However, the only significant reductions occurred under the headset delivery conditions in the laboratory setting.     

Why versus how often: Causal reasoning and the incidence of judgmental bias

When faced with the task of making a prediction or estimating a likelihood, it is argued that people often reason about the presence or absence and relative strength of possible causal mechanisms for the production of relevant outcomes. In so doing people rely on “causal cues” or properties of an inferential problem which indicate the nature of the particular causal processes which give rise to specific outcomes. It is hypothesized that causal cues, precisely because they focus attention and thought on specific causal mechanisms, can obscure the relevance of mathematical laws of probability and lead to statistically biased judgment. Two experiments were conducted. Their results support the hypothesis, showing that the incidence of the conjunction fallacy and the base rate fallacy depend on task-specific cues for causal reasoning.     

A case of acquired aphasia and convulsive disorder: some linguistic aspects of recovery and breakdown

Among the cases of acquired aphasia and convulsive disorder several children are reported to have experienced more than one aphasic period. We present such a case in more detail, with emphasis on some characteristics of spontaneous speech. The occurrence of paraphasias, and in particular of neologisms, appeared to be associated with language recovery and breakdown. At the beginning of the period of recovery, a rapid and total disappearance of neologisms was observed, while only literal paraphasias remained. A period of language breakdown was preceded by the return of neologisms. The process was not influenced by drug therapy.     

The ambiguity of recognition memory tests of schema theories

The majority of theories about the effects of schemata (or generic knowledge structures) on information processing share two fundamental assumptions. It is assumed, first, that schema-based inferences about unobserved features of an event are generated, and, second, that such inferences are stored in long-term memory and thereby confused with traces of observed features of that event. To test these assumptions, researchers rely heavily on recognition memory measures of hit and false alarm rates. In the present paper, it is observed that schema theoretic interpretations of recognition memory measures are inconsistent with an interpretation jointly derived from the theory of signal detection and Mandler's (1980, Psychological Review, 87, 252–271) subjective familiarity theory of recognition memory; from the latter's perspective, recognition memory measures are considerably more ambiguous than schema researchers realize and do not necessarily support the typical schema theoretic interpretations. Data from four experiments are analyzed from the perspective of the theory of signal detection/ subjective familiarity model and demonstrate the ambiguity of recognition memory measures for testing hypotheses about the function and consequences of schemata for information processing.