From page to program: Some typographical and temporal variables in radio homilies

Punctuation in 20 radio homilies by four speakers accounted for 76% of pause time and 64% of pause number. Pause duration varied systematically according to punctuation type. Commas accounted for 82% of punctuated positionsnot used for pausing.RRelevance for theories of text unitization is discussed. Both typographical and temporal measures are compared with a similar corpus of German homilies.     

Contrastive marking in French dialogue: Why and how

This experiment studies French-speaking adults' preferences for prosodic marking (focal accent) or morphosyntactic marking (clefting) to express information contrasts in dialogue. Our goal is to determine what syntactic and conceptual factors might contribute to these preferences, by examining for the former, the grammatical function of the item bearing the contrastive mark (subject vs complement) and, for the latter, the size of the class to which the contrasted item belongs (two members vs more than two members). The subjects' responses on a forced-choice judgment task showed that when only one device was used for contrast, subjects clearly preferred clefting for grammatical subjects and focal accent for complements. When both devices were used (prosodic and morphosyntactic), contrasted subjects were preferred over contrasted complements. Response times were longer when the contrasted item belonged to a two-member class. These results demonstrate that subjects' judgments of the suitability of linguistic devices for expressing information contrasts in French are more highly affected by syntactic factors than conceptual ones.     

The syllable-length effect in number processing is task-dependent

Two experiments were run in order to investigate the relationship between syllable length of number names and eye-fixation durations during silent reading of one- and two-digit numbers. In Experiment 1, subjects had to read a series of three numbers and recall them orally; in Experiment 2, subjects had to indicate manually whether the value of the middle number was between the values of the outer numbers. The effect of syllable length was controlled for possible confounding effects of number frequency and number magnitude. Findings indicated that fixation duration depended on syllable length of number names in the first task, but not in the second task. The results call into question the claim that phonological encoding is imperative in visual processing; phonological encoding was used only when the numbers had to be recalled, and not when they were coded for computational purposes.     

The decision to return to college: Role concepts,personality, attitudes,and significant others

In two studies, personality, role concepts, and attitudes distinguished wives and mothers who decided to resume college from those who did not. College women and women about to resume college had more self-actualizing, achievement-oriented, and dominant personalities (California Psychological Inventory); broader, more personalized role concepts; more liberal attitudes; better educated husbands; and fewer children than housewives. Measurements before college return and during the second year at college indicated that college exposure did not significantly affect these variables. The single exception was that after college exposure, women no longer saw society as supporting their efforts to actualize their potentials.A version of this paper was presented at the 83rd Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, August 31, 1975.     

Social competence in early childhood: An empirical validation of the SOCIAL model

Social skills are the basis of human interactions and functioning in society. Social competence (SC) is thought to evolve gradually during childhood and adolescence via the interplay of multiple factors. In particular, the early years of life are marked by the emergence of basic social abilities and constitute the foundation for successful social development. The biopsychosocial SOcio-Cognitive Integration of Abilities modeL (SOCIAL) posits that internal (child-based), external (environment), and cognitive factors are critical to SC in the context of normal brain maturation; but this has yet to be shown empirically and comprehensively. This study tested the SOCIAL model in a sample of typically developing preschool children. Parents of 103 children (M = 67.59 months, SD = 11.65) completed questionnaires and children underwent neuropsychological assessment of executive functioning (EF), communication skills and social cognition. Three-step hierarchical regression analyses (1) Internal factors, 2) External factors, 3) Cognitive factors) confirmed that each step of the regression model significantly predicted SC. In the final model, general cognitive and socio-cognitive factors significantly predicted SC above and beyond internal and external factors: children with lower temperamental negative affect and less parent-reported executive dysfunction, as well as better non-verbal communication and theory of mind had better SC. Our findings support the conceptual SOCIAL model, and highlight the importance of internal, external, and cognitive factors for SC in the preschool years. Identification of factors associated with early social development can inform both normative and clinical approaches to identifying intervention loci and optimizing SC in those at risk for maladaptive social functioning.     

Parenting Sensitivity,Parental Depression and Child Health: The Mediational Role of Parental Self-Efficacy

This paper discusses the theoretical role of parental self-efficacy, or parents' beliefs in their competence and effectiveness in the parental role, as a mediator of relations between parent–child risk and parental sensitivity. Evidence is marshalled from studies of parenting in the contexts of maternal depression and child health risk to support the premise that parent–child characteristics affect parental sensitivity indirectly via their more direct impact on parental feelings of efficacy, and that parenting efficacy represents the ‘final common pathway’ in the prediction of parenting sensitivity. Also considered in this working model are specific social-contextual factors as independent contributors to parenting efficacy and as possible moderators of relations between parent–child characteristics and self-efficacy. Implications for intervention are discussed. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.