Children infer affiliative and status relations from watching others imitate

We investigated whether young children are able to infer affiliative relations and relative status from observing others' imitative interactions. Children watched videos showing one individual imitating another and were asked about the relationship between those individuals. Experiment 1 showed that 5‐year‐olds assume that individuals imitate people they like. Experiment 2 showed that children of the same age assume that an individual who imitates is relatively lower in status. Thus, although there are many advantages to imitating others, there may also be reputational costs. Younger children, 4‐year‐olds, did not reliably make either inference. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate that imitation conveys valuable information about third party relationships and that, at least by the age of 5, children are able to use this information in order to infer who is allied with whom and who is dominant over whom. In doing so, they add a new dimension to our understanding of the role of imitation in human social life.     

Geographic Mobility and the Two-Earner Couple: Expected Costs of a Family Move

Current evidence indicates that people are less likely to make work-related moves when their spouses are employed, perhaps reflecting the expected adverse effects of the move on the earnings of the tied spouse. These studies investigated people's expectations about the effect of a job-related move on the employment opportunities of the tied spouse. Subjects expected that tied moves would have especially adverse consequences for the careers of well paid spouses, with those effects expected to be greater for moves to small towns than to big cities. Findings are discussed in relation to the actual moving trends of two-earner couples.     

Are thresholds reduced by illusions? An attempt at replication

Three experiments are reported, which are attempts to replicate the finding of Ross and Gregory (1964) that difference thresholds for weights can be lowered by means of the size-weight illusion. Three different procedures were used, the first one (experiment I) being designed to show whether or not changes in a subject's judgement criterion could account for apparent changes in sensitivity. The second method (Experiment II) was a replication of Ross and Gregory's first procedure, in which the standard weight was judged before the comparison. In Experiments I and II a larger illusion was induced than in the original studies, but in Experiment III both the weights and container sizes were practically identical to those used by Ross and Gregory. The procedure was also the same as their most successful procedure (number 3) in which standard and comparison were judged simultaneously. The findings were uniformly negative: there was no evidence of criterion shift when the size-weight illusion was induced nor did we find the lowering of threshold previously reported.     

A SEARCH FOR PRINCIPLES IN PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY

Principles of Psychology was published as an introductory textbook, with the contemporary virtue of having chapters that "can he assigned in any order." It is a compendium of speculation, with very few connecting threads to tie materials together. This article reports one psychologist's travels through thex Principles, in search of latent organizing structure, using as a guidebook the methodological and substantive content of two recent articles (Kimble. 1989. 1990a). The journey had its low and high points: The methodology encountered was hardly worth the trip. The exciting moments were the views of correspondences between James' insights and what we know today.     

Report of the ACA Ethics Committee: 1993–1994

The activities of the American Counseling Association (ACA) Ethics Committee are reviewed for the year 1993–1994. Summary data of ethical complaints and formal inquiries received during the year are presented followed by a brief discussion of trends noted. Updated information about the revision of the ACA Ethical Standards and the Policies and Procedures for Processing Complaints of Ethical Violations is also provided.     

Development of comprehension of sentences with “because” or “if”

The comprehension of sentences with “because” or “if” was investigated in children aged 2;9–11;11. Imitation, comprehension (choosing one of two picture sequences to go with a sentence), recognition (judging sentences with connective or structure differences as heard before or not), and synonymy (judging equivalence of meaning in sentences with different connectives or structures) tasks were administered, along with logical ordering, reversibility, and classification tasks. Above-chance responding in the comprehension task occurred by age 8, and in recognition and synonymy by age 10. Cognitive performance predicted 28.4% of the variance in the linguistic scores and cognitive success was concurrent with or preceded linguistic success. Comprehension of “because” and “if” appears to develop gradually, and is related to the development of certain operative rules.     

Voice onset time production and perception in apraxic subjects

This study explored the relationship between the perception and production of voice onset time (VOT) in apraxic subjects. Spectrograms of the words, “bees” and “peas” spoken by apraxic subjects were acoustically analyzed to obtain a measure of VOT. The subjects also identified the initial cognate (“b” or “p”) from synthetically generated speech spanning a voiced to voiceless time continuum. The results suggest that apraxic subjects have production as well as perceptual errors in the voicing feature but no significant relationship was found between the two measures.     

Memory development in adolescence: Relationships between metamemory,strategy use,and performance

Eighth and tenth grade students were asked to study and recall a list of paired associates. The word pairs were available either throughout an 8 sec per word study period or only at the beginning and were composed of either high frequency or low frequency words. After recall, students were asked to indicate which of several study strategies they had used with each word pair (read pair carefully, rehearsal, visual elaboration, verbal elaboration). In addition, they were asked which of these strategies would have had the best effect on recall. Knowledge of appropriate memory strategies (metamemory) was positively related to strategy use, and strategy use was positively related to recall performance at both ages. Improved performance with materials available throughout study and with high frequency word pairs was explained by increased use of elaborative strategies. Age differences in performance were explained by increased strategy effectiveness. These results are discussed in relation to changing relationships among metamemory, strategy use, and performance with age.