Disarmament Decisions as Social Dilemmas1

The individual deciding on a nuclear weapons production policy is faced with a dilemma in which a choice must be made to support one of several conflicting defense policies. In order to investigate the social-psychological variables that are related to armament policy decision making, a telephone survey was conducted in the City of St. Louis, Missouri. Adult subjects (N= 110) responded to questions concerned with cognitive, attitudinal, and emotional responses to nuclear arms. Participants were also asked to choose a weapons production policy for the United States under conditions of continued and decreased Soviet nuclear arms production. Results indicated that respondents decisions about nuclear weapons production were related to their support for deterrence, the availability of their nuclear-related images, their emotional response to nuclear war, their attributions of responsibility for the prevention of nuclear war, and their political party affiliation. Distinctions between antinuclear decision-makers and pronuclear decision-makers are discussed.     

THE EFFECT OF THE KOREAN NUMBER SYSTEM ON YOUNG CHILDREN'S COUNTING: A NATURAL EXPERIMENT IN NUMERICAL BILINGUALISM

In Korea, two number systems are in simultaneous use. One is somewhat irregular (like the English language number system), and the other regular (similar to the Chinese number system). This natural experiment allows a direct test of the hypothesis that structural regularity of the number system facilitates the acquisition of counting. Korean children initially suffer from their numerical ‘bilingualism’: they find it difficult to learn two counting systems at the same time. Yet, after this initial difficulty, they soon master the generative rules which are transparent in the regular system. The cognitive advantage provided by the regular number system then combines with other factors, like intensive teaching and parental pressure, to produce school achievement in mathematics superior to US children's.     

A measure of semantic complexity among predications

A scale for assessing the complexity or density of utterances was developed using 10 categories ofsemantic relations (e.g., temporal ordering, causality). The categories are inferable from the particular meanings of the words (e.g., connectives, particular tense variations) used in an utterance. The scale was applied to three samples of subjects to assess its interjudge reliability and to compare the utterances of fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade children from middle- and working-class neighborhoods. It was also used to compare the complexity of utterances for different types of visual stimuli (used to elicit language samples). Interjudge reliabilities were more than acceptable for each of the samples, and significant differences in semantic density were found across grade, between children from working-class and middle-class neighborhoods, and for the stimuli used to elicit the utterances. When two of the three types of eliciting visual stimuli were equated for content and exposure conditions, the differences in verbal density between eliciting conditions were not replicated. The usefulness of the scale for assessing utterance density and by implication, comprehension difficulty of utterances and of texts, is discussed.This study was supported in part by a Grant from the National Institute of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Complexity in Auditory and Graphics Communication, Project No. 4-470. Points of view or opinions stated here do not necessarily represent National Institute of Education position or policy.     

Privacy and the Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project has raised many issues regarding the contributions of genetics to a variety of diseases and societal conditions. With genetic testing now easily conducted with lowered costs in nonmedical domains, a variety of privacy issues must be considered. Such testing will result in the loss of significant privacy rights for the individual. Society must now consider such issues as the ownership of genetic data, confidentiality rights to such information, limits placed on genetic screening, and legislation to control genetic testing and its applications. There is often a conflict between individual rights to privacy and the need for societal protection.     

Interaction of genetics and separation in canine hyperkinesis and in differential responses to amphetamine

A model of childhood hyperkinesis, using the Telomian-beagle hybrid dog, is described, demonstrating the interactions of genetics and separation in the development of this syndrome and in the favorable responses of some of these dogs to amphetamine. This work represents the collaboration of three laboratories, utilizing chiefly methods of inhibitory training. Inducing separation distress enhanced the resistance to inhibitory training and the favorable responses to amphetamine.     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING WRITTEN ARITHMETIC: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY

This study is concerned with the manner in which Western mathematics is assimilated by children raised in traditional African cultures. It was predicted that after an initial period of difficulty in learning school arithmetic, African children (Baoulé and Dioula from the Ivory Coast) acquire basic concepts, develop invented strategies, and make errors similar to those of American children. Further, it was predicted that Dioula children, since they are members of a commercial culture, perform at a somewhat higher level than the Baoulé, members of a farming culture which does not seem to stress computational activity. To investigate these hypotheses, American, Baoulé, and Dioula children at two age levels were given a variety of arithmetic problems involving basic skills (e.g., reading numbers), number knowledge (e.g., place value), and calculational abilities (e.g., written computation). The results showed that, in general, older African and American children (fifth- and sixth-graders) were quite similar in all respects. The only large and significant differences occurred in the case of younger children (second- and third-graders). At this level American children generally performed at a higher level than Africans, as predicted, and Dioula occasionally at a higher level than Baoulé, also as predicted. At the same time, qualitative aspects of African and American children's performance were similar: for example, both groups made the same types and proportions of errors in written calculations. The results generally support the hypotheses and can be explained in terms of both educational and cognitive factors.     

The Social Psychology of Jury Nullification: Predicting When Jurors Disobey the Law1

The United States judiciary assumes jurors obey the law as it is charged to them in the trial judge's instructions. This paper contends that jurors' comprehension of the law results from an active intelligence which makes available alternative decision rules giving rise to the power of juries to nullify instructions. To study the compliance assumption, we presented to mock jurors pattern jury instructions along with summaries of testimonies from a rape trial. Four times during the trial we administered to participants measures of their attributions of defendant responsibility, judgments about the legal elements of the case, and verdicts. Multiple regressions conducted with data from separate subsamples and with separate questionnaire administrations revealed that a) verdicts were based on attributions independent of the jury instructions, b) individual differences in life experiences predicted the degree to which decision makers used their attributions, and c) the more practiced participants were at applying the jury instructions the more heavily they weighed their own attributions and less heavily the judgments required by the law. We concluded that comprehension alone cannot predict the likelihood that jurors will comply with the law. Therefore, the assumption that jurors follow the law needs to be more carefully considered.     

MENTAL ARITHMETIC IN AFRICA AND AMERICA: STRATEGIES,PRINCIPLES, AND EXPLANATIONS*

Mental arithmetic abilities were studied among unschooled African adults and American college students. A set of problems tested the use of the four basic arithmetic operations. Performance was analyzed for: strategies, implicit arithmetic principles, and explicit explanations of the principles. Both groups showed accurate mental arithmetic strategies related to the base ten structure of their native counting systems. The American students' mental strategies additionally made use of algorithms based on written place values. Several principles were implicit in the calculation strategies of both groups, and both used these principles to short-cut calculations. Though the African subjects did not, the American subjects did describe these abstract principles in explicit common language or algebraic expressions. Relationships between schooling and cognition are discussed.