The stability of status orientations among young,white, rural women from three southern states

This paper reports the results of a panel study of young, white, rural women from Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas (N = 138). The study was primarily concerned with how social origin variables affected early educational and occupational orientations and how early states of these orientations affected the orientations themselves at a later point in time. The results indicated that mother's education had a greater effect than father's education, but in either case the effect is mediated by intervening influences such as early aspirations and expectations. These young women held very traditional status orientations (with 60% projecting the occupations of beautician, nurse, stenographer, or school teacher), and their orientations were quite stable between their sophomore and senior years in high school. Since there has been so little work reported on the status attainment process for women, and rural women in particular, this study does offer a limited insight into this phenomenon.     

Sensory modality and method of item information presentation in memory

Investigated were differences in paired-associate learning for auditory versus visual modalities and within each modality the anticipation and study test methods of item presentation were compared. Extant reports re these two sensory modalities and of the two learning methods had been inconsistent. In this study of 40 university students, the learning of CVC-CVC nonsense syllable pairs was significantly better with the visual than with the auditory modality. The study-test method was significantly superior to the anticipation method in the visual mode. With auditory presentations, however, acquisition levels for both methods were the same. Significant interactions were observed between sensory modalities and methods of presentation. At present the retention interval theory (Izawa 1972–1979b) appears to account best for the varied findings with respect to the two methods of presentation.     

An individualistic approach to the evaluation and remediation of stuttering

A decision model is presented to facilitate the evaluation of stuttering behavior. This model calls for the evaluation to be conducted along a continuum with specified initiation and termination points. Following the evaluation, the information is formulated into an organized remediation procedure leading to fluent productions in the individual. This approach allows evaluation and remediation to be individualized to meet the needs and capabilities of each stutterer while allowing the professional the flexibility to choose remediation materials on the basis of objective information. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the use of the approach.     

Voice-onset time as a clue to the nature of Broca speech errors

Blumstein, Cooper, Goodglass, Statlender, and Gottleib (Brain and Language, 9, 153–170 (1980)) attempt to determine by an examination of the VOTs of aphasic speakers whether Broca's aphasics make phonemic substitutions in addition to their well-known phonetic errors. There are a number of problems with this study, mostly due to an apparent failure to fully appreciate the fact that VOT is a cover term for several acoustic features. It is suggested that VOT measurement in any given position in a word cannot solve this problem and that future studies should include glottographic observations as well as VOT measurements made in all positions in the word.     

The intermediate-hue transposition of children after same-different and seriation pretraining

The intermediate-hue transposition of first- and second-grade children was investigated in two experiments. In Expt. 1, it was found that seriation pretraining increased the amount of far transposition regardless of whether or not the same hues were used in pretraining and subsequent tasks. In Expt. 2, seriation pretraining produced more far transposition than did same-different pretaining and a no-pretraining control. The latter two conditions were not significantly different. Three assumptions about the effects of perceptual pretraining on subsequent transposition were described and related to the data.     

The temporal course of the frustration effect

General activity subsequent to reward (R) and nonreward (N) was monitored at 5-sec intervals with a stabilimeter in the runway goal box. Activity of never-rewarded control Ss was also measured. In Expt 1 it was found that the frustration effect (difference between N- and R-trial activities) disappeared after about 40 sec of goal box confinement. This disappearance of the frustration effect was due to activity increase on R trials rather than activity decrease on N trials as a function of time. Comparison of N-trial activity with control group activity indicated that frustration does not dissipate within 60 sec. Expt 2 investigated activity following reward and nonreward as a function of reward magnitude. Evidence from these experiments suggests that the late R-trial activity increase results from frustration, possibly conditioned to apparatus cues on N trials.     

The development of anticipatory hand orientation during infancy

The development of infants' prehensile adjustments regarding the orientation of objects was investigated. Five- and nine-month-olds (N = 16 per group) were presented with horizontally and vertically oriented dowels to determine at what point during the reach, hand orientation approximated that of the dowel. Nine-month-olds rotated their hands appropriately, early in the course of the reach, i.e., before tactual contact of the dowel, whereas five-month-olds did so mostly after tactual contact. Analyses of the effects of trials within the experimental session indicated that this age difference was not associated with practice or fatigue effects. The results are discussed in relation to the development of visual control of prehensile behavior.     

A feature analysis of stuttered phonemes

Stuttered and nonstuttered phonemes of 20 adult males were analyzed for distinctive feature patterns using the Chomsky-Halle system. The features (+ consonantal), (- voice), (+ continuant), and (- strident) occured significantly more often in stuttering than in nonstuttering instances. Results suggest that adult stuttering is most likely to occur when the primary sites of tension and discoordination are lingual and laryngeal and when the speaker must shift from (- voice) to (+ voice).