Scales for sex experience for males and females.

Tested 83 male and 101 female unmarried undergraduates on scales containing a range of heterosexual experiences. 2 12-item scales, one for males and one for females, were developed. Coefficients of reproducibility were .97 for both males and females, and the rank-order correlation between the ordering of items in male and female scales was .95. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

REPETITIVE TASK FAILURE AND SOCIOMETRIC CHOICE.

"This study was designed to study two predictions: a) that if failing-persons' expectations of a failing choice of a successful-person were made ambiguous, their choices would shift from choices among each other to choices of successful-persons, and b) that in sequences of tasks and grouping choices, task success is initially dominant over choice success motivation." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of lack of information on the undecided response in attitude surveys.

The "undecided" response in attitude inventory items may be selected because of actual neutrality, item ambiguity, lack of information, antagonism to the test procedure, or a need to "straddle." The major determiners are probably actual neutrality, "fence-straddling" attitudes, or lack of information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Erratum to Montemayor and Eisen.

Reports an error in the article "The Development of Self-Conceptions from Childhood to Adolescence," by Raymond Montemayor and Marvin Eisen (Developmental Psychology. Vol 13[4] Jul 1977, 314-319). On page 317, the first sentence of the first complete paragraph should be changed to read: The mean number of categories used at least once by students at each age was as follows: 8.6, 9.0, 9.1, 9.5, and 11.1; F(4, 257) = 3.86, p 1978-07730-001.) Studied self-concept development from childhood to adolescence from a cognitive-structural perspective. The responses of 136 males and 126 females from Grades 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 to the question "Who am I?", and to the Twenty Statements Test were analyzed by means of a 30-category scoring system. Results indicate that between childhood and adolescence, there was a significant increase in self-conceptions categorized as follows: occupational role; existential, individuating; ideological and belief references; sense of self-determination; sense of unity; interpersonal style; and psychic style. A significant decrease occurred for self-conceptions based on (a) territoriality, citizenship; (b) possessions, resources; and (c) physical self, body image. Curvilinear age changes were found for the use of the categories sex; name; kinship role; membership in an abstract category; and judgments, tastes, likes. The results for self-concept development are in general agreement with H. Werner's (1957) notion that cognitive development proceeds from a concrete to an abstract mode of representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavior-based versus trait-oriented performance ratings: An empirical study.

23 US Navy officer raters evaluated the performance of subordinate officers using (a) behaviorally anchored scales, (b) scales containing the same dimensions and definitions but without behavioral anchors, and (c) a series of scales involving trait-oriented dimensions, also without anchors. Comparisons of the formats' psychometric properties indicated that the behaviorally anchored scale format was somewhat superior to the other 2 on 3 of 4 dependent variables (involving estimates of leniency, halo, interrater agreement, and degree of differentiation among ratees). However, the magnitudes of the differences due to formats were small, in no case exceeding more than 5% of the variance on the dependent variable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Group performance as function of task difficulty and the group's awareness of member satisfaction.

Investigated the hypothesis that group effectiveness increases with increased member awareness of group satisfaction, and that this effect is greater for difficult than for easy tasks. 5-person groups attempted 3 tasks differing in difficulty, under 3 conditions of satisfaction feedback: no feedback, overt feedback, and covert feedback. In the overt condition, Ss publicly indicated their satisfaction with the problem-solving process, whereas in the covert condition their satisfaction was indicated anonymously. The results supported the hypothesis. It was suggested that valid communication of satisfaction leads to more complete use of members' contributions, and hence improves performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Why Teacher Certification for School Psychologists?": Comment.

Comments on Piers' article (American Psychologist, 1959, 14, 656-657). Powell agrees with Piers' comments but notes that Piers did not mention another area of confusion: the college training programs for school psychologists. Powell asserts that there is often conflict between education and psychology departments concerning whose function it should be to train the school psychologist. It is suggested that there is a need for both departments to upgrade the courses required for school psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

PIT: A macro-implemented implementation language

An implementation technique called PIT, for pseudo instructional technique, is described which utilizes the macro capabilities of most macro assemblers. A low level machine architecture is described via a set of macros that include some ‘high level’ features. Since the macros manipulate computer words, and refer to actual registers, their implementation in a system is relatively efficient, but since they do not reflect any one particular hardware design, they can be implemented by almost any macro assembler. Tests are built into the macros so that a PIT program will run without change on any machine that has defined these macros This technique should provide an alternative to using higher level languages as implementation languages if the object code produced by those compilers is deemed too slow (or too large) for the application that is being programmed.