Sex bias in language use: "Neutral" pronouns that aren't.

Terms such as "his," "he," and "man" refer to males but are also used as putative gender-neutral terms to refer to persons of unspecified sex. It is argued that male terms sometimes fail to be gender-neutral and may therefore be a cause of sex bias as well as a vestige of past inequality. In an experiment with 226 male and 264 female college students on the interpretation of pronouns, male terms such as "his," even in explicitly gender-neutral contexts, caused Ss to think 1st of males significantly more often than did "his or her" appearing in the same place. It is concluded that male terms can fail to be gender-neutral even when it is clear that a person of either sex is referred to, and males may have an advantage in contexts where they are referred to by a putative neutral term. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Responses to "neutral" pronoun presentations and the development of sex-biased responding.

Investigated whether 36 kindergarten and 36 1st-grade children, like college students, would give male-biased responses to a "he" presentation and examined how Ss would respond to the use of "they" and "he or she" pronoun presentations. The effects of pronoun use on memory were also investigated, as were possible sex differences in responding. Each S was assigned to 1 of 3 pronoun presentation groups, each of which contained an equal number of girls and boys. Ss in the different groups listened to the exact same story except that Group I Ss heard the pronoun "they" used throughout the story, Group 2 Ss heard "she" or "he" used throughout the story, and Group 3 Ss heard the pronoun "he" throughout the story. Ss were then asked to retell the story and were shown pictures of a boy and a girl and asked to indicate which one the story was about. Results support the pronomial dominance theory of pronoun functioning for young children. Results also support the hypothesis that boys initially use a self-imaging response to neutral presentations. The time of transition away from this response was identified as the 1st-grade level. There was no indication that kindergarten or 1st-grade girls use the self-imagining approach. The "they" presentation appeared to be the most neutral. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Checking it out: Cognitive style, context, and problem type in children's monitoring of text comprehension.

Three experiments investigated the effects of age, context, and reflection–impulsivity (as assessed by the Matching Familiar Figures Test) on children's monitoring of comprehensibility problems in extended passages. In Exp I with 20 kindergartners and 20 2nd graders, reflective listeners were generally more effective detectors of referentially ambiguous terms in brief texts than were their impulsive agemates. Presence of a perceptual context for the messages significantly facilitated Ss' ambiguity detection as well. Exp II replicated the perceptual-context effect for 20 1st graders but failed to find any effects of cognitive style. In Exp III, 72 1st, 3rd, and 6th graders heard stories with several types of coherence problems, including referential confusions or global text-organization problems (missing story themes or resolutions). Half the Ss anticipated retelling the stories, and half did not. No effects of this listener–purpose manipulation were observed. More reflective listeners again detected referential ambiguities more readily overall, but this cognitive style effect did not extend to other types of message problems. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactive effects of training domain and age on children's moral judgments.

69 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders were (a) read stories depicting either good (nice) or bad (naughty) acts paired with neutral acts, (b) trained to consider intentions rather than consequences while making moral judgments, and (c) tested for their use of intentions in both moral judgment domains (niceness and naughtiness). Results support the hypotheses that (a) training would be effective in both domains, (b) cross-domain generalization of training would occur, and (c) Ss would judge bad behavior on the basis of intentions and independently of consequences before they would do so for good behavior. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memorization processes involved in performance on the Visual-Sequential Memory subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities.

Two studies investigated memory processes involved in performance on the Visual-Sequential Memory subtest of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. In the 1st study, 64 2nd and 4th graders were administered this subtest under standard conditions. Ss were designated as either "labelers" or "nonlabelers" according to whether they used a stimulus labeling strategy to aid recall. Differences in performance between 2nd and 4th graders could be accounted for almost entirely in terms of the greater number of labelers in the 4th grade. In the 2nd study, labelers and nonlabelers from Exp I at each grade level were formally trained to use a labeling strategy. The training resulted in improved performance for all Ss. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Factors influencing rule discovery in children.

Reports on 2 studies using the Esper paradigm to determine development of rule application and discovery capabilities. This paradigm employs both learning and generalization phases. In Exp I with 48 3rd and 4th graders, it was determined that Ss could learn and generalize when rule and structure were provided, but there was little evidence of rule discovery. In Exp II with 48 different 3rd and 4th graders, memory and attention manipulations were added. Both manipulations facilitated learning, but only attention facilitated rule discovery. In both studies 4th graders performed better than 3rd graders on generalization but not learning. The relationship between performance on the Esper and Raven Coloured Progressive Matrices (given to all Ss), although inconsistent, when covaried out removed the significant grade but not experimental effects. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What makes certain arithmetic word problems involving the comparison of sets so difficult for children?

Arithmetic word problems with an unknown reference set, such as "John has 7 eggs. He has 4 eggs fewer [more] than Peter. How many eggs does Peter have?" are considerably more difficult for children than problems with an unknown compare set (2nd sentence: "Peter has 4 eggs more [fewer] than John"). Six experiments with 1st graders and kindergartners investigated reasons for this finding. Exps 1–4 revealed that neither difficulties in processing the personal pronoun nor the use of key word strategies could explain the difficulty differences. Exp 5 showed that most 1st graders were not aware that the difference between 2 sets can be expressed by either "In Set x there are n more objects than in Set y" or "In Set y there are n fewer objects than in Set x." Exp 6 indicated that this lack of access to flexible language use is what makes compare problems with an unknown reference so difficult. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of affective tone on the verbal behavior of process and reactive schizophrenics.

To test further the hypothesis that schizophrenics, described as "process" or "reactive," would demonstrate differential responsiveness to affective stimuli, Ss were shown slides projecting a verb (some affective-toned, some neutral) and 4 pronouns (him, she, they, I) and asked to make sentences using the verbs and 1 of the pronouns. It was hypothesized that avoidance of the pronoun "I" and retarded reaction time, when affectively-toned verbs were utilized, would distinguish the performance of the 2 groups: The results confirmed the hypotheses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of referential communication: Deciding that a message is uninformative.

Investigated whether young children typically attend to the age of the speaker when they lack knowledge of other communicative rules. Two experiments compared how children evaluate 3 types of uninformative messages (ambiguous, incomplete, inconsistent) and whether and why the speaker's age affects the evaluation of each. In Exp I, 22 1st and 22 4th graders played a referential communication game with either a peer or an adult speaker. In Exp II, 22 1st graders played the same referential communication game used in Exp I, but Ss who were interacting with the peer speaker were told that the speaker was very smart and Ss who were interacting with the adult speaker were told that the speaker was very stupid. Overall results indicate that incomplete messages were the easiest to evaluate and inconsistent messages were the most difficult. The evaluation of ambiguous messages was affected by the age of the S and the age of the speaker. Although older Ss attended solely to the quality of the message, 1st graders based their evaluations of ambiguous and inconsistent messages on the age of the speaker. Adult speakers' messages were evaluated more positively than peers' because the young Ss thought the adults were smart and therefore more likely to be good communicators. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's understanding of verbal and facial display rules.

144 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 10th graders listened to 8 stories designed to elicit either prosocial or self-protective display rules. Ss were asked to predict and explain what the protagonists would say and what facial expressions the protagonists would make in response to the emotion-laden situations. Findings indicate that Ss' knowledge of how and when to control emotional displays increased between 1st and 5th grade but then leveled off. Ss understood verbal display rules better than facial display rules, and they understood prosocial display rules better than self-protective ones. They sometimes failed to realize when other people would wish to regulate their emotional expressions. Findings are discussed in terms of the socialization of emotional displays, particularly the greater pressure placed on children to control verbal expression more than facial expression and to learn more prosocial than self-protective display rules. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical ambiguity and children's word recognition.

Conducted 2 experiments to examine the word recognition processes of 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders. In Exp I, 72 Ss named target words that were primed by words that had more than 1 meaning. Targets were related either to the more or less frequent sense of the ambiguous prime or were unrelated to it. Findings indicate that older Ss were more likely than younger Ss to restrict processing of ambiguous words to the most frequent meaning. While younger Ss showed approximately equal facilitation for words related to either meaning, regardless of each one's relative frequency, 6th graders apparently retrieved only the most frequent meaning. Exp II, with 36 Ss, was similar to Exp I but included neutral primes and varied the interval between presentation of prime and target. Results show that all groups showed automatic retrieval of both meanings of the ambiguous word. For 6th graders, however, this retrieval was followed by a 2nd stage, in which attention was allocated to the more frequent meaning, maintaining it, while the less frequent meaning was inhibited. Overall data indicate that older children use meaning frequency to narrow the amount of information kept active following word recognition. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Content of preachings and power of the model/preacher: The effect on children's generosity.

In 3 studies the effects of the power of the model/preacher and content of preachings on children's generosity were examined. In the 1st 2 studies, 278 3rd and/or 4th graders were exposed to empathic, normative, or neutral preachings about sharing delivered by a high-power adult (the children's principal or an individual identified as a potential future teacher at the children's school) or a low-power adult (a principal from another school who the children did not know was a principal). Ss were then given the opportunity to donate a portion of their earnings anonymously. The effects of a specific component of power—competence of the model—on 77 3rd graders' generosity were examined in the 3rd study. Empathic preachings significantly enhanced generosity, regardless of the identity of the exhorter. Persons with potential direct control over the Ss (a future teacher at the school) and competent individuals were effective in inducing generous behavior; the school principals, whether they were identified as principals or not, did not prove to be powerful preachers. Ss tended to react against the modeling of the incompetent, generous model, giving significantly less than the control group after having observed an incompetent model being generous. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental differences in organization and recall: Training in the use of organizational techniques.

Used an alternating sort-recall procedure in 3 experiments to train 204 elementary school children in the use of organizational techniques as memory aids. All Ss sorted a group of words into 2–7 categories, and some Ss were required to learn the sorting patterns generated by adults. In Exp I, the semantic sophistication of a S's sorting style predicted recall performance. Further, the tendency to improve memory performance as a result of being constrained to adult sorting patterns varied with age; constrained 5th graders significantly improved their recall, whereas the recall of 3rd and 7th grade Ss was not affected by this training. However, more detailed organizational training in Exp II facilitated the recall of 3rd graders. In Exp II, it was found that the constraining procedure was not necessary for facilitation to be observed. Rather, instructions to group words on the basis of meaning were sufficient to produce improved recall. Further, improvements in sorting style accompanied all significant changes in recall. Findings are discussed in terms of a discrepancy between the information which a child has in permanent memory and that which he uses spontaneously in the context of a memorization task. The importance of input organization as a mediating factor in memory performance and development is suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's distributive justice reasoning: A standardized and objective scale.

A paired-comparisons measure of distributive justice development (DJS) was developed and validated in 3 studies. In Exp I, 104 children from kindergarten and 2nd and 4th grades were given the DJS and 2 Piagetian logical reasoning tasks. Age trends and a relation with logical reasoning were found. In Exp II, 66 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders were given the DJS and a measure of verbal ability. Age trends and a low relation with verbal ability were found. In Exp III, 88 1st, 3rd, and 5th graders from Kinshasa, Zaire, were given the DJS. The trends replicated those found in Exp II. Implications for distributive justice research are drawn. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of subliminal stimulation of symbiotic fantasies on college student self-disclosure in group counseling.

36 female college students in 3 main groups of 12, with 6 experimental and 6 control Ss in each group, participated in 3 group-counseling sessions. Before each session the experimentals received the subliminal message, "Mommy and I are one," and the controls the neutral message, "People are walking." In the counseling session that followed, Ss in 1 main group (both experimentals and controls) were exposed to 8 counselor self-disclosures (CSDs); another group received 4 CSDs, and the 3rd received zero CSDs. The main hypothesis of the study, that the experimental "Mommy" message would produce more S self-disclosures (SSDs) than the neutral message, was supported, but 2 subsidiary hypotheses were not: (a) that a moderate number (4) of CSDs would elicit more SSDs than either zero or 8 CSDs; and (b) that SSDs would increase over time (between 1st and 3rd group-counseling sessions). These results with the "Mommy" stimulus, together with previous findings, indicate that the subliminal stimulation of symbiotic fantasies can enhance the effectiveness of therapeutic procedures of various kinds. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of comprehension monitoring as a function of context.

Two studies with 59 Ss (preschoolers–4th graders) explored the effects of stimulus factors on children's ability to monitor comprehension of messages as listeners in a referential communication situation. Results of Exp I show that both complexity of the stimulus array and degree of message ambiguity affected performances. In line with previous findings, 4th graders but not younger Ss showed evidence of effective comprehension monitoring. Data from Exp II show that when conducive stimulus conditions were arranged, even 1st graders demonstrated considerable skill in comprehension monitoring. In addition to investigating comprehension monitoring per se, the studies also examined the role of comprehension monitoring in directing the overall comprehension process. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alternatives to optimization in expectancy theory.

Three behavioral-choice principles were proposed and tested in the context of expectancy theory. The 1st principle, "satiation-fatigue," postulated that force (and thus effort level) was a joint function of reward value, fatigue, and boredom, and thus that force would decrease as a function of satiation and time spent on the task. Task performance of high-pay piece-rate Ss was therefore predicted to decrease over time relative to the performance of low-pay Ss. The 2nd principle, "satisficing," postulated that workers strive only to reach satisfactory outcome levels and therefore predicted that low-pay piece-rate Ss would continually outperform highly paid Ss over the course of an experimental task. The 3rd principle, "minimum necessary reward," predicted that high effort would be exerted only if Ss felt they could earn at least a minimally satisfactory outcome. Data most strongly support the minimum-necessary-reward principle, while providing no support for either the simplest version of the expectancy model or the other 2 alternatives. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of inferential set, outcome intent, and outcome severity on children's moral judgments.

38 1st, 2nd, and 6th graders read stories about aggressive acts that resulted in either mild or severe physically harmful outcomes that were perpetrated either accidentally or with mild or severe negative outcome intent. The inferential sets of Ss in the value-maintenance, situation-matching, and no-set conditions were manipulated, respectively, by telling Ss that they were going to play a game with or babysit and watch the "transgressor" or by telling them nothing about an interaction with the transgressor. Although younger Ss differentiated their moral judgments according to outcome intent, older Ss were uniformly harsh toward transgressors who intended to produce either mild or severe outcomes. Older Ss assigned blame on the basis of the intent to hurt and the foreseeability of harm, regardless of the degree of harm intended. Younger Ss regarded intentions with respect to severity as important, perhaps because of their greater rule orientation and concern with parental approval. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Development of children's use of a story schema to retrieve information.

In Exp I, 80 2nd and 6th graders and 40 college students heard normal or scrambled stories and either recalled them exactly as heard or recalled them by making them into "good" stories. Scrambled stories generally depressed recall; 2nd graders performed poorly, but there was a clear improvement with age/grade in the ability to reorganize a scrambled story. In Exp II, an explanation for 2nd graders' poor performance was proposed and tested with 24 additional 2nd graders. It was thought that 2nd graders might know the form of an ideal story, but fail to spontaneously and consciously use their knowledge of its constituent parts to guide retrieval. A brief training procedure was introduced to teach a new group of 2nd graders how to sequence story propositions. The expectation was that training would prime them to use the internal story structure as a retrieval strategy when faced with a set of scrambled stories to recall (in good order). The expectation was confirmed. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Need for achievement in Negro and white children.

2 studies were done comparing the scores of Negro and white children on need for achievement (n Ach), defined as concern with achieving high standards of excellence. All Ss were from rural, central North Carolina. In the 1st study, 5th and 7th graders wrote stories in response to 6 line drawings of people. In the 2nd study, 3rd-, 5th-, and 7th-grade Ss and high-school Ss wrote or told stories to 12 other line drawings. In both studies, white Ss scored significantly higher than Negro Ss, and n Ach scores increased significantly with age. In the 2nd study, Negro girls scored significantly higher than Negro boys. Negro Ss had more hostile non-n-Ach themes in the 1st study, but there was no meaningful pattern of the non-n-Ach themes in the 2nd study. (21 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)