Children's gender-role stereotypes: A sociological investigation of psychological models

This study investigates sociologically the predictions of the cognitive developmental, the social learning, and the interactive models of gender-role development. We examine the effect of a variety of variables on gender-role stereotyping among a sample of 1264 four-, five-, and six-year-old children enrolled in preschool programs in a major metropolitan area. Age, sex, and race are found to be significantly related to children's gender stereotypes. With age, children increasingly associate stereotypical behavior patterns with the male and female gender roles. Children are also found to demonstrate a higher degree of gender-role stereotyping with regard to members of their own sex. An age/sex interaction effect indicates that the tendency of children to demonstrate a higher degree of same-sex stereotyping is most pronounced among four-year-olds. Finally, black children are found to be less gender-typed in their images of males and females than are white children. These data suggest that the interactive model, including both social and cognitive factors, is the best explanation of these data and should be further investigated.     

Children of problem gamblers

An anonymous 37-item Health Survey was administered to 844 randomly selected ninth- to twelfth-grade students in four Southern California public high schools. Systematic information was gathered about their general health, quality of life, school and work adjustment, involvement with a range of potentially addictive substances and activities, and indications of psychosocial maladjustment, including difficulties with the law and suicide attempts. A series of self-ratings of students who characterized one or both of their parents as having a compulsive gambling problem (N=52) were contrasted with those of their classmates who reported no gambling problem among their parents (N=792). Findings have been grouped into three major areas: (a) comparative levels and reported effects of involvement with health-threatening behaviors (i.e., smoking, drinking, drug use, overeating, and gambling); (b) comparative incidence of psychosocial risk indicators (i.e., broken home, unhappy childhood and teenage years, legal action pending, overall quality of youth rated as poor); and (c) comparative incidence of dysphoria, school and work problems, and suicide attempts. Across each of these areas children of parents said to gamble excessively were found to be at consistently greater risk than their classmates who did not describe their parents as having a problem with compulsive gambling. These findings strongly suggest that without early and competent intervention, children of parents who gamble excessively: (a) will be seriously disadvantaged when attempting to solve their present adolescent and future adult problems of living; and (b) as a consequence are, themselves, high-risk candidates for developing one or another form of dysfunctional adjustment, including an addictive pattern of behavior.     

汶川地震后贫困村儿童的发展：灾害影响与异地安置的作用

自然灾害会依严重程度对事件经历者的心理产生重大影响,异地安置是自然灾害发生后较为普遍的干预措施,大部分已有研究表明异地安置对受灾者灾后身心具有负面影响。本文利用2009年2月对汶川地震受灾地区随机抽样所抽取的10个地震受灾县的100个贫困村庄的3000户家庭的抽样调查数据,在通过GIS工具变量回归有效控制地震灾害损害影响的基础上,估计了地震灾害以及灾后异地安置对儿童心理和学业的影响。结果表明,地震损害中的学校损毁程度（相对于家庭住房和成员伤亡）对儿童心理的消极影响最大,同时也影响儿童的灾后入学率;在控制灾害损害影响的条件下,学校的县内异地安置对儿童心理具有积极影响,学校的县外异地安置则有助于提高灾后儿童学业表现,而家庭的长期异地安置对灾后的入学率和学业表现都具有显著的积极影响。这些结果并不支持多数已有研究所得出的异地安置具有负面影响的结论,也为自然灾害的灾后应对措施的设计提供参考依据。     

The Effect of a Mediation-Blocking Task on the Acquisition of Instructive Feedback Targets

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - The inclusion of instructive feedback in discrete-trial training has been shown to increase the efficiency of learning. However, the behavioral mechanism...     

Professional Temporary Agencies, Women and Professional Discretion: Implications for Organizations and Management

There are a disproportionate number of professional women working through temporary agencies. We develop a theory wherein this gender skewness in temporary-agency employment results from the differences in perceptions of control at work between men and women working through large traditional organizations. Our theory suggests that if control is perceived to be less for women than for men in large organizations, then women will tend to populate other work arrangements, like temporary agencies, in order to enhance their control. Propositions are tested via a unique data set comparing the responses of employees from both a London temporary accountancy agency and a large London accountancy firm. Our results are consistent with a lack of control driving professional women from large firms to temporary agencies, and neither rely on preference differences nor familial obligations.