B. G. Rosenberg

The relationship of ordinal position and sibling sex status to cognitive abilities.

The influence of the interaction of ordinal position and sibling sex status on cognitive activity was examined. Results generally confirm the superiority of the first born over the second born on cognitive activity. Directional trends suggest that the presence of amale sibling enhances quantitative scores, the presence of a female enhances language scores, males having a greater effect on females than vice versa.

Sibling Associations and Role Involvement

A persons experience of particular sibling associations might have a lasting effect upon his involvement in adult roles. This chapter reviews the evidence from several investigations dealing with the effects of ordinal position and sibling sex status on role involvement. The studies indicate that the effects of ordinal position and sibling sex status vary with age and with the nature of the variables being considered. Sex of sibling has stronger effects on adjustment, anxiety and interest inventories, and ordinal position has stronger effects upon mental abilities—with boys affecting girls more than vice versa, and first-borns affecting non-first-borns more than vice versa. In explaining the effects of different ordinal positions and sibling sex status on masculine-feminine role differences, the view has been taken that these positions and statuses are arbitrary phenomena, so that if systematic relationships are found, the problem is to locate the different types of learning experience involved.

The Dramatic Sibling

It is proposed that because non-first-born children have less clearly structured roles than first born, they will show a greater interest in role exploration through drama. Second-born girls with an older sister (FF2), when compared with first-born girls with a younger sister (F1F), report significantly more participation in high school and college drama and are judged superior actresses by other F1F and FF2 viewing them through a one-way screen.

Non-Verbal Representation of Verbal Referents

The degree to which non-verbal sound symbols are consistently matched with five classes of referents was assessed. It was found that listener Ss tended to match the sounds with the particular referents which initially guided the speaker Ss to produce the symbols. High incidence of consistent matching obtained among the listener Ss for all referent classes. Highest agreement obtained for simple spatial referents and least for color and evaluative referents.

SIBLING DIFFERENCES IN EMPATHIC STYLE

The present study proposed that empathy as postural inference may characterize second-borns, while empathy defined as verbal understanding of the role of another may be more characteristic of first-borns. The former is likened to Miller and Dollards “matched-dependent” behavior, the latter follows the principle of “copying.” Results with males tend to confirm the superiority of the verbal-understanding type of empathy in first-born males, while second-born males are superior on empathy measures which rely on postural cues. Results for females suggest that superiority on postural inference is affected by the presence of a brother, not ordinal position, while superiority on empathy as verbal understanding is an accompaniment of having a sister.

The dramatic boy.

A sociometric investigation of role-playing competence in children of Grades 2 through 6 indicated that boys were perceived as better than girls, and girls with brothers as better than girls with sisters.

A representational assessment of meaningfulness

The present investigation has demonstrated that significant agreement occurs among Ss directed to judge which referents are best represented by CVCs. This agreement occurs independent of rated meaningfulness (m1). These results suggest that consideration of specific representational qualities rather than rated association, alone, may result in greater precision in verbal learning studies.