Harold D. Fishbein

Preschoolers select playmates on the basis of gender and race

Abstract Behavioral measures and playmate preferences were observed in all 90 children enrolled in an urban preschool. Patterns of play activities, social involvement, verbalization, and positive and negative acts were similar for boys and girls and black, white, and foreign-born Asian racial groups. Overall, all groups of children preferred playing dyadically with same-sex classmates. Girls showed a relative preference for same-race/same-sex playmates and greater relative avoidance for white boys than black or Asian boys. Boys showed a relative preference for white- race/same-sex playmates and least relative avoidance for same-race girls. The results with girls contradict implications from the racial attitudes literature. The overall pattern of results was explained on the basis of the interaction of two factors: childrens responses to the higher status of white boys and the perceived physical attraction of same-race children.

The Development of Prejudice and Sex Role Stereotyping in White Adolescents and White Young Adults

White male and female predominantly suburban students in grades 7, 9, 11, and college were given questionnaires that assessed sex-role stereotyping, prejudice against gay males and lesbians, persons with the HIV or AIDS virus, and African Americans. On all measures at all ages, males were more prejudiced and sex-role stereotyped than females. Gay and lesbian prejudice declined with increasing age; race prejudice remained relatively stable during high school, but increased in college; whereas HIV/AIDS prejudice remained relatively flat with increasing age. No systematic age-related patterns of prejudice change were observed. Male and female sex-role stereotyping were positively and equally correlated with all four types of prejudice. Additionally, with the exception of gay and lesbian prejudice, intercorrelations among prejudice types were approximately the same. These findings support the view that a characteristic of intolerance for deviations from social norms underlies commonalities of stereotyping and prejudice in adolescence.

Basic Money-Counting Skills of Children with Mental Retardation.

The thought processes involved in counting and comparing small amounts of money among children and adolescents with Down syndrome (n = 17), other children and adolescents with mental retardation of unknown etiologies (n = 17), and normally developing first graders (n = 15) were examined. Three different tasks that progressively reduced the cognitive demands placed on the children were used. Although not generally different from each other, the two groups of children with mental retardation had far greater difficulties with the tasks than normals. Also, as the complexity of the counting task increased, the number of comparison errors made by the children with mental retardation increased. Based on the findings, a program for teaching money principles to children with mental retardation was proposed.

Relevant and Irrelevant Saliency in Concept Learning.

Two concept-learning experiments are reported. The first compared performance under three stimulus configurations: with the two relevant dimensions highly salient; with two irrelevant dimensions highly salient; and with no highly salient dimensions. Performance was best when the relevant dimensions were highly salient, next best when two irrelevant dimensions were highly salient, and poorest when there were no highly salient dimensions. The second experiment explored several possible explanations of these results, which are contrary to existing notions of the effects of irrelevant saliency. Its results suggest that the presence of highly salient irrelevant dimensions improved performance because the subjects examined them in the early trials of the experiment and then could permanently eliminate them from further consideration. It is now generally accepted that variations in the saliency, vividness, or obviousness, of the stimulus materials have an important influence on human learning.1 Several different methods have been used in the attempt to manipulate saliency. One common method, called perceptual isolation, is to make some aspect of the stimulus material stand out by making it perceptually or conceptually unique. The effects of isolation are commonly identified with the name of von Restorff, who introduced isolation in a seriallearning task by embedding a single number in a list of nine syllables.2 The number was learned faster and retained better than the same number embedded in a more heterogeneous list containing other numbers, syllables, and nonsense forms. Received for publication March 9, 1970. This research was supported in part by Research Grants MH-11283 and MH-18249 from the National Institute of Mental Health, United States Public Health Service. 1 T. Trabasso and G. H. Bower, Attention in Learning, 1968; W. P. Wallace, Review of the historical, empirical, and theoretical status of the von Restorff phenomenon, Psychol. Bull., 63, 1965, 410-424. 2 H. von Restorff, Ueber die Virkung von Bereichsbildung im Spurenfeld, Psychol. Forsch., 18, 1933, 299-342.

Similarity judgments of patterns and maps

An algorithmic technique is described for generating from a common prototype three populations of forms (dots, open forms, and polygons) having different configurational properties. Within each population, subjects rated the similarity between standard stimuli and 20 transformations of these stimuli. The stimuli were represented to the subjects as abstract patterns or as maps. High rank-order correlations were obtained between the ratings given to the various transformations in each form population and in the pattern and map conditions. These correlations led to two conclusions: (1) there was ecological validity in the stimulus factors that influenced similarity judgments in the three form populations, and (2) subjects used analogous processes when making similarity judgments in tasks focusing upon pattern perception and spatial reference systems.

A stimulus generalization explanation of the serial position effect

Two experiments were run using either circles of different diameters or lines of different lengths as stimulus terms in PA learning. Those responses associated with the stimuli at the end positions of the stimulus dimensions of circle diameter and line length were learned first, producing the serial position effect. Analyses of intrusions supported a stimulus generalization explanation of the data. This explanation was extended to encompass the serial position effect in serial and PA learning.

The effects of perceptual organization on performance in classification tasks

Three experiments are reported which investigated the relationship between stimulus organization and performance in classification tasks. In Experiment 1, a conjunctive solution involving proximate stimuli was learned more rapidly than a solution involving nonproximate stimuli. In Experiments 2 and 3, type of solution (similar stimuli vs nonsimilar stimuli in Experiment 2; and unique vs nonunique stimuli in Experiment 3) and number of dimensions had interaction effects on rate of learning.

Human eyelid conditioning at detection threshold

Six Ss were run in a combined signal detection-eyelid conditioning procedure for 15 days each. Performance at asymptote was markedly affected by CS intensities near the detection threshold. The verbal responses and conditioned responses were related in such a way that conditioned responses appeared to be contingent upon Ss’ subsequent verbal responses.

A mathematical model for the wholist strategy in concept identification

A model is derived to describe the performance of Ss using the wholist strategy in a concept-identification problem. The general model provides the expected number of trials to solution for all numbers of irrelevant dimensions and numbers of levels within dimensions. Errors to solution are computed for special cases.