J. Thomas Puglisi

Sex Role Identity and Self Esteem in Adulthood

Sex role identity (Bern Sex Role Inventory) and self esteem (Texas Social Behavior Inventory) were examined in a cross sectional sample of 2069 Ohio State University students, employees, and alumni between the ages of seventeen and eighty-nine. Both men and women displayed peak masculinity scores in the middle years of adulthood, with no significant differences in femininity scores across the age range studied. Among both men and women, psychologically “androgynous” individuals displayed the highest levels of self esteem, followed by masculine sex-typed, feminine sex-typed, and “undifferentiated” individuals, in that order. Masculinity was a far better predictor of self esteem than was femininity.

Self-Perceived Age Changes in Sex Role Self Concept

A prospective/retrospective study of sex role self concept was conducted in order to explore the hypothesis that adult men and women experience a convergence of sex roles in later life. Young (age seventeen to twenty-nine), middle aged (age thirty to fifty-nine), and older (age sixty to eighty-five) adults (twenty-one male, forty-one female in each group) rated themselves on Bern Sex Role Inventory items, first describing themselves at age twenty, next at age forty-five, and finally at age seventy. Self-perceived age changes in sex role self concept reported by these three groups of adults produced strikingly similar patterns. In each case, both men and women evidenced high masculine self descriptions related to middle age (projected age forty-five) followed by decreases in masculinity in later life (projected age seventy). Only the projections of middle aged respondents displayed even marginally significant evidence in favor of sex role convergence.

DISABLED VS NONDISABLED READERS: PERCEPTUAL VS HIGHER-ORDER PROCESSING OF ONE VS THREE LETTERS

12 disabled and 12 nondisabled readers (mean age, 11 yr.) were compared on a letter-search task which separated perceptual processing from higher-order processing. Participants were presented a first stimulus (for 200 msec. to minimize eye movements) followed by a second stimulus immediately to estimate the amount of information initially perceived or after a 3000-msec. interval to examine information more permanently stored. Participants were required to decide whether any letter present in the first stimulus was also present in the second. Two processing loads (1 and 3 letters) were examined. Disabled readers showed more pronounced deficits when they were given very little time to process information or more information to process.