Julius M. Sassenrath

Coronary-prone behavior, locus of control, and anxiety.

216 college students were administered the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, the Bortner Type A/B Scale for coronary-prone behavior, and the Rotter internal-external Locus of Control Inventory. The results indicated that the mean anxiety score for the Type A-external group was significantly higher than those of the other three groups. This finding supports the bio-behavioral theory that high-risk coronary-prone individuals are more likely to possess a Type A, high external control, and high anxiety score profile. A mathematical analysis of responses to the items on the Bonner scale produced three interpretable factors, aggression, speed, and impatience, all of which have some clinical validity in other studies.

A longitudinal study of the predictive validity of the system of multicultural pluralstic assessment (SOMPA)

The System of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA) was initially administered to 700 Anglo, 700 Black, and 700 Hispanic children in California elementary schools in order to develop a nonbiased testing program. Ten years later, 1184 of the original 2100 youths were again tested with the SOMPA in high school. At that time, academic achievement and parental interview data also were collected. The results indicate that: (a) Mean achievement test scores and GPAs for the high school students showed that Anglos obtained higher scores than Hispanics, who received higher scores than Blacks. (b) Among the various medical measures, the Bender Gestalt, Fine Motor Sequencing and Finger-Tongue Dexterity tests of the SOMPA were the only ones able to consistently differentiate between youth who did poorly and those who did well academically ten years after their initial testing. (c) Scores on the 1972 IQ test (WISC-R) showed moderate correlations with achievement test scores ten years later. (d) 1972 IQ scores showed low but reliable correlations with GPAs ten years later. (e) In only a very few instances were IQ correlations with achievement test scores higher for minorities than for Anglos. (f) IQ correlated less well with GPA than with achievement test scores for all three ethnic groups. (g) An adjusted IQ, called Estimated Learning Potential (ELP), was more predictive of school achievement than was verbal IQ, particularly for Blacks in the lowest sociocultural quartile. (h) In the second lowest sociocultural quartile, the VIQ correlations with academic measures were reliably higher than the VIQ-ELP correlations, but only for the Anglo and total groups. (i) In the upper two sociocultural quartiles, for all ethnic groups combined, VIQ correlated slightly, but significantly, higher than ELP with school achievement. (j) Also in the upper two quartiles, VIQ correlated higher with academic measures than did VIQ-ELP for both Blacks and Hispanics in almost half of the comparisons. In conclusion, it appears that some subtests of the SOMPA may have some validity for predicting school achievement for students from different ethnic groups.

The Bem Sex-Role Inventory Reexamined

533 women and 361 men undergraduates were administered the 20-item masculine and the 20-item feminine scales of the Bern Sex-role Inventory. Factor analyses of the 40 items produced for both men and women 6 interpretable factors: nurturance, dominance, autonomy, bipolar M-F, competition, and leadership. Thus the inventory appears to be very complex. Nevertheless, multiple correlations (R) of the 40 items with the total masculinity and femininity scores separately produced an R = .75 for the masculinity scale and R = .86 for the femininity scale. Most of the items with significant contributions to each of the scales were consistent with the original scoring used by Bem.

Similarity of WISC-R and WAIS-R scores at age 16

Thirty learning disabled students of average intellectual ability between 16 and 17 years of age were given both the WISC-R and the WAIS-R to determine if the WAIS-R provided higher average IQ scores, as had been reported for educationally mentally retarded adolescents. The results indicated: (a) no significant differences between the two scales on either the Verbal, Performance, or Full Scale IQs, (b) significant correlations between the WISC-R and WAIS-R on the three IQ scores and 9 of the 11 subtests, and (c) the emergence of the ACID profile for learning disabled adolescents on both tests.

Effects of Overlearning and Similarity on Transfer in Word Recognition

Kindergarten children required more trials to learn a training list of similar than dissimilar words but made fewer errors on subsequent transfer tasks which tested their knowledge of all of the letters in the training words. This replication of previous work was extended by including a third group of children who were trained on the dissimilar list but who were given a few overlearning trials to make up for the additional training trials given the group who learned the similar list. In general, scores of the children in the overlearning group fell between scores of the children in the similar and dissimilar groups. Implications for reading instruction are discussed.

ANXIETY, ANXIETY REDUCTION AND MOTIVATING INSTRUCTIONS IN HUMAN LEARNING AND PERFORMANCE.

This experiment assessed the effects of (a) appropriate, random, and no reinforcement; and (b) stress (St) vs reassurance (Re) instructions in a learning situation on anxiety reduction and induction as measured by the Test Anxiety Questionnaire. The results, from a sample of 54 university students, showed no anxiety reduction or induction due to reinforcement conditions but did show anxiety reduction for the Re group and anxiety induction for the St group. The former results indicate that anxiety reduction and induction are not associated with another reinforcing stimulus. However, the latter results support the theory relating motivating instructions and test anxiety to learning.

Ecological validity of adjunct questions in a college biology course

Abstract To validate their use in a natural environment with realistic learning materials and conditions, the efficacy of adjunct questions was tested in a college biology course with a double-crossover design. Mixed results were obtained. On the one hand, students using adjunct questions during the second half of the course scored significantly higher than control students on a variety of measures obtained on the final examination. Significant indirect as well as direct effects were obtained, and significant effects were demonstrated on comprehension as well as verbatim-recall examination questions. On the other hand, during the first half of the course evidence was also obtained that some students did not follow instructions on the proper use of adjunct questions, and that for those students adjunct questions actually impaired learning. Such vagaries may be common in natural experimental settings as opposed to highly controlled laboratory settings. It is concluded that, rather than requiring all students to use adjunct questions, it would be better to make them optional. Presumably, adjunct questions would be used, under an optional condition, only by students who were motivated to use them properly after receiving strong warnings concerning their possible misuse.

Private and Public School Students: Longitudinal Achievement Differences?

Two groups of 49 students were matched on age, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and IQ on data obtained 10 years earlier when they were in public elementary schools. One of the groups switched from public to private schools with an average amount of time in the private schools being about 5.5 years. The other group remained in public schools. Ten years later when they were seniors in high school, both groups were given the same reading and mathematics tests. The results of this longitudinal study do not show any mean differences in achievement test scores between the private and public sectors. The results are discussed largely in the context of two recent and well-known studies on the same topic byColeman, Hoffer, and Kilgore (1981) and Page and Keith (1981).

Verbal Learning and Anxiety Drive

Four paired-associate lists of English words were constructed: non-difficult, non-competitive; non-difficult, competitive; difficult, non-competitive; and difficult, competitive. In Exp. I 90 Ss formed a 2 by 2 design. The results indicated that the main effects of competition and difficulty were significant. Exp. II tested hypotheses relating (1) scores on the Manifest Anxiety Scale to response competition, and (2) scores on the Test Anxiety Questionnaire to task difficulty. A 3 (MAS) by 3 (TAQ) design with 90 Ss and a covariate of denotative meaning showed no significant differences on any of the four lists. These results raise questions about anxiety drive and denotative meaning in verbal learning.

CONTEXT, MEANING, AND TRANSFER OF VERBAL BEHAVIOR

Two experiments, with 54 and 60 college Ss, respectively, had paired-associate words varied either in or out of a sentence context in training; had stimulus, response or both S-R similarity varied in 3 lists of paired-associate words or sentences between training and transfer; and had the meaning relationships of words within the 3 lists of paired-associate words or sentences between training and transfer varied in six ways: unrelated, synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, associates, and identical. Both experiments were designed as 2 (context) by 3 (lists) by 6 (meaning) with repeated measures for meaning. In Exp. I, the paired-associate words for the transfer task were not in a sentence context and in Exp. II the same paired-associate words were in a sentence context. The results indicated that there was reliably greater transfer for words that had homonym, associate or identical than unrelated, synonym, or antonym meaning relationships between training and transfer. This was true whether the paired-associate words were in or out of context in training or in transfer. Only when the training and transfer tasks were in context was there more transfer of learning due to context than no context. Contrary to the theory of transfer, there was no difference due to S, R, or S-R similarity being varied between training and transfer.