Serial anticipation and pattern extrapolation in rats as a function of element discriminability

In Experiment 1, three groups of rats were trained on one of three serial patterns consisting of different numbers of .045-g food pellets, either the simple strong monotonie pattern 14-7-3-1-0 (Group SM) or one of two complex weak monotonie patterns, 14-5-5-1-0 (Group 5-5) or 14-9-1-1-0 (Group 1-1). Learning to anticipate the terminal 0-pellet element occurred faster in Group 1-1 than in Group SM, which in turn learned faster than Group 5-5. In Experiment 2, Groups SM, 5-5, and 1-1 were trained on the first four elements of the patterns experienced by their Experiment 1 counterparts and then were tested for their ability to extrapolate the series to include the addition of a 0-pellet element in the fifth position. Extrapolation behavior was better in Group 1-1 than in Group SM, which in turn performed better than Group 5-5. The results were shown to be consistent with a memory-discrimination model of serial learning and inconsistent with a rule-learning model based on pattern complexity.     

Preadolescents'' Social-Emotional Adjustment and Selective Attrition in Family Research

Researchers often ask subjects to commit considerable time and effort to completing tasks that are not especially enjoyable. In a multistage investigation of sixth-grade boys and their families, we hypothesized that boys who were prone to high levels of distress (i.e., anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and low well-being) but only low or moderate levels of self-restraint (i.e., consideration of others, impulse control, suppression of aggression, and responsibility) would be particularly unlikely to agree to participate. Consistent with this hypothesis, boys from 33 classrooms who were nominated by their peers as high in distress and moderate or low in self-restraint were significantly less likely than other boys to take part in an in-class survey. In addition, the families of boys who scored high in distress and moderate or low in self-restraint on the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (WAI) were less likely than other families to agree to an observation session in their homes and to a series of telephone interviews about daily events in the boys' lives. Across the 3 phases of the research, the cumulative attrition rate of these at-risk boys was approximately 80%, compared to only 50% for those low in distress and/or high in self-restraint. These results suggest that the children of greatest interest in studies of social competence and family interaction may often be among those least adequately represented.     

The becoming place: A study of educational change in a small college

One of the more astonishing characteristics of educational research is the relative lack of social organizational analyses of higher educational institutions. There is even a greater gap in the literature with regard to thechange process associated with a given university or college. The present study is an examination of one college's attempt to change from a traditional white female finishing college to a larger biracial and coeducational college committed to experimental and innovative educational programs. Two ideal types of educational social organizations are utilized as explicit aids for the specification of the educational change process observed for the Becoming Place during the time period 1969 to 1975. The major findings, which are based on several data sources, can be summarized as follows. (1) Even when a proposed educational change is characterized by ideals of maximum involvement in the decision making process for all members of a college community, resistance to the change can be very substantial. (2) Ironically, little or no involvement by the faculty, students, and alumni in the initial decision to innovate was a major factor for the resistance to educational social change. The research is concluded with a consideration of the findings in terms of possible implications for the future of small colleges.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Knoxville, TN, April 1980.     

A Comparison of Equal Percentile and Partial Credit Equatings for Performance-Based Assessments Composed of Free-Response Items

This study compares the equal percentile (EP) and partial credit (PC) equatings for raw scores derived from performance-based assessments composed of free-response (open-ended) items clustered around long reading selections or multistep mathematics problems. Data are from the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program. The results suggest that Masters (1982; Wright & Masters, 1982) partial credit model may be useful for equating examinations composed of moderately easy (or not too difficult)items sharing a first principal component with at least 25% of the total variance. This conclusion appears to hold even in the presence of some level of response dependency for the items within each cluster. Although visible discrepancies were found between PC and EP equated scores in the skewed tail of the score distributions, the direction of these discrepancies is unpredictable. Therefore, it cannot be concluded from the study that the two methods give equivalent results when the distributions are markedly skewed.