Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Silencing In Public Schools, Michelle Fine

Publications and Research

Demands for silencing signify a terror of words, a fear of talk. This essay examines these demands as they echoed through a comprehensive public high school in New York City. The silencing resounded in words and in their absence; the demands emanated from the New York City Board of Education, book publishers, corporate sponsors, religious institutions, administrators, teachers, parents, and students. In the odd study of what's not said in public schools, one must be curious about whom silencing protects, but vigilant about how silencing students and their communities undermines fundamentally the vision of education as empowerment (Freire 1985; Shor …

Evaluation Issues In A Quasi-Experiment On Teaching Thinking Skills, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

Comments on the method used by R. J. Herrnstein et al (see record 1987-08654-001) to evaluate an educational intervention that was designed to advance the thinking skills of 7th graders. It would seem preferable to adopt multiple linear regression techniques, rather than the t-test, as the chief analytic tool.

Precursors Of Creativity: Metaphor, Symbolic Play And Categorization In Early Childhood, Jay A. Seitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Four and 6-year-olds were presented with seven different types of metaphorical relationships in both pictures and words. The core task consisted of a metaphor comprehension task of identical triads (target, nonliteral match, literal match) comprising perceptual/color, perceptual/shape, physiognomic, cross-modal, collectional, psychophysical and taxonomic matches. Children matched items based either on nonliteral similarity or literal contiguity. A series of symbolic play tasks were given to half the subjects at each age group and were hypothesized to facilitate the comprehension of metaphor because of an underlying structural similarity common to systems of reference invoked in both the act of metaphor comprehension and …

The Experience Of Public Art In Urban Settings, Roberta Degnore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The sine qua non for an artwork in the urban realm is neither its judged "goodness" nor the ability of audiences to perceive it "correctly," but is the total experience the work contributes to as part of the fabric of interlocking meanings that places have in people's lives.

In urban settings, the physical attributes and private intentionality of a work do not stand alone. As carefully as an artist installs his/her pieces in a gallery, the same concern for their working together and with their total environment must be applied to artworks in complex public settings, where choice to be …

Israeli, Palestinian And Egyptian Explanations Of Political Actions In The Middle East, Bethamie Horowitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study investigated how people affiliated with different parties in an international conflict understand their own actions and the actions of their adversaries. Using data gathered in the Middle East in 1982, the study examined the explanations offered by 1336 Israeli Jews, Palestinians (living in Israel) and Egyptians to three political events in the Middle East: 'Israeli Air Force conducts a raid on Beirut,' 'Palestinians attack a bus on the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway,' and 'A peace treaty is announced between Israel and Egypt.'

The study, an exploratory analysis, was carried out in a sequence of stages. First, the analysis involved …

Ten-Year Consistency In Neurological Test Performance Of Children Without Focal Neurological Deficit, Stephen Q. Shafer, Cornelius Stokman, David Shaffer, Stephen K-C Ng, Patricia A. O'Connor, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

To assess 'soft-sign' persistence and its correlates outside a referred sample, 159 members of a local birth cohort of the United National Collaborative Perinatal Project were traced and their performance on six neurological test scales was measured at age 17 by examiners blind to their status at age seven. A comparison group was also formed, who had been 'sign-free' at age seven. On four of the six tests (dysdiadochokinesis, mirror movements, dysgraphesthesia and motor slowness) index boys did significantly worse than the comparison boys; by contrast, index girls scored significantly worse than comparisons only on motor slowness.

The Genevan And Cattell-Horn Conceptions Of Intelligence Compared: The Early Implementation Of Numerical Solution Aids, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

The Genevan and Cattell-Horn theories of intelligence are compared. The theories are found to be similar in the following respects: Intelligence (operative intelligence and fluid ability) is conceptualized as adaptational in function; the products of everyday learning and crystallized skills reflect the impress of experience; one category of intelligence (operative intelligence, fluid ability) is conceptualized as prior or more fundamental than the other (learned products, crystallized skills). Important differences were also found: Whereas fluid ability is characterized as formless and fixed, operative intelligence is viewed as highly structured and evolving; a compensatory relation between noegenetic crystallized skills and fluid ability …

Working At Home And Being At Home: The Interaction Of Microcomputers And The Social Life Of Households, Jamie Horwitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Not until the recent upsurge of interest in microcomputers and home work has attention been devoted to the household as a setting for technical learning and invention, or organizational and independent work. Drawing upon theoretical implications of research on industrial technology and the household, this study contributes to the development of an empirical basis for understanding the first ten years of microcomputer use at home.

The environmental approach to this psychological study includes two stages. In the first, a survey and content analysis of over 400 articles in mainstream periodicals and national newspapers revealed that since 1976 the representation of …

Working At Home And Being At Home: The Interaction Of Microcomputers And The Social Life Of Households, Jamie L. Horwitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Not until the recent upsurge of interest in microcomputers and home work has attention been devoted to the household as a setting for technical learning and invention, or organizational and independent work. Drawing upon theoretical implications of research on industrial technology and the household, this study contributes to the development of an empirical basis for understanding the first ten years of microcomputer use at home.

The environmental approach to this psychological study includes two stages. In the first, a survey and content analysis of over 400 articles in mainstream periodicals and national newspapers revealed that since 1976 the representation of …

A Methodology For The Study Of Children's Environmental Knowledge In Other Cultures, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

This paper presents a methodology which I used to study the content and acquisition of children's environmental knowledge as central to the social reproduction of a rural agricultural economy in the Sudan. My approach was forged drawing on methods of geography, linguistics and anthropology to provide information on (1) how children learn to interact productively with their environment, (2) the nature of their interactions and (3) their knowledge of environmental processes and resources. In this paper I will describe first the methodology adopted including participant observation, ethnosemantic interviews, child-led walks, environmental modeling and "geo-dramas". I will then discuss its use …

Critical Note On The Usefulness Of Attention Deficit As A Clinical Syndrome, David Shaffer, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

Parental ratings of overactivity are unrelated to teachers' ratings of overactivity or to laboratory measures of inattention. Teachers' ratings of overactivity correlate strongly with teachers' ratings of inattention as well as to laboratory measures of inattention. Teachers' ratings of inattention, however, are unrelated to laboratory measures of inattention when IQ is controlled. There are considerable definitional problems relating to the symptoms of hyperactivity and inattention, making it difficult create a behavioral definition of the psychiatric syndrome of attention deficit disorder.

The Utilization Of Communicational Cues By One- And Two-Year-Old Children, Rhianon Allen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The relationships between three models for describing pragmatic response to utterances were surveyed and the application of these models to young children's response patterns evaluated. Of particular interest was how children might discriminate action-directive and information-testing usage of language.

In order to empirically test the validity of these models, sixteen one- and two-year-old children were visited in their homes. Each child participated in two video recorded play sessions with an experimenter, during which he or she was asked complex What-questions that could take either informational or action responses. Gestural accompaniments and preceding discourse were systematically varied in Experiment I. Each …

Neighborhood Change In New York City: A Case Study Of Park Slope, 1850 - 1980, Timothy James O'Hanlon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is a case study about social and economic changes in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Since the 1960's communities in New York City have been undergoing the process of deterioration and abandonment, or alternatively, the conversion of homes and warehouses for upper income families in high rent districts. In Park Slope both of these trends have been occurring. This study aims through an examination of a single community to provide both a comprehensive and comprehensible account of the process of neighborhood change in New York City.

This research describes the pattern of change in Park Slope within the context of the …

Capgras' Syndrome, Robert J. Berson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Capgras' Syndrome, the delusion of doubles, is a rare delusional phenomenon in which a person believes that identical doubles have replaced significant people in his life and/or that there exist identical doubles of himself. These delusional doubles are almost always believed to be malevolent. The delusion occurs in a variety of psychotic states, usually schizophrenia. It occurs in both women and men in a wide age range. This dissertation reviews early French reports by Capgras and his associates as well as over 100 cases reported in English. Previous efforts to explain the Syndrome have stressed both organic and psychodynamic factors. …

Disabled Women: Sexism Without The Pedestal, Michelle Fine, Adrienne Asch

Publications and Research

The position of the disabled woman in current U.S. society deserves political, theoretical and empirical attention. In this paper we have delineated the economic, social and psychological constraints which place her at a distinct disadvantage, relative to disabled men and nondisabled women. We evaluate the ways in which having a disability is viewed as an impediment to traditional or nontraditional sex role development. The construct rolelessness is introduced, defined and examined. We conclude with reconmiendations for needed research and policy.

Rules Of Order: Or So To Speak, Arthur Emanuel Blank

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How members of a social unit acquire their shared knowledge about the social world was approached in Sherif's (1935, 1936) writings on norm formation and in the phenomenological descriptions of Schutz (1971, 1973) and Berger and Luckmann (1967). Both traditions presume that shared understandings originate in face-to-face encounters, but they diverge in that the phenomenologists argue that talk, and the construction of "typifications," plays a prominent role in the acquisition of shared knowledge. For the phenomenologists, a "typification" enables members to categorize behavior as a known event and permits individuals to consider disparate behaviors as belonging to the same class …

Minority Group Blame-Orientation And Reactions To Social Protest, David W. Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Mother And Infant At Play: Reciprocity In Gazing Behavior, Goldie Alfasi-Siffert

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Twenty mothers and their 3-month-old male infants were studied in an attempt to isolate and describe some of the motivational components that contribute to infant gaze. Infants were videotaped in two conditions: playing with mother and playing with a female stranger. The videotapes were then analyzed on a second-by-second basis with respect to infant gaze and a variety of maternal/stranger behaviors. Results show that infants spend more time gazing at the stranger than at mother and that looks at the stranger are of much longer duration. In addition, high levels of infant gaze tend to be associated with facial and …

Modes Of Representation, The Epistemic Subject And Developmental Word Association Phenomena, Ellen M. Gerschitz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study was devised to investigate the developmental syntagmaticparadigmatic word association shift. In syntagmatic associations the stimulus and associative response are of different grammatical form classes and appear to be grammatically continuous, as response may follow stimulus in an utterance (e.g. cat-meows). These are the predominant responses of children before the ages of six to eight. Older children and adults shift to making paradigmatic associations in which stimulus and response are from the same form class and may be substituted for one another in an utterance (e.g. cat-dog). This shift was explained in terms of underlying symbolic mediational processes and …

The Favorability Of Person Perception As A Function Of Perceiver And Target Person Personality Style, Alfred D. Kornfeld

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

[no abstract provided]

Stability Of Visual Fixation With And Without Feedback, Antoinette Ruth Appel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Periodicity Instability On The Detection Of Interaural Time-Of-Arrival Difference, Roy F. Sullivan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Click-Intensity Discrimination In Relation To The Statistics Of The N1 Response, Harvey B. Taub

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract available.

Post-Discrimination Generalization In Human Subjects Of Two Different Ages, Jeffrey S. Landau

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.