This study focused on social and cooperative behavior in traditional science classrooms. Students in 30 junior and senior high school science classes were observed in terms of the amount of time spent on task, or time spent concentrating on the lesson. The physical organization of the classroom, the instructional style of the teacher, and the…

Attribution theory research has been criticized for minimizing the influences of social structure variables on individuals. The role of social factors in attributions was explored with 90 females and 50 males who, after reading interviews between police and assault victims, made attributions of blame about different types of assault. The…

Underlying the current use of ethnography in the study of teaching and learning is the assumption of an analogy between the school or classroom and culture. The claim of educational ethnography is that it discovers and describes the ways that members of the school community create and share meaning. Ethnographers aim to discover the operating…

This psychosocial role-theoretical approach to personality attempts to combine the conceptual utility of a role-theoretical perspective with the methodological utility of modern psychometric theory and multivariate research design. It focuses on the prediction of situation-specific interpersonal behavior. A conceptual model is presented, as well…

Nine elementary grade children, each referred originally for low levels of peer interaction in free-play situations in school, participated in a study designed to assess the effects of treatment "booster shots" on the maintenance of social behavior. An intervention package, consisting of social skills tutoring and a recess-based point…

A total of 1,333 faculty members from four universities judged the administrative effectiveness of their department head (numbering 103). They also described the department head's behavior by responding to 30 behavioral questions. Through a principal components analysis, four factors were extracted that accounted for 73 percent of the variance in…

This study examined dominance attempts of grade school children engaged in a cooperative task. Within each of three grade levels (K, 1, 3), eight mixed-sex triads were randomly formed. Utilizing verbal indices of dominance, significant differences were found for cross-sex and same-sex attempts, by grade level and triadic composition. The results…

Reinforcement for academic performance has been shown to increase both correct academic responding and rates of on-task behavior. Reinforcement for attending and on-task behavior has failed to increase correct academic responding in many studies, but it has produced vicarious and sociometric changes. The occurrence of vicarious and sociometric…

The interactional aspects of support within social networks of the elderly were investigated with a particular focus on the role which reciprocal exchanges play in defining the nature of the support channeled along the links in the network. The sample consisted of 50 adults, 55-83 years of age, living in an urbanized region of North Carolina.…

Because interviewing is a face-to-face interaction belonging to the genre of interpersonal relationships, the employment interview is subject to some of the same problems that beset interpersonal relationships. Problems can occur in both interviews and interpersonal relationships because of bias, which originates from background characteristics,…

As part of a larger, on-going study conducted through the Center for Child Development and Education at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, this paper explores the influence of the home environment on children's psychological functioning in school and on their academic achievement. Data were obtained on home experience, classroom social…

Based on the premise that personality psychology is aimed ultimately at providing a scientific basis for understanding individuals, it is argued on several grounds that the assessment and study of individual differences is essentially useless to the discipline. The basis for an alternative approach, termed "idiothetic," is described, in…

Areas of social behavior are reviewed in terms of the increasing emphasis on mainstreaming and normalization for children with special needs and the resulting concerns of psychologists and educators with the social interaction difficulties of learning disabled children. These areas of social behavior that contribute to a child's peer interactions…

This guide to accompany the student text presents lesson plans dealing with the influence of society on behavior. Lessons are designed to help students increase their ability to use the following techniques of social science research: (1) participant observation; (2) data manipulation; (3) questionnaire survey; (4) field manipulation; and (5)…

This Child Development Associate (CDA) training module is designed to enable the CDA intern to recognize social development in children's solitary, associative and cooperative play. The trainee will also learn about techniques and environmental conditions that can be used to foster socialization. Instructional and behavioral objectives are given.…