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Although the effect of teacher expectations on student performance has been well documented, little research has focused on the effect of teacher personality styles on student-teacher interactions. To investigate the effect of teachers' locus of control and their expectations of their own effectiveness on student success, 77 female college students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes were administered the Rotter Locus of Control Scale; subjects scoring in the upper and lower one third of the distribution were then assigned to one of four treatment conditions: positive/negative student expectation or positive/negative teacher expectation. They were then assigned as teachers in a contrived session in which each teacher taught a student confederate an eleven-word vocabulary list and administered a quiz. After the lesson, teachers rated their attitudes toward the student, the lesson, and their performance. An analysis of the results showed that teachers in the positive student expectation group rated the student as having more ability than did those in the negative condition; and teachers in the positive teacher expectation condition thought they had significantly more ability than those in the negative teacher condition. Teachers in the positive teacher expectation condition also tended to rate their students more positively. Subjects with an internal locus of control were more susceptible to information about their students' competence than were subjects with an external locus of control. Neither internal nor external locus of control subjects showed any susceptibility to information about their own expected ability. (BL)

Studies of children's deceptive behavior have scientific merit and can be carried out in an ethically defensible manner. Many arguments against studies requiring children to deceive others in an experimental context are relatively easy to refute. It is true, though, that the debriefing phase of deception studies presents ethical problems, particularly when the researcher employs a confederate. There are substantial arguments for and against informing children after a study of the nature of any deception incorporated in the research design. Clear ethical problems would exist, of course, if subjects were put in a situation leading them to spontaneously lie or cheat. Two factors support the claim that research on deception is ethical: subjects are at negligible risk, and benefits of the research are high. Further, certain questions can be answered with no other technique. In comparison to results of studies of role-played emotional states, results of deception studies involving spontaneous behavior are more illustrative of skill in the actual use of nonverbal behavior. Recent research suggests that the ability to be deceptive successfully is a social skill related to the development of other abilities in children. The finding of a significant correlation between role-taking abilities and ability to be deceptive illustrates the importance of research in which children are led to be deceptive. (RH)

The present study explored the effect of verbal dissembling on nonverbal behavior. Subjects were 146 females who were led to be either truthful or deceptive verbally to a confederate. The underlying affective state of the subjects and the publicness of the interaction between subject and confederate were also varied experimentally. The nonverbal behavior of the subjects was analyzed using objective scoring by trained coders and by showing samples of subjects' behavior to naive judges who rated how pleased the subjects appeared. Results showed that nonverbal behavior tended to reflect whether a subject was dissembling or being truthful. In addition, when they were truthful, subjects revealed their underlying affective states. However, when lying, there was no difference in nonverbal behavior according to the affect felt for the confederate. The nonverbal behavior of the subjects also tended to differ according to whether they were interacting publicly or privately; in public, subjects appeared more pleased with the confederate than in private. (Author)

Two studies explored the effects of peer teaching on the attitudes and behavior of tutors and tutees. In the first study, fourth graders tutored third graders in reading once a day for two weeks. Another group befriended a third grader over the same period of time, supervising play activities. A control group participated in neither special situation. After the experiment, the children were evaluated through personal interviews and tests to determine how, if at all, their feelings about themselves, their teachers, and their academic progress had changed. Although all the subjects liked being in the experiment, and the tutees' reading improved, few significant differences were seen in experiment and control subjects. In the second study, fifth graders taught first graders symmetry concepts in math twice a week for six weeks. Again, others befriended the first graders and others were not placed in a pair. Tutees in this situation learned a good deal and developed more positive perceptions of their intellectual performance. First graders who had a friend enjoyed the relationship, but their self-perceptions did not change as a consequence. It was speculated that this was because being in a friend relationship was not enough of a new, concrete role to foster the changes that role theory would suggest. Tutors enjoyed the experience and learned the material they had to teach, but the experiment did not seem to affect their self-concepts very much. (CD)

The experiment was designed to see whether children differ from adults in the ability to understand nonverbal responses of other children. Ten third-grade children were secretly filmed while watching a very easy and a very hard math lesson. Third graders, sixth graders, and adults (college students) were asked to judge, based on a film of each child's face, whether the subject understood a lot, a little, or none of the lesson. The children were more successful at this than the adults, although the degree of accuracy in an absolute sense was not particularly high for either adults or children. Participants also found it easier to tell whether males were watching difficult or easy lessons. The results should not be taken to indicate that children encode all nonverbal responses better than adults, but rather that their familiarity with the social situations of their peers helps them infer the meaning of different facial expressions of other children. The results of this experiment have clear implications for classroom teaching and tutoring by children. (CD)

Mothers' ability to decode the emotional expressions of their male and female children was compared to the decoding ability of non-mothers. Happiness, sadness, fear and anger were induced in children in situations that varied in terms of spontaneous and role-played encoding modes. It was hypothesized that mothers would be more accurate decoders of their children than the non-mothers. It was also expected that emotional expressions of female children would be decoded more easily than those of male children, and that positive affect would be more easily decoded than negative affect. Twenty-four children (12 male and 12 female), their mothers, and 24 matched non-mothers were recruited for the study. Children viewed slides and listened to corresponding narratives depicting scenarios such as a birthday party, a lost dog, and a false accusation. Spontaneous and role-playing behaviors were then observed by the mothers and non-mothers. It was found that the pattern of decoding accuracy differed for mothers and non-mothers. Mothers were able to accurately decode expressions of happiness, but had relative difficulty in decoding expressions of sadness, fear and anger. The pattern of decoding accuracy for non-mothers was such that no affect was decoded at greater than chance levels. Decoding accuracy also differed according to the sex of the encoding child. (Author/RH)

This study examines the possibility that ability to avoid detection of deceptive behavior via nonverbal behavior might be related to an individual's role-taking skill. Sixty-one 5 to 12 year-old boys and girls were led to be verbally deceptive or truthful by saying that they either had enjoyed or not enjoyed an unpleasant experience or had enjoyed or not enjoyed a pleasant experience. Untrained adult judges then rated whether they thought the children were being truthful or deceptive. It was hypothesized that the children's role-taking skill would be positively correlated with their ability to avoid detection by the adult judges. Results indicate a positive relationship between the ability to take the perspective of others and success at avoiding detection. The awareness that one's nonverbal behavior during social interaction has an impact on the perception of others appears to be an important factor influencing the ability to control nonverbal cues. Children who are better able to take the perspective of others in the role-taking task were also more effective at controlling their nonverbal behavior. (Author/MP)

In the first of two experiments, positive and negative expectations about a teacher were induced in a student who was about to be taught by that teacher, and both verbal and nonverbal measurements were taken. Results showed that subjects responded quite directly to the experimental manipulation. In the second experiment, a student simulated some of the behavioral manifestations of positive or negative expectancies suggested by the results of the first experiment and observed the effects upon the teacher. The results here showed that the rated adequacy of performance of the subjects differed significantly according to the nonverbal behavior of their student. Previous research has shown that cognitive level and nonverbal behavior are related as well. (DS)

Research has suggested that both teacher expectations and student expectations can affect the individuals' own attitudes and behavior, as well as the behavior of those with whom they are interacting. The joint effects of teachers' expectations about students and students' expectations about teachers on the performance and attitudes of both participants was examined. Subjects were 120 female undergraduates. Half of the subjects were designated as teachers and were led to expect either a high- or low-ability student. The other half, acting as students, were led to expect a teacher of high or low competence. Teachers and students were randomly paired in an experimental teaching session. Results showed that student performance was a function of the teachers' expectation. Teachers' attitudes and rated competence were affected by their expectations regarding the student, and students' attitudes were affected by their expectations about the teacher. Results indicated that both teachers and students can concurrently hold expectations about their partner, and that such expectations affect their attitudes about themselves, the partner, and the entire teaching situation. (Author/NRB)