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How are the basic categories of Parsons' theory obtained? In pursuit of an answer, this paper traces the decline of voluntarism with the passage of time in the Parsonian action scheme. The voluntarism of the Prewar scheme, including its derivative polemic against behaviorism as a variant of "positivism," appears now to have been replaced by programmatic behaviorism. But the postwar texts are persistently equivocal at every point where they can be compared to the voluntarism of the prewar scheme; these points involve the subjective reference and the normative orientation of action. The differences between the pre- and post-war schemes lead to differences in substantive hypotheses, particularly on the nature of norms and normative control. The paper finally considers whether norms and values need to be the kind of independent variables that they are (though for different reasons) in both versions of the action scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The behaviorist, neo-positivist school of sociology in the United States, with its emphasis upon mathematical symbolization, has gained many cohorts during the last quarter of a century, but it is only latterly that it has found a champion to present its tenets systematically and in full panoply. If this paper directs itself almost exclusively to one representative of this school which has so many followers, it is because the presentation of its case is both most recent and most thorough. Indeed, it should be a source of deep gratification that the position of this school of thought has finally been placed upon a full canvas, and been offered for popular showing. Only thus could both its merits and demerits be made obvious. For two decades, in a series of publications long and short, professor George Lundberg, erstwhile president of the American Sociological Society, has carried on a campaign for scientific method in the social sciences, and particularly sociology. The kind of world Lundberg wants is one in which the social scientist will be accepted as the final authority in informing men of how they can achieve the goals they set for themselves without himself approving or disapproving of these goals.

The article presents an elaboration of the paper by Harold W. Stevenson, titled "Piaget, Behavior Theory, and Intelligence." Stevenson stressed that a response to a stimulus yields a consequent stimulus. As to general reinforcement theory, Stevenson assumes that there exists a primary drive of a hunger for stimulus, and that this hunger can be diminished only by continuously transferring responses to new aspects of stimuli. By using these formulations, one may explain for the inspection by the infant of his environment and his search for different types of stimulation without departing from the stimulus-response theory.

General and operational definitions of attitude imply assumptions that choice behavior is independent of situational factors. It is suggested that the attitude concept be redefined and choice behavior be studied as a function of the choice situation. The experiment in this article demonstrates the S-R inventory approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the need for a theory of marketing. The authors believe a marketing theory would help businesses and students come to better conclusions as to policies and procedures in the field of marketing. Some of the problems of marketing theory include problems with price discrimination, land utilization in marketing, time aspects in marketing, economic entities, the limitations upon the alternatives to economic entities, the attitudes and motivations of buyers and sellers, and the development of market organization. The authors feel some of the sources for establishing a marketing theory should come from present economic theory, studies of sociology, ecological studies, and existing marketing literature.

The article refers to studies by B. F. Skinner and Mary Parker Follett and discusses a behavioristic view of coordination in management. Four basic stages in organizational coordination are planning the use of resources, organizing the physical and human resources needed to achieve the firm's goals, executing the plan, and distributing rewards to "the cooperators." Examples relate to Skinner's concept of intermittent reinforcement and Follett's concept of integration in the coordination process. The communication function of management, verbal behavior and conditioning tools, deus ex machina in "Walden Two," the organization as an organism, 12 types of coordination, and ten forms of coordinating actions that are related to government are mentioned.

The article discusses several important aspects of administrative theory, including the traditional approach, behavioral approach, decisional approach, and ecological approach. A discussion is presented about the emphasis and hallmark characteristics of each approach. Details related to their concepts and tools are examined. The author provides an explanation for the multiple approach of administrative theory. An overview of challenges associated with building an administrative theory is presented.

This article treats two central doctrines of behaviorism, namely, peripheralism and associationism, as doctrines which place semantic and syntactical constraints on acceptable language for the discussion of human beings, and assesses the consequences of these doctrines for the description of educational goals and methods. It is shown that peripheralism and associationism are philosophical doctrines inherited from British Empiricism, and that they are more appropriately treated as part of the philosphy of psychology, rather than as testable empirical claims. It is argued that the constraints that this philosophy places on a language render it incapable of expressing some meaningful educational goals, rule out some meaningful empirical hypotheses, and undermine some important ethical distinctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychological literature on male sexual impotence is reviewed. Specifically, a description of and a learning theory analysis of male impotence are presented. Also, there is a review of behavior modification techniques used to treat male impotence. Such techniques include systematic desensitization using self-induced and drug-induced relaxation, relaxation in the sexual environment, and training in assertive sexual behavior. It is suggested that more research is needed to assess the relative importance of insight, re-education in sexual behavior and techniques, encouragement, and expectancy, which are often used with strict behavioral treatment methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the concept of institutionalism. Institutionalism itself does not exist in isolation. The same intellectual influences and the same pattern of social events which have given direction to institutionalism have also produced other developments. Institutionalism has been identified with behaviorism. All that institutionalism proposes to do is to accept the full significance of the conception of human nature which is self explanatory. Price patterns can be conceived to reveal the character of the economy only if some of those patterns be regarded as the consequence of a human nature that is antecedent to all social patterns while others are regarded as evidence of unnatural interference. In recognizing the dynamic character of technology, institutionalism does not minimize the importance of the institutional patterns of any society. Economic theory is rightly identified as value theory. From the beginning, one of its central problems has been the relation of value-in-exchange to value-in-use.

6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children were assessed for spatial decentration with a modified version of Piaget's mountain scene task. Subjects received both single and multiple object arrays under either a shielded or nonshielded condition. Results indicated a positive relationship between age and none gocentric performance on the spatial perspective task. Shielding the stimulus arrays facilitated performance for the 8-year-old and, to a lesser extent, the 10-year-olds. while it had no effect on the 6-year-olds. Finally, no difference was found between single and multiple object arrays. Results are discussed in terms of variables which may lead to the activation of cognitive structures during the transitional period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

33 preschool children who had low Apgar scores (5 or below) at birth and matched controls were evaluated at the age of 30 months with the Pacific Multifactor Test battery, at which time social data were obtained. 6 months later the Stanford-Binet, L-M, and a Parent Questionnaire were administered to 24 pairs of Ss and their parents, respectively. Low Apgar scores at birth were not related to later performance on psychometric tests or personality ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of Piaget's views on the nature and development of symbolic functioning fails to support their alleged affinity to neobehavioristic concepts of meaning. Piaget's action theory of thought, however, does incongruously have much in common with recent neobehavioristic formulations of relational thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on recent research where experimental conditions were devised to affect the behavior of young children for social reinforcers from adults. These conditions appear to have a number of possibly critical formal characteristics in common. In both studies a similar cross-sex pattern of behavior for a social reinforcer was observed: Children appeared to emit more reinforcer-oriented responses to adults of the opposite sex than to adults of the same sex as themselves. In both studies, this tendency was more marked for boys than for girls.

This article focuses on the fact and metaphysics in economic psychology. The essence of behaviorism is the insistence that it is ignored in the study and description of behavior everything but the observed physical facts of the behavior itself, which of course means practically denying the existence of consciousness. This, again, is what has been done in the study of other natural phenomena. Besides, the behaviorist argues, one can in no case be "directly aware" of facts of consciousness, but at best can only "infer" them from behavior facts, which alone can be "observed." The subject-matter of a science of conduct should therefore be restricted to behavior data. The "existence" of consciousness would be left on one side as a metaphysical question, in the case of human beings as in that of the rest of nature. The notion of agency or real activity is still more violently antagonized by intellectual bias than the separate existence of observers, but just as irresistibly forces recognition. It cannot be reduced even to the category of interest just noticed, and of course still less to data of perception in the natural science use of those terms.

The article presents information on the effects of differential placement of questions in written material on reading time and eye movements. In connection with question placement,certain inspection-like behaviors accompany learning and specifically, reading, and that such behaviors could increase or decrease when questions are systematically interspersed between paragraphs. These inspection-like behaviors have been labelled mathemagenic behaviors. A specific mathemagenic behavior associated with learning from written materials should be eye movement. On the basis of this hypothesis, it would be expected that since there is no difference in learning given differential placement of common words type questions, there would also be no difference in the frequency of a mathemagenic behavior like eye movement. It is demonstrated that time was significantly longer with questions placed after paragraphs than with questions placed before paragraphs. This would suggest that the number of eye movements or the duration of visual fixations would be also greater with questions after than with questions before paragraphs.

Examines the compatibility of college English within the context of behavioral objectives in the U.S. Statement of the problem; Predominant misunderstanding about behavioral objectives and behaviorism; Limitations and dangers of the objectives; Potential benefits of planning behavioral objectives.

The article reports that the people of Christian nations after the Council of Nicaea were frequently disturbed by the changes and appearances of natural phenomena. Certain happenings which have occurred recently, domestic and foreign, mundane and heavenly, have contributed to our knowledge of what will cause a people to take fright. The newspapers give us reports of strange occurrences, so grave that they shock the politicians in the capitals of the world. Yet, with all the explanation of scientists and politicians, we learn nothing about the effect these dreadful things will have upon the routine of each day. No one can tell us if the earth satellite, as it is, will reduce the tonnage of a truck of coal, the volume of oil for a tanker, or even a bushel of wheat for a granary. These are now some of the chief concerns of the day to day interest, not only to the mass of producers, but to consumers of all types and ages. That the people generally, show no particular concern must be plain to the observant man who travels the parkways of the state and sees all the warning signs of what will happen when the siren warns them to take cover in a shelter.

This article focuses on "possession" or trance in a revivalistic Negro church. As maintained by the authors, trance has an almost world wide distribution, provided one includes the ecstatic states of the shaman and priest, possession induced by the physiological action of various drugs and multiple possessions at religious and semi-religious ceremonies. Excluding the chemically induced trance, the other forms may be distinguished on two possible groups, that of, a suggested but not proved, physiological and psychological difference between the two states and the valid sociological distinction that in one case people occupying particular and limited statuses within a wider group experience trance, and in the other case, the experience is open to all members of a defined group, irrespective of the status. The trance state can further be defined by behavior patterns involving mild body convulsions, prolonged dancing, usually to music that appears to be a semi-stupor state and falling to the floor either with body contractions or remaining still as in a faint. Participants describe the later behavior as a prolonged or momentary loss of voluntary control over body movements.

The article discusses a study which examined the rationality postulates underlying the theory of cooperative games. The basic analytical challenge of game theory, such as in zero-sum games and simple bargaining games, is the determination of behavior to be expected and entertained by rational players from one another. Bargaining models based on rationality postulates and ethical considerations are discussed using theoretical analysis for the prediction or forecasting of main bargaining behavior outcomes. With this, strategies are given conceptual clarification and analysis.

The article reports on the political situation in Latin America. Students of Latin American politics have often observed that party behavior and roles are confused and contradictory. The efforts being made to systematize comparisons of parties through the compilation of increasingly complex dimensions of party structure and activity may provide some valuable insights, but only if they are related to variations in the political systems in which the parties are found. Political scientists have several ways of describing this intervening variable, but the most prevalent ones are not adequate.

This article examines aspects of student decision making. The three components which are empirically investigated in this study include: (a) selected acts of parents as significant others to their children as students (b) three different categories of student self-conceptions and (c) a linguistic outcome variable, the educational attainment plans of students. The model of the sources and functions of human self-conceptualizations elaborated in this investigation provides social scientists with a potentially useful approach to the study of volitional behavior. All three categories of self-conceptions and all possible interaction terms are significant predictors of student plans. The absence of conceptions of self as being capable of role performance or the absence of feeling likely of attaining desired rewards from role performance may lead individuals to plan to not undertake certain role activities.

This article cites major studies aimed at evaluating total counseling services in the educational setting. The study conducted by Volsky and colleagues suggests that a promising approach to criterion variables for assessing counseling outcome is found in specific variables. These variables have certain face validity stemming from their direct reflection of client concerns in seeking and in experiencing the treatment process. The study by Kagan provided observation regarding the relevance of confusions in group counseling. It points out that the use of inadequate labels and the failure to describe the actual nature of treatments have retarded research in this area.

Chapter 21 of the book "Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development" is presented. It explores the different methods that were used by researchers in obtaining facts in describing the sexual behavior of an individual. It also discusses the two general methods that must be followed in conducting a scientific investigation of the development of human sexual behavior.

The article discusses a case study on difficulties arising in the conduct of social research. The research was undertaken by a team of three sociologists under a grant from the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. The aim of this research was to explore the nature of the relationship between an individual's school experiences and subsequent dropout or delinquent behavior. Certain general principles concerning the conduct of research are evident. In order to avoid comparable difficulties, one must obtain formal approval for research endeavors from the highest level possible, that is, those with final authority. Two additional suggestions are relevant to the task of obtaining adequate approval and cooperation. One must establish and maintain channels of communication with the various levels of the organization. As a final suggestion for future researchers, it is apparently essential, particularly in politically sensitive areas of the country, to establish a steering committee or some similar vehicle to inform significant figures in the community of the intent and purpose of one's research. In this way, those who might, through misinformation, become opponents of the research can be made into supporters.