Male nurturing: older men don't want to share their views; young women do.

When compared to men (n = 46) and women under 30 years of age (n = 30) or women over 60 (n = 68), men over 60 years of age (n = 41) showed an extreme reluctance to answer questions about their perceptions of other men who nurture children. Women under 30 were comparatively willing to share their views.

Canine analogs of human personality factors.

Analysis of the behavioral traits of 56 breeds of dog produced three factors with some similarities to the popular five-factor model of human personality: (a) reactivity--surgency, (b) aggression--disagreeableness, and (c) trainability--openness. Canine and human personality similarities are argued to have their origin in biogenetic factors stemming from common evolutionary sources and from canine breeding for human compatibility and assistance with human tasks. Each of the three canine factors was shown to have a highly visible morphological indicator between breeds of dog. Reactivity--surgency was related to overall size, aggression--disagreeableness was related to having pointed ears, and trainability--openness was related to the ponderal index.

Negative evaluations of men's nurturant touching of young children.

82 female and 65 male, mostly unmarried undergraduate students read one of 16 versions of a brief scenario depicting a man or woman either engaging or not engaging in nurturant touching of young children. Subjects then rated story characters on masculinity and goodness scales and on scales measuring likelihood of social acceptance and future instrumental achievement. Men and women who engaged in nurturant touching were rated low on masculinity and high on goodness and social acceptance. Men rated male characters lowest on goodness and women rated male characters highest on goodness. Women who engaged in nurturant touching were given the highest goodness and social acceptance ratings. It was concluded that some men may avoid engaging in nurturant touching of young children due to gender stereotyping.

Using a personal robot to teach young children.

Seventy-five preschool children were instructed about birds by a human teacher, a moving personal robot, a stationary personal robot, and a tape recorder. How much the children learned and how much attention the children paid were compared for each type of instruction. The children learned when they were taught by the human teacher and when they were taught by the animated and the stationary robots. The children paid more attention to the live teacher and to the moving robot than they did to the stationary robot or to the tape recorder. The difference between the amount of attention the children paid to the animated robot and the amount of attention they paid to the human teacher was not statistically significant.

Pinworm infestation of the genital tract.

Extraintestinal enterobiasis has been reported in the vagina, endometrium, myometrium, ovary, fallopian tube and pelvic peritoneum. Gravid female pinworms may migrate from the perianal area to the vagina, ascend through the genital tract and exit through the fallopian tube to the peritoneum. Ectopic enterobiasis seldom causes clinical symptoms, but chronic granuloma formation may simulate other mass lesions in the pelvis.

Abstinence or decreasing consumption among adolescents: importance of reasons.

This study determined the pervasiveness of reasons for abstinence or for decreasing alcohol consumption among 196 high school students in eastern North Carolina. Expanding upon prior research, 29 personal, social, and environmental reasons were examined. Generally, the less a student drank, the more important a reason was for abstaining or for a reduction in alcohol intake. Reasons rated important by a majority of all adolescent drinking groups, including heavy drinkers, were related to health, self-esteem/self-control, and parental disapproval/disappointment.

Overt and covert verbalization in normal and learning disabled children's problem solving.

The problem-solving ability of 18 learning-disabled high school students was increased by instructions to verbalize overtly, but not by instructions to verbalize their actions covertly. This suggests that Vygotsky's 1962 "internalization-of-speech" perspective may be as useful in understanding the limitations of disabled learners as it has been in understanding the limitations of young learners.