Word: psychologists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...third of the three Rs, American students would seem to have turned around in recent years. Since 1980, standardized math test scores have been tilting upward. The best mathematicians among U.S. collegians have performed strongly. Says University of Michigan Psychologist Harold Stevenson: "Teachers, parents and children all think they are doing just fine...
...each story Carter, like the Herm, seems to take on two natures, historian and psychologist, or antiquarian and storyteller, or feminist and philosopher. Although she might be called one or all of these things, in the end she defies any rubric. She tantalizes, she informs, she delights. She may occasionally mystify, but good writers do that...
...Psychologist David Lykken, one of the Minnesota researchers, thinks the study will shove the pendulum further away from the "radical environmentalism" of those who believe the characters of children are more or less created by their parents and environment. Lykken says Test Pilot Chuck Yeager is daring because he was "genetically endowed with a low scale of fearlessness," a trait that might have been redirected or tamped down but not eradicated. Says Psychologist Nancy Segal, a member of the project: "Parents can work to make a child less fearful, but they can't make that child brave...
Adam Matheny of the Louisville Twin Study, the oldest of U.S. twin study groups, says the "mechanism for change is laid down the moment a child is conceived" and that the genes provide a "rough sketch of life." Some psychologists who stress the influence of genes on behavior often speak as if nurture were a by-product of nature. "All of us make our own environment," says Developmental Psychologist Sandra Scarr of the University of Virginia. Lykken makes the same point: "The environment molds your personality, but your genes determine what kind of environment you have, seek and attend...
Some scholars, such as Princeton Psychologist Leon Kamin, fear that the Minnesota results will be used to blame the poor and downtrodden for their own condition. Political liberals have long believed that crime and poverty are largely by-products of destructive environments. As a result, they are usually suspicious of biological or genetic explanations for behavior. "These are very ambiguous data that can be interpreted any way you want to," says Kamin. "I'm not saying that anyone is falsifying facts or anything, just that we really know very, very little." For the Minnesota researchers and their allies, however, their...