e story (with what the authors describe as the parent's own "evaluative devices") รป its setting, the goal of the action, the complications that ensue from pursuit of the goal, and finally the outcome.
Children were selected from several Chicago area schools. On initial home visits each child told a story from Frog, Where Are You? to the experimenter, which was recorded on audiocassette. The experimenter returned a week later for a second recording of the child's version of the story. In the intervening week 24 of the 30 children had heard one or the other of their parents tell the story twice more to them, and the results were again tape-recorded. The other "no parent" six children functioned as a control group.
After transcription, each story was analysed for the number of clauses and the frequency of use of a variety of evaluatives.
Results: The children's stories improved after hearing a parent tell the story, with the sons telling stories containing more evaluatives (linguistic forms believed to promote better comprehension and memory of stories) after hearing their mother's story telling, and daughters telling stories containing more evaluatives after hearing their father's story telling.
Discussion: The social sciences suffer from an inherent lack of precision in both the definition and measurement of the research materials on which they focus compared to the much more easily quantified and tested subject matter of the physical sciences. To make up for this lack, the author of this article has engaged in the obfuscating mumbo-jumbo of sociological jargon, using the term "evaluatives" as if they are somehow more objective and real than being what they are: categories and differences that seem important to the investigator.
The second paper evaluated was Stephanie L. Dubois' (1997), Gender differences in the emotional tone of written sexual fantasies.
Purpose of study: Reasoning that the traditional gender rol...