My guess is that he originally wrote something like, "may remain unanswered", thought better of it and decided to replace "may remain" with "will not be easily". In the process, he probably just forgot to change "unanswered" to "answered". I don't actually have telepathic powers; I just recognize this kind of error from my own writing (especially e-mail).
Rick Dr. Richard L. Froman Psychology Department John Brown University Siloam Springs, AR 72761 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone and voice mail: (501)524-7295 http://www.jbu.edu/sbs/psych/froman.htm -----Original Message----- From: Ann Calhoun-Sauls [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 8:06 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences Subject: Rosenthal quote Hi all, I've assigned the excert from Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968) Teachers' expectancies:Determinants of pupils' I.Q. gains. Psychological Reports, 19, 115-118. that's reproduced in Pettijohn's Sources Notable Selections in Psychology book. One of my better students e-mailed me a question about a line he found particularly difficult to understand. While I think I know what was meant from the context, I also found the sentence extremely difficult and thought that it may have been misprinted. I''ve e-mailed the student back with my interpretation of the section, but wanted to see if any of you had any other input or perhaps even access to the original source. The sentence in question reads "Prior research on the unintentional communication of expectancies in experimentally more carefully controlled interactions suggests that this question will not be easily unanswered (Rosenthal, in press)" The preceeding sentence was "The most important question which remains is that which asks how a teacher's expectation becomes translated into behavior in such a way as to elicit the expected pupil behavior." These occur on page 171 in the Pettijohn book as the next to the last paragraph of the selection. What I told my student is: The part of the sentence that reads "Prior research . . . interactions" and the citation of "Rosenthal (in press)" means that Rosenthal had performed another study in which he had observed how the teachers' interacted with the students after being given expectations about their ability. The second part of the sentence appears to simply mean that from that study Rosenthal had not found any clear differences in how the teachers treated the students and assumed that it would be hard to figure it out. I agree that the phrasing is strange; it sounds like it should read "easily answered" not "easily unanswered." It could simply be that the word was copied incorrectly when the article was edited for your Sources book. Or it could be that this was a phrase that was once commonly used and went out of style before my time. I like the latter interpretation because it makes me feel really young for the first time in a while. Thank you. Any comments? Ann Calhoun-Sauls Belmont Abbey College Belmont, NC 28102 --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
