He's Made the Team

It isn't very often that a college undergraduate is given the opportunity to participate in active scientific research on a professional level, but James A. Block '59, a senior psychology major from New York City, is part of a research team granted $52,000 by the National Institutes of Mental Health for a study of social perception in children. When the project was first set up in the summer of 1957 he was named research assistant to Professor Albert Hastorf of the Psychology Department who was to be a member of the three-man team conducting the study.

The aim of the project is to discover categories of interpersonal perception in children and how they might be affected by such factors as ethnic origin, socioeconomic handicaps, or physical disability. The researchers collected data last summer on children, aged eight to twelve, from three camps around the metropolitan New York area, including two of the Herald Tribune's Fresh Air Fund camps. Variable factors were noted and recorded, and the data collected were separated as coming from three different types of situations: groups of children, all of whom were handicapped; groups, part of whom were handicapped, part able-bodied; and groups of all able-bodied children.

Jim had spent previous summers with camps for handicapped children so he knew what sort of problems he would face before starting the project. He and the other data-gatherers would sit down with the boys and girls individually and ask them to describe their feelings about the others living in their tent. The conversations were tape-recorded, later to be transcribed, and from the boys' reactions to each other a great deal of vital information was gathered. This is a new approach in determining categories of perception and in psychological circles it is known as the non-directional technique of interviewing.

Back in Hanover during the school year, Jim's task has been to sift through the voluminous amounts of evidence and analyze it, attempting to work out a methodology for further study. He suggests that determining the common factors by which children perceive one another may throw a great deal of new light upon their behavior patterns.

Another Dartmouth undergraduate, Abe Ross '60, works with Jim and has helped in the data gathering. Other members of the research team, besides Jim and Professor Hastorf, are Dr. Steven Richardson, of the Association for Aid to Crippled Children in New York, and Professor Sanford Dornbush, of the University of Washington. They all keep in very close touch with each other and carbon copies of each man's findings are sent to all the others. Since they are located in all parts of the country and Professor Hastorf is currently on leave to the Institute for Behavioral Study in Palo Alto, California, Jim claims that one of their biggest expenses is postage.

With Professor Hastorf gone, Jim is pretty much on his own with the Hanover end of the project, and he finds that it takes up a good bit of his attention. Besides this research, which only counts as one course, he must carry a full complement of other subjects; but it can't be hurting too much since Jim is a Rufus Choate Scholar. Though the project can be time-consuming, he finds it fascinating. As he sorts through his material he often runs across names he is familiar with from having handled their cases last summer.

Although nothing will be certain until all the final findings are gathered, it is hoped that the result of this study will be an article in a professional journal or possibly even a book. Jim graduates this year and plans to go into the pharmaceutical business with his father, but he still plans to carry on some psychological research at night. He can speak with the assurance of experience and claims that it is a "wonderfully exciting thing" to work with scientists engaged in such fundamental study.

Jim Block '59