Who uses community mental health centres? A study of one health district

A caseload analysis was undertaken to investigate those clients seen by five community mental health centre teams within one healthcare district. The 985 clients are described in terms of demographic and clinical features and questions relating to service provision are discussed.     

Recognition and recall of invisible objects

Three experiments examined recognition and recall of items that people imagined as being invisible. When one item hid another, the hidden item suffered in recognition, but so did the one that remained visible; the demand to imagine items invisibly made both items less recognizable than in control conditions. Cued recall did not depend on whether the visible item or the invisible item was the cue, but it did depend on whether the initial task required relational processing of the items. When both items were invisible in a dark imaginary scene, there was a general loss in all measures of memory, including memory for the scene. None of the results requires recourse to the “out of sight, out of mind” principle that memory depends on the visual characteristics of images. The results attest, instead, to the importance of the informational characteristics of memorial records.     

Gender and temporal differences in identifying sources of stress

Much of the methodology in stress research focuses on stress manifestation and organismic reactions to life’s crises. In contrast, the present study sought to identify the major sources of stress and the nature of those sources. The results revealed a consistent pattern in high and low stressors throughout the 3-year period of the study, and differences only of intensity between males and females, not type of stress. Except for individuals’ temporal variations in critical events, the highest stressors for the groups were external, primarily financial and time management. Internal sources, such as personal relationships and self-absorption, were typically the lowest concerns. Everyday problems arising from current life styles seem to be significant sources of stress.     

Salkovskis on obsessional-compulsive neurosis: a rejoinder

Salkovskis (Behav Res. Ther. 27, 677–682, 1989) presents a development of his 1985 account, together with empirical findings. A number of criticisms of this work are presented.     

The relationship of self and occupational concepts to the occupational preferences of adolescents

This study tested aspects of Super's self-concept theory of career development with a sample of British schoolchildren. Findings suggested that self-concepts and concepts of occupational preferences do have a role in career development, though there were some indications that the theory is more applicable to more able youngsters and to those high in self-esteem, than to others. Agreement between ideal-self-concepts and occupational preference concepts was significantly greater than that between actual-self-concepts and occupational preference concepts. This finding was interpreted as reflecting the youngsters' greater concern for the future and the possible, rather than the present and the given, and it suggested that refinements are needed in Super's theory.     

Do letter features migrate? A note of caution

Summary The feature-integration model of visual information processing (Treisman & Gelade, 1980) predicts perceptual errors based on the incorrect grouping of stimulus features in multi-element displays. Experiment 1 examined the frequency of such errors with a tachistoscopic bar probe task using letters and novel patterns with a production response. A substantial proportion of the errors did involve figures that were not present in the display but contained combinations of features which had been present. Such errors were especially prominent with novel patterns. The results with letters suggested that such responses were due to guessing, not feature migration, and this was confirmed by Experiment 2. In the second study, responses were collected for single character displays but were scored as if they had been responses to the multielement displays in Experiment 1. The results showed the same high proportion of illusory conjunction errors as the previous results and it was concluded that both results were due to guessing. Spatial confusions in the bar probe task with letters appear to involve whole characters, not character features.This research was supported by grant A-9581 from the National Science and Engineering Council of Canada to the senior author. This research was reported as a paper to the annual meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Toronto, 1981. Ian Morrison is now a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University.     

It's just (family) business: The impact of familial work experience on perceived qualification and hireability during the selection process

Though scholars have explored the impact of familial work experience (FWE) posthire, research has yet to determine the role of such experience during the selection process. Drawing from Attribution Theory and research on nepotism and family business dynamics, we suggest that the presence of FWE on an applicant's selection materials will lead to reduced perceptions of qualifications and hireability. Through two online experiments (N₁ = 170, N₂ = 251), we found mixed support for this proposition. In our first study focused on cover letters, we found that applicants who reported FWE were not appraised differently than those who did not. In our second study focused on letters of recommendation, however, we found that applicants who reported FWE were perceived as less qualified and less hireable. Moreover, we found that the level of job (i.e., service vs. managerial) moderates these relations, such that managerial applicants with FWE on their letter of recommendation were perceived as less hireable than those who did not. Implications for research and practice are discussed, and future research directions are offered.