Creating and criticizing theory

F. W. Vondracek, R. M. Lerner, and J. E. Schulenberg (Journal of Vocational Behavior, 1983, 23, 179–202) criticize the vocational literature for failing to “follow acceptable scientific procedures for building a theory” and for failing to attend to important methodological and substantive developments. It is argued here that no single acceptable process for creating theory exists and three strategies useful for developing a theory are illustrated: immerse yourself in data, pick a specific set of results to explain, and try to resolve inconsistencies in the literature. Three criteria for evaluating theories and criticisms of them are discussed: comprehensiveness (content value), accuracy (truth value), and clarity (form). The paper by Vondracek et al. is examined from this perspective and is shown to lack the specificity, clarity, and accuracy necessary to be an effective guide to better vocational research or theory.     

An analytical description of employment according to race,sex, prestige,and Holland type of work

The composition of employment was examined using 1970 census data for employed civilians, Holland's occupational typology, and a prestige scale. The present report extends earlier examinations of the labor force using these dimensions by studying the sex and race composition of types of work at several levels of prestige, and by examining the extent of government employment among men and women in different jobs. Results indicate areas where women and blacks are under- and over-represented. In addition, because of the association between type of work and prestige level, aspirations or interest in a type of work may have implications for the level of work that is available. Counseling and research implications of the results are discussed.     

The logic of neuropsychological research and the problem of patient classification in aphasia

A critical analysis is presented of the assumptions that must be made to use the data from aphasia to constrain models of normal language processing. The implication of these assumptions for patient classification and research methodology in aphasia is considered.     

Cognitive mechanisms in number processing and calculation: evidence from dyscalculia

This article presents a framework for the cognitive analysis of number processing and calculation. Within this framework the primary objective is the development of a model that is sufficiently detailed to serve as a basis for explaining the number-processing/calculation performance of both normal and cognitively impaired subjects. First a general model of the cognitive mechanisms for number processing and calculation is outlined. It is shown that patterns of impairments observed in brain-damaged patients support the major assumptions of the model and that the model provides a theoretically motivated framework for interpreting the deficits. A single case is then discussed in some detail, to demonstrate that through detailed analyses of impaired performance the preliminary model can be elaborated to specify not only the general architecture of the number-processing and calculation systems, but also the inner workings of specific components and the consequences of damage to these components. The article concludes with a discussion of several general issues arising from the presented arguments.     

Occupational differentiation among white men in the first decade after high school

Most research on career development is concerned with the fate of individuals, but portraits of the heterogeneity and development of whole populations or aggregates of individuals can also be useful for understanding the needs and development of different client populations. Two population-level concepts are proposed and defined: differentiation and distribution. This report then charts the rate at which occupational differentiation proceeds among 3730 young white men and investigates the personal and family attributes by which these men are distributed, or distribute themselves, to jobs. Data from the National Longitudinal (Parnes) Survey of the Labor Force Experience of Young Men are used to examine employment among men aged 16 to 28 in different levels and fields of work. Results suggest that the rate of labor force participation stabilizes in the early twenties, differentiation among men by education and the distribution of men among different broad levels and fields of work stabilize by the mid-twenties, and the sorting of men with different socioeconomic backgrounds into different occupational groups continues through the late twenties at which age it appears to have been largely completed. Discriminant analyses suggest that the distribution of men to jobs is primarily along an occupational status dimension, and secondarily according to field of work. Among the variables used in the analyses, academic achievement is the major dimension by which men are sorted or sort themselves to different jobs.     

Explaining the adult careers of dyslexic boys: Variations in critical skills for high-level jobs

Several hundred boys who were diagnosed as dyslexic (specifically reading disabled) in adolescence and who attended a private college preparatory school for dyslexics were followed up in adulthood. The occupations of these men, who were above average in both intelligence and socioeconomic background, were compared to those of both a control group and the general white male population. As hypothesized, the dyslexic men had higher level jobs than the average man but they were much less likely than the controls to become professionals. They rarely entered jobs such as physician, lawyer, or college teacher which require higher degrees; instead most became managers or salesmen. The occupational differences between the dyslexic and control men were related to, but not completely accounted for, by their large differences in educational attainment. Data on the competencies rated as critical to good job performance in different occupations were consistent with the hypothesis that dyslexic men would establish themselves in relatively high-level jobs emphasizing nonacademic rather than academic on-the-job skills. Nondisabled professionals rated getting information through reading among the most critical of the skills required on their jobs. In contrast, managers and salesmen rated reading as less important than nonacademic competencies such as taking initiative and responsibility or being persuasive. The results illustrate the value of knowing more about the particular competencies required in different jobs in order to help members of special groups, particularly those such as dyslexies who have specific and enduring handicaps but who are otherwise intellectually normal.     

A challenge to vocational psychology: How important are aspirations in determining male career development?

Nationally representative longitudinal data on 1394 employed white men aged 15 to 24 in 1966 were used to assess whether job opportunities or vocational aspirations are the more important determinants of later job held. Support was found for two hypotheses: (a) men more often achieve congruence between their aspiration and their field of employment by changing aspirations to match the job rather than vice versa; and (b) aspirations for field of work generally are not as useful as actual job field for predicting the field of jobs held 1 to 5 years later. Contrary to expectation, middle-class young men were no more able to attain their aspirations either for field of employment or for status level of occupation than were lower-class male youths. These results suggest that although aspirations have some predictive power, the opportunity structure—which both conditions aspirations to narrow ranges early in life and affects the direction of early career development—is too often neglected by vocational psychology. One suggestion for counseling practice is that interest and maturity assessments be used as sources of information to both client and counselor about past influences. Attempts to actually counteract those influences should be clearly specified as such and separated from the assessment process.     

Defective stimulus set attention in generalized epilepsy

This study examined auditory selective attention in primary generalized and complex-partial (temporal lobe) epileptics using binaural and dichotic versions of the Continuous Performance Test. The patient groups did not differ from normal controls when only one channel was presented or when divided attention (simultaneously monitoring two channels) was required. However, generalized epileptics had significantly depressed hit rates when directed attention (responding to critical stimuli in only one channel) was required. These results suggest a contribution of brain stem “arousal” mechanisms to stimulus set attention. In addition, right ear perceptual advantages were found on these dichotic monitoring tasks, lending support to the contention that short-term auditory memory and verbal report are not required for the dichotic ear effect.     

The selective impairment of phonological processing: A case study

A case study is reported of an aphasic patient with fluent speech and markedly superior comprehension of written vs. spoken words. Results of extensive testing supported the hypothesis that the patient suffers from a phonological processing deficit that affects performance in all tasks that require the generation of a phonological code. This selective deficit is interpreted as the underlying cause of diverse symptoms such as asyntactic comprehension of written sentences, the commission of spelling errors in writing, and the production of literal paraphasias and neologisms in spontaneous speech. Alternative possibilities for the classification of this patient are discussed.     

Applying an occupational classification to the work histories of young men and women

Holland's occupational classification was used to analyze the work histories of a national representative sample of young men and women ages 14 through 24. Hypotheses tested were concerned with the psychological orderliness of occupational changes, the relationship between occupational experiences and aspirations, and the relationship between consistent occupational codes and the stability of work histories. The analyses supported the usefulness of the occupational classification for organizing the work histories of both young men and young women. For both sexes, the classification reflected regular patterns of job changes. The category of a person's earlier job was an efficient predictor of a person's subsequent jobs; likewise, the category of a person's current job forecasted the category of his vocational aspiration. The consistency of an occupational code was also related to job stability for whites but not for blacks.     

Short-term memory performance in the absence of phonological coding

These experiments examined the short-term memory performance of an aphasic patient with posterior damage who shows a selective deficit in phonological coding. In recognition memory tests, the patient relied on both visual and semantic coding, and often showed an essentially normal level of accuracy. However, for memory sets consisting of four function words, his performance was quite impaired. Also, his retention of order information was far below that of normal controls. The implications of these deficits in short-term memory for language comprehension and production are discussed.     

An investigation of repetition and language processing in a case of conduction aphasia

A study is reported of a single case of conduction aphasia. A battery of tasks designed to investigate the parameters of the patient's severe repetition deficit is supplemented by tests of several language functions. The results provide extensive information on a wide range of the patient's language abilities and are used to evaluate the adequacy of four models that have been offered to account for conduction aphasia. An argument is made in support of the suggestion that the syndrome of conduction aphasia should be divided into two subgroups based on patients' ability to select and realize phonemes in speech output. It is concluded that the best explanation for the disorder of patients with repetition deficit but without significant speech output problems is the hypothesis that repetition ability is compromised by a pathological limitation of auditory-verbal short-term memory. This hypothesis is extended to account for the pattern of results obtained in the language tasks.     

Right-hemispheric damage and verbal problem solving behavior.

Patients with right-hemisphere damage, who ostensibly have no linguistic impairment, are relatively incapable of solving two-term series problems in which comparative adjectives in the premise and question are antonymic. This finding suggests that such verbal reasoning depends, in part, upon nonlinguistic imaginal processes subserved by the right hemisphere. In this manner, the right hemisphere is often required for the full elaboration of linguistic input.     

The semantic deficit hypothesis: Perceptual parsing and object classification by aphasic patients

Many aphasic patients are impaired in their ability to provide or to recognize the names of objects, but little is known about the processing deficits that underlie these difficulties. In this report, a model of object naming/name recognition is proposed, and a prediction is tested concerning one possible functional locus of impairment in name-recognition and object-naming disorders. A subgroup of aphasic patients is found to be impaired in the ability to perform perceptual similarity judgments for pairs of stimulus objects, and to be unable to classify the objects into one of two lexical categories. It is concluded that the classification disorder suffered by these patients results from an impairment at the level of the semantically guided perceptual parsing of objects.     

Parallel function strategy in pronoun assignment

Subjects completed sentences of the form NP1 aux V NP2 because (but) Pro … (e.g., John may scold Bill because he …) with a reason or motive for the action described. A basic perceptual strategy was hypothesized to underlie the comprehension of these sentences which have a potentially ambiguous pronoun in the subject position of the subordinate clause. It was expected that listeners would interpret the pronoun as being coreferential with the subject NP of the main clause, the NP with the same grammatical function. While this strategy accounted for the major share of the results, semantic factors restricted its use, establishing an interpretation in which the pronoun was coreferential with the object NP of the main clause.     

Choice behavior of rats searching for food

The experiments reported here were designed to determine if several general principles drawn from appetitively motivated discrimination experiments in standard laboratory apparatus might also apply to food-searching behavior under more naturalistic conditions. Food-deprived rats searched for food in an open observation area. Choice behavior after finding food and after not finding food was analyzed. In all cases, not finding food in a possible food location was sufficient to direct subsequent search behavior away from that location for the remainder of the day's test. Finding food had variable effects on subsequent choice behavior, depending on the number of locations that actually contained food and the number of days food was in one location before being shifted to another. The results indicate that the rat's search strategy was influenced by food availability and distribution in ways that are predicted by discrimination learning experiments.     

Decision processes in verifying category membership statements: Implications for models of semantic memory

Current models of semantic memory assume that natural categories are well-defined. Specific predictions of two such models, the Smith, Shoben, and Rips (1974a) two-stage feature comparison model and the Glass and Holyoak (1974/75) ordered search model, were tested and disconfirmed in Experiment I. We propose an alternative model postulating fuzzy categories represented as sets of characteristic properties. This model, combined with a Bayesian decision process, accounts for the results of three additional experiments, as well as for the major findings in the semantic memory literature. We argue that people verify category membership statements by assessing similarity relations between concepts rather than by using information which logically specifies the truth value of the sentence. Our data also imply that natural categories are fuzzy rather than well-defined.     

Imagery,propositions, and the form of internal representations

This paper has four major sections: First, we review the basic arguments offered by Pylyshyn (Psychological Bulletin, 1973, 80, 1–24) and others against using imagery as an explanatory construct in psychology. Second, we consider each of these points and find none that speak against any but the most primitive notions of imagery. Third, we review the results of various experiments on imagery. In each case, we compare two explanations of the findings: one which assumes the existence of a surface image manifesting emergent properties, and one which assumes that all internal representations are coded in terms of “abstract propositions.” We find imagery hypotheses to be at least as adequate as those based on propositional representation. Finally, we conclude that debate about the ultimate foundations of internal representation is fruitless; the empirical question is whether images have properties that cannot be derived directly from more abstract propositional structures.     

Cognitive correlates of map-reading ability

The performance of ROTC students on the Relief Format Assessment Test (RFAT) was regressed on psychometric variables and a measure of hemisphericity. Contrary to expectation, it was found that measures of visual-spatial ability and hemisphericity were not good predictors of map-reading ability, whereas the Extended Range Vocabulary and Mathematical Aptitude Tests were significant predictors. Factor analysis of the RFAT indicated the existence of two factors, one tentatively associated with terrain analysis and the other with altitude estimation. Mathematical Aptitude along with Form Board predicted performance on the altitude estimation factor, whereas Extended Range Vocabulary along with Similarities and Institution predicted performance on the terrain analysis factor. These results suggest that at least for our subjects, the solution of map-reading problems is primarily dependent upon verbal-analytic and to a lesser extent upon visual-spatial ability.