Facets of career decision-making difficulties

The present research investigated the relations among the measured and the expressed career decision-making difficulties in a sample of 299 young adults who intended to apply to college or university. As hypothesised, the correlations between career decision-making difficulties, as measured by the Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ), and the expressed difficulties were generally high (median = 0.64), but varied among the 10 difficulty categories (range 0.35-0.82). Both measured and expressed difficulties correlated negatively with the students' career decision-making self-efficacy (-0.63 and -0.65, respectively). The correlations between the CDDQ and both dimensions of the Vocational Decision Style Indicator were negative but low (-0.25 for the introvert vs. extrovert dimension and -0.35 for the thinking vs. feeling dimension). The correlations between the students' scholastic aptitude test scores and both measured and expressed difficulties were negligible (-0.03 and -0.08, respectively). Participants with more crystallised career plans reported lower career decision-making difficulties, higher career decision-making self-efficacy, and a higher 'thinking' (as opposed to 'feeling') vocational decision-making style. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Interaction of methadone, reinforcement history, and variable-interval performance.

In the present study, we examined how a reinforcement schedule history that generated high or low rates of responding influenced the effects of acute (Experiment 1) and chronic (Experiment 2) methadone administration. Initially, key-peck responses of pigeons were maintained under a variable-interval 90-s schedule of food presentation, and a methadone dose-response curve was determined with doses of 0.6, 1.2, and 2.4 mg/kg. The pigeons were then exposed, for at least 40 sessions, to either a fixed-ratio 50 schedule or a differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate 10-s schedule, or were given continued exposure to the variable-interval schedule. The methadone dose-response curve was redetermined after all pigeons again were responding under the variable-interval schedule. The effects of two different daily methadone doses (9.0 and 12.0 mg/kg/day) and withdrawal precipitated by naloxone also were assessed. Experience with a fixed-ratio or differential reinforcement of low rate schedule did not result in significantly different response rates under the variable-interval schedule and, in general, the acute effects of methadone did not have differential effects correlated with schedule history. However, for 2 of 4 subjects the rate-decreasing effects of methadone on rates of key pecking were greater following a history of low-rate responding, suggesting a possible interaction between schedule history and effects of methadone. Daily methadone administration under the variable-interval schedule revealed that pigeons with experience under the differential reinforcement of low rate schedule developed more rapid and complete tolerance to the rate-decreasing effects of methadone. Three of the 4 subjects in this group showed rate increases above drug-free baselines during chronic methadone dosing. Pigeons with a history of fixed-ratio responding also developed tolerance to the rate-decreasing effects of methadone but without the subsequent rate increases seen by subjects with low-rate histories. No subjects with variable-interval histories showed complete recovery of drug-free baselines, suggesting that interpolated training under other schedules may attenuate the rate-altering effects of chronically administered drugs. Naloxone (1.0 mg/kg), administered during the chronic methadone phase, resulted in greater disruption of responding by pigeons with a history of low-rate responding, as compared to subjects in the other two groups.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

THE ROLE OF PSYCHOLOGY IN NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT: WISHFUL THINKING AND REALITY

The aim of this essay is to indicate that psychology as a science or profession has not played a significant role in the historical evolution of industrialized countries. It is further argued that the problems of developing countries are basically political and economic and to psychologize them might be both unproductive and immoral. It is suggested that psychologists might do a better service by studying ways and means of changing the behavior of people who control the material resources of the world.     

A developmental study of the role of word order in comprehending Hebrew

Monolingual Hebrew-speaking subjects, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 11 years old, as well as adults, were asked to interpret utterances consisting of two nouns and a verb. Some utterances included only word order cues while others included direct object marker and subject-verb gender agreement cues. Even though Hebrew word order is relatively free, when subjects used word order as an interpretive cue they generally assigned sentence relations according to the dominant SVO order of modern Hebrew. This trend was less strong for the interpretations of NNV utterances than of NVN and VNN utterances. There was no evidence of a developmental sequence for word order strategies. In addition, there was no evidence that word order, for any age group, was necessarily a dominant cue for assigning sentence relations when other linguistic information was available.     

BEACHES: AN OBSERVATIONAL SYSTEM FOR ASSESSING CHILDREN'S EATING AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY BEHAVIORS AND ASSOCIATED EVENTS

An integrated system for coding direct observations of children's dietary and physical activity behaviors was developed. Associated environmental events were also coded, including physical location, antecedents, and consequences. To assess the instrument's reliability and validity, 42 children, aged 4 to 8 years, were observed for 8 consecutive weeks at home and at school. Results indicated that four 60-min observations at home produced relatively stable estimates for most of the 10 dimensions. Interobserver reliabilities during live and videotaped observations were high, with the exception of “consequences” categories that occurred in less than 1% of observed intervals. Evidence of validity was provided by findings that antecedents were associated with respective dietary and physical activity behaviors. The five physical activity categories were validated by heart-rate monitoring in a second study. The Behaviors of Eating and Activity for Children's Health Evaluation System is appropriate for studying influences on diet and physical activity in children in a variety of settings.     

Differences between Jewish–Israeli and Arab–Israeli college students in attitudes toward date selection and sex relations: A research note

Jewish and Arab–Moslem students attending an Israeli college were compared for their date selection criteria and their attitudes toward sexual relations. Questionnaires were completed by 214 Jews and 162 Arabs. Seventy percent of the respondents in both groups were women. Jews (more than Arabs) and males (more than females) showed a greater tendency to mention physical appearance as a selection criterion. In both ethnic groups, women thought that a longer dating period is needed before having sex. However, Jewish females did not differ from Jewish males in their vision of the appropriate age to start having sex, whereas Arab men and women did differ. The findings indicate that Israeli–Arab college students are considerably more traditional than Jewish students in their attitudes toward sex and dating and that the gender differences among Arabs are larger. The results are controlled for religiosity, family status, and financial status.     

Linking actors and models for water policy development in Egypt: Analyzing actors and their options

Policy development in the field of water resources management is traditionally supported by various analysis tools and planning models. Recent years have shown increasing attention for the social dimension of policy development, as this involves different actors interacting in an attempt to satisfy their interests. This requires information on the technical and financial aspects of policy options and information on the roles and interests of different actors. The use of the analysis of options technique is explored in this article, with the aim of incorporating such information in the development of a new water policy for Egypt. His main research interest is in the use of actor analysis to support decision making in the field of water resources management, and he has worked on actor analyses for water projects in Yemen, Egypt, and The Netherlands. He received his M.Sc. in Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management from Delft University of Technology in 1999. Nader El-Masry works as a water resources engineer for the National Water Resources Pan Project at the Ministry of Water resources and Irrigation in Egypt. In this position, he is involved in the development of a national water resources plan that should match Egypt’s water demands and supplies until the year 2017. He holds an M.Sc. in Water Resources and Environmental Management, from IHE, Delft, The Netherlands. Tarek Sadek has 12 years of experience in the field of hydrogeology, hydraulics, geomorphology, water resources management and environmental science. Currently, he is director of the National Water Resources Plan Project at the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation in Egypt. He holds a B.Sc. in Civil Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of Cairo University (1988), an M.Sc. in Hydrology from the Department of Engineering Hydrology, University College Galway (UCG, 1992), Republic of Ireland, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Australia (1997).     

Threat processing in obsessive-compulsive disorder: evidence from a modified negative priming task

Individuals with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often experience intrusive thoughts. These intrusions may be due to biases in information processing mechanisms, including attention, memory, and learning. To examine this hypothesis, we presented a modified negative priming (NP) paradigm with idiographically selected words to 19 individuals with OCD (OCs) and 19 matched non-anxious control participants (NACs). The words included OCD-relevant threat, OCD-relevant positive, and neutral words. This paradigm typically elicits positive priming because participants may learn the contingency between the prime and probe that facilitates responding [Frings and Wentura (2006). Strategy effects counteract distractor inhibition: NP with constantly absent probe distractors. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 32, 854-864]. As predicted, NACs showed facilitation (i.e., positive priming) rather than NP for all word types, whereas OCs exhibited facilitation for only neutral words. For positive words, OCs exhibited no priming and for threat words they exhibited NP. These results suggest that for idiographic, OCD-relevant threat information, individuals with OCD show difficulty learning the contingency between the information in the prime and probe displays relative to the NACs.