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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Thyroid chondroplasty: Smoothing the thyroid cartilage— A retrospective study of thyroid chondroplasty for feminine neck appearance

Background: Thyroid chondroplasty is a surgical intervention for reduction of the Adam's apple, performed in trans women to achieve a more feminine appearance of the neck. This procedure is necessary since hormonal therapy given as part of gender affirming medical interventions has no effect on the mature larynx.

Objectives: We aim to describe our thyroid chondroplasty surgical technique and outcome of all thyroid chondroplasties performed during the study period.

Methods: A retrospective chart review of all thyroid chondroplasty procedures performed in a tertiary referral center between 2006 and 2015. Patients' clinical characteristics and surgical outcome were recorded and analyzed.

Results: Twenty-seven trans women underwent thyroid chondroplasty in our institution. Post-operative complications included a single patient who suffered from false vocal fold (ventricular folds) hematoma that resolved spontaneously. Five other patients had an erythematous scar. No other complications were observed.

Conclusion: Thyroid chondroplasty is a safe procedure for achieving a feminine neck contour in trans women.     

Competence and performance in belief-desire reasoning across two cultures: the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about false belief?

There is a change in false belief task performance across the 3-5 year age range, as confirmed in a recent meta-analysis [Wellman, H. M., Cross, D., & Watson, J. (2001). Meta-analysis of theory mind development: The truth about false-belief. Child Development, 72, 655-684]. This meta-analysis identified several performance factors influencing success, including manipulations that highlight the salience of the initial belief content (such as asking where Sally will look first for the marble). However, because a proportion of variance in performance remained unexplained even when identified performance factors were controlled for, the authors concluded from the standpoint of a 'theory-theory' account that children's improvement is the result of conceptual change. Further, the meta-analysis showed that manipulations such as 'look first' improve performance only in children who are in the older part of the 3-5 year range, and thus plausibly operating with a 'transitional' theory of mind--just on the point of realizing conceptual change. Here, we present three studies systematically investigating the 'look first' manipulation which showed that: (i) the advantage for the look first question can be demonstrated in children across different cultures, (ii) look first has an effect that is additive to the improvement with age; there is no interaction such that older children gain more benefit from younger children, (iii) performance in younger children can be, but is not always, elevated to levels that are statistically above chance. These results challenge the theory-theory account and are discussed in terms of models of belief-desire reasoning in which both conceptual competence and performance factors play central roles.     

The BPQ: a scale for the assessment of borderline personality based on DSM-IV criteria

The aim of the study was to develop a self-report measure that assesses borderline personality traits as defined by DSM-IV criteria, including separate subscales for each criterion. A sample of normal subjects from community colleges in the midwestern region of the United States was used to develop the scale. The psychometric properties of the scale were examined using an additional United States sample and student samples from England and Australia. The scale was compared with existing measures of borderline and schizotypal personality. Evidence for the internal consistency and convergent and divergent validity of the new scale is presented. The results of several analyses of variance comparing males and females in the three national groups are reported. A Principal Components Analysis of the subscales suggested either a single factor or two correlated factors. Oblique rotation yielded a structure that distinguished identity/interpersonal and impulsivity borderline personality traits. It is concluded that the new scale provides a useful tool for clinicians and researchers interested in screening for borderline personality traits in both general and clinical populations. Suggestions for further research are indicated.