Clinicians' ratings and self-reports of basic symptoms

A sample of 34 paranoid or undifferentiated schizophrenic outpatients were given the Rome Basic Disorders Scale, a self-rating questionnaire aimed to the assessment of basic symptoms, as defined by the Bonn Scale. These patients were then interviewed on the same 54 basic symptoms explored with the scale, by two independent clinicians blind to the outpatients' data. Self-ratings compared with clinicians' ratings by Student t for dependent samples yielded only one significant difference (p< .01) for the item measuring hypersensitivity to light. Present findings suggest that the Rome Basic Disorders Scale may be safely self-rated even by collaborative schizophrenic patients.     

Audiotactile temporal order judgments

We report a series of three experiments in which participants made unspeeded 'Which modality came first?' temporal order judgments (TOJs) to pairs of auditory and tactile stimuli presented at varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) using the method of constant stimuli. The stimuli were presented from either the same or different locations in order to explore the potential effect of redundant spatial information on audiotactile temporal perception. In Experiment 1, the auditory and tactile stimuli had to be separated by nearly 80 ms for inexperienced participants to be able to judge their temporal order accurately (i.e., for the just noticeable difference (JND) to be achieved), no matter whether the stimuli were presented from the same or different spatial positions. More experienced psychophysical observers (Experiment 2) also failed to show any effect of relative spatial position on audiotactile TOJ performance, despite having much lower JNDs (40 ms) overall. A similar pattern of results was found in Experiment 3 when silent electrocutaneous stimulation was used rather than vibrotactile stimulation. Thus, relative spatial position seems to be a less important factor in determining performance for audiotactile TOJ than for other modality pairings (e.g., audiovisual and visuotactile).     

Psychological and physical well-being during unemployment: a meta-analytic study

The authors used theoretical models to organize the diverse unemployment literature, and meta-analytic techniques were used to examine the impact of unemployment on worker well-being across 104 empirical studies with 437 effect sizes. Unemployed individuals had lower psychological and physical well-being than did their employed counterparts. Unemployment duration and sample type (school leaver vs. mature unemployed) moderated the relationship between mental health and unemployment, but the current unemployment rate and the amount of unemployment benefits did not. Within unemployed samples, work-role centrality, coping resources (personal, social, financial, and time structure), cognitive appraisals, and coping strategies displayed stronger relationships with mental health than did human capital or demographic variables. The authors identify gaps in the literature and propose directions for future unemployment research.     

Books Received (2001)

Publications Received

Books Received (2001)     

Spatial localization in children after changes in position

Five experiments investigated the young child's ability to retrieve a target after a change in the position of the child or the target. In Experiments I–IV 2- to 4-year-old children were rotated 90, 180, 270, or 360° about a stationary square table containing four identical hiding locations at each of the cardinal locations. The children tested performed this task significantly better than chance, but their errors reflected either their response biases in the absence of any information as to the location of the target, or the repetition of a response which had been successful in retrieving the target prior to the change in position. When the children were forced to respond rapidly, these errors increased significantly. In Experiment V a table top was rotated 90, 180, 270, or 360° in front of 3- to 10-year-old children. There were two cue situations. The child saw the rotation, or the child had to infer the rotation. Young children made errors of the types observed in Experiments I–IV. The ability to inhibit these errors increased with age. By 7 years of age performance was virtually perfect when the child could observe the change in position of the hidden object. The ability to infer the positional change developed more slowly and was good but not perfect at 10 years of age.     

THE MOBILITY OF TWO-YEAR TECHNICIAN GRADUATES

This study is based on a total population of about 6,200 graduates of electronics and drafting design curriculums from 1955 to 1969. The mobility factors considered in this study are: (a) year of graduation, (b) number of dependents, (c) initial salary, (d) present salary, (e) distance between home-town high school and present job, (f) distance between home-town high school and first job, and (g) number of simultaneous job-resident changes. Zero-order correlations and multiple regression analyses were used to identify relationships between the mobility factors. The job characteristics of the graduates were identified by curriculum. The interrelationships between the mobility factors and the job characteristics were identified by zero-order correlation and linear multiple-regression techniques. It was found that (a) there are a number of significant interrelationships within the mobility factors, and (b) there are a number of significant relationships between job characteristics (data, things, and people related roles) and some of the mobility factors.