A Comparison of Verbal Response Modes Used by Master's-Level Career Counselors and Other Helpers

The verbal response modes of 4 master's-level career counselors, each in middle sessions of career counseling with 2 adult clients, were categorized and compared with those of other types of helpers. Career counselors primarily used information, direct guidance, paraphrase, and closed question. In comparison with data presented in Hill, Thames, and Rardin (1979) Toro (1986) and Levy (1989) career counselors were most similar to Albert Ellis, mental health professionals, psychologists on radio talk shows, and family practice lawyers in that all frequently used information and direct guidance. They were most dissimilar to Carl Rogers, who used more paraphrase, interpretation, and confrontation.     

Personality Characteristics of Achieving and Underachieving High Ability Senior Women

This study utilized the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and the Gough Adjective Check List (ACL) in an investigation of the relationship between personality characteristics and academic achievement in gifted university women. Several scales of the CPI differentiated achievers from underachievers. In addition, achieving and underachieving women described themselves differently on the ACL. As defined in this study, the achieving women were more highly socialized than the underachieving women.     

New reproductive technologies in the treatment of human infertility and genetic disease

In this paper I will discuss three areas in which advances in human reproductive technology could occur, their uses and abuses, and their effects on society. First is the potential to drastically increase the success rate and availability of in vitro fertilization and embryo freezing. Second is the ability to perform biopsies on embryos prior to the onset of pregnancy. Finally, I will consider the adding or altering of genes in embryos, commonly referred to as “genetic engineering”. As new reproductive technologies pass from experimental models into the potential for medical utilization, I believe that it will be important for lawmakers everywhere to avoid the impulse to outlaw procedures that a society believes to be ‘unnatural’ at a first glance. Rather, I would hope that they can respond thoughtfully with legislation that serves two purposes — to protect the rights of couples to overcome infertility or to reduce the risk of genetic disease in their children-to-be, and more importantly, to protect children-to-be from the abuses that could result from some of the practices that I will discuss.     

Expectancy Accessibility and the Influence of Outcome Expectancies on Adolescent Smokeless Tobacco Use

This study investigated the moderating influence of expectancy accessibility on the relation between outcome expectancies and drug use intentions. Specifically, it was hypothesized that expectancies made temporarily more accessible would predict smokeless tobacco intentions to a greater degree than would less accessible expectancies. In addition, it was anticipated that expectancies regarding positive outcomes of smokeless tobacco use would be better predictors of intention than would expectancies about negative outcomes. Results partially supported the accessibility hypothesis, but this effect occurred for positive outcome expectancies only. In addition, the anticipated prepotency of positive over negative expectancies in predicting drug use intentions was strongly supported. These findings are consistent with theories of problem behavior which differentiate between positive and negative outcome expectancies and which postulate that accessibility of expectancies plays an important role in expectancy-behavior relations.     

Use of techniques promoting students' self-determination: Effects on students' analytic problem-solving skills

Based on self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985, 1987, 1991), we assessed the effect of controlling strategies and restricted choice options on students' performance on analytic reason problems. Subjects in the controlling-directives condition were told by their teacher that a given strategy was the way students should solve a set of analytical problems. Although subjects in the noncontrolling-directives condition were taught the same strategy, they were encouraged to use any strategy they chose to solve the identical problems. The results indicated, as predicted, that subjects in the controlling-directives condition performed significantly worse than subjects in the noncontrolling-directives condition on a subsequent set of analytic reasoning problems, when tested by an experimenter who was unaware of a subject's condition. Interestingly, subjects in the controlling-directives condition regarded the teacher as qualitatively more competent than noncontrolling-directives subjects, in spite of their poorer performance. Furthermore, feelings about the task, mood differences, or perceptions of performance as a function of condition did not account for these findings. The data are discussed as they relate to the theoretical and practical import of the deleterious use of controlling techniques in a number of contexts, as well as adults' erroneous beliefs about controlling strategies.This study was funded in part from a grant from the Spencer Foundation and an NIMH grant to the first author.     

LESS SKILLED READERS HAVE LESS EFFICIENT SUPPRESSION MECHANISMS

Abstract— One approach to understanding the component processes and mechanisms underlying adult reading skill is to compare the performance of more skilled and less skilled readers on laboratory experiments. The results of some recent experiments employing this approach demonstrate that less skilled adult readers suppress less efficiently the inappropriate meanings of ambiguous words (e.g., the playing card vs. garden tool meanings of subject the incorrect forms of homophones (e.g., patients vs . patience), the typical-but-absent members of scenes (e.g., a tractor in a farm scene), and words superimposed on pictures. Less skilled readers are not less efficient in activating contextually appropriate information; in fact, they activate contextually appropriate information more strongly than more skilled readers do. Therefore, one conclusion that can be drawn from these experiments is that less skilled adult readers suffer from less efficient suppression mechanisms.     

The evolution of leadership during group development

This paper is based on the view that the theory of the group-as-a-whole is illuminated and clarified by a developmental perspective. Beck's theory of group development is used as the framework within which the evolution of four leadership roles across nine developmental phases are discussed. Leadership is defined as a shared function in which four participants play important roles in a dialectical process through which the structure of a group is developed, maintained, reinterpreted or modified as needed. Data are presented on verbal participation and on a sociometric questionnaire to illustrate changes in the four leaders' behavior and the members' perceptions of them across the phases of group development.     

Cerebral lateralization for speech in deaf and normal children

The cerebral lateralization pattern for speech production in normal hearing and congenitally deaf children was studied using the dual-task paradigm. Performance under the verbal task conditions showed predicted left hemispheric dominance for speech production in the normal hearing children. No developmental trends in asymmetry were found, suggesting that speech lateralization is present in normal 3-year-old children. These data support the developmental invariance hypothesis of cerebral organization. Deaf children showed more symmetrical patterns of cerebral control for speech production. No developmental trends in functional brain organization were observed among prepubescent deaf children.     

Tracing response parameter preparation strategies using transition times

Latencies were measured using a modified four-choice reaction time (4-CRT) test procedure; the responses comprised forward and backward displacements of left- and right-hand levers. Two stimuli were presented, separated by an interval (ISI) of 25, 165, 415 or 815 msec. S1 designated which response should be readied; and on 62% of occasions, S2 indicated that the prepared response should be executed immediately (same trials). During transition trials, S2 specified which one of the alternative responses should be substituted. Same conditions produced significantly shorter reaction times. Transition latencies varied depending on the modification required: changing direction proved easier than changing either hand or hand and direction. This is compatible with a response coding strategy in which limb is designated before direction. Latencies and exchange function analyses that preparations were discontinued after response selection; even at the longest ISI, there was no convincing evidence of preparatory motor programming.