A COMPARISON BETWEEN TWO PLACEMENT PROGRAMS FOR HARD-CORE UNEMPLOYED PERSONS

An exploratory placement class was conducted to teach vocational rehabilitation clients techniques of securing jobs. The results of this attempt were compared to a similar program conducted through another agency. The differences between the two programs suggest techniques that could increase the employment potential of vocational rehabilitation clients.     

Brief psychotherapy using dream interpretation

I believe it to be true that dreams are the true interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required to sort and understand them. Montaigne (Essays III)     

A beautiful day in the neighborhood: What factors determine the generation effect for simple multiplication problems?

In four experiments, we examined the generation effect for the free recall of simple multiplication answers. Large-product-size problems showed a consistent generation-effect advantage over small-product-size problems, except when each answer was generated twice, via two different sets of operands (Experiment 2). Also, measures of problem-solution time and strategy use accounted for the large-product-size advantage. Across experiments, however, small-product-size problems (but not large-product-size problems) showed considerable variation in the size of their generation effect. We discovered that solving small-product-size problems via direct memory retrieval increased the episodic recall probability of other problems that were near neighbors to the generated answer, and we attribute this result to a spreading activation mechanism in semantic memory. A measure of neighbor activations, combined with RT to solve each problem, accounted for 51% of the observed generation-effect variance.     

Psychological consultation under Oregon's 1994 Death With Dignity Act: ethics and procedures

The Oregon 1994 Death With Dignity Act prescribes an evaluation by a psychologist or psychiatrist when the patient is suspected to be suffering from impaired judgment. Several attempts have been made to propose procedures for assessing end-of-life mental conditions and competence. The psychologist's role may include ethical considerations, protecting patients' rights to autonomy, ensuring competent judgment, preventing unnecessary suffering and appropriate diagnoses of mental disorders, and supporting family members and the health care team.     

Synaptic plasticity and the organization of behaviour after early and late brain injury.

Hebb proposed that synaptic change underlies behavioural and cognitive plasticity. When applied to recovery from brain injury, the general hypothesis is that if there is recovery following brain injury, then there ought to be a correlated synaptic change, which is presumed to be responsible for recovery. In contrast, if recovery fails to occur, or expected recovery is blocked in some manner, then the synaptic change will likely not be present. Systematic study of functional recovery and synaptic change following brain injury at different ages supports these predictions. Good recovery is always correlated with enhanced connectivity whereas poor recovery is always correlated with an absence of reorganized connectivity. Furthermore, factors that stimulate recovery, such as neurotrophins or experience, stimulate synaptic change and functional recovery. Factors that retard recovery, such as depletion of neuromodulators, also block synaptic change. These results thus support Hebb's general idea that synaptic plasticity is related to behavioural change.     

Adolescent Males' Knowledge and Attitudes About AIDS in The Context of Their Social World1

This study sought to find out how much total knowledge adolescents had concerning AIDS, what particular areas of knowledge were deficient, and how those areas might be related to attitudes and experiences in their social world. Seventy-eight adolescent males from one suburban and three urban high schools were interviewed. A 101-item questionnaire was used to assess: a) overall knowledge about AIDS; b) attitudes about sexuality, drugs, death, and AIDS and; c) related aspects of their social world, i.e., number of IV drug users known, and sources of information about AIDS. Analyses of variance were performed on overall knowledge of AIDS and on five content areas of knowledge. Race was shown to relate to significant differences in the knowledge scores. The social world associated with the urban samples were discussed as risk factors for minority youth. Different attitudes related to strengths and weaknesses in different areas of knowledge. Attitudes associated with deficiencies in different subareas of knowledge were discussed as additional risk factors and as presenting target areas for AIDS education efforts.     

Development and validation of discriminant functions for the Strong Interest Inventory

This study compared the relative accuracy of (a) single Occupational Scale (OS) scores on the Strong Interest Inventory (SII) and (b) multiple-predictor scoring functions for discriminating members of nine occupations from people-in-general. The functions were constructed using discriminant function analysis with 4797 adults drawn from criterion samples for the 1985 SII. The analyses included Basic Interest Scale (BIS) scores only or combinations of OSs and BISs. Two subsequent analyses, one of which was cross-validation using 1302 young adults with little work experience, also were conducted. Results indicated that BIS-only functions yielded hit rates comparable to single OSs, and functions that combined OSs and BISs generally produced slight improvements in accuracy. These findings are potentially relevant for future SII scale development decisions.     

Criterion‐Related Validity of Statistical Operationalizations of Group General Cognitive Ability as a Function of Task Type: Comparing the Mean,Maximum, and Minimum1

The objective of the present study was to investigate the comparative criterion‐related validity of different statistical operationalizations of group general cognitive ability (i.e., mean, maximum, and minimum) as a function of task type based on Steiner's (1966, 1972) task typology. In contrast to recent investigations, we hypothesized that, regardless of task type, the mean of group members’ general cognitive ability would predict group performance as well as or better than other statistical operationalizations of group general cognitive ability. We conducted a laboratory study where 157 four‐person groups worked on 4 tasks that conformed to Steiner's typology (additive, compensatory, conjunctive, and disjunctive). The results indicate that the mean was the strongest predictor of group performance across all 4 task types and, in particular, was significantly stronger than the maximum and minimum on both the disjunctive and conjunctive tasks.