Job Stress and Organizational Learning Climate

Job stress may depend on the organizational learning climate, the organizational factors that affect learning how to cope with the rapid external and internal changes in working life. The relationship between individual job stress and the individual perception of learning climate was studied among 383 employees in the Norwegian Postal Service and in various community health care institutions. Mismatch between individual perceptions of learning climate and the averaged evaluation of learning climate in the rest of the working group, was found to be an important source of stress. Individuals who perceived the learning climate as good and who were working in a group that agreed with this position, had a low job-stress level. This may be ascribed to their feeling of control over the work situation and reduced demands due to the social support from the group, producing a low job stress level.     

Children's occupational sex-typing

Preschool and elmentary school children responded to questions measuring sex-typing of attribution (who would like this job), service preference (who the child would choose to do this job), and personal job choice (would the child like to do this job) dimensions for each of nine jobs, and stated a free-choice job preference. A subsample completed a cognitive classification measure. With age through second grade attribution and service preference sex-typing increased; generally, the match scores between the three aspects and census reality increased; the use of sex-typed categories in service preference decreased. For some aspects, girls were less sex-typed than boys; for others, each sex showed own-sex bias. Age, not classification skill, accounted for more variance in the sex-typing measures.This research was supported in part by an Indiana University Grant-in-Aid for dissertation research awarded to the first author. A shorter version of this article was presented as a paper at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, 1978. The authors would like to thank the children, parents, and school personnel in all five cooperating schools, including Central Elementary School, David Satter, Principal; Children's Corner Cooperative Nursery School, Sue Yamaguchi, Director; Christian Center Day Care Preschool, Monroe County United Ministries, James Fisbo, Executive Director, Jean K. Lloyd, Preschool Director; St. Charles School, Kathleen Fleming, Principal.     

Therapieabbrüche in der stationären Psychotherapie

This article focuses on the patients’ view of the causes and consequences of premature therapy termination in inpatient psychosomatic setting. In this study, drop-out patients and non-drop-out patients were questioned in semi-structured phone interviews (n=62). The causes of early termination are seen in this study to be connected with an internal, somatic concept of disease, discontent with treatment, and social interaction problems in the hospital. In 80% of the examined cases more than two causes were reported. Consequently, early termination of treatment can be considered as an outcome of multifactorial influences. Furthermore, a group of “inner drop-outs” has been identified within the non-drop-out patients. Despite high discontent, these patients remained in treatment because they often feared possible negative consequences of early treatment termination. Both drop-outs and inner drop-outs scored lower in outcome analysis than the remaining patients. This study points to problem areas that can help identify potential drop-out patients.     

Mechanisms of Reference Frame Selection in Spatial Term Use: Computational and Empirical Studies

Previous studies have shown that multiple reference frames are available and compete for selection during the use of spatial terms such as “above.” However, the mechanisms that underlie the selection process are poorly understood. In the current paper we present two experiments and a comparison of three computational models of selection to shed further light on the nature of reference frame selection. The three models are drawn from different areas of human cognition, and we assess whether they may be applied to a reference frame selection by examining their ability to account for both existing and new empirical data comprising acceptance rates, response times, and response time distributions. These three models are the competitive shunting model (Schultheis, 2009 ), the leaky competing accumulator (LCA) model (Usher & McClelland, 2001 ), and a lexical selection model (Howard, Nickels, Coltheart, & Cole‐Virtue, 2006 ). Model simulations show that only the LCA model satisfactorily accounts for the empirical observations. The key properties of this model that seem to drive its success are its bounded linear activation function, its number and type of processing stages, and its use of decay. Uncovering these critical properties has important implications for our understanding not only of spatial term use, in particular, but also of conflict and selection in human cognition more generally.     

ALTSim: A MATLAB simulator for current associative learning theories

ALTSim is a MATLAB-based simulator of several associative learning models, including Pearce’s configural model, the extended configural model, the Rescorla-Wagner model, the unique cue hypothesis, the modified unique cue hypothesis, the replaced elements model, and Harris’s elemental model. It allows for specifying all relevant parameters, as well as exact stimulus sequences by graphical user interfaces. It is an easy-to-use tool that facilitates evaluating and comparing the featured associative learning models. ALTSim is available free of charge from www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~lachnit/ALTSim/.     

Validation of the Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale (BADS) in a Community Sample with Elevated Depressive Symptoms

The Behavioral Activation for Depression Scale (BADS) was previously developed to measure changes in avoidance and activation over the course of Behavioral Activation for depression. Initial scale development, definition of the factor structure and confirmation of the factor structure was performed with a non-depressed undergraduate sample. These prior results revealed four factors (Activation, Avoidance/Rumination, Work/School Impairment, and Social Impairment) with good factor structure, internal consistency, and test–retest reliability. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the psychometric properties, factor structure and construct validity of the BADS with a community sample with elevated depressive symptoms (N = 193). Results indicated good psychometric properties, additional evidence for construct validity of the total scale and subscales, and adequate fit of the data to the original factor structure. Normative data are also provided separately for depressed men and women, and for Caucasians and African Americans.     

Clinical notes on a case of transvestism in a child

This clinical presentation describes the therapeutic process of a 5-year-old male child presenting as a main symptom quasi-delusional feminine enactments starting at an early age, which persisted for most of his five-year treatment. This symptom was understood in terms of an attempt at restitution, itself the result of being confronted with an autistic structure stemming from a series of traumatic incidents during the oral phase: his mother's pregnancy, abortion, depression and subsequent three-month absence at the end of his first year of life. The clinical material, drawings included, illustrates the interplay of oral, anal and phallic levels, with enactment predominant in sessions. The oral traumatic situation initially led to anal-manic play, then to quasi-delusional female personifications in sessions, later surfacing as an annihilating 'black hole'. All the above issued into a broad enacted phallic-genital unfolding that dramatised an oral-genital primal scene, in the course of which he managed to structure his male identity. Near the end of the analytic process the analysand reworked the 'stages' of the link to the analyst. To end, based on the clinical material, the respective participation of the early and the late Oedipus complex is examined.     

Panic disorder and depression: A psychodynamic exploration of comorbidity

Eight of twenty-one patients presenting for treatment in an open trial of brief psychodynamic psychotherapy for panic disorder also carried the diagnosis of major depression. For the patients who completed the study, depression remitted as well as panic disorder. The authors highlight psychodynamic factors that they hypothesize may contribute to the significant overlap between panic disorder and depression, and describe three videotaped cases to illustrate these points.     

What structures could not be

James Ladyman has recently proposed a view according to which all that exists on the level of microphysics are structures “all the way down”. By means of a comparative reading of structuralism in philosophy of mathematics as proposed by Stewart Shapiro, I shall present what I believe structures could not be. I shall argue that, if Ladyman is indeed proposing something as strong as suggested here, then he is committed to solving problems that proponents of structuralism in philosophy of mathematics such as Shapiro are trying to solve. Attempting to do so, however, brings out a tacit tension in Ladyman's position. I shall argue that the upshot of this is that the ontological import that Ladyman attributes to structures is rather epistemological import properly understood.