Beyond change management: a multilevel investigation of contextual and personal influences on employees' commitment to change

The extent to which attitudes toward organizational changes may be affected by contextual (other changes going on) and personal (self-efficacy) factors was investigated with a multilevel design involving 25 different changes. Even after aspects of the change itself were controlled, the interaction between the context and the individual difference explained significant variance in attitudes toward those specific changes. The positive relationship between self-efficacy and commitment to the change was stronger as the amount of simultaneous and overlapping change in the surroundings increased. The implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Low-dose mecamylamine improves learning of rats in the radial-arm maze repeated acquisition procedure

The nicotinic antagonist mecamylamine has been widely shown to cause cognitive impairment. However, these effects are mainly seen with high doses. There have been scattered findings that low doses of mecamylamine can have the opposite effect. This may be due to opposite effects of low doses of mecamylamine. In the current study, an extensive dose-effect function of mecamylamine was characterized in the low-dose range. Adult female Sprague-Dawley rats were trained on a repeated acquisition procedure on an automated 8-arm radial maze. Three of the eight arms were designated as correct for any particular session. Five trials per session were run. The number of errors per trial to find the three correct arms was determined. The rats were trained on the repeated acquisition procedure for at least 18 sessions at which time they showed reliable learning each session. Then, the effect of low doses of mecamylamine between 0 and 1 mg/kg were assessed in a repeated measures counterbalanced design. This dose range of mecamylamine did not affect performance on the first trial when the rats were na?ve to the array to be learned. On trials 2-5 a significant (p<.025) quadratic dose-effect function was seen over this dose range. The most substantial effect was seen with 0.125 mg/kg of mecamylamine, which caused a significant (p<.05) improvement relative to the saline control condition. The effect diminished with increasing mecamylamine doses and with the 1 mg/kg dose choice accuracy was back to control levels. This study showed that low doses of mecamylamine can effectively improve learning. A U-shaped dose-effect curve was documented. This suggests possible low-dose nicotinic antagonist lines of treatment for cognitive impairment.     

Establishing a Descriptive Database for Teachers with Aggressive Students

While establishing a database that describes students' aggressive behaviors and the conditions present at the time of occurrence, we discovered a variety of definitions of aggression in the literature. This lack of consistency limits the information provided to teachers working with the frequent problem of violence. We propose an inclusive and verifiable definition of aggression gleaned from experience and the literature. The definition incorporates verbal, paraverbal, nonverbal, and physical aggression. Validation is presented from the literature, and from 39 practicing teachers who used the definition to categorize 659 target behaviors. The teachers' level of agreement with the authors' categorization was 93% (median).     

WAIS test-retest reliability for a clinical out-patient sample.

WAIS test-retest reliabilities were calculated for a clinical out-patient sample with testing intervals varying from 1 to 10 yr. There was no relationship between test-retest interval and the stability of test scores and the correlations between IQs were quite satisfactory (Full Scale IQ = .897, Verbal IQ = .906, Performance IQ = .876). Reliabilities remained high even when the sample was divided by diagnosis into organic, neurotic, personality disorder, and schizophrenic subgroups.     

Social support: Its structure and impact on marital disruption

Availability of social support has been hypothesized to play a role in influencing adjustment to marital disruption either directly or by moderating the debilitating effects of stress. Yet previous research has not adequately conceptualized or measured the nature and availability of social support. In an effort to learn more about the structure and impact of social support as it relates to marital disruption, 50 newly separated men and women were interviewed at 2 months and again at 8 months after their separations. The structure of social support was found to include (a) several important sources of support, including family, friends, and the larger community; (b) an index of social activity; and (c) a sense of satisfaction with present marital status. Although the stress associated with separation was positively related to poorer adjustment, certain aspects of social support were found to moderate this relationship. This report is based, in part, on work supported by National Institute of Mental Health grant No. MH 26373 (Preventive Intervention for Newly Separated Persons), Bernard L. Bloom and William F. Hodges, co-principal investigators. We are pleased to acknowledge this support.