Fear of success in males and females in sex-linked occupations

Two experiments were reported which examined fear of success imagery in men and women in response to three sex-linked occupations. The occupations were engineer, child psychologist, and nurse. Both experiments found clear differences for perceived male dominance. It was also found that engineer and child psychologist did not differ in terms of perceived status, while nurse was significantly lower than the other two occupations. With regard to fear of success imagery the results of both studies indicated an interaction effect for sex of subject and occupations. Males exhibited the most fear of success imagery to the nurse cue, while females exhibited the most to the engineer cue. It was concluded that male dominance of occupations was an important factor in relation to fear of success imagery.     

Counseling for Personal Loss

This article presents both a conceptual model of and strategies for counseling on issues of personal loss. Grieving occurs even when losses are not caused by death, and problems appear when grieving is not allowed to proceed naturally. Counseling should aim to identify the need for and to facilitate the process of grieving so that clients are not overwhelmed by the experience. Specific suggestions offer conceptualizations and clinical approaches to help clients cope with a variety of loss problems.     

Parents of the Handicapped Child: Facilitating Acceptance Through Group Counseling

All parents have an image of the way they would like their children to be. Often this expectation is contradicted by reality for the parents of a handicapped child. Whether at the time of birth when obvious differences are apparent or later when performance differences are recognized, the discrepancy between expectation and reality causes parents to experience a loss and accompanying feelings of grief. This article suggests that the method of group counseling using a relevant framework on which to base discussion is without equal as a means of assisting parents to deal with their situations. Presented to those who lead parent groups for these persons is an applicable model and guidelines for its implementation.     

Duration differences between rare and common words and their implications for the interpretation of word frequency effects

The spoken durations of rare and common words were compared in three experiments. Depending upon the task and the amount of practice, rare words (with frequencies less than 3 per million) were spoken as much as 24% slower than common words (with frequencies greater than 100 per million), when the words were equated for number of letters. This difference was observed even when the memory and lexical access demands of the task were minimized, and it can be explained by differences in the phonetic constituents of the two classes of words. The existence of these phonetic differences has been previously reported by Landauer and Streeter (1973) and by Zipf (1935). These findings argue against the view that all effects on the processing of accurately perceived words that are correlated with frequency may be unambiguously ascribed to operations that involve secondary memory (although this may be true of frequency effects per se). One recent experiment (Watkins, 1.977) is examined in light of these findings.     

Accessing lexical memory: The transfer of word repetition effects across task and modality

Reading by literate adults is generally assumed to represent skill acquired years earlier. However, the present experiments show that aspects of that skill can be readily modified. In two experiments, pronunciation of visually presented common words speeded later recognition of those words. This facilitation of recognition occurred although subjects did not expect word repetition and the task was changed from pronunciation to recognition. In contrast, naming pictures did not facilitate later recognition of visually presented picture names. The occurrence of facilitation when the task was changed and the lack of facilitation when stimulus format was changed suggest that facilitation occurs in the processes of encoding and accessing memory, processes that may change little across tasks but may change substantially with stimulus format changes. This facilitation of recognition occurs automatically without mediation by subjects’ expectations. A third experiment indicates that this facilitation of recognition shows little relation to episodic memory.     

Extraversion and the orienting reaction habituation rate to visual stimuli

Eysenck's (1967) proposal that introversion is characterized by increased levels of activity in the cortico-reticular loop was treated in a series of experiments which compared high, middle, and low extraversion groups on the basis of OR habituation rate to visual stimulation. Generally, introverts were observed to have longer OR habituation rates to chromatic and word stimulation than extraverts as evidenced by cardiac, electrodermal, and vasomotor indices of habituation rate, a result which endorses Eysenck's hypothesis. Results are also discussed from the standpoint of individual differences in autonomic response.     

Evaluation of two test-anxiety reduction treatments in a secondary prevention program

The study evaluated the effectiveness of both a new anxiety management training program and a cognitive modification procedure as part of a secondary prevention effort to identify and treat test anxiety early in the academic career of college students. Subjects were 40 college freshmen who had been identified as high test-anxious in an initial mail-out survey of the Test Anxiety scale. Subjects were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions: anxiety management training, a cognitive modification procedure, and a no-treatment control group. Results indicated that both the cognitive modification and anxiety management training treatments were effective in reducing test anxiety on a posttreatment administration of the Test Anxiety scale. Especially interesting, a significant difference in academic performance emerged between treatment and control groups three semesters after treatment, underscoring the preventive value of the program.     

The interaction of visual and motor memory for graphic forms following tracing

Memory for series of abstract graphic forms was tested using a recognition/ reconstruction procedure in two experiments with 8-9-year-old children. The children either looked at the forms and traced around each of them in turn (VT condition), or looked at the forms for an equivalent length of time and pointed to them (V condition). Memory for the forms, but not their order was improved by tracing. The mechanism responsible for this was investigated by comparing the effects of motor and visual interference interpolated between stimulus presentation and recognition testing. Motor interference was most disruptive in the VT condition while visual interference tended to be most disruptive in the V condition. These results support the proposal that tracing produces a distinct motor memory trace and that this additional source of information aids visual recognition.     

A FORTRAN program for lag sequential analysis of contingency and cyclicity in behavioral interaction data

One method for identifying contingency relationships in a sequence of observed behaviors studies occurrences of matching behaviors at successive event or time steps from a criterion event. This paper briefly summarizes the method and presents a computer program for generating lag conditional probabilities and associated measures for assessing statistical significance.