Guidance in a New Ancient Land

The Republic of China is developing its guidance programs energetically and rapidly. The Chinese Guidance Association, a young but vigorous professional association, is devoted to research and development of China's student and industrial personnel programs. This APGA sister association has taken long strides ahead in the past eight years through organization of experimental school and college guidance programs, counselor education, development of tests, and distribution of vocational information materials. It has an ambitious and promising “five-year development plan” blocked out for the period 1966–71.     

Development of a Scale of Attitudes Toward School Guidance

This paper reports the development of two alternate forms of a scale for measuring attitudes toward school guidance programs. The resulting instrument features a high degree of usability, since it can be easily self-administered in less than five minutes without the necessity for timing or oral directions. The entire questionnaire appears on a single sheet of paper which the subject also uses to record his responses. Scoring and interpretation are likewise outstandingly simple. Preliminary studies indicate that the scale shows promise of possessing satisfactory technical characteristics.     

Superior Students' Occupational Preferences and Their Fathers' Occupations

The relationship between the occupational preferences of 147 superior students and their fathers' occupations was traced over the 4-year period that the students attended high schools in Wisconsin. Analysis of the data indicated that both male and female superior students tended to state vocational preferences at the professional level early in high school and to maintain this preference throughout. Their occupational preferences were generally at a higher level than those of their fathers. There was no trend away from general preferences for work at a professional level toward naming of specific occupations within that level. The results suggest that theories of vocational development that imply that stages are passed through during later adolescent periods do not apply to the superior student population of this study.     

Oculomotor adaptation to wedge prisms with no part of the body seen

When S looks at a visual target through prisms, adaptive shifts in reaching behavior occur even though he sees no part of his body through the prisms. These shifts are caused by a change in the judgment of the direction of gaze (oculomotor change), which in turn is caused by two secondary prismatic effects: (a) asymmetry of the visual display and (b) apparent rotation about a vertical axis of a panel or wall facing S. The “asymmetry” factor contributes 22% of the total oculomotor change, and the “rotation” effect contributes the remaining 78%. Oculomotor change is not facilitated by eye-movement activity. The adaptive oculomotor change induces a non-adaptive proprioception change about one-tenth as large as the oculomotor change. These findings are capable of accounting for the previously unexplained results reported by Wooster in 1923, and also for the current controversy about the role of reafferent stimulation in sensorymotor adaptation.     

Generalization and response latency

The present experiments investigated generalization in a reactio? time situation where the generalization stimulus, a tone, preceded the reaction time signal, a light. The hypotheses under investigation were that the duration of the cue stimulus would determine the degree of generalization (Experiment I) and that the response latency independent of the stimulus duration would be related to the amount of generalization (Experiment II). A particular generalization test stimulus (a tone of 40, 45, 50, 60, 65, or 70 dB) was presented only once always following two bar-pressing responses to training stimulus (tone of 55 dB) under each of two conditions of stimulus duration in Experiment I and under each of two conditions of response latency in Experiment II. It was found that under the condition of short response latency generalization was broader.     

Further experiments on movement masking

Voluntary attention to one of two static objects in the peripheral field of one eye makes this object more liable to masking by a moving object in the corresponding area of the field of the other eye (Experiment 1).

Positive after images (and probably negative after images) are subject to (binocular) movement masking (Experiment 2).

Movement masking can occur in the field of either eye, but with the displays so far tried the inhibitory influence of a moving object is less in the field of the eye to which it is shown than in the field of the other eye (Experiment 3).     

Oculomotor adaptation to wedge prisms with no part of the body seen

When S looks at a visual target through prisms, adaptive shifts in reaching behavior occur even though he sees no part of his body through the prisms. These shifts are caused by a change in the judgment of the direction of gaze (oculomotor change), which in turn is caused by two secondary prismatic effects: (a) asymmetry of the visual display and (b) apparent rotation about a vertical axis of a panel or wall facing S. The “asymmetry” factor contributes 22% of the total oculomotor change, and the “rotation” effect contributes the remaining 78%. Oculomotor change is not facilitated by eye-movzment activity. The adaptive oculomotor change induces a non-adaptive proprioception change about one-tenth as large as the oculomotor change. These findings are capable of accounting for the previously unexplained results reported by Wooster in 1923, and also for the current controversy about the role of reafferent stimulation in sensorymotor adaptation.