A psychological interview process for career assessment

The authors present a comprehensive four-step process for conducting initial career assessment by interview. The process assesses skills, interests, values, non-work relationships, goals and activities, and psychological aspects such as self-esteem and work attitudes. The interview process is flexible, internally consistent and portable. Step One analyzes the client's work history and includes reasons why such a history may be inadequate. Step Two examines work-related preferences. Step Three investigates lifestyle context, and Step Four produces a summary of all the accumulated interview information, including options the client wishes to avoid. Detailed worksheets accompany the article.This article has been adapted, with permission, from Chapter 3, Promoting Client Self Understanding, in Yost, E. B., and Corbishley, M. A.Career Counseling: A Psychological Approach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987.     

Functionalism and type-type identity theories

Conclusion Token-token identity theorists do not and need not deny that it may frequently be the same (kind of) brain state which on different occasions fills the functional rôle definitive of a given mental state. That is not at issue. What is at issue is whether functionally-oriented identity theorists should make two claims or three claims.The two claims they customarily make are, first, that each instance of a mental state is an instance of a brain state, and, secondly, that being in a mental state is having in one a state filling the relevant functional rôle. But to be in a mental state is to have that state in one. To be in pain is to have pain, to desire water is to have desire for water, and so on; just as to be poisoned is to have poison in you. (It is to have what is poison for you at the time, of course; and likewise for pain, desire and so on.)Our paper has been about a third sort of claim — relating particularly not to being in a mental state, nor to instances of that state, but to the mental state itself. We have argued that functionally-oriented identity theorists can and should make, in addition to the first two claims, the third type-type identity claim that mental states are brain states. Consequently a token brain state is a token of pain in a derivative sense. What makes it a token of pain is that it is a token of the type of brain state which realizes the pain-rôle for the organism at the time.     

Mental shock can produce retrograde amnesia

Subjects in three experiments saw a short film of a mentally shocking event in which a young boy is violently shot in the face. Compared to other subjects who saw a nonviolent version of the same film, those who saw the mentally shocking version showed poorer retention of the details of the film. Retention was poorer whether measured by recognition or recall. Furthermore, impaired memory occurred only when the event was mentally upsetting, and not when it was merely unexpected but not upsetting. These results suggest that mentally shocking episodes may disrupt the lingering processing necessary for full storage of information in memory.     

The fractionation of arithmetical skills: A single case study

A single case study of a patient with a selective impairment of arithmetical calculation is reported. DRC became severely acalculic after sustaining a left parietal intra-cerebral haematoma. His numeracy skills were documented as fully as possible. It was found that his knowledge of the significance of individual numbers and his concept of quantity appeared to be intact, but simple addition, subtraction and multiplication were all performed laboriously and inaccurately and his performance was inconsistent from trial to trial. Further it was shown that it was his knowledge of arithmetical facts not his knowledge of arithmetical operations which was impaired. The findings are discussed in relation to models of arithmetical calculation and it is concluded that for DRC there was a deficit in accessing one category of verbal semantic knowledge systems, namely arithmetical facts.     

A prescriptive paradigm for sequencing instruction in physical education

Recent advances in the understanding of the neurological basis of motor control have made possible an explanation of motor skill acquisition in terms of the notion of programs of muscle synergies. The progressive development of an individual's capacity to control these synergies may be presented as a kind of hierarchical organization of processing levels based upon changes in the neurological location of motor control and the ability of the individual to make adjustments in the programs. This paper is an attempt to apply this information about the processing levels of motor control to the problem of the identification of a paradigm to assist practitioners in the design of sequences of motor skill learning experiences. Such a paradigm is proposed as a reformulation of Jewett's Movement Process Category System, a model originally created for use in curriculum decision-making.The proposed reformulation identifies three subphases of adaptive skill acquisition: skill construction, where a program of synergies is first automated; skill stabilization, where that program is then schematized; and skill differentiation, where that program is finally modularized. Within each of the subphases, processing levels are defined to enable the practitioner to give directions and design learning environments which will focus upon the students' gaining progressive control of the program of synergies selected for acquisition. Comments made throughout this presentation are intended to bridge the gap between motor control research and the teaching of skills, as well as encourage researchers in the motor learning/motor development areas to consider the notion of programs of muscle synergies as the fundamental explanatory unit for motor skill acquisition.     

The effect of the temporal locus of the introtact probe on the hypothesis-testing strategies of kindergarten children

The hypothesis-testing behavior of kindergarten children in discrimination learning was studied in a factorial design with two temporal placements of introtact probes (pretrial and posttrial) and two types of pretraining (unidimensional and multidimensional). Pretrial probes consisting of a request for the child's current hypothesis were administered in a conventional manner at the beginning of each trial with the stimuli in view and prior to the choice response. Posttrial probes were administered also with the stimuli in view, but after the choice response had occurred and feedback information had been provided. Learning-to-learn experience in solving three pretraining problems was given either with unidimensional simultaneous problems or with more complex multidimensional problems like the criterion tasks. The results indicated that posttrial probes produced superior local consistency, win-stay, and lose-shift probabilities, relative to pretrial probes, for both types of pretraining. Posttrial probes, however, facilitated learning and the testing of valid hypotheses only for multidimensional pretraining. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that posttrial probes constrain the child to be locally consistent and therefore improve short-term efficiency in hypothesis testing under both pretraining conditions. However, posttrial probes produce an improvement in long-term efficiency, and therefore in learning, only when other components of a successful strategy are acquired as in multidimensional pretraining.     

Religious faith and adjustment to long-term hemodialysis

This study examines religious faith as associated with adjustment to end-stage renal failure and its treatment regimen of maintenance hemodialysis. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected initially and after a three-year interval in order to observe changes over time. The variable of the patient's perception of the import of religious faith was found to be positively related to interactional behavior and sick role behavior and to be inversely associated with alienation. Content analysis of qualitative responses for the item of perceived import of religious faith revealed a pattern of increasingly more positive patient attitudes occurring over time.     

Factors affecting hypothesis testing in kindergarten children

In a previous experiment, the authors demonstrated that kindergarten and first-grade children can be trained to test hypotheses sequentially within the context of a discrimination learning task. The present experiment is concerned with delineating various aspects of the pretraining that contribute to the improved hypothesis-testing strategies of kindergarten children (mean CA = 71.6 months). It was found that children who have learned to anticipate an invariant cue-reward relation in such tasks manifest improved hypothesis-testing behavior, as well as improved discrimination performance, whereas children who have been trained to identify and name the various stimulus components of the discriminanda do not perform better than those without such training. It was also found that children who have had practice in shifting from an irrelevant to a relevant dimension perform better than those who have not had such experience. Moreover, children who have been given explicit instruction and training in the use of win-stay and lose-shift rules, as well as in the use of valid hypotheses, manifest strategies superior to those without such training. Finally, extensive pretraining over two sessions, administered on separate days, resulted in a marked reduction in the proportion of children who were dimensionally fixated while solving discrimination problems with two genuine dimensions.     

Introtacts as predictors of discrimination performance in kindergarten children

Kindergarten children were given simultaneous discrimination tasks with two irrelevant dimensions varying within settings. Prior to each block of eight feed-back trials, the children were asked to attempt to provide a statement of the solution. The introtacts thus provided were found to have several of the desirable characteristics that have been reported for older children with either introtact or blank-trial probes, but which have not been found previously for kindergarten children with the blank-trial probe. Classification of the children according to the trial block on which they first verbalized the correct relevant dimension was found to account for more than 60% of the total variability in discrimination performance. The introtacts were also used to assign parameters to theoretical prediction equations, with nearly two-thirds of the total variability in discrimination performance accounted for by the theory. Extension of the method to other models is discussed.