RELATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS OF VERBAL, ARTICULATIVE, AND NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION TO EMPLOYMENT DECISIONS IN THE JOB INTERVIEW SETTING

Recruiter ratings of 338 on-campus interviews were used in a discriminant analysis procedure to determine the relative importance of the verbal, articulative, and nonverbal dimensions of communication during the job interview. Correlation of seven variables with the discriminant function indicated that appropriateness of content, fluency of speech, and composure were of greatest importance in contributing to a favorable employment decision. These findings were contrary to the recent literature which has emphasized the importance of nonverbal behavior. Implications for job-interview skills training are discussed, and suggestions for a comprehensive workshop model are presented.     

Hairdressers as caregivers. I. A descriptive profile of interpersonal help-giving involvements

The interpersonal help-giving behaviors of 90 hairdressers were explored in depth in an interview study. On the average, hairdressers saw 55 customers a week, and talked 25 minutes with each. About one-third of the talking time concerned clients' moderate to serious personal problems--particularly problems with children, physical health, marriage, depression, and anxiety. Hairdressers reported that offering sympathy and support, being lighthearted, just listening, and presenting alternatives were among their most frequent response strategies. Although they often enjoyed fielding clients' personal problems, at times they felt perplexed by them. Hairdressers perceived listening to customers' interpersonal problems to be an important part of their everyday function and expressed a need for professional inputs in that domain.     

The Primary Mental Health Project (PMHP): Evaluation of current program effectiveness

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the Primary Mental Project (PMHP), a program for early detection and prevention of school adjustment problems. Pre- and postprogram assessments were done with 215 primary-grade children seen in PMHP, usig teacher ratings of problem behaviors and competencies, and child-aide ratings of problems. School mental health professionals judged educational and behavioral changes in project children during the year. Significant across-the board improvements were found on all criterion measures. Modest intercorrelations among criterion change estimates suggested that the observed changes were due to program, rather than halo, effects. PMHP children also improved significantly more than matched, retrospective controls.     

Cognitive flexibility-rigidity, repetition effects, and memory

This experiment examined the role of cognitive flexibility-rigidity in memory. On the basis of several personality tests, subjects were classified as flexible, intermediate, or rigid, using a postexperimental blocking procedure. All subjects were given a perceptual grouping task, which masks the meaningful structure of the material. Subjects have the option of discovering the more meaningful structure consisting of word pairs, or alternatively, processing less meaningful chunks of letters. Results were that flexible subjects recalled substantially more items than intermediate and rigid subjects, in that order. In addition, subjects given different (varied) groupings of the letter chunks recalled substantially more than subjects given repeated presentations of the same grouping structure. Transfer tests indicated that subjects acquired different coding strategies under varied and constant input. Repetitious input led subjects to adopt inefficient strategies in processing the material to be remembered, whereas varied input led subjects to adopt efficient encoding strategies.     

Identification of familiar and unfamiliar faces from internal and external features: some implications for theories of face recognition

Three experiments are reported in which recognition of faces from whole faces or internal or external features was compared. In the first experiment, where the faces were of famous people, an advantage was found for identification from internal features. In the second experiment involving unfamiliar faces, however, no difference was found in recognition rates when subjects were given the internal or the external features. In a third experiment famous faces were presented and mixed with other famous faces for a recognition test. As in experiment 1, better recognition occurred from internals as compared with external features. It is argued that the internal representation for familiar faces may be qualitatively different from that for face seen just once. In particular some advantage in feature saliency may accrue to the internal or 'expressive' features of familiar faces. The implications of these results are considered in relation to general theories of face perception and recognition.     

Perception of numerical stimuli felt by fingers of the left and right hands

Three experiments are reported in which blindfolded right-handed adults felt numerical stimuli with the middle fingers of their left or right hands. These stimuli consisted of collections of raised dots in random arrangement to be enumerated (Experiment I), collections of evenly spaced raised dots in a straight line to be enumerated (Experiment II), and raised digits to be identified (Experiment III). Differences between hands were only found in Experiment I. The left hand was faster, apparently reflecting specialisation of the right cerebral hemisphere for the analysis of complex spatial stimuli. A fourth experiment, in which collections of raised dots in random arrangement to be enumerated were felt through a piece of cloth by subjects who were not blindfolded, confirmed the left hand superiority and demonstrated that it had not arisen from loss of sight of the movements of the dominant hand.     

Repetition Priming Follows Spontaneous but not Prompted Recognition of Familiar Faces

Reaction times to make a familiarity decision to the faces of famous people were measured after recognition of the faces in a pre-training phase had occurred spontaneously or following prompting with a name or other cue. At test, reaction times to familiar faces that had been recognized spontaneously in the pre-training phase were significantly facilitated relative to an unprimed comparison condition. Reaction times to familiar faces recognized only after prompting in the pre-training phase were not significantly facilitated. This was demonstrated both when a name prompt was used (Experiments 1 and 3) and when subjects were cued with brief semantic information (Experiment 2).

Repetition priming was not found to depend on prior spontaneous recognition per se. In Experiment 3, spontaneously recognizing a familiar face did not prime subsequent familiarity judgements when the same face had only been identified following prompting on a prior encounter. In Experiment 4, recognition memory for faces recognized after cueing was found to be over 90% accurate. This indicates that prompted recognition does not yield repetition priming, even though subjects can remember the faces. A fusion of “face recognition unit” and “episodic record” accounts of the repetition priming effect may be more useful than either theory alone in explaining these results.