A typology of mid-life career changers

This study examines the motivations for and the outcomes of mid-life career change among a sample of 73 men who had left professional and managerial careers between the ages of 34 and 54. Measures of personal desire for change and external pressure to leave were dichotomized to produce a typology of career changers: Drift-outs, Opt-outs, Force-outs, and Bow-outs. The four types of changers were found to differ on a number of variables, including: amount of education completed, additional schooling undertaken to change careers, time taken to make the change, radicalness of change, and the importance of personal values in deciding to leave their former careers. Overall, respondents were found to be highly satisfied with their career redirection.     

The informational basis of social judgments: Memory for informative and uninformative arguments

This study investigates the encoding and retrieval of arguments in an opinion formation task. It is based on a model of opinion formation that partitions the latter process into initial encoding, elaborative encoding, integration, and decision. According to this model elaborative encoding depends on two factors: (i) the informativeness of the arguments and (ii) their thematic relatedness. Since it is reasonably well established that the likelihood of retrieving an argument is an increasing function of the amount of elaboration performed on it, the first hypothesis is straightforward, namely, that the memory for an argument will increase with its informativeness and with its thematic relatedness to other arguments. The second hypothesis assumes that by dint of their closer association with the decision, informative arguments occupy a more central position in the representation of an opinion than uninformative ones. This implies that an informative argument should be accessed and reported prior to an uninformative argument, even when differences in retrievability (i.e., probabilities of recall) are controlled. The findings were consistent with such an analysis.     

Memory for words in prose and their locations on the page

Two experiments are reported that establish that the recall of the within-page spatial location and the content of words from a prose passage are not functionally independent, i.e., that each can serve to cue recall of the other. Depriving college students of the spatial-location cues on a page by having them read a passage in the continuous form from a scroll significantly lowered word recall, whereas providing them with cues that reinstated the within-page location of material at time of test significantly raised recall of words. Providing the content of answers to the questions at time of recall was found to increase memory for location. The data are consistent with a conception of memory as a constellation of features such that recall of one of these features serves a cuing function to facilitate recall of other features.     

TREATING TOTAL LIQUID REFUSAL WITH BACKWARD CHAINING AND FADING

In this study, we report on a 12-year-old boy with autism, mental retardation, and a history of severe gastrointestinal problems who presented with total liquid and food refusal. Backward chaining was used to shape drinking from a cup, and a fading procedure was used to increase the quantity of water he was required to drink.     

Training Genetic Counselors to provide teratogen counseling

Provision of teratogen counseling requires acquisition of knowledge and skills from several disciplines. Traditionally, training in teratogen counseling has occurred on the job. We describe a formal, didactic and experiential curriculum for teratogen counseling as an integral part of the Graduate Program in Genetic Counseling leading to the master of science degree at Northwestern University. All students complete a 5-week rotation with the Coordinator of the Illinois Teratogen Information Service (TIS). This provides them with an opportunity to evaluate a spectrum of teratogen exposures, to interpret teratogen studies in a manner useful for patients, and to develop skills in assessing and addressing psychosocial issues associated with fetal exposure to potential teratogens. Students also learn first hand about how a TIS functions and when and how to refer to TIS specialists. The goal of the program is to provide genetic counseling students with the opportunity to gain experience in accessing and interpreting teratology research and in communicating teratogen information to patients and health professionals in a sensitive, effective manner.     

Non-equilibrium dynamics as an indispensable characteristic of a healthy biological system

Healthy systems in physiology and medicine are remarkable for their structural variability and dynamical complexity. The concept of fractal growth and form offers novel approaches to understanding morphogenesis and function from the level of the gene to the organism. For example, scale-invariance and long-range power-law correlations are features of non-coding DNA sequences as well as of healthy heartbeat dynamics. For cardiac regulation, perturbation of the control mechanisms by disease or aging may lead to a breakdown of these long-range correlations that normally extend over thousands of heartbeats. Quantification of such long-range scaling alterations are providing new approaches to problems ranging from molecular evolution to monitoring patients at high risk of sudden death. We briefly review recent work from our laboratory concerning the application of fractals to two apparently unrelated problems: DNA organization and beat-to-beat heart rate variability. We show how the measurement of long-range power-law correlations may provide new understanding of nucleotide organization as well as of the complex fluctuations of the heartbeat under normal and pathologic conditions.     

Technology and civil disobedience: Why engineers have a special duty to obey the law

Summary Engineers have a greater responsibility than many other professionals not to commit civil disobedience in performing their jobs as engineers. It does not follow that engineers have no responsibility for their company’s actions. Morally, engineer may be required to speak out within the company or even publicly against her company. An engineer may be required to work on a project or quit her job. None of these acts, generally, are against the law. An engineer may be morally required to commit civil disobedience as a private citizen. But, given the institutional character of engineering and the division of labor in the modern world, very rarely will conscience require an engineer to violate the law in the performance of her job as an engineer.     

Some nontraditional (Unconventional and/or innovative) sychosocial treatments for children and adolescents: Critique and proposed screening principles

Five examples of nontraditional psychosocial treatments used for children/adolescents are reviewed: eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, electroencephalographic (EEG) biofeedback, deep pressure/touch therapies, stress-challenge treatments, and confrontational scare treatments. The generic recommendations from the September 1992 National Institutes of Health Conference on Unconventional Medical Treatments are summarized. Additional screening principles specific for psychosocial treatments are proposed and applied to the five treatments. The screens do not validate treatment efficacy or evaluate the quality of any previous research, but only facilitate decisions as to whether treatments deserve controlled investigation. Scientific evaluation of the nontraditional treatments reviewed could in general benefit from blinds (at least for assessment); control conditions matched for intensity, frequency, and duration (double blind where feasible); dose-response studies; testing of generalization and endurance supplements or boosters for quick, cheap treatments with time- or domain-limited effects; and comparing cost-effectiveness with established treatments. Two unscientific pitfalls must be avoided: embracing new treatments uncritically and rejecting them without fair examination. These pitfalls must be skirted without dissipating scarce research resources.The views and proposals in this article are those of the author, and do not in any way reflect any official National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) position. Further, mention or review of any particular treatment does not constitute endorsement of that treatment by either NIMH or the author.     

Computer-Based Assessment: A NATO Survey

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief summary of developments in NATO nations in order to bring these developments to a wider audience. The basis of the survey provided is the information collated by NATO Research Study Group 15 Computer-Based Assessment of Military Personnel as given in its report to NATO Headquarters in 1993.     

Sizing Things Up: Colloquial Reflection as Practical Wisdom

This essay reintroduces Rhetoric as the principle art for giving emphasis and importance to contested matters; in other words, for making things matter. In a speculative reading of the Aristotelian rhetorical tradition, Aristotle's interpretations of magnitude, contengency and practical wisdom are critically examined from both an aesthetic and an ethical-political point of view. The concluding discussion attempts to apply these same concepts to a growing dilemma in the present age. The dilemma is that monumental changes in scale have all but eroded the prospects for engaged encounters with contemporary contingency. It remains the challenge of rhetorical practice to reframe actions and events so that they and we may hold some hope for an engaged civic life.