The influence of labor market discrimination on locus of control

Prior research has established the existence of racial differences in locus of control as well as a relationship between labor market experience and locus of control. This study extends this line of inquiry by examining the relationship between labor market discrimination and subsequent change in locus of control. Drawing on a national probability sample (N = 2857) of young men, multiple regression analysis was used to estimate the effect of labor market discrimination (over a 2-year period) on subsequent locus of control. The results indicate that perceptions of employment discrimination influence the level of externality among blacks, over and above racial identification. Blacks who view themselves as victims of employment discrimination experience twice the increase in externality as blacks reporting no awareness of discrimination.     

Social interactions as predictors of children's likability and friendship patterns: A multiple regression analysis

The concurrent and predictive validity of four qualitative behavioral classes of social interaction (initiating and receiving positive and negative social interaction) was investigated using sociometric measures of peer acceptance (ratings) and friendship (nominations). Correlational analyses showed significant relationships between behavioral and sociometric measures supporting previous work with preschool populations. Stepwise multiple regression analyses suggested that receiving social interaction from peers best predicted overall acceptance, whereas initiating social interactions best predicted children's friendship patterns. Tentative implications for the behavioral assessment of children's social skills were discussed.The current data were gathered as part of a larger research project concerning social skills assessment and training in children.     

Validity of Social Behavior Assessment in discriminating emotionally disabled from nonhandicapped students

Discriminant analyses and stepwise multiple regression techniques were applied to teacher ratings of 184 kindergarten through eighth-grade students using Stephen's Social Behavior Assessment (SBA) inventory and were used to predict group membership as emotionalyy disabled (ED) or non-ED. The results suggested that the SBA was highly effective in correctly discriminating ED from non-ED students. The linear discriminant function derived from the 30 SBA subcategories correctly classified 83% of the subjects, yielding a highly significant separation of groups of ED and non-ED children. While the results of the discriminant analyses have not yet been cross-validated, these findings support the discriminant validity of the SBA for ED versus non-ED classification and suggest that the SBA is potentially a useful instrument for school psychologists as one source of information in a multifactored assessment regarding the identification of children as ED.     

The Headache Symptom Questionnaire: Discriminant classificatory ability and headache syndromes suggested by a factor analysis

A brief Headache Symptom Questionnaire was administered to 129 chronic headache Sufferers. The questionnaire accurately classified 68.42% of headache subjects in their proper diagnostic category, comparable to, but statistically less accurate than, the 86.4% agreement between expert headache diagnosticians using clinical interviews. Results of a factor analysis of the Headache Symptom Questionnaire lend support for their being two commonly accepted global headache categories—vascular/migraine and muscle contraction—and one headache dimension concerned with duration of headache pain. Combined migraine-muscle contraction headache was found to be related more to migraine than to muscle contraction headache, and cluster headaches emerged as a separate clinical entity, not loading positively on any factor and loading negatively on all three.This research was supported in part by Grant NS-15235 from the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke.     

Family therapy training: Current issues,future trends

This article extends the previous literature review of the family therapy training and supervision field (Liddle & Halpin, 1978) by organizing and discussing some of the dimensions most relevant to family therapy teachers. The five domains of focus include: (1) Personnel: who should teach and be taught family therapy? (2) Content and skills: what should be taught? (3) Methodology: how should the content and skills be taught? (4) Context: how do the setting and the training enterprise influence each other? (5) Evaluation: how should training be assessed? Finally, the article brings into focus several key aspects of family therapy training likely to have relevance for current and future trainers.     

Degree of consistent training: Improvements in search performance and automatic process development

Previous research has shown substantial improvements in detection performance when subjects consistently detect a subset of stimuli. In contrast, in conditions in which stimuli appear as both targets and distractors, there is little performance improvement with practice. The present experiments examine how varying degrees of consistency determine the improvement of detection accuracy with extended practice. The degree of consistency was varied by manipulating the frequency with which a letter was a distractor while holding the number of occurrences as a target constant. The experiments utilized a multiple-frame target-detection search paradigm in which subjects were to detect single-letter targets in a series of rapidly presented letters on four channels. Experiments showed that detection performance improvement with practice was a monotonic function of the degree of consistency, decreasing to zero as the target-to-distractor ratio increased from 10:0 to 10:20. As consistency decreased, detection performance asymptoted earlier and at a lower level. A dual-task experiment examined subjects’ ability to perform the previously trained search task as a secondary task. Results showed that the previous targetto-distractor consistency had a marked effect on resource sensitivity of the detection task. The general issues of consistency in the development of skilled performance and in the development of automatic processing are discussed.     

Generalized and specific expectancies: Sequential mediators of interpersonal behavior1

Two experiments confirmed sequential mediation of social interaction by investigating the effects of generalized expectancies on specific expectancies and the effects of specific expectancies on performance. Both experiments used a simulated tutoring task in which the subject took the role of tutor while a confederate took the role of student. In Experiment 1 subjects combined generalized expectancies about the effectiveness of certain tutoring responses with specific situational information to produce specific expectancies about the results of the tutoring responses under the experimental circumstances. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and showed that specific expectancies of the relative effectiveness of different responses influenced which response was performed more. Results were discussed in terms of cognitive motivation theory and social learning theory.     

Auditory processing and anxiety in stutterers

This study utilized the Synthetic Sentence Identification/Ipsilateral and Contralateral Competing Message subtests and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory to examine auditory processing deficits, anxiety levels, and the interaction of these two components in 15 adult stutterers and 15 nonstutterers. Results support brainstem auditory processing deficits in stutterers and equalization of cortical functioning between groups. Group differences were not found in anxiety levels. Nonsignificant correlations between anxiety levels and auditory processing were revealed.