Cognitive Ability and Personality Predictors of Training Program Skill Acquisition and Job Performance

Two important issues in the training process concern (1) the relative impact of cognitive ability and personality traits on the ability to acquire skills, and (2) whether training skill acquisition predicts subsequent job performance. We used a sample of 9,793 trainees to address these questions and were able to compare those who succeeded on the job with those who did not succeed on the job. We found that some personality factors positively correlate with skill acquisition and that skill acquisition can predict the level of subsequent job performance.     

A social learning therapy programme with an autistic child

Undergraduates were trained in a predominantly operant conditioning therapy aimed at acquiring a measure of control over the behaviour of an autistic child in the setting of a day-care centre. Objective measures of therapist-control prior to therapy showed that the workers initially had no influence whatever on the child. Post-measures indicated that both therapists had achieved a markedly greater degree of control. Controls for mere familiarity and for generalization to workers other than the therapists led to the conclusion that, during the programme, the child had become significantly more responsive to adults in general. The case study material, gleaned from the daily reports by means of which the author monitored the treatment, demonstrated many specific instances of behaviour-change, including the apparent desensitization of various fears. In view of the fact that the treatment setting was far from ideal for this approach, the positive results were regarded as strong support for the suitability of operant conditioning techniques for manipulating psychotic behaviour in children.     

Attractiveness as a biasing factor in the judgments of school psychologists

A sample of 324 practicing school psychologists received a fictitious case study to which was attached a photograph of an attractive boy, an attractive girl, an unattractive boy, or an unattractive girl. Otherwise the case studies were identical. Each psychologist was asked to make several decisions based upon the information provided in the case study. Results of a multivariate analysis of variance indicated that a pupil's attractiveness had a significant effect on the judgments of school psychologists.     

“Ordinary people” and the truncated nuclear family

The American-made movie Ordinary People, which moved and troubled audiences in the United States and abroad in 1980 when it appeared, exemplifies a type of truncated nuclear family in which the wife-mother attempts to model herself after the role of the husband-father, espousing those values more characteristic of men at home and in the world of work. The author holds that the movie accurately established a casual connection between the particular form of marital relationship and the psychiatric disturbance of one of the offspring during adolescence.