The Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor on Mental Patient Treatment Teams

This study asked the question: What are the role expectancies of treatment personnel in the treatment community and are they consistent across patients' emotional condition? An 83-item inventory was developed and administered under three different sets of instructions, each characterizing a different patient condition. Treatment staff and administrators were asked to rate items on the basis of the level of expectancy they held for their team vocational rehabilitation counselor. The analyses suggest that treatment staff and counselors do not agree on role expectations and that patient condition is a significant mediating variable.     

Retroactive inhibition as a function of similarity of meaning in free-recall learning

Summary Retroactive inhibition in free-recall learning was measured under six degrees of meaningful similarity: zero, low, low-medium, medium, medium-high, and high. For each degree of similarity, an experimental and a control group of 20 Ss each learned a list of 20 unrelated adjectives through three cycles of alternate study and unpaced free recall. Immediately thereafter, the experimental group learned a second list of 20 adjectives, while the control group rested. Finally, a single recall trial was administered to both groups to measure first-list retention. The results have revealed a relationship which is at variance with the relationships observed in both serial and paired-associate learning but conforms to the curvilinear function earlier formulated by Skaggs and Robinson. Fresh arguments are offered in defence of the Skaggs-Robinson hypothesis.     

Reading and typing

As an extension to an earlier study on typing, an experiment was carried out on skilled touch typists in which they were asked to type texts that differed in word structure and word length. It was predicted from certain assumptions about the reading process that there should be significant effects of structure, length and their interaction. These predictions were confirmed.     

Prior stimulation and the perception of causality

An attempt was made to discover whether, in conditions similar to those of Michotte, the number of causal responses given by subjects was influenced by stimulation during the period just before the main experiment. Time-intervals between the arrival of object A and the departure of object B were systematically varied within the range 60 to 390 msec. Those who had earlier been exposed to shorter time-intervals (60 to 210 msec.) gave fewer causal responses than those who had been exposed to longer ones (150 to 300 msec. and 240 to 390 msec.). A possible explanation is offered in terms of the modification of existing “schemata.”     

Recall of digits projected to temporal and nasal hemi-retinas

Fourteen right-handed, right eye dominant subjects recalled digits when different ones were projected simultaneously to either temporal or nasal retinas. The principal findings were: (a) Recall of digits projected to nasal retinas was significantly better than when projected to temporal retinas; (b) information projected to the right eye was recalled significantly better than that projected to the left eye. It is shown that the relative ineffectiveness of the recall of input from the non-dominant eye can be attributed almost wholly to the relative inefficient recall of digits projected to the left temporal retina.     

Synchronization and coupling of phases in periodic processes of conditioning

Locomotor avoidance conditioning and locomotor food conditioning in male albino rats demonstrated that locking of temporary connections is accomplished by coupling of phases of different synchronized periodic neural processes. Phase coupling was verified by the formation of parallel periodic courses of reaction times and motor reaction times in the process of elaboration of conditional avoidance reflexes, and by the curve of the corresponding correlation coefficients, which were calculated from the reaction times and motor reaction times in food conditioning measured every day during the period of stabilization. The authors hold the view that a locking mechanism based on the synchronization of periodic processes in conditioning is most compatible with efficient formation of conditional reflexes and can promote adaptation. Furthermore, it is assumed that information storage, too, occurs periodically, according to the principle of rotary storage.     

The organization of motivated and conditional reflex processes

Recent observations on the plasticity of brain and behavior relationships indicate that the temporary connections between environmental and neuroanatomical substrates have tremendous specificity but at the same time are very plastic. Establishment of a conditional reflex by stimulation of the hippocampal pyramidal layer and/or the mesencephalic reticular formation did not interfere with the differential stimulation of very near points in the same structures. These correlations between brain and behavior confirmed the earlier belief that the development of temporary connections between environment and brain is an elementary process of the central nervous system. Complex behavioral functions are organized through both neuronal and humoral afferentation. Data accumulated recently indicate that the descending forebrain influence is inhibitory in the brain stem and diencephalon and controls the sensory input in a somatomotor-specific and situation-specific manner. Humoral factors affecting thresholds can change the dynamic equilibrium existing between ascending excitatory and descending inhibitory systems; these alterations always follow the rule of situation and somatomotor specificity.     

College Major Choice and Personal Adjustment

This investigation focused on the differences in reported personal adjustment problems between freshmen students who made a congruent college major choice and students who made an incongruent choice. Personal adjustment was defined operationally with the Mooney Problem Checklist. Congruent and incongruent college major choice groups were defined operationally using the Vocational Preference Inventory. In the analysis of variance of the adjustment scores, the interaction term involving congruence of major choice and sex and the test for the main effect of sex were not significant. The test for the main effect of congruence was found to be significant. Subjects who had made a congruent college major choice reported fewer personal adjustment problems when compared to subjects in the incongruent group.