Effects of short-term retrieval on adult age differences in long-term recall of actions.

In Experiment 1 young and elderly subjects either recalled or repeated after every block of 4 actions, whereas control subjects received neither interpolated short-term recall nor action repetition. On a later long-term memory test, experimental subjects, regardless of age or condition, recalled slightly more actions than control subjects. In Experiment 2 young adult and elderly subjects received 12 short-term memory trials in which 2 actions were performed on each trial, but only 1 was cued for recall after a brief retention interval filled with a distracting activity. On a later long-term memory test for the actions performed on the short-term trials, both young and elderly subjects recalled significantly more previously cued than noncued actions. The Age X Cuing Condition interaction was negligible. Prior retrieval of actions appears to enhance later recall regardless of age but seemingly only when prior retrieval requires considerable cognitive effort (as in Experiment 2).     

The effect of exercise on depressive symptoms in the moderately depressed elderly

Thirty community-dwelling, moderately depressed elderly were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 interventions: experimenter-accompanied exercise in the form of walking, a social contact control condition, and a wait-list control. Exercise and social contact both resulted in significant reductions in both the total and the psychological subscale of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The exercise condition, however, unlike the control conditions, resulted in decreased somatic symptoms of the BDI. These results indicate that, at least in the short term, exercise has a broader effect compared with control conditions in reducing depressive symptoms in the moderately depressed elderly.     

Developing Instruments for Use in Counseling

This article describes the author's experiences and roles in developing four career-oriented measures. The first effort, translating the Ramak into English, proved to be a failure. The second and third efforts, the development of the Career Decision Scale and the Occupational Stress Inventory (OSI), have been more successful. The fourth, the Task Specific Scale of Occupational Self-Efficacy, is still underway, and its usefulness remains to be seen. In sketching these experiences, an attempt is made to show both how proper test development steps are to be followed as well as to indicate that research and development activities can logically grow out of one's personal experience.     

Counseling and the Bystander-Equity Model of Supervisory Helping Behavior: Directions for EAP Research

The proliferation of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) has created new opportunities for persons in the counseling profession to examine specific psychological, sociological, and environmental factors associated with employee occupational mental health, stress-affected work performance, vocational adjustment, and job-related social behavior. In this article, we discuss the contribution that Bayer and Gerstein's (1988a) Bystander-Equity Model of Supervisory Helping Behavior can make to the pursuit of EAP research based on the traditions of the field of counseling. We also offer the field a structure for pursuing empirical and applied activities in EAP settings. Finally, we encourage counseling researchers and practitioners to respond to the challenge of working much more closely with EAPs, so that our profession can further establish its commitment to investigating various aspects of vocational behavior.     

Issues and options in literacy training

When was the last time you saw a job application with no spelling or grammatical errors? Basic skill deficiencies among people at all levels of business are forcing companies to develop innovative ways of compensating for and correcting the problem. What follows is a summary of literacy training strategies and suggestions for implementation.     

A new typology of health behaviours for personality-health predictions: The case of locus of control

Psychological investigations of the impact of personality on health behaviours have tended to emphasize fine distinctions among personality variables while failing to distinguish among different kinds of behaviours. For example, theoretical treatments of perceived personal control are quite sophisticated; in contrast, only one well-known analysis of health behaviours exists. We propose four categories of health-enhancing behaviours, which take into account contemporary views of the shift in health care from acute and physician-directed actions to long-term and patient-directed efforts. In addition, we suggest that perceived control (we emphasize locus of control because of its generality and parsimony) is an important predictor variable when combined with other factors common to current models of health behaviour.     

Random error in additive decompositions of multiattribute utility

Decomposition is a common strategy for dealing with the complexity of multiattribute decision problems. A cognitively demanding task is broken down into tasks requiring simpler, perhaps easier, judgments which can then be aggregated. But individual judgments can be inconsistent in systematic or random fashion and when aggregated there is the possibility of propagation of this inconsistency. In this paper inconsistency in the form of random error is investigated in the context of additive decomposition of multiattribute utility. The process of aggregation of random error is studied and a comparison made with random error in holistic estimates of multiattribute utility. Conditions under which decomposition improves the consistency of the multiattribute utility estimate are presented and discussed.