Book reviews

Ethnomethodology: How People Make Sense, by Warren Handel Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice‐Hall, 1982, 159 pages, $9.95 paper.

Corrections, by Paul W. Keve, New York: Wiley, 1981, 506 pages.

The Correctional System: An Introduction, by Susan Titus Reid, New York: Holt, $18.95, cloth, 506 pages.     

A hierarchical taxonomy of top managers' goals

To embed goal theories more deeply in the domain of top-level leadership behavior and to provide a vehicle to facilitate future research, the authors developed a taxonomy of managerial goals. Interviews with 75 company leaders-founders and presidents-from 3 countries generated 2,182 articulated goals. Content analysis supported 2 taxonomic dimensions: goal content and hierarchical level. The goal content dimension specified 10 categories of substantive goal targets, and the second dimension captured the hierarchical structure of the top leaders' goal sets, with lower-level goals being instrumental toward achieving superordinate goals. The hierarchy comprised 5 goal levels: ultimate, enterprise, strategic, project, and process. Chi-square analyses revealed relationships between goal content and hierarchical level as well as differences between the national subsamples.     

Neurocognitive insights into substance abuse

Cognitive studies are revealing key aspects of how drug abusers monitor and respond to negative feedback differently from non-abusers, and in doing so are adding an important piece to the conceptual puzzle that must be solved to understand, treat, and prevent drug abuse. In this review, we bring together two quite different lines of research, one addressing the selection of gambles in a risky decision task, and the other focused on imaging neural systems related to the detection and processing of errors. We suggest that diminished behavioural control, which is a cardinal feature of drug abuse, may be linked to alterations in the psychological and neural mechanisms that detect error signals and which, in turn, lead to optimization of behavioural responses.     

Recognition hypermnesia: The growth of recognition memory (d') over time with repeated testing

This study sought to determine whether recognition hypermnesia (unforgetting) might be obtained over time with repeated testing of recognition memory. Four types of stimuli were investigated: pictures or words (captions) from configured (funny) or non-configured (non-funny) cartoons. Three recognition tests, each comprising the same stimulus and distractor items, were successively administered after the presentation of a large set of captioned cartoons. Silent think intervals of 5 min were interpolated between recognition tests. Recognition hypermnesia, measured by increasing d' estimates of accessible recognition memory, was obtained with the pictures from configured (funny) cartoons but not with any of the other groups.     

Assistance with learning competence and decision-making in schools and further education

721 first-year university students were asked about the amount of help they had received or might have received at their pre-tertiary institutions in developing their learning competence and in course/university/career decision-making. Over all items, nearly 30% felt they had been helped minimally, 40-45% slightly to moderately, and nearly 30% moderately to very much. They felt they had been helped most with learning competence concerns, less with their career and educational decision-making, and least of all with handling distracting personal worries. There were no significant differences by sex or by type of institution previously attended. The correlation between perceived amount of help and A-level scores was not significant. The implications of the findings are discussed in terms of the possible contribution of learning competence to attainment and the need for realistic educational and career decision-making.     

Counselling approaches to increasing students' learning competence

Learning competence is a comprehensive term which encompasses study skills, relevant interpersonal skills, and absence of debilitating achievement anxiety. 721 first year university freshmen were asked about the areas in which they felt more and less competent as learners. A factor analysis of their responses suggested eight areas of learning competence including: planning, organising and effective use of study time; effective reading and memorising; interpersonal relations and ability to obtain study help; and examinations. Ways in which counsellors can assist students with these varying learning concerns are reviewed, and it is suggested that more attention be paid in schools and colleges to professional approaches and structures for increasing student learning competence.     

Transfer between downshift in reward magnitude and continuous delay of reward

Two separate experiments were conducted to investigate transfer of persistence between delay and a downshift in reward magnitude. In the first experiment, experimental rats were initially downshifted in reward magnitude and later tested for persistence to continuous delay of large reward. It was found that these rats were more persistent to the effects of delay than control rats which did not receive prior experience with a downshift in reward magnitude. In the second experiment, experimental rats were first trained to receive large reward under delayed conditions and then tested for persistence to a downshift in reward magnitude. Compared to control rats which received no prior experience with delay, the experimental rats showed a significantly smaller negative contrast effect. The results were interpreted as supporting Amsel's theory of persistence as well as Capaldi's recent interpretation of contrast effects.