The predictive validity of a computer-assisted career decision-making system: A six-year follow-up

The present study tested the predictive validity of Making Better Career Decisions (MBCD), a computer-assisted career decision-making system. Seventy clients who had used MBCD six years earlier were interviewed by telephone about their present field of study or occupation and the degree of their satisfaction with their occupational choice. The participants were divided into two groups: one consisted of clients whose chosen occupation was on the list of occupations recommended by MBCD, whereas the other consisted of clients whose chosen occupation was not on the recommended list. In the first group, 84% were highly satisfied with their occupational choice and 16% were satisfied to a moderate extent. Among those whose chosen occupation was not on the recommended list, only 38% were highly satisfied with their chosen occupation, 44% were satisfied to a moderate extent, and 18% were dissatisfied with their choice. These findings support the predictive validity of MBCD. Implications for counseling and computer-assisted career guidance systems are discussed.     

Gender differences in loneliness and depression of university students seeking counselling

Gender differences in loneliness and depression were examined among university students seeking counselling. The short-form UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-8) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) were completed by 325 counselling seekers (107 males and 218 females) in Israel. Males were significantly higher in loneliness than females, while females were significantly higher in depression than males. The greater loneliness of male counselling-seekers than that of females is discussed, as well as the possibility of a response set. Implications for assessment and counselling are suggested.     

Professional Ethics of Software Engineers: An Ethical Framework

The purpose of this article is to propose an ethical framework for software engineers that connects software developers’ ethical responsibilities directly to their professional standards. The implementation of such an ethical framework can overcome the traditional dichotomy between professional skills and ethical skills, which plagues the engineering professions, by proposing an approach to the fundamental tasks of the practitioner, i.e., software development, in which the professional standards are intrinsically connected to the ethical responsibilities. In so doing, the ethical framework improves the practitioner’s professionalism and ethics. We call this approach Ethical-Driven Software Development (EDSD), as an approach to software development. EDSD manifests the advantages of an ethical framework as an alternative to the all too familiar approach in professional ethics that advocates “stand-alone codes of ethics”. We believe that one outcome of this synergy between professional and ethical skills is simply better engineers. Moreover, since there are often different software solutions, which the engineer can provide to an issue at stake, the ethical framework provides a guiding principle, within the process of software development, that helps the engineer evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of different software solutions. It does not and cannot affect the end-product in and of-itself. However, it can and should, make the software engineer more conscious and aware of the ethical ramifications of certain engineering decisions within the process.     

High School Students' Career‐Related Decision‐Making Difficulties

The present study examined the construct of career‐related decision‐making difficulties among 1,843 Israeli adolescents: choosing a high school (9th grade), choosing high school elective courses (10th grade), and deciding on a military job preference (11th grade). Three versions of the Career Decision‐Making Difficulties Questionnaire (CDDQ) were constructed to match the 3 decision situations. The structures of the 10 difficulty categories of the revised CDDQ were found similar to that proposed by I. Gati, M. Krausz, and S. H. Osipow (1996). Boys reported higher difficulties than girls in external conflicts and dysfunctional beliefs. Research and counseling implications are discussed.     

CLASSICAL CONDITIONING OF DECREASES IN HUMAN SYSTOLIC BLOOD PRESSURE1

Decrease in human systolic blood pressure of 4.35 mm Hg (range: 0 to 12 mm Hg) were classically conditioned in normal and hypertensive subjects using a delayed conditioning paradigm in which a 30-sec auditory stimulus (the conditioned stimulus) was followed immediately by tilting the subject 15° head-down to elicit small decreases in blood pressure. Conditioning occurred within five trials. A control group demonstrated that sensitization of the reflex by repeated tilting could not account for the blood-pressure decreases associated with the conditioned stimulus in experimental subjects.     

Evaluations of pairs of experiences: A preference for happy endings

Experiences often consist of a number of temporally separated events or outcomes, events which might be positive or negative. Building on previous research, the present paper proposes that the chronological order of the component events influences overall evaluations of these experiences. In particular, a preference for happy endings is hypothesized such that an experience consisting of a positive and a negative event is evaluated as more satisfactory if the positive event occurs last. This preference is examined in three studies in a variety of contexts. A preference for happy endings is shown to influence people's preferences, even to the extent of influencing preferences for segregated versus integrated events (Thaler, 1985). The implications of a preference for happy endings for decision researchers are also explored.     

Perceived benefits of using an Internet-based interactive career planning system

Making Better Career Decisions (MBCD) is an Internet-based interactive career planning system designed to help deliberating individuals. The present research examined the benefits of a dialogue with MBCD, by analyzing 712 users’ perceptions of its contribution to their career decision-making process, and locating variables associated with these perceptions. A pre-dialogue and a post-dialogue questionnaire were used to collect the users’ perceptions of its benefits and measure the change in the degree of decidedness. Perceived benefit was derived from participants’ ratings of the degree of progress they had made in their career decision-making process, whether they had learned about additional factors to be considered and their career-related preferences, as well as their ratings of the quality of the list of “promising” career alternatives presented to them during their dialogue with MBCD. This composite perceived benefit was found to be positively associated with the users’ decidedness at the completion of the dialogue with MBCD. Users’ satisfaction with the length and variety of their personal “promising alternatives” list was associated with a higher perceived benefit.     

Comparison selection: An approach to the study of consumer judgment and choice

We introduce an alternative perspective on the study of consumer judgment and decision making, which is based on the notion that judgment and choice problems consist of comparisons that decision makers might select. Our new perspective proposes that if we can predict the likelihood that particular comparisons will become focal in a judgment or choice task, we will be able to gain a better understanding of and anticipate the resulting effect. Building on related literatures, we propose that comparison selection is driven by the task's latitude of acceptance (LOA) and comparison fluency (i.e., the overall ease of making that comparison). The task's LOA curve represents the range and concentration of potentially acceptable comparisons, whereas comparison fluency refers to the salience and ease of making the comparison. We illustrate our approach using previously studied problems (e.g., choice, variety seeking, the “jacket and calculator” problem, and contingent valuation) as well as new empirical tests.     

A narrative evaluation of a psychoeducation and a therapeutic alliance intervention for parents of persons with a severe mental illness

Most attempts to study the impact of psychosocial interventions on parents of persons with severe mental illness (SMI) are quantitative. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the subjective experience of parents of persons with SMI who participated in either a psychoeducational intervention which emphasized providing information on the illness and support, or a therapeutic alliance focused intervention (TAFI) which emphasized the alliance between the group members and group leaders. Ninety-three parents, who participated in either one of these two interventions, were interviewed using the Narrative Evaluation of Intervention Interview. Results show that participants found both interventions to be beneficial with no statistical differences in the level of perceived change. Themes describing change in relating to illness were significantly more frequently mentioned by participants in the TAFI group, whereas significantly more participants in the family psychoeducation interventions reported that implementation and information provided contributed to positive change. Also participants in the TAFI reported significantly more often that group regulation contributed to change. As both interventions were perceived as contributing, the findings support the relationship orientation to psychosocial interventions, which stresses the quality of the social support and interpersonal interaction as the source of positive outcomes of intervention.     

Spreading Activation in an Attractor Network With Latching Dynamics: Automatic Semantic Priming Revisited

Localist models of spreading activation (SA) and models assuming distributed representations offer very different takes on semantic priming, a widely investigated paradigm in word recognition and semantic memory research. In this study, we implemented SA in an attractor neural network model with distributed representations and created a unified framework for the two approaches. Our models assume a synaptic depression mechanism leading to autonomous transitions between encoded memory patterns (latching dynamics), which account for the major characteristics of automatic semantic priming in humans. Using computer simulations, we demonstrated how findings that challenged attractor‐based networks in the past, such as mediated and asymmetric priming, are a natural consequence of our present model’s dynamics. Puzzling results regarding backward priming were also given a straightforward explanation. In addition, the current model addresses some of the differences between semantic and associative relatedness and explains how these differences interact with stimulus onset asynchrony in priming experiments.