Pupil Personnel Services in the Elementary School

Student personnel services for the elementary school utilizing counselor, social worker, and psychologist are discussed with respect to their overlapping and unique skills. As a solution to the manpower shortage, a program for multidisciplinary training of paraprofessionals is suggested.     

Discrimination of circles and squares with and without knobs by goldfish

Different groups of goldfish were trained to discriminate between a circle and either a square, a diamond, a square with a knob added at the top or a diamond with a knob. All subjects readily mastered the discrimination, and there was no significant difference between the groups in the number of trials taken to criterion. In transfer tests it was found that: (i) while there was no transfer from square to diamond or vice versa, the presence of knobs on these shapes did mediate transfer from one to the other, provided the knob remained in the top part of the shapes; (ii) all groups learned much more about the tops of the shapes than about the bottom halves; (iii) animals discriminated the square from the circle largely by detecting the presence of a strong horizontal edge at the top of the figure; (iv) two features of the diamond were discriminated--the presence of oblique contours and the existence of a point in the upper half of the shape. The results are discussed in terms of a proposed model of shape recognition.     

Book reviews

Animal Discrimination Learning. Edited by R. M. Gilbert and N. S. Sutherland. London: Academic Press. 1969. Pp. xvi + 501. 1358.

Luce, R. D. and Tukey, J. W. (1964). Simultaneous conjoint measurement: a new type of fundamental measurement. J. math. Psychol. I, 1-27.

Discrimination Learning. By D. A. Riley. Boston: Allyn and Bacon Inc. 1968. Pp. 172. Paperback 21s.

Annual Review of Psychology. Vol. 20. Palo Alto: Annual Reviews Inc. 1969. Pp. ix + 544. $9.00.

Cutaneous Sensation. By David Sinclair. London: Oxford University Press. 1967. Pp. xii + 306. 63s.

Modelling of Thinking and the Mind.. By N. M. Amosov. Translated by L. Finegold. New York: Spartan Books. London: Macmillan. 11967. Pp. xiii + 192.

The Mind of Mnemonist. By A. R. Luria. London: Jonathan Cape. 1969. Pp. xi + 160. 25s.

Determinants of Infant Behaviour IV. Edited by B. M. Foss. London: Methuen. 1969. Pp. 303. £3 10s.

Brain and Behaviour. Volumes 1-4. Edited by Karl Pribram. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. 1969. Pp. 496 +573 + 523 + 524. 12s. 6d. per volume.     

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.     

Integrated circuit random foreperiod device and digital interval timer1

A digital integrated circuit computer that produces random (as opposed to pseudorandom) foreperiods is described. Also contained in the device is a precision digital interval timer.     

Reaction time as a function of the intensity and probability of occurrence of vibrotactile signals

Three Ss made judgments of the presence or absence of a burst of 60-cps vibration onthe index fingertip.The probability of S’s reporting the presence of a signal was found to be influenced by signal probability and signal intensity. Mean reaction time for reporting the presence of a signal decreased as a function of signal intensity and signal probability whereas mean reaction time for reporting the absence of a signal increased as a function of signal intensity and signal probability. On trials where no signal was presented mean R T for reporting a signal decreased with increases in the signal probability whereas mean RT for reporting the absence of a signal increased with increases in signal probability. The results were interpreted as support for the hypothesis that S’s decision time was longer the closer on the sensory continuum a particular observation was to his criterion.