UCLA's Career Counseling Center: A Dialogue About a Unique Service

In this interview, two counseling psychologists describe aspects of a relatively unique career counseling service that has been validated by 40 years of success in the marketplace. Composed of 3 intensive individual interviews and 15 to 25 hours of educational and psychological testing, the service assists clients in identifying and beginning pursuit of suitable educational and occupational goals. The counselors describe how they organize and sift through test results to formulate recommendations for a client's unique career circumstances, why they accept responsibility for developing and presenting concrete recommendations, and what the changes in their clients' concerns suggest about the evolution of work in the United States. Their specificity and professionalism will help counselors understand the craft of career counseling.     

Continuity in intellectual functioning: the role of self-reported health

Surviving members of the Berkeley Older Generation Study were interviewed and tested with the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale in 1969-1970 and again in 1983-1984, when subjects' ages ranged from 73 to 93. Health was assessed by self-reports at both measurement periods. Although many individuals showed some decline in intellectual functioning, substantial individual differences were apparent at all age levels. More than one half of the subjects showed no reliable change, and a minority showed a reliable increase in verbal scores. The role of self-reported health has increasing importance in the maintenance of intellectual functioning in advanced old age.     

The concepts of depression,anxiety, and neuroticism in questionnaires

In this study, the relations among depression, anxiety, and neuroticism measured by self-report questionnaires were investigated. Subjects were 207 psychiatric patients. High correlations were found among self-report scales purporting to measure depression, anxiety, and neuroticism. Results of a content analysis showed considerable overlap among these scales. A division of items into six content categories did not result in lower correlations compared to the original scales.     

Verbal conditioning of stimulus significance in the orienting response context

The manipulation of stimulus significance, by instructions from the experimenter, may be taken as an example of verbal conditioning. Consideration of such a mechanism suggested that personality effects previously found in conditioning studies should be apparent in instructional manipulations of significance in a study of the orienting response (OR) to words. Because of recent changes in dimensioning of the personality structure, some of the items originally used to define Eysenck’s extraversion (E) dimension are now used to assess the new dimension of psychoticism (P), suggesting that at least some of the established effects of E upon conditioning may be associated now with P. Hence the P scale was focused on in this study. Words differing on the evaluative dimension of the semantic differential were presented in three blocks, the first under indifferent instructions, the second under instructions to rate the words for their affective impact, and the third under indifferent instructions again. These blocks correspond to baseline, conditioning, and extinction conditions respectively. Electrodermal activity indicated enhanced conditioning, together with greater carry-over effects in the extinction phase, for low-P compared with high-P subjects. The results indicate the importance of personality effects in studies of stimulus significance and illustrate the value of the verbal conditioning mechanism in this area of the OR field. They also suggest the need to re-examine previously obtained E-effects in conditioning studies in light of changing personality tests.     

The association between adolescents' attitudes toward suicide and their psychosocial background and suicidal tendencies.

The present study examined the relationship between adolescents' attitudes toward suicide and their psychosocial background. It also evaluated the association between attitudes toward suicide and the subjects' own suicidal tendencies. A questionnaire assessing these issues was administered to 525 Israeli adolescents. Results indicated that significantly more females, nonreligious adolescents, those exposed to suicidal behavior, and those with increased suicidal risk held more accepting attitudes. Ethnic origin, socioeconomic status, and living in intact/nonintact families were not associated with adolescents' attitudes toward suicide.     

The association between teacher attitudes, behavioral intentions, and smoking and the prevalence of smoking among seventh-grade students.

Seventh-grade students and teachers from twenty-three middle and junior high schools were surveyed to determine the association between teacher attitudes, behavioral intentions, and smoking behavior and the prevalence of student smoking. Teacher attitudes toward smoking policies were found to be strongly related to the current smoking behavior of the teacher but not consistently related to student smoking. In addition, teacher likelihood of intervening showed a modest association with teacher smoking status, with current smokers generally indicating being the least likely to intervene for student possession or use of cigarettes. Teacher intentions to intervene were strongly associated with the prevalence of smoking among boys but not girls.     

Sources of stress and coping responses of high school students.

A series of focus group interviews was used to identify major sources of stress and coping responses of Grade 10 students. Relationships with parents and family, work, and lack of money were found to be important sources of stress. Major coping responses included substance use and diversionary activities. Differences between academic streams (tracks) in sources of stress and coping responses were examined.     

Malevolent object representations in borderline personality disorder and major depression.

To study malevolent representations, earliest memories were reliably coded on scales of affect tone. Ss were diagnosed with borderline personality disorder: 31 without and 30 with concurrent major depression. Nonborderline comparison subjects had either major depressive disorder (n = 26) or no psychiatric diagnosis (n = 30). Borderline subjects were discriminated from comparison subjects by their more malevolent representations; they more frequently produced memories involving deliberate injury; and they portrayed potential helpers as less helpful. Results suggest the diagnostic significance of malevolent representations, which need to be explained by any theory of borderline personality disorder.