The relative effectiveness of alternative job sources

Vocational research has focused on the occupational choice process and the individual's adjustment to work. Very little research has examined the job search process in which the individual must engage in order to implement occupational choices. This study examines one dimension of the job search process: the relationship between job source and subsequent work experiences. The data reveal that when the respondents initially entered the labor market, those relying on formal job sources tended to work in higher-level occupations and in jobs more closely related to their training than their counterparts who used other job sources. In the longer run, the labor market advantages associated with the use of formal job sources dissipated for the engineering majors but tended to persist for the business alumni.     

Women in families: feminist therapy and family systems*

Current family therapy has as its basis the concept of the family as a system. Systems theory has developed a set of explanations that are frequently functional in nature; they are often applied as though they assume that within a system a common goal is worked towards as in biological systems. For example, the concept of homeostasis is used in much the same way as Cannon (1929) used it to describe the mechanisms of stability within biological systems such as body temperature regulation. Here all the components of the system co-operate to maintain body temperature within certain limits. This functional assumption of a common aim amongst components of a system to achieve balance should be compared with a pluralist systems analysis which does not assume such commonality of goals. For example, a pluralist analysis could highlight the conflict inherent amongst different subsystems when one subsystem has more power than the other. At a theoretical level it can be seen that family systems theory has restricted itself to a limited set of assumptions about the explanatory concepts it uses. An analysis of women's psychology which has emerged through the developments of feminist therapy can enrich the theory and practice of family therapists.     

Adult age differences in letter-level and word-level processing

Older and young adults' letter detection and lexical decision performance were examined as word frequency varied to determine whether there were age differences in word recognition. Allen and Madden (1989) found that older adults' pattern of reaction time (RT) across word frequency categories was different from young adults' pattern for a letter detection task. In this study, for both letter detection and lexical decision tasks, older adults exhibited a monotonically decreasing RT function as word frequency increased. However, young adults exhibited a nonmonotonic RT function across word frequency for the letter detection task but a monotonically decreasing RT function as word frequency increased for the lexical decision task. An expanded parallel input serial analysis model of word processing was hypothesized.     

RITALIN VS. RESPONSE COST IN THE CONTROL OF HYPERACTIVE CHILDREN: A WITHIN-SUBJECT COMPARISON

A within-subject comparison was made of the effects of methylphenidate (Ritalin) and response cost in reducing the off-task behavior of two boys, 7 and 8 years of age, who had been diagnosed as having an attentional deficit disorder with hyperactivity. Several dosages of Ritalin (5 to 20 mg/day) were evaluated with the results indicating varying effects of the drug for both children. Response cost (with free-time as the reinforcer) was superior to Ritalin in raising levels of on-task behavior and in improving academic performance.     

Strategies in cross-modality matching

Subjects were tested on cross-and within-modality matching conditions with either a 5-sec or a 20-sec delay imposed between standard and comparison stimuli. Half the subjects were informed before the trial of what the comparison modality would be, while the others were not. There was a strong effect of instructions on the cross-modality conditions, but little on the within-modality conditions. The informed subjects showed better performance in the haptic-visual condition, while for the uninformed subjects, visual-haptic performance was better. The results suggest the importance of subjects’ processing strategies in cross-modality performance.     

Counting eliminates the repetition effect in judgments of temporal duration.

College student subjects estimated the duration of time intervals (8–54 sec) by counting or not (N=35 per group). Counting eliminated the repetition effect (a decline in the magnitude of estimations across trials), and resulted in a truncation of the psychophysical function. The former result was interpreted as contrary to Treisman's (1963) model. The latter result was attributed to the effortfulness of counting, which was established in a subsequent experiment.     

Operant conditioning of epileptic neurons in monkeys and its theoretical application to EEG operant conditioning in humans

This paper reviews a series of previous reports which summarize the physiology of chronic experimental epileptic foci in monkeys. It is shown that such monkeys can be trained to bidirectionally control the firing rates of normal and epileptic neurons which comprise the epileptic focus. As a result of this acquired operant performance, the monkeys show both a decrease in clinical seizures as well as a decrease in single unit epileptic activity. The EEC correlate of this change in single unit epileptic actvity is generalized EEG desynchronization. The conclusion from these data would indicate epileptic neurons can be operantly controlled and this control is not correlated with any specific EEG pattern. This brings to question the specificity of the SMR in EEG biofeedback paradigms which treat human epilepsy. This author feels that the result from such biofeedback studies are the result of the patient learning to manipulate electrical events within the CNS pathways through which the seizure propagates and is not contingent upon specific EEG frequencies.