Development of lateral asymmetry in the perception of sequentially touched fingers

In order to investigate lateral asymmetry in tactile perception, two or four fingers of normal primary school children were touched sequentially. Stimulation was either unimanual or bimanual and either verbal or nonverbal responses were required. Right hand advantage was demonstrated subsequent to uni- and bimanual stimulation in both the verbal and nonverbal response conditions. Neither an age nor a sex effect on laterality was found. Right hand advantage was affected by direction of stimulation in the bimanual condition. Left hemispheric dominance was argued to be related to the temporal nature of the tasks.     

On various causes of improper solutions in maximum likelihood factor analysis

In the applications of maximum likelihood factor analysis the occurrence of boundary minima instead of proper minima is no exception at all. In the past the causes of such improper solutions could not be detected. This was impossible because the matrices containing the parameters of the factor analysis model were kept positive definite. By dropping these constraints, it becomes possible to distinguish between the different causes of improper solutions. In this paper some of the most important causes are discussed and illustrated by means of artificial and empirical data.The author is indebted to H. J. Prins for stimulating and encouraging discussions.     

Career perceptions of managerial and professional personnel

Stages of career development consistent with age were found in a group of employed managers and professionals. They tended to attribute career success to inherent abilities, education, and developmental experiences in the company studied. Trends among three age groups were similar in regard to factors they perceived as enhancing or adversely affecting their career development.     

Treatment of obsessive-compulsive patients: The contribution of self-instructional training to the effectiveness of exposure

Fifteen obsessive-compulsive patients were given treatment consisting of ten sessions of gradual exposure in vivo. For half of the patients gradual exposure in vivo was preceded by self-instructional training.Treatment resulted in significant improvement on anxiety and avoidance scales, Leyton Obsessional Inventory, Self-rating Depression Scale and on ratings for anxious mood and depression. Neither the post-test nor the follow-ups 1 month and 6 months later indicated a difference between the effects of the two conditions. Self-instructional training did not enhance the effectiveness of gradual exposure in vivo.     

The empirical study of teenage work: A behavioral code for the assessment of adolescent job environments

Policy recommendations that adolescents supplement their experience in school with experience in the workplace have been made in the absence of objective data on the nature of most adolescents' activity on the job. This paper presents a coding system for chronicling a variety of microbehaviors in sequence, as they occur, in adolescent job environments. Three elements of each of approximately 100 behaviors performed by a targeted teenage worker are recorded by an on-site observer who enters appropriate code numbers into a portable event recorder: (1) the social context of the behavior; (2) the character of the behavior; and (3) the duration and concomitants of the behavior, when appropriate. Each of 97 working teenagers was observed continuously over a two hour period on the job. Interobserver agreement on the coding of worker behaviors and the social contexts in which they occurred averaged .86 and .97, respectively. In addition to its applicability in research on the effects of working on adolescent development, information obtained using the code can be helpful in the evaluation of youth employment programs, the vocational counseling of adolescents, and the validation of subjective worker reports of job attributes.     

TEACHING THE HANDICAPPED TO EAT IN PUBLIC PLACES: ACQUISITION,GENERALIZATION AND MAINTENANCE OF RESTAURANT SKILLS

This study examined classroom-based instruction in restauranting skills for handicapped persons. Three male students were taught each of four skill components in sequential order: locating, ordering, paying, and eating and exiting. Training was implemented in a multiple baseline design across subjects and consisted of modeling and role playing in conjunction with photo slide sequences and a simulated ordering counter. The use of a menu containing general item classes and a finger matching procedure for identifying errors in the delivery of change greatly reduced the reading and math skills necessary to enter and complete the program. Periodic probes were conducted in a McDonald's restaurant prior to, during, and up to one-year following the termination of training. In addition, two probes (overt and covert observation) were conducted in a Burger King restaurant to assess further generalization to a location different from the one depicted throughout training. Results showed that students' performance on restaurant probes improved as a result of training, generalized to novel settings, maintained over an extended period of time, and was comparable to that of a normative sample of nonretarded persons.     

Foveal diplopia thresholds and fixation disparities

Comparison of the magnitude and intrinsic spread of foveal diplopia thresholds with the accuracy of ocular alignment as determined with a subjective alignment method shows that: the accuracy of alignment in the vertical direction (within 1–2 min) is remarkably good and much better than in the horizontal direction; the largest disparities occurring due to restricted alignment accuracy are usually substantially smaller than the foveal diplopia thresholds; interindividual variability in the magnitude of foveal diplopia thresholds is not due only to interindividual variability in the alignment accuracy; and the spread of foveal diplopia thresholds exceeds the spread of ocular alignment, which implies that the noise in the foveal disparity domain is not only due to the restricted alignment accuracy but also to sensory processes. Finally, the data confirm that, unlike the case with diplopia thresholds, the spread of stereoscopic thresholds is not affected by the restricted alignment accuracy.