Careers guidance and choosing a job

Data from the 16-year-old follow-up of the National Child Development Study relating to certain aspects of careers guidance are examined. These include the proportion of the 12,000 study children who were in schools with teachers responsible for careers guidance, the amount of training these teachers had received, and whether they were paid a special salary. The children's expected age of leaving school, their plans for further education and work, and their choice of likely first full-time jobs, are considered in relation to the presence of teachers with some training in careers guidance and to contacts with careers officers. The use made of sources of information about job choices is also described.     

A process model for Missionaries-Cannibals and other river-crossing problems

We extend a model originally developed by Atwood and Polson (1976) for the water jug task to four isomorphs of the Missionaries-Cannibals problem. Our results show that variation in cover story produced no differences in number of legal moves to solution, but caused large differences in illegal moves. A three-stage process model incorporating means-ends heuristics, assumptions about the utilization of memory, and an illegal move-detection process is able to account for both legal and illegal move data from all four versions of the problem.     

Assessing the psychological status of the Vowel Shift Rule

Several experiments designed to test the psychological validity of Chomsky and Halle's (1968) Vowel Shift Rule are reviewed, and both positive and negative evidence is evaluated. Moskowitz's (1973) claim that speakers' knowledge of vowel alternations is due to their knowledge of spelling rules is introduced, and an experiment designed to differentiate between behavior based on the Vowel Shift Rule and on spelling rules is presented in detail. It is shown that subjects in this experiment, and in previous experiments that claimed to have obtained positive evidence for the Vowel Shift Rule, are behaving in accord with spelling rules and not the Vowel Shift Rule. It is argued that literacy is a possible source of psychologically real linguistic knowledge.     

Cyclical Maladaptive Patterns: Interpersonal Case Formulation for Psychotherapy with Children

This paper proposes the use of Hans Strupp's case formulation method, Cyclical Maladaptive Patterns, with child clinical cases. While Strupp's case formulation method was developed for use with adults in Time-Limited Dynamic Psychotherapy, this interpersonally-based model is viewed as consistent with recent literature in child development and psychopathology which emphasizes the centrality of peer relationships, interpersonal schema, and social attribution biases in the development of maladaptive interpersonal behavior. Application of this method underscores the interpersonal nature and context of childhood problems as well as their cyclical and self-perpetuating quality. Use of this case formulation method with children is proposed as a basis for individually tailoring treatment plans with children who have problems with aggression, rejection, and other maladaptive interpersonal patterns.     

The impact of self-construal on aesthetic preference for angular versus rounded shapes

In this article, the authors examine the role of self-construal in aesthetic preference for angular versus rounded shapes. Previous research found an independent self-construal is associated with a confrontation approach to conflict resolution, whereas an interdependent self-construal is associated with compromise. Furthermore, the literature in empirical aesthetics suggests that angular shapes tend to generate confrontational associations, and rounded shapes tend to generate compromise associations. Accordingly, the authors propose individuals with independent self-construals should perceive angular shapes as more attractive, whereas individuals with interdependent self-construals should find rounded shapes more attractive. The authors argue this effect of self-construal should be more pronounced when people expect that their shape preferences will be evaluated by others because culturally consistent responses will be more accessible in this situation. These hypotheses were largely confirmed in a field study that classified logos from a variety of countries and two experiments in which self-construal was experimentally primed.     

New York City young adults’ psychological reactions to 9/11: findings from the Reach for Health longitudinal study

This research examines psychological distress among 955 economically disadvantaged New York City residents surveyed during high school and again after the September 11th terrorist attacks (9/11), when they were young adults. As part of the longitudinal Reach for Health study, young adult surveys were conducted from 6–19 months post-9/11 (average 8 months), providing opportunity to assess types of exposures and psychological distress, including symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, hopelessness, and anger. Regressions of psychological distress on 9/11 exposure were performed, controlling for high school distress, prior exposure to violence victimization, and socio-demographic characteristics. Exposure to 9/11 was positively associated with anger, hopelessness, and PTSD symptoms and a measure of global distress. The relationship was greater among women for PTSD symptoms. Although those who reported high school distress also reported more distress in young adulthood, prior psychological distress did not moderate the relationship between exposure and psychological outcomes. Greater exposure is related to distress among those who, during high school, reported lower distress, as well as among those who reported prior greater distress.     

When seeing what's wrong makes you right: The effect of erroneous examples on 3D diagram learning

Comprehending 3D diagrams is critical for success in scientific practice and research demonstrates that understanding of 3D geology diagrams can be improved by making predictive sketches. In mathematics, explaining erroneous examples can support learning. This study combined these approaches to better understand how to effectively support 3D geologic diagram understanding. Participants generated sketches, explained erroneous example sketches, or copied and explained correct sketches. It was hypothesized that generating sketches or explaining erroneous cases would improve understanding, but an open question was whether these conditions would differ from each other. Explaining erroneous examples and sketching improved understanding whereas explaining correct sketches did not. Further, explaining erroneous examples was a more efficient strategy than sketching. These results indicate that erroneous examples can be effective for supporting 3D diagram comprehension and may be a practical substitute for some traditional sketching activities in the context of real classrooms where class time is limited.     

Jeffrey conditioning,rigidity, and the defeasible red jelly bean

Jonathan Weisberg has argued that Jeffrey Conditioning is inherently “anti-holistic” By this he means, inter alia, that JC does not allow us to take proper account of after-the-fact defeaters for our beliefs. His central example concerns the discovery that the lighting in a room is red-tinted and the relationship of that discovery to the belief that a jelly bean in the room is red. Weisberg’s argument that the rigidity required for JC blocks the defeating role of the red-tinted light rests on the strong assumption that all posteriors within the distribution in this example are rigid on a partition over the proposition that the jelly bean is actually red. But individual JC updates of propositions do not require such a broad rigidity assumption. Jeffrey conditionalizers should consider the advantages of a modest project of targeted updating focused on particular propositions rather than seeking to update the entire distribution using one obvious partition. Although Weisberg’s example fails to show JC to be irrelevant or useless, other problems he raises for JC (the commutativity and inputs problems) remain and actually become more pressing when we recognize the important role of background information.