Individual characteristics and career exploration in adolescence

The effects of gender, age and school grade on several career exploration dimensions measured by the Career Exploration Survey were investigated. Subjects were high school students facing an imminent career decision. Regression analyses indicated that sex and grade-level were the most significant and prevailing individual characteristics related to the adolescents' career exploration behaviours, reactions and beliefs. Implications for career exploration interventions are discussed.     

Perceptual and Response Bias in Unilateral Neglect: Two Modified Versions of the Milner Landmark Task

Perceptual and response bias in estimating the proportion of the two segments of prebisected lines were disambiguated in a group of 121 patients suffering from left neglect by means of two variants of the Milner Landmark task (Milner et al., 1993). The first variant, LANDMARK-V, required a verbal response; the second variant, LANDMARK-M, required manual pointing. The paper reports and discusses the results obtained on each task and their correlations, as well as the relationships between either kind of bias and the intrahemispheric location of the lesion. It is argued that besides their usefulness as a diagnostic tool the proposed variants of the Milner Landmark task provide results that are worth further investigation in their own right.     

The use and abuse of touch in therapy and counselling

Sexual exploitation within therapy is founded upon inappropriate physical contact. Yet the use of touch in therapy remains a contentious issue. Some therapists purport that touch is a primary source of communication of which many clients, as children, were deprived. They argue that refraining from the appropriate use of touch in the counselling situation can be damaging to the client. This article considers the argument for the use of physical contact in therapy and counselling and its potential therapeutic value.     

Judgments of a Woman's Emotions: The Influence of Observer Attitudes1

The influence that observers' attitudes toward lesbians have on their judgments of a lesbian target's emotional display was examined. In Phase One, college undergraduates' attitudes toward lesbians were measured. In Phase Two, 185 subjects returned and viewed a videotape in which a female target described as a lesbian, a novel individual, or a heterosexual, responded to an interviewer's questions regarding her recent romantic breakup. The subjects then judged the appropriateness of the target's display of 11 emotions. Contrary to predictions, attitudinally negative subjects evaluated the Lesbian target as highly appropriate. The potential applications of this result for social psychologists interested in examining the contact hypothesis, as well as for outgroup members themselves, are discussed.     

Effects of chronic ethanol consumption on gestation and lactation in rats

Chronic consumption of ethanol during pregnancy and lactation may lead to abnormalities in the fetus or infant. A group of female Wistar rats was submitted to ethanol treatment over a period of a month. A pair-fed control group received sucrose solution isocaloric to ethanol and the control group received water “ad libitum.” Afterward, the females were mated with males over a period of 20 days. At birth, each litter was maximized to eight pups and the remaining ones were decapitated to remove the fetal blood and brains. No significant difference was observed in fetal body and brain weight at birth. During lactation the ethanol and pair-fed groups gained less weight than the control group. After weaning, their weight became similar. Fetal blood glucose levels were decreased in the ethanol-treated group. One hundred percent of the pair-fed and control females delivered live fetuses at term and all survived; only 40% of the females in the ethanol group delivered, and one pup did not survive. Chronic ethanol treatment pointed to a possible reduction in the fertility. It seems likely that the change in body weight of ethanol-fed dams was caused by undernutrition.     

Neuroticism and marital satisfaction

Thirty happily married and thirty unhappily married couples were examined by means of the MPI questionnaire to test the hypothesis that emotional instability impaired satisfaction in marriage. Unhappily married partners were very significantly higher on neuroticism than happily married partners, but there were no differences in extraversion/introversion. The data suggest that the high neuroticism of the unhappily married partners antedates their marriage.     

Consumer information processing strategies in middle and late adulthood

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the extent to which performance of a complex cognitive task of a type resembling that encountered in everyday life is maintained through adulthood. A total of 80 subjects participated; 20 in their thirties, 20 in their fifties, 20 in their sixties, and 20 in their seventies. Subjects were asked to make preference judgments with respect to 32 pocket-size notebooks of a sort they might encounter as consumers in a stationery or variety store. Independently, they were also asked to express their preferences with respect to each of the four dimensions on which the notebooks varied. With only minor differences across age groups, most subjects demonstrated the ability to integrate their individual dimension preferences into a complex preference judgment of an object embodying those dimensions, in a logically consistent manner.     

Fuzzy intuitionistic quantum logics

Fuzzy intuitionistic quantum logics (called also Brouwer-Zadeh logics) represent to non standard version of quantum logic where the connective not is split into two different negation: a fuzzy-like negation that gives rise to a paraconsistent behavior and an intuitionistic-like negation. A completeness theorem for a particular form of Brouwer-Zadeh logic (BZL ³) is proved. A phisical interpretation of these logics can be constructed in the framework of the unsharp approach to quantum theory.