Working memory for item and temporal information in younger and older adults

Two experiments examined age differences in mechanisms hypothesized to affect activation of item and temporal information in working memory. Activation levels were inferred from the ability to reject n-back lures matching items in different temporal positions. Information with the least decay had a performance advantage over less recent information, but was susceptible to the same temporal context errors found in all adjacent-to-target lure positions. Lures most distant from the current item showed a performance rebound. The pattern of increased magnitudes of age effects at adjacent-to-target positions indicated a reduction in older adults' working memory for temporal context information above and beyond item memory declines. Results overall support the emphasis on context information as a critical factor in working memory and cognitive aging.     

Workplace worries: a preliminary look at online sexual activities at the office-emerging issues for clinicians and employers.

Concerns about the impact of online sexual activities (OSA) on work-life are drastically increasing. This study examined 3,466 respondents who reported OSA, 18.5% of whom reported engaging in OSA at work. They were compared with the 81.5% who engaged in OSA at home, on average time spent in OSA, workplace policies regarding OSA, and relationship status. Two themes were identified and discussed: opportunity and sexual distress. Our findings indicate that participants are cognizant of issues of opportunity (e.g., the OSA from home group was more likely to indicate their workplace has established policies regarding OSA), and privacy, representing an important aspect of this theme (e.g., participants engaging in OSA at work were found to be twice as likely to have extra-marital affairs, compared with the OSA from home group). Secondly, our data suggests that many participants, especially from the OSA at work group, experience OSA-related distress. Engaging in OSA at the workplace may result in decreased productivity, issues of sexual harassment, and concerns about employee well-being. Clearly stated and consistently enforced policies regulating OSA are likely to mitigate workplace OSA. However, a significant minority of employees may have difficulties curbing OSA. Therefore, more sophisticated strategies to deal with workplace OSA should be established. Additional implications of importance for organizations and mental health professionals who support them are discussed.     

Klein and Lacan Meet 21st Century Schizoid Man: Fairy Stories for the Modern Era

Melanie Klein invited us into the phenomenology of the schizoid dilemma through her depictions of the paranoid?schizoid position. By inserting his recursive arrows, Bion extended this conceptualization, showing us the folly of believing that we can ever entirely move beyond the frightening fantasies and realities of social exclusion and isolation. The 21st century has brought, along with the explosion of technology, an expulsion from the social order of many children who have found refuge from isolation and humiliation in the more accessible and less terrifying world of media and technological invention. What may look like narcissism can mask a terrible underlying schizoid failure to enter into the human race. This is the realm of fantasy run amok, where desire becomes alien and alienated such that one is haunted and hunted down by its very possibility. In this universe, conceptualizations from Klein, Bion, and Lacan help us to locate the individual who has become caught in a massive psychic retreat such that there is no subject because there are no objects. To illustrate, I describe my work with a young man who is living in a terrible “zombie zone” where people are not real and therefore are incomprehensible and terribly dangerous. The poignancy of his dilemma is heartbreaking. Perhaps that is one lesson we can still take from our old fairy tales: when one’s heart can be broken by another’s plight, then comes the possibility of a healing, an entry through that piercing of what had been impenetrable.     

A randomized trial of skin cancer prevention in aquatics settings: the Pool Cool program.

Skin cancer is increasing, and prevention programs are essential. This study evaluated the impact of a skin cancer prevention program on sun-protection habits and swimming pool environments. The intervention included staff training; sun-safety lessons; interactive activities; providing sunscreen, shade, and signage; and promoting sun-safe environments. A randomized trial at 28 swimming pools in Hawaii and Massachusetts tested the efficacy of this program (Pool Cool) compared with an attention-matched injury-prevention control program. Results showed significant positive changes in children's use of sunscreen and shade, overall sun-protection habits, and number of sunburns and improvements in parents' hat use, sun-protection habits, and reported sun-protection policies and environments. Observations corroborated the positive findings. Pool Cool had significant positive effects at swimming pools in diverse audiences.     

Comparing interventions to motivate work-site collection of home-generated recyclables

Compared the efficacy of eight different intervention strategies to increase the work-site delivery of employees' home-generated recyclables. The interventions incorporated appeals, reciprocity, goals plus feedback, and raffles. Results indicated that relatively few employees participated during any phase of the 25-week program. Raffles of prizes donated by community businesses were the only effective intervention, motivating substantial deliveries of aluminum cans. This suggests that low-cost, impersonal interventions targeting employees' delivery of recyclables to work are not effective. Reasons for the low participation rates are discussed as well as suggestions for improving future corporate-based recycling programs. This report is based on the first author's doctoral dissertation research, supervised by the second author, and conducted at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Parts of the research were presented at the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Association for Behavior Analysis, Atlanta, Georgia. We thank the other members of the dissertation committee for their helpful input, specifically, W. David Conn, Jack W. Finney, Thomas H. Ollendick, and Richard A. Winett.     

GENDER COMPARISONS OF MATHEMATICS ATTITUDES AND AFFECT

This article reports the complex results of meta-analyses of gender differences in attitudes and affect specific to mathematics. Overall, effect sizes were small and were similar in size to gender differences in mathematics performance. When differences exist, the pattern is for females to hold more negative attitudes. Gender differences in self-confidence and general mathematics attitudes are larger among high school and college students than among younger students. Effect sizes for mathematics anxiety differ depending upon the sample (highly selected or general). One exception to the general pattern is in stereotyping mathematics as a male domain, where males hold much more stereotyped attitudes ( d = -.90). While affect and attitudes toward mathematics are not the only influences on the development of gender differences in mathematics performance, they are important, and both male and female affect and attitudes should be considered in conjunction with other social and political influences as explanations.     

Men's and women's ratings of life satisfaction by age of respondent and age interval judged

A total of 432 people in six age groups rated the satisfaction of their current, past, and projected future lives. Average ratings for men and women did not differ. However, the triple interaction of sex × age of respondent × age interval judged indicated an optimism toward the future on the part of women. Compared with men of the same age, women judged the age interval prior to their own, as well as their present age interval, as being less satisfying than did the men. But women expected levels of satisfaction in the future to be higher than men expected. This optimism is attributed to socialization differences as well as the hope engendered by the current feminist movement.     

Rewarding safety belt usage at an industrial setting: Tests of treatment generality and response maintenance

An incentive program to motivate seat belt use was implemented at a large munitions plant. Seat belt usage was assessed daily at an entrance/exit gate of the industrial complex when employees arrived for work in the morning and departed in the afternoon. During treatment incentive fliers, which prompted seat belt usage and gave belt wearers opportunities to win prizes, were distributed only in the afternoon. Seat belt wearing increased from baseline means of 20.4% and 17.3% during the morning and afternoon, respectively, to averages of 55.5% during afternoon departures and 31.1% during morning arrivals. During follow-up, mean belt use dropped almost to baseline levels. Categorizing vehicles according to driver sex and license plate number enabled a study of belt wearing practices of individuals, and revealed that the incentive program influenced some drivers to wear their seat belts during morning arrival when incentives were not distributed (i.e., treatment generalization) and during a follow-up period after the incentives were withdrawn (i.e., response maintenance).