Actual and ideal work tasks of careers officers

Actual and ideal functions of careers officers as seen by professional workers in the Youth Employment Service and by students in training were investigated. An instrument - based on an American counsellor task inventory and subsequently named the Careers Officers Task Inventory (COTI) - was administered by mail to a nationally representative total sample, consisting of a random sample of careers officers (stratified by geographical region and office size), all careers officers with special responsibilities for the handicapped, and the total intake of student careers officers in Britain at the time of the survey. Negligible disparity was found between perceptions of the job as it is and as it should be. Differences between sub-samples included differing perceptions of the role of counselling. Some contrasts with parallel American findings are indicated, and questions for future research are raised.     

Current Concerns and Electrodermal Reactivity: Responses to Words and Thoughts

ABSTRACT Previous research has found that subjects rate words that are closely related to their current concerns as affectively more arousing than other words. This investigation inquires whether a similar relationship occurs when arousal is measured electrodermally, and whether nonspecific (spontaneous) electrodermal activity is associated with self-generated thoughts about current concerns. In the first experiment, subjects listened to audiotaped sequences of three-word clusters associated with previously measured own current concerns or with concerns of others. Mean skin conductance responses were significantly larger for clusters related to subjects' own concerns than for those related to others' concerns, although many subjects contributing to this effect showed some awareness of the hypothesis. In the second experiment, thoughts that accompanied nonspecific skin conductance responses received significantly higher self-ratings for concern-relatedness and arousal than thoughts that occurred during electrodermal inactivity. In Experiment 3, they were rated higher for current-concern content and anxiety and lower for mental imagery and dormant-concern content than thoughts during electrodermal inactivity.     

TREATING CHRONIC FOOD REFUSAL IN YOUNG CHILDREN: HOME-BASED PARENT TRAINING

We evaluated the effects of a behavioral parent training program on parent and child feeding-related behaviors in the home. We trained mothers to initiate regular offerings of previously rejected (target) foods and to provide contingent attention (i.e., specific prompts, positive reinforcement) to increase their child's acceptance of nonpreferred foods. For 1 subject, we also directed training at increasing self-eating. Results of a nonconcurrent multiple baseline design across 3 mother-child dyads demonstrated that, with training, all mothers increased offerings of target foods and use of specific prompts, and 2 mothers increased levels of positive attention. In turn, children increased their acceptance of target foods and self-eating, thus demonstrating the functional effects of parent training on in-home mealtimes. Temporary increases in food refusals occurred when treatment was initiated but declined as treatment continued. We discuss the results in terms of the potential benefits and limitations of a home-based treatment model.     

Effects of income on drug choice in humans.

The effects of income (money available to spend during the experimental session) on human choice were examined in a concurrent-schedule arrangement. Subjects were 7 nicotine-dependent smokers, and reinforcers were puffs on the subject's usual brand of cigarette ("own") and puffs on a less preferred brand of cigarette with equal nicotine content ("other"). Across sessions, income varied and the price of the two reinforcers was held constant, with the other puffs one fifth the price of the own puffs. As income increased, consumption of own puffs increased while consumption of the less expensive other puffs decreased. These effects of income on choice were highly consistent across subjects. For some subjects, however, income had little effect on total puff consumption. Finally, an additional condition examined whether price and income manipulations would have functionally equivalent effects on choice by repeating an income condition in which the price of the other brand was increased. Although the increased price of the other puffs decreased their consumption in 4 subjects, 2 subjects showed increased consumption of the other puffs at the higher price. The results, when defined in economic terms, indicate that the own puffs were a normal good (consumption and income are directly related), the other puffs were an inferior good (consumption and income are inversely related), and the direct relationship between consumption of the other puffs and their price is defined as a Giffengood effect. The latter result also suggests that for these 2 subjects, price and income manipulations had equivalent effects on choice. These results extend findings from previous studies that have examined the effects of income on choice responding to human subjects and drug reinforcers, and provide a framework for further experimental tests of the effects of income on human choice behavior. Methodological and theoretical implications for the study of choice and for behavioral pharmacology are discussed.     

Faith development and Teresa'sInterior Castle

James Fowler's model of faith development is compared with the course of development described by St. Teresa of Avila in her classic work,Interior Castle. Both Teresa and Fowler drew their models from the study of individual lives. The paper first presents a brief summary of Fowler's model, then goes through the different levels of development described by St. Teresa, comparing each of them with corresponding stages in Fowler's model. The paper concludes that, though these models were developed in different cultures, centuries apart, they appear to describe a similar course of religious or spiritual unfolding.This paper is a revised version of one originally delivered to Division 36, Psychologists Interested in Religious Issues, at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.References to Teresa'sInterior Castle in this paper are given by section (Mansions) and chapter within section so that the passages can be found in any translation.     

What is involved in forgiving?

Conclusion I have argued that forgiveness paradigmatically involves overcoming moral anger, of which resentment is the central case. I have argued, as well, that forgiveness may involve overcoming any form of anger so long as the belief that you have been wrongfully harmed is partially constitutive of it, and that overcoming other negative emotions caused by a wrongdoer's misdeed may, given appropriate qualifications, count as forgiveness. Those qualifications indicate, however, significant differences between moral anger and other negative emotions; differences which must be taken into account when determining whether overcoming negative emotions other than moral anger count as forgiveness. I have proposed, too, that forgiveness requires neither overcoming all negative feelings (other than moral anger) nor the judgment that the offender is a wrongdoer.I must acknowledge that my analysis is incomplete, focusing as it does on the forgiver rather than on the person forgiven. After all, there are two sides to forgiveness. Not all forgiving involves a struggle to overcome negative feelings; sometimes it is a social transaction of a more casual sort that is effected by the simple speech act I forgive you. My analysis is incomplete insofar as it treats exclusively of forgiveness as a process and fails to offer an analysis of forgiveness as an act. Finally, a complete theory of forgiveness requires an account of the conditions under which forgiveness qualifies as a moral virtue, and such an account is beyond the scope of this essay. Though I have not offered a complete theory of forgiveness, my effort to clarify a dimension of what is involved in a common type of forgiveness may clear the way for answering related questions about it, and thereby lead to a fuller account of forgiveness as a moral phenomenon.     

Conceptual metaphors are not automatically accessed during idiom comprehension

Do conceptual analogies motivate idiom use and comprehension in discourse? For example, a story in which a person is described asfuming would be analogically consistent with an idiom such asblew her top, but inconsistent with an idiom such asbite his head off. Earlier work by Nayak and Gibbs(1990) had suggested that people use such analogical information during idiom comprehension. We replicated their findings inan idiom choice task, suggesting that people can indeed make use of such knowledge. However, when reading times were used to assess idiom comprehensibility, no effects of analogical consistency were found. We conclude that conceptual analogies play little, if any, role in idiom comprehension unless people have the time (and motivation) to make considered judgments.     

Attribution processes in mother-adolescent conflict

Attributions reported by 115 mothers and 122 adolescents were examined as they related to family conflict. Subjects completed measures of parent-adolescent conflict (Issues Checklist, Conflict Behavior Questionnaire) and the Mother-Adolescent Attribution Questionnaire. The results revealed that parent-adolescent conflict correlated with mothers' and teenagers' negative attributions. Specifically, self-reported conflict was positively correlated with mothers' and teenagers' beliefs that one another's negative behavior was intentional, selfishly motivated, and blameworthy.     

Distinguishing instrumental and hostile aggression: Does it make a difference?

An analogue task of instrumental and hostile aggression during a competitive game, modified to minimize overlap between aggressive responses, was evaluated in 8- to 14-year-old clinically referred boys (n=33). Postgame interviews indicated that the hostile response, an aversive noise, was perceived by over 80% of subjects as hostile and not instrumental. In contrast, the instrumental response, blocking the opponent's game, was perceived about equally as having instrumental and hostile functions. The hostile aggressive response was uniquely correlated with continuous performance task impulsive commission errors (r=51), which supported the theoretical relation of hostile aggression to poor impulse control. These results suggest that instrumental and hostile aggression can be distinguished and when precisely defined are distinct in theoretically important ways.The authors are grateful to Mary Milnamow, Susan Panichelli, Nancy Benzal, Elissa Batshaw, and Nancy Stone for assistance in data collection. This research was supported in part by an NIMH First Award MH4682 to the first author and support from NICHD Mental Retardation Research Center Core Center Grant DH26979, and by NIMH grants MH40364 and M00590 awarded to the second author. Preliminary data were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Child Adolescent Psychopathology, Costa Mesa, California, January 1990.