Derivatives of the Self-Directed Search: Potential clinical and evaluative uses

Four derivatives of the Self-Directed Search (SDS), accuracy in estimating one's profile, differentiation of one's six SDS personality types, consistency of the types within one's summary code, and congruence of the summary code with the preferred occupational area, were computed and correlated with other indices of career maturity for 138 community college students. Accuracy in estimating one's SDS profile correlated significantly with five other career maturity indices, but the other derivatives tended not to relate to the other career maturity criteria. The discussion examines the implications of using the Accuracy derivative to identify clients in need of assistance with career development and to unobtrusively evaluate career development interventions, and it suggests ways of increasing the reliability of the derivatives and promising directions for further research.     

The effect of sound on visual apparent movement

Twelve subjects found the longest possible interstimulus interval (ISI) at which they perceived continuous apparent motion of one light instead of partial motion or succession between two lights. In the visual condition, two lights only were presented. In the bimodal conditions, binaurally presented tones were presented synchronously with the lights, and the lights and tones were either spatially congruent (in phase) or incongruent (180 degrees out of phase). Bimodal presentations lowered the upper ISI threshold for the perception of visual apparent motion, and the reduction was greater when the tones and lights were spatially congruent. The threshold reduction may be caused by a perceptual inference about localization of the lights in space or by a change in visual persistence.     

Reconstruction of preverbal experiences

Only a few analysts (Deutsch, 1947, 1952; Braat?y, 1954) have systematically tried to investigate how nonverbal behavior may be derived from events and experiences from the preverbal phase of development. Their approaches to the analysis of such behavior differ. Extracts of an analysis are used to illustrate basic technical and theoretical questions with regard to the possibility of making use of nonverbal material to reconstruct preverbal experiences. It is inferred that the analyst's visual observations of the patient's nonverbal behavior may be a cue to significant events and trauma from the preverbal period. Besides, the specific visual imagery of the patient that, in this case, emerged just after the appearance of nonverbal behavior, may be a valuable source of data for analytic reconstruction.     

Learned helplessness in groups

Group learned helplessness is demonstrated in Experiment I. Groups of 2 tried to turn off noise by their joint action. In the solvable group (S), noise offset was contingent on their sequence of button pushing. In the yoked, unsolvable group (U), noise offset was independent of all sequences of button pushes they produced. In a practice group (O). subjects practiced coordinated sequences of button pushes with their partners, but heard no noise. Later, all 3 groups were tested in pairs in a shuttlebox which required coordinated joint responding to turn off noise. The unsolvable group escaped more poorly than the other 2 groups, paralleling helplessness effects with individuals. Experiment 2 and 3 found no transfer from individual helplessness training to group testing and no transfer from group helplessness training to individual testing. We suggest that the same mechanism, the expectation of response ineffectiveness, may mediate both individual and group learned helplessness.     

A preliminary report on the nature of interactions in a mental-handicap institution

A preliminary analysis of the reactions by staff and other residents to the behaviour of mentally-handicapped people living in a medium-sized institution is presented. The subjects' behaviour was categorized as appropriate, inappropriate or neutral according to culturally-normative criteria. It was found that, for the majority of time there was no reaction to the subjects' behaviour by staff or by other residents. The implications of utilizing culturally-normative criteria for categorizing behaviour are discussed. It is proposed that this type of analysis is potentially useful for understanding the nature of interactions in institutions.     

Effect of signaling intertrial unconditioned stimuli in autoshaping

Context-unconditioned-stimulus (US) associations have been suggested as the mediator of the response decrement that occurs when extra USs are added to the intertrial intervals (ITIs) of an otherwise standard Pavlovian conditioning situation. The present autoshaping experiments were concerned with the effect of signaling those extra USs, since such signaling might be expected to lessen their ability to condition the context. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that signaling the ITI USs did reduce their detrimental effects on responding to the conditioned stimulus (CS). To determine whether that reduction was due to an impact of signaling on the target-CS-US association or on performance to the target-CS, Experiment 3 examined responding to differentially trained CSs in a common context, as well as responding to identically trained CSs in differentially trained contexts. Whether the CS was tested in a context of relatively high or low associative strength, more responding occurred to the CS trained with signaled, as compared with unsignaled, ITI USs; further, there was more responding to that CS in the more highly valued context. The pattern of results suggests that contextual value does interact with CS-US learning and may also affect performance to the CS.     

The role of marking when reward is delayed

Two-choice spatial discrimination by rats is enhanced if a salient stimulus marker occurs immediately after every choice response and again after a delay interval (Lieberman, McIntosh & Thomas, 1979). Three experiments further explore this effect. Experiment 1 found that the second marker is unnecessary. Experiment 2 found that a marker presented before a response is as effective as one presented after. Both effects could be explained in terms of markers focusing attention on subsequent cues. Experiment 3, however, found that markers after choice enhance learning even when no discriminative cues are present following the marker. Markers thus appear to initiate both a backward search through memory and attention to subsequent events; both processes help to identify events that might be related to the unexpected marking stimulus.     

Spatial metrics of integral and separable dimensions

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the relationship between dimensional integrality and the form of the combination rule or spatial metric used in a similarity judgment task. In Experiment 1, two groups of eight subjects judged the dissimilarity of all pairwise combinations of 12 rectangles differing in height and width (integral dimensions) or 12 circles differing in size and diameter orientation (separable dimensions). The dimensional organization and spatial metric of both sets of dimensions were determined. The results showed that differences in height and width contributed independently to judgments of the overall dissimilarity of rectangles and that these dimensions were combined using a Euclidean metric. In contrast, substantial interactions between circle size and diameter orientation were found. Combinations of these dimensions also appeared to violate the triangle inequality implying that no spatial metric was appropriate. In Experiment 2, parallelogram size and tilt were similarly analyzed. Although some degree of dimensional interaction was observed, it was found that on the average these dimensions were combined using a city-block metric. In a subsequent speeded classification task, orthogonal interference was observed, which suggested that size and tilt are integral dimensions. The implications of both experiments for the supposed association between the Euclidean metric and dimensional integrality are discussed.     

Selective attention to multidimensional auditory stimuli

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by multidimensional auditory stimuli were recorded from the scalp in a selective-attention task. Subjects listened to tone pips varying orthogonally between two levels each of pitch, location, and duration and responded to longer duration target stimuli having specific values of pitch and location. The discriminability of the pitch and location attributes was varied between groups. By examining the ERPs to tones that shared pitch and/or locational cues with the designated target, we inferred interrelationships among the processing of these attributes. In all groups, stimuli that failed to match the target tone in an easily discriminable cue elicited only transitory ERP signs of selective processing. Tones sharing the "easy" but not the "hard" cue with the target elicited ERPs that indicated more extensive processing, but not as extensive as stimuli sharing both cues. In addition, reaction times and ERP latencies to the designated targets were not influenced by variations in the discriminability of pitch and location. This pattern of results is consistent with parallel, self-terminating models and holistic models of processing and contradicts models specifying either serial or exhaustive parallel processing of these dimensions. Both the parallel, self-terminating models and the holistic models provide a generalized mechanism for hierarchical stimulus selections that achieve an economy of processing, an underlying goal of classic, multiple-stage theories of selective attention.