Attitudes related to work of adolescents in the United Kingdom and Japan

This study was designed to provide data for notions that differences in achievement motivation in different nations may contribute to differences in national rates of economic growth. The nations investigated were the United Kingdom and Japan as representatives of low and high rates of economic growth in the decades after the end of World War II. Data were collected from college students for motivations and attitudes related to work. British students had higher achievement motivation, while Japanese students had higher competitiveness motivation and strong money beliefs. Differences in career preference between the nations were also presented. The relationship between motivations and attitudes to work with career preference were examined for each nation.     

On the nature of attachment in a borderline population: a preliminary investigation

Analyses of interpersonal behavior within a borderline population usually focus on object relations variables. In contrast, this preliminary research focuses on the nature of attachment styles and its relation to behavioral pathology. 24 hospitalized borderline patients were administered an Attachment Style Inventory and Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory. Analysis confirms predicted differences in attachment style between the borderline and normal control samples as well as indicates that a dependent style of attachment within this borderline sample is associated with less pathology than an avoidant, hostile, or resistant/ambivalent style. The implications of this preliminary work for full-scale research are addressed.     

Eco on Dewey

This study seeks to examine Umberto Eco's views of the key ideas in John Dewey's Art as Experience. Eco's proferred suggestion of transactional psychology as a corrective to Dewey's views is criticized as a misreading of Dewey's position.     

Impression management in behavior toward handicapped patients]

A previous study (Tr?ster, 1989) showed that nonhandicapped persons preferred a physically handicapped interaction partner to a nonhandicapped partner in an attributionally unambiguous situation. In order to test whether this "sympathy effect of physical handicap" is based on tendencies of impression management, 48 female subjects had to choose to sit next to either a physically handicapped or nonhandicapped female interaction partner in order to view a film together. Attributional ambiguity was varied by either confounding the choice of an interaction partner with a second, socially acceptable alternative (attributionally ambiguous situation: a choice between two films) or not confounding it (attributionally unambiguous situation: no choice between films). Public responsibility was manipulated by informing the subjects about their freedom to choose where they wished to sit either in public (public responsibility) or in private (no public responsibility). The results supported the impression management hypothesis: The handicapped interaction partner (in a wheelchair) was only preferred when the subjects had to anticipate that observers would deduce a preference of the chosen partner from the subjects' choices because of the attributionally unambiguous situation and the public announcement of their freedom of choice. Results suggest that the nonhandicapped strive to exhibit positive and nondiscriminative behavior toward the handicapped in order to avoid creating a disadvantageous impression in an observer.     

Effects of an intervention program for pregnant adolescents: Educational outcomes at two years postpartum

Examined postpartum effects of a school-based intervention program for pregnant adolescents. Interviews were conducted with 102 innercity black, low-income, school-aged mothers who had attended the program, and their academic and medical records were reviewed. For teenagers who had been poor students prior to becoming pregnant, a strong linear effect was found for duration of program attendance: with sufficient time in the program, poorer students became indistinguishable from better students in educational success. Most of the better students were educationally successful at 2 years postpartum, independent of their length of time in the program. For all students, longer durations of postnatal intervention were predictive of lower likelihood of subsequent childbearing. Numerous academic, medical, social, and demographic variables were ruled out as possible confounding factors that might have produced the positive educational outcomes for poorer students. The results suggest that adolescents who appear to have minimal academic promise prior to their pregnancy are nevertheless very responsive to school-based intervention.     

Psychophysiological evidence for continuous information transmission between visual search and response processes.

This study was designed to test whether information transmission between the perceptual and motor levels occurs continuously or in discrete steps. Ss performed visual search across nontargets that shared visual features with one of two possible targets, each assigned to a different response. In addition to reaction time, psychophysiological measures were used to assess the duration of target search and the onset of central and peripheral motor activity. Nontargets sharing features with a target selectively activated the response associated with that target, even when it was not present in the display. This suggests that information transmission to the motor level can consist of fine-grained visual information and that visual search and response selection occur in parallel.     

Parallel versus serial processing in visual search: further evidence from subadditive effects of visual quality.

The authors propose a diagnostic for distinguishing between serial and parallel processing in visual search; it is based on testing for subadditive effects of a within-trial visual quality manipulation on target-absent trials. It was evaluated in 2 experiments wherein parallel and serial processing might be expected on the basis of previous work and was then applied to a more uncertain situation in a third experiment. The diagnostic indicates parallel processing of stimuli that differ from each other on a featural basis (Xs and Os) and canonical letters that differ in line arrangement (Ts and Ls) but serial processing when Ts and Ls are randomly rotated. These results form a coherent pattern that is understandable in terms of the literature on visual search, and thus they suggest that the diagnostic may be a useful addition to the methodology used to distinguish between serial and parallel processes.     

Energetic and motor responses to increasing force requirements

The effects of increasing work (force) requirements on energy expenditure and response topography were examined in 7 rats pressing a beam to earn food. For the 1st 16 days, the force requirement was 5.52 x 10(-2) N (5.625 g). This increased by 4.91 x 10(-2) N (5 g) every 7th session until Ss had experienced 10 upward shifts. Following the 54.57 x 10(-2) N (55.625 g) condition, the original criterion was reinstated. During the augmented phase. Ss maintained stable reinforcement rates across conditions by increasing the peak force of beam pressing. These higher forces, occurring within 20 reinforcements of changing the force criterion, were produced primarily by increases in the rate of change of force (delta F/delta T). Also, while the rate of work performed on the beam increased, the overall energy expenditure fell. In contrast to these rapid adjustments, reinstating the original 5.52 x 10(-2) N (5.625 g) criterion resulted in only gradual alterations in motor performance.     

The effect of flumazenil on acquisition, retention, and retrieval of spatial information.

The effect of flumazenil, a benzodiazepine-receptor antagonist, was evaluated in a spatial-reference memory procedure in a water maze. Flumazenil (1.0, 3.0, and 10.0 mg/kg, ip) did not modify acquisition of spatial information. Retention was similar between control and experimental rats 24 h after the training phase, as all groups showed bias to the target quadrant in a free swim trial. However, 10 days later, only flumazenil-injected rats (3.0 mg/kg) showed bias to the target quadrant. Flumazenil did not affect retrieval of spatial information in a group of well-trained rats. These results suggest that a benzodiazepine-receptor mediated endogenous mechanism is activated during learning of spatial tasks and that its blockade facilitates retention of spatial information.