Measurement of social-evaluative anxiety in junior high school students

This paper provides some initial normative and validity data on the Social Avoidance and Distress (SAD) and the Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) scales for junior high school students. Findings indicated: the level of social-evaluative anxiety does not significantly vary during the junior high school years or between sexes, junior high school students report similar levels of FNE to college students but less SAD, a significant positive correlation between treatment subjects' SAD scores and peer sociometric ratings of social-evaluative anxiety, and subjects treated for social anxiety reported significantly less SAD and FNE at follow-up assessment. Recommendations for future research and clinical use of the SAD and FNE are offered.     

Achieving sex education program outcomes: points of view from students and alumni

Several inherent limitations to secondary school sex education program evaluations are: limited generalizability, lack of longitudinal research, and no clear consensus of program outcomes. With a Bureau of Health Education, Center for Disease Control study as the criterion for program outcomes, a study was undertaken to examine the immediate and long-term impact of sex education upon program participants. Two of the 20 schools in the CDC study identified as having exemplary sex education programs provided access to their students and alumni. Inventories which measured perceived achievement of 33 sex education outcomes were piloted for reliability and validity. Each inventory examined participant changes in knowledge, understanding of self, values, interaction skills, self-esteem, and fear of sex-related activities. Students were surveyed in school; alumni were surveyed through the mail. Response rates ranged from 30 to 100 percent for students and alumni at both schools. Overall there was no statistically significant difference between the perceptions of students and alumni as to achievement of investigated outcomes. Alumni responses at one school did, however, indicate some potentially weak areas of their school's program with respect to values and interaction skills outcomes. It appears that program impact may decrease with time. Thus, isolating and addressing the factors involved may be necessary. This would assist program planners and instructors to strengthen curricula and program activities in order to enhance the overall impact of sex education. The present study supports the notion that positive gains are achieved as a result of each school's sex education program, and these gains remained over time.     

Attentional strategies and the visual control of discrete movements

The relationship between the availability of visual information and attention demands during the production of a discrete motor act was examined. Subjects were required to move a linear slide a distance of 15 cm in both 150 and 600 msec conditions under three light manipulations, viz., light always on; light always terminated as movement began; or, subject was unsure as to whether light would stay on or terminate. A simple key press by the index finger of the opposite hand to a tone was used as a secondary task and a measure of attention demands. The light manipulation influenced attention demands on the rapid 150 msec movement such that more attention was demanded when the subject knew the light would terminate. No such attentional strategy differences were found with the slow 600 msec movement. These findings suggest that task constraints in the form of kinematic criteria, together with the perceived availability of visual information, contribute to determining attentional strategy in movement production.     

Cognitive dissonance as a mechanism in vocational decision processes

This study examined changes in cognitive-dissonance-related variables during the professional training period. Differences in levels and change in satisfaction with career choice, importance of career, certainty of career decision, self-occupational perceptions, general attitude toward career, time since career decision, and past experience were observed when students who left a collegiate professional training program before program completion were compared with those who remained in the program. Data supports the validity of D. Hershenson and R. Roth's (1966, Journal of Counseling Psychology, 13, 368–370) and V. Harren's (1979, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 14, 119–133) theoretical models of vocational decision and the Assessment of Career Decision Making scale.     

Developmental analysis of the effects of reward on selected Wechsler subscales

The authors recently proposed that adverse effects of material rewards on Wechsler subscale performance may be the result of a reward-produced developmental regression. The present study further explores that idea through an attempt to replicate earlier findings with adults and to extend the inquiry to children. Selected Wechsler subscales were administered to 32 subjects at each of three ages (5, 10, and 18 years) under either reward or nonreward conditions. Subscales were chosen to represent both algorithmic and heuristic types of tasks. Reward and nonreward groups (8 males and 8 females per group at each age) were matched initially on age and ability. For adults, consistent with earlier findings, reward had an adverse effect on performance on the heuristic subscales and tended to facilitate performance on the algorithmic subscales. However, rewards generally had no effect at the fourth-grade level and had a reverse effect at the nursery school level, i.e., rewards facilitated heuristic and hampered algorithmic performance. These findings appear to be more consistent with an explanation based on developmental regression than on any available alternative mechanism.     

Deconstructing the manifest dream

A major part of the analyst's task is to discover the basis for the patient's misidentification of his present life situation with significant but threatening events of his earlier life, now repressed and inaccessible to conscious recall. Reconstructing the patient's history is a crucial step in this process of discovery, but the dynamic relation between the present and the past must be reconstructed as well. The structure of the manifest dream contains the key to this relation. The imagery of the dream is a composite of experimental materials drawn from important drive-related events of the present and the past. The complex formed by the manifest dream and the patient's associations provides the analyst with data about both of these distinct sets of drive-related experiences. As Freud's discussion of his M elusine dream illustrates, one associative thread can be traced to an experience that incorporates a conflicted current wish. Another thread will lead to an experience in which a repressed wish of childhood has been expressed. Where the two associative threads converge, in the composite imagery of the dream, the basis for the identification between the wishes of the present and the past will be exposed. An understanding of the structure of the manifest dream helps to clarify some of the important theoretical issues left unresolved in Freud's writings. These include: the function of the day residue and the mechanism through which it is formed, the relation of the screen memory to the associative process, and the differing roles of condensation and displacement in dream construction and free association. A simple procedure is described for enhancing the recovery of the significant childhood memories whose details have been incorporated into the composite imagery of the manifest dream.     

Potential Social Action As A Function Of Expectation-Outcome Discrepancies Among Employed And Unemployed University Graduates

Full-time employed (N = 255), partly employed (N = 48), and unemployed (N = 43) male and female university graduates completed a questionnaire that included measures designed to assess expected job levels and current job levels and two measures of potential social action (willingness to volunteer actions and hours to a fictional Campaign to Assist Unemployed Youth). Comparisons between groups and the results of multiple regression analyses provided mixed support for the prediction that larger negative gaps between expected and current employment status would be associated with a greater willingness to assist the Campaign. The unemployed respondents tended to volunteer more actions and more hours to the Campaign than did the other two groups. A multiple regression analysis showed that the current level by expected level interaction term was statistically significant as predicted, but only for the fully employed graduates. Within the full-time employed group, female graduates and those from the humanities/social sciences/education schools expressed more willingness to assist the Campaign than did male graduates and those from the sciences/medicine schools of the university. Results were discussed in relation to current research on relative deprivation and reported affect and to recent studies of job satisfaction.