Promoting Insightful Problem Solving

This work assessed whether insightful problem solving could be trained. Specifically, we tested whether solutions to a heterogeneous set of verbal insight problems could be promoted. A training scheme was developed to promote the application of mechanisms that underlie the process of restructuring. Training across the five experiments consisted of different combinations of the following training techniques: advance strategic instructions, varying amounts of practice, practice with different types of feedback, and problem comparison. Results from all five experiments showed that training can promote solutions to verbal insight problems. Facilitation effects ranged from a 14%–24% gain in overall solution rates relative to no‐treatment controls. This work demonstrated that insightful problem solving could be trained at a relatively high level of generality.     

THE IMPACT OF FLEXIBLE BENEFITS ON EMPLOYEE SATISFACTION: A FIELD STUDY

This study examines the attitudes of 110 employees of a financial service organization before and after the introduction of a flexible benefit plan. A large, statistically significant increase in benefit satisfaction was observed following implementation, as was a smaller significant increase in overall satisfaction. Employee understanding of the benefit package also increased significantly. No significant relationships were found between demographic characteristics and responses to the flexible plan. Potential confounds due to the complexity of the intervention are discussed. Future research is called for to examine the processes through which flexible benefits impact worker reactions and to examine the impact of flexible benefits on behavioral responses such as attraction and retention.     

PASSIVES AND TOPICALIZATION

Recent studies, suggesting that passives emphasize the importance of their logical object over their logical subject, have employed full passives with both nominals similarly determined (e.g. the Noun + Verb + the Noun). When subjects are asked to indicate the important entity of full passives where the definiteness of nominals is varied, they select the definitely marked nominal in sentences like the N + V + a N, a N + V + the N, and the event in sentences like a N + V + a N. Since these results apply both to short passives and to active sentences, it would seem that the important entity of an utterance is not solely indicated by voice and word-order, but is more closely concerned with definiteness. This is apparently related to a feature of discourse which may be termed topicalization.     

School-community drug prevention programs

Much like the plague of days of old, the problem of drug abuse in the U.S. today is no respecter of age, social class, or ethnic background. Drugs are available in ever-increasing quantities, and the rate of increase is in direct proportion to the constantly expanding audience of youngsters sampling drugs. This paper presents a 10-point program for schools and communities, aimed at the prevention of abuse and rehabilitation of users. The program's thrust is a comprehensive endeavor involving key individuals and agencies in long-range efforts to dissuade youngsters from harmful experimentation with drugs. The author makes a plea for a united attack on the problem of drugs by all members and divisions of APGA.     

Misapplication of therapy models to school counseling

For a considerable time professionals engaged in school counseling have borrowed heavily from psychotherapeutic models in an attempt to find a theory and techniques viable in a school context. A number of factors, however, cast doubt on the applicability of any psychotherapeutic design to this setting. Among these factors are the structure of the school, training programs for school counselors, administrative attitudes, the involuntary nature of much school counseling, the limitations of time, educational objectives, the transitoriness of school counseling, and the irregularity of counseling contacts. Many psychotherapeutic models are at odds or even totally incongruent with educational objectives. Alternatives and options for generating theory and monitoring research are examined.     

How to avoid aging effects in free recall

This brief review was prompted by an article appearing in an earlier issue of this journal (Cohen & Stewart, 1982). It identifies several conditions under which aging effects in free recall of complex materials may be avoided. Under these conditions the diminution of aging effects may occur even when strategic requirements are evident. Results are interpreted in terms of the contextual approach to life-span cognitive developmental psychology.     

Effects of information-presentation mode and task complexity on the learning of probabilistic inference tasks

Learning of two-cue probabilistic inference tasks was studied in a 2 level of information-presentation mode (visual access to an ordered array of cue values vs. no such access) by 2 levels of task complexity (linear vs. nonlinear cue-criterion relations). The results replicated earlier findings in that performance was better in the linear tasks than in the nonlinear ones, and also showed that visual access to an ordered array of cue values facilitated performance, viz. there were no interactions. The results were interpreted as evidence that at least part of the suboptimal performance in ordinary experiments of this kind is due to cognitive strain introduced by the lack of control of the sequence of instances of cue-criterion pairs.