Secondary school curriculum and career behavior in young adults

As part of a larger longitudinal study of the effects of secondary school characteristics on career behavior in young adulthood, this paper presents findings obtained from 1007 males and females who graduated from high school in academic or vocational curricula 6 or 8 years ago. Criterion behavior included the completion of career development tasks in the exploration and establishment life stages as measured by the Adult Form of the Career Development Inventory, certainty about immediate occupational plans, and satisfaction with occupational goals and progress toward meeting them. Significant differences were found in the pattern of career development by curriculum but not by sex, in certainty by curriculum and sex, and in satisfaction by neither curriculum nor sex. The implications for a stage theory of career development are discussed.     

Essai sur la logique de l'indeterminisme et la ramification de l'espace-temps

Sans résumé     

Book reviews

Postman, L. And Keppel, G. (Eds.). Norms of Word Association. New York and London: Academic Press. 1970. Pp. vi+ 467. £12.00.

Wolstenholme, G. E. W. and Knight, J. (Eds.). Taste and Smell in Vertebrates. London: J. & A. Churchill. 1970. Pp. x + 402. £4.00.

Tobias, J. V. (Ed.). Foundations of Modern Auditory Theory, Vol. I. New York and London: Academic Press. 1970. Pp. xv + 466. £10.50.

Hexmelin, B. and O'connor, N. Psychological Experiments with Autistic Children. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1970. Pp. 142. £3.00.

Black, P. (Ed.). Physiological Correlates of Emotion. New York and London: Academic Press. 1970. Pp. xvi + 309. £6.30.

Baird, J. C. Psychophysical Analysis of Visual Space. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 1970. Pp. viii + 321. £4.50.

Flores D'Arcais, G. B. and Levelt, W J. M. (Eds.). Advances in Psycholinguistics. Amsterdam and London: North Holland. 1970. Pp. x + 454. £8.40.

Dodwell, P. C. Visual Pattern Recognition. Holt, Rhinehart & Wilson. 1970. Pp. 276. $9.00.

Gladwin, Thomas. East is a Big Bird. Oxford: University Press. 1970. Pp. 241. £4.75.

GULICR, W. L. Hearing: Physiology and Phychophysics. New York: Oxford University Press. 1971. Pp. viii+257. £4.50.

Plomp, R. and Smoorenburg, G. F. (Eds.). Frequency Analysis and Periodicity Detection in Hearing. Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff. 1970. Pp. xvi+482.

Jaffe, Joseph and Feldstein, Stanley. Rhythms of Dialogue. New York: Academic Press. 1970. Pp. 156. £3.95     

Subjective hardness of compliant materials

The apparent hardness and softness of nine samples of compliant materials were scaled by direct magnitude estimation and by cross-modal matches to the apparent force exerted on a hand dynamometer and a finger dynamometer, and to the loudness of a band of white noise. The physical hardness (force/indentation) of the compliant specimens covered a range of more than 100 to 1, extending from a fairly soft sponge to a fairly hard block of rubber. The apparent hardness of the specimens was found to follow the psychophysical power law. Subjective hardness grows as the physical hardness raised to a power. The indicated exponent was about 0.8 for magnitude estimation, about 0.7 derived by calculation from handgrip matches, and about 0.6 derived by calculation from loudness matches.

Numerical estimates and cross-modal matches for softness gave functions that were approximately the reciprocal of the functions given for hardness. Hardness is a continuum on which there exists an upper threshold.     

The influence of acoustic and semantic similarity on long-term memory for word sequences

It has been shown that short-term memory (STM) for word sequences is grossly impaired when acoustically similar words are used, but is relatively unaffected by semantic similarity. This study tests the hypothesis that long-term memory (LTM) will be similarly affected. In Experiment I subjects attempted to learn one of four lists of 10 words. The lists comprised either acoustically or semantically similar words (A and C) or control words of equal frequency (B and D). Lists were learned for four trials, after which subjects spent 20 min. on a task involving immediate memory for digits. They were then asked to recall the word list. The acoustically similar list was learned relatively slowly, but unlike the other three lists showed no forgetting. Experiment II showed that this latter paradox can be explained by assuming the learning score to depend on both LTM and STM, whereas the subsequent retest depends only on LTM. Experiment III repeats Experiment I but attempts to minimize the effects of STM during learning by interposing a task to prevent rehearsal between the presentation and testing of the word sequences. Unlike STM, LTM proved to be impaired by semantic similarity but not by acoustic similarity. It is concluded that STM and LTM employ different coding systems.     

Book reviews

Sutherland, S. (1989). Macmillan dictionary of psychology. London: Macmillan Reference Books. ISBN -333-38829-1. £ 29.95

Van Toller, S. & Dodd, G. H. (Eds.). (1988). Perfumery: the psychology and biology of fragrance. London: Chapman and Hall. Pp. 268. ISBN 0-412-30010-9. £ 35.00

Watt, R. J. (1987). Visual processing: Computational, psychophysical and cognitive resedrch. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Ltd. Pp.160. ISBN 0-86377-081-9. £ 14.95/$ 26.95

Caplan, D. & Hildebrandt, N. (1988). disorders of syntactic comprehension. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books. Pp. 340. ISBN 0-262-03132-9. £31.50     

Is the word length effect in STM entirely attributable to output delay? Evidence from serial recognition

Although it is generally accepted that the word length effect in short-term memory operates through output delay or interference, there is less agreement on whether it also influences performance through its impact on rehearsal. We investigated this issue by studying the effect of word length on recall and on a recognition task in which output delay was controlled. Word sequences were repeated exactly, or with one pair of words reversed. Two experiments using auditory presentation showed clear word length effects for both recall and serial recognition, although the magnitude of the effect tended to be less for recognition. A third experiment using visual presentation studied the effect of articulatory suppression during the recognition test; again we found a clear word length effect. It is concluded that the word length effect can influence retention through both rehearsal and output factors, as proposed by the phonological loop hypothesis.     

Rule-violations sensitise towards negative and authority-related stimuli

Rule violations have usually been studied from a third-person perspective, identifying situational factors that render violations more or less likely. A first-person perspective of the agent that actively violates the rules, on the other hand, is only just beginning to emerge. Here we show that committing a rule violation sensitises towards subsequent negative stimuli as well as subsequent authority-related stimuli. In a Prime-Probe design, we used an instructed rule-violation task as the Prime and a word categorisation task as the Probe. Also, we employed a control condition that used a rule inversion task as the Prime (instead of rule violations). Probe targets were categorised faster after a violation relative to after a rule-based response if they related to either, negative valence or authority. Inversions, however, primed only negative stimuli and did not accelerate the categorisation of authority-related stimuli. A heightened sensitivity towards authority-related targets thus seems to be specific to rule violations. A control experiment showed that these effects cannot be explained in terms of semantic priming. Therefore, we propose that rule violations necessarily activate authority-related representations that make rule violations qualitatively different from simple rule inversions.