The effects of graphemic,phonetic, and semantic relationships on access to lexical structures

The question of whether or not lexical information is accessed directly from a visual code or by a process of phonetic mediation was investigated in three lexical decision experiments. Phonetic similarity influenced decisions about visually presented words only when they were to be discriminated from orthographically regular nonwords. When consonant strings or random letter strings were used as nonwords, phonetic similarity effects were absent, and graphemic similarity exerted a powerful effect while evidence of semantic priming was found. This pattern was interpreted as evidence of direct lexical access, which is probably the normal processing mode for skilled readers. Phonetic coding, when it occurs, may be a storage strategy rather than a part of the addressing chain for lexical structures.     

A reexamination of sex differences in job preferences

Previous research has found conflicting answers to the question of whether males and females share similar preferences for various job characteristics. It is difficult to determine if the different findings are due to the different populations sampled, the various methodologies employed, or to a real change in the phenomenon itself. This study essentially replicates earlier work by having 130 male and 84 female college students rate the importance of 10 job characteristics for both themselves and members of the opposite sex. Both sexes rated motivators as important, but females also placed importance on the hygienes. Males tended to underestimate the importance of the motivators for females, while females overestimated the importance of hygienes for males. The subject's sex could be predicted by both the importance for self and importance for opposite sex ratings, contrary to the earlier study. The difference in results and interpretation was shown to be due to the type of analyses used. Additionally, it was found that females' job preferences were related to their mothers' educational achievement.     

Delayed monochromatic hue matches indicate characteristics of visual memory

Short-term memory for 16 monochromatic hues from 425 to 640 nm was measured after six delays from .1 to 24.3 sec by means of an iterative, momentary stimulus-matching technique. Small shifts were revealed in the remembered hue produced by certain wavelengths at some delays. These shifts did not follow trends consistent with a storage dependent on sensory pathway characteristics, perceptually unique hues, or semantic encoding but may reflect entropic effects in a storage that is remarkably unbiased. By indicating the discriminability of hues in memory, standard deviations of the delayed matches reveal other characteristics of what is stored: Their smooth, exponential growth questions the existence of "levels" and permits estimating the half-life of hue memory; their continued resemblance to the discrimination function for simultaneously perceived hues suggests that the stored activity; closely resembled the sensory response of color. The results also indicate how successive comparisons may be corrected in applied color work.     

The role of attentional resources in automatic detection

The question of whether an automatic detection task requires the use of limited-capacity resources was investigated in a series of dual-task experiments. The automatic task required subjects to detect a consistently mapped target digit in a display of letters. This task was paired with a variety of concurrent visual discriminations that could either occur in close proximity to the automatic target or in a disparate display area. The main finding was that accuracy in each task was higher in conditions allowing attention to be shared than when it had to be divided between separate areas. These results indicate that detection of automatic targets depends on the allocation of spatial attention to the target's area.     

Duplex perception with musical stimuli

Duplex perception, a phenomenon previously demonstrated for speech stimuli, is demonstrated here for musical stimuli. In the first experiment, major and minor chords are produced by dichotic fusion of two simultaneous piano notes presented to one ear (perfect fifth) with a “natural” or “flat” single note presented to the opposite ear. Musically trained subjects perceive simultaneously both the single tone and a fused (major or minor) chord. The chords are labeled more consistently than the single notes, even though the fused chords differ solely in terms of the contralateral notes. In a second experiment, using pure tones in place of piano notes, other musically trained subjects individually exhibited categorical perception for either the fused chord or the single tones, but never for both types of stimuli. The duplex phenomenon is discussed in terms of its implications for its specific component modes of perception.     

The job climate for women in traditionally male blue-collar occupations

Rapid growth has been observed in recent years in the number of women entering traditionally male blue-collar occupations, yet researchers have paid little attention to this pioneering group. The present study undertook a comparison of the job conditions of two groups of nontraditional women workers, tradeswomen (N=71), and transit workers (N=151); a third group, school secretaries (N=389), was studied as a comparison group of traditionally female workers. Results from a 16-page mail questionnaire revealed that women in traditionally male occupations encountered significantly more adverse working conditions than did their traditional counterparts, and, in addition, reported significantly less satisfaction and more stress at work. Tradeswomen were the most likely to experience sexual harassment and sex discrimination, and black tradeswomen to experience race discrimination. The degree of job satisfaction expressed by the secretaries was unexpected, since most evidence suggests that clerical workers lack autonomy, and encounter boredom and routinization on the job. These findings are discussed in terms of gender segregation and the need to focus future research efforts on specific occupational groups in order to make appropriate policy recommendations as well as to provide help for women in these jobs.This research was supported by grants from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Grant No. 1 RO1 OH02162-01A1) and the College of Health and Human Development, The Pennsylvania State University. The authors wish to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Patty Lambert, Ming Qi Wang, Mary Harmon, Joseph Vasey, Gina Jay, Darrell Harvey, and Haleh Rastegary.