CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF WORK,FAMILY AND LEISURE BY MANAGERS OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY*

This study analysed the way 20 managers in the information technology industry in Australia viewed their lives, and identified two dimensions of central importance cutting across the work, family and leisure spheres encompassed by them. One dimension was positively loaded towards activities which were challenging, creative and under the individual's control. These activities were enjoyable, and included examples such as consulting with clients, creating new business, and communicating and dealing with others, whether at work or at home. The opposite pole of this dimension involved activities such as completing paperwork, general administration, doing the shopping, and disciplining the children. Such activities were seen as necessary, routine or stressful, and were generally disliked. The other dimension dealt with activities which, at one pole, were emotionally involving or involved moral standards, and included examples such as attending meetings, doing things as a family, and settling disputes, either at work or at home. At the other pole were activities which were usually done alone and involved no sense of social or moral obligation. Leisure activities typically fell into this category. The results indicated that these managers generally pursued a lifestyle which was seen to be non-stressful, and one valued for the challenge, enjoyment, freedom of choice and personal control which it offered.     

Correspondence

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Enhancing possible selves in Mexican American students

This project assessed the modifiability of possible selves in young Mexican American children. Three intervention conditions were compared in a pre- and posttest design: child-only intervention, parent and child intervention, and a no-intervention control. Following eight intervention sessions, children in the two intervention groups showed significant gains in understanding the characteristics associated with becoming a good student and in recognizing the value of education in bringing about future occupational goals. Children in the intervention conditions also reported greater interest in becoming a physician, judge, or pilot — occupations they had directly experienced during training. The parent intervention phase contributed little to augmenting the positive results attributable to the child intervention component.This research was conducted under the auspices of NIH Grant HD-24003. We wish to thank Maritza Robles and the staff of the Bilingual program of the South Bend, IN, Corporation for their support.     

Interference in pitch memory as a function of ear or input

An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of spatial separation on interference effects in pitch memory. Subjects compared the pitches of two tones that were separated by a sequence of eight interpolated tones. It was found that error rates were lower in sequences where the test and interpolated tones were presented to different ears, compared with sequences where they were presented to the same ear; however, this effect of spatial separation was not large. It is concluded that differences in spatial location can enable the focussing of attention away from the irrelevant tones and so reduce their disruptive effect, but that this occurs only to a limited extent.     

A case report of pathological rule-governed syllable intrusion

A detailed analysis of a unique speech disturbance, marked by the frequent appearance in the speech stream of a meaningless intrusive syllable, is presented. Following a lengthy thoracic surgery, an American English speaking patient began to speak with non-English prosodic patterns, which evolved to a conspicuous intrusion in his speech of the syllable /sis/. This syllable and its variants were attached to words in a manner which conformed to the regular phonological rules in English (for formation of plural, possessive, and third person singular morphemes). The distribution and frequency of the intrusive syllable are described, and possible explanations for the abnormal occurrence of this particular syllable are discussed.     

Maternal ratings of newborn activity: Assessing convergence between instruments

When their newborns were 2 weeks of age, 53 mothers completed the activity items of the Rothbart questionnaire. Two weeks later, the same mothers were interviewed at home with regard to their newborns' activity level, using the Thomas, Chess and Birch guidelines and the Carey and McDevitt global rating. Prior to analysis, responses to the instruments were clustered into the contexts of feeding, sleeping, bathing, dressing, and daily activities. Though none of the questionnaire clusters correlated with the global rating, daily activities were convergent between the questionnaire and interview responses. In contrast, all five of the situational contexts for the interview were related positively to the global rating of activity. Results are discussed in light of the apparent contextual influence on maternal ratings of temperament at 1 month.