Orientation and job stability: The impact of supervisory and employee role-playing groups on turnover of potentially unemployable blacks

One hundred and seventy potentially hard-core black employees and their supervisors were divided into a 2 × 2 field design. Role-playing group-problem-solving orientation was provided for part of the supervisor sample and part of the employees. To test the impact of orientation, turnover data were compared across the four cells. For the entire group, treated as a whole, there were no significant effects. Dividing the sample in terms of job placement, significant results were found which suggested that orientation can be detrimental in work groups characterized by tight-knit social structures, and insignificant in impact in depersonalized, pressureful job environments. It was concluded that the nature of the job and the job environment certainly were among the significant factors determining the effectiveness of an intervention, although many other factors, including the nature of the total support system, also probably are important.     

Exemplary job analysis systems in selected organizations: A description of process and outcomes

Job analysis is an important aspect of human resource management. This study was conceived to further our understanding of how job analysis may best be used to enhance the variety of human resource management activities that rely on it. Nine geographically dispersed organizations, carefully selected on the basis of their exemplary job analysis functions, were each visited and their job analysis functions studied for a period ranging from one to three days. These organizations represented a wide range of industries. We found that job analysis functions are typically highly centralized and part or all of these functions are often housed in a unit dealing with compensation. The idea of a fully integrated personnel system based on a comprehensive job analysis data base is not quite ready for widespread adoption. However, a multipurpose approach, designed to serve several applications, is feasible to develop. Little progress has been made in estimating the costs of job analysis functions. Rudimentary cost estimates prepared by us on anad hoc basis revealed that the annual costs for job analysis functions ranged from $150,000 to $4,000,000 with a median of$280,000.     

Auditory phonemic perception in dyslexia: Categorical identification and discrimination of stop consonants

The possibility that phonological confusions may underlie some difficulties in processing written language was investigated using four speech perception tasks. Twelve dyslexic and four normal-reading children identified and discriminated synthetic speech syllables which varied either in voice-onset time (signaling the feature of voicing) or direction of formant transitions (signaling place of articulation). Results indicate that, like normal-reading children and adults, dyslexic children perceive these sounds categorically. Discrimination of the stimuli was limited by their identifiability. It is suggested that linguistic disturbances at other stages of the grapheme to meaning transformation underlie misreading.     

The role of sensorimotor impairments in dyslexia: a multiple case study of dyslexic children

This study attempts to investigate the role of sensorimotor impairments in the reading disability that characterizes dyslexia. Twenty-three children with dyslexia were compared to 22 control children, matched for age and non-verbal intelligence, on tasks assessing literacy as well as phonological, visual, auditory and motor abilities. The dyslexic group as a whole were significantly impaired on phonological, but not sensorimotor, tasks. Analysis of individual data suggests that the most common impairments were on phonological and visual stress tasks and the vast majority of dyslexics had one of these two impairments. Furthermore, phonological skill was able to account for variation in literacy skill, to the exclusion of all sensorimotor factors, while neither auditory nor motor skill predicted any variance in phonological skill. Visual stress seems to account for a small proportion of dyslexics, independently of the commonly reported phonological deficit. However, there is little evidence for a causal role of auditory, motor or other visual impairments.     

Minding the gap between positivism and hermeneutics in psychoanalytic research

Two quite different cultures are to be found within psychoanalysis, one more clinical in orientation, more focused on meaning and interpretation, and relying primarily on the traditional case study method, the other more research-oriented, focused on cause-and-effect relationships, and relying primarily on methods borrowed from the natural and social sciences. The history of this divide is reviewed and arguments, pro and con, about the potential contributions of specific types of empirical investigation are discussed. Increasingly, it seems, criticisms concerning the scientific status of psychoanalysis are being responded to by empirical research. This has contributed to a growing recognition within the scientific community of the credibility of aspects of psychoanalytic theories and of the effectiveness of psychodynamic treatment. However, some segments of the psychoanalytic community are concerned that this increase in the quantity and quality of empirical research on psychoanalytic concepts risks creating an empirical one-sidedness, while other segments are concerned that not engaging in systematic empirical research can lead to intellectual isolation, fragmentation, stagnation, and orthodoxy. To counter this polarizing tendency, a recommendation is made for methodological pluralism. Adopting this stance could contribute to an enriched understanding of the clinical process and to the development of new research methodologies to investigate complex psychodynamic hypotheses, thus bridging the gap between the two psychoanalytic cultures, as well as the gap between research and clinical practice.     

Tobacco use in adolescence: longitudinal links to later problem behavior among African American and Puerto Rican urban young adults

In this study, the authors assessed the relationship between adolescent tobacco smoking and measures of inner control, deviant behavior, and associating with deviant peers, which are indicators of problem behavior. African American (N = 333) and Puerto Rican (N = 329) early adolescents completed questionnaires in their classrooms in 1990 at Time 1 (T1) and were individually interviewed thereafter when they were late adolescents in 1995 at Time 2 (T2) and as young adults in 2000 at Time 3 (T3). The authors used ordinary least squares regression analysis to assess the comparative association of adolescent smoking patterns at T1 and T2 and the young adult outcomes at T3; they controlled for demographic variables, level of the outcome measure at T2, and marijuana use at T2. The analyses suggested that experimental tobacco smokers demonstrated more problem behaviors than did nonsmokers, and late and continuous smokers demonstrated more problem behaviors as young adults than did experimental smokers and nonusers. These findings may provide a useful guide to a next step that involves translational research.