Occupation,Competence, and Role Overload as Evaluation Determinants of Successful Women1

In order to determine what variables contribute to or detract from the inter- personal attraction of a successful career woman, 80 male and 80 female introductory psychology students at a large western state university viewed one of eight different videotapes of a female stimulus person discussing aspects of her career and homelife. Two levels of occupation (traditional vs. nontraditional), two levels of competcnce (high vs. low), and two levels of role overload (high vs. low) were factorially varied for each videotape. The Attitudes toward Women Scale (AWS) was used as a covariate, thereby equalizing attitudes between the sexes. A multivariate analysis of covariance was performed on the data. Results indicated that all main effects-competence, role overload, occupation, and sex of subjects-were significant. Also significant was a sex of subject by occupation interaction and two three-way interactions. These results were discussed in the context of how they increase our understanding of college students' perceptions of successful career women.     

Tactual and visual alphanumeric suffix effects

Two experiments tested the effects of suffixes on the recall of tactual and visual sequences of alphabetic characters presented at 19 letters per min. Scoring techniques allowed for the differentiation of losses of item and order information. In Experiment I performance decrements were found for both modalities, which were mainly caused by item loss at the more recent part of the serial position curve in the suffix conditions. In Experiment II, these effects were replicated and a non-alphabetic suffix led to greater decrements for both modalities than an alphabetical suffix. While a suffix effect based on the loss of item information is consistent with a sensory trace interpretation of the suffix effect, the presence of a visual suffix effect with slow stimulus presentation is not. Additionally, the greater effect of the non-alphanumeric suffix challenges attentional interpretations. Some possible explanations are proposed.     

Word-finding as a function of stimulus context: Children compared with aphasic adults

A study of object naming in 202 children, aged 5–11 years, demonstrated that varying the stimulus context affected the level of response accuracy. From age 6 to 10, completing a sentence with a noun (auditory) yielded the lowest error scores, naming objects upon hearing a definition (also auditory) produced most errors, while responding with names to pictured objects was of intermediate difficulty. This is the same order of object naming difficulty found in adult aphasic patients. Children older than 10 do not appear to be affected by stimulus context in their object naming. Results are discussed in terms of the relative syntactic difficulty of the two auditory conditions, the unexpected sex differences, and the “aphaseoid” naming errors of children.     

Predictors of turnover of female factory workers

This study examines predictors of turnover of female factory workers in a multivariate framework. Findings indicate that organizational, job, and personal characteristics are equally important in explaining turnover. Variables significantly related to turnover were tenure, cycle time, peer leadership, communication flow, training time, family income, and satisfaction with pay. The AID technique was demonstrated as a means of identifying interaction effects.     

Saccade latency and warning signals: Effects of auditory and visual stimulus onset and offset

Previous studies have found that a nonspecific visual event occurring at the fovea 50–150 msec after the onset of a peripheral target delayed the initiation of the saccade to that target. The present studies replicated and extended this finding by studying the effects of both visual and auditory warning signals, by examining the effects of onset and offset warning on manual response latency, and by investigating the effects of presenting the warning events in the periphery of the visual field. The results indicated that the interfering effects occur with visual but not auditory stimuli, with saccades but not motor responses, and when the visual warning event occurs either foveally or in the subject’s periphery. Implications for the processes involved are discussed.     

Asymmetries in the perceptual span for Israeli readers

Native Israeli readers read Hebrew and English text as their eye movements were monitored. A window of text moved in synchrony with their eye movements and the window was either symmetrical about the fixation point or offset to the left or right. When subjects were reading Hebrew, the perceptual span was asymmetric to the left and when they were reading English it was asymmetric to the right. The results point out the importance of attentional factors in reading.     

Life structure decisions: Factors related to career-marriage priorities in college youth

The present research conceptualizes life structure, or the pattern of life, as the ordering of priorities among competing alternatives. Intentions to emphasize career, marriage, or both were investigated for college students. Variations in these intentions were seen as resulting from differences in two classes of variables: (a) the perceived consequences of emphasizing the alternative; and (b) perceived normative pressures. A subjective probability model of the relationship between beliefs and behavioral intentions was used as a framework for determining the importance of these factors. The considerations identified as most likely to have a direct impact on life structure dealt primarily with interpersonal relations, particularly marriage and family. In general, the data suggested that the subjective probability model may be useful for further understanding of life structure decisions.     

Reading deficits in learning disabled children

The purpose of this study was to determine whether LD children exhibited problems in the processes of attention, memory, or syntactical awareness when decoding written prose. Eighteen LD children and 18 normal controls were matched for initial word recognition skills. Subjects were then trained to read a list of individual words to criterion. Subsequently, they were tested on their ability to decode the same words in paragraph form, presented both immediately after training, and then again one week later. Half the children read paragraphs following standard English syntax, while the other half read a syntactically scrambled version of the same paragraph. The results indicated that a major contributing factor in the reading (decoding) difficulties demonstrated by the LD children derived from problems of acquisition and retrieval from long-term memory storage. The results were discussed in terms of their implications for the developmental lag theory of learning disabilities.     

Stress-management training: Evaluation of effects on school psychological services

School psychologists participated in a cognitive-behavioral stress-management training program. The data showed decreases in self-reported anxiety and increases in job satisfaction of school psychologists as a result of the training. In addition, teacher satisfaction with school psychological services increased after participation in teacher inservice workshops generated as a result of training the school psychologists.     

Modification of anger in children by affective imagery training

From a school population of normal children third through fifth grades), thirty children initially identified as “angry”were randomly assigned to either an affective imagery training group, an attention group, or a control group. The treatment group received three sessions of affective imagery in which they focused on physiological changes and on their thoughts associated with prior emotional experiences. Teachers recorded pre-, post- , and short term follow-up aggressive behaviors for all thirty children. Cognitive perceptions and attributions were recorded at the same three occasions on the Affect Questionnaire. Results suggested that, as a result of affective imagery training, angry children's perceptions and cognitions shifted from “angry” towards “sad,” and there was a concomitant decrease in observed aggressive classroom behavior.