Changing correlates of job involvement in three career stages

The nature of correlates of job involvement over three career stages (i.e., early, mid, and late career) was explored in order to account for the lack of consistency of past empirical work in the job involvement area. Data relating to perceptions of job involvement, job characteristics, job satisfaction, rewards, and individual differences were collected from 332 Canadian transportation ministry employees. Utilizing correlational analysis, support was found for the hypothesis that career stage moderated the relationship of job involvement and various situational, individual difference, and outcome measures. These results are discussed in light of the current literature.     

The effects of delay and interference: A speed-accuracy study

This paper examines the effect of (1) delay between learning and test and (2) associative interference on memory retrieval speed. The speed-accuracy tradeoff methodology, which interrupts the retrieval process at various times (0.3, 0.7, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 3.0 sec) after presentation of the test item, provides a means of separating retrieval speed effects from effects on overall memory strength. Performance at short processing times is an index of retrieval speed. Performance given ample processing time is a measure of asymptotic accuracy, or memory strength. Increasing the delay between learning and test or introduction of interference relations lowered memory trace strength, as reflected in asymptotic accuracy. Items tested shortly (about 3 sec) after learning showed a significant speedup in retrieval relative to items tested at a longer (several minute) delay. Further analysis suggested that the delay effect on retrieval was primarily the result of immediate repetition, or testing of the last-learned item. The interference manipulation showed a slight and nonsignificant tendency toward slowing of memory retrieval. The implications of these results for various models of retrieval are explored via simulations. The results of all the simulations suggested a direct-access retrieval process where associations are processed largely in parallel. Contradiction or mismatch information in recognizing new items was important because it provided an explanation for a slight slowing in retrieval due to interference even with a parallel-processing assumption. Faster retrieval for the last-learned item may be the result of residual activation following active processing.     

Distortions in memory for maps

Evidence is presented for systematic errors in memory for real and artificial maps, local environments, and visual forms. These errors are attributed to two heuristics that are derived from principles of perceptual organization. Maps of countries or localities are conceived of as figures in backgrounds. Remembering the absolute location of figures is difficult, and is facilitated by remembering locations relative to other figures and/or relative to the natural directions of the figure. In alignment, figures are lined up relative to one another, a phenomenon related to perceptual grouping by proximity. In rotation, the natural axes induced by a figure converge with frame axes (north-south, east-west, or horizontal, vertical), a phenomenon related to perceptual organization by common fate. Heuristic-induced errors occur in a variety of tasks, and even when subjects are explicitly forewarned. These heuristics may be invoked in forming representations as well as in inference, and function analogously to syntax in locating smaller elements in larger units.     

Intelligence and teachers' ratings as predictors of abstract and concrete learning

This study concerned the prediction of children's learning with an individual measure of intelligence and teachers' evaluations. Eight abstract and eight concrete nouns were paired with nonsense geometric figures and presented to 60 elementary school children in a three-trial paired-associate (PA) learning task. Subjects' IQ scores on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised and teachers' ratings of learning proficiency were used to predict children's performance on the PA task. Multiple correlations favored abstract learning with verbal scale intelligence, accounting for the majority of the variability. Teachers' ratings provided a surprising degree of predictive efficiency for abstract recall which was redundant with verbal intelligence.     

Multiple sessions of systolic blood pressure biofeedback: Its effects on ability to control systolic pressure during training,after training,and its effects on pulse rate

Seventy-one normotensive subjects participated in four training sessions in which they were either (a) instructed to increase their blood pressure, (b) instructed to decrease their blood pressure, or (c) not instructed to change their blood pressure. The subjects either (a) were provided with biofeedback concerning systolic blood pressure or (b) were not provided with biofeedback concerning systolic blood pressure. After the last training session, subjects participated in a transfer session in which they were again instructed concerning changes in pressure but were not provided with biofeedback. Analyses conducted on data from the training and transfer sessions indicated that subjects who were instructed to increase pressure and given biofeedback to aid them showed higher pressure than subjects in other conditions and that there were no differences among those other conditions; that is, biofeedback was effective for teaching subjects to increase pressure but was not effective for teaching subjects to decrease pressure. Additional training sessions did not add to the effect achieved in the first training session. During training sessions, subjects who were instructed to increase pressure showed higher heart rates than subjects in other conditions. The results raise questions concerning the interpretation of earlier experiments that did not include no-treatment, instructions-only, and attention control conditions.     

Self-consciousness,evaluation of physical characteristics,and physical attractiveness

Results from an investigation of the relationship between habitual awareness of oneself as a social object (Public self-consciousness) and speed of processing information about the overt self are reported. Since high public self-consciousness subjects report themselves to be concerned about their physical appearance, they were expected to have more readily retrievable evaluative judgments concerning their physical characteristics. Consistent with this prediction, high compared to low public consciousness subjects required significantly less time to report their evaluations of eleven of their physical features. In a second study, high public self-consciousness was shown to be positively related to judged physical attractiveness in two geographically diverse samples. The quicker evaluations of the high public self-consciousness group were discussed in terms of information processing model recently described by Markus (1977).     

Reaction time for voiced and whispered /a/ in stutterers and nonstutterers

Recent research reviewed in this article suggests that stutterers' inability to initiate phonation promptly could be a significant factor in the occurence of stuttering. Since stuttering is either completely absent or markedly reduced in frequency during whisper, the present study tested the hypothesis that stutterers do not significantly differ from nonstutterers in reaction time (RT) for the initiation of whispered/a/, whereas the two groups differ significantly in RT for the initiation of voiced /a/. Ten adult stutterers and an equal number of comparable nonstutterers produced prolonged versions of the vowel /a/ using voice and whisper in response to tone stimuli. The results showed that stutteres and nonstutterers did not differ in RT for either voiced or whispered /a/. The stutterers, however, exhibited significantly longer RT to produce voiced /a/ than whispered /a/.