Concurrent validity of Holland's theory for college degreed working women

The study was designed to explore two areas: (1) the concurrent validity of Holland's theory for employed college degreed women using two different operational definitions (Vocational Preference Inventory and the Self-Directed Search) of vocational orientation; and (2) the relationships among same named scales across the VPI and the SDS. Concurrent validity was studied by administering the VPI and the SDS to 179 women workers in occupational environments consistent with Holland's six vocational environments. In general, the findings indicate that the VPI and SDS scales tend to effectively discriminate among the occupational groups consistent with Holland's theoretical framework. In addition, the correlation coefficients for same named scales for the two inventories were all found to be significant. In sum, the results of the study lend some support to the concurrent validity of Holland's theory for employed college degreed women.     

Relationship between career maturity and self-concepts of suburban and urban middle- and urban lower-class preadolescent black males

The relationship between career maturity and self-concepts of 252 sixth-grade black males was investigated. Student samples of suburban and urban middle- and urban lower-class were drawn from 42 different school settings located in Monroe, Erie, and Westchester Counties of New York State. The Attitude Scale of the Career Maturity Inventory and the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory were used to assess the association of career maturity and self-concepts. Results indicated relatively weak-positive relationships between career maturity and self-concepts. Significant career maturity differences were found. However, self-concepts of the three groups were not statistically significantly different. Of the set of independent variables predicting and estimating variance accounted for (socioeconomic status, family intactness, place of residence, and reading), socioeconomic status was found to have the strongest predictive value on career maturity. It was suggested that researchers examine elementary school black students' career development in view of the group with whom they identify most.     

Rapid educational rehabilitation for prison inmates

One of the major goals of prisons has been the educational rehabilitation of inmates. Studies have shown that predelinquents as well as delinquents could be motivated to achieve in academic areas through the use of an incentive system. The present study attempted to extend the behavioral yield of such a system with prison inmates. The academic performance of two inmates in math and English were compared when two levels of incentives were made contingent on that performance. The results showed that the two inmates passed academic tests as much as nine times faster under an enriched schedule of incentives than under a standard one. This increase in rate of performance was translated into actual academic achievement as one of the inmates passed 9th through 12th grade algebra in only 14 days. A standardized test confirmed this academic advancement for both inmates. These high rates of performance and academic achievement are even more dramatic in view of the fact that five months prior to this procedure, both inmates had been tested as being below average in intelligence.     

Fixed-interval punishment of running in hamsters

Four hamsters received brief electric shocks contingent upon running in a wheel. The fixed interval between shocks was varied systematically from 0 to 60 sec. Time spent running was directly related to the length of the fixed interval, while running speed remained roughly constant. Running depended on the fixed interval between shocks in the same way as bar-pressing maintained by food reinforcement, despite the fact that running was not established with nor maintained by explicit reinforcement.     

Effects of postresponse visual stimuli on visual discrimination learning in the rhesus monkey

To learn more about the mechanism (or mechanisms) involved with postresponse stimulus processing during discrimination learning, a series of studies was conducted with monkeys to determine why the combined relevant and irrelevant stimuli impair learning more than irrelevant stimuli appearing alone. It was found that: (a) the greater size and complexity of the combination of stimuli were not responsible for the greater deficit, while the presence of the relevant stimuli (S^D and S^Δ) within the stimulus combination apparently was; (b) the more similar the postresponse irrelevant stimuli were to the relevant stimuli the greater the deficit that resulted; and (c) monkeys that had earlier learned to discriminate the relevant and irrelevant features of a combination showed no learning impairment when this same stimulus combination was later presented after the response during a new learning problem. These results were interpreted as evidence that: (1) processes associated with learning a discrimination problem do not end with the execution of a choice response; (2) postresponse stimuli produce greater impairment in discrimination learning when they are distorted versions of the relevant stimuli; and (3) the impairment resulting from postresponse irrelevant stimuli occurs primarily when this misinformation is processed and misperceived as being relevant to learning the discrimination problem.     

Configural conditioning in the CER: Loss of element strength after repeated reinforced compound CS trials

Different groups of rats received different numbers of compound CS (light/noise) conditioning trials in the CER procedure. The amount of suppression evident to the single elements of the compound decreased as a function of the number of previous compound trials. This loss of CR strength was interpreted as a configuring effect. Further experimental comparisons indicated that the configuring effect could not be readily explained in terms of a generalization decrement or a stimulus novelty hypothesis.     

Effect of sample presentation time on long-delay matching in the pigeon

The effect of sample stimulus presentation time on long-delay matching in highly practiced pigeons was investigated. The birds were found capable of above chance matching performance at a delay of 60 sec provided the sample stimulus was presented for 4 sec or longer. Matching accuracy increased as a negatively accelerated function of sample stimulus presentation time and decreased as a negatively accelerated function of time since the termination of the sample. The rate of forgetting was found to be independent of sample stimulus presentation time. The data were inconsistent with a temporal discrimination interpretation of the effect of presentation time on delayed matching. The data were interpreted as supporting a simple trace strength and decay model of pigeon delayed matching.     

A probe trial procedure for the study of children's discrimination learning and transfer

A discrimination reversal problem was presented to 192 children varying in age from 3 to 5 years. At the end of both the initial learning and transfer trials, probe trials were introduced to ascertain the response rule describing children's choices. Results were analyzed in terms of a binary division of the children according to their responses to the probe stimuli; children who responded errorlessly (concept responders) were contrasted with children who made errors on the probes (instance responders). Using this criterion, it was found that many children transferred in a way different from the way they learned the initial problem. There was no difference in the proportion of younger and older children responding conceptually to the original problem, but older children were more likely to transfer conceptually when standard geometric blocks were used as stimuli. Future studies must consider the possiblity that learning and transfer may be accomplished by different processes whose application differs with age, the nature of the stimuli, and the stage of training.     

On the representation of language in the right hemisphere of right-handed people.

Laterality experiments using reaction time were conducted to assess the performance of the right hemisphere of normal people on verbal tasks. The results show that if the task calls for pictorial encoding of visually presented verbal material, then the right hemisphere's performance is superior to that of the left. When the task calls for linguistic analysis, the minor hemisphere displays no aptitude in dealing with the task. The latter finding is at variance with data from split-brain research. To reconcile these differences, it was proposed that language functions, though represented in the right hemisphere of normal people, are functionally localized in the left. When the control which the left hemisphere exerts over the right is weakened or removed, e.g., by commissurotomy, right hemisphere language is released. The application of this model to other neurological phenomena is briefly discussed.