The mediating effects of career indecision subtypes on career-counseling effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that career indecision subtypes serve as a mediating variable in regard to career-counseling effectiveness, and to an attempt to detect two other mediators, i.e., individual- versus group-counseling modes and direct versus indirect test interpretation. In a pre-post design conducted on 149 undergraduate clients who went through a standard counseling process it was found that: (a) Different subtype groups gained differentially in their career decidedness; clients who “lack structure” gained the most from the treatment while clients who “perceive external barrier” and who experienced “personal conflict” gained the least, (b) Neither counseling mode nor test interpretation directiveness had significant effects or interactions with career decidedness. It was proposed that career counseling should be conducted with different contents rather than processes in order to benefit clients with various problem types.     

Predicting persistence,stability, and achievement in college by major choice consistency: A test of Holland's consistency hypothesis

This study examined the relationships between students' level of consistency in choosing a major in college and their persistence, stability, and achievement in a 5-year follow-up. In contrast to the findings of most previous studies, it was found that consistent students tend to persist in college, not to change majors, and that they have higher achievement than inconsistent students. It was suggested that the current findings, which support Holland's theory, were different from the results of previous studies because of the use of behavioral definition for consistency level (actual student major choices) rather than responses to various inventories. The significance of these findings were discussed.     

Self-assessment and task performance

The present study tested the idea that the amount of effort expended in task performance is a function of the amount of uncertainty in one's ability level the resulting outcomes are expected to reduce. Two determinants of expected uncertainty reduction were manipulated: prior uncertainty about one's ability level and the diagnosticity of the task. Subjects first performed an initial task and then received fictitious feedback to manipulate their prior uncertainty. To induce low uncertainty, the feedback implied that the subjects are highly likely to have either low, intermediate, or a high level of ability. To induce high uncertainty, the feedback implied that the various ability levels were equally probable. Subjects then performed a task whose perceived diagnosticity regarding the ability under consideration was varied. As expected, subjects who were highly uncertain about their ability level performed better than subjects who were relatively certain they possessed either low, intermediate, or a high level of ability. Performance also improved with task diagnosticity, and the effect of task diagnosticity on performance was more pronounced when prior uncertainty was high than when it was low. Past research on the relationship between prior feedback and subsequent performance was discussed in light of the present results and a self-assessment model of achievement behavior.     

Authoritarian personalities in the natural and social sciences

This research is an extension of a previous finding, that authoritarian personalities are predisposed to the social sciences and nonauthoritarians to the natural sciences. Two hypotheses were tested: (1) Within the social sciences, more authoritarian personalities enter economics and geography than psychology, social work, or sociology; and (2) between the first and last years in college, in “authoritarian departments” there is an increase, while in “nonauthoritarian departments” there is a decrease in the students' authoritarianism.     

The effect of syntactic encoding on sentence comprehension in aphasia.

This study compared two levels of syntactic encoding with respect to their effect on aphasics' auditory comprehension. The same informational content was presented either as an embedded sentence or as two contiguous simplé propositions. A similar contrast was utilized to compare sentences containing relational terms of time, comparison, instrumentality, as well as sentences involving conjunction reduction, with parallel messages expressed in expanded, simplified form. A picture-verification paradigm was used. Comprehension was significantly enhanced only in the case of embedded sentences, with a tendency for Broca's aphasics to show the maximum effects.     

Menstrual symptom questionnaire: further psychometric evaluation

Novak, Jones, and Jones (1975) state that menstrual distress (dysmenorrhea) is the greatest cause of lost work hours among women, and Kistner (1970) estimate this to be 140 million annual work hours. Thirty-five percent of female adolescents. 25% of college women, and 60–70% of single females in their 30's and 40's are said to be invalid during menstruation (Green, 1971). Treatment procedures for primary dysmenorrhea have included hypnosis (Lackie, 1964), physical exercises (Golub. 1959). natural childbirth techniques (House, 1969), and oral contraceptives.

Though hormones are the most recent, frequent and effective treatment approach (Novak et al. 1975). Tyler (1973) cautions against their use because of possible adverse side effects. Recently, systematic desensitization (SD) has been used to relieve menstrual distress (Mullen, 1968, 1971; Reich, 1972; Tasto and Chesney, 1974) without risk of such side effects. Although SD has been effective, considerable response variability has been noted.

Becuase of this variability. Chesney and Tasto (1975a) developed the Menstrual Symptom Questionnaire (MSQ) to psychometrically identify two types of primary dysmenorrhea: spasdomic dysmenorrhea which designates distress during the flow period associated with excessive muscle tension, and congestive dysmenorrhea referring to premenstrual tension related to water retention. This instrument was designed to define types of menstrual symptoms and not symptom severity. Test-retest reliability was 0.87 and discrimination between spasdomic and congestive dysmenorrhea was highly significant. Of 48 women tested. 29 were identified as spasdomic with MSQ scores between 82 and 102, while 19 scored in the congestive range (46–68). Interestingly, no women scored in the median range (69–81), suggesting that there exists two unique types of primary dysmenorrhea identifiable by the MSQ. Subsequently, Chesney and Tasto (1975b) reported that congestive women did not respond to SD, while spasdomic symptoms were significantly reduced. It was hypothesized that the relaxation training component of SD was effective with spasmodic muscle tension symptoms and ineffective with congestive water retention symptoms. Consequently, the MSQ was thought capable of accounting for previously reported response variability of primary dysmenorrhea to SD.

The present study was intended to replicate Chesney and Tasto's (1975a, 1975b) findings. The following Null hypotheses were tested; (a) the MSQ does not have significant test-retest reliability; (b) the congestive-spasmodic symptom dimension of the MSQ is not dichotomous; and (c) the MSQ does not predict SD effectiveness     

Numerical taxonomy of aphasia

Two hundred consecutively seen aphasics, 142 of them with infarcts, were examined by tests of fluency, comprehension, repetition, naming, and information content. The language scores were subjected to a minimum variance clustering algorithm separately for the total and for the infarct groups. The latter generated 10 clusters on a dendrogram. Attribute analysis of each cluster provided a clinically meaningful profile of language performance for these groups. The degree of correlation of most computer generated clusters with clinically recognized groups was high, and the homogeneity of some of the clusters is striking. An exception appears to be “conduction aphasia,” which is bimodally distributed. One of these clusters, with high fluency and low comprehension scores, was renamed “afferent conduction” aphasia, and the other, with lower fluency and higher comprehension, was renamed “efferent conduction” aphasia. The Principal Components Analysis was used to evaluate the discriminatory value of language characteristics, and the Nearest Neighbor Network Analysis was used to evaluate the significance of clustering. The dendrogram for all aphasics showed a less specific and less homogenous six clusters.