The latent structure of occupations

Triads of occupations were given to 1300 high-school pupils of both sexes in order to find the affinities of the occupations and the values they used to arrive at the affinities. The values used to perceive occupations come from the subject; nevertheless they could be categorized into a scheme of 20 different values, with the residue category containing less than 1% of the answers. In accordance with previous research in this field, an almost universal structure of occupations was found. The following variables had no influence on the choice of occupational affinities: age, trend of study, SES, father's occupation, mother's occupation, vocational maturity, and preferred occupation. Only the pupils of one school were significantly different in affiliating the occupations in the triads. Furthermore, girls perceive the world of occupations more uniformly than boys.Underlying this universal structure of occupations there exists a latent structure, specific to each individual, which explains why the world of occupations is seen in the way it is. This latent structure of occupations is influenced by the individual's specific background.     

Expressed vs inventoried interests as predictors of paramedical effectiveness

Two interest measures, a composite of six items which provide a direct assessment of an individual's preferences for Navy health care work and a Navy Vocational Interest Inventory (NVII) scale which assessed the degree of similarity between an individual's activity preferences and those of hospital corpsmen (HMs), were considered along with aptitude test scores as potential predictors of effectiveness among 2429 Navy enlisted personnel assigned to training for HM jobs. Effectiveness was defined as completion of HM training and remaining on the job for at least 2 years. The six-item composite and NVII HM scale scores were correlated .51 with each other and were correlated .27 and .28, respectively, with the effectiveness criterion. When these measures were added to the aptitude measure by using multiple regression procedures, the validity for predicting effectiveness was increased significantly from .36 to .42 with a cross-validity of .42 for the three-variable equation. These findings provide support for the contention that interest measures can be useful predictors of occupational success as well as occupational entry. Furthermore, since most of the interest-related attrition that was found in this study occurred during HM training, these findings suggest that job withdrawal attributable to mismatches in vocational interests may tend to occur very soon after the individual enters the occupational field.     

Classes and collections: Conceptual organization and numerical abilities

Collections (e.g., forest, army) and classes (e.g., trees, soldiers) are natural concepts that differ in their organizational principles. Collections are organized into part-whole relations (e.g., trees are parts of a forest). Classes are organized according to class inclusion relations (e.g., oaks are kinds of trees). Because of their part-whole organization, collections are assumed to have greater psychological coherence than classes and therefore an advantage on tasks that require thinking about an aggregate as well as the individuals in it. Number requires aggregate analysis since it is a characteristic of sets, not of individuals. Four studies tested the hypothesized collection advantage in numerical reasoning tasks. In each, children viewed identical displays that were labeled with either class or collection terms. With perceptual input constant, the collection labels in contrast to the class labels promoted children's insight into certain numerical principles and facilitated the use of these principles in a variety of numerical tasks. Collection labels appear to induce a cognitive reorganization of importance to the child: the shift from inclusion to part-whole relations.     

The effects of differential reinforcement on generalized imitation

The present study examines the transfer of imitative learning to other nonimitative performance conditions and compares imitative and nonimitative performance under contingencies of differential reinforcement for S⁰ behavior, differential reinforcement for nonimitative behavior, and extinction. Many authors have suggested that a child's continued imitative performance of rewarded S^D and unrewarded S^Δ behavior is a function of subtle social cues or experimental demand present in most generalized imitation procedures. The two experiments presented here support that conclusion but also provide evidence that conclusions drawn from such generalized imitation studies were generally accurate. Even though a child's trial-by-trial imitative performance appeared to be a function of procedural artifacts, the child's later performance in the role of a model indicated that a functionally interdependent generalized response class of imitative behavior had been learned while the child imitated. As such, these experiments generally supported Baer's secondary reinforcement hypothesis for imitative performance and suggest that future research employ nonimitative tasks such as reversed imitation as a measure of imitative learning.     

The relation of esteem and social class to self-occupational congruence

The relation of self-esteem and social class to congruence with chosen occupation (the incorporation score) was analyzed by ANOVA and a priori contrasts. Fifty-four accounting majors were differentiated from 58 non-accounting, business majors on the basis of their ideal-self-accounting congruence (p < .01) and their self-accountant congruence (p < .05). Both high- and low-esteem accounting majors' congruence scores for accountant were higher than other S's accountant congruence, and high-esteem accounting majors had the highest congruence (p <.05). Working class accounting majors had higher congruence than middle class accounting students (p <.05). The implications of the findings for theory development and counseling were discussed.     

The effects of expectations upon task performance as moderated by levels of self-esteem

The study investigated the effects of expectations upon task performance in a simulated work environment. In a 2 × 2 factorial design, individuals of high and low self-esteem responded to either a favorable or unfavorable expectation. It was found that only high self-esteem individuals differed significantly in their response to the expectation manipulation. The results were discussed relative to self-consistency formulations and implications for organizational behavior were suggested.     

Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse

The effects of structure and content variables on memory and comprehension of prose passages were studied in two experiments. The experimental passages exemplify a class of simple narrative stories that is described by a generative grammar of plot structures. A comprehension model is proposed that assumes a hierarchical organizational framework of stories in memory, determined by the grammar, representing the abstract structural components of the plot. The quality and characteristics of subjects' memory for stories were tested on a variety of experimental tasks in which story organization was manipulated. Comprehensibility and recall were found to be a function of the amount of inherent plot structure in the story, independent of passage content. Recall probability of individual facts from passages depended on the structural centrality of the facts: Subjects tended to recall facts corresponding to high-level organizational story elements rather than lower-level details. In addition, story summarizations from memory tended to emphasize general structural characteristics rather than specific content. For successively presented stories, both structure and content manipulations influenced recall. Furthermore, repeating story structure across two passages produced facilitation in recall of the second passage, while repeating story content produced proactive interference. The implications for a model of memory for narrative discourse are discussed.     

Mental strategies,mental capacity,and instruction: A neo-Piagetian investigation

Pascual-Leone's neo-Piagetian theory of development was used to predict the pre- and postinstruction distributions of scores on a subject-controlled digit placement task as a function of three parameters: (1) the mental strategy which subjects attempted to apply, (2) the demand which attempting to apply this strategy placed on their mental capacity, and (3) the maximum mental capacity which they were capable of mobilizing. The predicted and obtained distributions corresponded quite closely for each kind of strategy at each age level sampled (6, 8, and 10). The discussion focused on the methodological and analytic requirements which must be met if the same approach is to be applied to making successful predictions in more naturalistic paradigms.     

The motive to avoid success: A further examination

Horner's (1968) “fear of success” study was replicated and expanded. One hundred seventy-seven high school (HS) and college students wrote stories in response to the following cues: “After first-term finals, John (Anne) finds himself (herself) at the top of his (her) medical-school class.” Results indicated similarity of response of HS men, HS women, and college men, all of whom expressed more fear of success imagery in response to the Anne cue than to the John cue. College women did not conform to this pattern.     

The early history of behavior modification of stuttering: A view from the trenches

The attitudes of 644 employers toward stuttering were studied through the use of a questionnaire which required the respondents to indicate their strenght-of- agreement to seven attitudinal statements concerning stuttering. While rejecting the suggestion that stuttering interferes with job performance, the employers agreed that stuttering decreases employability and interferes with promotion possibilities. It was concluded that although stuttering may not typically interfere with job performance, it is a significant vocationally handicapping problem.