SVIB revisions and factors affecting scale reliability

The 1966 SVIB scoring keys were investigated and found to contain an average of 214 fewer items per occupational scale than the 1938 scoring keys. The shorter scales are less reliable than the longer scales on the 1966 SVIB. The shorter scales in the 1966 edition and SCII contain items which differentiate criterion group members less well than do the longer scales. There may not be a wide enough range of item content on the SCII to develop reliable (and valid?) scales for certain occupations. Equivalence between the 1938 and 1966 editions functionally is low, as evidenced by the median correlation of .47 in the present 12-yr follow-up study for 40 occupational scales.     

Personality and the effects of stress on recognition memory

The experiment examined the contribution of anxiety, extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism to recognition memory for pictures and words using a signal detection method. Independent groups of subjects performed a recognition memory task under one of four conditions (control, noise, threat, and reward) that was intended to capitalize on dispositions which characterize the personality dimensions. In an ego threat condition involving personal evaluation, introverts displayed a performance decrement relative to noise and reward conditions. Psychoticism was inversely related to performance in the noise and threat conditions and directly related in a reward condition. In general, J. A. Gray's (1981) model of anxiety and impulsiveness accommodates much of the data, but the mechanisms which mediate the influence of personality on memory performance are not clear.     

Is it just reading?: Comments on the papers by Mann,Morrison, and Wolford and Fowler

Comments on the stimulating papers by V. A. Mann (Reading skill and language skill. Developmental Review, 1984, 4, 1–15), F. Morrison (Reading disability: A problem in rule learning and word decoding. Developmental Review, 1984, 4, 36–47), and G. Wolford and C. A. Fowler (Differential use of partial information by good and poor readers. Developmental Review, 1984, 4, 16–35) come under four headings. First, their differences with respect to the organizing themes are identified. Second, the central difficulty, for theories of reading disability, posed by the high correlation between reading and IQ, and ways of dealing with this difficulty, are discussed. In the third and fourth sections, comments on the individual papers and a summary of the main lessons to be learned from this collection are presented.     

Typing letter strings varying in orthographic structure

Subjects typed six-letter strings varying in orthographic structure. Lexical status, word frequency, position-sensitive log bigram frequency, and regularity of letter sequencing were systematically varied. Cumulative reaction times (RTs) of the keystrokes were adequately described by a linear function of letter position in the test string. Overall, words were typed faster than nonwords, and regular strings faster than irregular strings. Although the effect of log bigram frequency was not significant, this variable interacted with regularity and word frequency. Post hoc analyses of performance on each of the 200 letter strings revealed significant effects of the number of irregularities, log bigram frequency, and log word frequency. Transition times between successive keystrokes were significantly longer for illegal than for legal letter transitions. These results are similar to previous findings on the role of orthographic structure in the perceptual recognition of letter strings and provide a more complete analysis of context effects in typing.     

The use of conditional probabilities in applications of Holland's theory

The hexagon of J. L. Holland (1973, Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall) is a useful heuristic device for predicting congruency and consistency among the six personality/environment types specified by his theory. One limitation of the traditional hexagon is the implicit bidirectionality: the hexagon displays a single distance between two types. People in applied areas may assume a symmetry which does not exist. Examples are given of situations in which a consistent asymmetry occurs; e.g., in the illustrative data presented, C (Conventional) types are more likely to have E (Enterprising) as a secondary interest than E types are to have C as a secondary interest. Implications of such asymmetries are discussed and suggestions made concerning counseling and other applications.     

An occupational taxonomy by professional characteristics: Implications for research

Theorists concerned with the nature of professionalism and researchers investigating professionals in the work environment often assume that professional occupations are a unique occupational type. To test this assumption, an occupational taxonomy based on nine dimensions of professionalism was derived empirically. The taxonomy represented expectations only to a moderate degree. Several implications were noted for the use of occupational taxonomies in the generalization of research findings on one occupational group to other occupational groups in the same classification.     

Central auditory processing. VI. Detecting ear dominance by evoked potentials

An electrophysiological method is described for measuring the direction and strength of a subject's ear dominance for pitch using the P3 component of event-related potentials. Results of these experiments reveal that the P3 can be used effectively for these measures in man.