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

This study, using the Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI) and the Self-Directed Search (SDS), explored the concurrent validity of Holland's theory for employed non-college-degreed women. The VPI and SDS were administered to 114 women workers in occupational environments consistent with Holland's vocational environments. The results revealed that three scales of the VPI and five scales of the SDS successfully differentiated the occupational groups consistent with Holland's theoretical notions. In general, the findings lend some support to the concurrent validity of Holland's theory for employed non-college-degreed women.     

Recovery from aphasia: Spontaneous speech versus language comprehension

Seventy-four aphasic patients, subdivided into four groups (fluent, mixed, nonfluent, and severely nonfluent), were tested three times in the course of 1 year to assess recovery of spontaneous speech and sentence comprehension. Although 12 of the 28 spontaneous speech variables employed showed significant time changes, some of these changes indicated improvement and others deterioration. There was no overall clinical improvement in spontaneous speech in any group. On the sentence comprehension tests, however, all four groups did show considerable, significant improvement. There were no qualitative or quantitative differences among the groups in the course of recovery, despite the fact that the groups differed in the severity of aphasia as well as on the fluency dimension. In certain patients there was also some improvement in spontaneous speech, but this did not in most cases correlate with an improvement in either fluency or sentence comprehension. Possible reasons why receptive abilities improved more than expressive abilities are discussed.     

Acquired aphasia with convulsive disorders in children: a case study with a seven-year follow-up.

In a 7-year follow-up a case of the “syndrome of acquired aphasia with convulsive disorder” is described. In particular, attention is paid to EEG patterns and linguistic analysis. Although seizures have been controlled medically and EEG abnormalities have tended to improve, no close parallel improvement has been observed in the patient's language disorders.     

Stimulus- or response-induced excitation. A comparison of the behavior of introverts and extraverts

The tendency to inspect visual material (slides) rather than to respond by pressing a key in an attempt to move on to the next slide, was compared among introverts and extraverts. As predicted from Brebner and Cooper (1974): (1) extraverts inspected the stimuli for a shorter time before making their first response, (2) extraverts made more responses at a faster rate than introverts did, and (3) extraverts produced a significantly higher proportion of runs of accelerating responses.     

Hesitation and the production of verbal paraphasias and neologisms in jargon aphasia.

Techniques of hesitation analysis taken from studies of normal speakers were applied to the speech of a jargon aphasic. Neologisms were found to follow pauses indicating a word-finding difficulty. Other language functions—phonology, morphology, and syntax—appeared unimpaired, and further analyses of the linguistic and temporal characteristics indicated a single functional disorder in which there is a failure in the mechanisms which associate word-sounds with word-meanings. The patient strategically adapts to this functional impairment by substituting a neologism when lexical search fails. The source of a large class of neologisms, it is hypothesized, is a device which quasirandomly combines English phonemes in a phonotactically regular way. The implications for recovery patterns in jargon aphasia are discussed; and the implications of this case for models of normal language production are explored.     

The usefulness of distinguishing between a defensive and a nondefensive external locus of control

The study's purpose was to determine whether a distinction can be made between individuals adopting an external locus of control as a defense and those adopting the orientation because it reflects their life experience. It was hypothesized that the two groups differ in the amount of personal responsibility they accept for task outcomes. Internals and externals were identified and then further designated as high or low in action taking. Among externals, a high action-taking score implied defensiveness. Subjects randomly received either success or failure feedback on a presumed task of interpersonal sensitivity. Defensive externals varied their causal attributions as a function of outcome, whereas nondefensive externals did not (p < .05). The distinction between defensive and nondefensive external control was thus supported.     

Symbolic distance and congruity effects for paired-comparisons judgments of degree of self-reference

Two experiments are reported which speak to the properties of the process of self-reference. The first demonstrated a “symbolic distance effect” for self-reference. An inverse linear relation was found between item difference on a self-referent continuum and the time required to judge which of a pair of adjectives best described the respondent. The second experiment failed to demonstrate a “congruity effect” in a situation where subjects decided which of a pair of adjectives BEST or LEAST described them. This failure was interpreted as support for the proposition that the self functions as an immovable, rigid, and fixed reference point during the processing of personal information. Discussion focused upon how this fixed reference point property helps understand some other research findings.     

The expectancy model in the analysis of occupational preference and occupational choice

The differences between the factors related to occupational preference and occupational choice were explored for upper-division college students from business and psychology classes. The results strongly supported a valance-instrumentality-expectancy model in the context of occupational choice. Occupational preference was primarily a function of occupational valence, the multiplicative relation between the outcome valences and the instrumentalities of the occupations for these outcomes. Occupational choice was primarily a function of the force to choose an occupation, the multiplicative relaitonship between occupational valence and the expectancy of attaining an occupation and the expected costs of attaining an occupation.     

Infant pattern vision: A new approach based on the contrast sensitivity function

Current approaches to the study of infant pattern vision have yielded interesting findings but have not yielded a set of data or principles from which general predictions can be drawn. We propose an alternative approach based on measurements of the contrast sensitivity function (CSF). This approach has been successfully applied to the study of adult vision. In principle, the approach allows one to predict the detectability of a wide variety of two-dimensional patterns if one knows the observer's CSF. Two experiments were conducted. In Experiment 1, CSFs of 1-, 2-, and 3-month infants were measured using a fixation preference paradigm. The results indicated noteworthy development between 1 and 3 months particularly in sensitivity to high spatial frequencies (fine stripes). The low-frequency attenuation characteristic of adult vision is observed at 2 and 3 months but not always at 1. In Experiment 2, CSFs of 2-month infants were measured at a lower luminance level. The results indicated that low-frequency attenuation became less pronounced as would be predicted if it were a manifestation of lateral inhibitory processing. The manner in which the CSF can be used to make general predictions is described. The CSFs of Experiment 1 are then used to successfully predict infants' detection of patterns used in two frequently cited experiments. We also propose a simple model of infant pattern preference and show that the model accurately predicts the results of a number of well-known experiments.     

The social behavior of preschool children at different developmental levels: Effects of group composition

The social participation, constructiveness of play, and communicative interactions of 4- to 6-year-old developmentally delayed and nondelayed preschool children were compared under conditions in which children interacted in play groups homogeneous with respect to developmental level and in heterogeneous play groups. A within-subjects design was utilized to assess the relatively immediate effects of group composition. Data for both children and teachers were analyzed separately for each of four developmental level groups and across two time periods. Although numerous differences were obtained as a function of developmental level and time, the only significant effect of group composition on children was reduced inappropriate play by severely delayed youngsters while interacting in heterogeneous play groups. No detrimental effects of heterogeneous grouping were observed for children at any developmental level. These results were discussed in terms of their importance in evaluating the impact of programs that mainstream young children.