Women in male-dominated professions: Contrasts in their personal and vocational histories

Women in four high-status, male-dominated professions—architecture, law, medicine, and psychology—are described in terms of a variety of historical, social, and career variables. The women share common antecedents of their vocational choices and similar perceptions of their work, but the occupational groups are dissimilar on a number of dimensions. Psychologists stand in particular contrast to the other three groups of professionals, describing experiences and career patterns less in conflict with stereotypic female roles. These contrasts may reflect differences in the sex-typed characterizations of the professions even though all are male-dominated.     

The restoration of extinguished avoidance responses

Following extensive signaled shuttlebox avoidance training, Fischer 344 rats were given extinction trials until they reliably stopped responding and, thereafter, they received occasional classical CS-UCS pairings during the course of restoration test trials in which shock was absent. Experiment I demonstrated that the classical contingency was both necessary and sufficient for the complete recovery of such behavior. Experiment II revealed that the degree of recovery was not differentially affected by the frequency of such CS-UCS pairings. However, in Experiment III recovery in the presence of this contingency was shown to depend on the number of previous extinction trials, although even after a large number of such trials, a considerable degree of recovery occurred. These findings demonstrated the central role of the classical CS-UCS contingency in restoring a previously extinguished avoidance response.     

Active selection of items to be remembered: The role of timing

A series of experiments was carried out in which Ss were required to extract critical stimuli from a stream of nine spoken inputs, presented at various rates, and report on these after the presentation of each list. The critical items were normally digits at positions 2, 4, 6, and 8 in the input sequence. Subjects were required to employ either an “active” extraction strategy, aimed at achieving temporary storage only of items to be remembered, or a “passive” strategy, involving storage of all inputs with subsequent extraction of critical items. The initial experiment showed that the active strategy markedly improved performance efficiency as the presentation rate decreased; passive performance remained relatively stable. Experiments 2 and 3 indicated that the level of active performance was higher when critical items were categorically different from unwanted items. There were indications that this effect was independent of the effect of changes in the presentation rate.The final experiments in the series showed that when Ss were denied the opportunity of predicting the time of arrival of critical items active performance hardly benefitted from a reduction in rate.A “controlled activation” process is proposed as a basis for S's ability to modulate his state of alertness, so as to maximize receptivity for critical stimuli arriving at well-defined points in time.     

Differences in baseline drinking behavior between New Zealand alcoholics and normal drinkers

Details of alcohol drinking by 12 New Zealand hospitalized alcoholics and 12 normal drinkers from the local community were compared in an experimental bar-and-lounge environment. Differences between the drinking behavior of the two groups were found to be statistically significant on measures of total alcohol consumed, sip size and rate of alcohol ingestion (speed of drinking). The drinking pattern exhibited was similar to that reported in baseline studies of North American drinkers, as reported by Schaefer et al. (1971). This similarity was discussed in terms of a behavioral profile of alcoholics as compared with normal drinkers for the diagnosis of problem drinking.