Self-efficacy and depressive affect in college students

In an attempt to extend Bandura's theory of self-efficacy, we investigated the hypothesis that increases in self-efficacy, based on mastery experiences, would lead to improvements in mood and problem solving among dysphoric subjects.College students (N=79), classified as dysphoric or nondysphoric by the Beck Depression Inventory, were randomly assigned to anagram training groups that received bogus bar graphs suggesting either task ease or difficulty. Before and after training, subjects rated themselves on depressive affect (DACL) and self-efficacy. A difficult anagram task and a final DACL rating completed the procedure.Anagram training conditions did not lead to differential self-efficacy. However, multiple regression analyses showed that self-efficacy was related to depressive symptoms. Greater DACL decreases after training were seen in dysphoric subjects who reported higher posttraining self-efficacy. This improved mood is consistent with Bandura's theory. An unexpected finding among dysphoric subjects was that the higher their self-efficacy was, the lower was their final anagram performance. It appears that dysphoric/high self-efficacy subjects may have become more demoralized than dysphoric/low self-efficacy subjects when they encountered a need for much greater effort expenditure on the difficult anagram task.The findings suggest that skills training interventions which raise self-efficacy may be most effective in reducing depressive symptoms. The relevance of effort expenditure to the development of competine in depressed undiriduals appears to merit further investigation.where he served previously as Director of Clinical Psychology and as Chairperson of the Department of Psychology.Jeffrey Schwartz, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, has been a staff member at the Cliffwood Mental Health Center in Englewood, New Jersey for the past five years. He is also engaged in private practice in New York City.Jefferson M. Fish, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at St. John's University in New York City, where he served previously as Director of Clinical Psychology and as Chairperson of the Department of Psychology.This paper is based on the first author's Ph.D. dissertation in Clinical Psychology at St. John's University under the direction of the second author. Both authors wish to thank Jeffrey Nevid and John Hogan for their support and contributions as committee members, and Marc Garcia for his invaluable assistance with data analysis. Requests for reprints should be addressed to the second author, Department of Psychology, St. John's University, Jamaica, New York 11439. All other correspondence should be directed to the first author at the same address.     

Personality Types and Vocational Choice: A Test of Holland's Theory

In order to test the adequacy of Holland's theory of vocational choice with reference to a broad segment of entering college students, a sample of the freshman class entering the Pennsylvania State University evaluated themselves in terms of the six personality styles of Holland's theory. Relationships between the personality styles and vocational choices were studied for groups of Decided, Tentative, and Undecided students. While several inversions in the data are evident, the data possess sufficient consistency to indicate that the personality identifications these students made in Holland's frame of reference were related to their initial vocational choices.     

FUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION TRAINING WITH AND WITHOUT EXTINCTION AND PUNISHMENT

Functional communication training has been reported to be a promising treatment for severe behavior problems. In this study, functional communication training alone and combined with extinction and/or punishment was evaluated for 4 clients with severe retardation, behavior problems, and communication deficits. The participants were inpatients on a hospital unit for treatment of severe behavior disorders. They received individualized interventions based on functional assessment that included reinforcement of a communication response with the same function as their destructive behavior. Results showed that for some patients, functional communication training was not sufficient to produce clinically significant reductions in destructive behavior, and the combination of training plus punishment produced the largest and most consistent reductions.     

Dark adaptation of foveal cones during the cone-plateau period

Following substantial bleaching by "white" light, absolute threshold, relative spectral sensitivity and sensation of hue of monochromatic lights were measured at the central fovea during the cone-plateau period. The absolute-threshold level was found to increase and then decrease markedly, the relative spectral sensitivity remained invariant, while the sensation of hues of monochromatic lights from the long- and middle-wave regions of the spectrum changed toward hues of shorter wavelengths.     

Dual diagnosis: Clinical issues in the treatment of substance abuse,and affective,personality, and psychotic disorders

Co-morbidity of alcohol and substance with the spectrum of other psychiatric diagnoses is examined with specific emphasis on diagnostic indicators for anxiety and mood disorders. Diagnostic issues for the chemically dependent person are examined with the context of borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. Clinical research related to the dually-diagnosed patient is explored     

Conflict resolution and social understanding in six to twelve year old boys

Three different aspects of children's social competency were studied, i.e. social methods, (via their suggested solution to given conflict situations), social understanding (via their explanations of the solution given) and role-taking capacity. 75 boys—ages 6, 8 and 12 years—were interviewed concerning different conflict situations, six of which involved a child/child interaction and six a child/adult interaction. A separate role-taking task was also used. Developmental differences in social methods were found only in situations involving adults, where older children to a greater extent chose altruistic methods for solving the conflict. As regards social understanding, developmental changes were found and correspond to results reported by previous researchers. Role-taking capacity was found to increase with age. Role-taking as measured here was not related to social understanding. Social method and social understanding were significantly related to each other in some of the situations, mainly in those involving only children. The results indicate that different norms prevail for solving conflicts with adults versus with peers, and that the role-taking aspect is but one of several involved in the development of social understanding.     

Beauty Is Only "Name" Deep: The Effect of First-Name On Ratings of Physical Attraction

College students ( n = 197) voted to select a beauty queen from among six photographs equivalent in physical attractiveness, as determined by rankings of 35 students from a separate university. Half the photographs bore a desirable first-name and half were assigned an undesirable first-name. As predicted, firstname had a significant effect on physical attraction: Girls with desirable firstnames received 158 votes to 39 for those with undesirable names. These data were discussed in terms of an additive, rather than an interactive, effect, due to the nature of the task. The strength of these findings was related to the study's ecological validity.     

The computer psychiatrist: How far have we come? Where are we heading? How far dare we go?

The use of computers in psychiatry and psychology is reviewed. It is noted that computers are already being used successfully for consultation, interviewing, and continuing education. Issues related to the usage of computers in mental health are discussed. Guidelines for future work in the area are suggested.     

A systemic belief approach to epileptic seizures: A case of being spellbound

A systemic treatment approach, namely systemic belief therapy, has been found to be useful when dealing with families constraining beliefs when experiencing physical health problems. Two interventions which facilitate the altering of constraining beliefs are the externalization of physical symptoms and therapeutic letters. Epileptic seizures are examined in the context of the interaction between families and health care professionals. A case example is presented which highlights the use of this systemic approach to assist a young couple in challenging their beliefs about their ability to control and monitor epileptic seizures.     

Overt repetition as a means of controlling rehearsal

Abstract.— Three different ways of using the concept of rehearsal were discussed. Examples were presented showing confusions in the literature due to a failure to distinguish these three definitions. A free recall experiment was conducted with the purpose of investigating three problems relating to the concept of rehearsal: ( a ) an unclear relationship between overt and covert repetition, ( b ) whether overt repetition excluded other control processes, and (c) whether a shallow repetition produces a permanent memory trace or not. Using a pronounced time pressure it was demonstrated first that overt repetition facilitated recall performance of recency items and that recall of primacy items was facilitated by covert repetition. Secondly, it was shown that overt repetition did not exclude other types of encoding. Finally, a shallow maintaining repetition did not produce a permanent memory trace. The results are interpreted as supporting a level of processing point of view rather than a multistore approach.