Number of books at home as an indicator of socioeconomic status: Examining its extensions and their incremental validity for academic achievement

Social Psychology of Education - The present study investigates the incremental validity of the traditional books-at-home measure and selected extensions (i.e., number of children’s books and...     

Success in the first phase of the vocational career: The role of cognitive and scholastic abilities,personality factors,and vocational interests

The present study examines the relationship of cognitive and scholastic abilities, vocational interests, and personality traits with vocational success in the first phase of the vocational career. Drawing on large samples of technicians and industrial clerks, the effects of the covariates on satisfaction and dropout intention in the first months of vocational education and training (VET) were examined. Results show that the sets of predictor variables, especially personality traits and vocational interests, had a large proportion of variance in common, but exhibited different patterns of effects. Whereas in the case of personality traits the predictor-outcome relationships were largely invariant across different fields of VET, vocational interests exhibited a non-invariant pattern of effects that was in line with the congruence hypothesis (Holland, 1997). Vocational interests in the dominant domain characterizing the field of VET were the strongest predictors, whereas interests in the non-dominant VET domains were less important for predicting success. Abilities did not turn out to be important predictors of the markers of success under study. The results underscore the crucial role of personality traits and vocational interests in securing success in the first phase of vocational career.     

Vocal group signatures in the goitred gazelle Gazella subgutturosa

The potential for vocal modification in mammals has recently been of great interest. This study focuses on the potential for vocal matching in juvenile and adolescent goitred gazelles Gazella subgutturosa that were group housed as part of an animal management programme. Two groups of animals (16 and 19 unrelated individuals, respectively) were recorded at two different ages, juvenile and adolescent, regarding 20–25 calls per individual per age; each group was evaluated in a separate year. Vocal similarity of group members compared to non-members was prominent in both ages, but higher in juveniles. Individual identity was prominent in both ages and higher in adolescents. The more prominent vocal indicators of group membership in juveniles could be related to their higher social dependence compared to adolescents. The more individualized calls of adolescents could be a mechanistic consequence of more stable growth at older age. Our results suggest vocal plasticity of goitred gazelles under social influences. These data add to recent evidence about domestic goat kids Capra hircus, suggesting that vocalizations of species that are not capable of imitation are more flexible than previously thought.     

Fifteen minute stories about training

This panel presentation at the Journal's conference in St Petersburg responded to the conference theme of 'Ancestors in Personal, Professional and Social History' by relating it to the experience of training and being trained on the IAAP 'router' programme in Russia. The two organizers of the programme (JW and CC) have worked in Russia for over 12 years, bringing analysts from Britain to Moscow and St Petersburg on a 'shuttle' basis as supervisors and personal analysts. A few months after handing over the router programme in December 2010 to the Russian colleagues they had trained, they invited four analysts, three Russian and one Belarusian, to tell a short personal story about their training, linking it to the theme of 'the Ancestors'. The resulting four stories are very different but complement each other, using imagery to illustrate issues concerning both value and ambivalence. JW and CC jointly wrote their story about the programme in response to the four stories, reflecting on some of their themes and from them, giving consideration to the flexibility and limits of such a model of cross-cultural training. Themes in the stories included the possibility of mutual adaptation to another culture without losing tradition and identity; moving on from doctrinaire Soviet attitudes in education to embrace 'not knowing'; both organizers and routers learning from mistakes and from joint experience without guilt or shame; the need to protect reflective space amidst the constraints of time and geography. All Russian and UK contributors could finally acknowledge their shared luck to find themselves in the right place at the right time to respond to the collective revival of psychoanalytic practice in Russia.