The Development and Validation of a Vocational Interest Survey Instrument With Audio-Visual Format

Problem. Many present day vocational interest surveys rely exclu­sively on printed reading materials to assess youngsters\u27 vocational interest . The use of printed reading materials alone may not best serve the youngsters who are unable to read or who learn best through a different kind of learning structure . There needs to be a variety of valid assessing techniques that explore the youngster\u27s vocational interest. These techniques should not raise side issues of academic skills, but provide a pure measure of interest . The purpose of this research was to develop and test an instrument using photographs as choice stimulants in place of a printed reading list of occupations. Method. Six hundred and thirteen subjects were chosen by a stratified random method from among a polled sample population of 799 persons. The 613 subjects were divided into three major re­search groups. The first group was the professional-worker group which consisted of 202 people who were employed in occupational classifications similar to one of the six classifications hypothesized by John Holland (1973). The second group was the secondary sample which consisted of 200 students whose vocational major was similar to one of the six Holland typologies, and third; the post secondary sample which included 211 members whose major two-year study was similar to one of the six Holland types. Each group was administered the Visual Imagery Selector for Indexing Occupational Needs (V .I.S .I.O .N .), an instrument especially designed for this study. The professional-worker sample was also administered the Vocational Preference Inventory (V.P.I .) to compare similarities between the two vocational surveys. The other two student samples were administered only the V .I.S .I.O .N . survey. The V .I .S .I .O .N . survey consists of 120 slides depicting two types of vocational work tasks as described by Holland. The individual taking the inventory selected one of the work tasks he/she performed from the slides and marked their response on an answer sheet especially designed for the study. The responses were tabulated for each participating sample and prepared for analysis. An analysis was used for all sample populations to determine if the expected frequency of responses were the same or differ­ent than the observed frequency of responses. Second, a factor analysis was performed for the professional-worker sample alone to determine if any similarities existed between the V .I.S .I.O .N . and the V .P .I. surveys. Results. People employed or going to school that were appropriately grouped under one o f the six occupational types purposed by Holland chose photographs of work tasks that were most nearly like their own work experience or school majors . A comparison between the V .I.S .I.O .N . occupational interest inventory and the V .P .I. occupational interest inventory showed a similarity between elements of two tests . That is , people who responded most often to one of the six major Holland types on the photographic occupational inventory also responded the same way on the printed occupational inventory . The answer sheet that was designed especially for the photographic inventory seemed to fulfill its expected role of response gathering and occupation informing for those people that were administering the survey. Conclusions. It is possible to assess occupational interest using photographs of people working in one of the six Holland occupational types. Information about work and work options can be described with a non-reading form at. More than half of the variance for both the analysis and the factor analysis for the three samples describe a strong relationship between the research variables and their concomitant parts . The advantages of such a format open the possibility of counselors for helping youngsters that either (1) do not have skills necessary to decipher printed descriptions of occupations or, (2) whose prime mode of learning is not reading. Since the test was used on a wide range of persons, it also holds the possibility for developmental study

Methylphenidate Decreased the Amount of Glucose Needed by the Brain to Perform a Cognitive Task

The use of stimulants (methylphenidate and amphetamine) as cognitive enhancers by the general public is increasing and is controversial. It is still unclear how they work or why they improve performance in some individuals but impair it in others. To test the hypothesis that stimulants enhance signal to noise ratio of neuronal activity and thereby reduce cerebral activity by increasing efficiency, we measured the effects of methylphenidate on brain glucose utilization in healthy adults. We measured brain glucose metabolism (using Positron Emission Tomography and 2-deoxy-2[18F]fluoro-D-glucose) in 23 healthy adults who were tested at baseline and while performing an accuracy-controlled cognitive task (numerical calculations) given with and without methylphenidate (20 mg, oral). Sixteen subjects underwent a fourth scan with methylphenidate but without cognitive stimulation. Compared to placebo methylphenidate significantly reduced the amount of glucose utilized by the brain when performing the cognitive task but methylphenidate did not affect brain metabolism when given without cognitive stimulation. Whole brain metabolism when the cognitive task was given with placebo increased 21% whereas with methylphenidate it increased 11% (50% less). This reflected both a decrease in magnitude of activation and in the regions activated by the task. Methylphenidate's reduction of the metabolic increases in regions from the default network (implicated in mind-wandering) was associated with improvement in performance only in subjects who activated these regions when the cognitive task was given with placebo. These results corroborate prior findings that stimulant medications reduced the magnitude of regional activation to a task and in addition document a “focusing” of the activation. This effect may be beneficial when neuronal resources are diverted (i.e., mind-wandering) or impaired (i.e., attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), but it could be detrimental when brain activity is already optimally focused. This would explain why methylphenidate has beneficial effects in some individuals and contexts and detrimental effects in others

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Divided Attention Selectively Impairs Value-Directed Encoding

In the present study, we examined the effect of value-directed encoding on recognition memory and how various divided attention tasks at encoding alter value-directed remembering. In the first experiment, participants encoded words that were assigned either high or low point values in multiple study-test phases. The points corresponded to the value the participants could earn by successfully recognizing the words in an upcoming recognition memory task. Importantly, participants were instructed that their goal was to maximize their score in this memory task. The second experiment was modified such that while studying the words participants simultaneously completed a divided attention task (either articulatory suppression or random number generation). The third experiment used a non-verbal tone detection divided attention task (easy or difficult versions). Subjective states of recollection (i.e., “Remember”) and familiarity (i.e., “Know”) were assessed at retrieval in all experiments. In Experiment 1, high value words were recognized more effectively than low value words, and this difference was primarily driven by increases in “Remember” responses with no difference in “Know” responses. In Experiment 2, the pattern of subjective judgment results from the articulatory suppression condition replicated Experiment 1. However, in the random number generation condition, the effect of value on recognition memory was lost. This same pattern of results was found in Experiment 3 which implemented a different variant of the divided attention task. Overall, these data suggest that executive processes are used when encoding valuable information and that value-directed improvements to memory are not merely the result of differential rehearsal