Training Transfer: A Suggested Course of Action for Local Authorities to Leverage Performance

Maximization of training influence on individual performance through changes in employee knowledge, skills, and abilities is a paramount concern of organizations. However, training without implementation in a work setting cannot achieve its goals. In this article, the author maps the primary factors that influence transfer of what is learned in training to work settings and provides some evidence‐based recommendations and implications for improved performance.     

Autoionization in atomic and molecular physics

The important role of ionized atoms and molecules in many aspects of physical and chemical phenomena is being increasingly recognized. Typical research areas are astrophysics and interstellar molecular syntheses; plasma physics and fusion research; aeronomy and effects of ultraviolet irradiation on high atmosphere constituents; ion-molecule reactions; mass spectrometry; fundamental research on structural problems; behaviour of excited species; quantum theory of molecular structure and chemical kinetics. This paper emphasises the role of the autoionization process and discusses some of its characteristics, as well as the experimental methods used for its study.     

Reflections on teaching and learning

Ditor's Note: Jacques Barzun, one of the eminent scholars of our time, examines the current state of American education in a new book appearing this spring:Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (The University of Chicago Press). This collection of fifteen newly edited and introduced essays covers a wide range of subjects. What follows are the introductions to three essays that he felt would be of particular interest to our readers. We thank Prof. Barzun and The University of Chicago Press for their interest in having these pieces appear in our pages.     

The Relationship between Parenting Types and Older Adolescents' Personality, Academic Achievement, Adjustment, and Substance Use

The purpose of the present study was to examine Baumrind's T3 conceptual framework using a multiple informant design and an older adolescent population. With 178 college students and their families as participants, the present study found many of the predicted relations between parents' child-rearing style (Authoritative, Democratic, Nondirective, Nonauthoritarian-Directive, Authoritarian-Directive, and Unengaged) and their adolescent children's behavior in the 4 domains assessed: personality, adjustment, academic achievement, and substance use. The differences between parenting types on the criterion measures were not as large as reported in Baumrind's study, and significant effects were predominantly due to the poor scores from children with Unengaged and Authoritarian-Directive parents. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the Authoritative parenting type, the utility of using a typology, and areas for future research.     

Integrating control generated by positive and negative reinforcement on an operant baseline: Appetitive-aversive interactions

The interaction of opposing motivational states was measured within a design in which rats barpressed for food in one stimulus and to avoid shock in another. Tone and light discriminative stimuli (Sds) were counterbalanced over incentive conditions. Extinction eliminated responding when neither Sd was present. To minimize the influence of competing peripheral operants or reinforcer-elicited behaviors during appetitive-aversive interactions, contingency parameters were manipulated to generate similar rates and patterns of barpressing in both Sds and stimulus-compounding tests were administered in extinction. On these tests, rates in tone, light, and tone plus light (T+L) were equivalent. In contrast, when the same reinforcer (i.e., food or shock avoidance) maintained comparable training rates in tone and in light, in testing, T+L controlled double the rates of the single stimuli—strong additive summation. These results were strikingly similar to those of single-incentive experiments concerned with the contribution of excitatory and inhibitory incentive states to the results of stimulus compounding. Simultaneously presenting two Sds whose implicit stimulus-reinforcer (S-S^r) contingencies were arranged to make them, respectively, conditioned appetitive and aversive exciters (present experiment) produced test results comparable to those of two Sds whose implicit S-S^r contingencies were arranged to make them both conditioned inhibitors. Reciprocal antagonism between these two motive states more than neutralizes them. It appears to produce a negative (i.e., an inhibitory) motive state.