Desired safety practices were behaviorally defined for four sections of a city's vehicle maintenance division (N = 55). A total of 165 observations were conducted over 45 weeks. A multiple-baseline design with a reversal component was used in which five conditions were introduced: (a) baseline, (b) Training Only 1 (desired practices were discussed, illustrated, and posted), (c) Training and Feedback 1 (supervisors observed daily and provided feedback about the section safety level on graphs), (d) Training Only 2, and (e) Training and Feedback 2. Whereas employees showed only slight improvements during the Training Only 1 phase, their performance increased substantially during the Training and Feedback 1 phase.At this point, it was concluded that the provision of training alone is not a sufficient means of improving and maintaining performance. This conclusion was confirmed during the Training Only 2 phase when performance declined. Performance improved once again during the Training and Feedback 2 phase, but only when feedback was provided at least three times a week. This qualification raises significant questions with regard to sustaining performance gains and supervisory support.

Undocumented clinical reports have suggested that, among women in psychotherapy, women who have been sexually abused manifest an increased prevalence of eating disorders. The relationship between these two phenomena was investigated in a sample of women (N = 87) who were receiving group psychotherapy. Individual interviews were used to document the presence of a sexual abuse history. Diagnoses of anorexia nervosa and bulimia were based on DSM‐III criteria. Rates of abnormal eating patterns in the absence of a fully diagnosable syndrome were also assessed. The following rates of eating disturbance were found in the total sample: 21% bulimic, 1% anorexic, and 82% with at least moderately abnormal eating patterns. Comparisons of women with and without histories of sexual abuse suggested no association between the occurrence of eating disturbance and a history of sexual abuse. The frequent cooccurrence of these two phenomena in female therapy clients may be sufficiently explained by their high base rates in this population but may have led clinicians to perceive a relationship where none exists.

Three experiments, involving 8, 10, and 10 naive participants, respectively, were conducted to examine the phenomenon in which the peripheral member of a parafoveally appearing stimulus pair is more accurately identified than the central. In the first experiment, the asymmetry was observed with stimulus pairs which had but one distinguishing feature; this could have implications for the notion that feature perturbations between stimuli provide the basis for the effect. The second experiment eliminated an explanation based upon acuity at the position of the midpoint of the stimulus configuration, since the asymmetry remains when this position is held constant. The involvement of response or decision factors seems unlikely, since the third experiment found the effect with blocked presentations involving responses to only one member of the pair. It is concluded that accounts which appeal to difficulties in separating stimuli from the overall pair configuration fail to explain more accurate identification of the peripheral stimulus when the pair is positioned at a constant distance from fixation.

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