Reduced chromatic discrimination in children with autism spectrum disorders

Atypical perception in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) is well documented ( Dakin & Frith, 2005 ). However, relatively little is known about colour perception in ASD. Less accurate performance on certain colour tasks has led some to argue that chromatic discrimination is reduced in ASD relative to typical development ( Franklin, Sowden, Burley, Notman & Alder, 2008 ). The current investigation assessed chromatic discrimination in children with high-functioning autism (HFA) and typically developing (TD) children matched on age and non-verbal cognitive ability, using the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test (Experiment 1) and a threshold discrimination task (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, more errors on the chromatic discrimination task were made by the HFA than the TD group. Comparison with test norms revealed that performance for the HFA group was at a similar level to typically developing children around 3 years younger. In Experiment 2, chromatic thresholds were elevated for the HFA group relative to the TD group. For both experiments, reduced chromatic discrimination in ASD was due to a general reduction in chromatic sensitivity rather than a specific difficulty with either red–green or blue–yellow subsystems of colour vision. The absence of group differences on control tasks ruled out an explanation in terms of general task ability rather than chromatic sensitivity. Theories to account for the reduction in chromatic discrimination in HFA are discussed, and findings are related to cortical models of perceptual processing in ASD.     

Heidegger,Dreyfus, and the Intelligibility of Practical Comportment

Most scholars agree that meaning and intelligibility are central to Heidegger’s account of Dasein and Being-in-the-world, but there is some confusion about the nature of this intelligibility. In his debate with McDowell, Dreyfus draws on phenomenologists like Heidegger to argue that there are two kinds of intelligibility: a basic, nonconceptual, practical intelligibility found in practical comportment and a conceptual, discursive intelligibility. I explore two possible ways that Dreyfus might ground this twofold account of intelligibility in Heidegger: first in the distinction between the hermeneutic and apophantic “as”, and second in the presence and absence of the as-structure. I argue that neither approach succeeds because practical intelligibility is always already discursive and discursive articulation is a condition of practical comportment.     

The Relationship of Recruiting Sources and Pre-Hire Outcomes: Examination of Yield Ratios and Applicant Quality

The study reported in this paper examined the relationship between 5 recruiting sources (college placement offices, newspaper advertisements, employee referrals, direct applicants, and job fairs) and several important but neglected pre-hire outcomes (e.g., percentage of qualified applicants generated, percentage of applicants who were hired). As hypothesized, applicants who applied directly for jobs and those who were referred by current employees were more likely to receive job offers and to become employees than were applicants recruited via other sources. Unexpectedly, recruiting sources were not related to the measures of applicant quality used in this study.     

The Relationship Between Religion and Happiness Among German Students

A sample of 331 students completed German editions of the Oxford Happiness Inventory and the Francis Scale of Attitude toward Christianity, together with the short form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. These data provide no evidence for a relationship between religiosity and happiness among German students, contrary to the conclusions of recent studies that have employed the same indices in the UK and in the USA.     

Imbalances in the knowledge about infancy: The divide between rich and poor countries

Over 90% of the world's infants are born in low‐income or “developing” countries, and these countries bear a disproportionate burden in terms of health and social problems. In this article we compare the contributions of richer and poorer countries to knowledge about infancy. We surveyed articles on infancy from 12 international journals dealing with psychological aspects of childhood and infancy and found that 94% of articles surveyed were written from Europe or North America. We suggest that the imbalance in knowledge about infancy is serious and that efforts must be made to increase collaborative research between poor and rich countries. ©2003 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.     

Female Juvenile Offenders: Defining an Early-Onset Pathway for Delinquency

We examined whether childhood factors predict age of first arrest in adolescent girls referred for placement and treatment for serious delinquency problems (N = 62). Measures included child characteristics (i.e., age of menstrual onset, childhood ADHD, and IQ), family environmental factors (i.e., severe punishment, parental transitions, and sexual abuse), biological parent criminality, and juvenile court records. Parental transitions and biological parent criminality significantly predicted the age of first arrest (M = 12.5 years), and IQ showed a trend to be a significant predictor. The final model accounted for 52% of the variance. A younger age of first arrest was related to increased health-risking sexual behaviors and to increased self-reported delinquency. Logistic regression analyses indicted that membership in an early-onset group could be reliably formed using family and child predictors, with accurate classifications for 46-90% of the girls. Family environmental and child characteristics played a strong role in predicting which girls would be arrested at an earlier age. The strong predictive utility of parental transitions and biological parent criminality, in particular, suggest two avenues for identifying girls at risk for delinquency problems.     

Religiosity, Personality, and Happiness: A Study among Israeli Male Undergraduates

A sample of 203 male Hebrew speaking undergraduate students completed the Hebrew translation of the Oxford Happiness Inventory together with the Katz–Francis Scale of Attitude toward Judaism and the short form of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The data demonstrate that Eysenck's dimensional model of personality provides significant prediction of individual differences in both attitude toward Judaism and happiness. After taking personality into account there is a small but statistically significant positive correlation between religiosity and happiness.     

Transformative Learning: A Case for Using Grounded Theory as an Assessment Analytic

Transformative Learning Theory and pedagogies leverage disruptive experiences as catalysts for learning and teaching. By facilitating processes of critical analysis and reflection that challenge assumptions, transformative learning reframes what counts as knowledge and the sources and processes for gaining and producing it. Students develop a broader range of perspectives on and entry points for learning and behavior change engaging cognition, embodiment, aesthetics, emotions, and ethics (see Mezirow 1991 and Figures 1 and 2). The open‐inquiry, multi‐modal nature of transformative learning defies most traditional assessment strategies. This article demonstrates that grounded theory offers the rigorous qualitative analysis needed to document and track transformative learning outcomes in practice. By applying a grounded theory approach to data from over eighty student portfolios across several iterations of a Religion and Ecology course at Emory University, this article demonstrates a successful and replicable assessment of transformative learning pedagogies.     

Linking clergy psychological type profile and church growth in the Diocese of Chester: a pilot study

Two recent studies (one in England and one in Australia) have linked church growth and church decline with the psychological type profile of church leaders. The present study, conducted within the Diocese of Chester, compares the psychological type profile of two groups of clergy who had served in the same parishes for five years or more: 29 leading declining churches and 19 leading growing churches. The data found a significantly higher preference for perceiving among those leading growing churches, although there were no significant differences in terms of the orientations, the perceiving process, or the judging process.