Book Review

C. G. Jung : Psychological reflections Frances Smart : Neurosis and crime Gérard Borg : Le voyage à la drogue Karl Menninger : Number words and number symbols: a cultural history of numbers Alvin R. Mahrer . (Ed.) New approaches to personality classification Curatorium C. G. Jung Institute (Eds.) Conscience Joachim Fleschner : Childhood and destiny: the triadic principle in genetic education Kenneth Koch : Wishes, lies and dreams Joe Kovel : White racism: a psychohistory Isca Salzberger -Wittenberg : Psycho-analytic insight and relationships: Kleinian approach Robert C. Carson : Interaction concepts of personality     

Critical Notice

M arie -L ouise von F ranz (Ed., with commentary). Translated by R. F. C. Hull and A. S. B. Glover. Aurora consurgens     

Behavioral objectives in training for competence in the administration of individual intelligence tests

Competency standards are important to school psychology training, and this study demonstrates, in the area of individual intelligence test administration, how competency standards can be implemented. The study sets up behavioral objectives, determines what training is required for specified levels of mastery, and shows what specific training procedures contribute to the achievement of competency.     

Pausing phenomena: Influence on the quality of instruction

This report summarizes work of 7 years on the influence of a variable called “wait-time” on the development of language and logic of children taking part in elementary science programs. Analysis of over 300 classroom tape recordings showed mean pauses to be on the order of 1 sec; that is, after a teacher asked a question, students had to begin a response within an average time of 1 sec. If they did not, the teacher typically repeated, rephrased or asked a different question, or called on others. A second wait-time is involved: when a student makes a response, the teacher normally reacts or asks another question within an average time of 0.9 sec. This study investigates the consequences of manipulating both species of wait-time. When mean wait-time of 3–5 sec is achieved through training, analysis of more than 900 tapes shows changed values on eight student variables: (1) the length of response (number of words) increases, (2) the number of unsolicited but appropriate responses increases, (3) failures to respond decrease, (4) incidence of speculative responses increases, (5) incidence of student-student comparisons of data increases, (6) incidence of evidence-inference statements increases, (7) frequency of student-initiated questions increases, and (8) the variety in type of verbal moves made by students increases. Servochart plots of recordings show that students discussing science phenomena tend to speak in bursts, with intervals of as much as 3–5 sec between bursts being fairly common provided they are not interrupted. The average post-student-response wait-time of 0.9 sec apparently intervenes between bursts to prevent completion of a thought. The classroom is conceptualized as a two-player game in which the quality of inquiry will tend to improve when there is a better equity in the distribution of moves between the players. The teacher is treated as one player and the collection of students as the second player. Changes in wait-time shift the game toward a more equitable state. Over time, a classroom or instructional group on the prolonged wait-time schedule undergoes certain spontaneous changes. Two teacher variables change: (1) response flexibility scores increase, and (2) teacher questioning patterns becomes more variable. There is some indication that teacher expectations for performance of students rated as relatively slow improves.     

Stereotype activation is unintentional: Behavioural and event‐related potenials evidence

In this study, a priming Stroop paradigm was used to determine whether stereotype activation is unintentional. Priming conditions (priming/no‐priming) and the relationship between priming and target (consistent/inconsistent/no‐relation) were the independent variables; accuracy, reaction time and N400 amplitude were used as dependent variables. The reaction time revealed that stereotype activation is, to some extent, unintentional. Furthermore, the event‐related potenial (ERP) results showed that N400 amplitude was larger for inconsistent conditions than for consistent conditions. This result supported the notion that stereotype activation is an unintentional and automatic process.     

Riding the waves: A functional‐cognitive perspective on the relations among behaviour therapy,cognitive behaviour therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy

Different types of therapy explain psychopathology and the effects of psychotherapy differently. Different explanations are, however, not necessarily mutually exclusive. Based on the idea that functional and cognitive explanations are situated at different levels, we argue that functional therapies such as traditional Behaviour Therapy (BT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are not necessarily incompatible with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). Whether a functional and a cognitive therapy actually align depends on whether they highlight the same type of environmental causes. This functional‐cognitive perspective reveals various differences and communalities among BT, CBT and ACT.     

Time-Varying Treatments in Observational Studies: Marginal Structural Models of the Effects of Early Grade Retention on Math Achievement

One of the main objectives of many empirical studies in the social and behavioral sciences is to assess the causal effect of a treatment or intervention on the occurrence of a certain event. The randomized controlled trial is generally considered the gold standard to evaluate such causal effects. However, for ethical or practical reasons, social scientists are often bound to the use of nonexperimental, observational designs. When the treatment and control group are different with regard to variables that are related to the outcome, this may induce the problem of confounding. A variety of statistical techniques, such as regression, matching, and subclassification, is now available and routinely used to adjust for confounding due to measured variables. However, these techniques are not appropriate for dealing with time-varying confounding, which arises in situations where the treatment or intervention can be received at multiple timepoints. In this article, we explain the use of marginal structural models and inverse probability weighting to control for time-varying confounding in observational studies. We illustrate the approach with an empirical example of grade retention effects on mathematics development throughout primary school.