Critical Notice

N oll , R ichard . The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement.
N oll , R ichard . The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of Carl Jung.     

Concerning the psychophysical power law

It is fortunate that, despite our theorizings, most of our facts manage to stay stubbornly as they were. I am encouraged by that thought as it bears on a recent theoretical attempt by Treisman (1964) to do over the psychophysical law. I should like, more in explication than in rebuttal, to comment on three major points relating to the law in question.     

Brightness function: Binocular versus monocular stimulation

A dozen observers matched numbers to the apparent brightness of a target viewed by one eye or by both eyes. Brightness grew as a power function of luminance, and the functions were practically identical for the two modes of viewing. Throughout its course, the obtained binocular function tended to fall about a decibel above the monocular function. This small degree of binocular summation, of the order of a jnd, mayor may not be significant.     

What communication skills do employers want? silicon valley recruiters respond

The purpose of this study was to analyze the satisfaction levels of Silicon Valley employers with the communication skills of newly hired college graduates. Employers reported that oral and written communication skills needed improvement in several areas, including the use of vocabulary and self‐expression. College graduates' skills are not always adequate to perform the tasks required on the job. Employers said students needed stronger writing skills; more training on professional uses of e‐mail; and additional education regarding self‐expression, impression management, and avoidance of slang.     

Inattention/Overactivity Following Early Severe Institutional Deprivation: Presentation and Associations in Early Adolescence

The current study examined the persistence and phenotypic presentation of inattention/overactivity (I/O) into early adolescence, in a sample of institution reared (IR) children adopted from Romania before the age of 43 months. Total sample comprised 144 IR and 21 non-IR Romanian adoptees, and a comparison group of 52 within-UK adoptees, assessed at ages 6 and 11 years. I/O was rated using Rutter Scales completed by parents and teachers. I/O continued to be strongly associated with institutional deprivation, with continuities between ages 6 and 11 outcomes. There were higher rates of deprivation-related I/O in boys than girls, and I/O was strongly associated with conduct problems, disinhibited attachment and executive function but not IQ more generally, independently of gender. Deprivation-related I/O shares many common features with ADHD, despite its different etiology and putative developmental mechanisms. I/O is a persistent domain of impairment following early institutional deprivation of 6 months or more, suggesting there may be a possible pathway to impairment through some form of neuro-developmental programming during critical periods of early development.     

Do Theory of Mind and Executive Function Deficits Underlie the Adverse Outcomes Associated with Profound Early Deprivation?: Findings from the English and Romanian Adoptees Study

Theory of Mind (ToM) and Executive Function (EF) have been associated with autism and with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and hence might play a role in similar syndromes found following profound early institutional deprivation. In order to examine this possibility the current study included a group of 165 Romanian adoptees, of whom 144 were adopted into the UK from deprived institutional settings before 43months of age, and a group of 52 within-UK adoptees, all adopted before 6months of age. Both groups were assessed at 6 and 11years. The Strange Stories task was used to assess ToM and the Stroop task was used to assess EF, both at age 11. The Romanian adoptees displayed deficits in both ToM and EF compared with the within-UK adoptee group. The degree of deficit was greater for children who had experienced more than 6months of institutional deprivation. Deficits in both domains (ToM and EF) were associated with each of the three apparently deprivation-specific problems, namely quasi-autism, disinhibited attachment and inattention/overactivity. Statistical analyses indicated a mediating role for both ToM and EF with respect to quasi-autism; possibly a partial mediating role for EF with respect to inattention/overactivity; and probably no mediating role for either ToM or EF in the case of disinhibited attachment. In conclusion, there is evidence for a possible mediating role for ToM and EF in the development of some apparently deprivation-specific difficulties in institution-reared Romanian adoptees, but neither accounts for the overall pattern of deprivation-related difficulties.     

Differences in the neural mechanisms of selective attention in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds: an event‐related brain potential study

Previous research indicates that children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds show deficits in aspects of attention, including a reduced ability to filter irrelevant information and to suppress prepotent responses. However, less is known about the neural mechanisms of group differences in attention, which could reveal the stages of processing at which attention deficits arise. The present study examined this question using an event‐related brain potential (ERP) measure of selective auditory attention. Thirty‐two children aged from 3 to 8 years participated in the study. Children were cued to attend selectively to one of two simultaneously presented narrative stories. The stories differed in location (left/right speaker), narration voice (male/female), and content. ERPs were recorded to linguistic and non‐linguistic probe stimuli embedded in the attended and unattended stories. Children whose mothers had lower levels of educational attainment (no college experience) showed reduced effects of selective attention on neural processing relative to children whose mothers had higher levels of educational attainment (at least some college). These differences occurred by 100 milliseconds after probe onset. Furthermore, the differences were related specifically to a reduced ability to filter irrelevant information (i.e. to suppress the response to sounds in the unattended channel) among children whose mothers had lower levels of education. These data provide direct evidence for differences in the earliest stages of processing within neural systems mediating selective attention in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Results are discussed in the context of intervention programs aimed at improving attention and self‐regulation abilities in children at‐risk for school failure.     

When quantity trumps number: discrimination experiments in cotton-top tamarins (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Saguinus oedipus</Emphasis>) and common marmosets (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Callithrix jacchus</Emphasis>)

The capacity for non-linguistic, numerical discrimination has been well characterized in non-human animals, with recent studies providing careful controls for non-numerical confounds such as continuous extent, density, and quantity. More poorly understood are the conditions under which animals use numerical versus non-numerical quantification, and the nature of the relation between these two systems. Here we test whether cotton-top tamarins and common marmosets can discriminate between two quantities on the basis of the amount of food rather than on number. In three experiments, we show that when choosing between arrays containing different numbers and sizes of food objects, both species based their decisions on the amount of food with only minor influences of numerical information. Further, we find that subjects successfully discriminated between two quantities differing by a 2:3 or greater ratio, which is consistent with the ratio limits found for numerical discrimination with this species. These studies demonstrate that non-human primates possess mechanisms that enable quantification of total amount, in addition to the numerical representations demonstrated in previous studies, with both types of quantification subject to similar processing limits.