Parents' estimations of their own intelligence and that of their children: a comparison between English and Icelandic parents

In this study, 158 parents (79 fathers and 79 mothers) with a mean age of 38.3 yrs (SD = 8.2), estimated their own, and their children's, overall intelligence as well as their children's score on the 12 intelligence scales from the Wechsler's Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-III). The sample included English (n = 122) and Icelandic parents (n = 36), and a comparison between them showed few differences except that Icelandic parents' estimates were lower than English parents' estimates. The results showed fathers estimated their own overall intelligence higher than mothers estimated theirs and sons were estimated higher than daughters on overall intelligence. Two factors (verbal, performance) of intelligence were identified through factor analysis of the ratings of the 12 WISC subscale score estimates. A hierarchical regression showed that these two factors explained most of the variance in the estimation of the child's overall intelligence; however, gender of child and parents' self-estimated own overall intelligence added incremental variance.     

Development of organization in recall: A stages-of-learning analysis

An experiment is reported in which the effects of taxonomic organization on 7-year-old and 11-year-old children's free and cued recall of two- and four-category lists were examined. The data were analyzed using a stages-of-learning model that simultaneously delivers estimates of the impact of these manipulations on storage and retrieval components of recall. The results indicated that for the Grade 2 children providing a category label at the time of recall primarily enhanced storage whereas increasing the number of categories primarily enhanced retrieval. For Grade 6 children, on the other hand, the use of category labels to cue recall primarily enhanced retrieval, whereas increasing the number of categories affected both storage and retrieval in free recall, but only retrieval in cued recall. In addition, while older children were superior to younger children at both storing and retrieving information, age differences at retrieval were generally larger than those at storage.     

英国心理学会介绍

英国心理学会成立于1901年,有较长的历史;现有会员4万4千多人,在英国心理学研究和应用方面发挥了重要的领导和协调作用。该文介绍了英国心理学会的组织结构及它在2006年的活动情况。     

Training the brain: fact and fad in cognitive and behavioral remediation

Putatively safe and effective for improving cognitive performance in both health and disease, products purported to train the brain appeal to consumers and healthcare practitioners. In an increasingly health-centered society, these applications constitute a burgeoning commercial market. Sparse evidence coupled with lack of scientific rigor, however, leaves claims concerning the impact and duration of such brain training largely unsubstantiated. On the other hand, at least some scientific findings seem to support the effectiveness and sustainability of training for higher brain functions such as attention and working memory. In the present paper we provide a tectonic integration and synthesis of cognitive training approaches. Specifically, we sketch the relative merits and shortcomings of these programs, which often appeal to parents who must choose between side-effect-laden medication and other less conventional options. Here we examine how neuroplasticity allows the healthy as well the impaired to benefit from cognitive training programs. We evaluate the evidence and consider whether brain training can be a stand-alone treatment or an adjunct to pharmacotherapy, outline promising future prospects, and highlight what training outcomes are plausible in line with available data. Future research would determine whether the field of brain training realizes its potential to revolutionize education and rehabilitation or withers away engulfed in controversy.     

The Cross versus the Crescent: Karl Kumm’s Missiology

ABSTRACT

This article surveys the missiology promoted in the writings of the Protestant missionary Karl Kumm during the first decades of the twentieth century. Kumm was famous as a missionary explorer. He was the first European to successfully cross the region known as the Sudan, from the Niger bend to the Nile. He was also notable because he founded two different missions in two different places in Africa, both aimed at evangelizing the peoples of the Sudan. Lastly, Kumm was significant for having constructed in his various writings a highly influential case against the evangelization of Muslims and for the evangelization of traditionalist people. Kumm, his ideas and actions helped shape government policy towards Christian missions and Christian–Muslim relations in colonial Northern Nigeria.     

Analytic philosophy, 1925–69: emergence,management and nature

ABSTRACT

This paper shows that during the first half of the 1960s The Journal of Philosophy quickly moved from publishing work in diverse philosophical traditions to, essentially, only publishing analytic philosophy. Further, the changes at the journal are shown, with the help of previous work on the journals Mind and The Philosophical Review, to be part of a pattern involving generalist philosophy journals in Britain and America during the period 1925–69. The pattern is one in which journals controlled by analytic philosophers systematically promote a form of critical philosophy and marginalize rival approaches to philosophy. This pattern, it is argued, helps to explain the growing dominance of analytic philosophy during the twentieth century and allows characterizing this form of philosophy as, at least during 1925–69, a sectarian form of critical philosophy.