Synapses,Schizophrenia, and Civilization: What Made Homo Sapient?

Progress in technology has allowed dynamic research on the development of the human brain that has revolutionized concepts. Particularly, the notions of plasticity, neuronal selection, and the effects of afferent stimuli have entered into thinking about brain development. Here I focus on development from the age of four years to early adulthood, during which a 30 percent reduction in some brain synapses occurs that is out of proportion to changes in neuronal numbers. This corresponds temporally with changes in normal child behavior from the loose‐associative, almost schizoid, thinking and art of the four‐year‐old to the more trained, or disciplined, or acculturated—and restrained—personality of the young adult. I propose that the synaptic changes can best be thought of as a winnowing process likely subject to environmental influences. Acquisition of language and the ability to link linguistic cognition to the plastic development of the brain provide a potentially powerful means of explaining the evolutionally explosive development of human cognition and culture. Schizophrenia, a disease that can be envisioned as representing a derangement of synaptic maturation, may provide an entry into the search for genes controlling the processes mediating the unprecedented development of Homo sapiens over the past 40,000 to 70,000 years. The recently completed mapping of the genome of the chimpanzee provides a new frame of reference that may speed the search.     

A device for facilitating the computation of the first four moments about the mean

A mechanical device is described which materially reduces the time, labor, and probability of errors which are involved in the computation of certain moments about the mean. The use of the device is illustrated with the computation of the mean, standard deviation,g ₁ as a measure of skewness, andg ₂ as a measure of kurtosis of data from a given study.Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Holter Research Foundation of Helena, Montana for the grant-in-aid which made possible the development of this device.     

Forgiveness,Reconciliation, and Mechila: Integrating the Jewish Concept of Forgiveness Into Clinical Practice

The professional literature diverges in defining the role of forgiveness and reconciliation in counseling regarding how forgiveness and reconciliation are conceptualized from a professional and secular perspective. The Jewish conceptualization of forgiveness is multifaceted; mechila, the forgiveness of debt, is particularly important in providing a framework for forgiveness when the issue of reconciliation is involved. The authors offer an explanation of the Jewish conceptualization of forgiveness and discuss a way to infuse the concept of mechila into counseling practice on a broader level with all clients.     

The experiential loci and sensory qualities of various emotions

Sixty-nine university students were asked to describe the sensations and to identify the loci of those sensations for 34 emotions. The methods of reporting were introspection, retrospection, and recollection. There was no evidence that any method was consistently better than the others. Also, there was no evidence that the reports given were the result of social or linguistic convention rather than reports of actual sensory experience. Cochran's Q test showed that, within each emotion, the kinds of loci cited differed significantly, and that for all but one locus, the frequencies for the emotions differed significantly. Principal component analysis showed six locus factors clustered on stomach, face, head, heart, hands-heart, and eyes. Although not distinctive for all emotions, there were characteristic patterns of sensory loci and sensory qualities as shown by high frequencies of citation. It is suggested that these loci and qualities are one of several components of experienced emotion. The results are seen as supporting subjective or phenomenological studies of emotion, and are discussed with special reference to facial feedback theories of emotion.This research was supported, in part, by a grant from the President's Research Fund of Simon Fraser University.     

Age differences in target identification as a function of retinal location and noise level: examination of the useful field of view

Foveal and peripheral target detection were compared in young adults (M age = 22 years) and older adults (M age = 66 years) who were optically corrected for the viewing distance. In a two-alternative, forced-choice task, target letters were presented at 0 degree to 10.5 degrees from fixation. Targets were presented alone, flanked on each side by one noise element (i.e., nontarget letter), or embedded in a horizontal row of 19 noise elements. An Age X Noise Level X Location interaction was obtained, wherein age differences were largest for peripheral targets presented in noise. Slope analyses of latency data showed that the performance of young adults in the high-noise condition was most similar to that of older adults in the low-noise condition. At the functional level, results indicated that aging is associated with a restricted useful field of view. In addition, the data suggest that age differences in search can be described by a model in which older adults take smaller perceptual samples from the visual scene and scan these samples more slowly than do the young adults.