Critical Letter Research Articles

How to write a critical letter and respond to one.

Critical letters are important. They correct the published record. To write a critical letter requires tact; to respond to one requires tact--and the humility that comes with the realisation that belief in an observation or an idea does not make it true.

The place of personal writing in a PhD thesis: Epistemological and methodological considerations

This paper reports on a particular approach to doing a doctorate in which the first author has used personal writing to increase the relevance, autonomy and quality of her learning and to allow her to present her study, her personal reactions to the study, and the experiences that have led her to the study in one thesis. The personal writing consisted of reflective and critical journal and letter writing through which Mary dealt with the affective, social, and moral factors she believed to be an integral part of deep learning in a social science. The paper describes how, as well as having consequences for her research on improving autonomy, motivation and learning in Year 8 science students, this has led her to present her PhD thesis on two levels: science education and narrative.

The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen, Volume II translated by Joseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman

BOOK REVIEWS609 dents seeking a broader overview would be better directed toward other works, such as Reilly's earlier Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain (1992). Nevertheless, the entire trilogy, and this final volume in particular, is a remarkable achievement that provides a solid foundation for our understanding of this era of medieval Spanish history. James William Brodman University ofCentralArkansas The Letters ofHildegard ofBingen,Volume II. Translated byJoseph L. Baird and Radd K. Ehrman. (New York: Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. xv, 215. $45.00.) The appearance of the second volume of translations of Hildegard's letters, almost four years after the first (see ante, LXXXII [July 1996], 542-543), is an event to be welcomed. It makes accessible, in readable and accurate translations , another tranche of Hildegard's correspondence. This volume includes letters to and from members of religious orders whose location can be established, starting with correspondents from Ellwangen and finishing, at letter 217, with Trier. The arrangement follows the order of Van Acker's critical edition, though for some reason the letters translated here do not reflect the total number of letters in his Volume II, which continues through to letter 250 from Zwiefalten. However, it does include Hildegard's very important correspondence with her last secretary, Guibert of Gembloux, in which she answers his questions about her visionary gift and method of writing. Also included is her correspondence with Abbot Ludwig of St. Eucharius, another helper of her latter years with whom she seems to have had a close relationship, and exchanges with her visionary protégée, the nun Elisabeth of Schönau. Most of the letters come from men and women who are otherwise unidentified , though sometimes named (and sometimes not even named, though their location is specified, this being the criterion for inclusion). Here the editors might have provided more help for the reader. There is no consistent attempt to identify the senders or even the orders to which they belonged. In this connection their titles—whether abbot or provost, or less usually, provisor—might have been used to distinguish between personnel from Benedictine or Cistercian houses and those of the newer orders of canons. This distinction was not absolute, however, since the Richard described as "Abbot of Springiersbach" Oetter 207) was actually head of a house of Augustinian canons. He was also— a fact not mentioned here—the brother of Tengswich of Andernach, whose critical letter to Hildegard (no. 52) was featured in the first volume. It would have been useful for the reader to have had the opportunity to compare their letters in the light of this relationship. Given the lack of identification of Hildegard 's correspondents, inevitable in some cases, but apparently due to an editorial decision in others, the provision of a map would have indicated at least 610BOOK reviews their geographical distribution and helped to identify some of the more obscure places from which they wrote. Finally, a comparison of the first and second volumes reveals a sad deterioration in the production values of Oxford University Press (NewYork). Not only is the paper of the present volume noticeably coarser,but in several places the text threatens to disappear off the bottom of the page. Despite this, the book costs a good deal more than the first volume. It is to be hoped that this trend may be reversed for the two further projected volumes of this most important work. Sabina Flanagan University ofMelbourne, Australia Vioice ofthe Living Light: Hildegard ofBingen and her World. Edited by Barbara Newman. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1998. Pp. Lx, 278. $48.00 clothbound; $1995 paperback.) As Barbara Newman outlines in her introduction to Voice ofthe Living Light, the aim of this collection is to "set Hildegard in context" without diminishing her exceptionality. The contributors to this volume are respected scholars in their fields, who each examine a facet of Hildegard's life and activity—from abbess and reformer to medical writer and composer. They explore the breadth and scope of her diverse interests and personal creativity against the social, religious , intellectual, and political backdrop of twelfth-century culture and society . This approach locates Hildegard within the traditions she inherited, while at the...

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE SLAMMED

Its very existence tends to give legitimacy to some very strange stuff, says Robert L. Park about the National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM). Park, a University of Maryland, College Park, physicist, and other prominent scientists also argue in letters to Rep. John E. Porter (R- 111.) that OAM is sullying the good name of NIH and OAM's funding ought to be drastically cut or eliminated entirely. Their critical letters hit Porter's desk just before his appropriations subcommittee was to take up NIH's funding for fiscal 1998. The scientists contend that Porter is sympathetic to their concerns. And the congressman's press secretary, David Kohn, confirms this, telling C&EN that Porter takes their concerns very seriously and is looking into the issue. OAM was created in 1992, the result of the legerdemain of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who believes his allergies were cured by an unconventional medical treatment. Beginning with a $2 million ...

Primer of Scientific Management by Frank B. Gilbreth: A response to publication of Taylor’s Principles in The American Magazine

Response to the serialized publication of Frederick W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management (1911) in The American Magazine was in two forms: (a) letters‐to‐the‐editor praising and seeking further information, which became the foundation for Frank B. Gilbreth’s Primer of Scientific Management (1912); and (b) highly critical letters, which did not materialize in print but are preserved in the Taylor Collection of Stevens Institute of Technology. This paper describes Gilbreth’s “primer” and documents the origins of this seminal book in management history. Further, it gives highlights of several letters‐to‐the‐editor not mentioned in the primer which show that Taylor was selective about the questions addressed in order to control his image and promote his cause. The letters demonstrate that Upton Sinclair was only one of many who questioned the value of scientific management immediately following its introduction to the public in The American Magazine. These letters reflect the transitional time for labor that existed in the early 1900s which provided the environment in which scientific management was conceived.

Should intellectual property be disseminated by "forwarding" rejected letters without permission?

Substantive scientific letter writing is a cost-effective mode of complementing observational and experimental research. The value of such philosophically uncommitted and unsponsored well-balanced scientific activity has been relegated. Critical letter writing entails the abilities to: maintain rational scepticism; refuse to conform in order to explain data; persist in keeping common sense centre-stage; exercise logic to evaluate the biological significance of mathematical figures, including statistics, and the ability to sustain the will to share insights regarding disease mechanisms on an ostensibly lower research platform. During peer review, innovative letter writing may share the occasionally unfortunate fate of innovative research. Rejected scientific letters do not automatically lose copyright. Periodicals with high letter loads will see some valuable contributions wasted, but that is the price for maintaining autonomy in scientific publication. The scientific community is an integrated whole that must respect the rights of authors at all levels. Unauthorised forwarding of rejected letters sets the dangerous precedent of justifying unjust means.

Lexical control of within-word eye movements.

Eye movements were recorded during the reading of long words, which were presented in isolation at their optimal viewing position. Refixations were found to be preferentially directed toward the region of the word that contained the critical letters for distinguishing it from its competitors. In Experiments 1 and 2, low-frequency stimulus words sharing all letters except the initial ones with a high-frequency stimulus word (critical letters at the beginning of the word) elicited more left refixations than low-frequency stimulus words sharing all letters except the final ones with a high-frequency stimulus word (critical letters at the end of the word). A similar result was found in Experiments 3 and 4, using an orthographic priming paradigm. These results suggest that refixations are linked to the selection stage of lexical access, aimed at isolating a single lexical entry among a set of candidates activated during the first fixation.

Your Right/Write to Appeal

Who among us hasn’t written a letter of complaint or criticism? The letter may have been about poor repair service on a car or home appliance or about surly treatment at a restaurant or hotel. It may have been about poor value, that is, believing you paid too much for a service or product. Or it may have been a protest for the apparent mishandling of an application for a job, a scholarship, or a mortgage. The possibilities are endless.

Neurobehavioural changes in workshop painters of a public transport network.

To determine alterations in functional capacities due to exposure to solvents in painters, a battery of psychological tests consisting of associative recall, critical flicker fusion, letter cancellation, Muller-Lyer illusion and card sorting was administered before their work day schedule starting at 0800 h, 16 h after cessation of their work the previous day. Simultaneously a reference group of diesel worker and a control group were also tested at the same time of day. Age-adjusted performance scores were calculated for the painter group and diesel worker group based on the linear age trend of the control group. Analysis of variance suggested significant degradation in performance on tests of critical flicker fusion (alternate), letter cancellation, Muller-Lyer illusion and card sorting (by design configuration). Persistence of solvent exposure effects through visual and motor function impairments is reflected.

In reply

Dr. Breuer's points are well taken. It probably will not surprise Dr. Breuer to learn that several points raised in her letter regarding the article by Morley and Kraenzle were also raised by the external reviewers, who had mixed opinions about whether this article should be published. As Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, I decided to publish the article for one simple reason. In the original editorial, which the editorial group wrote when we assumed responsibility for the Journal in March, it was stated that creative speculation would receive a relatively high priority with regard to possible publication; therefore, I decided to publish this particular article. Dr. Breuer points out that it is the editor's responsibility to assure that articles published in the Journal have conclusions that are supported by the design of the study. I agree with this in part. Yes, indeed, this is the editor's responsibility; it is also, however, the responsibility of readers to respond to speculative articles in a critical fashion. Perfect data are often not available on important topics; however, critical discourse, in terms of letters to the editor, can dramatically increase or decrease the value of information reported in the Journal. Dr. Breuer is to be commended for her excellent letter, and other readers are encouraged to respond to articles with either critical or complimentary letters. A published submission is not the last stage in scientific discourse. The reaction to the publication and its subsequent dissemination and utilization must be accompanied by judicious critique as well.

The Role of Phonology in Young Children Learning to Read Words: The Direct-Mapping Hypothesis

We present three experiments concerned with the processes used by 5-year-old children in learning to read words. In the first two experiments, based on a technique introduced by Ehri and Wilce (1985), children learned to associate printed three- or four-letter abbreviations, or cues, with spoken words (e.g., bzn for the word basin). All but one of the letters in the cue corresponded to phonemes in the spoken word. The single exceptional letter in the cue corresponded to a phoneme that was articulated similarly (Phonetic cues, e.g., z rather than s in bzn) or dissimilarly (Control cues, e.g., f rather than s in bfn) to one in the word. These critical letters were positioned either at the beginning or in the middle of the cues. Children found the phonetic cues easier to learn than the control cues when the critical letter was in the middle or at the beginning of the word. In a third experiment children learned to read words with a relatively direct correspondence between their letters and sounds more easily than words with less obvious letter-sound correspondences. It is argued that from a very early stage in learning to read, children are sensitive to the relationships between the phonological and written forms of words.

Representation of letter position in visual word recognition process

Two experiments investigated the representation of letter position in visual word recognition process. In Experiment 1, subjects (12 undergraduates and graduates) were asked to detect a target word in a briefly-presented probe. Probes consisted of two kanji words. The latters which formed targets (critical letters) were always contained in probes. (e.g. target: [symbol: see text] probe: [symbol: see text]) High false alarm rate was observed when critical letters occupied the same within-word relative position (left or right within the word) in the probe words as in the target word. In Experiment 2 (subject were ten undergraduates and graduates), spaces adjacent to probe words were replaced by randomly chosen hiragana letters (e.g. [symbol: see text]), because spaces are not used to separate words in regular Japanese sentences. In addition to the effect of within-word relative position as in Experiment 1, the effect of between-word relative position (left or right across the probe words) was observed. These results suggest that information about within-word relative position of a letter is used in word recognition process. The effect of within-word relative position was explained by a connectionist model of word recognition.

The control of visual attention using multiple target features

An experiment was conducted to determine how visual attention is allocated in response to pairwise combinations of location, color, and size cues. Subjects viewed displays of eight letters arranged into an ‘X’ pattern emanating from a central fixation point. The letters varied on the dimensions of location (foveal or parafoveal positions), size (large or small), and color (red or blue). Seven of the letters were ‘X’s and the remaining, critical letter was either an ‘R’ or an ‘L’. Subjects were given advance cues about characteristics of the critical letter on two of the three dimensions (location, size, and color). The cues varied in their validity such that on any trial either both dimensions were validly cued, one dimension was validly cued while the other was invalidly cued, or both cues were invalid. Subjects were instructed to try to use the cues to find the critical letter, and response times to identify it as an ‘R’ or an ‘L’ served as the main dependent measure. Two models were evaluated against the data; in one, location cues are viewed as having distinct effects on an early stage of attention whereas color and size cues operate only in a later, selection stage. In the other model, all cues are used in a similar way to select display items for serial, focal attention. In general, the serial processing model provides a more complete account of the data.

Intrusion and location errors in the naming of letters in words and non-words.

In two experiments subjects were asked to report the identity of a position-cued critical letter in a linear array of letters. The identification errors made were classified either as “intrusion” (i.e., a report of a letter not in the array), or as “location” (i.e., a report of a noncritical or context letter from the array), and the arrays used were either unpronounceable non-words or words. In the first experiment all stimuli were four letters long and were presented in two parts: a leading array in which the information from two quadrants of a vertical by horizontal division of each letter was presented, and, after intervals of 40 and 160 ms, a trailing array of the complementary letter parts. The cue for the critical letter appeared either 80 ms before the initiation of the leading array or 320 ms after. The results showed a word advantage in all conditions, and an analysis of mislocations as proportions of total errors did not show that they differed significantly for non-words and for words. In the second experiment the stimuli were eight letters long and they were presented intact, followed after 140 ms by a patterned mask. The critical letter was again pre- and post-cued, and arrays subtended either 1.6° or 5° of visual angle. The results again showed a general word advantage and no difference in the proportions of mislocations for non-words and words. The results of both studies failed to provide support for the notion that the non-words probably required more attention than the words, and since this differential-attention hypothesis questioned the equality of encoding assumption of the Interactive Activation model of word perception, its rejection supported the latter proposition. It was concluded, therefore, that the encoding of the strings of letters in these studies was independent of their linguistic properties.

The use of intra-word contextual constraint in letter identification

Abstract In this experiment subjects were asked to report the identity of a position-cued critical letter in a linear array of four letters. There were tour types of arrays used: (a) unpronounceable non-words; (b) pronounceable non-words; (c) words in which the critical letter was minimally constrained by the context letters; and (d) words in which the critical letter was maximally constrained by the context letters. A different group of subjects was assigned to each of these array conditions. All four-letter stimuli were presented in two parts: A leading array in which the information from two quadrants of a vertical by horizontal division of each letter was presented, and, after intervals of 120 and 160 msec, a trailing array of the complementary letter parts. However, the most important manipulation in the study was the presence or absence of the critical letter. On a random half of the experimental trials the cue specified an empty location and the subject was forced to “guess” the identity of the mis...

When redundancy hurts letter detection: an attempt to define one condition.

The issue examined in this study concerns why some experiments have demonstrated that it takes longer to detect the initial letter of a redundant array such as BBBBB than it does to detect a single letter presented in isolation (i.e., the single-letter advantage; Johnson, 1977, 1981, 1986b), whereas other studies have shown no difference in the latency of letter detection under those two conditions (e.g., Krueger &Shapiro, 1980). The present study involved five experiments that not only ruled out several alternative explanations, but also demonstrated that if the predisplay fixation field provided a clear point the subjects could use as a basis for prefocusing their attention to a narrow spatial extent that included only the location of the up-coming critical letter, there was no single-letter advantage, but that the advantage did occur if such prefocusing were not possible. Consistent with Johnston and McClelland’s (1980) model, the results are interpreted as suggesting that what has been taken as evidence of holistic encoding of small visual patterns (e.g., words) also might be interpreted as reflecting the order in which attention is deployed to the patterns once the encoding process is complete.

An error analysis of the word‐superiority effect

In this experiment subjects were asked to report the identity of a position‐cued critical letter in a linear array of four letters. There were four types of arrays used: (1) unpronounceable non‐words; (2) pronounceable non‐words; (3) words in which the critical letter was minimally constrained, by the context letters; and (4) words in which the critical letter was maximally constrained by the context letters. A different group of subjects was assigned to each of these four array conditions. All four‐letter stimuli were presented in two parts. A leading array in which the information from two quadrants of a vertical by horizontal division of each letter was presented, and, after intervals of 0, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320, 640 ms and infinity (i.e. no trailing array) a trailing array of the complementary letter parts. Examination of identification errors showed that performance in the word conditions was consistently superior to performance in the non‐word conditions, and the magnitude of this difference (i.e. the word‐superiority effect) increased with increasing stimulus onset asynchrony up to 160 ms and then gradually declined. It was argued that these systematic changes in the size of the word‐superiority effect were suggestive of the presence during encoding of robust word and fragile letter codes. This was consistent with the Interactive Activation Model of Word Perception. However, this model also assumes that all strings of letters are encoded in the same way independent of their linguistic properties, and comparisons of the relative proportions of the types of errors made were not necessarily consistent with this assumption. The identification errors were classified either as ‘intrusion’ (i.e. a report of a letter not in the array), or as ‘ location’ (i.e. a report of a non‐critical or context letter from the array), and an analysis of the proportions of the latter indicated that mislocations contributed more to the total errors in the unpronounceable non‐words than in the other three types of stimuli. This suggested that the non‐words may have been encoded differently.

Direct Comparison of Masking and Half-Letter Word-Superiority Effects

Subjects identified a position-cued critical letter in a linear array of four letters. Each critical letter formed part of either a word or an unpronounceable nonword, and the method used to present the stimuli was varied orthogonally with these conditions. That is, each letter array was followed either by a pattern mask or was presented as two temporally separated halfletter arrays of complementary letter parts. A different group of subjects was assigned to each of these four array by presentation conditions. The delay between the onset of the array and the onset of the mask, and between the onsets of leading and trailing half-letter arrays was varied as 40, 60, 80, 100, and 120 ms. Advantages for the words were observed under both conditions of presentation, but the magnitude of the word advantage was reliable and much greater in the masking conditions. This finding supports the major role given to pattern masking in the formulation of the interactive activation model of word perception and the word-superiority effect.

Temporal separation of two part-letter arrays and size changes in a nonmasking work-superiority effect.

In two experiments subjects were asked to report the identity of a position-cued critical letter in an array of four letters. Four types of arrays were used: (i) unpronounceable nonwords; (ii) pronounceable nonwords ('pseudowords'); (iii) words in which the critical letter was minimally constrained by the context letters; and (iv) words in which the critical letter was maximally constrained by the context letters. All four-letter stimuli were presented in two parts. A leading array in which the information from two quadrants of a vertical by horizontal division of each letter was presented, and, after intervals of 0, 20, 40, 80, 100, 120, 160, 320, and 480 ms and infinity (ie, no trailing array), a trailing array of the complementary letter parts. In experiment 1 a single group of eight subjects responded to the one hundred and sixty combinations of the four types of letter strings, the four serial positions, and the ten stimulus onset asynchrony values. In experiment 2 the stimulus onset asynchrony values were varied among subjects, with twelve subjects responding at each value. The results from these two studies were generally similar. Performance in the word conditions was consistently superior to performance in the nonword conditions, and the magnitude of this difference (ie, the word-superiority effect) increased with increasing stimulus onset asynchrony up to 120 ms, and then gradually declined. The fact that the magnitude of the word-superiority effect initially increased with the separation of leading and trailing arrays was interpreted as support for Johnston's suggestion that letters in words are represented during visual encoding both in the form of individual letter percepts and in a decay-resistant word percept, as opposed to letters in nonwords, which are represented only as decay-susceptible letter percepts. The experimental findings are discussed in relation to the 'interactive activation' model of word perception.

Influence of Competing Part-Letters on the Word Superiority Effect

This experiment was designed to examine the effects of varying the relationship between temporally separated strings of letter parts on the word-superiority effect. The subjects were asked to report the identity of a position-cued critical letter in an array of four letters. One group of sixteen subjects reported critical letters from words and a second group of sixteen subjects reported the same letters from non-words. All the letter strings were presented in two parts. A leading array in which the information from two quadrants of a vertical by horizontal division of each letter was presented, and, after intervals of 40, 80,120,160, and 200 msec, a trailing array of letter parts. The relationship between the part-letters in the leading and trailing arrays was systematically varied as follows: (1) both the critical and the context letter parts were complementary (i.e., when combined they formed complete letters); (2) the critical letter parts were complementary but the context letter parts were not; (3) ...