"What happens when a society elevates victimhood to a virtue and decides that punishment is cruel? You get the disease Dr. Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy. And the West may be terminally infected" --

This is a book on reminiscence, or more modestly a book on reminiscence in motor tasks, or more modestly still on reminiscence in pursuit rotor learning, with occasional references to other types of reminiscence. The vast majority of experiments investigating reminiscence with the pur suit rotor have been carried out within the framework of Hullian learn ing theory. Thus, of necessity, this book also will be much concerned with that theory. Some readers may feel that so much detailed attention paid to one piece of apparatus and one now rather discredited theory, is overdone; we could not agree with such an evaluation. There are several features of pursuit-rotor performance which make it particularly worthy of attention. One of the more important of these features is the easy replicability of many of the phenomena found in performance of this task; this is our first point. Replicability is the life blood of science; what cannot be replicated by any well-trained observer is of doubtful status in science, and on this score pursuit-rotor work certainly emerges as perhaps the most reliable set of observations in experimental psychology. The effects of massing and spacing; of rest pauses of different length; of switching from massed to spaced learn ing, or vice versa; of interpolating different activities; of introducing distracting stimuli; of switching from right to left hand, or vice versa; of changing the speed of rotation, or the diameter of the target disk these are clear-cut and replicable as few phenomena in psychology are.

As the pastPresident ofthe Israel Society forAutism, it gives me great pleasure to c- gratulate Professor Schopler and his colleagues on the publication of their new book concerning the relationship between scientific research and treatment. When we in Israel began our specifically structured education program for young children with autism, our work was based on slim to scarceknow-how andinformation, and with no experience whatsoever. Whatever information we could gather was mostly from psychological educational centers in the U.S. One of the most important and significant connections was established between the TEACCH program of North Carolina, led and conducted by the two important scholars, Professor Eric Schopler and Professor Lee Marcus, and our Israel Society for Autism. During our many encounters, seminars, and conferences, we profited enormously from all their accumulated expertise and scientific research, while perhaps it was also an important experience for them to see how a young society with very limited means was eventually shaping its educational program and arriving at some excellent results. We, ofcourse, have the highest esteem for Governor Hunt who has been following this program with so much attention and support, and we still remember his visit to Israel with distinguished representatives of the TEACCH Program. I wish the new book every success. I know it will be an enormous contribution to all those who must cope with a difficult and painful issue—autism—for whom there is no end to the need for research and continuously improving methods of care and education.

Prologue.- Chapter 1. Depressing Thoughts.- Chapter 2. Suicide and History.- Chapter 3. Suicide and Criminality.- Chapter 4. Suicide and Science.- Chapter 5. Distinguishing Differences.- Chapter 6. The Matter of Reporting.- Chapter 7. Mainstream Suicide.- Chapter 8. Aboriginal Suicide.- Chapter 9. The Matter of Rejection.- Chapter 10. The Matter of Prevention.- Chapter 11. A Matter of Economics.- Chapter 12. A Matter of Education.- Chapter 13. Kinds Hearts and Coroners.- Chapter 14. Reading Guide.- References.