One Betazoid Parent: Empathic and Telepathic Capacity at Age 20 in 1,204 Children of Betazoid and Human Parentage, Born 2330–2352, by Which Parent Is Betazoid

1. Introduction

Telepathy is a settled feature of Betazoid life, and an earlier study in this journal described its natural history in children of two Betazoid parents. It emerges in adolescence, its timing runs strongly in families, and it is rarely present from birth. That description came from a register limited to children of two Betazoid parents, and it left aside children with one Betazoid parent, whose abilities the study noted are observed clinically to differ and to be often partial.

Federation and Betazoid communities have intermarried for generations, and the Institute's register alone holds well over a thousand children with one Betazoid parent and one Human parent. Clinical tradition treats them as empaths who sense the feelings of the people near them and do not perceive thoughts (Haverford-Nkemelu, 2366). The tradition is reasonable, and it has been formed from patients who came to clinics. No one has counted how many children in an unselected group have no capacity, how many are empathic only and how many are telepathic in the full sense, or whether it matters which parent is Betazoid.

We use the Institute's companion register of children of mixed parentage to answer two questions. How are empathic and telepathic capacity distributed at age 20 among children with one Betazoid and one Human parent? And does the distribution differ according to whether the Betazoid parent is the mother or the father? We write in 2376. The register closed in 2372 as planned, before the Dominion occupation of Betazed that began in 2374 interrupted the Institute's work.

2. Methods

The companion register enrols every child in its catchment born on Betazed to one Betazoid and one Human parent, and follows each to a final assessment at age 20 (Betazed Institute of Telepathic Studies, 2372). We took every child born between 2330 and 2352, so that all had reached age 20 before the register closed. The register held 1,317. We excluded 113: 84 who left Betazed before the age-20 assessment (51 of 844 eligible children of Betazoid mothers and 33 of 465 of Betazoid fathers), 21 who died before age 20 (13 and 8), and 8 whose records did not show which parent was Betazoid. We analysed 1,204 children, 780 with a Betazoid mother and 424 with a Betazoid father.

Capacity was assessed at age 20 by the Institute's protocol (Betazed Institute of Telepathic Studies, 2369). Assessments made before the protocol was issued followed the Institute's earlier procedure and were re-scored to the protocol from the archived records. The protocol reports agreement between two examiners of kappa 0.91 for the thought-report assessment and 0.86 for the empathy assessment in a validation sample of 200. Telepathy was defined by the standard thought-report assessment, in which the young person reports, above chance, a concept held in mind by an examiner out of sight (Rothwell-Adair, 2358). Empathy was defined by a second assessment in which the young person reports, above chance, the emotional state of an examiner out of sight, without reporting the concept. A young person who passed neither was classed as having no capacity, and one who passed the first was classed as telepathic whether or not they passed the second. This gives three ordered grades: none, empathic without telepathy, and telepathic.

The outcome is ordinal, so we used proportional-odds ordinal regression, with the odds of a higher grade of capacity modelled on which parent is Betazoid, mother against father. We adjusted for birth period, 2330–2341 against 2342–2352, because assessment practice changed over the register's life, from the earlier procedure to the 2369 protocol. We checked the proportional-odds assumption by estimating the odds ratio separately at each of the two cut points between grades and comparing them (Castelnau-Vance, 2374). Siblings appear in the register, and we did not model the clustering of siblings within families. For description we also compared the proportion telepathic between the two groups with a risk difference and a chi-square test, and the whole distribution with a chi-square test with 2 degrees of freedom. All tests were two-sided at .05.

3. Results

Of the 1,204 children, 780 had a Betazoid mother and 424 a Betazoid father, and 570 were born in 2330–2341 and 634 in 2342–2352. The earlier period held 371 children of Betazoid mothers and 199 of fathers, with 46 having no capacity, 434 empathic and 90 telepathic. The later period held 409 and 225, with 50, 484 and 100. At age 20, 96 (8.0%) had no capacity, 918 (76.2%) were empathic without telepathy and 190 (15.8%) were telepathic (Table 1).

The distribution differed by parent. Among children of Betazoid mothers, 52 (6.7%) had no capacity, 592 (75.9%) were empathic and 136 (17.4%) were telepathic. Among children of Betazoid fathers, 44 (10.4%) had no capacity, 326 (76.9%) were empathic and 54 (12.7%) were telepathic. The chi-square test with 2 degrees of freedom gave 8.6 (p = .013). The difference in the proportion telepathic was 4.7 percentage points (95% CI 0.6 to 8.8; chi-square with 1 degree of freedom 4.6, p = .033).

In the ordinal model, children of Betazoid mothers had 1.51 times the odds of a higher grade of capacity (95% CI 1.14 to 2.00; p = .004). Adjustment for birth period left the estimate unchanged (1.51, 95% CI 1.14 to 2.00), and birth period itself made no detectable difference (odds ratio for the later period 1.01, 95% CI 0.78 to 1.31; p = .94).

We found no evidence against the proportional-odds assumption. The odds ratio for having at least some capacity was 1.62 (95% CI 1.06 to 2.47), and the odds ratio for telepathy was 1.45 (95% CI 1.03 to 2.03). The two are close, and their intervals overlap widely, though with these numbers the check has limited power.

4. Discussion

Clinical tradition is largely right about the typical child and wrong about the rule. Three in four children with one Betazoid parent were empathic without telepathy, as the tradition says. About one in six was telepathic in the full sense, and about one in twelve had no capacity. Capacity in this group is graded, and neither of the two simple accounts, that these children are always empaths or that they may be telepaths, describes the distribution.

Children of Betazoid mothers were more likely to reach a higher grade, and the ordinal odds ratio of 1.51 is moderate. The finding is a difference in distribution and says nothing about any individual child. Most children of Betazoid fathers were empathic, and so were most children of Betazoid mothers, so which parent was Betazoid does not predict any single child's grade.

The difference could arise in two ways. It could be a parent-of-origin effect, in which the trait is expressed differently according to which parent transmits it, a phenomenon reported for some traits in hybrid offspring of other pairings (Lindenbaum-Achterhof, 2361; Ozturk-Vellacott, 2370). It could also arise from upbringing, since a child raised by a Betazoid mother may be exposed more often, and earlier, to telepathic communication than a child raised by a Human mother. The register records no genetic data and no information on the household, and it cannot separate the two. An earlier study in this journal found a strong family resemblance in the age of onset among children of two Betazoid parents and stated that it could not separate inheritance from shared upbringing. The same limit applies here, and a comparison of children raised apart from their Betazoid parent would be the study to do.

One practical use follows from the finding, for the register's own population. Parents and schools may assume that children of mixed parentage will be empaths and nothing more. In this register about one child in six was telepathic by the standard test, and such children may need the same guidance in screening what they perceive that Betazoid children receive. We do not claim the same proportion for children of mixed parentage elsewhere.

5. Limitations

The final assessment is at age 20. Among children of two Betazoid parents the ability emerges by 20 in almost all, but we do not know whether children of mixed parentage emerge on the same schedule, and some may become telepathic later, which would understate the telepathic group. The thought-report assessment was built for children of two Betazoid parents, and it may under-detect weak telepathy in a young person with one Human parent. We excluded 84 children who left Betazed before assessment, 6.0% of eligible children of Betazoid mothers and 7.1% of fathers, and although the rates are close, departures may still have been related to capacity. Children of Betazoid mothers made up 65% of the register, an imbalance whose cause we do not know and which may reflect who is enrolled. The register enrols only children whose other parent is Human, and the findings do not extend to other pairings. Assessors knew which parent was Betazoid, and there was no blinding. The birth-period comparison is crude, and we did not have data on the household or on the Betazoid parent's own ability, both of which may matter.