bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Getting to “Yes” on Self-Determination
Authors: Juviler Peter
Published: September 2011

Two main concepts of a new Union and its genesis emerged in 1990–1991. Gorbachev conceived of a close-bound “vertical” federation, such as depicted in the draft Union treaty published March, 9, 1991, to be produced under the leadership of the Center, in consultation with the republics. The nationalist opposition in the nine prospective states of the new Union conceived of a decentralized confederation emerging out of a “horizontal” compact among equals. The two approaches involved clashing concepts of the right of self-determination as to both process and substance.
Economic Reform and Republican Integration
Authors: Ericson Richard
Published: September 2011

Basically this question comes down to asking: Will the economy or the economic situation be of any help in salvaging the Union? Along the way to answering that, I want to address the question of what is the relationship between economic reform and republican integration from the perspective of the Center and from the perspective of economics.
The Republics as International Actors
Authors: Clemens Walter
Published: September 2011

To some extent I feel as Robert Lewis does, that the process leading from “national awakening” to “national liberation” is a worldwide tendency, and that the Soviet Union is part of a global Zeitgeist in this respect.

Byway of illustrating this fifteen-stage process, I would like to just report on a couple of examples I came across in reading about the republics as independent actors. One such issue has to do with the attempts of the different republics, and the nations within them, to form transnational coalitions across borders. In a way, these attempts get around the problem of establishing formal diplomatic relations with other countries: maybe you do not need de jure recognition if in fact you can do things with other people. For instance, consider the anti-nuclear congress, organized in Kazakhstan by something called the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement, led by the poet Olzhas Suleimenov. In early 1989, a Soviet nuclear test in Kazakhstan was followed by a public protest, and Suleimenov became the leader of the movement. He and his people quickly decided to call it not the “Semipalatinsk Movement” but the “Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement.” And they immediately brought in American Indians, Maoris, and other people from around the world, who are all being subjected to nuclear testing. He also established personal liaison with Dr. Bernard Lawn of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War in Cambridge, Massachusetts; last summer three hundred doctors and scientists in Semipalatinsk talked to people who were immediately affected by military nuclear testing.
(Discussant)
Authors: Sacks Michael Paul , Dovhopoly Dmytro
Published: September 2011

There is a tendency here to assume that the market is new, that nations have emerged anew, that civil society has suddenly come about, that all of a sudden people are speaking their native languages and going to school in their native language. I would like to argue that this is not the case at all.
The Gypsies of Czechoslovakia
Authors: Kalvoda Josef
Published: September 2011

The 1952 edition of the Dictionary of the Czech Language defines “gypsy” as follows: “gypsy [with a small “g”]—a member of a wandering nation, a symbol of mendacity, theft, wandering,…jokers, liars, impostors and cheaters.” This definition was published two years after the Czechoslovak government outlawed any form of discrimination on the basis of color. As far as this writer recalls, the above definition expressed the popular understanding of the Gypsies as a group in the 1930s, in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia. Despite the persecution of the Gypsies during the war and the popular sympathy for them because of it, the prejudice against them have not disappeared and one can find its reflection in the official press as well as in conversations of the common people. Although one cannot generalize about members of any racial, national or religious group, it is evident from the official publications that most Gypsies pose certain problems for the regime and the society.
Attitudes Towards Gypsies in Ukraine (1989)
Authors: Sazhin Valentin
Published: September 2011

Gypsies are one of the most famous though least known national minorities, representatives of which can be found in many countries. Several works have been written about them but no analysis has yet been made of the interrelationship between Gypsies and the nationalities among whom they live. An analysis of this kind is timely in that it would give governments a means with which to alleviate ethnic tensions by amending their present faulty nationality minority policies.

The author of this article has recently made a detailed sociological study by means of a lengthy questionnaire of the attitudes of various nationality groups towards each other in Ukraine. Included in it are questions either directly or indirectly relating to the Gypsies. This ethnic group, despite its relatively small size, is well known throughout Ukraine. Gypsies stand out from the rest of the population by their way of life and by their appearance; as a rule, they speak their own language, even though they know the languages of other nationalities. Most of the population of Ukraine comes in contact with Gypsies, though most often with their worst representatives (swindlers, extortionists, etc.). They meet these Gypsies in the most populous places—at railroad stations, outside large stores, and in marketplaces.
Preface
Authors: Dailey Erika
Published: September 2011

Communism in the Soviet Union has long served officially as religion's surrogate. It has offered an organized and compelling belief system with which to rationalize the misfortunes of the past, establish codes of behavior to manage the present, and conceptualize the future. Although communist theory categorically rejects religion, it actively promotes, and is itself predicated on, institutions of “faith” in the abstract sense. The herculean industrialization and literacy campaigns of the early decades of Soviet rule that forever transformed the USSR's largely illiterate, agricultural society vividly illustrate the power and popular legitimacy of communist institutions of “faith” such as the Party and the Komsomol. Trusting that earthly sacrifice will bring future rewards has been as much the basis of Soviet communism as it has been of the Abrahamic tradition of religion addressed in this issue.
Islamic Assertiveness and the Waning of the Old Soviet Order
Authors: Atkin Muriel
Published: September 2011

The Soviet Union has a Muslim population about the size of Turkey's. Definition is a problem because Soviet censuses do not ask about religious convictions. All one can say is that those nationalities which have traditionally been predominantly Muslim number, according to the 1989 census, approximately 55 million people out of a total population which exceeds 285 million. Although it is common to refer to “Soviet Muslims” as if they constituted a monolithic community, these millions of people are in fact diverse in terms of their religious traditions, current attitudes toward their ancestral faith, nationality, and numerous other secular aspects of life as well. This essay will attempt to describe all the forms of Islamic activity among the Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union, but will consider the status of Islam primarily in Central Asia, where the largest number of the Soviet Union's traditionally Muslim nationalities live, and especially the republic of Tajikistan, where the status of Islam largely resembles that of other important parts of the region.
Slovenia in Europe
Authors: Bučar France
Published: September 2011

When we talk about Slovenia in Europe, we are talking about a two-way relationship: what does Slovenia mean for Europe? and, what is Slovenia's place in Europe? The first question requires an answer to an additional question: what is Europe, and where is its development leading? As part of Europe, and as a part of its system, Slovenia must also be in harmony with it or, rather, Slovenia's attributes must not be in conflict with those of Europe, otherwise Slovenia would not integrate properly. Europe could not then accept it as a composite part, for Slovenia's development would not align with the direction in which Europe is moving.
Slovene Images
Authors: Brejc Tomaž
Published: September 2011

I start instinctively as the airplane swings on its descent toward a stretch of land that is my country. A simple view from an aircraft approaching the Ljubljana airport suddenly becomes a fictitious vision of the ‘memory landscape’ conveyed by Dušan Kirbiš in his picture Gesichte einer Jugend (1984). Under the lowered, steel grey sky, among patches of snow-covered landscape, I catch glimpses of a dark green surface which reminds me of the woodland above the Sava river—the Kočevski rog forest or the Pohorje hillsides of dark, peaceful, impenetrable woods and sparse clearings with remote, unfriendly houses. In the coolness of this vision, the landscape of Slovenia looks both like a satellite photo and an object of fantasy.
The Jews and Nationality Conflicts in the Habsburg
Lands
Authors: Wistrich Robert S.
Published: September 2011

There have been few areas of the world during the past 150 years that have been
as shaped by Jewish influences as East Central Europe. The prominent Czech
writer Milan Kundera observed seven years ago that in the years before Hitler,
the Jews were the “intellectual cement,” the essentially
cosmopolitan and integrative element that forged the spiritual unit of this
region. It was this small nation par excellence which added the
quintessentially European color, tone and vitality to great cities like Berlin,
Vienna, Prague, Budapest, not to mention Cracow, Lemberg and Czernowitz further
to the east. The Nazi mass murder of the Jews, to which Stalin added his own
macabre postscript after World War II, brought about the disappearance of this
fructifying Jewish leaven and crushed for forty years the independence of the
smaller East European nations sandwiched between Russia and Germany. Since the
European revolutions of 1989, these nations, re-emerging from a
semi-totalitarian deep freeze, have been recovering their national identities
and historical roots long repressed under Communist rule.
Policy Toward Islam in Uzbekistan in the Gorbachev Era
Authors: Fierman William
Published: September 2011

This study examines the transformation of policy toward Islam in Uzbekistan during the Gorbachev era. It considers both Moscow's policy and, as Uzbekistan began to achieve greater control over its own affairs, the policy of the republic's leaders. The article begins by placing the changes in policy toward Islam in the broader context of emerging Soviet policy toward religion during the middle of the 1960s. It then examines some of the All-Union and republic communist parties’ concessions toward Islam and attempts to use Islam in addressing the most pressing cultural, social, economic, and political problems facing Uzbekistan. The study pays particular attention to the official religious establishment and briefly explores its role in efforts by Uzbekistan's political leadership to maintain political control.
Ethnic Relations: Estonians and Non-Estonians
Authors: Kirch Marika , Kirch Aksel
Published: September 2011

As is generally known, the contemporary demographic situation in Estonia is fundamentally different from that of the prewar period. The autochthonous minorities who lived in the prewar Estonian Republic—Germans, Jews, Swedes, Finns, but also native Russians (living in the northern and southern areas of the Peipsi lake)—were lost after World War II together with a change of Estonia's eastern border by Soviet authorities in 1945. This left Estonia a very homogeneous country where Estonians formed some 97% of the population and where the entire population was made up of Estonian-speakers.
Estonia and Baltic Sea Co-Operation: From Idea to Reality
Authors: Jaanson Kaido
Published: September 2011

For hundreds of years the Baltic Sea has both connected and separated the nations living on its shores. For the last fifty years the sea has been part of the Iron Curtain. However, for Estonia the formation of nation states on the shores of the Baltic has been inextricably linked with the idea of cooperation. What follows is a description of the historical background of the idea of Baltic Sea cooperation (before 1940) and some elements of its restoration in the 1990s.
The Economy at a Turning-Point
Authors: Rajasalu Teet
Published: September 2011

General Features of Economic Development.

There are two parallel processes taking place in the Estonian economy. First, the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. Secondly, the shift from external relations that are Eastern oriented to relations that are Western oriented. Both processes accelerated after the introduction of the national currency—the kroon (abbreviation EEK)—on June 20, 1992.
National Reconstruction and Social Re-stratification
Authors: Helemäe Yelena , Saar Ellu
Published: September 2011

Introduction

In the 1940–50s a totalitarian regime was established and consolidated in Estonia. Socialist society led to a new kind of social stratification and inequality. Stratification under totalitarian, socialist regimes differs from that in Western, capitalist countries. The utopian idea to create an egalitarian society turned into the creation of a hierarchically organized and heavily institutionalized society. Access to political power became the basis for social stratification. Reforms in the early 1990s have led to fundamental changes in the social stratification of Estonian society. The present social situation in Estonia (as in other former socialist countries of Eastern Europe) is characterized by the co-existence of elements of socialist and post-socialist societies, the expected marks of transition. Privatization brings about the emergence of new social strata. Therefore, the new social stratification in Estonia is now in the formation phase, and further changes are still forthcoming.
Disconfirmation and Dual Hypotheses on a more Difficult version of Wason's 2–4–6 Task
Authors: Gorman Michael E. , Stafford Ann , Gorman Margaret E.
Published: September 2011

This paper reports two experiments in which subjects worked to solve a more difficult version of Wason's 2–4–6 task: instead of the usual “numbers must ascend in order of magnitude” rule, a more general rule, “the three numbers must be different”, was used. The first experiment established that instructing subjects to disconfirm on the “three different numbers” did not significantly improve their performance, as compared with confirmatory and control groups. Disconfirmatory subjects did try to propose more triples at variance with their hypotheses but were unable to obtain the necessary disconfirmatory information.

To help subjects represent the task in a way that facilitated disconfirmation, the second experiment utilized a procedure in which subjects were told that they were looking for two rules, Dax and Med–the Dax rule corresponding to “three different numbers” and the Med rule to its complement, i.e. two or more numbers the same. Of subjects in the Dax–Med condition, 88% solve the rule, as opposed to 21% of subjects in a control condition. Dax–Med subjects tended to search for positive instances of the Med rule, which, in turn, forced them to test the limits of the Dax rule. It was concluded that the Dax–Med manipulation did facilitate a different mental representation of the task than the normal procedure.
On Retrieving Analogues When Solving Problems
Authors: Keane Mark
Published: September 2011

After criticism of the precision of previous experimental procedures for testing analogue retrieval, a new procedure that overcomes the proposed inadequacies is described. This procedure is then employed in two experiments that test aspects of the general hypothesis that base analogues that are semantically remote from a target problem (Duncker's radiation problem) are more difficult to retrieve than those that are semantically closer. Experiment 1 confirmed this hypothesis by finding that remote analogues are seldom retrieved relative to literal analogues. The results of Experiment 2 falsified the hypothesis that analogue retrieval is solely due to the recognition of an “identical element”. Finally, an ad hoc model of analogue retrieval is proposed based on Schank's dynamic memory theory, and its consistency with the evidence and more general implications are considered.
Expecting Different Categories at Different Locations and Spatial Selective Attention
Authors: Lamben Anthony
Published: September 2011

An experiment is reported testing the idea that spatial selective attention operates like the beam of a spotlight. Subjects made speeded orientation judgements to alphanumeric characters that could appear at an upper or lower display location. Letters tended (p = 0.8) to occur at one location, while digits tended to occur at the other. Alphanumeric category was pre-cued (p = 0.8). Response times were faster for cued than uncued items. For cued items subjects were faster at the likely location for a cued item. For uncued items this was reversed, with faster responding at the likely location for an uncued item. Hence, location selectivity reflected location probability for each category regardless of short-term expectancy concerning stimulus category. These data are incompatible with a simple spotlight view of spatial selective attention. Alternative explanations, including a modified two-stage spotlight model, were considered.
Recognizing Melodies: A Dynamic Interpretation
Authors: Jones Mari Riess , Summerell Lee , Marshburn Elizabeth
Published: September 2011

Two experiments explore hypotheses about rhythm and contour in recognition of simple pitch strings (melodies). Target melodies that differed with respect to pitch relationships (interval and contour pitch differences) and rhythm, were presented to ordinary listeners who were told to learn the melodies (Phase I). In a subsequent recognition test (Phase II), listeners had to recognize these same target melodies although they were transposed to a different musical key. In recognition, target melodies appeared in the original rhythm or in new rhythms that simulated some pause properties of the original rhythm. Target melodies were interspersed with decoy melodies that either preserved the pitch contour of targets or did not; all appeared in the original rhythm and in new rhythms. Results indicated that a new rhythmic context lowered recognizability of target melodies, and that decoys were most confusing when they possessed the same “dynamic shape” (contour-plus-rhythm) as targets (Experiment 1). Also, target recognition improved with Phase I familiarity (Experiment 2), although rhythmic shifts remained detrimental across levels of target familiarity. Confusions based on “dynamic shape” accounted for a relatively high proportion of errors where familiarity with targets is low. Findings were interpreted in terms of a theory of context-sensitive dynamic attending in which remembering is assumed to involve recapitulation of the original rhythmical activities involved in attending to melodies.
Dissociation of Semantic Priming, Word and Non-Word Repetition Effects by Event-Related Potentials
Authors: Rugg Michael D.
Published: September 2011

Two experiments investigated the modulation of event-related potentials (ERPs) by semantic priming and item repetition. In Experiment 1, subjects silently counted occasional non-words against a background of words, a proportion of which were either semantic associates or repetitions of a preceding word. Compared to control items, ERPs to repeated words were distinguished by an early (ca. 200 msec) transient negative-going deflection and a later, topographically widespread and temporally sustained positive-going shift. In contrast, semantically primed words showed a relatively small, topographically and temporally limited positive-going modulation peaking around 500 msec. These data were interpreted as evidence against models of priming and repetition which postulate similar loci for these effects. In Experiment 2, subjects counted occasional words against a background of non-words, some of which were repeated. ERPs to repetitions showed a similar early ERP modulation to that in Experiment 1, and also displayed a later slow positive shift. This latter effect was smaller in magnitude and had a delayed onset in comparison to Experiment 1. It was concluded that the effects of repetition differ as a consequence of whether, prior to their first presentation, items possess a representation in lexical memory.
Attentional Factors in Iconic Memory and Visible Persistence
Authors: Orenstein Howard B. , Holding Dennis H.
Published: September 2011

Arrays of 12 fragmentary letters were followed, at various intervals, by one randomly selected complementary letter fragment. On half the trials a partial-report cue (a vertical bar-marker) coincided with the second completion fragment. In Experiment 1 subjects fixated the centre of the to-be-identified letter location, whereas in Experiment 2 subjects fixated the centre of the array. In Experiment 1, the degree of integration and time between successive fragments were inversely related. Integration of fragmentary letters in Experiment 2, however, was uniformly low in the experimental and guessing control conditions. The results were discussed in terms of recent non-traditional accounts of iconic storage that emphasize post-categorical processing.
Retroactive Semantic Priming in a Lexical Decision Task
Authors: Briand Kevin , den Heyer Ken , Dannenbring Gary L.
Published: September 2011

The present study reports two experiments that required subjects to name target items preceded by a masked prime. Additionally, and subsequent to the naming task, subjects were required to indicate whether or not the prime was a word, along with a confidence rating of their lexical decision. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the processing of masked primes is facilitated by related targets when such targets are presented either 100 or 200 msec after the onset of the prime. Experiment 2 extends the finding of “retroactive” priming to a 1000=msec separation in prime–target presentation (SOA). The extent of retroactive priming is not dependent on SOA between prime and target, nor is it affected by the prime–mask SOA, which varied from 10 to 180 msec. Priming of targets was also independent of prime–target and prime–mask SOA, providing that primes had been classified as words. For word primes classified as non-words there was no semantic priming on target naming reaction time. Implications of these findings with respect to the nature of retroactive priming and the current controversy concerning subliminal priming effects were discussed.
Children'S Syllogistic Reasoning
Authors: Johnson-Laird Philip N. , Oakhill Jane , Bull Deborah
Published: September 2011

Most theories of the development of deductive ability propose that children acquire formal rules of inference. An alternative theory assumes that reasoning consists of constructing a mental model of the situation described in the premises, scanning the model for an informative conclusion, and then searching for alternative models that refute this conclusion. Hence, performance should reflect two principal factors: the difficulty of constructing a model, which depends on the “figure” of the premises, and the number of models that have to be evaluated to respond correctly. In Experiment 1, two groups of children (9- to 10- and 11- to 12-year-olds) drew conclusions from 20 pairs of syllogistic premises. The results confirmed that children are affected both by figure and by number of models. Experiment 2 corroborated these findings for all 64 possible forms of syllogistic premises. The development of reasoning ability may therefore depend on the acquisition, not of formal rules of logic, but of procedures for manipulating models.
Process Traces of Binary Choices: Evidence for Selective and Adaptive Decision Heuristics
Authors: Schmalhofer Franz , Albert Dietrich , Aschenbrenner K. Michael , Gertzen Heiner
Published: September 2011

While previous research has shown that human decision processes adjust to the characteristics of choice situations and task demands, the present study examined whether information processing would even adapt to the characteristics of an individual choice pair. By a process tracing method it was found that the amount of inspected information systematically depended upon the particular choice pair. In order to specify the selective and adaptive information processing, criterion-dependent choice models were introduced. These models postulate that information processing continues until the accumulated amount by which one alternative is better than the other reaches or exceeds a certain criterion. These models are strongly supported by the empirical data of the present study. Deviations between model predictions and observed data are explained in terms of fluctuating feature values of the choice alternatives.
Strategic control of sentence context effects in a naming task
Authors: Norris Dennis
Published: September 2011

This paper reports an experiment that demonstrates strategic influences on sentence context effects in a naming task. The size of the sentence context effect is shown to be influenced by the validity of the contextual information. A similar result is obtained simply by changing the proportion of validly completed sentences in the practice session without altering the composition of the experimental trials themselves. The manipulation of context validity was found to have its effect largely on the facilitatory component of the context effect. This dissociation of facilitation and inhibition is shown to be contrary to the predictions of attentional accounts of priming but in line with an explanation of contexts effects based on a mechanism that has evolved primarily to resolve lexical and perceptual ambiguity (Norris, 1986). In a further experiment it is shown that the facilitatory effects of sentence context observed in Experiment 1 are not dependent on the particular baseline condition employed.
Language blocking and lexical access in bilinguals
Authors: Grainger J. , Beauvillain C.
Published: September 2011

Two experiments are described which compared the effects of mixed- and pure-language lists on lexical decision times with English-French bilinguals. Experiment 1 showed that reaction times are faster in the pure-language presentation than in the mixed-language presentation with words that are orthographically legal letter strings in the other language. The second experiment tested this pure-mixed effect more precisely by comparing different sequences of two successive items and by introducing the language-specific orthography factor. No pure-mixed effect was found for words with language-specific orthographies. The pure-mixed effect was restricted to words containing no language-specific orthographic cues and to the different language sequences, that is, on trials following a language change. These results are not compatible with a selective search process that it strategically modified by pure-language presentation. The role of language-specific orthography in bilingual word recognition is discussed with regard to recent models of word recognition.
Is Stimulus Structure in the Mind's Eye? An Examination of Dimensional Structure in Iconic Memory
Authors: Burns Barbara
Published: September 2011

Three experiments examined integral and separable dimensions as attentional selective cues from iconic memory. Sperling's partial-report task was employed with physically separable and physically integral stimuli. Stimulus displays were varied in terms of the redundancy of the irrelevant non-cued dimensions—i.e. control, correlated, and orthogonal conditions within Garner's (1974a) framework—and selective readout performance was measured. The results demonstrate that, in initial processing, physically separable dimensions (e.g., circle size vs. angle of radial line) can be selectively attended to as independent dimensions, but physically integral dimensions (e.g., size vs. brightness and height vs. width) can only be represented as wholistic integral objects. Implications of these findings for current models of feature integration and perceptual development are discussed.
The Effects of Literacy on the Recognition of Dichotic Words
Authors: Morais José , Castro Sao Luis , Scliar-Cabral Leonor , Kolinsky Régine , Content Alain
Published: September 2011

The hypothesis that awareness of phonemic segments influences the way in which speech is perceived was examined. Illiterate adults, who generally lack awareness of segments, were compared with literates, who are aware of the segmental structure of speech, on the recognition of words presented dichotically. A group of people who learned to read and write but who do it only occasionally was also tested. The results indicated much better performance in literates than in illiterates or semiliterates. In addition, literates made proportionally more single-segment errors, especially those limited to the first consonant, and fewer global errors, i.e. on all the segments of a syllable, than illiterates. On the other hand, phonetic feature blendings were as frequent in illiterates as in literates. It is suggested that awareness of segments allows attention to be focused on the phonemic constituents of speech and thus contributes to better recognition in difficult listening conditions. However, awareness of segments does not influence the preattentive extraction of phonetic information.
Morphological Errors in Acquired Dyslexia: A Case of Mistaken Identity
Authors: Funnell Elaine
Published: September 2011

Morphological errors in oral reading have been used to support theories of lexical access in which root morphemes and affixes are independently represented in the orthographic lexicon. No support for such theories was found in this study, which examined the morphological errors made by two patients with different patterns of acquired dyslexia. Instead, it was shown that the probability of making a morphological error depended upon the absolute levels of imageability and word frequency of the affixed word and the relative levels of its root morpheme. These properties also affected the oral reading of words without affixes. It was concluded that so-called “morphological” errors reflect the properties of the reading system which influence lexical orthographic access for both affixed and unaffixed words and further reflect the functional level of the lexical pathways available to the patient.
The Influence of Premovement Visual Information on Manual Aiming
Authors: Elliott Digby , Madalena John
Published: September 2011

Three experiments were conducted to determine whether a visual representation of the movement environment, useful for movement control, exists after visual occlusion. In Experiment 1 subjects moved a stylus to small targets in five different visual conditions. As in other studies (e.g. Elliott and Allard, 1985), subjects moved to the targets in a condition involving full visual information (lights on) and a condition in which the lights were extinguished upon movement initiation (lights off). Subjects also pointed to the targets under conditions in which the lights went off 2, 5 and 10 sec prior to movement initiation. While typical lights-on-lights-off differences in accuracy were obtained in this experiment (Keele and Posner, 1968), the more striking finding was the influence of the pointing delay on movement accuracy. Specifically, subjects exhibited a twofold increase in pointing error after only 2 sec of visual occlusion prior to movement initiation. In Experiment 2, we were able to replicate our 2-sec pointing delay effect with a between-subjects design, providing evidence that the results in Experiment 1 were not due to asymmetrical transfer effects. In a third experiment, the delay effect was reduced by making the target position visible in all lights-off situations. Together, the findings provide evidence for the existence of a brief (< 2 sec) visual representation of the environment useful in the control of aiming movements.
Explanation and Verbalization in a Computer-Assisted Search Task
Authors: Berry Dianne C. , Broadbent Donald E.
Published: September 2011

Three experiments examine the effects of two different forms of explanation on assisted performance on a complex search task. The task involves determining which of a set of factories is responsible for polluting a river by testing the river for the presence or absence of various pollutants. All subjects receive computer suggestions as to which pollutants they should test for. In addition, some subjects receive an explanation of the principle according to which the advice program works. Two forms of explanation are compared. Experiment 1 shows that subjects who are allowed to ask “why” each computer recommendation is made perform significantly better than those who are provided with a block text of explanation at the start of each trial. Experiment 2 shows that the latter type of explanation is not completely ineffective, however. Subjects who are required to verbalize following the single explanation perform significantly better than do subjects who are required to verbalize but who have not received any form of explanation. Finally, Experiment 3 shows that subjects who receive the multiple “why” explanations or the explanation/verbalization combination maintain a superior performance level on subsequent unaided trials.
Effects of Practice and Alcohol on Performance of a Perceptual-Motor Task
Authors: Maylor E. A. , Rabbitt P. M. A.
Published: September 2011

Practice may modify the effects of alcohol on perceptual-motor performance in at least three different ways: (1) alcohol may affect learning—that is, the rate at which performance of a skill improves with practice; (2) alcohol may have a greater effect on performance when the skill is unfamiliar than when it is practised; and (3) practice with alcohol may allow adaptation to its effects. These were investigated using a simple computer game in which subjects attempted to destroy a tank by pressing a key to release a bomb from a plane horizontally traversing the screen above it. The results demonstrated that (1) performance improved with practice; (2) with alcohol (0.8 mg/kg body weight), subjects were more variable and less accurate; (3) improvement with alcohol was greater than without alcohol, but as performance was impaired by alcohol, there was greater scope for improvement; (4) those who practised with alcohol still improved when switched to no alcohol late in practice; and (5) alcohol had the same effect early and late in practice. It is therefore concluded that there is no evidence to support any of the three suggestions outlined above.
Separating Central Mechanisms by POCs: Evidence for an Input—Output Buffer
Authors: FitzGerald Peter , Tattersall Andrew , Broadbent Donald
Published: September 2011

Four experiments were performed, in each of which two sub-lists of items were presented for later recall, with varying priorities for success on each of the lists. All showed a trade-off, indicating that at some point the two lists were using the same mechanisms. In the two cases where presentation was simultaneous, however, the effects of priority interacted with those of recall order—that is, the items recalled first showed a larger effect of priority than did those recalled second. In the two cases where one sub-list arrived after the other, the low-priority items gave just as large an effect of recall order as the high-priority items. The second list presented did, however, show a larger effect of recall order than the first list presented. It is argued that the systems shared between two sublists involve some representations that are not disturbed by output, as well as an input—output buffer. The latter can hold a little extra information temporarily, but is disturbed by output; for successive lists it is dedicated largely to the most recently received list, but for simultaneous lists it is shared between the two lists in proportion to priority.
The Role of Explicit and Implicit Learning Processes in Concept Discovery
Authors: Mathews Robert C. , Buss Ray R. , Chinn Roberta , Stanley William B.
Published: September 2011

Analysis of individual learning curves and concurrent verbal protocols from three experiments concerning discovery of a non-salient verbal concept and a pictorial analogue (Chinese ideograph) of the concept show that a substantial transition phase occurs in which discrimination of exemplars from non-exemplars of the concept is above chance but not yet asymptotic. Under most conditions the ability to verbalize knowledge of the concept occurred almost simultaneously with the onset of the transition phase. However, the addition of noise in the form of false feedback (Experiment 3) created a temporary dissociation between task performance and verbalizable knowledge. Additional results suggest that individual hypothesis revision/rejection strategies affect the length of the transition phase of learning, whereas the size of the domain of hypotheses being sampled affects the number of trial blocks before the transition phase begins. The effect of feedback error on the relation between early rates of hypothesis generation and subsequent transition phase length also suggests that a strategy of quick rejection of falsified hypotheses becomes less adaptive in noisy task environments (e.g. when there are many exceptions to a rule or the concept is probabilistic). Finally, failure to find effects of variables known to affect implicit learning suggests that implicit learning processes do not play a large role in the discovery of this type of concept.
“Anaphoric Islands” Revisited
Authors: Garnham Alan , Oakhill Jane
Published: September 2011

This paper reports two experiments in which subjects made timed judgements about the acceptability of a sentence or clause containing a pronoun that followed either an explicit nominal antecedent (e.g. … dreams … them …) or an implicit antecedent suggested by the verb corresponding to the noun. In Experiment 1 the verb was identical to the nominal antecedent ( dreams), and in Experiment 2 it was different ( dreamed). In both experiments pronouns with implicit antecedents were judged less acceptable than those with explicit antecedents. This tendency was more pronounced in Experiment 2. Furthermore, the times to make the judgements about pronouns with implicit antecedents were longer than for those with explicit antecedents. However, the effect on judgement times was of a similar magnitude in both experiments. These results suggest that when people read about an activity such as dreaming, they do not automatically represent dreams in their mental representation of the passage, but must infer their existence from a subsequent pronominal reference to them.
Word Identification: Imageability, Semantics, and the Content-Functor Distinction
Authors: Davelaar Eileen , Besner Derek
Published: September 2011

It has often been suggested that different special-purpose mechanisms underlie the processing of content words and function words. The received view is that processing differences in various tasks arise because of differences between these word classes in terms of their semantic/syntactic function, despite the fact that these tasks often involve word processing in the absence of any sentence context. It is also well known that the ease with which a word arouses a sensory impression is often a good predictor of word-processing performance, yet the literature largely ignores the fact that, typically, imageability and word class are confounded factors. A series of three experiments shows that in the context of a Stroop task, the typical content-function word difference can be obtained, but that this word class difference disappears completely when the items are matched on the dimension of imageability. It is suggested that the processing of decontextualized content and function words does not necessarily engage distinct special purpose processing mechanisms. Implications for understanding previously published work on word class effects in other paradigms are briefly noted.
Effects of Background Music on Phonological Short-Term Memory
Authors: Salamé Pierre , Baddeley Alan
Published: September 2011

Immediate memory for visually presented verbal material is disrupted by concurrent speech, even when the speech is unattended and in a foreign language. Unattended noise does not produce a reliable decrement. These results have been interpreted in terms of a phonological short-term store that excludes non-speechlike sounds. The characteristics of this exclusion process were explored by studying the effects of music on the serial recall of sequences of nine digits presented visually. Experiment 1 compared the effects of unattended vocal or instrumental music with quiet and showed that both types of music disrupted STM performance, with vocal music being more disruptive than instrumental music. Experiment 2 attempted to replicate this result using more highly trained subjects. Vocal music caused significantly more disruption than instrumental music, which was not significantly worse than the silent control condition. Experiment 3 compared instrumental music with unattended speech and with noise modulated in amplitude, the degree of modulation being the same as in speech. The results showed that the noise condition did not differ from silence; both of these proved less disruptive than instrumental music, which was in turn less disruptive than the unattended speech condition. Theoretical interpretation of these results and their potential practical implications for the disruption of cognitive performance by background music are discussed.
Working Memory for Movements
Authors: Smyth Mary M. , Pendleton Lindsay R.
Published: September 2011

Movement to spatial targets that can, in principle, be carried out by more than one effector can be distinguished from movements that involve specific configurations of body parts. The experiments reported here investigate memory span for a series of hand configurations and memory span for a series of hand movements to spatial locations. Spans were produced normally, or in conditions in which a suppression task was carried out on the right or the left hand while the movements to be remembered were presented. All movements were recalled using the right hand. There were two suppression tasks. One involved repeatedly squeezing a tube and so changing the configuration of the hand, and the other involved tapping a repeated series of spatial targets. The spatial tapping task interfered with span for spatial locations when it was presented on either the right or the left hand but did not affect span for movement pattern. The movement suppression task interfered with memory for movement pattern when it was presented on either the right or the left hand, but did not interfere with span for spatial locations. It is concluded that memory for movement configurations involves different processes from those used in spatial tasks and that there may be a need for a subsystem of working memory that is specific for movement configuration.
Modality Effects: Do They Fall on Deaf Ears?
Authors: Engle Randall W. , Cantor Judy , Turner Marilyn
Published: September 2011

The present study tests the assumption of the PAS theory of echoic memory (Greene & Crowder, 1984) that the representation of acoustic features is necessary in producing modality effects. Performance by deaf subjects was compared to hearing subjects on serial and free-recall tasks with vocalizing and non-vocalizing conditions. For the serial tasks, typical modality and acoustic similarity effects were observed with hearing subjects, and no such effects were found with deaf subjects. However, for the free-recall task, modality effects were found for both deaf and hearing subjects. It is unlikely that phonological coding resulting from gestural cues mediates the modality effect, as phonological confusion errors for deaf and hearing subjects did not correlate with the size of this effect.
Impairment in Processing Meaningless Verbal Material in Several Modalities: The Relationship between Short-term Memory and Phonological Skills
Authors: Bisiacchi Patrizia S. , Cipolotti Lisa , Denes Gianfranco
Published: September 2011

Phonological processing abilities were studied in a patient who, following focal brain damage, showed selective impairment in non-word reading, writing, and repetition and also a severe short-term memory (STM) deficit specific for auditorily presented verbal material. The patient could execute tasks involving phonemic manipulation and awareness perfectly. Our data, in contrast with earlier observations in a case of developmental phonological dyslexia, show that acquired impairment in non-word reading, writing, repetition, and immediate memory may occur despite good phonological processing abilities. The role of STM in processing meaningless verbal material is discussed.
Lexical Capture: A Developmental Disorder of Reading and Spelling
Authors: Funnell Elaine , Davison Margaret
Published: September 2011

We report a case of a 35-year-old teacher, Louise, with a history of learning difficulties and current evidence of developmental phonological dyslexia and dysgraphia. Her reading, spelling, and remembering of novel stimuli written in conventional alphabetic script was poor, but she performed significantly better when the same items were written in the International Phonetic Alphabet, a system that she learned when studying linguistics. Her impaired performance in tasks of phonemic segmentation and short-term memory, which are generally associated with impaired reading and spelling of unfamiliar material, could not account for her specific difficulty with alphabetic stimuli. Instead, her problems appear to result from a lexical strategy, which we have called “lexical capture”.
Accuracy of Perceptual Processes Subserving Different Perception–Action Systems
Authors: Bootsma Reinoud J.
Published: September 2011

The accuracy of perceptual processes subserving different perception–action systems was evaluated by presenting subjects (N = 17) with similar optic flow patterns, while requiring different actions from them. Squash balls were dropped along a fixed trajectory, and subjects were asked to (a) hit the ball using their own arm, (b) release an artificial arm to hit the ball, and (c) indicate when the ball was at the point of contact of conditions (a) and (b). The variability of the temporal initiation point of the actions, which served as an operationalization of perceptual accuracy, was compared under all three conditions. The results indicated that the variability of the temporal initiation point was smallest under the natural arm condition, even though movement time was more variable here than under the artificial arm condition. It is argued that, because perception and action are intimately interwoven components of a perceiving/acting system, it is not an extrinsically (experimenter-) determined simplicity of perceptual and/or motor aspects of the task, but the intrinsic make-up of this overarching system that determines which couplings lead to a more accurate performance.