Recall of aggressive and withdrawn statements among young children: Social schema or meaningfulness

Two studies assessed the effects of type of sentence (aggressive vs. withdrawn) and meaningfulness level on the sentence recall of young children. In Study 1, normative data showed that the meaningfulness value of aggressive sentences was greater than that of withdrawn sentences and that meaningfulness and recall were positively related. In Study 2, subjects were tested for sentence recall in a 2 (aggressive vs. withdrawn sentences) x 2 (high vs. low meaningfulness)within subjects design. The sole significant effect was meaningfulness, with the superior recall of high relative to low meaningful sentences. Results are interpreted through a knowledge base model. This research was supported by the Wake Forest University Research and Publication Fund. Experiment 1 was presented at the 1988 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Atlanta, GA, and Experiment 2 was presented at the 1991 annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, Washington, DC.     

Recall of aggressive and withdrawn statements among young children: Social schema or meaningfulness

Two studies assessed the effects of type of sentence (aggressive vs. withdrawn) and meaningfulness level on the sentence recall of young children. In Study 1, normative data showed that the meaningfulness value of aggressive sentences was greater than that of withdrawn sentences and that meaningfulness and recall were positively related. In Study 2, subjects were tested for sentence recall in a 2 (aggressive vs. withdrawn sentences) x 2 (high vs. low meaningfulness)within subjects design. The sole significant effect was meaningfulness, with the superior recall of high relative to low meaningful sentences. Results are interpreted through a knowledge base model. This research was supported by the Wake Forest University Research and Publication Fund. Experiment 1 was presented at the 1988 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Atlanta, GA, and Experiment 2 was presented at the 1991 annual meeting of the American Psychological Society, Washington, DC.     

The meaningfulness and meaning of schematic faces

A pool of 128 schematic faces was generated by varying brow, mouth, nose, eye height, and eye shape. Ratings of meaningfulness (how easy it was to find an adjective describing the face) and meaning (the adjective given to the face) were mainly a function of brow and mouth. When brow and mouth were horizontal, faces were least meaningful and neutral in expression; if either brow or mouth moved from the horizontal, faces increased in meaningfulness, meaning being dependent on the moving feature; when both brow and mouth moved from the horizontal, faces were most meaningful, and their expression was a function of the combination of brow and mouth.     

The effect of meaningfulness in tachistoscopic word perception

Studies of tachistoscopic word perception were reviewed under two theoretical headings: the structural approach, in which the variables of interest are linguistic relations among letters, and the lexical approach, where the interest is in the availability of words in lexical memory. The results of a recent tachistoscopic recognition study question the importance of lexical availability by finding no difference in performance between meaningful words and well-structured, pronounceable nonwords. In the present study, further comparisons between words and pronounceable nonwords were performed, and a meaningfulness effect was demonstrated. The generality of this finding was discussed, and alternative models accounting for the effect were considered. Two of these were capable of explaining structural effects as well as the meaningfulness effect: a translation model and a lexical discrimination net.     

The religious physician

In order to understand what it means to be a physician, we must, according to Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, analyze four words that capture the essence of the medical enterprise: profession, patient, compassion, and consent. The resultant model provides a rational and secular basis upon which the Jewish or Christian physician can then build an understanding of medicine in its peculiarly religious form. This religious form is likewise characterized by four words: vocation, neighbor, love, and covenant. An analysis of these words provides a model of and for the religious physician.     

The changing dynamics of religious authority on Pakistani religious television

This paper analyses the production, ownership and control of Pakistani religious talk shows, which have emerged as a popular genre of religious programming, subsequent to the liberalisation of Pakistani media in 2002. Much scholarship has implicated the nexus between Islam and televisual media in enabling the fragmentation of religious authority, by altering ‘lay’ engagements with Islam and thereby eliciting wider participation in religious discourse. In contrast, this paper focuses on the changing terms of asserting religious authority in the newly liberalised media context. Based on an analysis of the innovative formats and modes of editorial control characterising contemporary religious shows, I posit the significance of religious talk shows in both altering the nature of scholarly participation in religious public debate, and subjecting featured scholars to non-scholarly interests and agendas. I argue that the latter two insights into the nature of religious authority on television are only accessible from a production-based perspective, which is crucial for evaluating the wider implications of broadcast media for religious authority.     

The universality of generalized personality statements

Researchers for three decades have assumed that generalized personality statements are nearly universally valid. In this study, undergraduate students indicated whether generalized personality statements were "true" or "false" as applied to themselves; then these same students and a group of graduate students estimated the percentage of college students who would answer each generalized statement "true." Only 7 of the 12 commonly-used, generalized personality statements were found to be nearly universally valid among the undergraduates; the other 5 were answered "true" by fewer than two-thirds of the undergraduates. Both groups undergraduates and graduate students were very accurate in estimating the percentage of students who would respond "true" to each statement. Thus, many supposed generalized statements are not nearly universally valid, and students are cognizant of the degree of universality of generalized statements. Results of prior research based on inappropriate assumptions about generalized statements must be viewed cautiously.