Time without Rate

There is a lingering objection to the idea of the passage of time. Roughly speaking, the argument runs as follows: (i) if time passes, its passage must occur at some rate, but (ii) there is no such rate; hence, the passage of time is a myth. While some philosophers try to reject premise (ii), I wish to challenge the first premise by arguing that time may pass with or without a rate. My argument addresses two cases, one that identifies the passage of time with changes in things and one that does not. I call the former view ‘the Priorian passage theory’, and the latter view ‘the pure passage theory’. I argue that each dynamic view of time is immune to the rate argument. Further, I suggest a possible extension of the Priorian passage theory, in which the passage of time is identified with the pure persistence of things.     

Initial mention as a signal to thematic content in technical passages

Information near the beginning of a passage has often been reported to be recalled better than information appearing later in the passage. The explanation has been that the most important information in a passage is recalled best, and this information usually appears early in a passage. This suggests that there is a linguistic convention that important information should appear in an initial position. That initial mention functions as a signal to the important, or thematic, content of a passage was demonstrated with two experiments in which readers reported what they thought was the main idea or the main item of technical passages. The first experiment unconfounded content and position by using passages in which the main idea was expressed by a sentence that appeared either first in the passage or embedded in the middle of the passage. Statements of the main idea resembled the intended theme sentence to a greater extent if this sentence appeared first than if it was embedded. The second experiment showed that statements of the main item tended to name the major referent that appeared first in the passage. The results suggest that readers base much of their abstractive processes on the semantic content of a passage, with superficial features such as initial mention serving to guide or influence these processes.     

Prenatal maternal speech influences newborns' perception of speech sounds

Pregnant women recited a particular speech passage aloud each day during their last 6 weeks of pregnancy. Their newborns were tested with an operant-choice procedure to determine whether the sounds of the recited passage were more reinforcing than the sounds of a novel passage. The previously recited passage was more reinforcing. The reinforcing value of the two passages did not differ for a matched group of control subjects. Thus, third-trimester fetuses experience their mothers' speech sounds and that prenatal auditory experience can influence postnatal auditory preferences.     

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THINGS A REANALYSIS OF CHUANG TZUS BUTTERFLY DREAM

Chuang Chou's Butterfly Dream is perhaps the most well-known and widely studied passage in the Chuang Tzu . It is also one of the most slippery with regard to its meaning. In this paper, I have proposed that the meaning of this passage can be clarified when the passage is recognized as an embodiment of Chuang Tzu's main thane and the double-bind method of instruction which is found throughout the second chapter of the Chuang Tzu. Understood as such, the passage stands as the quintessential example of this theme and teaching style, pressing the reader to transcend the limits of dualistic thinking and awaken in the fullest sense of the word. When viewed from this vantage point, the perplexing nature of the passage dissolves and its beauty and profundity shine through as never before.     

Influence of Question Format and Text Availability on the Assessment of Expository Text Comprehension

This study examines how passage availability and reading comprehension question format (open-ended vs. multiple-choice) influence question answering. In two experiments, college undergraduates read an expository passage and answered open-ended and multiple-choice versions of text-based, local, and global bridging inference questions. Half the participants were allowed to refer to the passage when answering the questions and half were not. Participants' prior domain knowledge relating to the text contents was assessed using multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Correlation-based analyses in the two experiments indicated: (a) a decline in the relationship between prior domain knowledge and comprehension when the passage was available during question answering; and (b) a high correlation between multiple-choice and open-ended question answering performance when the passage was not available for reference. Overall the results indicate that the nature of the reading comprehension assessment is influenced by the specific task with which comprehension is assessed.     

大学生同一性状态与时间管理:生命时间流逝情绪和流逝注意的中介作用

我国自古便有“通过强调时间流逝而珍惜当下”的教育与文化传统,对这一“时间认知影响时间行为”的作用机理,当前所知不多。采用问卷法对2232名低年级大学生调查,以考察同一性状态、生命时间流逝情绪、流逝注意与时间管理之间的关系.结果显示：（1）同一性获得、延缓状态正向直接预测时间管理倾向各维度（时间价值感、监控观与效能感）;早闭状态直接正向预测时间监控观、负向预测效能感;扩散状态直接负向预测时间价值感和监控观;（2）获得状态通过流逝情绪间接预测监控观和效能感;（3）延缓状态通过流逝情绪、流逝注意间接预测监控观、效能感,还能通过流逝注意间接预测价值感;（4）早闭状态通过流逝注意间接预测时间管理各维度,其中,流逝注意在“早闭—价值”间起完全中介作用。     

FINE'S MCTAGGART,TEMPORAL PASSAGE,AND THE A VERSUS B‐DEBATE

I offer an interpretation and a partial defense of Kit Fine's ‘Argument from Passage’, which is situated within his reconstruction of McTaggart's paradox. Fine argues that existing A‐theoretic approaches to passage are no more dynamic, i.e. capture passage no better, than the B‐theory. I argue that this comparative claim is correct. Our intuitive picture of passage, which inclines us towards A‐theories, suggests more than coherent A‐theories can deliver. In Finean terms, the picture requires not only Realism about tensed facts, but also Neutrality, i.e. the tensed facts not being ‘oriented towards’ one privileged time. However unlike Fine, and unlike others who advance McTaggartian arguments, I take McTaggart's paradox to indicate neither the need for a more dynamic theory of passage nor that time does not pass. A more dynamic theory is not to be had: Fine's ‘non‐standard realism’ amounts to no more than a conceptual gesture. But instead of concluding that time does not pass, we should conclude that theories of passage cannot deliver the dynamicity of our intuitive picture. For this reason, a B‐theoretic account of passage that simply identifies passage with the succession of times is a serious contender.     

The impact of familiarization strategies on the missing-letter effect

When reading a text and searching for a target letter, readers make more omissions of the target letter if it is embedded in frequent function words than if it is in rare content words. While word frequency effects are consistently found, few studies have examined the impacts of passage familiarity on the missing-letter effect and studies that have present conflicting evidence. The present study examines the effects of passage familiarity, as well as the impacts of passage familiarization strategy promoting surface or deep encoding, on the missing-letter effect. Participants were familiarized with a passage by retyping a text, replacing all common nouns with synonyms, or generating a text on the same topic as that of the original text, and then completed a letter search task on the familiar passage as well as an unfamiliar passage. In Experiment 1, when both familiar and unfamiliar passages use the same words, results revealed fewer omissions for the retyping and synonyms conditions. However, in Experiment 2, when different words are used in both types of texts, no effect of familiarization strategy was observed. Furthermore, the missing-letter effect is maintained in all conditions, adding support to the robustness of the effect regardless of familiarity with the text.     

Experience Sampling Methodology reveals similarities in the experience of passage of time in young and elderly adults

Many people accept the idea that time seems to pass more quickly as they get older, as if this is a psychological reality. However, systematic investigations of differences in judgments of passage of time between young and elderly people are very rare and contradictory. The present study examined the experience of passage of time in daily life in young and elderly people using Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM), with 8 alerts per day for 5 days being delivered by smartphones. At each alert, a short questionnaire was filled in, asking questions about passage of present time, affective state, arousal level, and attention to current activities, among others. Our ESM study found no difference between the young and the old participants in the judgment of passage of present time. Irrespective of the participants' age, the experience of passage of time in every-day life was significantly related to affective states and current activities when they captured attention.     

COULD WE EXPERIENCE THE PASSAGE OF TIME?

It is usually taken for granted that we could experience the passage of time. Since it seems to us that we experience the passage of time it is therefore assumed that we have prima facie reason to believe that time passes. But this is false; the passage of time could not be an object of experience because it could not cause, shape or influence temporal experience in any way. After explaining each premise of the argument I discuss several objections that are likely to be raised. I also discuss some related epistemic arguments against the passage of time given by Huw Price and David Braddon‐Mitchell along with objections raised against them by Tim Maudlin and Peter Forrest respectively.     

Effect of cognitive appraisal on d' and response bias to experimental stress.

The effects of an intellectualization-denial passage designed to modify cognitive appraisal of stressor stimuli (gory scences) were evaluated in terms of sensory-decision theory analysis. The passage was found to reduce "felt stress" ') for certain pairs of the stimuli addressed by the passage content but to less effective in reducing stress (Lx) was reduced rather than increased wi;h presentation of the passage for the included simuli only. Differences in d' between subjects classified within treatment groups as repressors versus sensitizers were obtained for certain stimulus pairs generally in the direction of lower sensitivity for repressors. Results are discussed in terms of the effects of altered cognitive appraisal on the "prevention of stress" and on "defensive"denial.     

Input/output switch in bilingual code switching

Chinese-English bilinguals were asked to read a passage with spontaneous bilingual code switchings, compared with a unilingual Chinese translation of the passage, a unilingual English translation, a translation with random switchings, and a translation with only nouns switched into English. There was no difference between the reading speed for the passage with natural switchings and the unilingual Chinese passage, thus questioning the need to postulate a bilingual imput/output switch. The speed for reading passages with artificial switchings was slower. In a translation task, the naturally switched items required less time in Chinese-to-English translations compared with English-to-Chinese translations. This indicates that in natural code switchings, the English lexical items produced were more available, even though English is generally the weaker language.     

Prose Representation: A Multidimensional Scaling Approach

Multidimensional scaling was employed to study the comprehension of prose. Subjects rated the similarity between pairs of 20 nouns before reading. After reading a passage containing the nouns, the subjects re-rated the words with respect to similarity within the passage. Subjects then recalled the passage. The similarity ratings were analyzed by multidimensional scaling. The results indicated that the scaling analysis provided an effective, valid indicator of prose representation. The multidimensional structural characteristics of dimension interpretation, clustering, and centrality were interpreted in terms of the theme, episodes, and central organizing feature of the story, respectively. Theoretically, the analysis indicated that comprehension was a function of the passage organization mapping onto the existing memory structure superimposed upon and suppressing the prior conceptual structure.     

Memory for a dialectical and a nondialectical prose passage in young and older adults

Age differences in adults' processing of a dialectical or nondialectical prose passage were explored. Twenty young and 20 older adults read a dialectical or mechanistic passage and were tested for free recall and recognition after a 30-min delay (filled with vocabulary and paradigm belief scale). Older (vs. young) adults had significantly lower formistic and mechanistic scores and showed greater relative preference for relativistic and dialectical beliefs (paradigm scale). There were no age differences in amount of free recall or number of correct responses (hits) on recognition, but older adults produced more spontaneous dialectical distortions in recall of the mechanistic passage and more paradigm-congruent false alarms on recognition. There was also a move from absolute toward dialectical thinking on the paradigm scale and, among males, on the recognition measure. Dialectical scores (paradigm scale) were positively correlated, and mechanistic scores negatively correlated, with number of dialectical distortions on free recall (mechanistic passage), while dialectical scores were positively correlated with number of dialectical false alarms (dialectical passage).     

Liturgical Rites of Passage for the Later Years

ABSTRACT

Rites of passage help redefine self-understanding and community behavior as individuals move through transition events into successive life stages. Traditional religious rites, such as baptism, confirmation, matrimony and the funeral, function as rites of passage within faith communities. Congregations need to develop similar rites to mark individuals' passage into newer life stages such as the empty nest, retirement, and final infirmity.     

Terrestrial passage theory of the moon illusion

Theories of the celestial, or moon, illusion have neglected geometric characteristics of movement along and above the surface of the earth. The illusion occurs because the characteristics of terrestrial passage are attributed to celestial passage. In terrestrial passage, the visual angle subtended by an object changes discriminably as an essentially invariant function of elevation above the horizon. In celestial passage, by contrast, change in visual angle is indiscriminable at all elevations. If a terrestrial object gains altitude, its angular subtense fails to follow the expansion projected for an orbital course: Angular diminution or constancy is equivalent to distancing. On the basis of terrestrial projections, a similar failure of celestial objects in successive elevations is also equivalent to distancing. The illusion occurs because of retinal image constancy, not--as traditionally stated--despite it.     

Linguistic and emotional-valence characteristics of reading passages for clinical use and research

PurposeFluency assessment in people who stutter (PWS) includes reading aloud passages. There is little information on properties of these passages that may affect reading performance: emotional valance, arousal, word familiarity and frequency and passage-readability. Our first goal was to present an extensive examination of these factors in three commonly used (“traditional”) passages. The second goal was to compare a traditional passage to a new passage, designed to minimize the impact of these properties.MethodsContent words were rated (129 participants) on arousal, valence and familiarity. Other linguistic features were analyzed based on available datasets. This information was used to assess traditional passages, and to construct a new well-balanced passage, made of neutral, low-arousal and highly-familiar words. Readability for all passages was tested using formula-based and CLOZE tests (31 participants). Finally, 26 PWS were evaluated on fluency comparing the commonly used “Rainbow” passage with the novel one.ResultsThe three traditional passages contain a share of emotionally valenced (22-34%), high arousal (15-18%), lower familiarity (6-8%) and polysyllabic (5-9%) content words. Readability was highest for the novel passage (on formula-based scales). Average disfluencies percent for the Rainbow and our novel passage were not significantly different. Yet half of the individuals in this sample showed a large difference between the two passages.ConclusionWe provide detailed information on potential sources of variance using the traditional passages. Knowledge about these characteristics can inform clinical practice (and research). We suggest a combined procedure, using more than one passage to assess stuttering in individual cases.     

Hornsby and Baker on the physicalist orthodoxy

I examine some recent claims put forward by L. A. Paul, Barry Dainton and Simon Prosser, to the effect that perceptual experiences of movement and change involve an (apparent) experience of ‘passage’, in the sense at issue in debates about the metaphysics of time. Paul, Dainton and Prosser all argue that this supposed feature of perceptual experience – call it a phenomenology of passage – is illusory, thereby defending the view that there is no such a thing as passage, conceived of as a feature of mind-independent reality. I suggest that in fact there is no such phenomenology of passage in the first place. There is, however, a specific structural aspect of the phenomenology of perceptual experiences of movement and change that can explain how one might mistakenly come to the belief that such experiences do involve a phenomenology of passage.     

On measuring time metaphors

Referring to the 2005 article by Wittmann and Lehnhoff, the problem of using time metaphors for measuring awareness of time is posed. Starting from clarification of meaning, the Metaphors Slowness scale which was not homogeneous, an alternative interpretation of the result was proposed, given that metaphors refer to two separate aspects of time speed, an ongoing passage of time, and ex post reflection on passage of time that has already passed. The former refers to the judgment of an ongoing passage of time, and the latter to the judgment of passage of past time from a particular point in the past till now. Time perception is multifaceted and perhaps ambiguous. This particular aspect of time perception is covered by a notion of a "dialectical time", when opposite aspects of time are combined, e.g., pleasant and unpleasant ones.