Sex differences in verbal fluency: a short note

Adult male and female subjects performed two fluency tasks from the 'Kit of Reference Tests for Cognitive Factors'. Although both word fluency and ideational fluency are said to show female superiority, a significant difference in favour of females could be found only in the task which primarily requires lexical access and not in the task requiring mental access to colour and form of objects.     

Sex differences in verbal fluency: a short note

Adult male and female subjects performed two fluency tasks from the ‘Kit of Reference Tests for Cognitive Factors’. Although both word fluency and ideational fluency are said to show female superiority, a significant difference in favour of females could be found only in the task which primarily requires lexical access and not in the task requiring mental access to colour and form of objects.     

Experience and backswing movement time variability : A short note concerning a serendipitous observation

Decreased variability of both response outcome and movement kinematics is generally thought to be a characteristic of skilled performance. This note reports an apparently paradoxical case in which expertise is associated with greater variability of an aspect of movement kinematics. The relative variability of backswing and downswing duration (standard deviation as a percent of movement time) was assessed for experienced and novice field hockey players performing a drive of an approaching ball. The experienced group exhibited higher relative variability of backswing duration than the novice group. It is argued that this variability is functional (in the sense that greater backswing duration variability is associated with superior task performance) and may result from the joint effects of players visually controlling movement during its execution (Bootsma 1988) and the experienced subjects' earlier pick-up of relevant information for visual control (cf. Abernethy and Russell 1987).     

Short review and book note

Michael Carrithers, The forest monks of Sri Lanka: an anthropological and historical study, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. xii + 306. Rs 145

Philippe Besnard (editor), The sociological domain: The durkheimians and the founding of French sociology, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pp. xii + 296. $44.50     

Short review and book note

Wilson, Monica, Religion and the transformation of society: A study of social change in Africa (The Scott Holland Memorial Lectures, series 15, 1969.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. 165 pp, £1.80

Witt, R. E. Isis in the Graeco‐Roman world, Thames and Hudson, London, 1971, 336 pp., £3.75

Taylor, John V. (et al.) ‘Face to face’: Essays on inter‐faith dialogue. Highway Press, 1971, 72 pp. 50 p.

Alphonso‐Karkala, John B. (ed.). An anthology of Indian literature. Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1971. 630 pp. 90 p.

Gay, John D. The geography of religion in England. London: Duckworth, 1971, pp. xviii + 331. £3.95     

Short review and book note

John McManners, Death and the enlightenment. Changing attitudes to death among Christians and unbelievers in eighteenth-century France, Oxford University Press 1981, vii + 619 pp. £17.50

Richard Swinburne, Faith and reason, Oxford, The Clarendon Press 1981, 206 pp. £16.00

John Coulson, Religion and imagination, Oxford, The Clarendon Press 1981, 193 pp. £12.50

Irving Hexham, The irony of apartheid, the struggle for national independence of Afrikaner calvinism against British imperialism, New York, Edwin Mellen Press 1981, 239 pp

David Tracy, The analogical imagination, London, SCM Press 1981, xii + 467 pp. £12.50

K. D. Sethna Rutherford, The spirituality of the future, a search apropos of R. C. Zaehner's study in Sri Aurobindo and Teilhard de Chardin, Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses 1981. 314 pp. $28.50     

Short review and book note

G. J. Cuming and D. Baker, ed. Studies in church history, vol. 8: Popular belief and practice. Cambridge University Press, pp. xii and 331. £6.40.

James E. Wood, Jnr. (Ed.), Jewish-Christian relations in today's world (The Markham Press Fund of Baylor University Press, Waco, Texas, 1971) pp. 164.

Stern, S. M. and Walzer, Sofie, Three unknown Buddhist stories in an Arabic version, introduction, text and translation. Oxford, Cassirer, 1971, 38 pp. £2.00

Brown, Peter, Religion and society in the age of Saint Augustine, Faber and Faber, 1972, pp. 352. £3.25; MACINTYRE, ALASDAIR, Against the Self‐Images of the Age, Duckworth, 1871, pp. vi‐284. E3.45; WINCH, PETER, Ethics and Action, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972, pp. 231. £2.75.

Woodcock, George. Gandhi. Fontana, Collins (London), 1972. 108 pp., paperback 35p.

Masunaga, R. A primer of Soto Zen: A translation of Dogen's shobogenzo zuimonki. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972. 126 pp., £1.25.

Swanton, Michael (Ed.). The dream of the road. Manchester University Press, 1970. ix + 146 pp. £1.20 (paperback 60p).