Automation of mazes and shuttleboxes

Automation of the movement of doors in mazes and shuttleboxes may be readily achieved by a simple modification to apparatus commonly found in laboratory settings. Using a commercial timer module fitted with a “take-up” spool, a simple pulley may be arranged to lift and lower doors to permit and/or restrict access to certain areas of mazes and shuttleboxes, obviating experimenter handling.     

Exploratory behaviour in elevated and enclosed mazes

Rats given daily exploratory trials in a simple enclosed maze showed a decline in activity from day to day, while animals exploring an elevated maze showed no decline between days. In a further experiment exploration of either an elevated or an enclosed maze was found to cease after about 15 min. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

The mazes of practicing and the horizons

Teaching must take account of young people's individual needs and talents; it must develop their desire for criticism and effort. The spiritual framework must therefore rest on values of rationality and sensitivity. Morality must rest on the notion of personal dignity. In this way, we shall be able to create a horizon, a goal which can inject meaning into life.     

Strategic navigation of two-dimensional alley mazes: comparing capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees

Planning is an important component of cognition that contributes, for example, to efficient movement through space. In the current study we presented novel two-dimensional alley mazes to four chimpanzees and three capuchin monkeys to identify the nature and efficiency of planning in relation to varying task parameters. All the subjects solved more mazes without error than expected by chance, providing compelling evidence that both species planned their choices in some manner. The probability of making a correct choice on mazes designed to be more demanding and presented later in the testing series was higher than on earlier, simpler mazes (chimpanzees), or unchanged (capuchin monkeys), suggesting microdevelopment of strategic choice. Structural properties of the mazes affected both species' choices. Capuchin monkeys were less likely than chimpanzees to take a correct path that initially led away from the goal but that eventually led to the goal. Chimpanzees were more likely to make an error by passing a correct path than by turning onto a wrong path. Chimpanzees and one capuchin made more errors on choices farther in sequence from the goal. Each species corrected errors before running into the end of an alley in approximately 40% of cases. Together, these findings suggest nascent planning abilities in each species, and the prospect for significant development of strategic planning capabilities on tasks presenting multiple simultaneous or sequential spatial relations. The computerized maze paradigm appears well suited to investigate movement planning and spatial perception in human and nonhuman primates alike.     

The effects of variation of intertrial interval on exploration of elevatd and enclosed mazes

The interval between exploratory trials was varied in experiments using simple elevated or enclosed mazes. Activity on the second trial was depressed for short intertrial intervals but had recovered after about 10 min.; the degree of recovery was different in the two types of maze. A second decrease in second trial activity was found with inter-trial intervals of more than 20 min., but a further experiment suggested this was due to the effects of delay itself, rather than to previous experience of the environment.     

Content mazes and filled pauses in narrative language samples of children with specific language impairment

Linguistic nonfluencies known as mazes (filled pauses, repetitions, revisions, and abandoned utterances) have been used to draw inferences about processing difficulties associated with the production of language. In children with normal language development (NL), maze frequency in general increases with linguistic complexity, being greater in narrative than conversational contexts and in longer utterances. The same tendency has been found for children with specific language impairment (SLI). However, the frequency of mazes produced by children with NL and SLI has not been compared directly at equivalent utterance lengths in narration. This study compared the frequency of filled pauses and content mazes in narrative language samples of school-age children with SLI. The children with SLI used significantly more content mazes than the children with NL, but fewer filled pauses. Unlike content mazes, the frequency of filled pauses remained stable across samples of different utterance lengths among children with SLI. This indicates that filled pauses and content mazes have different origins and should not be analyzed or interpreted in the same way.     

Of mice and men: virtual Hebb-Williams mazes permit comparison of spatial learning across species

We developed a computer-generated virtual environment to test humans, for the first time, on the Hebb-Williams mazes. The goal was to provide a standardized test that could be used to directly compare human performance with that of C57BL/6J mice performing in real versions of the mazes. Such a comparison seems crucial if conclusions regarding genetic manipulations of rodents are to be mapped onto human cognitive disorders. The learning curves across species were strikingly similar, lending support to the rodent model of human spatial memory. Humans learned faster than rodents in both the acquisition and the test portions of the protocol, and females of both species were less efficient in solving these problems than males. These results represent the first modern comparison of human and rodent learning that uses the same test of spatial problem solving.     

A House of Living Stones

This report to the 6th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Vancouver in 1983 describes the church as a “House of Living Stones,” based on the First Letter of Peter. The ecumenical movement is the means by which the churches that form the house, the oikos of God, are seeking to live and witness before all peoples. The image of the house of living stones is a reminder that only as the churches relate to each other as living stones will they discover new realities about their essential calling to be the church, the house of the triune God, as a fellowship of confessing, learning, participating, sharing, healing, reconciliation, unity, and expectancy to the glory of God.     

清凉石的优美传说

当我们踏上五台山这块佛国净土时,无不被那清洁新鲜的空气、凉爽宜人的气候、漫山遍野的鲜花、如鸣佩环的溪声和那青松翠柏掩映着的梵宇花宫所陶醉.然而,这充满诗情画意、令人神往的清凉胜境,原来并非这般景象.相传,在远古的时候,五台山叫五顶山.五座山峰矗立天际,悬崖陡峭,山丘相连,纵横交错.气候异常恶劣,冬天滴水成冰,春天飞沙走石,夏天炎热难耐,终年天旱无雨,寸草不生,天罕飞禽,地绝走兽,只有面目峥狞的古怪岩石和令人窒息的滚滚沙石,看去满目荒凉,好像一个没有生命的不毛之地.……