Social positions in the city of light

This article describes the social positions of inhabitants in the otherworldly City of Light as reported by a limited number of Mormon near-death experiences (NDErs). These social positions included men and women and various relatives and friends, in addition to authorities or administrators, genealogists, guardians, guides, homemakers, missionaries, teachers, and students. These reports of social positions in the City of Light are similar to those described by other researchers, and are comparable to those found in our own world.The authors thanks Jay G.Burrup for providing a section of theDiary of George Henry Carver. This research was supported in part by a sabbatical leave granted to Dr. Lundahl by the Sabbatical Leave Committee of Western New Mexico University.     

A simulation of memory for chess positions

This paper describes an information-processing model, MAPP, implemented as a computer program, that simulates the processes subjects use to remember and reproduce chess positions they have seen briefly. The model incorporates processes adapted from PERCEIVER, an information-processsing theory of eye movements in chess perception, and EPAM, a theory of rote verbal learning. The data from MAPP show good agreement with the performance of strong chess players in identical tasks.     

Global poverty: four normative positions

Global poverty is a huge problem in today's world. This survey article seeks to be a first guide to those who are interested in, but relatively unfamiliar with, the main issues, positions and arguments in the contemporary philosophical discussion of global poverty. The article attempts to give an overview of four distinct and influential normative positions on global poverty. Moreover, it seeks to clarify, and put into perspective, some of the key concepts and issues that take center stage in the philosophical discussion of global poverty. The four positions to be discussed are labeled the Maximalist Position, the Minimalist Position, Intermediate Position I and Intermediate Position II. After an account of these four distinct positions, we turn, in the conclusion, to a discussion of what role empirical sciences such as economics and political science should play in normative considerations about global poverty.     

Chess players' recall of auditorily presented chess positions

Abstract

Chess players' recall of auditorily presented chess positions were studied in three experiments. The results of the first two experiments showed that the skilled chess players are better at recalling game and random positions. This contradicts the standard finding that they perform better only in game positions. In the third experiment, the memory load was increased by increasing the number of positions to be recalled simultaneously from one to four positions. Skilled subjects are still far better at recalling game positions, but they score no more than moderately skilled subjects in recalling four random positions.

The results are in contradiction with the direct chunking hypothesis. Skilled chess players do not fail to recall random positions because there are no chunks in them, but because they are not, under some special conditions, able to encode them properly. It is necessary to postulate more complicated encoding mechanisms than a simple recognition-based activation of a chunk in long-term memory.     

Recall memory for visually presented chess positions

A series of three experiments replicated and extended earlier research reported by Chase and Simon (1973), de Groot (1965), and Charness (Note 1). The first experiment demonstrated that the relationship between memory for chess positions and chess skill varies directly with the amount of chess-specific information in the stimulus display. The second experiment employed tachistoscopic displays to incrementally "build" tournament chess positions by meaningful or nonmeaningful chunks and demonstrated that meaningful piece groupings during presentation markedly enhance subsequent recall performance. The third experiment tested memory for one of two positions presented in immediate sequence and demonstrated that explanations based on a limited-capacity short-term memory (Chase & Simon, 1973) are not adequate for explaining performance on this memory task.     

Response-times at different positions within a sentence

Response latency has often been used to draw inferences about scanning operations in serial lists. Different models have been employed and this experiment tests their predictions when a sentence replaces a serial list. Constituent analysis is used to predict an increase in latency when responding involves crossing a constituent boundary. This prediction is confirmed, and it is found necessary to revise those explanations derived from studies using serial lists to include reference to the syntactic structure of the linguistic material used.     

Depth of ankle inversion and discrimination of foot positions

Ankle inversion injuries are common, yet little is known about the error associated with different positions as inversion depth increases. In this study, absolute judgments made without feedback were used to measure discrimination of different extents of ankle inversion which arose from active movements made to physical stops by 20 self-reported right side-dominant participants. Testing was conducted over three sets of five inversion depths that were within a range of 1.4 degrees and centered around mean depths of 8,11, and 14 degrees. Discrimination of ankle inversion movements decreased linearly with depths of movement further into inversion, both within and across the sets of inversion depths. Thus, error in assessing movement position increased with inversion depth. Inversion movements that were made with the left foot were significantly better discriminated at all depths than those made with the right foot.     

Attending to forty-nine spatial positions at once.

Simultaneous attention to 49 spatial positions resulted in the processing of threshold information from one of those positions essentially identical to the processing when the subject knew in advance that that position would be tested. This result held true when the task consisted of detection of the presence of a briefly presented dot. The same result held true for 9 spatial positions when the task consisted of report of the briefly presented letter in the target position.     

Relation between flicker fusion threshold and retinal positions

The critical flicker frequencies (CFF) were determined for various locations on the retina. Under the conditions in which pupil size varies little with target luminance and size for a retinal location, two findings were obtained. First, the relation between the CFF value and the retinal location depends basically upon the density distribution of the receptor cells (cones and rods) on the retina. Second, when a large test field is employed, the peripheral area shows a maximal CFF value. These characteristics are explicable in terms of the retinal structure and by assuming some functions for it.     

Explanations of success and derailment in upper-level management positions

Using an inventory based on findings from several qualitative studies, this investigation developed eight dimensions distinguishing successful senior managers from those who had derailed. Results showed that bosses' ratings of 86 successful senior managers on the eight dimensions were significantly higher than those of 83 who had derailed, providing empirical support for many of the earlier qualitative findings. Comparing the successful managers to the derailed suggests dimensions otherwise overlooked which are important to consider when assessing managerial talent.     

Perceptual invariance for stop consonants in different positions

The basis for the invariant perception of place of articulation in pre- and postvocalic stops was investigated using the selective adaptation paradigm. Experiments 1 and 2 considered the role of identical bursts, mirror-image formant transitions, and similar onset and offset spectra in the invariant perception of place of articulation in CV and VC stimuli, and Experiment 3 considered the importance of the second two cues in a VCV context. The results of these experiments suggest that, at the level of processing tapped by selective adaptation, neither identical bursts, mirror-image formant transitions, nor similar onset and offset spectra are the basis for the invariant perception of place of articulation in initial and final position. The vowel portion of an adapter was found to affect perception of the consonant portion of a stimulus, and the direction of this effect was predictable from the acoustic characteristics of the consonant and vowel. The implications of these findings for the nature of selective adaptation are discussed.     

Rhesus plasma cortisol response at four dominance positions

Adrenocortical function and social behaviors were measured in 48 laboratory-born juvenile monkeys in stable (original) groupings at rest, in the same groupings in competition for drinking water, in newly formed groupings each composed of animals from the same original dominance position, and upon return to the original groupings, always in groups of four. In newly formed groupings, plasma cortisol measured higher with each step down in the new dominance hierarchy, the effect attenuating by day 8. Although the partial correlation between frequencies of hostility behavior and plasma cortisol level was low (r = 0.05) when holding fear constant, the partial correlation between cortisol and fear behaviors, holding hostility behavior constant, was 0.86. The data provide evidence that corticosteroid elevations during social stress are related to behavior suggestive of fear and not aggression and are dependent upon dominance rank, the level of dominance competition, and previous dominance history.     

宫观应该发挥的作用

道教有许多积极的教义精神和内容,都是通过宫观展示和发挥出来的。依托宫观,道教在历史的过程中进步发展,展现了道教作为一种文化载体特有的精神风貌,许多著名的高道也是在各个历史的时代中依赖宫观环境发     

Mapping people's positions regarding the acceptability of somatic gene therapy

IntroductionAs gene therapy entails potential drawbacks, studies are needed in order to know people's opinions regarding its use.ObjectivesThe present study examined French people's positions regarding somatic gene therapy.MethodA sample of 224 adults living in various areas in France was presented with 32 realistic scenarios that were created by orthogonally combining the levels of four factors: the type of illness (e.g., hemophilia), the probability of transmission of the pathogenic gene, the technique used (e.g., transfer of a functional gene just after birth), and le probability of success of the therapy.ResultsThrough cluster analysis, six qualitatively different positions were found: Never very acceptable (8% of the sample, mostly males and more educated people), Legalist (17%, mostly people who have been informed of the legal and technical aspects of the therapy), Depends on the chances of success (18%), Fully acceptable after birth (5%), Fully acceptable before birth (8%), and Quite always acceptable (33%, mostly older people with children).ConclusionAlthough it has some few detractors, the recourse to gene therapy seems to be well accepted by a majority of the participants, and this high level of acceptation hold whether the pathology considered is hemophilia, immunodeficiency, propensity to develop cancer, or cardiovascular pathology.     

Your highness: vertical positions as perceptual symbols of power

Metaphorically, power equals up. Drawing on embodied theories of cognition, the author argues that thinking about power involves mental simulation of space and can be interfered with by perception of vertical differences. Study 1 assessed image schemas for power and found a shared vertical difference metaphor. Studies 2, 3, and 4 showed that the judgment of a group's power is influenced by the group's vertical position in space and motor responses implying vertical movement. Study 5 ruled out that the influence of vertical position on power judgments is driven by valence differences. Study 6 showed that vertical position also influences the power judgment result itself. The evidence suggests that the concept of power is partly represented in perceptual form as vertical difference.     

The role of external letter positions in visual word recognition

A key issue for any computational model of visual word recognition is the choice of an input coding schema, which is responsible for assigning letter positions. Such a schema must reflect the fact that, according to recent research, nonwords created by transposing letters (e.g., caniso for CASINO ), typically, appear to be more similar to the word than nonwords created by replacing letters (e.g., caviro ). In the present research, we initially carried out a computational analysis examining the degree to which the position of the transposition influences transposed-letter similarity effects. We next conducted a masked priming experiment with the lexical decision task to determine whether a transposed-letter priming advantage occurs when the first letter position is involved. Primes were created by either transposing the first and third letters (démula-MEDULA ) or replacing the first and third letters (bérula-MEDULA). Results showed that there was no transposed-letter priming advantage in this situation. We discuss the implications of these results for models of visual word recognition.