Incidental formation of episodic associations: The importance of sentential context

The influence of relevant semantic context on the incidental formation of episodic associations between words was probed in two experiments. In Experiment 1, we examined the influence of associations formed incidentally between unrelated words presented either in isolation or embedded in a sentential context on subsequent explicit paired-associate leaning tested by cued recall. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the cued-recall rate of words studied in sentential context was higher than that of words co-occurring in isolated pairs. A subsequent single-items recognition test showed equal item memory for words studied in sentences than for words studied in isolated pairs, suggesting that the sentential context effect in cued recall indeed reflected stronger associations between paired words rather than better memory for single words. In Experiment 2, we ruled out memory for the entire sentence as an alternative explanation for the results of Experiment 1. We suggest two possible mechanisms to account for this advantage: First, pairs embedded in a sentence undergo semantic elaboration that might lead to the incidental formation of an association between them. Second, words embedded in a sentence enjoy the conjoint activation of compatible semantic features, a fact that may also facilitate the formation of an episodic association between them. The implications of these results for computational models using word representations based on co-occurrence data are discussed.     

Age-related accelerated tapping response in healthy population

Different types of rapid tapping responses were described in the finger-tapping test. The "Hastening phenomenon" was described as an abnormal motor response in patients with Parkinson's disease. Accelerated tapping has been shown in a healthy elderly sample. It is not clear whether accelerated tapping relates to the hastening phenomenon or characterizes normal aging. We hypothesized that this sample of 21 healthy elderly people showed increased accelerated tapping but not hastening phenomenon. To assess this hypothesis, 20 healthy young and 21 elderly subjects performed a tapping test, requiring responses from 1 to 6 Hz. The healthy elderly sample showed increased accelerated tapping but not increased "hastening phenomenon." We conclude that Accelerated tapping may represent age-related motor processes unlike the hastening phenomenon characterizing Parkinson's disease.     

Nothing New Under the Sun? A Comparison of Images of Women in Israeli Advertisements in 1979 and 1994

The changing role of women in society hascreated a challenging task for advertisers — howto portray women in advertisements. The subject of thisarticle is a comparison of two studies undertaken in1979 and 1994 of the portrayal of women and men inprinted Israeli advertisements. These studies respond,in part, to the need articulated by Durkin (1985) forthe analysis of advertisements from countries other than the United States. While Durkin focused ontelevision, however, this study concentrates onadvertisements in the print media because Israelicommercial television is very young, having made itsdebut only at the beginning of the 1990s. The purposeof this paper is essentially twofold: first, to provideevidence about gender display in advertising in Israel— a non-English speaking, capitalist, Western democracy that nevertheless possesses strongtraditional normsand second, to provide a comprehensivepicture of Israel's advertising print output byanalyzing various daily newspapers andmagazines.     

An Anatomy of Political Beliefs: A Study of Their Centrality, Confidence, Contents, and Epistemic Authority

The present study is a simultaneous investigation of the contents of political beliefs and their characteristics among Israeli students. In addition, it examines their perceived use of information sources. The results indicate that political beliefs regarding the Israeli-Arab conflicts are organized systematically around the dove/hawk dimension. Also, a positive relationship was found between centrality of beliefs and confidence in them; between well-defined political identification and centrality and confidence; and between agreement with the beliefs and confidence. Finally, the results show that the perceived use of information sources is related to political identification. The performed investigation demonstrates the importance of combining the study of the contents of beliefs with that of their characteristics, since the latter have important implications for understanding individuals' cognitive, affective, and behavioral reactions.     

The relative consistency of system RRC* and some of its extensions

We present a relative consistency proof for second order systemRRC* and for certain important extensions of this system. The proof proceeds as follows: we prove first the equiconsistency of the strongest of such extensions (viz., systemH RRC*+(/CP**)) with second order systemT ^* . Now, N. Cocchiarella has shown thatT ^* is relatively consistent to systemT*+Ext; clearly, it follows thatH RRC*+(/CP**) is relatively consistent toT*+E _xt. As an immediate consequence, the relative consistency ofRRC* and the other extensions also follows, being all of them subsystems ofH RRC*+(/CP**).I am grateful to the referee for some modifications suggested to an earlier draft of this paper.Presented byMelvin Fitting     

A developmental assessment of children's verbal strategies for social action resolution

The objectives of this study were (1) to devise a method to assess children's developing verbal strategies for action resolution as expressed in reflection on a naturalistic, real-life social experience and (2) to examine these strategies in relation to differences in age and reflective social understanding level. In the design of this study the two independent variables were grade (second and third versus fourth and fifth) and level of reflective social understanding (level 1 versus level 2 on a social understanding interview schedule). Four small activity groups (six subjects per group), homogeneous with respect to grade and reflective social understanding level, were composed from 24 girls with middle class backgrounds. Each of the four groups met for twelve consecutive school weaks, once a week, for 90 minutes in adult supervised after-school cooperative group activities (e.g., putting on a puppet show).A Social Action Resolution Strategies interview was administered to each subject individually at the end of the twelve-week program in order to assess the child's preferred verbally expressed choice of action for resolving common conflits which arose in the activity group experience. Interviews were coded according to four levels of social action resolution strategies (0–3). Results indicated that the developmental sequence of social perspective-taking levels can be considered to underlie the range of strategies used by children to settle social conflicts as well as social understanding levels. A clear relation among level of social action resolution strategies, level of reflective social understanding, and grade was found.     

Supracompact inference operations

When a proposition is cumulatively entailed by a finite setA of premisses, there exists, trivially, a finite subsetB ofA such thatB B entails for all finite subsetsB that are entailed byA. This property is no longer valid whenA is taken to be an arbitrary infinite set, even when the considered inference operation is supposed to be compact. This leads to a refinement of the classical definition of compactness. We call supracompact the inference operations that satisfy the non-finitary analogue of the above property. We show that for any arbitrary cumulative operationC, there exists a supracompact cumulative operationK(C) that is smaller thenC and agrees withC on finite sets. Moreover,K(C) inherits most of the properties thatC may enjoy, like monotonicity, distributivity or disjunctive rationality. The main part of the paper concerns distributive supracompact operations. These operations satisfy a simple functional equation, and there exists a representation theorem that provides a semantic characterization for this family of operations. We examine finally the case of rational operations and show that they can be represented by a specific kind of model particularly easy to handle.     

Gossip and counselling: The tendency to gossip and its relation to vocational interests

In this study we attempted to treat gossip as a psychological disposition related to vocational interests, using a newly developed instrument, the Tendency to Gossip Questionnaire (TGQ). One hundred and twenty Israeli students (58 females, 62 males) at the Haifa Technion and the University of Haifa were administered the TGQ together with the Social Desirability Scale and the Ramak-Vocational Interests Questionnaire. We found that: (a) women tended to report that they gossiped more than men did, but this difference was confined to one specific content area of gossip only; and (b) interest in people-oriented professions was related to the tendency to gossip even when social desirability and gender were controlled for statistically. The last finding supports the ‘spillover’ hypothesis (Staines, 1980) on the relationship between vocational and avocational interests. The positive relationship between the tendency to gossip and an interest in people-oriented professions might mean that both derive from the same basic needs. We suggest that counselling and psychotherapy can be regarded as sublimated forms of gossip. It is our hope that the TGQ may be of help in expanding our knowledge about the relationship between the tendency to gossip and other psychological dispositions.

This paper attempts to examine the relationship between Existential thought & Client Centred approach to counselling. This task is undertaken by means of an examination of both the similarities and differences between the two fields, as well as relevant research. The paper draws upon thinking of major writers in the fields under consideration, and in doing so looks at such themes as meaning and existence, such concepts as philosophy and technique in psychotherapy and counselling and characteristics of the therapist and the counselling process.     

Suicide and self-inflicted injuries

The present study addressed itself to the problem of self-inflicted injuries (SII) in the Israeli army, and to the wider question whether non-fatal self injuries and suicide are part of the same phenomenon. The findings show that in some cases SII is an unsucessful suicide while in others SII is anything but a reflection of a death wish. It appears that the modus operandi is a major indication as to the intentions of the actor. The study also demonstrates the difference between the population of the suiciders and that of the SII victims. While suiciders seem to score higher on the Performance Prediction Score (PPS) and Combat Suitability Scale, the SII population seems to be overly represented in the lower parts of the PPS and the Combat Suitability Scale. The study used a data set that represents a 5 year period, and followed the consequences of the SII in terms of medical status and occupational assignment of the actors. The findings yielded some possible policy implications, in terms of a better classification of the relevant populations, and a possible attribution of a more refined meaning to the behavior. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

A Temporal Logic for Sortals

With the past and future tense propositional operators in its syntax, a formal logical system for sortal quantifiers, sortal identity and (second order) quantification over sortal concepts is formulated. A completeness proof for the system is constructed and its absolute consistency proved. The completeness proof is given relative to a notion of logical validity provided by an intensional semantic system, which assumes an approach to sortals from a modern form of conceptualism.