How Body Asymmetries Determine Accessibility in Spatial Frameworks

Spatial frameworks are a class of spatial mentalmodel that code locations of objects relative to the body axes. Spatial frameworks predict accessibility of spatial relations from memory primarily on the basis of the relative asymmetry of the body axes, such that highly asymmetric axes lead to faster retrieval of information. The present research examined how bodily asymmetries affect retrieval. Experiment 1 contrasted two theoretical accounts. The Salience Account proposes that relative degrees of asymmetry render axes differentially salient, and hence differentially foregrounded in one's mental model. The Direction Decision Account proposes that an explicit decision process is necessary to access specific locations along body axes. The ease of the decision process presumably depends on the degree of asymmetry that exists to discriminate poles along a body axis. The spatial framework pattern of accessibility was observed both when subjects identified specific directions of objects and when subjects identified just the axis to which objects were associated, supporting the Salience Account. Experiment 2 investigated whether lateralization affects accessibility from spatial frameworks. Performance of highly lateralized individuals did not differ from that of weakly lateralized individuals.     

Restoring the associability of a pre-exposed CS by a surprising event

Three experiments are reported which use rats and the conditioned suppression technique. The first two confirmed a previous finding that prior exposure to a stimulus predicting a weak shock retards further learning when this same stimulus is subsequently used to signal a stronger shock. They further showed that this loss of stimulus associability could be attenuated by inserting trials on which the stimulus was presented alone in the absence of shock before the phase of training with the stronger shock. Experiment III demonstrated that, for animals given prior exposure to two stimuli, the insertion of nonreinforced trials with one of the stimuli will restore the associability only of that stimulus. These results are taken to show that a surprising event (the omission of an expected shock) can restore the associability of a pre-exposed conditioned stimulus.     

Is Act-Utilitarianism the ‘Ethics of Fantasy’?

Act-utilitarianism is often criticised as an unreasonably demanding moral philosophy that commits agents to a life of ceaseless and depersonalizing do-gooding. In this essay I argue in Sidgwickian vein that the strenuousness of act-utilitarianism has been greatly exaggerated, and that the practical demands of the doctrine in the contemporary world are closer to those of common-sense morality than such critics as Derek Parfit and Brad Hooker allow.     

Infant individuation and identification of objects

Recent studies of the infant's object concept have focused on the role of property information in individuation. We draw a distinction between individuation and identification. By individuation, we mean the setting up of an object representation (OR). By identification, we mean using the information stored in an OR to decide which, if any, previously individuated object is presently encountered. We investigate this distinction in experiments with 12-month-old infants. We find that for infants of this age, a shape difference between two objects has a large effect on both individuation and identification. However, a color difference between two objects has a large effect on individuation, but little or no effect on identification. This suggests that, somewhat surprisingly, information used to establish an OR may not always be incorporated into that representation.     

Challenges and Resilience: Managers’ Perceptions of Firm Performance Following M&As

We study mergers and acquisitions (M&As), resilience and performance, identifying links between managers’ perceptions of performance and resilience, using trans-national organisational-level survey evidence (N = 3,613) and follow up semi-structured in-depth interviews with managers involved in M&As and demerger. Drawing on the resilience and M&A literature, we identify reasons why employees in acquired firms may be less resilient in coping with the resultant changes than those of the acquirer and why this will negatively impact perceptions of performance. We explore the causes and consequences of variations in resilience and performance within firms that acquire others, and in those that have been demerged. As anticipated, we find that although managers in acquired firms tended to report worse performance than those in acquiring firms, both tended to be more positive than firms that had not taken part in an M&A at all. We draw out implications for theory and practice.     

Book reviews

PASSINCHAM, R. E. The Human Primate. Oxford and San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. 1982. Pp. xii + 390. ISBN 0 7167 1356 X, £14.95 (hardback); 0 7167 1357 8, £7.50 (paperback).

MACPHAIL, E. M. Brain and Intelligence in Vertebrates. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1982. Pp. 423. £20. ISBN 0 19 854550 9.

KATSUKI, Y. Receptive Mechanisms of Sound in the Ear. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1982. Pp. 155. ISBN 0 521 24346 7. £20.00.