Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

MARRIAGE AND DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS

This study examined gender differences in the configuration of components of intimacy in marriage and in the relationship of marriage to depression in a community sample of 260 men and women. We hypothesized that women's report of marital intimacy would include a distinct self-disclosure component, whereas this would be part of companionship in men's report of intimacy. Also, using self-in-relation theory, we hypothesized that self-esteem level would mediate the relationship between marital quality and depression for women but would moderate this relationship for men. Both predictions were upheld, suggesting a need to reformulate current models of the role of marital quality in depression to better capture the influence of gender.     

Components of the laterality effect in letter recognition: Asymmetries in iconic storage

A partial report procedure and a backward masking paradigm were employed to explore lateral asymmetries in components of letter recognition. Stimulus displays were displaced off-centre into the left visual field (LVF) or the right visual field (RVF). Visual field differences in the effect of a delayed backward mask indicated an RVF superiority in the rate of read-out or encoding. Comparison of masked and unmasked full report also yielded estimates of iconic persistence. The persistence of these peripheral displays was surprisingly brief, although it was significantly longer in the LVF (₅₇ ms) than in the RVF (₃₄ ms). Precueing by colour and by location produced a larger partial report advantage in the RVF, reflecting a superiority in selective sampling. With postcueing no partial report effect was obtained at any delay, and this failure was attributed to the briefness of the iconic persistence.