Verbal recoding of visual stimuli impairs mentalimagetransformations

Two experiments were carried out to test the hypothesis that verbal recoding of visual stimuli in short-term memory influences long-term memory encoding and impairs subsequent mental image operations. Easy and difficult-to-name stimuli were used. When rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, each stimulus revealed a new pattern consisting of two capital letters joined together. In both experiments, subjects first learned a short series of stimuli and were then asked to rotate mental images of the stimuli in order to detect the hidden letters. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression was used to prevent subjects from subvocal rehearsal when learning the stimuli, whereas in Experiment 2, verbal labels were presented with each stimulus during learning to encourage a reliance on the verbal code. As predicted, performance in the imagery task was significantly improved by suppression when the stimuli were easy to name (Experiment 1) but was severely disrupted by labeling when the stimuli were difficult to name (Experiment 2). We concluded that verbal recoding of stimuli in short-term memory during learning disrupts the ability to generate veridical mental images from long-term memory.     

Book reviews

Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience. Peter L. Berger, 1997 Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter 216 pp., £13.40 (hb) ISBN 3–11–015562–1

Reflections on Sociology and Theology. David Martin, 1997 Oxford: Clarendon Press viii +257 pp., £30.00 ISBN 0–19–827384–3

Wilderness Wanderings: Probing Twentieth‐Century Theology and Philosophy. Stanley Hauerwas, 1997 Oxford: Westview Press/Harper Collins 242 pp., £21.50 (hb) ISBN 0–8133–3349–0

The Longing for Home. Leroy Rouner, ed., 1997 Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion, Vol. 17 Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 248 pp., US$34.00 (hb) ISBN 0–268–01310–1

The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach. Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Bernard Spilka, Bruce Hunsberger & Richard Gorsuch, 1996, 2nd edition New York, London: Guilford Press 546 pp., US$70.00, £45.00 (hb) ISBN 1–57230–116–3

America's Communal Utopias. Donald E. Pitzer, ed., 1997 Chapel Hill, London: University of North Carolina Press 537 pp., US$60.00 (hb), US$24.95 (pb) ISBN 0–8078–2299‐X (hb), ISBN 0–8078–4609–0 (pb)

Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium. Donald E. Miller, 1997 Los Angeles, CA: California University Press 254 pp, US$ 27.50 (hb) ISBN 0–520–20938–9

Resurgent Evangelicalism in the United States: Mapping Cultural Change since 1970. Mark A. Shibley, 1996 Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press 156 pp., US$24.95 ISBN 1–57003–106–1

Struggle for the Spirit: Religious Transformation and Popular Culture in Brazil and Latin America. David Lehmann, 1996 Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press xiv +244 pp., £39.50 (hb) ISBN 0–7456–1784–0

The Soul of Development: Biblical Christianity and Economic Transformation in Guatemala. Amy L. Sherman, 1997 Oxford: Oxford University Press 224 pp., £37.99 ISBN 0–19–510671–7

Jamaica Genesis: Religion and the Politics of Moral Orders. Diane J. Austin‐Broos, 1997 With a Foreword by Raymond T. Smith Chicago; The University of Chicago Press 328 pp., US$19.95, £15.95 (pb), US$50.00, £39.95 (hb) ISBN 0–226–03286–8 (pb), ISBN 0–226–03284–1 (hb)

Black God: The Afro‐Asian Roots of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Religions. Julian Baldick, 1997 London, New York: I.B.Tauris 198 pp., £39.50 (hb) ISBN 1–86064–123–7

Image of the Prophet Muhammad in the West: A Study of Muir, Margoliouth and Watt. Jabal Muhammad Buaben, 1996/1417 AH. Markfield: The Islamic Foundation 394p., £ 9.50 (pb); £19.50 (hb) ISBN 0–86037–261–8 (pb), ISBN 0–86037–260‐X (hb)

New Religious Movements in Western Europe: An Annotated Bibliography. Bibliographies and Indexes in Religious Studies, No. 41 Elisabeth Arweck & Peter B. Clarke, 1997 Westport, CT & London: Greenwood Press xliii + 381 pp., £71.50 (hb) ISBN 0–313–24324–7

The New Age Movement: The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity. Paul Heelas, 1996 Oxford: Blackwell 266 pp., £45.00, US$49.95 (hb); £13.99; US$21.95 (pb) ISBN 0–631–19331–6 (hb), ISBN 0–631–19332–4 (pb)

New Age Religion and Western Culture. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, 1996 Leiden & New York: E. J. Brill 580 pp., NLG 235.00, US$ 147.50 (hb), NLG 80.00, US$51.75 (pb) ISBN 90–04–10695–2 (hb), ISBN 90–04–10696–0 (pb)

Embers of Wan Letters from a Quaker Relief Worker in War‐Torn Germany. Grigór McClelland, 1997 London: British Academic Press 230 pp., £25.00 (hb) ISBN 8–6064–312–4

Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ. William A. Christian Jr., 1996 Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press xxii + 544 pp. £32.00 ISBN 0–520–20040–3

The Topography of Remembrance: The Dead, Tradition and Collective Memory in Mesopotamia. Gerdien Jonker, 1995 Leiden: E. J. Brill xiii + 284 pp., c. £66.00 ISBN 90–04–10162–4

Faith in History: Armenians Rebuilding Community. Susan Paul Pattie, 1997 Washington & London: Smithsonian Institution Press 282 pp., £38.25 ISBN 1–56098–629–8

The Good Parsi: The Fate of a Colonial Elite in a Postcolonial Society. Tanya M. Luhrmann, 1996 Cambridge, MA & London, England: Harvard University Press xi +317 pp., £33.50 (hb), £15.50 (pb) ISBN 0–674–35675–6 (hb), ISBN 0–674–35676–4 (pb)

The Feast of the Sorcerer Practices of Consciousness and Power. Bruce Kapferer, 1997 Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press 367 pp., US$65.00, £51.95 (hb), US$27.50, £21.95 (pb) ISBN 0–226–42411–1 (hb), ISBN 1–226–42413–8 (pb)

Religion in Japan: Arrows to Heaven and Earth. P.F. Kornicki & I.J. McMullen, eds., 1996 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press xxv +315 pp., £40.00, US$59.95 ISBN 0–521–55028–9

Teaching Right and Wrong: Moral Education in the Balance. Richard Smith & Paul Standish, eds., 1997 Stoke on Trent, England: Trentham Books 157 pp., £13.95 (pb) ISBN 1–85856–084–5     

Individual differences between liars and the ability to detect lies

It is difficult to detect deception. Studies suggest it is little, ifany, better than chance. But some guidance is available. This study examinedpersonality traits, in particular self-consciousness in public and abilityto control behaviour. The effects can be observed in hand movements. Thisstudy examined the effects, of giving this information to assessors, upontheir ability to detect deception.     

In the Begining Science said…

From DNA to Dean: Reflections and Explorations of a Priest-scientist , Arthur Peacocke
God and the Web of Creation , Ruth Page     

What is Testimony?

C.A.J. Coady, in his book Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), offers conditions on an assertion that p to count as testimony. He claims that the assertion that p must be by a competent speaker directed to an audience in need of evidence and it must be evidence that p . I offer examples to show that Coady's conditions are too strong. Testimony need not be evidence; the speaker need not be competent; and, the statement need not be relevant or directed to someone in need of evidence. I give alternative conditions. Coady was led into the stronger conditions by investigating testimony as it occurs in legal contexts, where special steps are taken to ensure that testimony provides the jury or the judge with evidence by a competent speaker that is relevant to the disputed question of the guilt or innocence of the defendant.     

Temporal Grouping Effects in Immediate Recall: A Working Memory Analysis

The presence of temporal pauses during list presentation can markedly improve immediate memory for a sequence of verbal items. A series of experiments analysed this effect using Baddeley's (1986) model of working memory. Experiment 1 showed that the effect of temporal grouping on memory for visual sequences was removed by either articulatory suppression or reciting random digits. Experiment 2 indicated that effects of temporal grouping were insensitive to the word length of the items. Experiment 3 showed that articulatory suppression did not remove the temporal grouping effect for auditory lists. Experiment 4 showed that the temporal grouping effect was insensitive to the phonemic similarity of the items. The effects of concurrent articulation suggest that grouping influences the phonological loop component of working memory. However, the working memory model is insufficiently well specified to account for the insensitivity of grouping effects to word length and phonemic similarity. The main findings could be simulated by a connectionist model of the phonological loop, which invokes a context timing signal (Burgess & Hitch, 1992, in press), This assumed that pauses during list presentation affect the timing signal in a similar way to the pause before list presentation and made some novel predictions.     

A central limit theorem for families of stochastic processes indexed by a small average step size parameter,and some applications to learning models

Let > 0 be a measure of the average step size of a stochastic process {p _n ⁽⁾ } _n=1 ⁽⁾. Conditions are given under whichp _n ⁽⁾ is approximately normally distributed whenn is large and is small. This result is applied to a number of learning models where is a learning rate parameter andp _n ⁽⁾ is the probability that the subject makes a certain response on thenth experimental trial. Both linear and stimulus sampling models are considered.