The cosmology of economy: West African witchcraft,finance and the futures market

In this article, the relationship between cosmology and financial transactions via the sacred and deeply secret discourses of West African traditional priests in Europe is explored, who believe that they can spiritually manipulate the monetary pricing of stocks and shares. Of particular interest is how West African witchcraft discourses, while still embedded in kinship relationships, become symbolically caught up in the economy and in the volatile movement of industrial commodity indexes. In analysing the financial imaginary and constant reconfiguration of the marketplace by different networks of stakeholders, Ghanaian fetish priests allow for a fiscal elasticity and material distorting of monetary flows such that the incoherence and uncertainty of global financial practices and the fictious pricing and purchase of unstable commodities are shaped and magnified through a thick Akan cosmology.     

Psychosoma in crisis: an autoethnographic study of medically unexplained symptoms and their diverse contexts

In this study, we examine autoethnographic data from three critical incidents as experienced by the first author demonstrating the importance of context in understanding medically unexplained symptoms, their incidence and underlying patterns. We make the case for ethnographies as a crucial research strand in discerning the finer aspects of the patient or client experience; aspects that might be missed where people are directed along protocolised pathways of care. The article describes care as fragmented and depersonalising, leading to disembodied exchanges, as reflected in other autoethnographic studies, particularly those that highlight the complex relationship and controversies surrounding diagnostic uncertainty. We observe that psychological therapists, given the quality of the therapeutic relationship and sustained attention to the person’s experience, are well placed to assist in the necessary processes of re-contextualisation and re-embodiment.     

The Influence of Gender Identities on Body Image and Breast Health among Sexual Minority Women in Taiwan: Implications for Healthcare Practices

The present paper presents constructions of gender roles among Taiwanese sexual minority women with different gender identities (i.e., butch and femme, known as T and Po, respectively, in Taiwan) and associations between their views toward their own breasts and breast healthcare intentions and behaviour. A total of 37 face-to-face interviews were conducted among women aged 20 years or older who self-identified as lesbians or women who partnered with other women in four areas of Taiwan between August 2012 and October 2012. The majority of the T –identity lesbians held negative views toward their own breasts. The T-identified lesbians’ negative intentions toward breast cancer screenings were associated with their negative views toward their own breasts and body construction process. All Po-identified lesbians reported positive views toward their own breasts; these views facilitated positive breast healthcare intentions and behaviour. The study findings can be used to help healthcare providers in understanding the importance of providing competent cultural care to sexual minority women and to help policymakers in formulating suitable policy to meet women’s healthcare needs.     

The Influence of Child Gender on the Prospective Relationships between Parenting and Child ADHD

The aims of the current study were to (i) explore the potential bidirectional, prospective relationships between parenting and child ADHD, and (ii) explore whether these relationships differed on the basis of child gender. Data were obtained from waves 1 (children aged 4- to 5-years) to 5 (children aged 12- to 13-years) of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Child (LSAC) dataset (child cohort). In order to examine dimensions of both mothers’ and fathers’ parenting, a subsample of nuclear families with mothers, fathers and children present at all waves was extracted (final sample = 1932; sons = 981, daughters = 951). Child ADHD measures included the hyperactive-impulsive subscale of the strengths and difficulties questionnaire for symptoms, and parent-report question for diagnosis. Mothers and fathers completed scales on dimensions of Angry, Warm and Consistent Parenting. A cross-lagged panel model demonstrated (i) higher child ADHD symptoms at wave 1 led to a global increase in less-than-optimal parenting at wave 2, and (ii) child ADHD symptoms and Angry Parenting shared a prospective, bi-directional relationship (whereby increases in one predicted increases in the other over time) during earlier years of development. Latent growth curve models demonstrated that increases in Angry Parenting across time were significantly predicted by increases in child ADHD symptoms. A logistic regression demonstrated that both mothers’ and fathers’ Angry Parenting at wave 1 significantly predicted an ADHD diagnosis in children at wave 3. No predictive relationships differed between child genders; thus, it appears these prospective pathways are similar for both sons and daughters.     

Learning nonwords: the Hebb repetition effect as a model of word learning

Page and Norris [(2008). Is there a common mechanism underlying word-form learning and the Hebb repetition effect? Experimental data and a modelling framework. In A. Thorn &; M. P. A. Page (Eds.), Interactions between short-term and long-term memory in the verbal domain; (2009). A model linking immediate serial recall, the Hebb repetition effect and the learning of phonological word forms. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1536), 3737–3753. doi:10.1098/rstb.2009.0173] have suggested that the Hebb [(1961). Distinctive features of learning in the higher animal. In J. F. Delafresnaye (Ed.), Brain mechanisms and learning (pp. 37–46). Oxford: Blackwell] repetition paradigm can be considered as a laboratory analogue of word learning. In Hebb learning experiments, the lists of items to be learned are presented as discrete sequences. In contrast, novel words are, by definition, always heard as a single coarticulated whole. Might this undermine the claim that Hebb learning can shed light on word learning? Here we report an experiment comparing learning sequences of isolated syllables with learning the same sequences spoken as a single coarticulated nonword. The pattern of learning was similar in the two cases, suggesting that the Hebb repetition paradigm can indeed provide valuable insights into the way novel word forms are learned.     

Producing the Post-Fordist Public: The Political Economy of Public Engagement with Science

The commercial exploitation of scientific knowledge and increased public participation in democratic decision-making about science and technology have emerged as the two central themes of contemporary science policy in Britain. We argue that the prominence of participatory discourse in contemporary science policy is primarily due to the close fit of this discourse with the post-Fordist and post-industrial economic strategy of the British state. Participation is a form of immaterial labour which gains currency in this phase of capitalism, blurring the distinctions between production and consumption, and between the economy and the political or communicative public sphere. Participation is cognitive, interpretative, affective, and social work which enters into the construction of technologies as bundled material artefacts and cultural meanings. Participation operates both in the production and consumption of goods and in the legitimation of social and political relations. Public engagement exercises prepare the product for the market and the market for the product. Such exercises therefore instantiate the way in which immaterial labour is both productive and political. Participation activates, but also disciplines, the subjectivities of post-Fordist publics. Contrary to the rhetoric of democratization that has accompanied public engagement efforts, these programmes potentially operate as forms of control and co-optation, and promote the shaping of publics as markets.     

Olfactory working memory: exploring the differences in n-back memory for high and low verbalisable odorants

ABSTRACT

We describe four experiments each examining n-back performance for high and low verbalisable odorants. Participants were presented with a sequence of odorants and were required to state if the current odorant was the same or different to the odorant presented two items earlier. Experiment 1 reported superior performance for high, relative to low, verbalisable odorants and was evident despite above-chance memory performance for the low verbalisable odorants. Experiment 2 showed that such superiority persisted with a concurrent articulation condition, suggesting that the memory benefit was not a consequence of verbal recording and rehearsal. Experiment 3 employed metacognitive judgments and showed that correct 2-back responses for high verbalisable odorants received more recollection responses compared to low verbalisable odorants. Experiment 4 compared n-back performance across different stimulus types and showed that, for high verbalisable odorants, performance correlated with both letters and abstract shapes, but such correlations were absent for low verbalisable odorants. Taken together, these findings show differences in n-back performance between high and low verbalisable odorants, and show that high verbalisable odorants exhibit performance similarities with both verbal and visual stimuli. We further argue that n-back performance for low verbalisable odorants operates differently to that of high verbalisable odorants.     

Book and Website Reviews

Using practicing sales managers as subjects, the results indicate that personal characteristics of gender and weight may be used in making disciplinary judgments following episodes of a particular type of unacceptable work behavior, an unethical selling act. As hypothesized, saleswomen were disciplined less severely while overweight salespeople were disciplined more severely. However, being overweight produced harsher discipline for saleswomen but had no effect on salesmen. A stated organizational policy about the particular type of unacceptable behavior used did bring about more equal treatment for those described as overweight but did not even out the discipline administered to men and women.