A longitudinal study of pain sensitivity and blood pressure in adolescent boys: results from a 5-year follow-up.

A growing literature has observed a significant reduction in pain sensitivity among hypertensive animals and humans. It is uncertain whether a reduced sensitivity to pain can be observed in nonnotensive individuals who go on to develop high blood pressure. Blood pressure (BP) was reassessed in one hundred fifteen 19-year-old boys initially tested at age 14, when they were also presented with a pain stimulus (mechanical finger pressure). Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that information regarding pain tolerance improved prediction of changes in systolic and diastolic blood pressure beyond that afforded by differences in BP at age 14, parental history of hypertension, and body mass index. These analyses suggest that pain sensitivity may be associated with physiological processes involved in the development of sustained high blood pressure.     

Audience Design in Multiparty Conversation

How do speakers design what they say in order to communicate effectively with groups of addressees who vary in their background knowledge of the topic at hand? Prior findings indicate that when a speaker addresses a pair of listeners with discrepant knowledge, that speakers Aim Low, designing their utterances for the least knowledgeable of the two addressees. Here, we test the hypothesis that speakers will depart from an Aim Low approach in order to efficiently communicate with larger groups of interacting partners. Further, we ask whether the cognitive demands of tracking multiple conversational partners' perspectives places limitations on successful audience design. We find that speakers can successfully track information about what up to four of their partners do and do not know in conversation. When addressing groups of 3–4 addressees at once, speakers design language based on the combined knowledge of the group. These findings point to an audience design process that simultaneously represents the perspectives of multiple other individuals and combines these representations in order to design utterances that strike a balance between the different needs of the individuals within the group.     

Signification et signifiance

Sans résumé     

PAST: Viewing the programming process

A software package called PAST (Programmer Assessment Software Tools) is described. PAST was designed as a research and diagnostic tool to analyze how programmers develop and test program code. PAST uses line changes between successive compiles to estimate a programmer’s cognitive processing. Line changes are highlighted and graphically presented between any two versions or compiles. Summary graphs and statistics across all versions also are provided. Applications of PAST for expanding our understanding of programming and applying it to research, teaching, and learning are discussed.     

Abstract versus modality-specific memory representations in processing auditory and visual speech

Serial recall of lip-read, auditory, and audiovisual memory lists with and without a verbal suffix was examined. Recency effects were the same in the three presentation modalities. The disrupting effect of a suffix was largest when it was presented in the same modality as the list items. The results suggest that abstract linguistic as well as modality-specific codes play a role in memory for auditory and visual speech.     

Critique,rhétoricité, communicabilité

La critique et la théorie littéraires contemporaines présentent un paradoxe: elles notent, par la référence à la rhétorique, la rupture de la propriété argumentative ou persuasive de l'oeuvre; elles préservent cependant l'hypothèse d'une propriété conversationnelle du littéraire — hypothèse qui n'est pas véritablement explicitée. Ce paradoxe, essentiellement lisible dans la déconstruction, l'est aussi dans les propositions de Sartre, dans la pensée du dehors de Foucault, dans le dialogisme de Bakhtine. Le paradoxe revient, de fait — telle est la thèse de cet article — à énoncer une propriété rhétorique et persuasive de l'oeuvre, au moyen d'une référence à la rhétorique d'abord confondue avec la tropologie et avec l'effacement du jeu persuasif. Cette ultime propriété rhétorique et persuasive est identifiable par l'alliance de lasuspension, qui caractérise le texte littéraire dès lors qu'il est placé sous le signe de la rupture de l'argument et de la persuasion, et du jeu anaphorique, lui-même indissociable du questionnement que suscite la suspension. A partir du constat de ce questionnement, il convient de dire que le texte littéraire est ce qui fait fond à la disparité du doxique, et que celui-ci apparaît comme le répondant provisiore et variable de lacasuistique que constitue le texte littéraire.     

BODILY REFORM AS HISTORICAL PRACTICE: THE SEMANTICS OF RESISTANCE IN MODERN SOUTH AFRICA

This paper seeks to explore why rituals of bodily reform play so prominent a role in movements of social reconstruction, particularly in collective action which never attains the level of explicit historical discourse. I argue that the crucial signifying role of the body here derives from its position as primary mediator between the self and the sociocultural context. In the case of a protest movement in modern South Africa, I show how the semantics of bodily affliction and reform permit participants to address and redress the historical roots of their conflict-laden experience. Here, sociocultural contradiction takes tangible shape in the ‘natural’ contradictions of the human body, and reconstitution proceeds by alike drawing upon media from the body's seemingly inexhaustible stock. But in this, the body is more than mere ‘natural alibi’ or set of unmotivated signs; it provides implements determined by an inherent, natural logic which engages in what is a reciprocally determining relationship with the semantic logic of specific sociohistorical projects.