A note on modulation of gait in man: Effects of constraining stride length and frequency

In this study, our aim was to investigate the effect of an imposed stride-length on walking speed and stride-frequency, and the effect of an imposed stride-frequency on walking speed and stride-length. These variations were determined in relation to the values obtained by analysing the subject's preferred pace. In the first case, the subject had to step on transversal stripes on the floor; in the second case, he had to synchronize his stride with a regular auditory signal. The results obtained with 8 subjects show that speed was the most variable factor. Variations in speed were correlated with variations in the imposed parameter: whenever the subject lengthened his stride or increased his stride-frequency, his walking speed increased proportionally. These results point to a relative independence between stride-length and stride-frequency, and a strong correlation between each of these parameters and speed.     

Just Annexation

Fabre defends a human rights‐focused cosmopolitan theory of peace. One would expect that, given this view, she would be in favour of human rights‐promoting annexations by liberal states. However, she distances herself from this view, adopting the common‐sense view that annexing states ‘act ultra vires’. I argue that her core cosmopolitan view motivates a different and, in principle, much more positive view of four types of annexations. In the course of defending this view, I take a critical look at her appeal to perverse moral incentives and the notion of a cosmopolitan ethos.     

Kierkegaard on Existential Kenosis and the Power of the Image: Fear and Trembling and Practice in Christianity

What is the role of the image in faith? How should we relate to Abraham and Christ? Through new readings of two of Kierkegaard’s rarely compared texts, this article locates the religious power of the image in its ability to cleanse the subject of received mis‐images of Christianity, and suggests that Kierkegaard was inspired by elements of Rheno‐Flemish mysticism. Kierkegaard not only identifies this inward existential kenosis as the correct form of imitation, he narratively induces this in his reader. As well as examining this textual performativity and the imagination’s role of kenotically preparing the subject for her subsequent upbuilding, this article identifies the movement of kenosis as constitutive of faith – a task that involves suffering, but a suffering that is always accompanied and tempered by love.     

Contextual Integration in Multiparty Audience Design

Communicating with multiple addressees poses a problem for speakers: Each addressee necessarily comes to the conversation with a different perspective—different knowledge, different beliefs, and a distinct physical context. Despite the ubiquity of multiparty conversation in everyday life, little is known about the processes by which speakers design language in multiparty conversation. While prior evidence demonstrates that speakers design utterances to accommodate addressee knowledge in multiparty conversation, it is unknown if and how speakers encode and combine different types of perspective information. Here we test whether speakers encode the perspective of multiple addressees, and then simultaneously consider their knowledge and physical context during referential design in a three‐party conversation. Analyses of referential form—expression length, disfluency, and elaboration rate—in an interactive multiparty conversation demonstrate that speakers do take into consideration both addressee knowledge and physical context when designing utterances, consistent with a knowledge‐scene integration view. These findings point to an audience design process that takes as input multiple types of representations about the perspectives of multiple addressees, and that bases the informational content of the to‐be‐designed utterance on a combination of the perspectives of the intended addressees.     

Self‐Priming in Production: Evidence for a Hybrid Model of Syntactic Priming

Syntactic priming in language production is the increased likelihood of using a recently encountered syntactic structure. In this paper, we examine two theories of why speakers can be primed: error‐driven learning accounts (Bock, Dell, Chang, & Onishi, 2007; Chang, Dell, & Bock, 2006) and activation‐based accounts (Pickering & Branigan, 1999; Reitter, Keller, & Moore, 2011). Both theories predict that speakers should be primed by the syntactic choices of others, but only activation‐based accounts predict that speakers should be able to prime themselves. Here we test whether speakers can be primed by their own productions in three behavioral experiments and find evidence of structural persistence following both comprehension and speakers’ own productions. We also find that comprehension‐based priming effects are larger for rarer syntactic structures than for more common ones, which is most consistent with error‐driven accounts. Because neither error‐driven accounts nor activation‐based accounts fully explain the data, we propose a hybrid model.     

Cognitive Offloading: Structuring the Environment to Improve Children's Working Memory Task Performance

Research has shown that adults can engage in cognitive offloading, whereby internal processes are offloaded onto the environment to help task performance. Here, we investigate an application of this approach with children, in particular children with poor working memory. Participants were required to remember and recall sequences of colors by placing colored blocks in the correct serial order. In one condition the blocks were arranged to facilitate cognitive offloading (i.e., grouped by color), whereas in the other condition they were arranged randomly. Across two experiments (total N = 166) the ordered condition improved task performance for children with low working memory ability. In addition, participants in Experiment 2 rated the difficulty of the two arrangements and performed a further condition in which they were given an opportunity to freely arrange the blocks before completing the task. Despite performing better in the ordered condition, children with low working memory ability did not rate the ordered arrangement as easier, nor did they choose an ordered arrangement when given the opportunity to do so. This research shows that cognitive offloading can also be a useful process in populations other than typical adults, and the implications of this work for supporting children with poor working memory are discussed.