A delivery system for olfactory stimuli

This paper describes the design of a new method for controlling and administering olfactory stimuli—namely, thehood system. The hood system involves a stream of vaporized odor (at known concentrations) mixed with odorless air and pumped (at a constant flow rate) into an oxygen therapy hood. It is designed to be used with odorants in solution, such as essential oils, as the olfactory stimulus. The use of oxygen therapy hoods allows for the precise control of a constant concentration of odorized air over time, while allowing subjects to breathe normally. The hood system provides a natural administration of olfactory stimuli and the exact determination of the stimulus concentration. The use of this system will allow experimental conditions to be completely defined and results and replication studies to be accurately interpreted. The hood system is portable, cost effective, and constructed from readily available components. It is proposed that the hood system could be adopted to suit a wide range of olfactory research, particularly that in which the effects of chronic exposure to olfactory stimuli on cognition are examined.     

Book reviews

Christianity. Brian Wilson, 1999. Religions of the World. London, Routledge. 128 pp., pb. £6.99, ISBN 0 415 21161; hb. £25.00, ISBN 0 415 21342 8

Islam. Jamal J. Elias, 1999. Religions of the World. London, Routledge. 128pp., pb. £6.99, ISBN 0 415 21165 4; hb. £25.00, ISBN 0 415 21344 4

Islam. Jan Slomp, 1999. Kampen, Uitgeverij Kok. 142 pp., pb.NLf 19,90, ISBN 90 242 9372 3

Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim sources on spirituality and religious life. John Renard (Ed.), 1998. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press. xx + 431pp., pb. £15.95, ISBN 0 520 21086 7

Shattering the Myth: Islam beyond violence. Bruce B. Lawrence, 1998. Princeton, Princeton University Press. xix + 237 pp., hb. $17.95, ISBN 0 691 05769 9

Islam and Other Faiths. Ismail Raji al‐Faruqi, ed. Ataullah Siddiqui, 1998. Leicester, the Islamic Foundation and The International Institute of Islamic Thought. 370 pp., pb. n.p., ISBN 0 86037 276 6

Christian‐Muslim Dialogue: theological and practical issues. Roland E. Miller & Hance A.O. Mwakabana (Eds), 1998. LWF Studies 3/1998. Geneva, Department for Theology & Studies—The Lutheran World Federation. 391pp., pb., n.p., ISBN 3 906706 63 X

Islam and the West: conflict, co‐existence or conversion?. Colin Chapman, 1998. Carlisle, Paternoster. 198 pp. pb. £12.99, ISBN 0 85364 781 X

The Rights of Women in Islam: an authentic approach. HaifaaJawad, 1998. London, Macmillan Press. 150pp., pb, £15.99, ISBN 0 333 73458 0; hb. £42.50, ISBN 0 333 65086 7

Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: the Graeco‐Arabic translation movement in Baghdad and early Abbasid society (2nd‐4th/8th‐10th centuries). D. Gutas, 1998. London, Routledge. 256pp., hb. £45.00, ISBN 0 415 06123 6; pb. £14.99, ISBN 0 415 061334

Ibn ‘Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: the making of a polemical image in medieval Islam. Alexander D. Knysh, 1999. Albany, NY, State University of New York Press. xvi + 449 pp., pb. $27.95, ISBN 0 7914 3968 2; hb. $81.50, ISBN 0 7914 3967 4

Love, Religion and Politics in Fifteenth‐century Spain. Ian Macpherson & Angus MacKay, 1998. Medieval Iberian Peninsula Texts and Studies 13. Leiden, Boston & Cologne, Brill. 286 pp., hb. Nig. 165.00/US$ 97.25, ISBN 90 04 10810 6

Shi'i Scholars of Nineteenth‐century Iraq: the Ulama of Najaf and Kerbala. MeirLitvak, 1998. Cambridge Middle East Studies. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 264pp., hb. £35.00, ISBN 0521623561

Islam and Postcolonial Narrative. John Erickson, 1998. Cambridge, University Press. 243 pp., hb. £35.00, ISBN 0 521 59423 5

Imperialism and Orientalism. Barbara Harlow & Mia Carter (Eds), 1998. Oxford, Blackwell. 416 pp., hb. £65.00, ISBN 1 55786 710 0; pb. £16.99, ISBN 1 55786 711 9

Islam et Occident face a face: regards de I'histoire des religions. Jacques Waardenburg, 1998. Geneva, Labor et Fides. 144 pp., pb. n.p., ISBN 2 8309 0786 8

Against Islamic Extremism: the writings of Muhammad Sa'Id al‐'Ashmawy. Carolyn Fluehr‐Lobban (Ed.), 1998. Florida, University Press of Florida. 131 pp., hb. £39.95, ISBN 0 8130 1546 4

Spokesmen for the Despised: fundamentalist leaders of the Middle East. R. Scott Appleby (Ed.), 1997. Chicago, Chicago University Press. 438 pp., pb. £15.95, ISBN 0 226 02125 4; hb. n.p., ISBN 0 226 02124 6. Muslim European Youth: reproducing ethnicity, religion, culture. Steven Vertovec & Alisdair Rogers (Eds), 1998. Aldershot, Ashgate

215 pp., hb. £35.00, ISBN 1 84014 341 X

Islam in Germany and France. Muslime in Deutschland: Nebeneinander oder Miteinander. Ursula Spuler‐Stegemann, 1998 Freiburg, Herder. 352 pp; hb. DM 24,80, ISBN 3 451 04419 6

Musulmans de France: diversite, mutations et perspectives de l'islam francais,. Gilles Couvreur, 1998. Paris, Les editions de Fatelier. 112pp., pb. FF 65, ISBN 2 7082 3384 X

Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919–1922. Michael Llewellyn Smith, 1998. London, Hurst. xxi + 401 pp., hb. £40.00, ISBN 185065 413 1; pb. £14.95, ISBN 1 85065 368 2

The History of Saudi Arabia. Alexei Vassiuev, 1998. London, Saqi Books. 576 pp., hb. £45.00, ISBN 0863569358

City of Stone: the hidden history of Jerusalem. Meron Benvenisti, 1998. Berkeley, University of California Press. viii + 274 pp., pb. $16.95/£10.95, ISBN 0 520 20768 8

The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. Adeeb Khalid, 1998. Berkeley, University of California Press. xxiii + 335 pp., hb. $55.00, ISBN 0 520 21355 6; pb. $22.00, ISBN 0 520 21356 4

Ethnicity, Law and Human Rights: the English experience. Sebastian Poulter, 1998. Oxford, Clarendon Press. xxxvii +418pp., hb. £45.00, ISBN 0 19 825773 2

Muslim Family Law. David Pearl & Werner Menski, 1998. 3rd edn. London, Sweet & Maxwell. xii + 551pp., pb. £55.00, ISBN 0421 52980 6

Religion in Prison: equal rites in a multi‐faith society. James A. Beckford & Sophie Gilliat. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. xiv + 232 pp., hb. £35.00, ISBN 0 521 62246 8

Educating Muslim Girls: shifting discourses. Kaye Haw, 1998. Buckingham/Philadelphia, Open University Press. xii +203pp., pb. £15.99, ISBN 0 335 19773 6; hb. £50.00, ISBN 0 335 19774 4     

The puzzle of language evolution

Linguistics must again concentrate on the evolutionary nature of language, so that language models are more realistic with respect to human natural languages and have a greater explanatory force. Multi-agent systems are proposed as a possible route to develop such evolutionary models and an example is given of a concrete experiment in the origins and evolution of word-meaning based on a multi-agent approach.     

Knowledge level learning and the power law: A soar model of skill acquisition in scheduling

Zusammenfassung. Das hier vorgestellte Modell lernt graduell, Planungsaufgaben aus der Klasse der Maschinenbelegungsprobleme (job-shop-scheduling problems) zu lösen. Mit Hilfe des Chunking-Mechanismus von Soar wird episodisches Wissen über die Belegungsreihenfolge von Aufträgen auf Maschinen memoriert. Bei der Entwicklung des Modells wurden zahlreiche qualitative (z. B. Transfereffekte) und quantitative Befunde (z. B. Bearbeitungszeiten) aus einer früheren empirischen Untersuchung berücksichtigt. In einer Validierungsstudie wurden dieselben Aufgaben von 14 Probanden und dem Modell bearbeitet. Die Passung von Simulationsdaten und empirischen Ergebnissen fiel insgesamt gut aus. Allerdings löst das Modell die Aufgaben schneller und zeigt auch einen etwas besseren Lernverlauf als die Probanden. Das Modell liefert eine Erklärung für das Rauschen, das typischerweise bei Bearbeitungszeiten zu beobachten ist: es handelt sich um erworbenes Wissen, das mehr oder weniger gut und auch unterschiedlich häufig auf neue Situationen übertragen wird. Der Lernverlauf der Probanden entspricht nur für aggregierte Daten einer Potenzfunktion (power law). Der vorgestellte Mechanismus zeigt, wie ein symbolisches Modell der Informationsverarbeitung graduelle Verhaltensänderungen generiert und wie der offensichtliche Erwerb allgemeiner Prozeduren ohne explizites Lernen von deklarativen Regeln erfolgen kann. Es wird nahegelegt, daß es sich hier um die Modellierung einer Form impliziten Lernens handelt. Summary. The model presented here gradually learns how to perform a job-shop scheduling task. It uses Soar's chunking mechanism to acquire episodic memories about the order to schedule jobs. The model was based on many qualitative (e.g., transfer effects) and quantitative (e.g., solution time) regularities found in previously collected data. The model was tested with new data where scheduling tasks were given to the model and to 14 subjects. The model generally fit these data with the restrictions that the model performs the task (in simulated time) faster than the subjects, and its performance improves somewhat more quickly than the subjects' performance. The model provides an explanation of the noise typically found in problem solving times - it is the result of learning actual pieces of knowledge that transfer more or less to new situations but rarely by an average amount. Only when the data are averaged (i.e., over subjects) does the smooth power law appear. This mechanism demonstrates how symbolic models can exhibit a gradual change in behavior and how the apparent acquisition of general procedures can be performed without resorting to explicit declarative rule generation. We suggest that this may represent a type of implicit learning.     

Iterated Belief Revision, Reliability, and Inductive Amnesia

Belief revision theory concerns methods for reformulating an agent's epistemic state when the agent's beliefs are refuted by new information. The usual guiding principle in the design of such methods is to preserve as much of the agent's epistemic state as possible when the state is revised. Learning theoretic research focuses, instead, on a learning method's reliability or ability to converge to true, informative beliefs over a wide range of possible environments. This paper bridges the two perspectives by assessing the reliability of several proposed belief revision operators. Stringent conceptions of minimal change are shown to occasion a limitation called inductive amnesia: they can predict the future only if they cannot remember the past. Avoidance of inductive amnesia can therefore function as a plausible and hitherto unrecognized constraint on the design of belief revision operators.     

Is the inversion effect in rhesus monkeys face-specific?

This study investigated the face inversion effect in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta). Face stimuli consisted of ten black-and-white examples of unfamiliar rhesus monkey faces, brown capuchin faces, and human faces. Two non-face categories included ten examples of automobiles and abstract shapes. All stimuli were presented in a sequential matching-to-sample format using an automated joystick-testing paradigm. Subjects performed significantly better on upright than on inverted presentations of automobiles, rhesus monkey and capuchin faces, but not human faces or abstract shapes. These results are inconsistent with data from humans and chimpanzees that show the inversion effect only for categories of stimuli for which subjects have developed expertise. The inversion effect in rhesus monkeys does not appear to be face-specific, and should therefore not be used as a marker of specialized face processing in this species. Received: 18 November 1998 / Accepted after revision: 9 May 1999     

A Systems/Dialectical Model of Supervision: A Symbolic Process

Although there has been a proliferation of models of supervision in the marriage and family therapy literature recently, most tend to focus on methods rather than on the process of supervision. The model presented here is grounded in developmental concepts and focuses on student learning through a dialectical process of cognitive and emotional growth and incorporates three stages: 1) developing relationships; 2) breaking impasses, and 3) orchestrating changes. Students discover that supervision becomes isomorphic with relationship issues that arise in their therapy sessions. Dialectical in nature in that each stage is characterized by the resolution of contradictory emotions, the supervision process helps supervisees experience emotional shifts in their interactions with others, referred to as emotional restructuring.     

On the distinction between artifacts and information

Sperling, Landy, Dosher, and Perkins (1989) argued that all previous research on the kinetic depth effect has been contaminated by stimulus artifacts, and they developed a new task that they believe can successfully overcome this problem. The present discussion offers a counter-argument that artifacts are not as pervasive in previous research as Sperling et al. imply and that their proposed method is subject to precisely the same limitations as earlier studies. Also discussed are some general guidelines of experimental design in this type of research to minimize the possibility that subjects will adopt an inappropriate response strategy that does not truly reflect their visual perceptions of three-dimensional form.     

Visual perception of smoothly curved surfaces from double-projected contour patterns

This research was designed to examine how human observers are able to perceive the 3-dimensional structure of smoothly curved surfaces from projected patterns of surface contours. Displays were generated by using a method of double projection that made it possible to cover a surface with a wide range of contour patterns of varying geometric structure and to eliminate systematic variations of image shading. The compelling impression of 3-dimensional form from these patterns provides strong evidence that the ability of observers to perceptually interpret surface contours is considerably less restrictive than would be reasonable to expect on the basis of existing computational models. Results suggest that the perceptual analysis of surface contours is able to exploit statistical regularities of contour structure over appropriately large regions of visual space.