Reduced Memory Representations for Music

We address the problem of musical variation (identification of different musical sequences as variations) and its implications for mental representations of music. According to reductionist theories, listeners judge the structural importance of musical events while forming mental representations. These judgments may result from the production of reduced memory representations that retain only the musical gist. In a study of improvised music performance, pianists produced variations on melodies. Analyses of the musical events retained across variations provided support for the reductionist account of structural importance. A neural network trained to produce reduced memory representations for the same melodies represented structurally important events more efficiently than others. Agreement among the musicians' improvisations, the network model, and music-theoretic predictions suggest that perceived constancy across musical variation is a natural result of a reductionist mechanism for producing memory representations.     

An Examination of the Technique of Interpretation in Counseling

Perceptions of the value and application of interpretation in counseling vary widely among researchers and practitioners. An exploration of the use of interpretation in counseling often presents contradictory opinion and data. Relating counseling theories, propositional and semantic aspects, and attributional theory to interpretation assists in clarifying the nature of the technique.     

Testing Schneider's ASA Theory

Dans une population de 344 cadres de Grande-Bretagne appartenant à 4 organisations, 5 fonctions et 3 niveaux de direction, il fut découvert que les cadres de diverses organisations diffèrent par la personnalité. Il en est de meme des cadres de différentes fonctions. Il n'y a pas d'effets interactifs avec le niveau. Ces résultats furent saisis pour appuyer certains traits du modèle d'attraction, de sélection et d'attrition de Schneider (1987).
In a sample of 344 UK managers from four organisations, carrying out five functions, and at three levels of management, it was found that managers from different organisations differed in personality. So, too, did managers carrying out different functions. There were no interactive effects with level. These results were taken to support certain features of Schneider's (1987) attraction, selection and attrition model.     

Emergence of self and other in perception and action: an event-control approach

The present paper analyzes the regularities referred to via the concept 'self.' This is important, for cognitive science traditionally models the self as a cognitive mediator between perceptual inputs and behavioral outputs. This leads to the assertion that the self causes action. Recent findings in social psychology indicate this is not the case and, as a consequence, certain cognitive scientists model the self as being epiphenomenal. In contrast, the present paper proposes an alternative approach (i.e., the event-control approach) that is based on recently discovered regularities between perception and action. Specifically, these regularities indicate that perception and action planning utilize common neural resources. This leads to a coupling of perception, planning, and action in which the first two constitute aspects of a single system (i.e., the distal-event system) that is able to pre-specify and detect distal events. This distal-event system is then coupled with action (i.e., effector-control systems) in a constraining, as opposed to 'causal' manner. This model has implications for how we conceptualize the manner in which one infers the intentions of another, anticipates the intentions of another, and possibly even experiences another. In conclusion, it is argued that it may be possible to map the concept 'self' onto the regularities referred to in the event-control model, not in order to reify 'the self' as a causal mechanism, but to demonstrate its status as a useful concept that refers to regularities that are part of the natural order.