Negative priming by rotated objects

Previous work has found that repeated exposure to ignored rotated objects is insufficient to allow the formation of orientation-invariant representations (Murray, 1995b). In this study, the negative priming paradigm was used to examine whether the identity of ignored rotated objects was encoded. Subjects were briefly presented with a prime followed by a probe display. One of the two overlapping drawings of objects in each display was selected for further processing, and the other was ignored. In one condition, the ignored objects were upright; in another, they were rotated 240°; and in a final condition, subjects repeatedly named the 240° objects prior to experiencing them as ignored objects in the priming task. Naming latency for the attended probe was slower when it was semantically related to the ignored prime in all conditions. The results suggest that unattended rotated objects are processed to a level of representation that is at least categorical.     

‘Belonging to a global religion’: The sociological dimensions of international elements in Sahaja Yoga

The paper introduces a contemporary Hindu‐based sect, Sahaja Yoga, and outlines the extent to which the beliefs and rituals of the group foster its internal perception of itself as a global movement. The network of contacts maintained between British members and the international ‘collective’ of disciples which also go towards supporting this view are highlighted. The paper then describes the extent to which there is international cultural conformity within Sahaja Yoga. The final section draws on Rajneeshism for a comparative discussion of issues raised. It explores the factors behind the differing global configurations of religious groups, the advantages and disadvantages of having a global ethos and some of the ways in which New Religious Movements mirror aspects of the contemporary process of globalisation.     

Selectively prompting speech repairs in stages I to V: A technique for investigating early metalinguistic abilities

When children aged from 1;6 to 3;6 made errors in relation to targeted morphemes within grammatically obligatory contexts, a prompt of “Pardon?” was given. Morpheme repair rates increased with linguistic proficiency, and with target morpheme mastery. The selective use of prompted repairs appears to be a useful technique for assessing rudimentary abilities to monitor grammatical form within very young children.     

“Subordination” and sensitivity to nonverbal cues: A study of married working women

Sex Roles - Women's superiority in decoding nonverbal cues of emotion has often been discussed as an adaptation to low status. To examine the relation of status to nonverbal sensitivity,...     

War,innocence, and the doctrine of double effect

I am grateful to members of the philosophy departments at the University of Melbourne and Sydney, to students in my Fall 1991 Ethical Theory class at the University of Maryland, especially John Watts, and to David Luban for useful discussions.     

Accreditation Standards for University and College Counseling Centers

The accreditation standards outlined in the article are used by the International Association of Counseling Services, Inc., as the basis for the formal accreditation of college and university counseling programs throughout the United States and Canada. They reflect the program elements and practice standards that are deemed essential in a counseling center that provides high-quality services to students.     

Verb Comprehension Deficits in Probable Alzheimer's Disease

Studies of lexical comprehension in probable Alzheimer's disease (pAD) have focused almost exclusively on nouns. In the following preliminary study, we examined whether lexical comprehension for verbs is also impaired in 25 pAD patients. The semantic meaning of motion verbs, cognition verbs, and perception verbs was assessed with a triadic comparison task. Structural meaning associated with these verbs was evaluated by asking the patients to judge the coherence of sentence frames that accept these verbs naturally or awkwardly. We found that pAD patients are significantly impaired at identifying semantic relations among verbs. pAD patients also encountered significantly more difficulty judging the coherence of sentences than control subjects. Correlation and regression analyses demonstrated that semantic characteristics of verbs are projected from the verbs' sentence frames in control subjects, but there was minimal evidence for such a structural–semantic relationship in pAD. We consider several possible explanations for our preliminary observations of an impairment that has consequences for processing both semantic and structural aspects of verb meaning.     

Assessing decision strategies using HyperCard

The use of “process-tracing” techniques for examining individuals’ decision strategies has been criticized widely for yielding results that are uninformative and often confounded. The present paper describes a new technique based on a “structural” approach that allows efficient assessment of finely discriminated decision strategies via a HyperCard program called DECOUT. The program presents individuals with an information matrix (e.g., describing five alternative pesticides on three attributes). Individuals are asked to choose the best or the worst alternative in the matrix for 12 problems. Information in the matrix is constructed so that choice of an alternative by an individual is uniquely associated with use of one particular decision strategy. The strategies include information integration, maximin, maximax, pessimism-optimism, and minimax-regret processes. An experiment using the program is described, and possible directions for future research and development are discussed.