Book reviews

Arnold, M. Memory and the brain. Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1984. Pp. 532. ISBN 0-89859-290-9. £47.90.

Green, T. R. G., Payne, S. P. and van der Veer, G. C. (Eds.). The psychology of computer use.. London: Academic Press. 1983. Pp. 225. ISBN 0-12-2974204. $9.50.

Stunkard, A. J. and Stellar, E. (Eds.). Eating and its disorders. New York: Raven Press. 1984. Pp. 302. ISBN 0-89004-891-6. $58.50.

Spillmann, L. and Wooten, B. R. (Eds.) Sensory experience, adaptation, and perception: Festschrift for Zero Kohler. Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 1984. Pp. xxvii + 748. ISBN 0 8985-3-218-6. £70.85.

Geschwind, N. and Galaburda, A. M. (Eds.)Cerebral dominance: The biological foundations. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1984. Pp. 232. ISBN 0-674-10658-X. £24.35.

Annett, M. Left, right, hand and brain: The right shift theory. 1985. London and Hillsdale, N. J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pp. xiii + 474. ISBN 0-86377418-5 £29.95.

Ericsson, K. A. and Simon, H. A. Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data. Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I.T. Press. 1984. Pp. 426. ISBN 0-262-05029-3. £28.95.     

Auditory and temporal factors in the modality effect

Subjects in five experiments read nine-digit memory lists from a cathode ray tube for immediate recall. Reading aloud always produced a localized and reliable advantage for the last item, compared to reading silently. Two experiments on whispered and mouthed lists, with or without simultaneous broadband noise, falsified expectations derived from the theory of precategorical acoustic storage. Three additional experiments showed no enhancement of recency in the silent conditions when the digits were drawn or spelled gradually on the screen, a result that is inconsistent with the changing-state hypothesis. The classic auditory-visual modality effect is large and reliable, but still poorly understood.     

AQUINAS'S ARGUMENT AGAINST SELF-HATRED

Aquinas's argument against the possibility of genuine self‐hatred runs counter to modern intuitions about self‐hatred as an explanatorily central notion in psychology, and as an effect of alienation. Aquinas's argument does not deny that persons experience hatred for themselves. It can be read either as the claim that the self‐hater mistakes what she feels toward herself as hatred, or that, though she hates what she believes is her “self,” she actually hates only traits of herself. I argue that the argument fails on both readings. The first reading entails that all passions are really self‐love, and so is incompatible with Aquinas's own “cognitivist” view of what it is that distinguishes specific passions in experience. The second reading entails that persons have no phenomenal access to “self,” rendering self‐reference—how it is that the self can be an intentional object of conscious mental states—a mystery. Augustine's claim, which Aquinas accepts on authority, that all sin originates in inordinate self‐love seems to entail the impossibility of genuine self‐hatred because both thinkers fail to distinguish between two distinct forms of self‐love: amor concupiscentiae and amor benevolentiae.