Short review and book note

G. J. Cuming and D. Baker, ed. Studies in church history, vol. 8: Popular belief and practice. Cambridge University Press, pp. xii and 331. £6.40.

James E. Wood, Jnr. (Ed.), Jewish-Christian relations in today's world (The Markham Press Fund of Baylor University Press, Waco, Texas, 1971) pp. 164.

Stern, S. M. and Walzer, Sofie, Three unknown Buddhist stories in an Arabic version, introduction, text and translation. Oxford, Cassirer, 1971, 38 pp. £2.00

Brown, Peter, Religion and society in the age of Saint Augustine, Faber and Faber, 1972, pp. 352. £3.25; MACINTYRE, ALASDAIR, Against the Self‐Images of the Age, Duckworth, 1871, pp. vi‐284. E3.45; WINCH, PETER, Ethics and Action, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972, pp. 231. £2.75.

Woodcock, George. Gandhi. Fontana, Collins (London), 1972. 108 pp., paperback 35p.

Masunaga, R. A primer of Soto Zen: A translation of Dogen's shobogenzo zuimonki. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972. 126 pp., £1.25.

Swanton, Michael (Ed.). The dream of the road. Manchester University Press, 1970. ix + 146 pp. £1.20 (paperback 60p).     

Executive Heads and the Role of Intergovernmental Organizations: Expansionist Leadership in the United Nations and the European Union

Despite considerable advances in methods to examine leaders' personal characteristics using at–a–distance assessment, few studies have applied such techniques outside of the national level. This study reveals that such approaches can provide analytical leverage for examining executive heads of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). The personal characteristics of six United Nations Secretaries–General and four European Union Commission Presidents were measured via content analysis of their responses to questions. Separately, their behavior in office was measured via historical accounts and analyses. In general, executive heads with higher expansionist leadership style scores displayed a greater willingness to try to enhance the status of their organizations.     

CAT: A tool for eliciting knowledge on how to perform procedures

Procedural tasks involve context-sensitive sequences of actions that are performed in pursuit of goals. Procedural knowledge specifies how to do something (e.g., repairing a car) but not how the physical system works (e.g., how the engine works). We have developed a computer program that elicits procedural knowledge from individuals with varying amounts of domain knowledge (ranging from novices to experts) and varying amounts of computer literacy. The tool is called CAT (cognitive analysis tool). CAT is an extension of a class of cognitive models known as GOMS, which stands for goals, operators, methods, and selection rules. The tool guides the user in articulating the goals (and subgoals) the user wants to accomplish, the operators (actions, steps) to accomplish each goal, the alternative methods of accomplishing goals, the conditions in which each method is applied, and exceptional circumstances when goals are suspended and restarted. CAT can be used on most IBMcompatible microcomputers.     

A comparison of instruction formats for administering a computerized behavioral test

Shaping and fading techniques were employed to replace written instructions used in computerized behavioral tests. Apple Macintosh computers and HyperCard with Pascal extensions were chosen as the development environment to implement the new techniques. Initial Findings demonstrate the effectiveness and relative efficiency of shaping techniques to teach correct performance on the Symbol-Digit Test.     

Correction to: The fitting attitudes analysis of value: an explanatory challenge

Philosophical Studies - Few errors were identified in the original publication of the article. The corrections are as follows.     

No evidence for binding of items to task-irrelevant backgrounds in visual working memory

When representing visual features such as color and shape in visual working memory (VWM), participants also represent the locations of those features as a spatial configuration of the locations of those features in the display. In everyday life, we encounter objects against some background, yet it is unclear whether the configural representation in memory obligatorily constitutes the entire display, including that (often task-irrelevant) background information. In three experiments, participants completed a change detection task on color and shape; the memoranda were presented in front of uniform gray backgrounds, a textured background (Exp. 1), or a background containing location placeholders (Exps. 2 and 3). When whole-display probes were presented, changes to the objects’ locations or feature bindings impacted memory performance—implying that the spatial configuration of the probes influenced participants’ change decisions. Furthermore, when only a single item was probed, the effect of changing its location or feature bindings was either diminished or completely extinguished, implying that single probes do not necessarily elicit the entire spatial configuration. Critically, when task-irrelevant backgrounds were also presented that may have provided a spatial configuration for the single probes, the effect of location or bindings was not moderated. These findings suggest that although the spatial configuration of a display guides VWM-based recognition, this information does not necessarily always influence the decision process during change detection.