Book reviews

Nisbett, R. and Ross, L. Human inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social fudgement. Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall. 1980. Pp. 334. £9.70. ISBN 0 13 445130 9.

Rouse, W. B. Systems Engineering Models of Human-machine Interaction. North-Halland: 1980. Pp152. £14.00

Solso, R. L. Cognitive Psychology. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979. Pp499. £10.75. ISBN 0 15 507870 4.

Martin, I Venables, P H. (Eds.). Techniques in Psychophysiology. New York: Wiley, 1980. Pp. 699. £19.50. ISBN 0 471 27637 5.

Massaro, D. W. Taylor, G. A. Venezky, R. L. Jastrzembski, J. E. and Lucas, P. A. Letter and Word Perception. North Holland. 1980. pp.278. $30.50. ISBN 0 444 85493 2

Stelmach, G. E. and Requin, J. (Eds.). Tutorials in Motor Behavior. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co. 1980. Pp. xx+680 (typewritten). $61. ISBN 0444 854665.

Karmiloff-Smith, A. A Functional Approach to Child Language. London: Cambridge University Press. 1979. Pp. 258. £15

Cooper, W. E. and Walker, E. C. T. (Eds.). Sentence Processing: Psycholinguistic Studies Presented to merrill garrett. Hillsdale, New jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. 1979. Pp. 447. £18.50. ISBN 0 470 26731 3     

Ladies and Gentlemen, Women and Men: A Study of the Connotations of Words Indicating Gender

Lakoff's hypothesis about the connotations of the words "lady" and "woman" was investigated by asking college students to rate these words, as well as the masculine words "gentleman" and "man", on several adjective scales. Ratings indicated that the term "gentleman" implied greater competence and warmth than the word "man", while the term "lady" tended to suggest to raters relatively less competence and less warmth than the term "woman" did. Further, it was found that the more formal term ("gentleman", "lady") regardless of gender was described more positively than the less formal term ("man", "woman") on several scales concerned with goodness, politeness, morality, and femininity. Lakoff's hypothesis that "lady" conveys some unique meanings relative to sex role stereotypes thus received support, although some of the connotations of "lady" appear to be due to implied formality rather than to gender features. The degree to which feminine terms were differentiated by raters could be predicted to some extent on the basis of rater characteristics; no significant prediction was possible for the masculine terms.     

Witnessing Whiteness in the Ethics of Hauerwas

Despite constituting one of the most pressing ethical issues of our time, most white Christian ethicists and theologians fail to engage the issue of white supremacy in their work. As one of the most influential and prolific Christian ethicists of the past half‐century, Stanley Hauerwas represents this tendency, and provides specific reasons for his silence. This essay analyzes those reasons, and argues that a commitment to Alasdair MacIntyre’s understandings of tradition and narrative frames his view on race and prevents his engagement of racism. It then highlights the ways this reflects the broader trends of silence, abstraction, and colorblindness among white Christian ethicists when it comes to the issue. Identifying these failures, the essay concludes by suggesting that Hauerwas’s first published essay in 1969, on Black Power, provides resources for theologically engaging the problems of white supremacy today.     

The irrelevant sound effect: What needs modelling, and a tentative model

This paper reviews the literature on the irrelevant sound effect and concludes that, contrary to some claims, the data consistently show that irrelevant sound and articulatory suppression are not functionally equivalent. We evaluate the contribution of Larsen and Baddeley (2003 in this issue) and briefly discuss additional data in support of their position. We perform an error analysis on data from their third experiment and simulate detailed aspects of those data using our primacy model of immediate serial recall. Our model is briefly related to a number of findings in the literature on irrelevant sound.