Teaching maxi- and minicomputer programming at the same time: Is there an advantage?

A course is described that provides concurrent and equal coverage of maxi- and minicomputer systems. The results of student evaluations are provided.     

Trauma and autobiographical memory specificity in depressed inpatients

Research on autobiographical memory has shown that clinical depression is associated with a difficulty in retrieving specific autobiographical memories in response to cue words. This study examined the relation between lack of autobiographical memory specificity and self-reported trauma in a group of depressed adults (N = 23). In addition to the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986) participants completed a number of questionnaires assessing the presence of traumatic experiences in the past, level of depression and neuroticism. The number of specific responses was not related to depression severity, but was significantly associated with the presence and severity of reported physical abuse. Participants who had been victim of physical abuse were less specific than participants who had not been confronted with such physical adversities. The results are discussed in the context of a functional hypothesis about the developmental relations between memory specificity, trauma and depression.     

The Effects of Self-generated Cues on Recall of the Paragraphs of a Text

A self-generated list of short indications of the paragraphs of a text was shown to subjects to facilitate the retrieval of the text's contents during recall. The results of Experiment 1 indicated that a substantial number of potentially accessible paragraphs failed to be retrieved under ordinary conditions of free recall. Access to some paragraphs appears to have been inhibited progressively by previous, more or less complete, retrieval of the contents of other paragraphs. In Experiment 2, repetition of recall provided access to a significant number of supplementary paragraphs. A significant number of paragraphs initially reproduced, however, was omitted during secondary recall. In both experiments, the completeness of recalled paragraphs was a negative function of their serial position of output. In Experiment 3, inspection of a self-generated list of short indications of paragraphs and experimenter-provided verbal embellishment of half of the paragraphs affected recall independently.     

Emerging Migrant Churches in the Netherlands: Missiological challenges and mission frontiers

Abstract Emerging migrant churches in the Netherlands are a visible sign of a changed society. These changes demand rethinking of missiological challenges and “mission frontiers”. In this process sentiments of the Dutch population towards immigrants need to be addressed. Since the murders of right‐wing politician Pim Fortuyn and film producer Theo van Gogh, existing tensions in society and feelings of fear can neither be neglected nor downplayed. Referring to three examples of newly emerged multicultural churches, the author comments on how these communities shape their church and mission. He argues that migrant churches are missional by definition in their focus on internal, external or common mission. In discussing the response to migrant's theologies, he argues that true dialogue is often precluded by reductionist tendencies. More opportunities for theological training of the leadership of migrant churches, on their own terms, are mentioned as an important challenge. Defining one's own Christian identity anew in the changed context is seen as vital for true dialogue and connectedness.     

Effects of language comprehension on visual processing - MEG dissociates early perceptual and late N400 effects

We investigated whether and when information conveyed by spoken language impacts on the processing of visually presented objects. In contrast to traditional views, grounded-cognition posits direct links between language comprehension and perceptual processing. We used a magnetoencephalographic cross-modal priming paradigm to disentangle these views. In a sentence-picture verification task, pictures (e.g. of a flying duck) were paired with three sentence conditions: A feature-matching sentence about a duck in the air, a feature-mismatching sentence about a duck in a lake, and an unrelated sentence. Brain responses to pictures showed enhanced activity in the N400 time-window for the unrelated compared to both related conditions in the left temporal lobe. The M1 time-window revealed more activation for the feature-matching than for the other two conditions in the occipital cortex. These dissociable effects on early visual processing and semantic integration support models in which language comprehension engages two complementary systems, a perceptual and an abstract one.     

The human body as field of conflict between discourses

The approach to AIDS as a disease and a threat for social discrimination is used as an example to illustrate a conceptual thesis. This thesis is a claim that concerns what we call a medical issue or not, what is medicalised or needs to be demedicalised. In the friction between medicalisation and demedicalisation as discursive strategies the latter approach can only be effected through the employment of discourses or discursive strategies other than medicine, such as those of the law and of economics. These discourses each realise different values, promote a different subject, and have a different concept of man. The concept of discourse is briefly outlined against concepts such as the linear growth concept of science and the growth model of science as changes in paradigm. The issue of testing for AIDS shows a conflict between the medical and the legal discourse and illustrates the title of our contribution: the human body as field of conflict between discourses.     

Linguistic rhythm guides parsing decisions in written sentence comprehension

Various recent studies attest that reading involves creating an implicit prosodic representation of the written text which may systematically affect the resolution of syntactic ambiguities in sentence comprehension. Research up to now suggests that implicit prosody itself depends on a partial syntactic analysis of the text, raising the question of whether implicit prosody contributes to the parsing process, or whether it merely interprets the syntactic analysis. The present reading experiments examine the influence of stress-based linguistic rhythm on the resolution of local lexical-syntactic ambiguities in German. Both speech production data from unprepared oral reading and eye-tracking results from silent reading demonstrate that readers favor syntactic analyses that allow for a prosodic representation in which stressed and unstressed syllables alternate rhythmically. The findings contribute evidence confirming immediate and guiding effects of linguistic rhythm on the earliest stages of syntactic parsing in reading.     

SHALL WE DANCE? MUSIC AS A PORT OF ENTRANCE TO MATERNAL–INFANT INTERSUBJECTIVITY IN A CONTEXT OF POSTNATAL DEPRESSION

The present study introduces the concept of a mother–infant group therapy that makes use of music, singing, and moving to establish maternal–infant intersubjectivity. It was conducted in a residential mother–baby unit for mothers with postnatal depression and their infants over a 5‐week period. Maternal–infant intersubjectivity of four dyads in relation to the group dynamics were microanalyzed for Sessions 1 and 5. We made within‐session (i.e., beginning–middle–end) and between‐session (Session 1 vs. Session 5) comparisons for the number of intersubjectivity moments (ISMs), total time of intersubjectivity (IST), and the mean duration of ISMs on a dyadic (i.e., own mother/infant involved) and a nondyadic level (i.e., own mother/infant not involved). In addition, three ISM levels (degree of group contribution) were distinguished. The results indicated a significant increase of ISMs/IST from Session 1 to Session 5. Within‐session analyses showed that ISMs/IST significantly decreased through Session 1 and remained stable throughout Session 5. Intersubjectivity occurred mainly on ISM Level 1 during Session 1 and on ISM Level 3 during Session 5, suggesting increased dyadic autonomy and self‐efficacy. The results are discussed in relation to the musical characteristics of mother–infant dyads, music improvisation techniques, group processes, and intersubjective development.