Primacy of functional knowledge in semantic representations: the case of living and nonliving things

In 3 experiments, participants decided whether sensory and functional features were true of living and nonliving concepts. In Experiments 1 and 2, concepts were presented twice: test phase followed study phase after either 3 min (Experiment 1) or 3 s (Experiment 2). At test, concepts were paired with the same feature as that at study, or a different feature from either the same modality (within-modality priming) or another modality (cross-modality priming). In both experiments functional decisions were faster than sensory decisions for living and nonliving concepts. Whilst no semantic priming occurred between study and test in Experiment 1, the shorter study-test interval of Experiment 2 did lead to test phase semantic priming. Here there was greater within- than cross-modality priming for sensory decisions, but equivalent within- and cross-modality priming for functional decisions owing to significantly greater facilitation of functional decisions from prior sensory decisions than vice versa. Experiment 3 involved a single verification phase: For half the participants the feature name preceded the concept name, and for half the concept name preceded the feature name. The functional processing advantage persisted irrespective of presentation order. Results suggest that functional information is central to the representation of all concepts: Function is processed faster than sensory information and is activated obligatorily.     

The Great Mandate,Sages and Sufism: Expounding Ma Dexin and his Sino-Muslim predecessors

Abstract: Ma Dexin (1794–1874), the prestigious Sino-Muslim philosopher, bridged Sufi ideas and Neo-Confucian philosophy by his handling of the concept of the Great Mandate. For Ma, the Sufi idea of ‘the Muhammadan Reality’, namely the reality of the perfect human, could be understood through an adoption and exploration of an ontological and cosmological interpretation of the Confucian concepts ‘sage’ and ‘ming’. The paper explains how Ma departed from the Neo-Confucian conceptual framework by holding that the Non-Ultimate had more ontological significance than the Supreme Ultimate. It is proposed that Ma's difference from the Neo-Confucians on that point explains his identification of the Great Mandate with the Non-Ultimate.     

The role of dynamic information in the recognition of unfamiliar faces

The effects of movement on unfamiliar face recognition were investigated. In an incidental learning task, faces were studied either as computer-animated (moving) displays or as a series of static images, with identical numbers of frames shown for each. The movements were either nonrigid transformations (changes in expression) or rigid rotations in depth (nodding or shaking). At test, participants saw either single, static images or moving sequences. Only one experiment showed a significant effect of study type, in favor of static instances. There was no additional advantage from studying faces in motion in these experiments, in which both study types showed the same amounts of information. Recognition memory was relatively unaffected by changes in expression between study and test. Effects of viewpoint change were large when expressive transformations had been studied but much smaller when rigid rotations in depth had been studied. The series of experiments did reveal a slight advantage for testing memory with moving compared with static faces, consistent with recent findings using familiar faces. Future work will need to examine whether such effects may also be due to the additional information provided by an animated sequence.     

Review Article

The Pope's Armada Gordon Urquhart, 1995 London: Bantam 441 pp., £16.99 hb ISBN 0–593–033884     

Access to Categories of Experience and Mental Health in a Sample of Managers

This study of 28 managers investigated the importance for mental health of Jahoda's (1982) five categories of experience, measured for both work and leisure. Each of the categories of experience of time structure, social contact, collective purpose, status, and activity correlated with at least one measure of mental health. Multiple regression analysis showed that collective purpose and status, in both work and leisure, had moderate to large β coefficients, indicative of their potential influence, for a range of measures of mental health, covering positive mental health and freedom from negative mental health. Analyses of Warr's (1987) nine "principal environmental influences" (PEI) also supported the importance of collective purpose and status. This showed that the PEI "valued social position," which includes these two categories of experience, remained significantly associated with several measures of mental health. Analysis of the PEIs also showed that opportunity for use of existing skills in leisure, and variety in leisure, were significantly associated with several measures of mental health. The importance of valued social position and active leisure for the well-being of managers is discussed.     

Memory conformity and the perceived accuracy of self versus other

Here, we demonstrate that the decision to conform to another person’s memory involves a strategic trade-off that balances the accuracy of one’s own memory against that of another person. We showed participants three household scenes, one for 30 s, one for 60 s, and one for 120 s. Half were told that they would encode each scene for half as long as their virtual partner, and half were told that they would encode each scene for twice as long as their virtual partner. On a subsequent two-alternative-forced choice (2AFC) memory test, the simulated answer of the partner (accurate, errant, or no response) was shown before participants responded. Conformity to the partner’s responses was significantly enhanced for the 30-s versus the 60- and 120-s scenes. This pattern, however, was present only in the group who believed that they had encoded each scene for half as long as their partner, even though the short-duration scene had the lowest baseline 2AFC accuracy in both groups and was also subjectively rated as the least memorable by both groups. Our reliance on other people’s memory is therefore dynamically and strategically adjusted according to knowledge of the conditions under which we and other people have acquired different memories.     

Witnessing stories: Definitional Ceremonies in Narrative Therapy with adults who stutter

BackgroundNarrative therapy (White & Epston, 1990) was developed as an approach to counselling, as a response to the power relations that influence people's lives. Its use with people who stutter has been documented. A basic tenet of narrative therapy is that the dominant problem-saturated narrative is challenged by externalizing the problem, in due course facilitating development of an alternative narrative. Within this process, the definitional ceremony involving outsider witnesses is a key procedure used to influence change.AimsThis paper describes definitional ceremonies, and their application within a narrative approach to therapy for stuttering. The analysis of a specific definitional ceremony is presented, leading to an exploration of identity as a public and social achievement.MethodsA definitional ceremony involving a woman who stutters and family members was recorded and analysed using two methods: interpretative phenomenological analysis and Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenological analysis. Details of the clinical application of definitional ceremonies with this client are described.Results and conclusionsResults from both methods of analysis were found to be similar. Notable results include the fact that the stuttering per se was not presented as the problem; rather, the impact of stuttering, especially the experience of bullying, was a dominant theme. This paper shows how definitional ceremonies can open opportunities for clients to present themselves in a preferred way, forming the basis for a new story and revised identity. Emerging themes can be identified for reflection and discussion with the client for therapeutic benefit.Educational objectives: (1) to describe and explain to readers the process of narrative therapy, with special attention to the use of definitional ceremonies; (2) to provide detail regarding the clinical processes involved with a specific definitional ceremony with one client; (3) to have the reader appreciate the specific importance of involving outsider witnesses in the therapy process; (4) to discuss the outcomes of the use of this particular definitional ceremony.     

Hopes and cautions in implementing Bayesian structural equation modeling

Muthén and Asparouhov (2012) have proposed and demonstrated an approach to model specification and estimation in structural equation modeling (SEM) using Bayesian methods. Their contribution builds on previous work in this area by (a) focusing on the translation of conventional SEM models into a Bayesian framework wherein parameters fixed at zero in a conventional model can be respecified using small-variance priors and (b) implementing their approach in software that is widely accessible. We recognize potential benefits for applied researchers as discussed by Muthén and Asparouhov, and we also see a tradeoff in that effective use of the proposed approach introduces increased demands in terms of expertise of users to navigate new complexities in model specification, parameter estimation, and evaluation of results. We also raise cautions regarding the issues of model modification and model fit. Although we see significant potential value in the use of Bayesian SEM, we also believe that effective use will require an awareness of these complexities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

The sound of the crowd: auditory information modulates the perceived emotion of a crowd based on bodily expressions

Although both auditory and visual information can influence the perceived emotion of an individual, how these modalities contribute to the perceived emotion of a crowd of characters was hitherto unknown. Here, we manipulated the ambiguity of the emotion of either a visual or auditory crowd of characters by varying the proportions of characters expressing one of two emotional states. Using an intersensory bias paradigm, unambiguous emotional information from an unattended modality was presented while participants determined the emotion of a crowd in an attended, but different, modality. We found that emotional information in an unattended modality can disambiguate the perceived emotion of a crowd. Moreover, the size of the crowd had little effect on these crossmodal influences. The role of audiovisual information appears to be similar in perceiving emotion from individuals or crowds. Our findings provide novel insights into the role of multisensory influences on the perception of social information from crowds of individuals.