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.     

Perceived racism and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery to personally relevant stress.

This study evaluated cardiovascular responses (CVR) to an active speech task with blatantly discriminatory (BRC) versus neutral (NRC) stimuli and an anger recall task in a sample of Black men (N = 73; age 18 to 47). Diastolic blood pressure scores were higher for NRC versus BRC stimuli during anger recall (p = .05). Moreover, persons in the NRC group who perceived high levels of racism (vs. no racism or BRC group) during active speech showed larger increases in blood pressure across postspeech rest, anger recall, and subsequent rest (p = .03). The notable elevation in CVR in response to an ambiguous event extends current models of racism suggesting that subtle racism is a psychosocial stressor that erodes health through chronically elevated CVR.     

Observing responses in rats: Support for the secondary reinforcement hypothesis

Rats' lever presses on a retractable lever earned brief presentations of discriminative stimuli signalling periods in which responding on an alternative lever was either non-reinforced (extinction) or reinforced on a random ratio schedule. The predictions of two theoretical accounts of this behaviour were tested by studying the effects of omitting either the stimulus signalling the reinforced or that signalling the non-reinforced schedule component. Under these conditions rats' behaviour is determined by the conditioned, affective properties of the stimuli rather than by their purely informational properties.     

Rabbi and Magister: Overlapping intellectual models of the twelfth-century renaissance

Elka Klein’s writings have illuminated reciprocal and distinctive characteristics of the social and intellectual lives of Jewry in Iberia and by comparison Northern Europe during the High Middle Ages. This article honors her insights, by comparing the development of biblical hermeneutics at the Abbey of St. Victor in Paris and in the writings of Abraham ibn Ezra. Hugh of St. Victor’s introduction to the study of Scripture, Didascalicon, provides a program for the individual student to integrate all branches of human knowledge into the search for Divine Wisdom that may be found only in Scripture. The innovation in Hugh’s program is the emphasis on the “literal” or “historical” sense of Scripture as the solid basis for the development of theological study. Grammar and rhetoric were stepping stones that led the young theologians to higher levels of Divine Wisdom. The introduction to Abraham ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Pentateuch constitutes a parallel point of orientation for twelfth-century Jewish readers. A close reading of ibn Ezra’s prologue maps the hermeneutical approaches that different communities – Christian, rabbinic Jewish, and Karaite – utilized in their expositions of the Pentateuch. After critiquing each community, ibn Ezra offers his own approach that builds an overall framework for correct interpretation on the foundation of grammar and the rabbinic oral tradition. From this perspective, the article demonstrates that during this period Jews and Christians, both in Iberia and Northern Europe, focused on harmonizing reason and revelation. Both communities used grammar as the primary criterion for evaluating the accumulation of traditional sources. Both approaches intended to develop students, who were capable of understanding that “reason is the angel that mediates between God and humanity.”