Attention to pure tones

Listeners were required to detect increments of intensity or frequency in trains of pure tone bursts under different conditions of attention. The data were analysed taking into account contralateral events when more than one stimulus train was present. Marked changes in d' and β were found and the changes were positively correlated.

If targets are rare and attention is divided the values of β and d' are the same as in undivided attention provided that the contralateral event is a correct rejection, but fall if the contralateral events are hits or false alarms. If targets and non-targets are equi-probable no such difference is found. The data suggest that the observers can make use of the statistical properties of the stimulus sources. The results are compared with those in recent experiments using pure tones in a discrete trial paradigm and in experiments using semantic stimuli.     

全球地域化:基督宗教在华传播史的一种诠释——对章开沅"传播与植根"观念的解读

章开沅自20世纪80年代中期涉足中国基督宗教史研究领域.他通过深入考察基督宗教在中国传播的历史进程,精辟阐释中西文化的巨大差异,透彻解析中外基督徒有识之士的经典著述,站在跨文化对话的高度,对中国基督宗教史予以"全球地域化"解读.章开沅认为,只有构筑中国本土化的世界观与价值观,才是基督宗教在华"传播与植根"的必由之路.     

Unnoticed,Untapped, and Underappreciated: Clients' Perceptions of their Public Defenders

The challenge of providing high-quality public defense services continues to be a concern at federal, state, and local levels. Some scholars have alluded to a potential solution in client-centered representation, but research in this area is sparse at best. Such a lack of understanding leaves in its place speculation, particularly as to the potential importance of client perceptions in shaping broader system legitimacy. To fill this gap and create an empirical platform for future research, an exploratory pilot study was launched with the Hamilton County, Ohio Public Defender's Office, which used mixed methodologies to assess client attitudes toward public defenders as a potential resource for aiding the improvement of indigent representation. Findings from this pilot study suggest that there are five factors a public defense attorney should address that may prove to be very important in obtaining client satisfaction and cooperation: engaging the client for input, listening to the client, examining the prosecutor's evidence, focusing on the client's case during meetings, and informing the client of potential consequences. Implications for practice and future research are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Strategic Revenue Management under Uncertainty: A Case Study on Real Estate Projects in India

This paper proposes an approach for strategic revenue management under uncertainty for real estate projects. It integrates three modelling techniques: first, artificial neural network integrated support vector machines for forecasting the profit and loss‐making real estate residential projects; second, analytical network process approach using decision making trials and evaluation laboratory methodology for establishing interrelationships among factors; and third, multiobjective genetic algorithm approach for obtaining optimal numbers and types of apartments in a real estate project. We compare the respective revenues generated with the new number of apartments and price from the suggested revenue maximization model and that of the old practiced one through a case study of India. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stopping rules for multi-category computerized classification testing

Computerized classification testing (CCT) aims to classify persons into one of two or more possible categories to make decisions such as mastery/non-mastery or meet most/meet all/exceed. A defining feature of CCT is its stopping criterion: the test terminates when there is enough confidence to make a decision. There is abundant research on CCT with a single cut-off, and two common stopping criteria are the sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) statistic and the generalized likelihood ratio statistic (GLR). However, there is a relative scarcity of research extending the SPRT to the multi-hypothesis case for when there is more than one cut-off. In this paper, we propose a new multi-category GLR (mGLR) statistic as well as a stochastically curtailed version of the CCT with three or more categories. A simulation study was conducted to show that the mGLR statistic outperformed the existing stopping rules by generating shorter average test length without sacrificing classification accuracy. Results also revealed that the stochastically curtailed mGLR successfully increased test efficiency in certain testing conditions.     

Losing My Religion as a Natural Experiment: How State Pressure and Taxes Led to Church Disaffiliations between 1940 and 2010 in Germany

The sociological literature has produced a remarkably consistent picture of the quantitative patterns of religious disaffiliations in Western countries. This article argues, and demonstrates, that strong changes in a social context may lead individuals to disaffiliate rapidly, leading to very different aggregate effects from those in the “western model.” We use the unique situation of the separation of Germany from 1949 to 1989 and its subsequent reunification as a “natural experiment” to show just how much the relationships routinely found can be disrupted under changed conditions. The state socialist “treatment” affected religious disaffiliations in East Germany profoundly as it (a) made disaffiliations 10 times more probable in the East than in the West in the 1950s and 1960s, (b) shielded East German church members from factors that led to mass disaffiliations in the West in the late 1960s and early 1970s, (c) reversed the education‐disaffiliation link in the East, thus making disaffiliation more likely among the less educated, and (d) led to an especially strong increase in disaffiliations in the East right after the reunification     

Word Learning in L2 Chinese: from Perspectives of Learner-Related and Language-Related Factors

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Word learning in a second language (L2) is a complex process, which is affected by learner-related (e.g., morphological awareness) and language-related (e.g.,...     

Changing the Criminal Justice System Response to Sexual Assault: An Empirical Study of a Participatory Action Research Project

In jurisdictions throughout the United States, thousands of sexual assault kits (SAKs; also known as a “rape kits”) have not been submitted by the police for forensic DNA testing. DNA evidence may be helpful to sexual assault investigations and prosecutions by identifying perpetrators, revealing serial offenders through DNA matches across cases, and exonerating those who have been wrongly accused. This paper describes a longitudinal action research project conducted in Detroit, Michigan after that city discovered approximately 11,000 untested sexual assault kits in a police department storage facility. We conducted a root cause analysis to examine individual, organizational, community, and societal factors that contributed to the development of the rape kit backlog in Detroit. Based on those findings, we implemented and evaluated structural changes to increase staffing, promote kit testing, and retrain police and prosecutors so that cases could be reopened for investigation and prosecution. As we conducted this work, we also studied how this action research project impacted the Detroit criminal justice system. Participating in this project changed stakeholders’ attitudes about the utility of research to address community problems, the usefulness of DNA evidence in sexual assault cases, and the impact of trauma on survivors. The results led to new protocols for SAK testing and police investigations, and new state legislation mandating SAK forensic DNA testing.