Semantics and the sacred

ABSTRACT

This article looks at four different scholarly perspectives on ‘sacred’ – the ineffable sacred, the experienced sacred, the polarized sacred and the contextualized sacred – in order to draw out their implicit presuppositions about meaning. The first two stances presuppose that meaning depends on what bits of language are about (referentialism), and the other two stances presuppose that meaning depends on relations between bits of language (holism). The article concludes three things: these prominent views of ‘sacred’ rest on usually implicit or unrecognized assumptions about the nature of meaning; some of those assumptions explain why certain theories are contentious and problematic and others ground more promising and productive approaches.     

New polytypes of long-period stacking ordered structures in a near-equilibrium Mg97Zn1Y2 alloy

By atomic-scale high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy, the long-period stacking ordered (LPSO) structures in a near-equilibrium Mg₉₇Zn₁Y₂ (at.%) alloy have been characterised. In addition to 18R and 14H, new polytypes of LPSO structures are analysed and determined as 60R, 78R, 26H, 96R, 38H, 40H, 108H and 246R. All of these LPSO structures feature AB′C′A building blocks with two Mg layers and three Mg layers sandwiched between them. The Bravais lattices and space groups of new polytypes of LPSO structures were easily determined via the newly introduced method. A structural relationship between the LPSOs is proposed.     

Cultural appropriation and the intimacy of groups

Philosophical Studies - What could ground normative restrictions concerning cultural appropriation in cases where they are not grounded by independent considerations such as property rights or...     

Children's Understanding of the Instrumental Value of Products and Brands

Gelman and Echelbarger (2019—this issue) provide a valuable discussion about children's understanding of the inferred or nonobvious features of objects, which has implications for how children value products. We further this conversation by examining how children value products and brands as a means for meeting important goals, which we refer to as instrumental valuation. Specifically, we examine developmental trends in instrumental valuation for three goals—self‐concept development, self‐presentation, and happiness. Across these areas, we find that children place greater value on products and brands for meeting these goals as they grow older, particularly during late childhood and early adolescence. We conclude with a discussion of how age differences in instrumental valuation add to the general conversation about how children of different ages value objects.     

Timing in a dual-task in children and adults: when the interference effect is higher with concurrent non-temporal than temporal information

This study used a dual task with participants of different levels of cognitive capacities, assessed with neuropsychological tests, to examine the attentional cost on time judgment of processing concurrent temporal and non-temporal information. Children and adults performed a temporal reproduction task with either an interfering temporal or non-temporal discrimination task. The results showed an underestimation of time in the dual task compared to the single task, the extent of which was directly linked to individual attentional capacities. However, the non-temporal task interfered more than the temporal task on the reproduced durations. Nonetheless, the temporal reproduction task equally affected performance in the non-temporal and the temporal discrimination task. These results reveal the predominant role of the cost of dual-tasking in interference effects on time judgment, and the lesser role of concurrent information, especially of temporal information. This suggests a lack of competition for attentional resources in the processing of multiple durations.     

Estimating group size from human speech: Three's a conversation,but four's a crowd

Much previous research has examined various aspects of auditory processing, including the localization of sounds, and the influence of lexical and indexical information on language processing. In the present set of experiments we explored the ability of listeners to estimate the number of speakers in a group solely from the information in an auditory signal. The bound on accurately estimating the number of simultaneous speakers is 3. We suggest that subitization—the ability to estimate numerosity of visual and auditory elements without explicitly counting these elements—rather than the capacity of short-term memory, may underlie this limitation. The cognitive constraint on estimating the number of simultaneous speakers may have implications for a wide variety of seemingly unrelated psychological phenomena.     

A first-principles study of the formation of θ′′ phase in Al–Cu alloys

The θ′′-Al₃Cu phase plays an important role in the precipitation process of Al–Cu alloys. This phase has a sandwich structure—every two {200}_Cu layers are separated by three {200}_Al layers. To analyse the formation mechanism of this structure, the elastic strain energy of the {200}_Cu and {200}_Al layers, and the chemical bonding energy that reflects the interaction between the electrons in Cu and neighbouring Al atoms are calculated and analysed by first-principles calculations, projected density of states and Bader analysis. Our computation results reveal that this sandwich structure is energetically preferred in the competition of elastic strain and chemical bonding energies. To minimise the elastic strain energy of {200}_Al and {200}_Cu layers, the {200}_Cu layers prefer being apart from each other, whereas the chemical bonding energy favours the opposite arrangement because the intermetallic bond between Al and Cu atoms may form through p-d hybridization.     

Tailoring the Mode of Information Presentation: Effects on Younger and Older Adults' Attention and Recall of Online Information

Previous studies have mainly focused on tailoring message content to match individual characteristics and preferences. This study investigates the effect of a website tailored to individual preferences for the mode of information presentation, compared to 4 nontailored websites on younger and older adults' attention and recall of information, employing a 5 (condition: tailored vs. text, text with illustrations, audiovisual, combination) × 2 (age: younger [25–45] vs. older [≥65] adults) design (N = 559). The mode‐tailored condition (relative to nontailored conditions) improved attention to the website and, consequently, recall in older adults, but not in younger adults. Younger adults recalled more from nontailored information such as text only or text with illustrations, relative to tailored information.