Contributions of survey research to the understanding of memory

This article reviews the results of survey methodological research that illustrate phenomena of potential interest to investigators of memory, and also reviews psychological research designed to explore some of these phenomena under controlled laboratory conditions. We classify the phenomena reviewed into broad categories of remembering what events occurred, remembering when events occurred, and estimation and reconstruction processes used in reporting recurring events. We delineate the contributions of this research for our understanding of memory phenomena and show where this research has revealed gaps in our existing theories and knowledge. These findings present challenges for future collaboration between cognitive psychologists and survey methodologists.     

Evaluating student achievement with a relational database

Commercial database programs such as dBase and Paradox, although developed originally for business applications, are versatile and powerful tools that can be used for an academic purpose such as evaluating student performance. They can be used to write and store test questions, assemble and print classroom or on-line laboratory tests, and calculate grades, test statistics, and so forth. Databases are flexible, unlike textbook “ancillary” test bank programs that are inextricably bound to the strictly linear format and brief shelf life of specific textbook editions. A prototypical relational database program is described, with which an instructor can produce tests based on generic terms adapted from Boneau’s (1990) study of psychological literacy, as well as on behavioral learning objectives adapted from Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of educational objectives. As a relational database, the program integrates terms, objectives, questions, tests, and test scores, and avoids unnecessary data duplication and waste of computer storage space.     

Singles ads: Gender,social class,and time

The contents of 800 singles ads were examined. They were compared by the gender of the advertiser, the year of appearance (1991 and 1986), and the SES of the target readership (affluent and general). There were very few advertisers who listed themselves as black, so these ads were not included in the study. Gender differences were most important. Men were more likely to offer financial security and seek attractiveness. Women were more likely to offer attractiveness and seek financial security. The gender differences were in agreement with those reported for over a decade and from many geographical areas, although less than half of the advertisers mentioned either finances or attractiveness. Contrary to our hypotheses, the contents of mens' and womens' ads were more different in 1991 than they had been in 1986 and more in conformity with sexual stereotypes. Ads in a paper with an affluent readership were more likely to mention educational and financial status while ads in a paper with a readership throughout the metropolitan area were more likely to mention physical characteristics.     

Grading the ‘cultural literacy’ project

The essay examines the argument advanced by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., for instituting ‘cultural literacy’ as a fundamental priority of schools. A number of confusions and equivocations in Hirsch's reasoning are identified, and the propensity of his project to indoctrinate is exposed. Among the features of Hirsch's argument shown to be troubling are his shifting construal of ‘language’, his inconsistency about the requirements of cultural literacy, and his uncritical relation to traditional images of the American past and present. The upshot is to raise the question why Hirsch's project has elicited wide support and praise.     

Religious Coping and Heart Transplantation: From Threat to Health

Previous research has established the existence of homogeneous religious coping profiles in cardiac-transplantation candidates labeled as the deferring/collaborators, self-directors, and the eclectic religious copers. However, their prospective impact on outcome has not yet been established. This paper examines potential differences between pre-cardiac transplantation religious coping cluster groups on post-cardiac transplantation quality of life (physical functioning, mental health, and general health). Results indicated that the religious coping profiles of deferring/collaborators and self-directors had significantly better scores on mental health and general health than did the eclectics. Implications for religious-coping research and clinical practice are discussed.     

Emmanuel Levinas: Thinker between Jerusalem and Athens A Philosophical Biography

Emmanuel Levinas died a few days before he would have been ninety years old, on December 25, 1995, very early on a Monday morning, in the Paris clinic of Beaujon, where he had been admitted the previous day with serious heart complications.     

Referenzsemantik in der Partnermodellierung

How can we explain that an assertion on something perceived can be understood in the same manner by somebody who cannot perceive that scene? This problem bases the interest in computational linguistics in how listener modeling could possibly be harmonized with reference semantics. Mental images substituting real perception appear as a way out. The architecture of the listener model has to be adapted to the creation and use of such pictorial data structures. Furthermore, the relation between the latter and a verbal (i. e., propositional) representation must be understood. The resulting architecture of a listener model with reference semantics can be employed to solve communicational problems from three general classes in a better way, as is demonstrated by an example implementation.     

Discussion of “Visions of the Future: The Analyst's Expectations and their Impact on the Analytic Process” By Kenneth Winarick

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Half the village

In 1947 India became independent and at the same time lost a large part of its territory to the newly created state of Pakistan. This new political arrangement was achieved at a terrible cost in terms of human life and suffering. The years up to and immediately following 1947 provoked a debate about national and human identity. Pakistan was founded on the grounds that Muslims could not be safe or prosperous under majority Hindu rule in newly independent India. The new India insisted that she was a secular democracy in which all religious communities could enjoy equal status. The debate is reflected in a number of Hindi‐language novels which deal with this period. The present article is about one of them, written by a member of India's small Shi'ite Muslim community who was also a Marxist. The debate raises issues about human identity which we can now see as being tragically and importantly relevant for contemporary Europe. These issues are not only political but also religious in that they go to the heart of our understanding of what it means to be human beings. The article points to some of these issues and at the same time argues that the novel as a literary form provides a valuable and significant vehicle for their discussion.