Movement and working memory: Patterns and positions in space

Five experiments are reported in which subjects were asked to remember short, visually presented sequences of whole body movement patterns, words, and spatial positions. The items were recalled in order in a memory span paradigm. During presentation of the items to be remembered subjects simply watched, or they carried out a concurrent activity involving articulatory suppression, movement to external spatial targets, or body-related movement. When the movement patterns to be remembered were familiar to subjects, movement span was not disrupted by articulatory suppression or movement to spatial targets but was disrupted by body-related movement. This movement suppression task, however, did not interfere with performance on a spatial span task or on verbal span. It is concluded that the memory for patterns of limb movement differs from memory for movement to spatial targets and that accounts of visuo-spatial processes in working memory involve the latter type of movement.     

The epistemology of religiosity: an Orthodox Jewish perspective

This paper focusses on the Rabbinic suggestion that the attitude of awe, rather than any particular belief, lies at the heart of religiosity. On the basis of these Rabbinic sources, and others, the paper puts forward three theses: (1) that belief is not a sufficiently absorbing epistemic attitude to bear towards the truths of religion; (2) that much of our religious knowledge isn’t mediated via belief; and (3) that make-believe is sometimes more important, in the cultivation of religiosity than is mere belief.