Mary's new perspective

Book Information The Semantics of Media. By Jeff Ross. Dordrecht, Kluwer. 1997. Pp. vii + 137. £56.75.     

Creativity profile of university and conservatory music students

Abstract:

Music students in conservatories appear to be driven, single minded, highly gifted individuals. Little research has been done concerning the differences, if any, between music students who choose to study in conservatory settings and those who choose a university. The creative potential, preference for high energy activities, and personality characteristics of music majors at the New England Conservatory of Music and at the University of Wisconsin were compared. Instruments used were: Barron‐Welsh Revised Art Scale, Adjective Check List (ACL) Creativity Scales, Drawing Task, and Action Preference Test. Results indicated that the conservatory students scored significantly higher on the Action Preference test than the university music students; otherwise the two populations appeared very similar. The 63 music students were significantly more creative than normative groups but not as creative as art students. They were distinctly different from norm groups on 19 scales of the ACL. Their preference for high energy activities was significantly higher than norm groups.     

Time-driven effects on parsing during reading

The phonological trace of perceived words starts fading away in short-term memory after a few seconds. Spoken utterances are usually 2-3 s long, possibly to allow the listener to parse the words into coherent prosodic phrases while they still have a clear representation. Results from this brain potential study suggest that even during silent reading, words are organized into 2-3 s long ‘implicit’ prosodic phrases. Participants read the same sentences word by word at different presentation rates. Clause-final words occurring at multiples of 2-3 s from sentence onset yielded increased positivity, irrespective of presentation rate. The effect was interpreted as a closure positive shift (CPS), reflecting insertion of implicit prosodic phrase boundaries every 2-3 s. Additionally, in participants with low working memory span, clauses over 3 s long produced a negativity, possibly indicating increased working memory load.     

A phenomenology of Christian religious maturity

One branch of adult development which needs further study is adult religious development. In this article, the author describes a phenomenological theory of adult development in Christian religious experience. This three-stage theory was derived from interviews with seven religious professionals and employs language which individuals might use in describing their ongoing relationship with God as Person. Progression through these stages requires conscious decision on the part of a believing individual and presumed interaction with God. It is not a natural chronological process. The relationship with God influences attitudes and values about self, others, and God. Some of the progression is measurable.     

Nothing Matters in Survival

Do I have a special reason to care about my future, as opposed to yours? We reject the common belief that I do. Putting our thesis paradoxically, we say that nothing matters in survival: nothing in our continued existence justifies any special self-concern. Such an “extreme” view is standardly tied to ideas about the metaphysics of persons, but not by us. After rejecting various arguments against our thesis, we conclude that simplicity decides in its favor. Throughout the essay we honor Jim Rachels, whose final days exemplified his own unselfish morality as well as the “neutralist” ideal we espouse. As an appendix, we include the last original work to be published by James Rachels, in which he criticizes Sidgwick’s most famous defense of egoism.     

Effects of fluency on psychological distance and mental construal (or why New York is a large city, but New York is a civilized jungle)

People construe the world along a continuum from concretely (focusing on specific, local details) to abstractly (focusing on global essences). We show that people are more likely to interpret the world abstractly when they experience cognitive disfluency, or difficulty processing stimuli in the environment, than when they experience cognitive fluency. We observed this effect using three instantiations of fluency: visual perceptual fluency (Study 1b), conceptual priming fluency (Study 2b), and linguistic fluency (Study 3). Adopting the framework of construal theory, we suggest that one mechanism for this effect is perceivers' tendency to interpret disfluently processed stimuli as farther from their current position than fluently processed stimuli (Studies 1a and 2a).     

Financial deprivation selectively shifts moral standards and compromises moral decisions

Previous research suggests people firmly value moral standards. However, research has also shown that various factors can compromise moral behavior. Inspired by the recent financial turmoil, we investigate whether financial deprivation might shift people’s moral standards and consequently compromise their moral decisions. Across one pilot survey and five experiments, we find that people believe financial deprivation should not excuse immoral conduct; yet when people actually experience deprivation they seem to apply their moral standards more leniently. Thus, people who feel deprived tend to cheat more for financial gains and judge deprived moral offenders who cheat for financial gains less harshly. These effects are mediated by shifts in people’s moral standards: beliefs in whether deprivation is an acceptable reason for immorality. The effect of deprivation on immoral conduct diminishes when it is explicit that immoral conduct cannot help alleviate imbalances in deprived actors’ financial states, when financial deprivation seems fair or deserved, and when acting immorally seems unfair.     

The Search for Moderators in Disfluency Research

Recent research has demonstrated that, under the right circumstances, making fonts harder to read can improve educational outcomes. However, the initial demonstrations did not fully map out the boundary conditions for where this effect will and will not be observed. In this paper, we identify some of the most plausible moderators of the effect and provide some cautionary notes on how to interpret and report findings regarding disfluency in education. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.