Cerebral dominance assessed by object- and color-naming latencies: sex and familial sinistrality effects.

Two vocal RT experiments were conducted. The first required the naming of five lateralized drawings of common objects; the second of five hues of equal brightness and saturation. Tachistoscopic exposure time was 100 msec. Both tasks yielded faster RT to stimuli channeled directly to the left hemisphere, demonstrating that the left hemisphere superiority for naming letters or digits obtained in previous tachistoscopic studies was not dependent on the use of alphanumeric stimuli. Interesting sex differences in object-naming and familial sinistrality differences in color-naming were obtained. Compared with other behavioral tasks for assessing language laterality, color-naming seems highly recommended in terms of freedom from spatial-confounding, good percentage agreement with clinical estimates of the frequency of left hemisphere language dominance in right handers, and sensitivity to familial sinistrality influences.     

Globalisation,society and religion: from mono‐metastructural theory to metatheoretical reflexivity

Examining globalisation theories, Eduardo Mendieta has come to the conclusion that there is a conceptual link between religion and social theory when theorising globalisation. His preference is for metatheoretical reflexivity type theories of globalisation that, in contrast with mono‐metastructural and matrix rearrangement theories, incorporate conceptual reflection on ‘religion’. With this typology in mind, the work of Ninian Smart and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, two authors in the study of religion for whom the era of globalisation was a central element in developing their views on religion and the study of religion, will be compared. Whereas Smart's views do not fundamentally break away from mono‐metastructural type theories, Smith's work, although highly problematic, gives some hints for developing a meta‐theoretical reflexivity type theory of religion, society and globalisation.     

Ghost and self: Jung's paradigm shift and a response to Zinkin

Abstract :  Zinkin's lucid challenge to Jung makes perfect sense. Indeed, it is the implications of this 'making sense' that this paper addresses. For Zinkin's characterization of the 'self' takes it as a 'concept' requiring coherence; a variety of abstract non-contextual knowledge that itself has a mythical heritage. Moreover, Zinkin's refinement of Jung seeks to make his work fit for the scientific paradigm of modernity. In turn, modernity's paradigm owes much to Newton's notion of knowledge via reductionism. Here knowledge or investigation is divided up into the smallest possible units with the aim of eventually putting it all together into 'one' picture of scientific truth. Unfortunately, 'reductionism' does not do justice to the resonant possibilities of Jung's writing. These look forward to a new scientific paradigm of the twenty-first century, of the interactive 'field', emergence and complexity theory. The paper works paradoxically by discovering Zinkin's 'intersubjective self' after all, in two undervalued narratives by Jung, his doctoral thesis and a short late ghost story. However, in the ambivalences and radical fictional experimentation of these fascinating texts can be discerned an-Other self, one both  created and found .     

A general framework for the analysis of concept identification tasks

A general framework is presented for concept identification based on hypothesis-testing theory. It is a modification of the duoprocess theory presented by Chumbley (1972). It is shown how Markov models for various complex concept identification tasks may be derived from this framework and how such models may be analyzed by making use of probability generating functions. Two experiments are described. In experiment 1 three tasks were used: two simple tasks, where the subject either only had to select the relevant dimension in order to solve the problem or only had to learn a short list of paired-associates, and a more complex task, where both processes were needed to reach the solution. The results were in general favorable to the theory. Experiment 2 was designed to test the application of the theory to the four-choice concept problem. The predictions of the theory are compared to those of the subproblem learning theory of trabasso and Bower (1964), modified to include a ‘learning-on-errors’ assumption. The fit of the duoprocess theory was reasonably good and superior to that of the subproblem learning theory.     

Comparing natural and abstract categories: A case study from computer science

In order to address the issue of whether abstract and concrete objects are categorized similarly, this paper looks at how computer scientists categorize the common concepts of their field. Using the methodology of Rosch, Mervis, Gray, Johnson, and Boyes-Braem (1976) and of Rosch and Mervis (1975) to identify the categorizations used by computer scientists, this study found that the categorization phenomena reported for concrete objects are quite general, operating over a wider range than was previously thought.     

Acquiring new word meaning: What does it tell us about development

R. J. Sternberg (1984, Developmental Review, 4, 113–138) offers a thoughtful and provocative essay on how individuals acquire meanings for novel or unfamiliar nouns. The Sternberg essay, however, is incomplete on a number of grounds. By stressing general processes and specific knowledge as critical components in the acquisition of verbal concepts, for example, it overlooks two logically complementary categories—specific processes and general knowledge—and the role these play in the acquisitions in question. A second concern is that the paper blurs distinctions among development, short-term learning, and the origin/acquisition of individual differences. Finally, Sternberg is encouraged to frame the specific phenomenon described here within the context of a larger theory of intellectual development and to indicate what else this specific model can be used to explain.