Given-New Ordering Effects on the Production of Scrambled Sentences in Japanese

Across many languages, speakers tend to produce sentences so that given (previously referred to) arguments are mentioned before new arguments; this is termed given-new ordering. We explored the nature of such given-new effects in Japanese using a procedure following Bock and Irwin (1980). Speakers encoded and then recalled canonical (e.g., okusan-ga otetsudaisan-ni purezento-o okutta, the housewife gave the housekeeper a present) or scrambled (okusan-ga purezento-o otetsudaisan-ni okutta) dative targets when prompted by a statement-question sequence. The prompting statement established one nonsubject argument of the dative target as given, leaving the other nonsubject argument as new. Previous mention was either with lexically identical content (e.g., otetsudaisan or purezento) or with lexically distinct but nearly synonymous content (meidosan, housemaid or okurimono, gift). Results showed that speakers produced canonical or scrambled word orders so that given arguments were mentioned before new, but especially when the previous mention of the given argument occurred with lexically identical content (replicating Bock and Irwin's English effect). These results show that the production of Japanese scrambled and canonical word orders is sensitive to given versus new status (as in English), implying that given-new ordering arises at the stage of sentence production where scrambling effects are realized.     

The ‘Medical Body’ As Philosophy's Arena

Medicine, as Byron Good argues, reconstitutes thehuman body of our daily experience as a medical body,unfamiliar outside medicine. This reconstitution can be seen intwo ways: (i) as a salutary reminder of the extent to which thereality even of the human body is constructed; and (ii) as anarena for what Stephen Toulmin distinguishes as theintersection of natural science and history, in which many ofphilosophy's traditional (and traditionally abstract) questionsare given concrete and urgent form.This paper begins by examining a number of dualities between themedical body and the body familiar in daily experience. Toulmin's epistemological analysis of clinical medicine ascombining both universal and existential knowledge is thenconsidered. Their expression, in terms of attention,respectively, to natural science and to personal history, isexplored through the epistemological contrasts between themedical body and the familiar body, noting the traditionalphilosophical questions which they in turn illustrate.     

Sehen, Sichtbarkeit und empirische Forschung

Vision, Visibility, and Empirical Research. In general, natural scientists use the concept of observation in a liberal way: they talk of observing electrons, DNA, or distant quasars. Several philosophers of science have recently argued for a similar use of the concept of observation: they have claimed that the important aspects of scientific research can only be properly reconstructed in accordance with how this term is actually used in science. With reference to an example from astronomy, I point out that the proposed generalisation of the concept of observation leads to undesirable consequences. I argue that a differentiated conceptual framework is required in order to give an adequate account of the varieties of scientific experience. Thus, the appropriate starting point for distinguishing these various scientific research practices should not be the generalised scientific conception of observation, but instead distinctly different uses of the term observation drawn from ordinary language. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Acquisition of Related and Unrelated Factual Information Delivered by a Teacher Within an Inclusive Setting

Two secondary students with moderate disabilities (one per classroom) attended Advanced English classes with peers without disabilities in a rural high school. In additional to conducting planned daily instruction, each English teacher also systematically presented three sets of information (two facts per set) to each student with disabilities during the course of the class using a parallel treatments design. Each set of information included a fact related to the English class (e.g., Begin each sentence with a capital letter.) and a fact not related to the English class (e.g., The governor of Kentucky is Paul Patton.). The special education teacher conducted daily probe sessions to document acquisition. Of the six facts presented to each student with disabilities, one student acquired two related facts and one unrelated fact, while the other student acquired two related and two unrelated facts. This investigation implies that students who are fully included can acquire information presented by the regular classroom teacher during the course of a typical class and that teachers can facilitate learning by planning to present such information in a systematic fashion.     

Keeping Up with the Cloneses -- Issues in Human Cloning

The advent of cloning animals has created a maelstrom of social concern about the ethical issues associated with the possibility of cloning humans. When the ethical concerns are clearly examined, however, many of them turn out to be less matters of rational ethics than knee-jerk emotion, religious bias, or fear of that which is not understood. Three categories of real and spurious ethical concerns are presented and discussed: 1) that cloning is intrinsically wrong, 2) that cloning must lead to bad consequences, and 3) that cloning harms the organism generated. The need for a rational ethical framework for discussing biotechnological advances is presented and defended.     

SOMETHING TO OFFEND EVERYONE: TIPLER'S VISION OF IMMORTALITY

Abstract. Frank Tipler's The Physics of Immortality provides abundant cause for intellectual offense—including challenges to physics, to theology, and, seemingly, to common sense. Few philosophical conundrums remain unaddressed. Still, the book is stimulating and well presented.     

Religiousness, Health, and Health Behavior in Public-Use Data of the National Center for Health Statistics

Studies of religiousness and health-related variables in large, population-based cross-sectional or, preferably, longitudinal studies, which are often prohibitively expensive, are important to complement findings from the more commonly performed studies. Inadequately known among social science researchers, the national health surveys of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) offer large, high-quality data sets to the public at no or nominal cost and hence offer important opportunities for research in the area of religion and health, religion and reproductive behavior, sociology of religion and psychology of religion. This report provides an overview of the data sets and a bibliography of prior research using these data, which is intended to suggest how the data of NCHS may be further exploited by researchers of religiousness and health.

Letters, Notes, and Comments

Letter: Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World's Religions
Commenting on Leaping into the Boundless: A Daoist Reading of Comparative Religious Ethics by Francisca Cho, Moral Reason, Risk, and Comparative Inquiry by Robin W. Lovin, Heuristic Power as the Test of Theory by Ronald M. Green, and The Author Replies by Francisca Cho     

Changes in Saccadic and Manual Motor Control After Ocular Smooth Pursuit Adaptive Modifications

The gain of ocular smooth pursuit responses can be adaptively modified under certain circumstances. Evidence that these modifications are caused, at least partly, by changes at a sensory level comes from the fact that subsequent manual tracking movements generated during visual fixation are also modified in a similar manner. The question addressed in the present experiment was whether the modifications are constrained specifically to responses such as these, which are driven by retinal image motion, or whether they can also influence movements that make use of retinal image position. This was accomplished by comparing manual and oculomotor responses to step changes in target position before and after smooth pursuit adaptation. The results showed that, as with manual tracking movements, these responses were also modified by the adaptive procedure, although to a lesser extent. In particular, following a 20-min period in which subjects (N = 4) were submitted to a procedure designed to increase the gain of the smooth pursuit system, manual step tracking movements and ocular saccades displayed larger amplitudes than those shown prior to the adaptation. In addition, these gain changes were accompanied by appropriate alterations in response kinematics. Taken together, these results suggest that the mechanisms responsible for adaptive modifications in the smooth pursuit system are also able to more generally influence the processing of visuospatial information. The possible neurophysiological substrate underlying these mechanisms is discussed.     

Setting the sales budget: An exploratory study

This article explores how the sales budget is set in a business organization. Findings from a longitudinal participant observation study revealed that the sales budget is considered of great importance to the organization as sales estimates serve as premises for planning of production and supply and new product developments. It was observed that the sales budget was based on a narrow, inner-directed perspective, almost looking away from important environmental driving forces such as competitors and customers. The findings also showed that individuals involved in the sales budgeting process behaved opportunistically, influencing the budgetary process and outcomes. Theoretical and normative implications are highlighted.