Everything is What it is,and Not Another Thing: Knowledge and Freedom in Isaiah Berlin's Political Thought

Although Isaiah Berlin's critique of positive liberty has achieved canonical status, its place within his wider political philosophy remains obscure. However, the re-publication of one of his most important philosophical essays, From Hope and Fear Set Free, as part of a new edition of Four Essays on Liberty, simply entitled Liberty, has opened the door to a re-evaluation of Berlin's political project.

At the heart of Berlin's argument, which gains its fullest expression in From Hope and Fear Set Free, stands his contention that positive liberty, in its incarnation as self-realisation, conflates liberty with knowledge, which leads to the distortion of our phenomenologically inescapable structure of experience. This transgression against the conceptual framework in terms of which we think, Berlin argues, played its desolate part in linking the ‘totalitarian temptation’ latent in liberty as self-realisation with the totalitarian politics of the mid-twentieth century.     

Phonological recoding,rapid automatized naming,and orthographic knowledge

Phonological recoding, orthographic knowledge, and rapid automatized naming (RAN) are three major contributors to word identification. However, the interrelations between these components remain somewhat unclear. The current analyses focus on how phonological recoding and alphanumeric versus non-alphanumeric RAN contribute to different components of orthographic knowledge (word specific vs. general). Results indicate that alphanumeric and non-alphanumeric RAN contribute to orthographic knowledge components differently. Alphanumeric RAN relates more to word-specific orthographic knowledge, whereas non-alphanumeric RAN relates more to general orthographic knowledge. Furthermore, phonological recoding is more closely related to word-specific orthographic knowledge than to general orthographic knowledge.     

Encoding Processes and Release from Proactive Interference in Short-Term Memory of Preschool Children

A modified proactive interference paradigm was developed to investigate encoding and memory processes in preschool-age children. The buildup and release from proactive interference in preschool-age children parallels that of adults and of mentally retarded persons, indicating that very young children and older people may use many of the same encoding dimensions.     

Strategies in the Information Search Process: Interaction Among Task Structure,Knowledge, and Source

The authors explored the information search strategies of 145 individuals in the predecisional stage. Decision-making participants selected pieces of information from a list including relevant and irrelevant data. The authors investigated the influence of the individual's knowledge and information source. In Experiment 1, the authors experimentally manipulated the information source reliability. The results revealed that participants tended to use a sequential strategy when the authors presented information as supplied by a reliable source. In Experiment 2, the authors analyzed the interaction between information source and the individuals' knowledge. When participants believed the source to be reliable, even knowledgeable participants adopted a strategy as sequential as that chosen by naive individuals. In Experiment 3, a mediational model corroborated the hypothesis that the search strategy affects the final judgment. The results were consistent with the constructivist framework, which emphasizes the role of individual, task, and context in the decision-making process.     

Investigating the Role of Instructional Focus in Incidental Pattern Learning

The authors used a novel dual-component training procedure that combined a serial reaction time task and an artificial grammar learning task to investigate the role of instructional focus in incidental pattern learning. In Experiment 1, participants either memorized letter strings as a primary task and reacted to the stimuli locations as a secondary task or vice versa. In Experiment 2, participants were given the same dual-component stimuli but performed only one of the two training tasks. Instructional focus affected the amount of learning and the likelihood of acquiring explicit knowledge of the underlying pattern. However, the effect of instructional focus varied for the different types of stimuli. These results are discussed in terms of the role of focused attention in incidental learning.     

A Longitudinal Study of Semantic Grouping Strategy Use in 6–11-Year-Old Children: Investigating Developmental Phases,the Role of Working Memory,and Strategy Transfer

This two-cohort longitudinal study on the development of the semantic grouping strategy had three goals. First, the authors examined if 6–7-year-olds are nonstrategic before becoming strategic after prompting at 8–9 years of age, and if 8–9-year-olds are prompted strategic before spontaneous strategy use at 10–11 years of age. Children 6–7 and 8–9 years old performed two sort-recall tasks (one without and one with a grouping prompt) at two time points separated 1.5 years from each other. Second, the authors investigated whether short-term or working memory capacity at time point 1 predicted recall in children who did or did not use the semantic grouping strategy 1.5 years later. Third, the authors investigated whether prompted strategic children and children who used the strategy spontaneously differed in strategy transfer to a new task. Developmental results confirmed previous cross-sectional results, but in a longitudinal two-cohort study 6–7-year-olds were nonstrategic, and became prompted strategic around 8–9 years of age, followed by spontaneous strategy use at age 10–11 years. The authors found that memory capacity was not predictive of later use of the strategy. New findings were that prompted strategic children were as equally able as spontaneously strategic children to transfer the strategy to a new task, albeit with smaller recall benefits.     

Profiles of Chronic Illness Knowledge in a Community Sample of American Adults

The author identified profiles of chronic illness knowledge (i.e., heart disease, cancer, diabetes) in a community sample of American adults and examined the effect of sociodemographic influences on relations of illness knowledge to health practices and well-being. Participants were 181 women and 120 men who completed measures of illness knowledge, sociodemographics, personal health practices (e.g., diet, exercise, substance abuse, adaptive healthcare use), well-being (e.g., self-rated physical health, depression, social support), and perceived illness risk. Two-step cluster analyses performed on random subsets of the sample identified three levels of illness knowledge: low, medium, and high. Knowledge groups were differentiated on most measures of health practices, well-being and perceived illness risk. However, effects were substantially attenuated after controlling for differences in age and SES. Findings indicate that age and other sociodemographic factors are related not only to levels of illness knowledge but also to the application of knowledge in relation to health practices and well-being.     

The Effect of Fatigue on Learning and Performance of a Gross Motor Task

40 college males were sequentially assigned to 1 of 2 groups to examine the effects of induced physical fatigue upon the performance and learning of a gross motor task, the stabilometer. All Ss were given 32 practice trials over 3 practice sessions, with 48 hr. rest interpolated between sessions. Trials 1 and 2 were performed under control conditions (no fatigue) for both groups. The Experimental Group was then required to perform under conditions of physical fatigue during Trials 3-26. Trials 27-32 (Session 3) were performed under control conditions. The condition of fatigue was achieved on Trials 3-26 by having Ss pedal a bicycle ergometer until a heart rate of 180 beats/min was attained prior to each trial. The Control Group cancelled vowels. The results indicated that physical fatigue was detrimental to the performance and learning of the Experimental Group.     

Motor Programming Is Not the Only Process Which Can Influence RT

The current status of research on the memory drum theory is evaluated with emphasis on the issues raised by Marteniuk and MacKenzie (1981). A general theme emerging from this review is that response programming is not the only process which can influence RT and that distinguishing programming from non-programming effects clarifies rather than “clouds? the issues.     

Transfer of Motor Learning Engages Specific Neural Substrates During Motor Memory Consolidation Dependent on the Practice Structure

The authors investigated how brain activity during motor-memory consolidation contributes to transfer of learning to novel versions of a motor skill following distinct practice structures. They used 1 Hz repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) immediately after constant or variable practice of an arm movement skill to interfere with primary motor cortex (M1) or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The effect of interference was assessed through skill performance on two transfer targets: one within and one outside the range of practiced movement parameters for the variable practice group. For the control (no rTMS) group, variable practice benefited delayed transfer performance more than constant practice. The rTMS effect on delayed transfer performance differed for the two transfer targets. For the within-range target, rTMS interference had no significant affect on the delayed transfer after either practice structure. However, for the outside-range target, rTMS interference to DLPFC but not M1 attenuated delayed transfer benefit following variable practice. Additionally, for the outside-range target, rTMS interference to M1 but not DLPFC attenuated delayed transfer following constant practice. This suggests that variable practice may promote reliance on DLPFC for memory consolidation associated with outside-range transfer of learning, whereas constant practice may promote reliance on M1 for consolidation and long-term transfer.