Segmentation of input in simultaneous translation

This paper examines the events of the simultaneous translation situation. Parallel visual records of the input speech and of the interpreter's speech were used to investigate what is the length and nature of the segment which the interpreter needs to monitor before he can start encoding. The results suggest that lexical and grammatical aspects of the text, as well as the interpreter's subjective organization of the material, interplayed in a systematic fashion.This investigation was supported by a grant from the Social Science Research Council, London.     

The Interrupted Managerial Career Path: A Longitudinal Study of MBAs

The view of managerial career success as an uninterrupted climb up the corporate ladder no longer fits the realities of many managers. This study examined longitudinal data on the career paths of MBAs to determine the consequences of early- and mid-career gaps on career success. The study found that early gaps have a negative impact on income and management level. Gaps in mid-career also reveal an income penalty, even after controlling for pre-gap income. In mid-career, the negative level effect was found for women, but not for men. MBAs with discontinuous employment histories, however, did not have diminished career satisfaction. The research suggests the need for researchers, organizations, managers, and business schools to broaden the definition of acceptable managerial career paths.     

Adults’ perception of native and nonnative vowels: Implications for the perceptual magnet effect

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the perceptual magnet effect. In Experiment 1, Amer-ican English speakers representing diverse dialects were presented with a fine-grained set of stimuli (varying in just noticeable differences forF1 andF2) and indicated whether they heard “/i/” or “not /i/,” thus delimiting the /i/ portion of the vowel space for individual subjects. Then these same subjects selected their own /i/ prototype with a method-of-adjustment procedure. The data from this experiment were used to synthesize customized prototype and nonprototype stimulus sets for Experiment 2. In Experiment 2,24 of our original 37 subjects completed a discrimination task for each of three conditions, in which vector stimuli varied from the subject’s prototype, the nonprototype, or a foreign vowel (/y/) in 15-mel steps. Subjects displayed higher discrimination, as indexed byd′, for the nonprototype condition than they did for both the prototype and the foreign conditions. In addition, discrimination was better for variants further away from the referent in each condition. However, discrimination was not especially poor for stimuli close to subjects’ individual prototypes—a result that would have yielded the strongest support for the operation of a magnet effect. This negative finding, together with other aspects of our results, raises problems for any theory of vowel perception that relies solely on “one-size-fits-all” prototype representations.     

Adults' perception of native and nonnative vowels: implications for the perceptual magnet effect.

Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the perceptual magnet effect. In Experiment 1, American English speakers representing diverse dialects were presented with a fine-grained set of stimuli (varying in just noticeable differences for F1 and F2) and indicated whether they heard "/i/" or "not/i/," thus delimiting the /i/ portion of the vowel space for individual subjects. Then these same subjects selected their own /i/ prototype with a method-of-adjustment procedure. The data from this experiment were used to synthesize customized prototype and nonprototype stimulus sets for Experiment 2. In Experiment 2, 24 of our original 37 subjects completed a discrimination task for each of three conditions, in which vector stimuli varied from the subject's prototype, the nonprototype, or a foreign vowel (/y/) in 15-mel steps. Subjects displayed higher discrimination, as indexed by d', for the nonprototype condition than they did for both the prototype and the foreign conditions. In addition, discrimination was better for variants further away from the referent in each condition. However, discrimination was not especially poor for stimuli close to subjects' individual prototypes--a result that would have yielded the strongest support for the operation of a magnet effect. This negative finding, together with other aspects of our results, raises problems for any theory of vowel perception that relies solely on "one-size-fits-all" prototype representations.     

Legislative role performance of female legislators

Women members of the United States House of Representatives for the 91st and 93rd Congresses are compared with male members to test whether there is a significant difference in their legislative behavior in the following areas: liberalism-conservatism, dependency-independence, specialization, and effectiveness. Only in the area of specialization is there reasonable statistical support for the hypothesis of significant difference. Women did introduce legislation relating to health, education, welfare and other social concerns at a slightly higher rate than males, but this still represented only about one-fourth of their legislation.     

Behavioral Goals for a Diverse Organization: The Effects of Attitudes, Social Norms, and Racial Identity for Asian Americans and Whites

This research identified 5 behaviors that may enhance the effectiveness of a diverse organization and used Fishbein and Ajzen's (1975) theory of reasoned action to identify predictors of these behaviors. Results from samples of White and Asian undergraduate students from 2 universities generally supported the Fishbein and Ajzen model. Attitudes and subjective norms were significant predictors of behavioral intentions when gender, race, and social desirability bias were controlled. Racial identity also had a significant, positive effect on attitudes toward diversity-related behaviors among the Asian American students, but no significant effect among Whites. These results supported our reasoning that members of historically excluded racial groups with strong racial identities will be most likely to welcome organizational attempts to become more pluralistic because pluralism means that their valued identities will be respected rather than repressed.     

1. Life in the midst of death

The main presentations on the Sixth Assembly theme and its sub-themes were accompanied by a number of brief presentations testifying to the way in which Jesus Christ is present and alive in concrete situations in different parts of the world. The following are abbreviated versions of some of those testimonies.     

Speech production and the predictability of words in context

The purpose of the experiments was to examine the function of hesitation pauses in speech. Pauses were conceived of as anticipating increase of information in subsequent speech and as involving acts of choice.

This hypothesis was tested by relating the incidence of pauses within sentences to the transition probabilities of the words constituting them. Estimates of these probabilities were obtained experimentally by an adaptation of Shannon's guessing technique and were based on reverse as well as forward guessing. The hypothesis was borne out by the facts; hesitancy in speech was shown to be closely related to uncertainty of prediction (entropy) and fluency of utterance to redundancy. These results are shown to be in line with the facts of language statistics. Their theoretical implications for the concept of information and for understanding the processes of speech organization is discussed.