Ein zählender Chronograph

Zusammenfassung Ein z?hlender Chronograph¹) wird beschrieben, der Reihen von fortlaufenden und sich überschneidenden Zeitstrecken zu messen gestattet und der ein rasches Bestimmen und nachtr?gliches Kontrollieren der gemessenen Zeiten erlaubt. Es werden Hundertstel-, Zehntel-, halbe und ganze Sekunden (bei Umstellen auf “langsamen Gang” Zehntel- und ganze Sekunden) in unterschiedlicher Weise auf einem Morsestreifen kenntlich gemacht, und zwar durch ein Gangwerk, das von einer Stimmgabel reguliert wird und im hohen Grade unabh?ngig von Schwankungen des Motors ist, der den Chronographen antreibt. Die zu messenden Zeiten werden durch zwei R?dchenschreiber als L?ngsstriche auf dem Morsepapier wiedergegeben. Mit 2 Abbildungen im Text.     

Children's perception of certain musical properties: scale and contour

Children's perception of scale and contour in melodies was investigated in five studies. Experimental tasks included judging transposed renditions of melodies (Studies 1 and 3), discriminating between transposed renditions of a melody (Study 2), judging contour-preserving transformations of melodies (Study 4), and judging similarity to a familiar target melody of transformations preserving rhythm or rhythm and contour (Study 5). The first and second studies showed that young children detect key transposition changes even in familiar melodies and they perceive similarity over key transpositions even in unfamiliar melodies. Young children also are sensitive to melodic contour over transformations that preserve it (Study 5), yet they distinguish spontaneously between melodies with the same contour and different intervals (Study 4). The key distance effect reported in the literature did not occur in the tasks of this investigation (Studies 1 and 3), and it may be apparent only for melodies shorter or more impoverished than those used here.     

The client: Therapist's partner or therapist's opponent? thoughts on the question of power and cooperation in therapy

The difference in process and outcome of two therapies conducted by the author with families having a psychotic adolescent is considered. Attention is paid to the fact that in one case the client was regarded theoretically as an opponent and in the other as a partner. It is concluded that the contention thatthe therapist must decide whether to be influential or cooperative arises from a logical confusion by failing to recognize that therapy cannot be anything other than cooperation.Originally published as part of a special issue on the power metaphor guestedited by Klaus G. Deissler inZeitschrift fur systemische Therapie (1986),4, 253–257. Translated by S. Awodey.     

Genesis and modern theories of evolution

Summary We have seen that the theory of the evolution of the universe is very remote from being matter of absolute knowledge as its popular presentation today would have us believe. Moreover, it is based on a certain aspect of reality, namely, that of science, which cannot pretend to be the only one possible and thus to exclude the religious aspect of the world as a creation by God. The same is true regarding the evolutionary theories of life by Eigen or Vollmert, both being based on polymeric chemistry. If, therefore, Vollmert confesses, as already quoted, that he is not afraid to accept a creating God as an alternative to Darwinism, so in this respect he speaks despite everything as a believer and not as a scientist. By no means do I deny that the scientific results of Vollmert which seem to reveal the mystery of life to us can strengthen our faith — but never can faith be based on it. Faith springs from another source.Despite that, we can say today that the situation has changed principally, because both the philosophy of science and the discussions of the theories of evolution have shaken that kind of naive belief in science which in contrast to former times has turned theology into the ancilla, the maid of science.On the other hand, it would be a great misunderstanding to assume that now we can simply turn the tables. The criticism which I have partly put forward against the modern theories of evolution cannot obscure the numerous discoveries of the highest importance which are connected with them. These discoveries have provided us with an immensely deepened knowledge both of the physical conditions of the universe and of the chemical foundations of life. To conclude, I want to quote an American scientist who said: I am as confused as before — but on a much higher level. And this, I think, is the best summary of the present situation.     

Cognition and olfaction: a review

Examines research in cognitive psychology, which has in the past paid little attention to the olfactory modality. But there is now a significant body of literature on the role of the olfactory system in memory and cognition. Human beings possess an excellent ability to detect and discriminate odors, but they typically have great difficulty in identifying particular odorants. This results partly from the use of an improverished and idiosyncratic language to describe olfactory experiences, which are normally encoded either in a rudimentary sensory form or as part of a complex but highly specific biographical episode. Consequently, linguistic processes play only a very limited role in olfactory processing, whereas hedonic factors seem to be of considerable importance.     

EVIDENCE FOR RELATIONAL-CODING IN CONCEPT FORMATION,AND A NOTE ON THE EFFECTS OF FEEDBACK*

The purpose of the present paper was to determine whether people encode relations among component features in experience, or whether they simply encode the occurrence of features separately as independent cues. This has become a major issue in theories of concept-formation at the present time. It is suggested in this paper that two problems have particularly obstructed a clear resolution of the issue. The first is a consistent failure to check to what extent training materials actually contain relations among features, before results are declared in favour of a particular model. The second is the use, hitherto, of only informal methods of analysing such relations, where they exist, and of predicting from them the structure of the concept. This paper describes an expression for measuring the overall relations among feature-variables in concept training materials. It also introduces a methodology, using log-linear models, for predicting concept structures on the basis of those relations. An experiment combined these methods to assess whether subjects abstracted relations among features, or whether they abstracted independent cues. A subsidiary aim was to assess how feedback, based on independent-cue information, during learning, affected the construction of the concept. The results came out strongly in favour of relational-coding and there was some evidence that feedback based on independent-cues retarded concept formation.     

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