Electrode placement,EMG feedback,and relaxation for tension headaches

Fifteen tension headache subjects were allocated to one of three groups: direct EMG feedback (from a site corresponding to the source of pain), indirect EMG feedback (from a site not corresponding to the source of the pain) and relaxation instructions. There were two base-line, six treatment and one post-treatment sessions. No significant differences were found between base-line and post-treatment EMG levels, for any of the groups; however, some significant reductions in levels were obtained within sessions. EMG levels recorded during headache attacks did not differ significantly from levels recorded during base-line. Frequency and intensity of headaches were significantly reduced, particularly in the relaxation group. At follow-up this improvement was maintained for subjects with forehead pain, but differences between the groups had disappeared.     

Active selection of items to be remembered: The role of timing

A series of experiments was carried out in which Ss were required to extract critical stimuli from a stream of nine spoken inputs, presented at various rates, and report on these after the presentation of each list. The critical items were normally digits at positions 2, 4, 6, and 8 in the input sequence. Subjects were required to employ either an “active” extraction strategy, aimed at achieving temporary storage only of items to be remembered, or a “passive” strategy, involving storage of all inputs with subsequent extraction of critical items. The initial experiment showed that the active strategy markedly improved performance efficiency as the presentation rate decreased; passive performance remained relatively stable. Experiments 2 and 3 indicated that the level of active performance was higher when critical items were categorically different from unwanted items. There were indications that this effect was independent of the effect of changes in the presentation rate.The final experiments in the series showed that when Ss were denied the opportunity of predicting the time of arrival of critical items active performance hardly benefitted from a reduction in rate.A “controlled activation” process is proposed as a basis for S's ability to modulate his state of alertness, so as to maximize receptivity for critical stimuli arriving at well-defined points in time.     

The “feminine mystique” in male-dominated jobs: A comparison of attitudes and background factors of women in male-dominated versus female-dominated jobs

This paper examines various background factors plus success and work-related atttudes of 324 women as aggregated into one of three groups: those women working in male-dominated jobs, those in female-dominated jobs, and those in relatively sex-ratio balanced jobs. Overall results show that women holding male-dominated jobs are more likely to be older, better educated, have fathers with higher educational levels, and are more likely to be childless as compared to women in female-dominated jobs. Holding age and education constant, women in male-dominated jobs usually rated definitions of success as more important to their feelings of well-being than did women in female-dominated jobs. With these same constants, there were few differences in work attitudes among the three groups, but contrary to expectations, women in female-dominated jobs rated the importance of their work higher than did women in male-dominated jobs. The variables best predicting whether a woman held a male-dominated job were college attainment, problems related to sex discrimination, the age of the participant, her feelings toward achieving a very high salary, her feelings of the importance of her work, and her feelings about becoming an authority in her job.     

On the inseparability of reasoning and virtue: Madame de Maintenon's Maison royale de Saint-Louis

This paper engages with the curriculum at Madame de Maintenon's school for girls at Saint-Cyr to raise and address a set of questions: What is it to teach someone to reason? The curricular materials of Saint-Cyr suggest that learning to reason is a matter of practice. How is one to distinguish autonomous reason giving from habituation or automatic trained responses? How can practices in reason giving informed by social mores have objective validity? Moreover, if we think of the role of a philosopher as the cultivation of rational faculties and recognize that how this role is played is bound up with social norms, by what standards ought we to evaluate whether a philosophical educator is good or bad? Intertwined with the discussion is also a question about the limits of philosophy for the question.     

Constructing Legitimacy in Geoengineering Discourse: The Politics of Representation in Science Policy Literature

Geoengineering, the idea of addressing climate change through large-scale technological projects, is a unique example of a contested emerging technology. It stands out in the degree to which both its scope of possibilities and its premise are characterized by global existential risks. Despite controversy due to inherent and perceived risks, this field has been shifting toward mainstream consideration. Geoengineering science policy reports reflect this shift and influence the subsequent trajectory of research and potential deployment. The two most notable geoengineering policy reports are those by the Royal Society in 2009 and the National Research Council (NRC) in 2015. Discursive strategies recurrent in these reports construct notions of legitimacy and normalcy in regard to geoengineering. These strategies include relative legitimation of actors and approaches, differentiating research from deployment, elevating particular geoengineering methods through comparative evaluation, and normalizing novel geoengineering proposals through analogy. These strategies are present in both the benchmark geoengineering policy reports, with a deepening and entrenchment evident in the later NRC report. Together, these discursive strategies promote the legitimization of geoengineering research.     

Religion,the Royal Society,and the Rise of Science1

Accounts of the role of religion in the rise of modern science often focus on the way in which religion provided the intellectual foundations for scientific enquiry, motivated particular individuals, or provided the substantive content of approaches to nature. These relate to the origins of science and assume that, once established, modern science becomes self-justifying. However, seventeenth-century criticisms of science—attacks on the Royal Society being one example—suggest that science remained a marginal and precarious activity for some time. The rise of science to cultural prominence in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was possible only because science was eventually able to establish itself as a religiously useful enterprise. Religion thus played a key role not only in the origins of modern science, but in providing the ongoing social sanctions that ensured its persistence and rise to prominence.     

Stimulus control of generalized imitation in subnormal children

Generalized imitation was established in three young subnormal children by reinforcing their imitations of a limited set of modeled actions in the presence of a large ball. A discrimination was then established by training nonimitation in the presence of a small ball. Imitation was then tested for various other ball sizes. Rate of imitation decreased as the test stimuli increasingly differed in size from the large ball. Imitations that were never reinforced occurred at about the same rate as those that were reinforced when in the presence of the large ball in training.     

The use of English stress assignment rules by children taught either with traditional orthography or with the initial teaching alphabet

This experiment examines children's use of spelling conventions as a guide to pronunciation, and their ability to handle stress assignment rules. The subjects, 7-year-old school children, of whom half had learned to read and write using traditional orthography (t.o.) and half had learned using the initial teaching alphabet (i.t.a.), read out short simple sentences each containing a two-syllable nonsense word. The grammatical category and the spelling of the nonsense words were varied systematically. It was found that, in assigning stress, both groups of children were influenced by phonemic and grammatical features in a manner similar to that predicted by Chomsky and Halle (1968), but they differed in their handling of the silent final e. It was the i.t.a. children whose use of this orthographic device was more in accordance with Chomsky and Halle's theory, despite their relative lack of experience with it. A comparison with Smith and Baker's (1976) adult subjects indicated substantial differences between adults and children, particularly in their treatment of words with a lax final vowel.     

Quasireinforcement: Control of behavior by second-order interval schedules

Pigeons were trained on a variable-interval 66-sec schedule of reinforcement that was segmented into either fixed- or variable-interval 10-sec components. Three-second access to food followed some components according to the overall VI 66-sec schedule, but 3-sec periods of nonreinforcement followed the other components. With both FI 10-sec and VI 10-sec segments, overall response rates were generally higher when the completion of unreinforced segments was signaled by a red key (never paired with food) than when it was unsignaled. Response rates during the red-key periods dropped to zero. Brief presentations of the red key engendered the distinctive (FI or VI) patterns of responding which would be expected if each segment were followed by food. These data demonstrate behavioral control by brief stimuli which are not paired with primary reinforcement and show that such control may develop even when the sequences of behavior required to produce food or brief stimuli are variable in duration.