Our daily lives unfold continuously, yet our memories are organised into distinct events, situated in a specific context of space and time, and chunked when this context changes (at event boundaries). Previous research showed that this process, termed event segmentation, enhances object-context binding but impairs temporal order memory. Physiologically, peaks in pupil dilation index event segmentation, similar to emotion-induced bursts of autonomic arousal. Emotional arousal also modulates object-context binding and temporal order memory. Yet, these two critical factors have not been (...) systematically studied together. To address this gap, we ran a behavioural experiment using a paradigm validated to study event segmentation and extended it with emotion manipulation. During encoding, we sequentially presented greyscale objects embedded in coloured frames (colour changes defining events), with a neutral or aversive sound. During retrieval, we tested participants’ memory of temporal order memory and object-colour binding. We found opposite effects of emotion and event segmentation on episodic memory. While event segmentation enhanced object-context binding, emotion impaired it. On the contrary, event segmentation impaired temporal order memory, but emotion enhanced it. These findings increase our understanding of episodic memory organisation in laboratory settings, and potentially in real life with perceptual changes and emotion fluctuations constantly interacting. (shrink)

Chomsky's current Biolinguistic methodology is shown to comport with what might be called 'established' aspects of biological method, thereby raising, in the biolinguistic domain, issues concerning biological autonomy from the physical sciences. At least current irreducibility of biology, including biolinguistics, stems in at least some cases from the very nature of what I will claim is physiological, or inter-organ/inter-component, macro-levels of explanation which play a new and central explanatory role in Chomsky's inter-componential explanation of certain properties of the syntactic (...) component of Universal Grammar. Under this new mode of explanation, certain physiological functions of cognitive mental organs are hypothesized, in an attempt to explain aspects of their internal anatomy. Thus, the internal anatomy of the syntactic component exhibits features that enable it to effectively interface with other 'adjacent' organs, such as the Conceptual-Intensional system and the Sensory- Motor system. These two interface systems take as their inputs the assembled outputs of the syntactic component and, as a result of the very syntactic structure imposed by the syntax are then able to assign their sound and meaning interpretations. If this is an accurate characterization, Chomsky's long-standing postulation of mental organs, and I will argue, the advancement of new hypotheses concerning physiological inter-organ functions, has attained in current biolinguistic Minimalist method a significant unification with foundational aspects of physiological explanation in other areas of biology. (shrink)

We propose that synesthetic cross‐activation between the primary auditory cortex and the anatomically adjacent insula may help explain two puzzling conditions—autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) and misophonia—in which quotidian sounds involuntarily trigger strong emotional responses. In ASMR the sounds engender relaxation, while in misophonia they trigger an aversive response. The insula both plays an important role in autonomic nervous system control and integrates multiple interoceptive maps representing the physiological state of the body to substantiate a dynamic representation of emotional (...) wellbeing. We propose that in ASMR cross‐activation of the map for affective (sensual) touch leads to an increase in subjective wellbeing and parasympathetic activity. Conversely, in misophonia the effect of the cross‐activation is to decrease emotional wellbeing and increase sympathetic activity. Our hypothesis also illuminates the connection between hearing and wellbeing more broadly and helps explain why so many people experience decreased wellbeing from modern urban soundscapes. (shrink)

We may now ask the question: In what historical perspective should we place the work of Richard Goldschmidt? There is no doubt that in the period 1910–1950 Goldschmidt was an important and prolific figure in the history of biology in general, and of genetics in particular. His textbook on physiological genetics, published in 1938, was an amazing compendium of ideas put forward in the previous half-century about how genes influence physiology and development. His earlier studies on the genetic and (...) geographic distribution of the various species and races of Lymantria contributed soundly to an understanding of the inheritance and development of sex, as well as the genetics of speciation. He was a curious mixture of the experimentalist, empiricist, and theorizer, who could grasp both the large and the small at once and wrap them into the same integrated and coherent package.In insisting on trying to relate genetics to development, Goldschmidt was continually forced to speculate and to forsake experimental fact for generalized theory. In refusing to reconcile a physiological and developmental conception with a corpuscular theory of the gene, he forced himself to substitute for a large body of experimentally verified evidence, vague and general speculations which did not lead in any precise direction. L. C. Dunn summarizes succinctly the effect of Goldschmidt's thinking on the development of genetic theory: Although Goldschmidt's ideas had a considerable influence in directing attention to the developmental processes intervening between genes and characters, they did not lead to the establishment of a general theory of development in genetical terms. In fact, at the end of the period, as signalized by Goldschmidt's book of 1938 [Physiological Gentics] doubt remained whether there was a field with a defined problem which could be identified as developmental genetics.Yet the frequency with which Goldschmidt is cited by later writers suggests that there is a more positive side to his contribution than this. The early Mendelians had recognized the genic constitution of organisms and the Drosophila workers had uncovered in detail the chromosomal mechanism of heredity. These great discoveries were of classical character, solidly based on a multitude of well established facts. By themselves, however, they would not have been sufficient to place genetics in the central position within biology which it was to assume. Beyond the “static” analysis of gene transmission an insight was needed into the dynamic role of genes in cellular physiology, biochemistry, and development. Goldschmidt recognized this aspect and outlined in brilliant generalizations a physiological theory of genetics. Necessarily the prophetic nature of this achievement — romantic in the sense of Ostwald's classification of great scientists and their discoveries — transcended its factual basis. It was the audacity of the theoretician unimpeded by the still scanty data which gave a new focus to biological thought.Some have called Goldschmidt an “obstructionist” in the history of genetics—one whose efforts were largely directed toward useless and continual criticism — challenge for the sake of challenge. As this line of argument goes, time wasted answering Goldschmidt's poorly conceived criticisms could have been better used to pursue new lines of thought within the classical gene theory. Sometimes historians are upbraided for studying the work of such “obstructionists,” or even the work of those whose ideas have later proved to be inadequate. This argument misses the point of history and the lessons which it can teach. Perhaps Goldschmidt did take the time of a number of the classical geneticists who tried to answer his objections to the gene theory; and perhaps many of his own ideas about genes were, by today's view, “wrong.” These are always easier judgments to make by hindsight than at the moment. But that is not the point. Goldschmidt had a considerable influence on his contemporaries, and to dismiss him as an obstructionist because his opponents later proved to be more nearly right, distorts history and obscures significant questions which we might well be asking. It might be valuable to know why Goldschmidt felt compelled to be an iconoclast —and how that impulse, psychological in orgin, led him to overlook critical items of evidence which his opponents considered more carefully. It might also be valuable to try and understand how a contemporary of Goldschmidt or. Morgan really viewed the gene theory — what were its strong and weak point? Such questions are not readily answered by studying the work of only those men who were correct by later standards.Answers to some of the above questions can be gleaned from this study of Goldschmidt — though the first, and most psychologically oriented, question is largely untouched here.On the one hand, Goldschmidt forced classical geneticists to reexamine the foundation of their ideas about the nature, inviolability, and even physical dimensions of genes. He also kept alive the very real problems of gene physiology and its relations to development — a relationship that was given less attention by the Drosophila school in their pursuit of the transmission process. On a broader level he emphasized to the biological community a principle that was in danger of being lost in the enthusiasm surrounding the expansion of the Mendelian-chromosome theory. The point was that all theories in science are transient, logical constructs which should not be held as sacred. Time and again, as the history of science has shown, theories become rigid structures which retard new modes of thought. From Goldschmidt's perspective, the gene theory was in danger of performing just that function, for it was preventing workers from viewing the gene in a functional as well as a structural light.On the other hand, examining the work of critics (or even of outright “obstructionists”) gives the historian an opportunity to observe how the more established community of scholars at some point in time reacts to challenges of its cherished ideas. The fact that many workers in his own day (such as Beadle, Luria, Delbruck, Sturtevant, Bridges, and others), as well as most geneticists today, saw Goldschmidt as having been largely “obstructionist” is useful historical (and/or sociological) data. Clearly, as this paper has tried to show, Goldschmidt's ideas were not all obstructionist, and his viewpoint that genes must be considered functionally was one which was clearly valid, premature as it may have been from an experimental and technique point of view. Perhaps Goldschmidt's major fault was that he developed alternative theories which were not easily testable. Nonetheless, his challenge to a fundamental and established idea brought forth a reaction from many members of the genetic community which indicates how unwilling they were to reconsider the formalized theory on which their work was based. While many of Goldschmidt's criticisms — and particularly his way of making them — arose out of his own idiosyncrasies, they were also a product of his times. His view of the nature of theory-construction, and his rejection of old-style reductionism and mechanism, were part of a growing awareness within the world scientific community that explanations based on reducing complex phenomena to ultimate particles or units were clearly inadequate. The success of the Mendelian-chromosome theory had obscured that fact for many geneticists, but to Goldschmidt it was a point that could not be allowed to pass unnoticed. (shrink)

This article explores how Plato, in his “metaphysical” dialogues, sees the specific properties of motion (and especially of motion in music), which lend themselves to adaptation for the purposes of maintaining or restoring the health of the soul. Plato explores the property of regular or rhythmic motion in particular. The attention has been drawn to the analogy between the calming effect of music, at the human level, and the Demiurge’s achievement in willing the world into existence. The focus of the (...) article lays on the Laws, in which the principle of musical motion plays a central role in resolution of the contradictions between material and spiritual, natural and physiological, medical and educative. (shrink)

Music in the Flesh reimagines the lived experiences of music-making subjects (composers, musicians, listeners) in the long European seventeenth century. There are countless historical testimonies of the powerful effects of music upon early-modern bodies, described as moving, ravishing, painful, dangerous, curative, miraculous, and encompassing "the circulation of the humors, purification of the blood, dilation of the vessels and pores. In asking what this all meant at the time, the author considers musical scores and their surrounding texts as "somatic scripts" that (...) afford a range of somatic actions and reactions and can give us a glimpse into the historical embodied experience of organized sound. Starting from the Lutheran hymns and their accompanying intellectual traditions and ritual practices in German-speaking lands, the book moves with ease across repertories and regions, sacred and vernacular musics, domestic and public settings in order to sketch a "physiology of music" that is as historically illuminating as it is relevant for present-day performing practices and that sheds unprecedented light on how subjectivity was embodied through sound in early-modern Europe. (shrink)

Emotional expressions provide strong signals in social interactions and can function as emotion inducers in a perceiver. Although speech provides one of the most important channels for human communication, its physiological correlates, such as activations of the autonomous nervous system (ANS) while listening to spoken utterances, have received far less attention than in other domains of emotion processing. Our study aimed at filling this gap by investigating autonomic activation in response to spoken utterances that were embedded into larger semantic (...) contexts. Emotional salience was manipulated by providing information on alleged speaker similarity. We compared these autonomic responses to activations triggered by affective sounds, such as exploding bombs, and applause. These sounds had been rated and validated as being either positive, negative, or neutral. As physiological markers of ANS activity, we recorded skin conductance responses (SCRs) and changes of pupil size while participants classified both prosodic and sound stimuli according to their hedonic valence. As expected, affective sounds elicited increased arousal in the receiver, as reflected in increased SCR and pupil size. In contrast, SCRs to angry and joyful prosodic expressions did not differ from responses to neutral ones. Pupil size, however, was modulated by affective prosodic utterances, with increased dilations for angry and joyful compared to neutral prosody, although the similarity manipulation had no effect. These results indicate that cues provided by emotional prosody in spoken semantically neutral utterances might be too subtle to trigger SCR, although variation in pupil size indicated the salience of stimulus variation. Our findings further demonstrate a functional dissociation between pupil dilation and skin conductance that presumably origins from their differential innervation. (shrink)

Why does symbolic communication in humans develop primarily in an oral medium, and how do theories of language origin explain this? Non-human primates, despite their ability to learn and use symbolic signs, do not develop symbols as in oral language. This partly owes to the lack of a direct cortico-motoneuron control of vocalizations in these species compared to humans. Yet such modality-related factors that can impinge on the rise of symbolic language are interpreted differently in two types of evolutionary storylines. (...) 1) Some theories posit that symbolic language originated in a gestural modality, as in “sign languages”. However, this overlooks work on emerging sign and spoken language showing that gestures and speech shape signs differently. 2) In modality-dependent theories, some emphasize the role of iconic sounds, though these lack the efficiency of arbitrary symbols. Other theorists suggest that ontogenesis serves to identify human-specific mechanisms underlying an evolutionary shift from pitch varying to orally-modulated vocalizations (babble). This shift creates numerous oral features that can support efficient symbolic associations. We illustrate this principle using a sound-picture association task with 40 learners who hear words in an unfamiliar language (Mandarin) with and without a filtering of oral features. Symbolic associations arise more rapidly and accurately for sounds containing oral features compared to sounds bearing only pitch features, an effect also reported in experiments with infants. The results imply that, beyond a competence to learn and use symbols, the rise of symbolic language rests on the types of signs that a modality of expression affords. (shrink)

Here, we describe how Casas Grandes Medio period (AD 1200 to 1450) shamanic practices of the North American Southwest used tobacco shamanism, a ritual stance called the Tennessee Diviner (TD) posture, and cultural expectations to generate trance experiences of soul flight and divination. We introduce a conceptual model that holds that specific trance experiences are the emergent result of human minds interacting with additional factors including entheogens, cultural expectations, physiological states, postures/movement, and sound/stimulation. Experimental and ethnographic evidence indicates (...) initiating trance with either tobacco intoxication or the TD posture accompanied with a rapidly beating drum or rattle corresponds with perceptions of soul flight, transformation, and divination/information acquisition. Both have similar results but pairing them together as they were during the Medio period likely helped ensure the culturally desired trance experiences. This practice of mutually reinforcing factors was likely part of tobacco‐based shamanism found in other New World cultures as well. We suggest our general model can be applied to other contexts to examine how various aspects of trance induction interact to produce the cultural patterns (and resulting cosmological and spiritual frameworks) anthropologists have documented in other cultures. (shrink)

Peculiar Attunements places the recent turn to affect into conversation with a parallel movement in European music theory of the eighteenth century. During that time the affects--or passions, as they were also called--formed a vital component of a mimetic model of the arts. Eighteenth-century critics held that artworks imitated or copied the natural world in order to produce copies of the affects in their beholders. But music caused a problem for such theories, since it wasn't apparent that musical tones could (...) imitate anything with any dependability, beyond the rare thunderclap or birdcall. Struggling to articulate how it was that music managed to move its auditors without imitation, certain theorists developed a new affect theory crafted especially for music, postulating that music's physical materiality as sound vibrated the nerves of listeners and attuned them to the affects through sympathetic resonance. This was a theory of affective attunement that bypassed the entire structure of representation, offering a non-discursive, corporeal alternative. It is a pendant to contemporary theories of affect, and one from which they have much to learn. Inflecting our current intellectual moment through eighteenth-century music theory and aesthetics, this book offers a reassessment of affect theory's common systems and processes. It offers a new way of thinking through affect dialectically, drawing attention to patterns and problems in affect theory that we have been given to repeating. Finally, taking a cue from eighteenth-century theory, it gives renewed attention to the objects that generate affects in subjects. (shrink)

ObjectivesConstant Installation of Present Orientation and Safety is a Eye Movements Desensitization and Reprocessing -derived technique, which is often used to prepare for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. It differs from the latter by involving cyclically recurring exercises in reorientation to the present, interspersed between brief periods of exposure to the traumatic material.While EMDR is well established as a therapeutic method, the efficacy and mechanisms of action of CIPOS have not been investigated so far. In this pilot study, an (...) experimental setting was used to record the subjective and physiological effects of the CIPOS intervention compared to a control condition with pure mental exposition.MethodsThe study was performed on 30 healthy volunteers aged from 20 to 30 years. Distress was induced using audio files of subjectively stressful situations. Subjective distress was measured via the Subjective Units of Distress Scale, while physiological indicators were used as measures for objective stress. For each condition, pre- and post-intervention comparisons were calculated.ResultsIn both groups, startle reflex potentiation and mean skin conductance level significantly decreased. In the group with CIPOS intervention, but not in the control group, a significant decrease in the SUD value was found.Conclusion and significanceThe results show that the CIPOS technique is as effective as pure mental exposition in reducing physiological stress. In addition, a superiority in reducing subjective distress was found compared to pure mental exposition. Possible explanations of these effects are discussed. (shrink)

Since sound and music are powerful forces and drivers of human behavior and physiology, we propose the use of sonification to activate healthy breathing patterns in participants to induce relaxation. Sonification is often used in the context of biofeedback as it can represent an informational, non-invasive and real-time stimulus to monitor, motivate or modify human behavior. The first goal of this study is the proposal and evaluation of a distance-based biofeedback system using a tempo- and phase-aligned sonification strategy to (...) adapt breathing patterns and induce states of relaxation. A second goal is the evaluation of several sonification stimuli on 18 participants that were recruited online and of which we analyzed psychometric and behavioral data using, respectively questionnaires and respiration rate and ratio. Sonification stimuli consisted of filtered noise mimicking a breathing sound, nature environmental sounds and a musical phrase. Preliminary results indicated the nature stimulus as most pleasant and as leading to the most prominent decrease of respiration rate. The noise sonification had the most beneficial effect on respiration ratio. While further research is needed to generalize these findings, this study and its methodological underpinnings suggest the potential of the proposed biofeedback system to perform ecologically valid experiments at participants' homes during the COVID-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Postnatal parent-infant physiological regulatory effects described in the previous paper (Part I) are viewed here as being biologically contiguous with events that occur prenatally, preparing and sensitizing the fetus to the average microenvironment into which the infant is expected, based on its evolutionary past, to be born. Following McKenna (1986), evidence (some of which is circumstantial) is presented concerning fetal hearing and fetal amniotic liquid breathing as they are affected both by maternal cardiovascular blood flow sounds in the uterus (...) and by fluctuating maternal blood sugar levels. These data are linked in turn to the infant’s postulated postnatal responsivity to parental sensory cues, including auditory and vestibular respiratory cues that may assist infants as they “learn” to breathe and, for some, to resist a SIDS event. Data on the respiratory and vocalizing behavior of normal and hearing-impaired persons are used to show that not all forms of human breathing are innate; some forms develop with experience. These data reveal how human infants learn, for example, to coordinate higher and lower brain respiratory nuclei in the context of learning initially to cry with intent and purpose and later to speak. Voluntary, cortex-based breathing emerges at the same time that infants are most likely to die from SIDS, between 2 and 4 months of age. This switch between voluntary and involuntary breathing during both sleep (while dreaming) and wake cycles, which depends on the integration of higher cortical and lower brain stem nuclei, is complex and is possibly the basis of the human species’ unique susceptibility to SIDS—a syndrome as yet unrecognized in other species. These human infant vulnerabilities, including delayed maturity, can explain in part why natural selection ought to favor increased infant sensitivity to parental sensory cues provided by a caregiver—stimuli available in the evolving parental care environment that included parent-infant co-sleeping for more than 4–5 million years of human evolution. (shrink)

Born in 1838, Mach was a pioneer in the field of physics, having even made an impression on Einstein in his younger life who credited him with being the "Philosophical forerunner of relativity theory." His name is also associated with the speed of sound (as in traveling at Mach "insert-number-here") as well as the Doppler effect. Throughout his career, he was particularly interested in the biological and sensory relationship to physics and science, and naturally, this interest expanded to that (...) of the world of psychological perception and physiological psychology as well as philosophy. The Analysis of Sensations is about just that, the nature of the relationship of physics and the physical sciences to psychological phenomena of sense and perception. It's a fascinating read for anyone looking to expand their knowledge of how the two sides of the same coin meld harmoniously. (shrink)

We examined liking for happy- and sad-sounding music as a function of exposure, which varied both in quantity (number of exposures) and in quality (focused or incidental listening). Liking ratings were higher for happy than for sad music after focused listening, but similar after incidental listening. In the incidental condition, liking ratings increased linearly as a function of exposure. In the focused condition, liking ratings were an inverted U-shaped function of exposure, with initial increases in liking (after 2 exposures) followed (...) by decreases (after 8 or 32 exposures). The results documented that: (1) sad music is liked as much as happy music in some instances; (2) frequency of exposure causes both familiarity (positive) and over-familiarity (negative) effects; and (3) effects of exposure on liking differ for focused and incidental listening. (shrink)

Positive Psychology has been instrumental in promoting wellbeing science in the modern era. However, there are still ways in which positive psychology interventions and positive education programmes can be improved to achieve more robust and sustained effects. One suggested method is to make wellbeing more salient and tangible through the use of objective tools that assess the relationship between psychological and physiological wellbeing, and enable wellbeing status and change to be seen. With the addition of an interdisciplinary team, as (...) well as technology-enabled and pedagogically sound learning tools and approaches, the potential for positive outcomes and impact increases exponentially. Monitoring wellbeing progress in this way can provide evidence, motivation and belief in positive psychology and wellbeing interventions. This can lead to engaged learning, sustained benefits and systemic impact. Positive psychology needs to strategically extend on the emerging work in this field to help everyone, including policy makers, notice and value wellbeing. (shrink)

The standard account of arousal seems on the surface relatively straight forward. Its basic meaning is to awaken someone, reading him for activity. Physiologically, this involves stimulating the cerebral cortex into a general state of wakefulness and attention. The aroused subject shows an increased heart rate and blood pressure. Psychologically, sensory alertness, mobility and readiness to respond all mark the aroused state. As all the experts agree, arousal involves more than the simple presence of an external stimulation. It requires impulses (...) that are external and internal to the body. To be effective, the external impulses must find a corresponding response. Thus, it is no good trying to wake someone up by a sound outside of the range of his hearing. Similarly, the genital displays of one species will not cause sexual arousal in another. In neither case, can the external impulses activate the inner impulses or drives. This requires the presence of appropriate stimuli. Thus, the sight and smell of food arouses appetite. It awakens the drive of hunger, which is directed towards the food. Similarly, the sight, odor and touch of the sexual partner brings about sexual arousal and activation of the corresponding sexual drive. Even in the case of arousal from sleep by such varied stimuli as a light being turned on, a noise, or the touch of a person fit into the pattern of an inner impulse or drive being activated by an external impulse. The drive in this case is towards the various stimuli that our senses prime us to receive. Our need for such is as basic as that for food. Placed in a situation of sensory deprivation, the mind attempts to make up their loss by generating hallucinations. The German phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl, spoke in this context of “non-objectifying instincts.” They designate an instinctive “interest in the data and fields of sensation—before the objectification of sense data,” that is, before there is “a thematically actualizable object” for the drive to fasten on.[i] In each of these examples, hunger, sex, or simple sensation, the external stimuli trigger internal processes primed to response.. (shrink)

This paper and its subsequent parts (Part II and Part III) build on an earlier publication (McKenna 1986). They suggest that important clinical data on the relationship between infantile constitutional deficits and microenvironmental factors relevant to SIDS can be acquired by examining the physiological regulatory effects (well documented among nonhuman primates) that parents assert on their infants when they sleep together.I attempt to show why access to parental sensory cues (movement, touch, smell, sound) that induce arousals in infants (...) while they sleep could possibly help one of many different subclasses of infants either to override certain kinds of sleep-induced breathing control errors suspected to be involved in SIDS or to avoid them altogether. I do not suggest that solitary nocturnal sleep “causes” SIDS, that all parents should sleep with their infants, or that traditional SIDS research strategies should be abandoned. However, using evolutionary data, I do suggest that an adaptive fit exists between parent-infant sleep contact and the natural physiological vulnerabilities of the neurologically immature human infant, whose breathing system is more complex than that of other mammals owing to its speech-breathing abilities. This “fit” is best understood, it is argued, in terms of the 4–5 million years of human evolution in which parent-infant contact was almost certainly continuous during at least the first year of an infant’s life. Thus, to dismiss the idea that solitary sleep has no physiological consequences for infants does not accord with scientific facts. (shrink)

'Sound Effects' collects original articles on English and American prose fiction which analyse vocal phenomena by using the psychoanalytic concept of the object voice - introduced by J. Lacan and theorised by M. Dolar - as their interpretative tool.

Our primary goal was to develop and validate a task that could provide evidence about how humans learn praxis gestures, such as those involving the use of tools. To that end, we created a video-based task in which subjects view a model performing novel, meaningless one-handed actions with kinematics similar to praxis gestures. Subjects then imitated the movements with their right hand. Trials were repeated 6 times to examine practice effects. EEG was recorded during the task. As a control, subjects (...) watched videos of a model performing a well-established (over learned) tool-use gesture. These gestures were also imitated 6 times. Demonstrating convergent validity, EEG measures of task-related cortical activation were similar in topography and frequency between the novel gesture task and the overlearned, praxis gesture task. As in studies assessing motor skill learning with simpler tasks, cortical activation during novel gesture learning decreased as the same gestures were repeated. In the control condition, repetition of overlearned tool-use gestures were also associated with reductions in activation, though to a lesser degree. Given that even overlearned, praxis gestures show constriction of EEG activity with repetition, it is possible that that attentional effects drive some of the repetition effects seen in EEG measures of activation during novel gesture repetition. (shrink)

Drug recalls and lawsuits against pharmaceutical manufacturers are accompanied by announcements emphasizing harmful drug side-effects. Those with elevated health anxiety may be more reactive to such announcements. We evaluated whether health anxiety and financial incentives affect subjective symptom endorsement, and objective outcomes of cognitive and physiological functioning during a mock drug recall. Hundred and sixty-one participants reported use of over-the-counter pain medications and presented with a fictitious medication recall via a mock Food and Drug Administration website. The opportunity to (...) join a class-action lawsuit was manipulated. We assessed health anxiety, recalled drug usage, blood pressure, heart rate, and performance on a computerized Trail Making Test. Symptom endorsement was strongly predicted by health anxiety. When combined, three health anxiety measures explained 28.5% variance. These effects remain strong after controlling for depression and anxiety. Litigation condition did not predict symptom endorsement. Blood pressure and heart rate were modestly predicted by health anxiety, but not by litigation condition. TMT performance was consistently predicted by health anxiety, with higher scores associated with poorer performance. Although there were no main effects for litigation, interactions consistently emerged for the TMT, with generally poorer performance for those with higher health anxiety in the non-litigation condition; whereas health anxiety was unrelated to performance for the litigation condition. All but one participant joined the litigation when given the opportunity, despite a healthy sample and minimal use of pain medication. Subsequent data from 67 individuals with no mention of the FDA scenario or litigation showed that health anxiety still significantly predicts symptom endorsement, but the explained variance is less than half that obtained in the FDA scenario. The findings suggest that health anxiety plays a significant role in adverse symptom reporting, beyond anxiety or depression, and this effect is independent of the presence of the FDA recall. The lack of differences for health anxiety and symptom endorsement between litigation and non-litigation conditions rules out malingering. Although it is general practice in drug recalls to list potential adverse side effects caused by medications, this may elicit unintended symptom experiences and health anxious individuals may be more susceptible. (shrink)

The auditory gaze cueing effect (auditory-GCE) is a faster response to auditory targets at an eye-gaze cue location than at a non-cue location. Previous research has found that auditory-GCE can be influenced by the integration of both gaze direction and emotion conveyed through facial expressions. However, it is unclear whether the emotional information of auditory targets can be cross-modally integrated with gaze direction to affect auditory-GCE. Here, we set neutral faces with different gaze directions as cues and three emotional sounds (...) (fearful, happy, and neutral) as targets to investigate how the emotion of sound target modulates the auditory-GCE. Moreover, we conducted a controlled experiment using arrow cues. The results show that the emotional content of sound targets influences the auditory-GCE but only for those induced by facial cues. Specifically, fearful sounds elicit a significantly larger auditory-GCE compared to happy and neutral sounds, indicating that the emotional content of auditory targets plays a modulating role in the auditory-GCE. Furthermore, this modulation appears to occur only at a higher level of social meaning, involving the integration of emotional information from a sound with social gaze direction, rather than at a lower level, which involves the integration of direction and auditory emotion. (shrink)

With historical hindsight, it can be little questioned that the view of protozoa as unicellular organisms was important for the development of the discipline of protozoology. In the early years of this century, the assumption of unicellularity provided a sound justification for the study of protists: it linked them to the metazoa and supported the claim that the study of these “simple” unicellular organisms could shed light on the organization of the metazoan cell. This prospect was significant, given the (...) state of cytology circa 1910. In the wake of the major gains made in understanding nuclear division in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, cytology was suddenly confronted with many, seemingly less penetrable, problems. Several aspects of nuclear organization still remained unexplained, and recent research had revealed the presence in the cytoplasm of structures whose functions in cell life were unknown. Classical methods of cytology, relying on descriptive, morphological analysis, seemed ill equipped to resolve these questions.Hertwig's program for protozoology, grounded in the assumption of the fundamental unity of organization in protozoa and metazoa, offered a potential means for investigating these and other problems of cell theory. Linked to mainstream cytology, protozoology was advocated as a means of experimentally investigating key biolobical processes — reproduction, metabolism, and organelle morphology and physiology — less accessible in higher organisms. Protozoa were hailed as prime experimental organisms, in which cell structure and function could be more easily studied. Unlike the metazoan cell, they could be subjected to controlled experiments in which the external environment was modified and the effects monitored. Protozoa offered, in other words, a promising experimental means by which to investigate the cell — its structures and its processes.The success of this program within Germany was soon apparent. In contrast to the rather neglected state of the discipline in 1900, protozoology began to be recognized as more than a somewhat obscure area of study for specialists. In practical terms, this translated into greater numbers of students attracted to the field, increased institutional support for the discipline, and its elevation in status within the biological sciences as new developments, particularly in connection with medical applications, began to draw attention to the field.64The unicellular hypothesis also promoted the internal development of the science. It provided a rationale for introducing the various techniques used in cytology, embryology, physiology, and the new field of biochemistry as suitable research tools for protozoology as well. This vastly extended the research possibilities and facilitated the understanding of, among other things, protozoan organization, modes of reproduction, and evolutionary relationships. The new experimental grounding of the discipline in turn fitted in well with developments in biology at large: in contrast to the descriptive methodology that had predominated in the nineteenth century, this new experimental program placed protozoology at the forefront of the early twentieth-century movement to make biology an experimental science comparable to physics and chemistry.Yet the criticism of the unicellular hypothesis can also be seen as having served a valuable function within the development of the discipline. It focused attention on the study of protists as organisms in their own right, not simply as models for metazoan cells. More generally, it helped to remind biologists of the particular evolutionary assumptions that supported this conception. Dobell and other British critics pointed out, among other things, the association between the theory of recapitulation and the interpretation of protozoa as unicellular organisms. At the time when the recapitulation theory and the germ-layer doctrine were in decline, it was important to stress how these evolutionary ideas also entered into the contemporary concepts of subsidiary specialties. This was as true for protozoology as it was for cell theory itself. The chromidial theory, in its various guises, and the binuclearity hypothesis did in fact contain elements of recapitulationist reasoning, and they were open to criticism for the same kind of overly speculative theorizing that characterized this evolution theory. Dobell's critique forced protozoologists and cell theorists alike to review the theoretical postulates guiding their investigations.In the absence of further historical studies, it is hard to evaluate the consequences of this debate in later years. The issue was not whether protozoa were the precursors of metazoa — both sides accepted this. They disagreed over which particular protozoon had served as the ancestral form, and this, in turn, influenced their stance on the question of unicellularity. The situation is little changed today. Because the former question is still an open one, the latter remains so too. Both of the models for the origin of multicellular organisms — colonies of ciliates versus multinucleate protists — are still presented as possible mechanisms in modern textbooks of evolution. Unable to judge the dispute in terms of the ultimate validity of the competing conceptions, the historian requires other criteria. It perhaps becomes more important to evaluate the issues in the context of the internal and external stimulus they provided the discipline.65 In these terms, and from the present historical vantage point, Hertwig's research program for protozoology, based upon the unicellular hypothesis, appears to have been a successful one. (shrink)

This study sought to find out the effect of the Hot Seat Strategy on eighth graders’ achievement in Wave Motion and Sound Unit in their Life and Science textbook. The researcher used the quasi-experimental design to achieve the aim of the study. The population of the study was all eighth graders (No=934) in Qalqilya public schools. The study sample, randomly chosen, was 208 students in the eighth grade. Of five eighth-grade sections, the researcher randomly chose two sections: one experimental (...) and another control. After data collection, it was obtained that the Hot Seat Strategy positively impacted students’ achievement. There was a statistically significant difference at α = 0.05 in students’ achievement level as well as level of knowledge, memorization, understanding, and application in favor of the experimental group. (shrink)

In spite of these efforts in the 1920s and 1930s to initiate ongoing research on contraception, the subject of birth control remained a problem of concern primarily to the social activist rather than to the research scientist or practicing physician.80 In the 1930s, as has been shown, American scientists turned to the study of other aspects of reproductive physiology, while American physicians, anxious to eliminate the moral and medical dangers of contraception, only reluctantly accepted birth control as falling within their (...) professional domain.As a result, the problem of cheap, effective, and safe contraception was not solved by these earliest attempts. Consideration of the subject was initiated afresh by private philanthropy after World War II, sparked by a new wave of interest in population studies.81 Summarizing such efforts to support research in the reproductive sciences, a recent Ford Foundation study has noted: “To initiate and sustain serious research in the reproductive sciences has required for more than half a century concerted effort by interested individuals and private organizations, mainly from outside the mainstreams of the biomedical research community.”82The early laboratory research on chemical contraception described in this paper was but one important outcome of the concerted effort made by reformers in the 1920s to eliminate a variety of social problems thought to derive from excessive fertility. Scientific arguments and expertise were employed to advocate reform as well as to define the appropriate solution to such social problems. Scientists were recruited as advocates for the movement, but they were also employed as researchers in laboratory investigations sponsored by these same reformers.Sponsors of these early laboratory studies noted the difficulty of obtaining first-class investigators.83 The routine analyses necessary for such research, as well as the traditional scientific aversion to applied problems, provide only a partial explanation for this response. The real difficulty lay in recruiting investigators to a field that had previously been taboo. Once opened up — first as socially relevant, and finally as scientifically sound — there was much interest in this area, and the appeal to researchers of the scientific issues surrounding fertility and reproduction soon surpassed that of the reforming value of birth control.A survey of the kinds of experimental investigations sponsored by birth control advocates indicates the range of physiological problems explored by contraceptive research. The most definitive work was done on the efficacy and safety of spermicides, but the potential of other contraceptive methods was also examined. Investigators attempted to develop spermatoxins that would effectively immunize women against sperm, and they also tried to elucidate the mechanism of hormonal control of reproduction. In fact, speculations about the possible hormonal manipulation of fertility were expressed at the Seventh International Birth Control Conference held in Zurich in 1930.84In the 1920s, clinical studies were undertaken to assess the effectiveness of the various birth control methods. Laboratory investigators complemented this work by screening spermicides for safety and testing for their ability to kill sperm. There were a variety of birth control preparations on the market, but no one really knew whether these were effective or even safe.85 Although the physiology of other major organ systems was well advanced, the scientific study of reproductive physiology and contraceptive technology was clearly in its infancy in this period. Routine analyses simply could not be conducted, because the fundamental research establishing baselines had not yet been done. Scientists used this fact to redirect attention to basic research on reproduction.Laboratory research on contraception indicated important unexplored areas for physiological investigation. Social activists, who had encouraged prominent scientists to become interested in both the social value and the genetic implications of birth control, found these investigators revising the goals of their research. The biologists had formed their own network and had begun to seek out funding, reformulating the justification for sponsorship of further investigations. The eugenic motivations underlying these studies, which had initially made them theoretically attractive to biologists, were gradually eroded. Concern with “human evolution” ceded its place to interest in physiological mechanisms. Crew and others began to note that the use of biological theory to justify essentially political decisions had serious limitations. Biologists had become uncomfortable with those very arguments which had originally captured their interest. Recognition of the potential political abuse wrought by applying scientific principles to society was expressed by Crew just one year after the Zurich meeting. Referring to previous assessments of the role of sex in reproduction, he generalized: “In the past the biologist has justified feudalism, Manchester Liberalism, socialism and every other type of social organization and political programme by reference to selected biological phenomena.”86 By 1932 Crew had also begun to question the biological logic of regulated breeding, and had made it clear to his American sponsor that there was no simple correspondence between the practice of birth control and the genetic improvement of the human race.87Biologists further began to recognize, however, that although the hopeful genetic solution to human problems was probably an illusion, contraception still remained one tangible means to alleviate, human misery. Some laboratory scientists, like Crew, acknowledged the applicability of their own particular skills to this problem. For a few brief years, social needs and scientific goals were mutually supportive and closely intertwined. But as laboratory researchers gained interest in the study of reproduction and established their own priorities in this field, they temporarily withdrew from the arena of debate over birth control as an important mechanism for social reform.With the rise of Hitler, the genetic arguments for birth control rapidly lost their appeal. But by that time the scientific problem of how to achieve effective contraception had entered the professional consciousness. Both physicians and scientists began to be aware of birth control as a subject within their domain of expertise, although outside the principal focus of their research. Scientific discussion of birth control permanently altered from a question of justification to a problem of method: How could one achieve reliable and safe contraception? This had been Sanger's and Dickinson's goal from the beginning. Laboratory scientists had indeed been persuaded to undertake this work; this research had in turn affected biologists' perceptions of the whole field of reproductive physiology, encouraging further study of reproductive mechanisms. The promise of new knowledge provided for continued funding of this research, despite the caution by scientists that the social benefits would not be as immediate or as far-reaching as advocates and they themselves had first argued.The activities of birth control activists and their supporting agencies, and the financial backing of private contributors and foundations, notably the Rockefeller philanthropies, provided an important new stimulus to the development of research on the biology of reproduction in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Biologists were able to claim an enlarged realm of issues for scientific study through their activities as advocates and as investigators for the birth control movement. At the same time, they promised as-yet-undiscovered possibilities for regulating human reproduction once its physiology was understood. The knowledge and control that they promised lay in understanding the whole reproductive cycle — not merely in evaluating the toxic effects of presumptive spermicides.Chemical spermicides never summoned the interest of scientists as the contraceptive pill was to do, yet that research did reinforce the widespread perceptions of scientific research as essential to social reform. Spermicide investigations focused research efforts in reproductive biology by challenging traditional taboos, defining problems for further study, and providing laboratory investigators the opportunity to assert the social and scientific value of their own skills. Crew echoed this attitude as he observed in 1934:Man has turned from the adventurous conquest of his environment to the conquest of himself. To-day is the day of biological invention, eagerly used for the control of the undesirable and the unwanted. Sex and reproduction are no longer hedged around by myth and taboo; they are no longer accepted as mysteries that defy understanding. They are matters inviting examination and explanation; they are regarded as expressions of physico-chemical forces, the nature of which is to be displayed. It is accepted that when knowledge is sufficient, control will be absolute, and, though knowledge is not yet sufficient, readers... must be persuaded to the view that this will not always be so.88The synergism between reproductive biology and social needs has been temporary and sporadic, but recurring, since the 1920s. Scientific research programs have clearly been influenced by issues raised by public debate. Nevertheless, reproductive biologists have continued to assert their own professional goals. For the most part, they have rejected problems without inherent scientific interest and have spurned applied research except as it has had a direct bearing on current research themes. This attitude, apparent among American and British investigators in the 1930s, created the intellectual context for the invention and acceptance of the technically sophisticated oral contraceptive pill. It did not foster the production and improvement of the simple, safe, effective, and cheap vaginal contraceptive desired by early birth control advocates. (shrink)

In the current study, we aimed at understanding the effect of exposure to complex input on speech sound development, by conducting a systematic meta-analysis review of the existing treatment-based studies employing complex input in children with speech sound disorders. In the meta-analysis review, using a list of inclusion criteria, we narrowed 280 studies down to 12 studies. Data from these studies were extracted to calculate effect sizes that were plotted as forest plots to determine the efficacy of complexity-based (...) treatment approaches. The outcome variables of interest were improvement on the treated and generalization to the untreated sounds. Meta-analysis revealed that the exposure to complex input not only promoted improvement in production of complex speech sounds but also facilitated the production of untreated simple speech sounds. Overall, the current findings revealed that the exposure to complex input promotes acquisition of both complex and simple speech sounds. The current findings are in line with the models of language learnability. The current findings have implications in the treatment of speech sound disorders. (shrink)

Spatial region concepts such as “front,” “back,” “left,” and “right” reflect our typical interaction with space, and the corresponding surrounding regions have different statuses in memory. We examined the representation of spatial directions in the auditory space, specifically in how far natural response actions, such as orientation movements toward a sound source, would affect the categorization of egocentric auditory space. While standing in the middle of a circle with 16 loudspeakers, participants were presented acoustic stimuli coming from the loudspeakers (...) in randomized order, and verbally described their directions by using the concept labels “front,” “back,” “left,” “right,” “front-right,” “front-left,” “back-right,” and “back-left.” Response actions varied in three blocked conditions: (1) facing front, (2) turning the head and upper body to face the stimulus, and (3) turning the head and upper body plus pointing with the hand and outstretched arm toward the stimulus. In addition to a protocol of the verbal utterances, motion capture and video recording generated a detailed corpus for subsequent analysis of the participants’ behavior. Chi-square tests revealed an effect of response condition for directions within the left and right sides. We conclude that movement-based response actions influence the representation of auditory space, especially within the sides’ regions. Moreover, the representation of auditory space favors the front and the back regions in terms of resolution, which is possibly related to the physiological characteristics of the human auditory system, as well as to the ecological requirements of action control in the different regions. (shrink)

Italian Sounding—i. e., the Italian appearance of a product or service brand irrespective of its country of origin—represents a global market phenomenon affecting a wide range of economic sectors, particularly the agro-food sector. Although its economic impact has been repeatedly stressed from different points of view, systematic scientific knowledge regarding its social–psychological bases is lacking. Three studies carried out in three different countries address this literature gap. Different consumer groups are targeted regarding major product categories pre-selected categories, which are the (...) major Italian food goods within the specific country according to piloting. In each study, the main independent variable has been manipulated by presenting real product images, whose “Italianness” degree is effectively manipulated by the main study variable across three or four levels. Main hypotheses are tested via a survey with the specific product images administered to samples in Italy, China, and the USA. Across the three studies, results show that Made in Italy products, compared to the other ones, are advantaged in terms of the main dependent variables: reputation profile, general reputation, attitude, and willingness to pay. Moreover, Italian Sounding products are endowed with corresponding significant advantages when compared to the Generic Foreign by non-Italian samples. Results reveal the specific social–psychological profile of Italian Sounding products in terms of either weaknesses or strengths when compared to both Made in Italy products and Generic Foreign ones, differently in the eyes of Italian and non-Italian consumers across different countries. Finally, consistently across the three studies, the extent to which a food product is perceived to be Italian increases consumers' WTP for that product, and this effect is consistently mediated by the product's reputation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 73-79 [Access article in PDF] Does Film Weaken Spectator Consciousness? R.D. Boyd and S.K. Wertz The role of spectator is crucial for an actor, for there are "no actors without spectators." 1 At times the success of the actor depends upon the role taken by the spectator. Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" depends upon an active,creative, involved audience. Other artists expect their audience (...) to be passive,almost unconscious. Whether the medium of creativity is film or the printedpage, examples of both dependencies abound. The focus of this essay is ona classic piece in the literature about film. In the Theory of Film, Siegfried Kracauer provides us with a mesmerizing printed discussion of film. 2 In this essay we wish to examine his reasoning that is in a self-contained argument by analogy. Since Kracauer does not use or mention the argument thereafter, we feel that we can isolate the argument from its context and deal with it as it stands. After an extended analysis of the argument, we will relate some of the points to the literature on film. The following analogical argument is our focus. Films...tend to weaken the spectator's consciousness. Its withdrawal from the scene may be furthered by the darkness in moviehouses. Darkness automatically reduces our contacts with actuality, depriving us of many environmental data needed for adequate judgments and other mental activities. It lulls the mind....Devotees of film and its opponents alike have compared the medium to a sort of drug and have drawn attention to its stupefying effects....Doping creates dope addicts. It would seem a sound proposition that the cinema has its habitues who frequent it out of an all but physiological urge. They are not prompted by a desire to look at a specific film or to be pleasantly entertained; what they really crave is for once to be released from the grip of consciousness, lose their identity in the dark, and let sink in, [End Page 73] with their senses ready to absorb them, the images as they happen to follow each other on the screen. 3To support his main point, "Films...tend to weaken the spectator's consciousness," Kracauer develops three intermediate arguments (IA's), which support his major argument (MA). If each sentence in the above passage were numbered one through nine, with the last full sentence being broken into two sentences at the semicolon, the following schema emerges. In English the chain of reasoning is: IA-1 Some habitues of film are not prompted by a desire to look at a specific film or to be pleasantly entertained. What they really crave is release fromthe grip of consciousness, to lose their identity in the dark, and let sink in, with their senses ready to absorb them, the images as they happen to follow each other on the screen. Therefore, the cinema has its habitues who frequent it out of an all but physiological urge.IA-2 Some habitues of film frequent it out of an all but physiological urge. Doping creates dope addicts. Therefore, devotees of film and its opponents alike have compared the medium to a sort of drug and have drawn attention to its stupefying effects.IA-3 Darkness automatically reduces our contacts with actuality, depriving us of many environmental data needed for adequate judgments and other mental activities. Darkness lulls the mind. Therefore, consciousness withdrawal from the scene may be furthered by the darkness in moviehouses.MA Devotees of film and its opponents alike have compared the medium to a sort of drug and have drawn attention to its stupefying effects. Consciousness withdrawal from the scene may be furthered by the darkness in moviehouses. Therefore, films...tend to weaken the spectator's consciousness. The above chain of arguments influences us, the spectators, to embrace his main point. However, before we are lulled into accepting his reasoning, it will be helpful to examine and evaluate each link. [End Page 74]IA-1 Some habitues of film are not prompted by a desire to... (shrink)

Published in 1981, “The Maximin Strategy in Modern Obstetrics” offered two claims—first, that obstetrical interventions ought to be assessed not singly, but rather as packages of interconnected measures that could cumulatively increase risks of harm; and second, that many of these interventions, considered either singly or as a package, lacked a sound evidence base. The first claim has been well supported by later literature, although the term “cascade effect” has proven a more felicitous descriptor for the phenomenon of interventions (...) that trigger the use of other interventions to monitor, prevent, or treat possible side-effects. The second claim was initially supported in a very inadequate way, since the “Maximin” article appeared before an understanding of the methods of systematic reviews of medical evidence had been widely promulgated. Despite these defects, subsequent, rigorously conducted systematic reviews have tended to confirm the impression first offered in 1981, that practices that support physiologic childbearing and the innate, hormonally driven capacities of childbearing women and their fetuses/newborns are much more in keeping with the available evidence than practices involving common or routine high-technology interference with physiologic processes. Harm may occur either directly, through high-technology interventions, or when such procedures distract attention and resources from safe, effective biological processes and lower-technology measures. Surveys indicate a lack of knowledge of this evidence among childbearing women, signaling a serious ethical deficiency in shared decision-making processes and perhaps the skills and knowledge of maternity care clinicians. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.2 (2003) 133-134 [Access article in PDF] Fictional Beings J. M. Coetzee What Does It Mean, "To Understand"? A tennis coach is teaching a young player a forehand topspin drive. He does so with a mixture of demonstrations (nonverbal) and explanations (verbal), such as, "At the moment of impact you roll the wrist over like this" (demonstrates). The player tries the stroke again and again, (...) and each time the coach shakes his head and says, "You haven't got it yet." Then the player gets the stroke right. The coach says "Now you've got it! Now you understand! Now let's do it again!"Is this a legitimate use of the word understand? I think it is. The coach intends the following: At first you may have understood my words but from your actions—the practice strokes you played—I could not see that you had understood my meaning. Then, when you got the stroke right, and could repeat it, I saw that you had finally understood the meaning behind my words.Understanding is in this case the effective translation of words, or words plus demonstrations, into actions, where effectiveness can be easily measured. The translation is from a verbal, or mixed verbal, system into an entirely nonverbal system of electrochemical impulses.Conversely, one can picture an exhaustive analysis of forehand topspin drives by André Agassi, conducted by microphotography, implanted sensors, and so on, to issue in a mixed verbal and diagrammatic account of how Agassi plays the stroke. In this case the physiologic system of the stroke has been successfully translated into a (partially) verbal system. Again, it would be meaningful to say that the sports physiologist who does the analysis has come to understand how the stroke is played.Although in both these cases understanding is conceived of as a translation process, I concentrate from here onward on the translation process from the verbal to the nonverbal, exemplified by understanding how to play a particular stroke.The coach says X and the player tries to "do" X, but fails and fails, until finally he succeeds. When the player has at last "done" X, he has understood. Thereafter, by steps, the player ceases to depend on the coach and the coach's X: the player can do X by himself; he understands X in the sense that whenever he says X to himself he can do X. He has made X his own.I read The Sound and the Fury, the part devoted to Benjy. Benjy says X and I don't understand. I understand the words on the page one by one, many of the sentences I understand one by one in the sense that I can translate them into other English sentences, but I don't understand the logic that gets Benjy from one sentence to the next, I don't understand the references of many words that are usually referential, and sometimes I am baffled by the syntax.For whatever reason, I go on reading Benjy. In a few respects I begin to understand better. For instance, there are sentences that stop in midstride, and I begin to suspect that such sentences stop because Benjy does not want to think what [End Page 133] comes next—that is to say, that the Faulkner behind Benjy means me to understand that Benjy lacks the wherewithal to face what would naturally come next. Mainly, however, I remain in the dark.Then I begin to experience something interesting. I find that I am, in my mind, going through some of the movements of Benjy's language. I am, as it were, practicing the characteristic strokes of his game. Although I remain, for the most part, unable to translate his pages into connected discourse—that is, into a discourse in which the logical connection between one sentence and the next is, however faulty, at least clear—I am better and better able to "do" Benjy."Doing" Benjy in this case means more than parrot-like repetition of Benjy's words. I can now speak of "entering Benjy" in a way that makes sense. I... (shrink)

The theory of passions in the music was a Baroque doctrin of musical figures which has its preceding thinkers in the natural philosophy and sciences of the 16th century. The aim of this study is to reconstruct the theory of the passions in Girolamo Cardano, because he is one of the main natural philosophers and encyclopedists of the Renaissance, and to analyse his patterns in thinking the power of music for the creation of passions. In Cardano’s mathematical work De proportionibus (...) and in his De musica, the remaining part of an unpublished work about music, he explains a physiological theory about passions as local movements of the corporal part of the soul. In De subtilitate Cardano claims that the passions are movements and variations of natural heat and he investigates the effects of passions in the human body and their benefits and dangers for health. At last Cardano excludes some passions, amor, odium and tristitia from the effects of music because sounds effect only general passions - passions without knowledge of something - and cause life, not death. (shrink)

Making the inevitability of mortality salient makes people more defensive about their self-esteem and worldviews. Theoretical arguments and empirical evidence point to a mediating role of arousal in this defensive process, but evidence from physiological measurement studies is scarce and inconclusive. The present study seeks to draw a comprehensive picture of how physiological arousal develops over time in the mortality salience paradigm, and whether contemplating one’s mortality actually elicits more physiological arousal than reflecting on a death-unrelated aversive (...) control topic. In a between-subjects design, participants were asked two open questions about their mortality or about dental pain. Cardiac, respiratory, and electrodermal indicators of arousal were measured both as participants provided written answers to the questions, and during a series of resting intervals surrounding the questions. A Bayes factor analysis indicated support for the hypothesis that the mortality salience paradigm increases physiological arousal, both while answering the two open-ended questions and afterwards. Regarding the mortality salience versus dental pain comparison, the null hypothesis of no difference was supported for most analysis segments and signals. The results indicate that the arousal elicited by mortality salience is not different from that elicited by dental pain salience. This speaks against the idea that worldview defense following mortality salience occurs because mortality salience produces higher physiological arousal. Of course, this finding does not rule the importance of other forms of arousal (i.e., subjective arousal) for mortality salience effects. (shrink)

A pianist’s movements are fundamental to music-making by producing the musical sounds and the expressive movements of the trunk and arms which communicate the music’s structural and emotional information making it valuable for this review to examine upper-body movement in the performance process in combination with the factors important in skill acquisition. The underpinning playing technique must be efficient with economic muscle use by using body segments according to their design and movement potential with the arm segments mechanically linked to (...) produce coordinated and fluent movement. Two physiologically and pianistically important actions proposed by early music scientists to deliver the keystroke involve dropping the hand from the shoulders towards the keys via a wave action with the joints activated sequentially, and forearm rotation to position the fingers for the keystroke, an action followed by the elbow/upper-arm rotating in the opposite direction. Both actions spare the forearm muscles by generating the energy needed in the larger shoulder muscles. The hand in the playing position has a curved palm through action of the metacarpal (knuckle) joints and curved fingers. Palm/finger posture controls sound quality from loud, high tempo sounds to a more mellow legato articulation, and to perform effectively the forearms should slope down towards the keyboard. The technique must be automatic through systematic practice which develops the motor skills for proficient playing, with practice duration tempered to reduce the risk of causing injury through overuse of the forearm muscles. Efficient movement patterns and strategic muscle relaxation which results in faster movement are realized only through extensive training. The constant movements of the head and trunk, and flowing arm movement with frequent hand lifts and rotational elbow movements, although generated in producing the playing technique, resonate with audience members who perceive them as expressive and thereby creating in them an empathic engagement with the music. It was proposed that music students be trained in the mechanical aspects of upper-body use in the playing technique, and practice strategies, with specialist pedagogy for children to develop motor skills for efficient playing, and training methods fostering an appreciation of the communicative aspects of music performance. (shrink)

(For English, scroll down) Der Text präsentiert drei miteinander verbundene Thesen. (1) Philosophie der Musik modifiziert philosophische Grundbegriffe. (2) Eine gemeinsame Eigenschaft in der Vielfalt der Musikformen liegt im Effekt einer Wahrnehmungsveränderung: oft subtil, unterschwellig und zuweilen als ekstatisch erlebte Selbst- und Welt-Transformation. (3) Strenggenommen nehmen wir nicht Töne wahr, sondern a) unsere Hör-Physiologie wandelt Schwingungsfrequenzen ab circa 18 Hz in Tonhöhen um und damit Zeit-Organisation in ein Raum-Äquivalent. (Musik mit tiefen Tönen an der Grenze zur Wahrnehmung, etwa mittels großer (...) Orgelpfeifen in Kathedralen oder Ton-Anlagen in Nachtclubs, inszeniert genau diesen physiologischen Umschlag, mit potentiellen Transzendenz-Effekten.) b) Wir nehmen einfache Frequenzverhältnisse wie 1:2, 2:3 etc. als (relativ) konsonant wahr, komplexere Verhältnisse als (relativ) dissonant. Die Folge: c) Musikhören verbindet uns mit physikalischem Verhalten von Materie, einschließlich unserer selbst. Hierin gründen rare, musikalisch herausgehobene Eindrücke von Erkenntnis und Enthüllung: das Universum betreffend und unsere Stellung in ihm. -/- The text presents three related claims. (1) Music as a topic of philosophy alters key philosophical concepts; (2) In spite of their vast cultural, historical and contextual differences, all forms of music share the effect of a transformation of perception: ranging from subtle and subliminal to the (rare) experience of ecstatic world- and self-transformations; (3) Strictly speaking, we do not perceive sounds. Rather, a) our hearing-physiology translates frequencies (impulses) of more than 18 Hz into pitch and thus temporal events into quasi-spatial perceptions. Compositions containing very deep sounds (e.g. in cathedrals or in night-clubs) stage exactly this physiological conversion: with potentially ‘transcendence’-like effects. b) We hear simple frequency-ratios such as 1:2, 2:3, 3:4 etc. as (relative) consonances and more complex ones as (relative) dissonances. Thus, c) musical compositions make laws of physical behaviour of matter affectively perceptible. This allows for the occasional impression of musical revelations: regarding the universe, its laws, and our place in it. -/- . (shrink)

As development of the speech recognition system entirely depends upon the spoken language used for its development, and the very fact that speech technology is highly language dependent and reverse engineering is not possible, there is an utmost need to develop such systems for Indian languages. In this paper we present the implementation of a time delay neural network system (TDNN) in a modular fashion by exploiting the hidden structure of previously phonetic subcategory network for recognition of Hindi consonants. For (...) the present study we have selected all the Hindi phonemes for srecognition. A vocabulary of 207 Hindi words was designed for the task-specific environment and used as a database. For the recognition of phoneme, a three-layered network was constructed and the network was trained using the back propagation learning algorithm. Experiments were conducted to categorize the Hindi voiced, unvoiced stops, semi vowels, vowels, nasals and fricatives. A close observation of confusion matrix of Hindi stops revealed maximum confusion of retroflex stops with their non-retroflex counterparts. (shrink)