1,083 research outputs found
Suet puddings and red pillar boxes: A review of Marc Stears’ Out of the Ordinary
No full textMarc Stears’ Out of the Ordinary: How Everyday Life Inspired a Nation and How It Can Again is an engaging and sincere work of political theory. In it, Stears explores how the work of a number of British writers and artists in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s– Bill Brandt, Barbara Jones, Laurie Lee, George Orwell, JB Priestley and Dylan Thomas– can help us to overcome some of the lazy ideological conventions of our time which suggest it is impossible to simultaneously value tradition and progress, patriotism and diversity, individual rights and social duties, nationalism and internationalism, conservativism and radicalism. In this review, I highlight the timely and engaging elements of Stears’ book while also raising doubts about his treatment of the ‘everyday’ and his Blue Labour solutions to our political ills
Les confréries dans la ville de Rouen à l’époque moderne, XVIe–XVIIIe siècles. Documents presentés par Marc Venard
No full textThe phonological store abandoned
No full textBaddeley and Larsen (2007) argue that a number of key findings reported by Jones, Macken, and Nicholls (2004) and Jones, Hughes, and Macken (2006) pointing to shortcomings of the phonological store construct arise from the store being abandoned with long lists. In our rejoinder we point out that Baddeley and Larsen use a procedure in which retrieval from the supposed phonological storage would not—according to their own theory—have been possible, and we present theoretical, empirical, and logical problems with their “store abandonment” argument and highlight a number of difficulties associated with the interpretation of suffix and prefix effects. We conclude that our data are still problematic for the phonological store construct and suggest that a reformulation of short-term memory theory needs to embody (or indeed focus exclusively upon) perceptual and effector systems rather than bespoke storage modules
Safe Policies for Factored Partially Observable Stochastic Games
No full textWe study planning problems where a controllable agent operates under partial observability and interacts with an uncontrollable opponent, also referred to as the adversary. The agent has two distinct objectives: To maximize an expectedvalue and to adhere to a safety specification. Multi-objective partially observable stochastic games (POSGs) formally model such problems. Yet, even for a single objective, the task of computing suitable policies for POSGs is theoretically hard and computationally intractable in practice. Using a factored state-space representation, we define a decoupling scheme for the POSG state space that—under certain assumptions on the observability and the reward structure—separates the state components relevant for the reward from those relevant for safety. This decoupling affects the possibility to compute provably safe and reward-optimal policies in a tractable two-stage approach. In particular, on the fully observable components related to safety, we exactly compute the set of policies that captures all possible safe choices against the opponent. We restrict the agent’s behavior to these safe policies and project the POSG to a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP). Anyreward-maximal policy for the POMDP is then guaranteed to be safe and reward-maximal for the POSG. We showcase our approach’s feasibility using high-fidelity simulations of two case studies that concern UAV path planning and autonomous driving. Moreover, to demonstrate the practical applicability, we design a physical experiment involving a robot decision making problemunder energy constraints that is motivated by a paired helicopter with NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover.Algorithmic
Disruption of Memory for Lip-Read Lists by Irrelevant Speech: Further Support for the Changing State Hypothesis
No full text Two experiments critically re-examine the finding of Campbell and Dodd (1984, Experiment 2), which suggests that irrelevant speech disrupts the encoding of visual material for serial recall. Support is sought for the competing view that the effect of irrelevant speech is on storage by comparing the effect of a range of acoustic conditions on memory for graphic and lip-read lists. Initially, serial short-term recall of visually presented lists was examined with irrelevant speech that was both asynchronous with the visually presented items and of varied speech content (Experiment 1a). In this experiment substantial impairments in recall of both graphic and lip-read lists were found. However, with unvarying asynchronous speech (Experiment 1b) the effect of speech was small and non-significant. Experiment 2 examined the effect of changing state and of synchrony of speech with lip movements. When conditions of synchronous and asynchronous unvarying speech were contrasted, no significant effect of synchrony or irrelevant speech was found (Experiment 2a and 2c). In contrast, when the speech was varying in content, a strong effect of irrelevant speech was found; moreover, the effect was roughly the same for synchronous and asynchronous materials (Experiment 2b). The contrast in outcome with varying and unvarying speech provides strong support for the “changing state” model of the irrelevant speech effect. Coupled with the absence of an effect of synchrony in Experiment 2, these experiments reinforce the view that disruption by irrelevant speech occurs in memory, not at encoding. </jats:p
Word Dose in the Disruption of Serial Recall by Irrelevant Speech: Phonological Confusions or Changing State?
No full text Irrelevant background speech disrupts serial recall of visually presented lists of verbal material. Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the degree of disruption is dependent on the number of words heard (i.e. word dose) whilst the task was undertaken. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that more disruption is produced if the word dose is increased, thereby providing evidence to support the experimental hypothesis. It was concluded from the first two experiments that the word-dose effect might be the result of increasing the amount of changing-state information in the speech. The results of Experiment 3 supported this conclusion by showing an interaction between word dose and changing-state information. It was noted however that the results might be explained within the working memory account of the disruptive action of irrelevant speech. A further two experiments cast doubt on this possibility by failing to replicate the finding that the phonological similarity between heard and seen material affects the degree of interference (Salamé & Baddeley, 1982). The findings are discussed in relation to the changing state hypothesis of the irrelevant speech effect (e.g. Jones, Madden, & Miles, 1992). </jats:p
The cognitive psychology of auditory distraction: the 1997 BPS Broadbent Lecture
No full textRecent research extending Broadbent's work on selective auditory attention is described through the medium of the irrelevant sound effect (the loss of efficiency when irrelevant sound is played during a serial short-term memory task). This breakdown of selective attention cannot be explained by interference at encoding, but rather as disruption following some obligatory entry of sound into memory. Within memory, interference does not arise as a result of the conflict between the contents of memory and the irrelevant sound, since neither phonological nor semantic similarity predicts its extent. Instead, the interference seems to be a product of the similarity in process - the degree of seriation - between rehearsal in short-term memory and the perceptual organization of the irrelevant sound. This type of breakdown in selectivity is likely to have relatively great practical impact, particularly since it is relatively insensitive to loudness and does not appear to diminish with repeated exposure
The fate of the unattended stimulus: Irrelevant speech and cognition
No full textFollowing a tradition established by Broadbent of understanding the fate of the unattended message, the effects of extraneous sound (especially speech) on cognitive processing are reviewed. Speech disturbs the encoding or registration of visual material, particularly in settings in which the sound and vision combine to have the property of a single object. The effect of irrelevant speech on short-term memory is confined to verbal or spatial tasks that require memory for serial order, and is most pronounced with sounds that exhibit change. This effect is not confined to speech, however, and a range of non-speech sounds can disrupt serial recall. Studies using complex tasks, though less common, are consistent in showing appreciable interference from irrelevant speech. The effect on reading is qualitatively dissimilar to that found with short-term memory. Implications for theory and practice are spelled out
Influx, 1999, volume 15, issue 1:
No full textAssistant editors: Chris Jones, Corinna vanGerwen, Cristina King, Leslie Grant, TJ Anzai, Sean Clancy, Wendy Hainstock. Contributors: Adrian Robertshaw, Albert Song, Alexander Duff, Andrea Nunes, Andrew Bryden, Andrew Dadson, Andrew Fransblow, Anki Strom, Ashley Chadwick, Benjamin Asa Smith, Bernadette Wycks, Brendan Laird, Buddy Matthews, Caithlin Johnson, Carolyn Bell, Clive Tucker, Corinna vanGerwen, Cristina King, Daina Warren, Daryl Kirkham, David Spriggs, Dorrie Ratzlaff, Dylan Doubt, Ehran Seeland, Gail Carney, Geneviève Clouthier, Heidi Mattis, Holly Armishaw, Ishi Dinim, Jason Armstrong, Jeremy Hitch, Jesse Birch, Jiz Cuz, Kelly Deck, Kelly Hart, Kier-La Janisse, Kim Clarke, Larz Cuzner, Lee Elliot, Leslie Grant, Lu Hogan, Man Dao, Marc Hébert, Melanie Janisse, Mia Thomsett, Michelle Doucette, Nathan Strijack, Nicola Sampson, Richard Tomkinson, Ryan Murphy, Sascha Yamashita, Sean Clancy, Sheldon McKenzie, Sondra Cross, Sydney Hermant, Tara Rudnickas, Thirza Cuthand, TJ Anzai, Wendy Hainstock.
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Interference in memory by process or content? A reply to Neath (2000)
No full textThe approach to the irrelevant sound effect by Neath (2000) is discussed in terms of the contrast between content-based and process-based interference. Four themes are highlighted: First, problematic features of the feature model are highlighted; second, results not considered by Neath are presented; third, empirical underpinnings of the feature model not related to the irrelevant-sound effect are questioned; last, the parsimony of the feature model is questioned. The balance of the evidence seems to be in favor of a process-based approach, on the grounds that it provides a comprehensive account of acoustic and taskbased factors within the irrelevant sound effect, for both speech and nonspeech sound
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