179 research outputs found
Trace-strength and source-monitoring accounts of accuracy and metacognitive resolution in the misinformation paradigm
No full textTwo experiments are reported that investigate the impact of misinformation on memory accuracy and metacognitive resolution. In Experiment 1, participants viewed a series of photographs depicting a crime scene, were exposed to misinformation that contradicted details in the slides, and later took a recognition memory test. For each answer, participants were required to indicate whether they were willing to testify (report) their answer to the Court and to rate confidence. Misinformation impaired memory accuracy but it had no effect on resolution, regardless of whether resolution was indexed with confidence-rating measures (gamma correlation and mean confidence) or a report-option measure (type-2 discrimination: d’). In Experiment 2, a similar accuracy-confidence dissociation was found, and the misinformation effect occurred mostly with fine-grained responses, suggesting that responding was based on recollected details. We argue that the results support source-monitoring accounts of accuracy and resolution rather than accounts based on trace strength
Global subjective memorability and the strength-based mirror effect
No full textBetween-list manipulations of memory strength through repetition commonly generate a mirror effect, with more hits, and fewer false alarms for strengthened items. However, this pattern is rarely seen with within-list manipulations of strength. Three experiments investigated the conditions under which a within-list mirror effect of strength (items presented once or thrice) is observed. In Experiments 1 and 2, we indirectly manipulated the overall subjective memorability of the studied lists by varying the proportion of non-words. A within-list mirror effect was observed only in Experiment 2, where a higher proportion of non-words was presented in the study list. In Experiment 3, the presentation duration for each item (0.5 s versus 3 s) was manipulated between groups with the purpose of affecting subjective memorability: A within-list mirror effect was observed only for the short-presentation durations. Thus, across three experiments, we found the within-list mirror effect only under conditions of poor overall subjective memorability. We propose that when the overall subjective memorability is low, people switch their response strategy on an item-by-item basis, and that this generates the observed mirror effect. <br/
Early Mercia and the Britons
No full textThis essay considers some aspects of the ethnic composition of the Mercian kingdom and hegemony to the death of Penda, king of the Mercians c.633–c.655. The early Mercians appear in Bede's Historia ecclesiastica as an ‘English’ group; we are told that they are of Anglian stock, and Bede treats them throughout as a part of the gens Anglorum, if often a morally dubious part. It will be argued here that the situation was rather more complex than Bede implies. Three zones of interaction between the Mercian kingship and the Britons will be proposed: firstly an ‘outer zone’ consisting of kingdoms which formed part of and contributed to Penda's hegemony; secondly, an ‘inner zone’ made up of groups more closely tied to the Mercian kingship; and finally, a ‘core zone’, the people of the early Mercian kingdom proper. It will be argued that as one moves from the periphery to the centre, British elite culture becomes less prominent, but that even in the heartland of the earliest Mercian kingdom there was in the early seventh century a British element among the elite.
The paucity of literary sources relating to Mercia is well-known and has long been an impediment to the study of this kingdom. Those texts which exist are mainly narratives, Bede's Historia ecclesiastica being the principal. Furthermore, the literary sources we possess are of an almost exclusively non-Mercian origin
The mid Upper Palaeolithic of European Russia: chronology, culture history and context: a study of five Gravettian backed lithic assemblages
No full textThis thesis examines the Mid Upper Palaeolithic (MUP) of Russia (ca. 30,000–20,000 14C BP). During this time, as in the rest of Europe, the principal archaeological industry is known as the Gravettian. However, in Russia two other industries, the Streletskayan and the Gorodtsovian, are also known from the beginning of the MUP. Historically, there have been significant problems integrating the Russian MUP record with that from the rest of Europe. The research described in this thesis concentrates on backed lithic assemblages (including Gravette points, microgravettes, other backed points and backed bladelets) from five Russian Gravettian sites: Kostenki 8 Layer 2, Kostenki 4, Kostenki 9, Khotylevo 2 and Kostenki 21 Layer 3. These are studied from an explicitly Western European theoretical perspective, using standard techno-typological methods to construct typological groupings and describe the variation between and within sites. Alongside this, new radiocarbon dates from several sites Kostenki 8 Layer 2, Kostenki 4 and Borshchevo 5) were obtained. These radiocarbon dates are critically analysed alongside published dates and unpublished dates made available to this research. The results of the research constitute a new culture history for the Russian MUP. Each stage of the MUP is dated and described, and the uncertainties in our knowledge outlined. One new lithic index fossil is defined and two others are re-assessed. The Russian record is compared with the contemporary archaeological record elsewhere in Europe, in order to describe large-scale synchronic variation and changes through time in the homogeneity and regionalisation of material culture. The relationship between these dynamics and climate change are discussed
Diary of a Disaster: British Aid to Greece, 1940-1941
No full textOn October 28, 1940, the Italian army under Benito Mussolini invaded Greece. The British had insisted on guaranteeing Greek and Turkish neutrality, despite the fact that Greece was never more than a limited campaign in an unlimited war as far as they were concerned. The British, however, were never quite sure that Greece was not their last foothold in Europe, and they harbored dreams of holding on to this last bastion of civilization and of protecting it with a diplomatic and military alliance—a Balkan bloc. These dreams bore little relation to military and economic realities, and so the stage was set for tragedy.
In Diary of a Disaster, Robin Higham details the unfolding events from the invasion, though the Italian defeat and the subsequent German invasion, until the British evacuation at the end of April 1941. The Greek army, while tough, was small and based largely upon reserves. They were also largely equipped with obsolete French, Polish, and Czech arms for which there was now no other source than captured Italian materiel. Transportation was also lacking as Greece lacked all-weather roads over much of the country, had no all-weather airport, and only one rail line connecting Athens with Salonika and Florina in the north.
Added to the woes of the Greek military, the British commander-in-chief for the Middle East, Sir Archibald Wavell, faced huge logistical challenges as well. Based in Cairo, he was responsible for a huge theatre of operation, from hostile Vichy French forces in Syria to the Boers in South Africa nearly six thousand miles away. His air force was comprised of only a handful of modern aircraft with biplanes and outdated, early monoplanes making up the bulk of his force. Radar was also unavailable to him. His navy was woefully short on destroyers and often incommunicado while at sea. While Wavell had roughly 500,000 men under his command, he was severely limited in how he could use them. The South Africans could only be deployed in East Africa and the Austrians and New Zealanders could not be employed without the consent of their home governments. In short, Churchill had instructed Wavell to offer support that he did not really have and could not afford to give to the Greeks.
Higham walks readers through these events as they unfold like a modern Greek tragedy. Using the format of a diary, he recounts day-by-day the British efforts though the failure of Operation Lustre, which no one outside of London thought had any chance of stemming the Nazi tide in Greece.
Robin Higham, professor of history emeritus at Kansas State University, is the author and editor of many books, including Why Air Forces Fail: The Anatomy of Defeat and The Influence of Air Power Upon History: Statesmanship, Diplomacy, and Foreign Policy since 1903.https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_military_history/1008/thumbnail.jp
Optimal solution of the nearest correlation matrix problem by minimization of the maximum norm
No full textThe nearest correlation matrix problem is to find a valid (positive semidefinite) correlation matrix, R(m,m), that is nearest to a given invalid (negative semidefinite) or pseudo-correlation matrix, Q(m,m); m larger than 2. In the literature on this problem, 'nearest' is invariably defined in the sense of the least Frobenius norm. Research works of Rebonato and Jaeckel (1999), Higham (2002), Anjos et al. (2003), Grubisic and Pietersz (2004), Pietersz, and Groenen (2004), etc. use Frobenius norm explicitly or implicitly. However, it is not necessary to define 'nearest' in this conventional sense. The thrust of this paper is to define 'nearest' in the sense of the least maximum norm (LMN) of the deviation matrix (R-Q), and to obtain R nearest to Q. The LMN provides the overall minimum range of deviation of the elements of R from those of Q. We also append a computer program (source codes in FORTRAN) to find the LMN R from a given Q. Presently we use the random walk search method for optimization. However, we suggest that more efficient methods based on the Genetic algorithms may replace the random walk algorithm of optimization.Nearest correlation matrix problem; Frobenius norm; maximum norm; LMN correlation matrix; positive semidefinite; negative semidefinite; positive definite; random walk algorithm; Genetic algorithm; computer program; source codes; FORTRAN; simulation
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