Adaptation by normal listeners to upward spectral shifts of speech: Implications for cochlear implants

Multi-channel cochlear implants typically present spectral information to the wrong ''place'' in the auditory nerve array, because electrodes can only be inserted partway into the cochlea. Although such spectral shifts are known to cause large immediate decrements in performance in simulations, the extent to which listeners can adapt to such shifts has yet to be investigated. Here, the effects of a four-channel implant in normal listeners have been simulated, and performance tested with unshifted spectral information and with the equivalent of a 6.5-mm basalward shift on the basilar membrane (1.3-2.9 octaves, depending on frequency). As expected, the unshifted simulation led to relatively high levels of mean performance (e;g., 64% of words in sentences correctly identified) whereas the shifted simulation led to very poor results (e.g., 1% of words). However, after just nine 20-min sessions of connected discourse tracking with the shifted simulation, performance improved significantly for the identification of intervocalic consonants, medial vowels in monosyllables, and words in sentences (30% of words). Also, listeners were able to track connected discourse of shifted signals without lipreading at rates up to 40 words per minute. Although we do not know if complete adaptation to the shifted signals is possible, it is clear that short-term experiments seriously exaggerate the long-term consequences of such spectral shifts. (C) 1999 Acoustical Society of America. [S0001-4966(99)02012-3]

Collective action and community resilience: specific, general and transformative capacity

Communities are taking action to address different types of change and shape their own future to enable a desirable state. Yet a critical understanding of the relationship between collective action and community resilience is not fully elaborated. This thesis enriches community resilience research by examining attributes of community and how the attributes interact with collective action to promote three constituent components of community resilience: that is specific resilience, general resilience, and transformative capacity, defined here as ability to envisage and plan for the future. This study undertakes research in Wadebridge, north Cornwall, UK, and Sedgefield, western Cape, South Africa. These coastal towns represent emerging complexities of change, both with a history of collective action and communities fragmented by identity and demographic divisions. Focus groups, semi-structured key informant interviews and participatory scenario planning are used to elicit different resident perspectives on community and ability to promote specific and general resilience and transformative capacity. The results suggest four key attributes of community: resident identity, trust, interests around collective action and differential ability and power to affect change. Incomers, who are a particular type of lifestyle migrant, act as catalysts promoting collective action for specific resilience, which builds capacity for incomers to address known hazards. But there is significant difference between incomers and other resident groupings that reinforces social divisions. Collective action that enables general resilience reconfigures to bring distinct residents together to share resources and build trust, allowing more residents to positively address different shocks and disturbances and provide an entry point to negotiate the future. Residents understand transformative capacity also requires fundamentally changing social structures, power relations and identity-related roles. The implications of the results are that incorporating the influence of lifestyle mobility into community resilience research increases explanation of the way in which communities are being reshaped and the role of individuals in promoting collective action for different constituent components of community resilience. Collective action conferring general resilience is shaped by individual capacity and networks, rather than collective capacity, with individuals interlinking responses to specific and general resilience together

Method and Writing: A Review of Adams’ Narrating the Close

The reviewer starts the review with her reading strategy of beginning with the discussion of the method. She argues that Adams’ work expands definitions of culture and what constitutes the field in ethnographic work in a beautifully written piece of autoethnography. Adams marries method, writing, and topic matter. The reviewer believes that this text would be appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students as well as those of us wanting an excellent example of autoethnography. In conclusion, the reviewer claims excitement to see where this will take ethnographers in the future, and especially those of us interested in the study of stigmatized and marginalized identities and close relationships

Women\u27s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Newsletter Spring 2014

xii, 190 hal; 23 c

Dear Courts: I, Too, Am a Reasonable Man

There has been an ongoing debate regarding police-on-Black violence since the dawn of the United States police force. At every stage, the criminal justice system has had a monumental impact on the plight of the Black American community. The historical roots of racism within the criminal justice system have had adverse effects on the Black American psyche. Emerging research suggests that the upsurge in reporting police-on-Black violence—including videos shot from pedestrian camera phones and uploaded to multimedia platforms and historical accounts of the agonizing treatment Black Americans have experienced beginning with Slave Patrols—has affected individualized behavior during interactions with police officers. This is crucial because courts analyze an individual\u27s behavior at the sight of or in the presence of police officers when deciding whether or not a police officer had the requisite reasonable suspicion to stop an individual. Courts consider an individual\u27s nervous or evasive behavior as a factor in favor of finding a police officer had justifiable reasonable suspicion to perform a stop. In doing so, courts use a race-neutral approach, which undoubtedly discounts the Black American historical experience. This race-neutral approach ignores the specific history of racism against Black Americans by failing to explore how the sordid history of racialized terror in the criminal justice system affects individualized behavior. This article explores how the Supreme Court\u27s creation of the reasonable suspicion standard facilitates, justifies, and perpetuates police violence against Black Americans. This article argues that this interpretation of the Fourth Amendment enables officers to manifest implicit biases and target Black Americans with little or no justification. The result is the current state of affairs, including unwarranted racial disparities at every stage of the criminal justice process. Accordingly, this article suggests that instead of using a race-neutral analysis of the law, the Supreme Court should recognize the significance of the Black experience in the United States and implement the use of race as a factor in analyzing whether or not an individual\u27s behavior expressed enough nervousness or evasiveness to constitute justifiable reasonable suspicion for a police officer to perform a stop