Your Unconscious Knows Your Name

One's own name constitutes a unique part of conscious awareness – but does this also hold true for unconscious processing? The present study shows that the own name has the power to bias a person's actions unconsciously even in conditions that render any other name ineffective. Participants judged whether a letter string on the screen was a name or a non-word while this target stimulus was preceded by a masked prime stimulus. Crucially, the participant's own name was among these prime stimuli and facilitated reactions to following name targets whereas the name of another, yoked participant did not. Signal detection results confirmed that participants were not aware of any of the prime stimuli, including their own name. These results extend traditional findings on “breakthrough” phenomena of personally relevant stimuli to the domain of unconscious processing. Thus, the brain seems to possess adroit mechanisms to identify and process such stimuli even in the absence of conscious awareness

The effects of stimulus complexity on the preattentive processing of self-generated and nonself voices: an ERP study

The ability to differentiate one's own voice from the voice of somebody else plays a critical role in successful verbal self-monitoring processes and in communication. However, most of the existing studies have only focused on the sensory correlates of self-generated voice processing, whereas the effects of attentional demands and stimulus complexity on self-generated voice processing remain largely unknown. In this study, we investigated the effects of stimulus complexity on the preattentive processing of self and nonself voice stimuli. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 17 healthy males who watched a silent movie while ignoring prerecorded self-generated (SGV) and nonself (NSV) voice stimuli, consisting of a vocalization (vocalization category condition: VCC) or of a disyllabic word (word category condition: WCC). All voice stimuli were presented as standard and deviant events in four distinct oddball sequences. The mismatch negativity (MMN) ERP component peaked earlier for NSV than for SGV stimuli. Moreover, when compared with SGV stimuli, the P3a amplitude was increased for NSV stimuli in the VCC only, whereas in the WCC no significant differences were found between the two voice types. These findings suggest differences in the time course of automatic detection of a change in voice identity. In addition, they suggest that stimulus complexity modulates the magnitude of the orienting response to SGV and NSV stimuli, extending previous findings on self-voice processing.This work was supported by Grant Numbers IF/00334/2012, PTDC/PSI-PCL/116626/2010, and PTDC/MHN-PCN/3606/2012, funded by the Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) and the Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional through the European programs Quadro de Referencia Estrategico Nacional and Programa Operacional Factores de Competitividade, awarded to A.P.P., and by FCT Doctoral Grant Number SFRH/BD/77681/2011, awarded to T.C.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Evaluation of UK car insurance brokers' web sites: some preliminary findings

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to: determine which criteria of the car insurance brokers' web sites are important or unimportant; establish how well those criteria are presented on the car insurance brokers' web sites; and find out whether the consumer's final decision to purchase the product is influenced by the web sites' characteristics, the price, etc. Design/methodology/approach - The evaluation method employed in this study is the extended web assessment method (EWAM), which is an evaluation tool specifically created for the assessment of electronic commerce applications. A double questionnaire survey has been undertaken to collect data from 28 finance advisers in an independent financial advisory firm in the UK. Findings - The preliminary findings suggest that the majority of the assessed web site criteria fall in the categories of "maintain strategy" and "no immediate improvement necessary" with certain web site features considered as "strategic overkill" or "improvement necessary". It is also found that the web sites are utilised as a tool for shopping around for quotes but the final purchase would be made by most consumers via the telephone. Research limitations/implications - It is important to mention that an empirical study with a sample of 28 insurance advisers in one financial advisory company can only reflect a limited picture of current practice in the UK car insurance brokers market. Therefore, the findings reported in this paper are tentative and preliminary. To test or confirm relevant findings reported here, further evaluation work with a larger number of assessors having different backgrounds may be necessary. Practical implications - While the majority of the assessed web site criteria fall in the "maintain strategy" and "no immediate improvement necessary" fields, efforts should be made by practitioners to improve site maps, site search, and insurers' details for quotes. Originality/value - This paper provides useful information for UK car insurance brokers and web sites developers

Relationship between accounting and taxation in the Czech Republic

Changes taking place in the Czech Republic mean a return to the free market economy and private ownership. In the transition from centrally planned to market system new accounting and tax regulations were necessary. After a brief historical introduction, the paper examines the changes in relationship between accounting and taxation in the corresponding Czech legislation, the process of setting accounting regulations related to deferred tax, in particular. Recent development and experience after the year 1989 are described.

Vliv zdaneni na financni rizeni a rozhodovani podniku

Available from STL Prague, CZ / NTK - National Technical LibrarySIGLECZCzech Republi