Warning – Taboo Words Ahead! Avoiding Attentional Capture by Spoken Taboo Distractors

We examine whether the disruption of serial short-term memory (STM) by spoken taboo distractors is due to attentional diversion and unrelated to the underlying disruptive effect of sound on serial STM more generally, which we have argued is due to order cues arising from the automatic pre-categorical processing of acoustic changes in the sound conflicting with serial–order processing within the memory task (interferenceby-process). We test whether the taboo-distractor effect is, unlike effects attributable to interference-by-process, amenable to top-down control. Experiment 1 replicated the taboo-distractor effect and showed that it is not merely a valence effect. However, promoting cognitive control by increasing focal task-load did not attenuate the effect. However, foreknowledge of the distractors did eliminate the taboo-distractor effect while having no effect on disruption by neutral words (Experiment 2). We conclude that the taboo-distractor effect results from a controllable attentional-diversion mechanism distinct from the effect of any acoustically-changing sound

Unravelling social constructionism

Social constructionist research is an area of rapidly expanding influence that has brought together theorists from a range of different disciplines. At the same time, however, it has fuelled the development of a new set of divisions. There would appear to be an increasing uneasiness about the implications of a thoroughgoing constructionism, with some regarding it as both theoretically parasitic and politically paralysing. In this paper I review these debates and clarify some of the issues involved. My main argument is that social constructionism is not best understood as a unitary paradigm and that one very important difference is between what Edwards (1997) calls its ontological and epistemic forms. I argue that an appreciation of this distinction not only exhausts many of the disputes that currently divide the constructionist community, but also takes away from the apparent radicalism of much of this work

Jekyll and Hyde: men's constructions of feminism and feminists

Research and commentary on men's responses to feminism has demonstrated the range of ways in which men have mobilised both against and for feminist principles. This paper argues that further analyses of men's responses require a sophisticated theory of discourse acknowledging the fragmented and contradictory nature of representation. A corpus of men's talk on feminism and feminists was studied to identify the pervasive patterns in men's accounting and regularities in rhetorical organisation. Material from two samples of men was included: a sample of white middle-class 17-18 year old school students and a sample of 60 interviews with a more diverse sample of older men aged 20 to 64. Two interpretative repertoires of feminism and feminists were identified. These set up a 'Jekyll and Hyde' binary and positioned feminism along with feminists very differently as reasonable versus extreme and monstrous. Both repertoires tended to be deployed together and the paper explores the ideological and interactional consequences of typical deployments along with the identity work accomplished by the men as they positioned themselves in relation to these

Jockeying for position: the construction of masculine identities

In this paper we examine the construction of masculine identities within a real-life social situation. Using data from an extensive series of interviews with small groups of sixth-form (17-18-year-old) students attending a UK-based, single-sex independent school, the analysis looks at the action orientation of different constructions of identity. More specifically, it focuses upon how the identity talk of one particular group of students were oriented towards managing their subordinate status within the school. In a number of instances the identity of the `new man' was adopted as a strategy of resistance. However, it was found that the more common strategy involved buying back into values embodied within a more traditional definition of masculinity

A new terrestrial palaeoenvironmental record from the Bering Land Bridge and context for human dispersal

Palaeoenvironmental records from the now-submerged Bering Land Bridge (BLB) covering the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the present are needed to document changing environments and connections with the dispersal of humans into North America. Moreover, terrestrially based records of environmental changes are needed in close proximity to the re-establishment of circulation between Pacific and Atlantic Oceans following the end of the last glaciation to test palaeo-climate models for the high latitudes. We present the first terrestrial temperature and hydrologic reconstructions from the LGM to the present from the BLB’s south-central margin. We find that the timing of the earliest unequivocal human dispersals into Alaska, based on archaeological evidence, corresponds with a shift to warmer/wetter conditions on the BLB between 14 700 and 13 500 years ago associated with the early Bølling/Allerød interstadial (BA). These environmental changes could have provided the impetus for eastward human dispersal at that time, from Western or central Beringia after a protracted human population standstill. Our data indicate substantial climate-induced environmental changes on the BLB since the LGM, which would potentially have had significant influences on megafaunal and human biogeography in the region. © 2018 The Authors

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in tau final states

We present a search for the standard model Higgs boson using hadronically decaying tau leptons, in 1 inverse femtobarn of data collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron ppbar collider. We select two final states: tau plus missing transverse energy and b jets, and tau+ tau- plus jets. These final states are sensitive to a combination of associated W/Z boson plus Higgs boson, vector boson fusion and gluon-gluon fusion production processes. The observed ratio of the combined limit on the Higgs production cross section at the 95% C.L. to the standard model expectation is 29 for a Higgs boson mass of 115 GeV.Comment: publication versio

Search for W' bosons decaying to an electron and a neutrino with the D0 detector

This Letter describes the search for a new heavy charged gauge boson W' decaying into an electron and a neutrino. The data were collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron proton-antiproton Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 1 inverse femtobarn. Lacking any significant excess in the data in comparison with known processes, an upper limit is set on the production cross section times branching fraction, and a W' boson with mass below 1.00 TeV can be excluded at the 95% C.L., assuming standard-model-like couplings to fermions. This result significantly improves upon previous limits, and is the most stringent to date.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events

The $B^0$-$\bar B^0$ oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of 23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives $\Delta m_d = 0.493 \pm 0.012{(stat)}\pm 0.009{(syst)}$ ps$^{-1}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Search for a scalar or vector particle decaying into Zgamma in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV

We present a search for a narrow scalar or vector resonance decaying into Zgamma with a subsequent Z decay into a pair of electrons or muons. The data for this search were collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron ppbar collider at a center of mass energy sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV. Using 1.1 (1.0) fb-1 of data, we observe 49 (50) candidate events in the electron (muon) channel, in good agreement with the standard model prediction. From the combination of both channels, we derive 95% C.L. upper limits on the cross section times branching fraction (sigma x B) into Zgamma. These limits range from 0.19 (0.20) pb for a scalar (vector) resonance mass of 600 GeV/c^2 to 2.5 (3.1) pb for a mass of 140 GeV/c^2.Comment: Published by Phys. Lett.

Measurement of the ratios of the Z/G* + >= n jet production cross sections to the total inclusive Z/G* cross section in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV

We present a study of events with Z bosons and jets produced at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider in ppbar collisions at a center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The data sample consists of nearly 14,000 Z/G* -> e+e- candidates corresponding to the integrated luminosity of 0.4 fb-1 collected using the D0 detector. Ratios of the Z/G* + >= n jet cross sections to the total inclusive Z/G* cross section have been measured for n = 1 to 4 jet events. Our measurements are found to be in good agreement with a next-to-leading order QCD calculation and with a tree-level QCD prediction with parton shower simulation and hadronization.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, slightly modified, submitted to Phys. Lett.