Multi-modal discrimination learning in humans: evidence for configural theory

Human contingency learning was used to compare the predictions of configural and elemental theories. In three experiments, participants were required to learn which indicators were associated with an increase in core temperature of a fictitious nuclear plant. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the rate at which a triple-element stimulus (ABC) could be discriminated from either single-element stimuli (A, B, and C) or double-element stimuli (AB, BC, and AC). Experiment 1 used visual stimuli, whilst Experiment 2 used visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli. In both experiments the participants took longer to discriminate the triple-element stimulus from the more similar double-element stimuli than from the less similar single-element stimuli. Experiment 3 tested for summation with stimuli from either single or multiple modalities and summation was found only in the latter. Thus the pattern of results seen in Experiments 1 and 2 was not dependent on whether the stimuli were single- or multi-modal nor was it dependent on whether the stimuli could elicit summation. This pattern of results is consistent with the predictions of Pearce’s (1987) configural theory

On a purported local extension of the quantum formalism

Since the early days of quantum mechanics, a number of physicists have doubted whether quantum mechanics was a complete theory and wondered whether it was possible to extend the quantum formalism by adjoining hidden variables.1 In 1952, Bohm answered this question in the affirmative2 and in doing so refuted von Neumann’s influential yet flawed proof that no such extension was possible.3 However, Bohm’s hidden variable theory has not won wide support partly because the theory is nonlocal: there is instantaneous action at a distance. Since there is an obvious problem reconciling such nonlocal theories with Relativity, hidden variable theories would look much more promising if they also satisfied locality. Accordingly, the question as to whether or not local hidden variable theories are possible assumes great significance. In 1964 Bell appeared to prove that this question had a negative answer:4 He showed that any local hidden variables theory is incompatible with certain quantum mechanical predictions. Since these predictions have been borne out by the experiments of Aspect and others5 the prospects for hidden variable theories have looked grim. Angelidis disagrees.6 He claims to have done to Bell what Bohm did to von Neummann: He has found a theory which is local and which generates a family of probability functions converging uniformly to the probability function generated by quantum mechanics. If this were true, then Angelidis’ theory would be a counterexample to Bell’s theorem and a promising path would once again be open to hidden variable theorists. Unfortunately, Angelidis’ theory fails to live up to his claims: As formulated, the theory does not make the same predictions as quantum mechanics, and while there is a natural extension of his theory which does make the same predictions, the extension is not local. Bell’s Theorem stands

Modern ‘live’ football: moving from the panoptican gaze to the performative, virtual and carnivalesque

Drawing on Redhead's discussion of Baudrillard as a theorist of hyperreality, the paper considers the different ways in which the mediatized ‘live’ football spectacle is often modelled on the ‘live’ however eventually usurps the ‘live’ forms position in the cultural economy, thus beginning to replicate the mediatized ‘live’. The blurring of the ‘live’ and ‘real’ through an accelerated mediatization of football allows the formation of an imagined community mobilized by the working class whilst mediated through the sanitization, selling of ‘events’ and the middle classing of football, through the re-encoding of sporting spaces and strategic decision-making about broadcasting. A culture of pub supporting then allows potential for working-class supporters to remove themselves from the panoptican gazing systems of late modern hyperreal football stadia and into carnivalesque performative spaces, which in many cases are hyperreal and simulated themselves

Effects of Goal Training on Goal Structures

In this study, a goal training intervention was developed and evaluated. The main purpose of this investigation was to provide evidence that training, constructed according to implications drawn from goal theory, can affect student goal setting and achievement. Unique to this investigation was that training targeted both short- and long-term goal setting processes linked to career goal pursuits. Findings indicated that goal training resulted in students’ productions of career goal hierarchies consistent with theoretical prescriptions of quality goal structures. This study has implications for those in positions to develop and mentor individuals’ pursuit of long-term meaningful goals across settings

An Inquiry Concerning Health as a Status-role

An individual’s conception of his health may be influenced by social as well as physical and psychological considerations. The problem under investigation is to determine whether certain social bariables are related to conception of health and, if they are, to describe a health status-role suggested by the variables considered. Health is no longer considered to be exclusively a biological phenomenon. It is influenced by psychological and sociological forces as well as physical ones. The layman may accept the belief that a person’s attitude or his personality may affect how he feels, but he might question a statement about an individual’s status in a group having an effect upon his conception of his health. The present study suggests that there are certain social expectations which, if not met, influence an individual to say that he does not feel well even though he does not have a discernible physical or psychological illness. If an individual is old, poorly educated, has a low net-worth, does not participate in numerous organizations including church organizations, has an unfavorable attitude toward retirement, seeks material comforts and does not value friendship then he may say that he does not feel well even though he suffers from no apparent physical or psychological illnesses. This study is considered to be basic research and, therefore, is not exclusively concerned with solving a practical problem. Applied research is ordinarily designed to help solve some existing problem, but basic research is an attempt to establish general principles

An annotated bibliography and webography of sources related to practice research

This document was primarily created by Sophie Stone during June and July 2017 as a research assistant to the Centre for Practice Based Research in the Arts at Canterbury Christ Church University as part of a project examining the resources available to support Practice Researchers. The purpose of the bibliography and webography is to assist Practice Researchers (both new and experienced) in their research within academia and beyond, for example, within a methodological review chapter; when preparing written work for journals that publish Practice Research; when preparing documentation for research assessment exercises; when learning about documentation, presentation and dissemination

Comment on ``All quantum observables in a hidden-variable model must commute simultaneously"

Malley discussed {[Phys. Rev. A {\bf 69}, 022118 (2004)]} that all quantum observables in a hidden-variable model for quantum events must commute simultaneously. In this comment, we discuss that Malley's theorem is indeed valid for the hidden-variable theoretical assumptions, which were introduced by Kochen and Specker. However, we give an example that the local hidden-variable (LHV) model for quantum events preserves noncommutativity of quantum observables. It turns out that Malley's theorem is not related with the LHV model for quantum events, in general.Comment: 3 page

Performing temporal processes

This article explores the way that the performance of temporal processes in recent contemporary music reveals something about the nature of musical time. Process music deals with time as a part of its material, offering the opportunity to experience time as time: the expression and experience of units of time that are defined by, and enclose, processes, in works whose forms are defined by their durations. The nature of time in four examples, by Alistair Zaldua, Mathias Spahlinger, Steve Gisby, and Sophie Stone, is discussed with reference to theories of time by Jonathan D. Kramer and Henri Bergson

State-dependent rotations of spins by weak measurements

IIt is shown that a weak measurement of a quantum system produces a new state of the quantum system which depends on the prior state, as well as the (uncontrollable) measured position of the pointer variable of the weak measurement apparatus. The result imposes a constraint on hidden-variable theories which assign a different state to a quantum system than standard quantum mechanics. The constraint means that a crypto-nonlocal hidden-variable theory can be ruled out in a more direct way than previously.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. Substantially revised to concentrate on weak measurement transformation of states and application to crypto-nonlocal hidden-variable theor

Multipartite positive-partial-transpose inequalities exponentially stronger than local reality inequalities

We show that positivity of {\it every} partial transpose of $N$-partite quantum states implies new inequalities on Bell correlations which are stronger than standard Bell inequalities by a factor of $2^{(N-1)/2}$. A violation of the inequality implies the system is in a bipartite distillable entangled state. It turns out that a family of $N$-qubit bound entangled states proposed by D\"ur {[Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 87}, 230402 (2001)]} violates the inequality for $N\geq 4$.Comment: 4 pages, To appear in Phys. Rev.