“The Most Vivifying Influence:” Operation Delta in Preparing the Canadian Corps for the Hundred Days

Preparation and training for Operation Delta in May and June 1918 provided the Canadian Corps with vital experience for the types of operations conducted during the Hundred Days. Delta was a proposed attack on the southern portion of the Lys salient formed by the German April offensive in Flanders. The operation represented a clear break with the operational concepts employed in 1917 prior to Cambrai. It was a difference between seeing a play diagrammed on a blackboard and actually running it in conditions just short of combat. Having a concrete plan to prepare schemes against was an invaluable element in readying the corps for the strains of the Hundred Days. It helped in overcoming the challenges of ridding the corps of old thinking, mastering the new, and at an accelerated tempo. It was also a valuable rehearsal for the circumstances faced by the corps at Amiens. Finally, it demonstrated how the Canadian Corps differed from the British Army in creating and inculcating a corps level doctrine and the mechanisms used by the senior commanders and staff to disseminate, enforce, and practice it

Review of A Midnight Massacre: The Night Operation on the Passchendaele Ridge, 2 December 1917: The Forgotten Last Act of the Third Battle of Ypres by Michael LoCicero

Review of A Midnight Massacre: The Night Operation on the Passchendaele Ridge, 2 December 1917: The Forgotten Last Act of the Third Battle of Ypres by Michael LoCicero

The effect of interstimulus interval on sequential effects in absolute identification

In absolute identification experiments, the participant is asked to identify stimuli drawn from a small set of items which differ on a single physical dimension (e.g., 10 tones which vary in frequency). Responses in these tasks show a striking pattern of sequential dependencies: The current response assimilates towards the immediately preceding stimulus but contrasts with the stimuli further back in the sequence. This pattern has been variously interpreted as resulting from confusion of items in memory, shifts in response criteria, or the action of selective attention, and these interpretations have been incorporated into competing formal models of absolute identification performance. In two experiments, we demonstrate that lengthening the time between trials increases contrast to both the previous stimulus and the stimulus two trials back. This surprising pattern of results is difficult to reconcile with the idea that sequential dependencies result from memory confusion or from criterion shifts, but is consistent with an account that emphasizes selective attention. </jats:p

The effect of stimulus range on two-interval frequency discrimination

It has traditionally been thought that performance in two-interval frequency discrimination tasks decreases as the range over which the standard tone varies is increased. Recent empirical evidence and a reexamination of previous results suggest that this may not be the case. The present experiment found that performance was significantly better when the standard roved over a wide range (1500 Hz) than a narrow range (30 Hz). This pattern cannot readily be accommodated by traditional models of frequency discrimination based on memory or attention, but may be explicable in terms of neural plasticity and the formation of perceptual anchors

Psychophysics and the judgment of price: judging complex objects on a non-physical dimension elicits sequential effects like those in perceptual tasks

When participants in psychophysical experiments are asked to estimate or identify stimuli which differ on a single physical dimension, their judgments are influenced by the local experimental context — the item presented and judgment made on the previous trial. It has been suggested that similar sequential effects occur in more naturalistic, real-world judgments. In three experiments we asked participants to judge the prices of a sequence of items. In Experiment 1, judgments were biased towards the previous response (assimilation) but away from the true value of the previous item (contrast), a pattern which matches that found in psychophysical research. In Experiments 2A and 2B, we manipulated the provision of feedback and the expertise of the participants, and found that feedback reduced the effect of the previous judgment and shifted the effect of the previous item’s true price from contrast to assimilation. Finally, in all three experiments we found that judgments were biased towards the centre of the range, a phenomenon known as the “regression effect” in psychophysics. These results suggest that the most recently-presented item is a point of reference for the current judgment. The findings inform our understanding of the judgment process, constrain the explanations for local context effects put forward by psychophysicists, and carry practical importance for real-world situations in which contextual bias may degrade the accuracy of judgments

One-hundred years (and counting) of blast-associated traumatic brain injury

Blast-associated traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become one of the signature issues of modern warfare and is increasingly a concern in the civilian population due to a rise in terrorist attacks. Despite being a recognised feature of combat since the introduction of high explosives in conventional warfare over a century ago, only recently has there been interest in understanding the biology and pathology of blast TBI and the potential long-term consequences. Progress made has been slow and there remain remarkably few robust human neuropathology studies in this field. This article provides a broad overview of the history of blast TBI and reviews the pathology described in the limitedscientific studies found in the literature

Turning people into couch potatoes is not the cure for sports concussion

No abstract available