Representation, space and Hollywood Squares: Looking at things that aren't there anymore

It has been argued that the human cognitive system is capable of using spatial indexes or oculomotor coordinates to relieve working memory load (Ballard, Hayhoe, Pook & Rao, 1997) track multiple moving items through occlusion (Scholl & Pylyshyn, 1999) or link incompatible cognitive and sensorimotor codes (Bridgeman and Huemer, 1998). Here we examine the use of such spatial information in memory for semantic information. Previous research has often focused on the role of task demands and the level of automaticity in the encoding of spatial location in memory tasks. We present five experiments where location is irrelevant to the task, and participants' encoding of spatial information is measured implicitly by their looking behavior during recall. In a paradigm developed from Spivey and Geng (submitted), participants were presented with pieces of auditory, semantic information as part of an event occurring in one of four regions of a computer screen. In front of a blank grid, they were asked a question relating to one of those facts. Under certain conditions it was found that during the question period participants made significantly more saccades to the empty region of space where the semantic information had been previously presented. Our findings are discussed in relation to previous research on memory and spatial location, the dorsal and ventral streams of the visual system, and the notion of a cognitive-perceptual system using spatial indexes to exploit the stability of the external world

Thriving Pastors Cohort: Expanding Capacity for Lifelong Ministry

Assemblies of God pastors can expand their capacity for lifelong thriving by avoiding or recovering from ministry fatigue or burnout. The key insights that emerged from my research are as such: 1) Ministers are a vulnerable and largely self-isolating group who need a mechanism for spiritual growth and companionship. 2) There is already good work being accomplished in this arena, but pastoral thriving can be further nuanced and presented in a non-threatening and life-giving way. 3) There is not a singular way to accomplish the task of assisting ministers to engage in ongoing spiritual advancement. The cohort is but one avenue in pursuing pastoral flourishing. My current ministry context is as the Lead Pastor of People’s Church, a 300+- Assemblies of God church located in Winter Haven, Florida. The Thriving Pastors Cohort is a nine-session, in-person, group-based journey for pastors and ministry leaders who desire to avoid ministry burnout and expand their capacity for lifelong ministerial flourishing

Engaging the Paradoxical: Zeno\u27s Paradoxes in Three Works of Interactive Fiction

For over two millennia thinkers have wrestled with Zeno\u27s paradoxes on space, time, motion, and the nature of infinity. In this article we compare and contrast representations of Zeno\u27s paradoxes in three works of interactive fiction, Beyond Zork, The Chinese Room, and A Beauty Cold and Austere. Each of these works incorporates one of Zeno\u27s paradoxes as part of a puzzle that the player must solve in order to advance and ultimately complete the story. As such, the reader must engage more deeply with the paradoxes than he or she would in a static work of fiction. In addition, each of the three works presents a different perspective on the intellectual challenges associated with the paradoxes

Patching the Patchwork Quilt: Reforming the Medicaid Program - The Medicaid Program - The Medicaid Voluntary Contribution and Provider-Specific Tax Amendments of 1991

Congress modified the Medicaid program by restricting states\u27 sources of funding, capping payments to certain hospitals, and altering the relationship between the states and the federal government. While the legislation puts to rest an ongoing dispute between the state and federal governments, it does not improve access to or quality of care nor address fundamental problems with the Medicaid program; it is simply another patch to the patch-work quilt called Medicaid

Does the Community Reinvestment Act influence lending? an analysis of changes in bank low-income mortgage activity

Anecdotal evidence that the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) influences the lending behavior of financial institutions has not been uniformly supported by empirical research. We revisit this issue by evaluating changes in low-income mortgage lending at commercial banks over the 1992-96 period. Our empirical results fail to support a hypothesis that banks respond to public and regulatory pressure exerted as a result of a downgrade in CRA rating by increasing low-income mortgage lending. The findings are consistent with the contention that during this period regulators stressed adjustments in the lending process of banks (e.g., documentation of lending program and efforts directed at targeted markets) more than lending performance. The findings underscore the importance of regulatory efforts made later in the decade to more closely link enforcement of the CRA to lending outcomes.Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 ; Mortgages ; Bank loans ; Financial institutions

Spectral convergence in tapping and physiological fluctuations: coupling and independence of 1/f noise in the central and autonomic nervous systems.

When humans perform a response task or timing task repeatedly, fluctuations in measures of timing from one action to the next exhibit long-range correlations known as 1/f noise. The origins of 1/f noise in timing have been debated for over 20 years, with one common explanation serving as a default: humans are composed of physiological processes throughout the brain and body that operate over a wide range of timescales, and these processes combine to be expressed as a general source of 1/f noise. To test this explanation, the present study investigated the coupling vs. independence of 1/f noise in timing deviations, key-press durations, pupil dilations, and heartbeat intervals while tapping to an audiovisual metronome. All four dependent measures exhibited clear 1/f noise, regardless of whether tapping was synchronized or syncopated. 1/f spectra for timing deviations were found to match those for key-press durations on an individual basis, and 1/f spectra for pupil dilations matched those in heartbeat intervals. Results indicate a complex, multiscale relationship among 1/f noises arising from common sources, such as those arising from timing functions vs. those arising from autonomic nervous system (ANS) functions. Results also provide further evidence against the default hypothesis that 1/f noise in human timing is just the additive combination of processes throughout the brain and body. Our findings are better accommodated by theories of complexity matching that begin to formalize multiscale coordination as a foundation of human behavior

Economic Value Added (EVA) and the Valuation of Small Businesses

This article presents an overview of the standard asset, market, and income valuation methods generally used to estimate the value of small businesses

Value Creation and the Entrepreneurial Business

The need to finance high growth and manage the interests and needs of investors makes value creation a critical concern for entrepreneurial businesses. Almost any financial endeavor, such as attracting new investors or making investment decisions, necessitates the consideration of the equity value created by the endeavor. The perceived value creation, for example, has a direct effect on the percentage of the firm outside investors will require if they are to invest in the business. Measuring the value created by publicly traded businesses, depending on the assumptions made, is relatively straightforward. If public markets are at least semi-strong form efficient (i.e., equity prices reflect all publicly available information regarding a business’s true underlying value), then the closing price on a large, publicly-traded company should accurately reflect that enterprise’s value. In other words, public markets take individual investors’ beliefs of the magnitude, timing and riskiness of the business’s expected future cash flows and incorporate them into the actual equity value reported at closing. Like the managers of large companies, the entrepreneur should think market value, rather than just accounting profits, when making economic decisions. Unfortunately, the major problem of measuring the value of an entrepreneurial business is that many are either privately-owned or are publicly-traded in very thin secondary markets, subsequently market assessment of the true value of the business’s equity is not readily available. This unavailability of market information makes the value creation assessment process more difficult for entrepreneurial companies, but certainly not any less important. Thus, information about the correlation of readily available performance measures with a true market value creation measure is worthwhile. This study statistically examines the relationship of non-market measures of value creation with a true market value creation measure for a sample of small publicly-traded companies (i.e., less than $100 million). We restricted the size of the companies we examined to make our sample more representative of entrepreneurial businesses, which are more likely to be either privately-held or traded very thinly in public markets. For the purposes of this study the market value creation measure utilized was shareholder return. Each company’s shareholder return was estimated using stock price and dividend information. Three different dimensions of non-market value creation measures were utilized. These three dimensions were accounting profitability, cash flow performance, and growth. Our investigation revealed that relationships between certain non-market measures of value and small entrepreneurial types of businesses existed. Statistically significant positive correlations were found between shareholder return and the earnings profitability measures of return on equity, return on assets and return on invested capital. These relationships were found to exist only for companies that reported positive earnings. Stronger relationships were found to exist between shareholder return and the cash flow performance measures of earnings growth and sales growth. Furthermore, the sales growth measure was found to be correlated for companies that had positive earnings and companies that reported negative earnings