Studies concerning tactile short-term memory (short-term memory or the sense of touch) have often been contradictory. Some of these studies support the existence of modality-specific tactile memory, ...a separate, independent storage system for tactile information. Other studies do not support such a system. Further, confusion has arisen regarding the tactile test materials, since many of them use common shapes which are easily labeled verbally. It is hypothesized that information which can be labeled is stored in material-specific verbal memory in the left hemisphere, while patterned or spatial information is stored in material-specific nonverbal memory in the right hemisphere.
This paper reports two studies conducted to demonstrate both verbal and nonverbal material-specific memory using tactile test materials. The first experiment utilized the Seguin Formboard, which has wooden shapes that are easily labeled verbally. The test was administered to brain damaged patients and to normal controls. Results showed that the performance of the people with left hemisphere brain damage was significantly impaired relative to the normal controls. This was expected since verbal material is processed in the left hemisphere. People with damage in this area have difficulty naming objects and storing the names.
The second experiment utilized wooden shapes that were presumed difficult to label. This test was again administered to brain damaged subjects as well us to normal controls. The results were not significant. This may have been because the test was too difficult or because it did not tap nonverbal spatial information. Thus, people with right hemisphere damage were expected to have difficulty processing this type of material. The right damaged group did tend to do more poorly than the other groups. It is not known if this difference would be significant were the test simplified, or if there were actually no group differences.
The first study suggests that the Seguin Formboard, thought to be a nonverbal tactile memory test, is actually verbally mediated. The second study did not yield significant results, but suggests a line of further research into the area of nonverbal material-specific memory tested in the tactile modality. These experiments suggest the importance of carefully evaluating test materials to determine what abilities they actually measure in order to obtain a fine analysis of memory function.
Talent or Not Meyers, Maria Christina; Dries, Nicky; De Boeck, Giverny
The Oxford Handbook of Talent Management,
09/2017
Book Chapter
It is assumed that employees display favorable attitudes (e.g., high organizational commitment) and behaviors (e.g., high work effort) when identified as organizational talent. If they did not, the ...idea that talent management creates value by making disproportionate investments into organizational talent would need to be reconsidered. We reviewed the literature to explore whether the assumed favorable reactions among talent are valid and the results are not straightforward. Many studies found evidence for the assumption; however, several studies revealed that talent designation bears considerable risks: Being identified as talent creates (overly optimistic) expectations of receiving rewards and benefits from the organization and it increases the felt pressure to meet high performance standards. We discuss the findings in the light of social exchange theory, psychological contract theory, and others commonly used in talent-management research, highlighting key issues regarding talent designation and identifying avenues for future research.
Cognitive Limitations Veramonti, Tracy; Meyers, Christina
Work and Cancer Survivors
Book Chapter
Amongst some of the more common and distressing symptoms faced by individuals with cancer is that of neurocognitive dysfunction. While neurocognitive symptoms often herald the diagnosis when cancer ...directly affects the brain, survivors with systemic malignancies (e.g., breast cancer, lung cancer, leukemia) have also been found to have neurocognitive impairments, even prior to the initiation of treatment 1–4. Additionally, oncologic successes are often dependent on a multimodal, aggressive treatment approach that frequently combines surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and/or immunotherapy. The central nervous system may be vulnerable to these antineoplastic treatments, leading to a worsening of neurocognitive symptoms and/or emergence of new symptoms during and following treatment. Further, cancer survivors may be susceptible to neurocognitive symptoms as a side effect of medications commonly prescribed to manage concurrent medical complications (e.g., corticosteroids, antiepileptics, immuosuppressive agents, antiemetics, and opioid narcotics) or secondary to co-existing neurologic conditions unrelated to the diagnosis of cancer 3, 4.
On November 4, 2004, President George W. Bush won re-election. According to exit polls, a majority of people who voted for Bush over his opponent, Senator John Kerry, did so because they believed ...that Bush was the “moral values” candidate. In this dissertation, I assess the moral persona that the President rhetorically constructed during his first term in office. To do so, I utilize Kenneth Burke's cluster and pentad tools to analyze Bush's statements on embryonic stem cell research, 9/11 and the ensuing War on Terror, and same-sex marriage, three issues that the elite press explicitly identified as being “moral values” during Bush's first term. The analyses reveal that Bush's rhetoric frames the ethical struggle as being between himself and an elite/powerful few others. The majority of Americans are thus stripped of their agent status and the corresponding ability to act and left to feel the effects of a “moral” decision that is made in their absence yet affects their very being. I term this sort of ethics “elitist ethics” as ethics and morality are made to seem like a power struggle between an elite few. In the conclusion I assess the effects of elitist ethics in the public sphere.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is designed to provide an unprecedented optical imaging dataset that will support investigations of our Solar System, Galaxy and Universe, across half the sky and ...over ten years of repeated observation. However, exactly how the LSST observations will be taken (the observing strategy or "cadence") is not yet finalized. In this dynamically-evolving community white paper, we explore how the detailed performance of the anticipated science investigations is expected to depend on small changes to the LSST observing strategy. Using realistic simulations of the LSST schedule and observation properties, we design and compute diagnostic metrics and Figures of Merit that provide quantitative evaluations of different observing strategies, analyzing their impact on a wide range of proposed science projects. This is work in progress: we are using this white paper to communicate to each other the relative merits of the observing strategy choices that could be made, in an effort to maximize the scientific value of the survey. The investigation of some science cases leads to suggestions for new strategies that could be simulated and potentially adopted. Notably, we find motivation for exploring departures from a spatially uniform annual tiling of the sky: focusing instead on different parts of the survey area in different years in a "rolling cadence" is likely to have significant benefits for a number of time domain and moving object astronomy projects. The communal assembly of a suite of quantified and homogeneously coded metrics is the vital first step towards an automated, systematic, science-based assessment of any given cadence simulation, that will enable the scheduling of the LSST to be as well-informed as possible.
As cancer care moves into the outpatient setting and hospital stays are shortened, patients and their family members are expected to take on tremendous responsibilities in providing their own ...self-care. At the same time, stress and anxiety about the diagnosis of cancer, the disease itself, and cancer therapy can effect learning. Information processing, learning styles, and learning barriers need to be considered when developing and implementing cancer education programs.
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