Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity and Visual Search in Reading

Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) are related to variations in a wide range of cognitive tasks. Surprisingly, effects of individual differences in working memory capacity are somewhat limited in visual search tasks. Here we tested the hypothesis that such an effect would be robust when search was one component of a dual task. Participants were presented strings of letters using rapid serial visual presentation and were required to detect all instances of a particular target letter. In Experiment 1, participants performed the letter search task in three contexts, while: a) reading a prose passage, b) processing a stream of random words, or c) processing a random stream of non-words. In the absence of the dual task of reading prose, and in line with much of the literature on individual differences in WMC and visual search, search performance was unaffected by WMC. As hypothesized, however, higher working memory capacity participants detected more target letters than lower capacity participants in the “true” dual task (searching while reading prose). The hypothesized results from the prose passage were replicated in Experiment 2. These results show that visual search efficiency is dramatically affected by WMC when searching is combined with another cognitive task but not when it is performed in isolation. Our findings are consistent with recent suggestions that visual search efficiency will be affected by WMC so long as searching is embedded in a context that entails managing resource allocation between concurrent tasks.

Interpreters – experts in careful listening and efficient encoding? Findings of a prose recall test

Research Questions: The purpose of the present experiment was to study interpreters’ recall of spoken prose. Design: The prose recall of simultaneous and consecutive interpreters was compared to that of foreign language teachers and non-linguistic experts. The professional experience of participants (21–24 participants in each group) was 10 years as a aminimum. The auditory presentation of the prose passage to be recalled, divided into eleven speech sequences, resembled the working conditions of interpreters. Data: Transcripted prose recall recordings were analysed quantitatively through an idea unit measure and qualitatively through meaning-based expressions. Findings: The foreign language expert groups outperformed the non-linguistic experts in both quantitative and qualitative measures. Additionally, compared to foreign language teachers, interpreters indicated a better recall of time expressions and topic sentences, as well as of complicated emotional and causal expressions. The explanation for these findings could indicate expertise-dependent tendencies: possibly a continuous practising of careful listening and the demand for a quick comprehension of the source text under the extreme time pressure of interpreters’ work leads to better results in prose recall. However, the findings can only be generalized to a limited extent because the prose passage used contained only one or two expressions of each type studied in the qualitative analysis. Originality: The study differs from previous studies in that the memory of interpreters, and especially of consecutive interpreters, was studied for the first time with a prose recall measure. Significance: The prose recall test revealed that the abilities of careful listening and effective comprehension of coherence and causality seem to play a significant role in explaining memory functions of simultaneous and consecutive interpreters compared to those of foreign language teachers and non-linguistic experts.

Rilke, Παλαμάς, Σαχτούρης, Αθανασιάδης: ένα σημείο συνάντησης / Rilke, Sachtouris, Palamas, Athanasiades: a point of convergence

With the date 28.1.1924, the translation of the first nine verses from the “Book of Pilgrimage” is entered in the Appendix of Xanatonismene Mousike [Retoned Music], that is the collection of translations by Kostis Palamas, as these were included in his Complete Works. The “Book of Pilgrimage” is the second of the three parts of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Stundenbuch (which was translated into Greek as “Horologion” by Aris Diktaios, but is more widely known as “Book of Hours” and is referred to as such in Palamas’s translation. This translation of the characteristic excerpt from the poetic oeuvre of the “romantic” Rilke, as Palamas considered him, was destined – and not without reason – to be the most popular, even though several translations have followed. Except that, as we shall see, the perception of the specific verses as referring to the love affair between a man and a woman, a perception-interpretation that has prevailed widely, does not correspond (exactly) to the “reality” of Rilke’s poem. The two intertexts, to which we shall refer in the present article, seem to presuppose a corresponding interpretation, at least broadly speaking. So, examined here is the intertextual contact of the aforesaid poetic passage-translation from Rilke’s Stundenbuch, on the one hand, with the poem “The night of the forgotten woman” from the collection the Forgotten Woman (1945) by Miltos Sachtouris (who spoke often with love and respect about the influence of Rilke’s work on his own), and on the other, with a prose passage from the novel The Throne Room, by Tasos Athanasiadis (whose rich textual-intellectual contact with Rilke’s oeuvre has also been pointed out), which has characteristically been defined as a “modern Aesop’s fable”.

“On the day I Took Them out of the Land of Egypt”: A Non-Deuteronomic Phrase within Jeremiah’s Conception of Covenant

This paper proceeds in three stages, and sets three goals. First, through the careful study of one prose passage in Jeremiah (11:1-14), I aim to complicate our sometimes simplistic perception of the use of Deuteronomic expressions in Jeremiah. One crucial phrase clearly draws on Priestly style and covenant conceptions, and is repeated in another four prose prophecies within the book (Jer 7:21-28 [22]; 11:1-14 [4, 7]; 31:31-34 [32]; 34:8-22 [13]). Thus, the second goal of this paper is to consider this (Priestly) phrase’s contribution to Jeremiah’s conception of covenant. Third, the proximity of both Deuteronomic and Priestly pentateuchal materials in a single prophetic context moves us beyond questions of authorship to literary strategies of allusion to and exegesis of both Deuteronomic and Priestly pentateuchal materials within the prophecy. The tendency within the book to harmonize diverse pentateuchal traditions has far-reaching implications for the study of both Jeremiah and the Pentateuch.

SERPENTINE RIVERS AND SERPENTINE THOUGHT: FLUX AND MOVEMENT IN WALTER PATER’S LEONARDO ESSAY

ON AUGUST 21, 1911 THE MONA LISA was stolen from the Louvre, not to reappear again until well over two years later when the thief tried to sell the work to a Florentine art dealer. The patriotic Italian workman who had stolen the painting had wanted to bring some of the Italian masterpieces in French collections back to where they belonged, and he had commenced his grand project with the Mona Lisa because, as he explained, “mi sembrava la piú bella” — she seemed to him to be the most beautiful of them all.1 For Bernard Berenson the disappearance of the Mona Lisa brought about a major rebellion against the ideals he had cultivated as a young man. In his early books on the Florentine painters and their drawings he had sung the praises of Leonardo,2 and ever since he was a student at Harvard in the early 1880s he had been a professed devotee of the writings and thought of Walter Pater.3 Pater’s most celebrated prose passage — his evocation of the Mona Lisa — was one of the pieces of nineteenth-century art criticism which had influenced Berenson more than anything else.4 Like so many other people of his generation, he had learnt the text by heart, and his first visits to the Louvre appear to have been as much in honor of Walter Pater as of the Italian masters.