Involuntary Manner Research Articles

Attentional capture by working memory contents.

There has been controversy on whether working memory (WM) contents automatically guide attention. The present study tried to replicate the effect of WM-based attentional capture using an adaption of Downing's (2000) paradigm, in which WM and attentional capture were combined. Subjects were presented with an attention display containing two objects, one of which could be precued by a matching item being held in WM. As measured by a probe discrimination task, the memory-matching object had a privileged status to capture attention regardless of the stimulus onset asynchronies between the memory cue and the attention display, even when there was absolutely no benefit for subjects to bias attention in favour of the memory match. These results suggest that WM contents guide attention in an involuntary manner. The implications of current findings for understanding of WM effects on visual selection are discussed.

Oscillatory activity in prefrontal and posterior regions during implicit letter-location binding

Many cognitive abilities involve the integration of information from different modalities, a process referred to as “binding.” It remains less clear, however, whether the creation of bound representations occurs in an involuntary manner, and whether the links between the constituent features of an object are symmetrical. We used magnetoencephalography to investigate whether oscillatory brain activity related to binding processes would be observed in conditions in which participants maintain one feature only (involuntary binding); and whether this activity varies as a function of the feature attended to by participants (binding asymmetry). Participants performed two probe recognition tasks that were identical in terms of their perceptual characteristics and only differed with respect to the instructions given (to memorize either consonants or locations). MEG data were reconstructed using a current source distribution estimation in the classical frequency bands. We observed implicit verbal–spatial binding only when participants successfully maintained the identity of consonants, which was associated with a selective increase in oscillatory activity over prefrontal regions in all frequency bands during the first half of the retention period and accompanied by increased activity in posterior brain regions. The increase in oscillatory activity in prefrontal areas was only observed during the verbal task, which suggests that this activity might be signaling neural processes specifically involved in cross-code binding. Current results are in agreement with proposals suggesting that the prefrontal cortex function as a “pointer” which indexes the features that belong together within an object.

"He is But a Bastard to the Time": Status and Service in The Troublesome Raigne of John and Shakespeare's King John

“He is but a Bastard to the time”: Status and Service in The Troublesome Raigne of John and Shakespeare’s King John Edward Gieskes Introduction Shakespeare’s King John, standing between the two tetralogies, marks a transition in his treatment of political and historical questions. This argument has been advanced by critics like Sigurd Burckhardt, Virginia Vaughan, Michael Manheim, and Marsha Robinson (among many others). 1 Vaughan, for example, writes that the play “demonstrates Shakespeare’s experimentation with more sophisticated dramaturgical techniques to convey political complexities, techniques he perfected in the Henriad.” 2 Most of the criticism focuses on Shakespeare’s changing treatment of political questions to the exclusion of social considerations; but if King John marks a transition in Shakespeare’s treatment of politics and history, it also marks a change in his depiction of the social issues attendant on that history and politics. 3 This essay will focus on the Bastard, arguably the central player in the action, as representative of the play’s engagement with expressly social concerns: issues of class, rank, and vocation distinct from the explicitly political issues which have been discussed 7elsewhere. Despite the limited historical records concerning the Bastard Faulconbridge, both Shakespeare and the author of The Troublesome Raigne of John King of England make him a major player in the “history” of King John’s reign. 4 The different treatments of the same figure in these two plays represent different understandings of service to the crown. In the Troublesome Raigne, Philip Faulconbridge claims royal ancestry (after direct supernatural prompting) and proceeds to behave as a person of noble descent. He goes off to war in France, pursues and kills Austria, receives lands, and woos Blaunch, all as though he had always been a member of the aristocracy. By contrast, Shakespeare’s Bastard Faulconbridge exhibits a very different relationship towards his own rise in status. His status as adopted Plantagenet is treated by the play as a vocation in our modern sense of employment. By the end of the [End Page 779] play he administers the royal succession to the throne without any real opposition from the hereditary nobles around him. Shakespeare’s Bastard actively chooses a career as a royal servant in choosing to acknowledge his bastardy while the Bastard of the Troublesome Raigne is forced to avow his ancestry, against his better judgment, and in this involuntary manner enters the aristocracy, and from thence comes to royal service. The two plays exhibit alternative conceptions of identity—one chosen, the other essential—which are linked to the ability of each character to serve his King. I Both King John and the Troublesome Raigne contain a recognition scene—each play’s Bastard finds out the truth of his birth in the public and legal context of a land (or succession) dispute. In King John, the Bastard and his brother “come from the country” for judgment and in Troublesome Raigne they, having “committed a riot,” appeal to the King on the issue. 5 In both plays, Robert Faulconbridge accuses his elder brother of being illegitimate and thus barred from inheriting the family estate. 6 The basic claim is identical but details of its presentation vary considerably. 7 In the Troublesome Raigne, Philip (the Bastard) presents himself as the victim of his younger brother’s slander and greed: “the wrong is mine; yet wil I abide all wrongs, before I once open my mouth to unrippe the shamefull slaunder of my parents, the dishonour of myself, & the wicked dealing of my brother in this princely assembly”(T, 86–90). He refuses even to address the “shamefull slaunder,” in the best tradition of wounded honesty. Then Philip’s younger brother Robert speaks, making his case in the face of his brother’s silence. In the initial encounter the Bastard presents himself as slandered and offers no hint that he might know or believe his brother’s accusation to be true. In the Troublesome Raigne, then, the Bastard believes he is the legitimate heir and desires his inheritance; it is only as a result of external intervention that he resigns his claim. 8 Shakespeare’s King John treats this scene differently. In the Troublesome Raigne, when King...

Modern Control Technology for Improved Nuclear Reactor Performance

One of the main complaints leveled at reactor control systems by utility spokesmen is complexity. One only has to look inside a power reactor control room to appreciate this viewpoint. The high reliability and versatility of modern microprocessors makes possible distributed control systems with only performance data and abnormal conditions being relayed to the control room. In a sense, this emulates the human-body control system where routine repetitive actions are handled in an involuntary manner. The significance of expert systems to the nuclear reactor control and safety systems is their ability to capture human and other expertise and make it available, upon demand, and under almost all circumstances. Thus, human problem-solving skills acquired by the learning process over a long period of time can be captured and employed with the reliability inherent in computers. This is especially important in nuclear plants when human operators are burdened by stress and emotional factors that have a dramatic effect on performance level.