Verbal Terms Research Articles

Combined verbal and numerical expressions increase perceived risk of medicine side-effects: a randomized controlled trial of EMA recommendations.

The study evaluated European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommendations on communicating frequency information on side-effect risk. The study used a 2 × 2 factorial trial, with random allocation of information about 10 side-effects of paclitaxel (Taxol) expressed using one of four formats. Recruitment was via the CancerHelpUK website. Information was conveyed using numerical frequency bands (e.g. 'may affect up to 1 in 10 people') or combined verbal terms and numerical bands (e.g. 'common: may affect up to 1 in 10 people'); in addition, the risk qualifier verb was manipulated, with risks expressed either as 'will affect…' or 'may affect…'. Participants then made six side-effect frequency estimates indicated their satisfaction with the information and evaluated the side-effects: how bad; how likely; how risky to health; and their influence on taking paclitaxel. The sample comprised 339 people, of whom 37.5% had cancer. The combined verbal and numerical risk expressions resulted in higher estimates of side-effects, four of which reached statistical significance (P < 0.05), and participants also said that side-effects would be more likely. Use of 'may affect' or 'will affect' did not result in differences in any estimates. This is the first evaluation of the full range of combined verbal and numerical risk expressions recommended in EMA guidance; it demonstrates that they can lead to significant risk overestimations when compared to numerical frequency bands alone. The EMA should consider revising its guidance. Government agencies and professional bodies should be cautious about recommendations for risk communication in the absence of empirical evidence.

Fuzzy Inference System Based on a Model of Affective-Cognitive Criteria for English Learning Achievement

Criterion-referenced assessment (CRA) employs a specifically-defined set of criteria or standards that can guide teachers to assess students grade by comparing students’ learning score with the pre-specified standards. However, the use of CRA is considered incomplete as most of the criteria are merely based on knowledge domains. Meanwhile, affective factors also need to be considered in the assessment to describe students’ complete attributes. Nonetheless, measuring affective factors is not as straightforward task as measuring cognitive factors because affective description is often represented in descriptive verbal terms. In this study, affective factors and cognitive factors based on CRA are combined as a model for assessment of students’ learning. A questionnaire is developed to collect student affective attributes. A novel fuzzy inference system (FIS) is proposed to infer student achievement in English learning based on CRA. The FIS method was applied to analyze the data collected from students studying English as a second language. The result indicates the usefulness of the FIS based on CRA as a basis to assess student English learning by considering both affective and cognitive factors.

Gender Difference and School Aggressiveness

Increasingly large media coverage refers to problems of violence and aggression found in schools in Romania. The question is related to the magnitude and dimensions of this phenomenon. For some students responding in hostile, aggressive verbal terms or even physically became a habit, this phenomenon being increasingly encountered among children. Aggression of the students varies by gender of subjects. At this age the child is still in full training and development of all points of view, so it is very important that what is happening around him to have a positive influence, train and reinforce socially desirable behavior, which does not bring negative consequences for the child.

Words or numbers? Communicating risk of adverse effects in written consumer health information: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BackgroundVarious types of framing can influence risk perceptions, which may have an impact on treatment decisions and adherence. One way of framing is the use of verbal terms in communicating the probabilities of treatment effects. We systematically reviewed the comparative effects of words versus numbers in communicating the probability of adverse effects to consumers in written health information.MethodsNine electronic databases were searched up to November 2012. Teams of two reviewers independently assessed studies. Inclusion criteria: randomised controlled trials; verbal versus numerical presentation; context: written consumer health information.ResultsTen trials were included. Participants perceived probabilities presented in verbal terms as higher than in numeric terms: commonly used verbal descriptors systematically led to an overestimation of the absolute risk of adverse effects (Range of means: 3% - 54%). Numbers also led to an overestimation of probabilities, but the overestimation was smaller (2% – 20%). The difference in means ranged from 3.8% to 45.9%, with all but one comparison showing significant results. Use of numbers increased satisfaction with the information (MD: 0.48 [CI: 0.32 to 0.63], p < 0.00001, I2 = 0%) and likelihood of medication use (MD for very common side effects: 1.45 [CI: 0.78 to 2.11], p = 0.0001, I2 = 68%; MD for common side effects: 0.90 [CI: 0.61 to 1.19], p < 0.00001, I2 = 1%; MD for rare side effects: 0.39 [0.02 to 0.76], p = 0.04, I2 = not applicable). Outcomes were measured on a 6-point Likert scale, suggesting small to moderate effects.ConclusionsVerbal descriptors including “common”, “uncommon” and “rare” lead to an overestimation of the probability of adverse effects compared to numerical information, if used as previously suggested by the European Commission. Numbers result in more accurate estimates and increase satisfaction and likelihood of medication use. Our review suggests that providers of consumer health information should quantify treatment effects numerically. Future research should focus on the impact of personal and contextual factors, use representative samples or be conducted in real life settings, measure behavioral outcomes and address whether benefit information can be described verbally.

Uncertainty and decision making: Volcanic crisis scenarios

The impact of uncertainty on Disaster Risk Reduction decision-making has become a pressing issue for debate over recent years. How do key officials interpret and accommodate uncertainty in science advice, forecasts and warnings into their decision making? Volcanic eruptions present a particularly uncertain hazard environment, and to accommodate this scientists utilize probabilistic techniques to inform decision-making. However, the interpretation of probabilities is influenced by their framing. We investigate how verbal or numerical probabilities affect decisions to evacuate a hypothetical town, and reasons given for that decision, based upon a volcanic eruption forecast. We find fewer evacuations for verbal terms than for equivalent numerical terms, and that the former is viewed as more ambiguous. This difference is greater for scientists, which we suggest is due to their greater familiarity with numerical probabilities and a belief that they are more certain. We also find that many participants have a poor understanding of the relationship between probability and time window stated, resulting in an incorrect assessment of overall likelihood and more evacuations for the lower likelihood version of two scenarios. Further, we find that career sector (scientist or non-scientist) influences evacuation decisions, with scientists tending to reduce the uncertainty by focusing on the quality and volume of information provided, while non-scientists tended to either acknowledge or suppress the uncertainty, focusing on actions to take. These findings demonstrate the importance of identifying communication strategies that mitigate different perceptions of forecasts, to both enhance end-user decision making and to prevent premature, delayed, or unnecessary actions.

Vinko Globokar’s Balkan Requiem

Globokar’s rare excursions into folklore include the two Études pour folklora of 1968 which imitate the techniques of folk musicians in Bosnia and Macedonia and Élegie balkanique of 1992 which laments the Balkan tragedy in musical and verbal terms, in effect a secular requiem.

Partial hue-matching

It is widely believed that color can be decomposed into a small number of component colors. Particularly, each hue can be described as a combination of a restricted set of component hues. Methods, such as color naming and hue scaling, aim at describing color in terms of the relative amount of the component hues. However, there is no consensus on the nomenclature of component hues. Moreover, the very notion of hue (not to mention component hue) is usually defined verbally rather than perceptually. In this paper, we make an attempt to operationalize such a fundamental attribute of color as hue without the use of verbal terms. Specifically, we put forth a new method--partial hue-matching--that is based on judgments of whether two colors have some hue in common. It allows a set of component hues to be established objectively, without resorting to verbal definitions. Specifically, the largest sets of color stimuli, all of which partially match each other (referred to as chromaticity classes), can be derived from the observer's partial hue-matches. A chromaticity class proves to consist of all color stimuli that contain a particular component hue. Thus, the chromaticity classes fully define the set of component hues. Using samples of Munsell papers, a few experiments on partial hue-matching were carried out with twelve inexperienced normal trichromatic observers. The results reinforce the classical notion of four component hues (yellow, blue, red, and green). Black and white (but not gray) were also found to be component colors.

Sometimes, often, and always: Exploring the vague meanings of frequency expressions

The article describes a general two-step procedure for the numerical translation of vague linguistic terms (LTs). The suggested procedure consists of empirical and model components, including (1) participants' estimates of numerical values corresponding to verbal terms and (2) modeling of the empirical data using fuzzy membership functions (MFs), respectively. The procedure is outlined in two studies for data from N = 89 and N = 109 participants, who were asked to estimate numbers corresponding to 11 verbal frequency expressions (e.g., sometimes). Positions and shapes of the resulting MFs varied considerably in symmetry, vagueness, and overlap and are indicative of the different meanings of the vague frequency expressions. Words were not distributed equidistantly across the numerical scale. This has important implications for the many questionnaires that use verbal rating scales, which consist of frequency expressions and operate on the premise of equidistance. These results are discussed for an exemplar questionnaire (COPSOQ). Furthermore, the variation of the number of prompted LTs (5 vs. 11) showed no influence on the words' interpretations.

Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity (review)

Reviewed by: Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity Alexandra Pappas Michael Squire . Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xxvi, 515. $120.00. ISBN 978-0-521-75601-3. Squire's ambitious book on the complex relationship between the verbal and the visual both opens and concludes with instructive readings of modern advertising campaigns and their exploitation of the rich communicative capabilities of mixed media; while the advertising industry seems to understand clearly the symbiosis between words and images, most classical scholarship has mistreated this fundamental link, he argues. The counterintuitive frame of the contemporary is appropriate, for this is a provocative book that is currently relevant and sure to excite fruitful debate and future research—for classical philologists, classical art historians, art historians at large, and the interdisciplinary range of scholars engaged in word and image studies. With sweeping reviews of the theological and aesthetic histories of images and texts grounded by expertly developed case studies, Squire sets forth strategies for approaching the interrelationship of the seeable and the sayable in general, [End Page 513] and offers critical insights into Graeco-Roman examples in particular, some familiar, and some essentially untreated before now. The book is divided into three main parts. It begins by teasing out the origins of the word-image divide that has led many scholars to ask the wrong kinds of questions, in particular of antiquity (part I, 15-193). Squire's premise is deceptively simple and methodologically profound: the sixteenth-century Reformation privileged the verbal over the visual and asserted the necessity of reducing the visual into purely verbal terms as a means of knowing the divine. Ever since this theologically informed separation of form from content, Squire elaborates, scholars of images and texts—from the German aesthetic theorists Hegel and Kant to the historians of art Winckelmann and Lessing—have operated from this fundamental Lutheran premise of division, often unwittingly. This new critical approach gets us away from ill-formed treatments of images as simply "illustrating" texts (122-39), or of ecphrastic texts as purely verbal, literary phenomena (139-46), as recent scholarship has tended to do. Squire moves us toward readings that are sensitive to the interconnection and interdependence between visual and verbal cultures, that resist privileging one medium over the other and assuming a bipartite separation between them in the first place (189-90). Part 2 divides into two chapters that focus on inscribed texts in the same physical space as images, the full verbal-visual contexts of which have been largely neglected until now—a carved epigram amidst the sculptural groups in Tiberius' grotto at Sperlonga (202-38) and the epigrams alongside the paintings in the so-called "House of Propertius" at Assisi (239-93). Squire demonstrates, for example, how the audience viewing the paintings in the "House of Propertius" as a collection in turn would have read the appended epigrams as an assemblage as well—a process that pulled the reader-viewer in multiple programmatic directions and thus opened up potential responses rather than shut them down (291). The two chapters of part 3 shift slightly to examine how texts and images in Graeco-Roman antiquity that did not literally share the same space nonetheless still worked "through and against each other in related ways" (11). Here, Squire proves the point by analyzing as "iconotexts" various ecphrases of Philostratus' Imagines alongside Campanian wall paintings, first of Polyphemus (300-56), and next of food and other subjects categorized in antiquity as xenia and currently as "still life" paintings (357-428): readers of Philostratus' ecphrases of Polyphemus paintings would have brought their visual repertoire of actual paintings of Polyphemus to the experience, resulting in a multilayered reader-viewer response to Philostratus' tableaux as well as Polyphemus' own fraught history of viewing (352). Thus, xenia paintings, anything but "still," actively engaged Roman discourses about reality and representation, nature and art that invited careful navigations of what was real and what was not (e.g., 372). Squire's thesis about the multidirectional exchanges between images and texts persuades this reader. Some readers will want more than the relatively brief discussion of scholarship on word and image that...

‘I’ll do what they did”: Social norm information and cancer treatment decisions

ObjectiveUsing a cancer-treatment scenario, we tested whether descriptive norm information (e.g., the proportion of other people choosing a particular treatment) would influence people's hypothetical treatment choices. MethodsWomen from an Internet sample (Study 1 N=2238; Study 2 N=2154) were asked to imagine deciding whether to take adjuvant chemotherapy following breast cancer surgery. Across participants, we varied the stated proportion of women who chose chemotherapy. This descriptive norm information was presented numerically in Study 1 and non-numerically in Study 2. ResultsThe descriptive norm information influenced women's decisions, with higher interest in chemotherapy when social norm information suggested that such chemotherapy was popular. Exact statistics about other people's decisions had a greater effect than when norms were described using less precise verbal terms (e.g., “most women”). ConclusionProviding patients with information about what other people have done can significantly influence treatment choices, but the power of such descriptive norms depends on their precision. Practice implicationsCommunication of descriptive norms is only helpful if prevailing decisions in the population represent good clinical practice. Strategic presentation of such statistics, when available, may encourage patient outliers to modify their medical decisions in ways that result in improved outcomes.

L2 vocabulary learning through multimodal representations

The present study set out to discover how Iranian learners of the English language learn L2 vocabulary through laptop based delivery of multimodal items. To that end, learners were placed into four different short term memory (STM) ability groups, using Visual and Verbal Short Term Memory Test. Upon treatment, they were evaluated on their recognition and recall of vocabulary items. The results indicated that except for low visual and low verbal group, the other three groups treated with vocabulary items with pictorial or written annotations performed significantly better on the tests. The results suggest considering learners’ cognitive styles in teaching vocabulary. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

The Formation of Bach's Motifs: Chapter Two of Andr� Pirro's "L'Esth�tique de Jean-S�bastien Bach"

The Formation of Bach's Motifs: Chapter Two of André Pirro's L'Esthétique de Jean-Sébastien Bach Translated byJoeArmstrong A Note fromthe Editor As increasingly in the the study field of as sophisticated, text-music facile.Among relations itis these easy inBach's to are dismiss Albert music early Schweitzer's has ventures become increasingly sophisticated, itis easyto dismissearly ventures in the fieldas facile.Amongtheseare AlbertSchweitzer's J.S. Bachlemusicien poète (1905) andAndrePirro'sL'Esthétique de JeanS ébastien Bach(1907).Of thetwo,Schweitzer's isthebetter known, no doubtbecauseitappearedalmostimmediately inbothGermanand English translations (1908 and 1911, respectively) and has been steadily reprinted sincethen. It is unfortunate thatPirrois so litdeknownin the Englishspeaking world. WhilePirro'sdatesforthecantatas mustbe readwith caution,his commentson themusicareinsightful and wellworth consideration bythemodernreader.In 1957,whenMervynSavill translated AndréPirro's1906biography ofJ.S. Bach,hewrote: André Pirro (1869-1943) isconsidered oneofthemost important figures inthefield ofmusicology ofourtime. Born inSaint-Dizier, France, hestudied lawandletters andattended theorgan classes of CésarFranck attheParisConservatory. Latera member ofthe directing committee ofthe Schola Cantorum, in1912hesucceeded Romain Rolland asProfessor ofMusical History attheSorbonne. Of Pirro, Л Dictionary ofModern Music andMusicians says:"The historic andartistic valueofhisworks andthespirit animating them reveal himas oneofthemoststriking personalities among musicologists." 32 Bach's Motifs 33 Pirro's1906biography on Bach grewoutofhisearly interest in organplaying. The verynextyearhe completedL'esthétique deJeanS ébastien Bachas a dissertation forthe University of Paris.Three subsequentbooks confirmed Pirroas a leaderin modernFrench musicology: Dietrich Buxtehude (Paris, 1913/R),Schiit^ (Paris, 1913/R), and Les claveánistes: étude critique (Paris,1924/R).Otherpublications demonstrate an interest inearly music.The lastandmostsignificant oftheseis Histoire dela musique delafinduXlVe siècle à lafinduXVle (Paris,1940). For a timePirro'sL'Esthétique deJean-Sébastien Bachwas out of print;thenitbecame availableagainin theMinkoff Reprintseries (1973).1WhileSchweitzer's workhas been characterized as overly fanciful andevenconfusing,2 Pirro'sworkhasusually beenpraisedby thosewhoarefamiliar with it.As early as 1909EbenezerProutwrote: It is scarcely saying toomuchto saythat M. Pirroseemsto be acquainted with nearly every barofBach'smusic. Inproof ofthis itmaybe saidthat ofBach's190[sic] church cantatas, no fewer than182areeither quotedin theworkor referred to ina way which proves that theauthor isperfectly familiar with them.3 Now anEnglishtranslation isbeingcompleted byjoeArmstrong. To giveour readersa tasteof Armstrong's workto date,we offer Pirro'ssecondchapter, ofwhichSamuelBaronwrites: Typical ofPirro's methods isa study found inthesecond chapter ofL'Esthétique inwhich theauthor traces a cliché ofword-painting through many examples from different Bachcantatas andthereby reveals thebranching process that takes placeinthecomposer's imagination, a process that travels easily from theactual senseof ]Seereview by Paul Brainard, Early Music 14/4 (1986): 587. 2See, for example, Walter Emery's comments in"Bach's Symbolic Language," Music and betters 30/4 (1949): 345-54. André Pirro's 'inesthétique de Jean-Sébastien Bach"' Monthly Musical Recordé (1909): 53 asquoted inSamuel Baron, "Bach's Text Settings: Schweitzer andPirro Revisited," A Bach Tribute : Essays inHonor ofWilliam H. Scheide , eds.PaulBrainard andRay Robinson (Kassel/Chapel Hill: Bärenreiter/ Hinshaw, 1993), 2'š 34 Bach thewords tothefigurative sense, a process whereby a verbal term may bepictured andinterpreted atthesametime.4 Melvin Unger Pirro: L'Esthétique de Jean-Sébastien Bach Chapter Two: The Formation of Motifs The motifsof tonaland consonantcharacter. - Interpretation of themes composed of repeatednotes, of fragments of scales or arpeggios.- The meaningof alteredintervals. - The themesof distressand horror. - Chromaticmotifs. - Descendingchromatic series in seventeenthcenturyworks. - Despair and being overwhelmed.- Ascending chromaticmotifsand the idea of redemption, oftransfiguration through pain.- Longingandtears. In upon this certain chapter the cases ascending we we will have or study descending seenhow a less the notes apparent meanings thatcomprise element ofmotifs of them. depend interIn upon theascending ordescending notesthatcomprisethem.In this chapterwe will studya less apparentelementof interpretation : therelation ofthemes tothegeneral tonality ofthepassages inwhichthey appear.Whether itsnotesbe scale-wise orseparated by larger intervals, eachmotif canbe appreciated andqualified according tothelawthatcommonly governsnotesfollowing a certain orderof modality orharmony. Indeed,somesonorouscategories existwhere notesare foundin regular groupings, and on each notea majoror minorscalecanbe built inthecustomary organization. Motifs canbe formedin such a way thatthe regularelementsof these scales predominate andthenotessucceedeachotheraccording tothesame pitchesofthattonality, consistendy maintaining consonantrelations amongthemselves. Butthey also canbe constructed very differendy, andthecomposermayfrequendy buildthemfrom altered notesand mix dissonantmelodic intervalsinto them.Therefore, we must considertwo typesof motifs:the first, simple,easy to sing,and somehow seemingnatural;and the second, uneasy,unpleasant sounding, andhavinga harsheffect. 4Baron, "Bach's Text...

What is the Significance of Research for Music Education in Practice? On Relations between the Practice of and the Scientific Approach to Music Education

The relation between music pedagogy as a field of research and the practice of music education is characterized as a continuum ranging from remoteness through cooperation to full integration. A typology is drawn up (the where the relation is separate, co-operative, integrated ,or parallel). All these types of relationship are considered necessary. The distinctive task of music pedagogical research is to question, explore, and develop issues, conditions, and potentialities within the practice of music education by rendering them accessible to consciousness and conceptual thought in verbal terms. Consequently, it has to do its utmost not to degenerate into ideology. The role of teacher education is discussed. Examples show how research may matter to practical music teaching and learning. An overall conclusion is that the relationship in question should be marked by closeness and distance at the same time in order to ensure relevance as well as quality and integrity.

Does Using Nonnumerical Terms to Describe Risk Aid Violence Risk Communication?

Actuarial risk assessments yield valid numerical information about violence risk, but research suggests that forensic clinicians prefer to communicate risk using nonnumerical information (i.e., verbal terms such as high risk). In an experimental questionnaire study, 60 forensic clinicians disagreed on the interpretation of nonnumerical terms, and their nonnumerical risk estimates for one group of violent offenders were influenced by comparison with another group. Adding nonnumerical terms to numerical probability statements had no effect on hypothetical forensic decisions. These findings suggest that nonnumerical descriptive terms do not aid effective communication of violence risk and that contextual information might artificially affect estimated risk.

Game Face: Douglas Huebler and the Voiding of Photographic Portraiture

On December 17, 1972, Douglas Huebler took ten photographic portraits of the German photographer Bernd Becher. These portraits, together with a written statement, constitute Huebler's Variable Piece # 101. The statement explains how the work was made: Becher was asked to pose, in the following order, as: “a priest, a criminal, a lover, an old man, a policeman, an artist, Bernd Becher, a philosopher, a spy, and a nice guy.” After two months Huebler reordered the original sequence of photographs and sent them to Becher, asking him to “make the ‘correct’ associations with the given verbal terms.” Becher's reordered list of character types is listed on the statement as: “1. Bernd Becher; 2. Nice Guy; 3. Spy; 4. Old man; 5. Artist; 6. Policeman; 7. Priest; 8 Philosopher; 9. Criminal; 10. Lover.” The written statement explains all this. But more than a simple explanation, the statement is also constitutive of the work: “Ten photographs and this statement join together to constitute the final form of this piece.” Word and image combine, one playing off the other, to form Variable Piece #101.

Locating targets from imagined perspectives: Comparing labelling with pointing responses

Participants in two experiments adopted imagined perspectives in a perceptually available spatial scene and located targets by using either verbal terms (labelling) or arrows (pointing). Results revealed that performance was faster and more accurate for labelling than for pointing and more so when the adopted perspectives were misaligned with the physical orientation of the participant. This finding was obtained even when an orientation cue allowed participants to adopt the imagined perspective in advance of target presentation. A third experiment replicated these findings using traditional pointing and verbal responding. We argue that performance from misaligned perspectives in perspective-taking tasks suffers due to reference frame conflicts and that these conflicts are more pronounced with pointing and other manual responses that rely more on the reference frame of the physical body.

Verbal Labels Can Triple Perceived Risk in Clinical Trials

The purpose of this study was to assess whether the use of verbal descriptors, such as “common” and “rare” affects peoples perceptions of the risks involved in clinical trials as well as their likelihood of entering into the trial. Participants were required to imagine that they had a serious skin condition and being asked if they would take part in a clinical trial for a new drug. They were provided with some information about the trial and drug, in which the probability of side effects occurring was described using either verbal labels alone or verbal labels with associated numerical values. The results showed that those given just the verbal descriptors were significantly less satisfied with the information, perceived risk to be higher (by a factor of three) and benefit to health to be lower, and indicated that they would be significantly less likely to enter the trial. We recommend that patients are informed about the likelihood of potential risks using verbal terms linked with indicative frequency ranges

Integration of the stratigraphic aspects of very large sea-floor databases using information processing

Abstract Information-processing methods are described that integrate the stratigraphic aspects of large and diverse collections of sea-floor sample data. They efficiently convert common types of sea-floor data into database and GIS (geographical information system) tables, visual core logs, stratigraphic fence diagrams and sophisticated stratigraphic statistics. The input data are held in structured documents, essentially written core logs that are particularly efficient to create from raw input datasets. Techniques are described that permit efficient construction of regional databases consisting of hundreds of cores. The sedimentological observations in each core are located by their downhole depths (metres below sea floor — mbsf) and also by a verbal term that describes the sample ‘situation’ — a special fraction of the sediment or position in the core. The main processing creates a separate output event for each instance of top, bottom and situation, assigning top-base mbsf values from numeric or, where possible, from word-based relative locational information such as ‘core catcher’ in reference to sampler device, and recovery or penetration length. The processing outputs represent the sub-bottom as a sparse matrix of over 20 sediment properties of interest, such as grain size, porosity and colour. They can be plotted in a range of core-log programs including an in-built facility that better suits the requirements of sea-floor data. Finally, a suite of stratigraphic statistics are computed, including volumetric grades, overburdens, thicknesses and degrees of layering.

Performance measurement using linguistic terms in group decision-making

Due to their convenience, there is an increasing tendency towards the use of verbal terms by decision makers. In fact, verbal models have been extensively employed in decision systems. This paper presents a multi-person verbal model that focuses mainly on the behaviour of decision makers. We propose a systematic procedure to quantify the effects of their behaviour on the weights of verbal terms which cannot be analysed using statistical methods. An example concerning the aggregation of share analyst opinions on share recommendations is presented in this paper to show how the proposed model works. Also, the performance of the shares recommended by analysts is evaluated.

Editor's Column: Changes and Continuities in The Comparatist

In introducing my first issue of The Comparatist, I am deeply aware of the growth and development of the journal under the guidance of my predecessors. From its beginnings as a vehicle primarily for the publication of papers delivered at the annual conference of the Southern Comparative Literature Association to its status as a nationally and internationally recognized publication in the field, The Comparatist has been enriched by the editorial wisdom and hard work of Jeanne Smoot, Mechthild Cranston, Marcel Cornis-Pope, and John Burt Foster. The current issue introduces not only a new editor but also a major change in the journal's publication status: it is the first to be published by the University of North Carolina Press at Chapel Hill. The journal's new look and streamlined distribution, among other changes, come from the press's professional oversight. In addition, the journal has in a sense come home, in that it is now sponsored again by North Carolina State University at Raleigh, where it began. The contributions to this issue reflect certain traditions of the SCLA and of The Comparatist, together with innovative scholarship. From its inception, the SCLA conference offered sessions on literature and the other arts, as well as on East-West literary relations. The Comparatist has published a number of essays dealing with the relations of literature to visual arts and music and has been encouraging a more globalized approach to comparative literature. The essays here grouped under Inter-Art Relations and East /West Intersections offer fresh approaches as well as continuities in those fields. The question of comparative literature's relationship to cultural studies, which has preoccupied our discipline at least since the publication of the Bernheimer report ten years ago, has also been evident in the journal. The authors in the final grouping address that issue from divergent angles. Ben Stoltzfus's essay on Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jasper Johns approaches the traditional inter-art subject of literature and painting through the lenses of meta-fiction, autopoesis, and chaos theory. Robbe-Grillet's text La Cible is unique in that it incorporates and reworks in verbal terms items from Johns's painting Target With Plaster Casts. The visual and the verbal artist each restructures the apparently random elements in his composition through the orderly disorder described in chaos theory. Working against the grain of established doxa, both painting and text deconstruct meaning, while attaining higher levels of insight. Stolzfus provides new perspectives on this vital relationship. The possibilities of visual-verbal artistic interactions are illuminated from a different perspective in Corinne Andersen's comparison of Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas with the photograph by Man Ray that serves as its frontispiece. Using the comparison to refute traditional criticisms of The Autobiography as exemplifying Stein's monumental egotism, Andersen demonstrates how the construction of the photograph calls attention to and complements Stein's critique of autobiography as a genre purporting to be referential or to tell the truth. In Stoltzfus's and Andersen's esays, verbal and visual languages appear to refract each other while constructing their own realities. The East-West comparative axis that seemed clearly delineated years ago has become more complex in our current understanding of global configurations, where the identity of the cardinal points is not always so clear and the interactions among cultures is more frequent. Two types of East-West intersections are emphasized in the essays under the second rubric, edited by John Burt Foster, Jr. Ling Chung also uses visuals to help illustrate the far-Western poet Gary Snyder's encounter with Eastern religions by way of perceived correspondences between Native-American and Asian shamanism. Moving between anthropology and literature, Chung demonstrates how experience with shamans not only influenced Snyder's personal life but also how shamanistic initiation rites are embedded in the deep structure of his poetry. …