Vocal Inflections Research Articles

Telling the Patient's Story: using theatre training to improve case presentation skills

A medical student's ability to present a case history is a critical skill that is difficult to teach. Case histories presented without theatrical engagement may fail to catch the attention...

Shakespeare on Silent Film: An Excellent Dumb Discourse (review)

Reviewed by: Shakespeare on Silent Film: An Excellent Dumb Discourse Emmie McFadden Judith Buchanan . Shakespeare on Silent Film: An Excellent Dumb Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. xxiii + 316 + 57 b/w illus. $99.00. Shakespeare on Silent Film: An Excellent Dumb Discourse is Judith Buchanan's second monograph on Shakespeare film adaptations. Her previous work, Shakespeare on Film (2005), includes two chapters on silent Shakespeare, and these are radically revised and rewritten for a new delivery in a book dedicated exclusively to Shakespeare films made during the silent era (1899-1927). The book also serves as a companion piece to the British Film Institute Silent Shakespeare DVD [End Page 245] (2004)—a collection of seven silent Shakespeare films with both introduction and commentary provided by Buchanan. There was an audience for silent Shakespeare: Buchanan counts between 250 to 300 films based on Shakespearean material during cinema's silent era, and over the course of seven chapters, she examines why Shakespeare was such an attractive source for silent film. The idea of wordless Shakespeare productions might seem paradoxical on first conception, but as the subtitle of Buchanan's monograph reminds us, character muteness is a phenomenon already explored in Shakespearean drama. It is Alonso's dialogue from The Tempest that Buchanan borrows for her title on silent Shakespeare films, and through the use of a pleasurable incongruity, Shakespeare's words bridge us to the concept of a wordless Shakespeare. Later in the preface, Buchanan seizes another opportunity to recall Lavinia from Titus Andronicus, who, dismembered of her hands and tongue, is unable to communicate through voice, and as a result her "signs, winks, nods and kneelings" replace her verbal discourse (1). Upon remembering that wordlessness is an occurrence already explored in Shakespeare's plays, the feeling that we are being presented with a novel and incongruous idea is dispelled. At the same time, the mere thought of Shakespeare without words has the potential to incite feelings of violation or to evoke sentiments of loss. This is not a book that laments the muting of Shakespeare. There are no expressions of bereavement, only articulations of gain. As foregrounded by Alonso and Lavinia, in the absence of the spoken word a variety of other expressions emerge that are equally Shakespearean in content. The book covers a range of British, American, Italian, and German productions, which are separated chronologically into the pioneering years of cinema (1805-1906), the transitional years of cinema (1907-13), the 1916 tercentenary, and the later silent films of the 1920s, with Buchanan's research offering exhaustive examinations into the marketing, distribution, exhibition, and reception of the films. In an endeavor to press us to rethink the ways in which we experience Shakespeare, Buchanan presents engaging, in-depth and lively analyses of the nonlinguistic dimensions of Shakespeare films of the silent era. Opening with an account of the nineteenth-century legacy of magic lantern productions of Shakespeare plays, Buchanan notes that artistic nuances seemingly unique to silent cinema actually derive from and share many similarities with theater. Drawing on performance conventions associated with the nineteenth-century stage, actors are seen to perform words through stylized gestures and other acting codes that have become familiar through theater. Buchanan then recalls the speech act ban, which monitored the spoken word onstage during the Restoration, and she supplies examples of difficulties surrounding the delivery of dramatic dialogue prior to the arrival of silent film. In order to evade the policing of words during the speech act ban, innovative methods were required, and linen scrolls became an alternate way to supply dialogue. The use of linen scrolls can [End Page 246] be seen to anticipate the cinematic intertitle, and as Buchanan notes, the effect of the dialogue scrolls in each case was remarkably similar: In both instances, words were stripped of vocal inflection and performance emphasis, and became instead part of the visual scheme of the piece. Like the earlier stage scrolls, intertitles were similarly to impose a temporary interruption of the performed action in order to supply dialogue, plot, summary or location report in written form. The alternative suspension of action and dialogue that the intertitles of silent film brought in...

Contextualizing eighteenth century Enlightenment through the lenses of contemporary science

Leonid Perlovsky’s hypothesis that music evolved from “a split in the vocalizations of proto-humans into two types: one less emotional and more concretely-semantic, evolving into language, and the other preserving emotional connections along with semantic ambiguity, evolving into music” bears remarkable resemblances to French Enlightenment philosophy [1]. It is surprising that classic philosophers such as Etienne Bonnot de Condillac and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were not cited in this paper. By the mid of the 1700s, in his Essai sur l’origine des connaissances humaines [2], Condillac depicted the earliest spoken languages as being composed of action-orientated vocal inflections such as warnings, cries for help and shouts of pleasure. They did not use consonants but vowel-like intonations. Condillac suggested that early hominids did not prioritize the invention of different utterances (or ‘words’), but tended to use a short repertoire of utterances with different variations in pitch and timbre in order to express different things. In contemporary music theory these variations are considered as important carriers of musical emotions. Also in the eighteenth century, Rousseau suggested that vocal utterances of early hominids expressed primarily feelings (e.g., “I am sad. . .”), whilst gestures were normally preferred to express rational thoughts (e.g., “Brrr. . . It is getting cold. Let’s make a fire!”). Like Condillac, Rousseau proposed that primeval languages might have sounded like melodies of vowel-like utterances. However, he offered an interesting explanation for the emergence of consonants: as hominids’ dealings with one another grew in complexity, spoken language needed to become less passionate and more precise. In his Essai sur l’origine des langues [3], Rousseau argued that the emergence of sophisticated languages was motivated by the increasing necessity for social bonding. Within this bonding process, the amount of tone variations decreased, giving rise to the appearance of consonants. New articulations needed to be formed, and consequently grammatical rules for making sequences of utterances soon emerged. As language followed the path of logical argumentation, those melodic aspects of the primordial utterances evolved into music instead. Music thus developed from the sounds of passionate speech.

Effects of damping head movement and facial expression in dyadic conversation using real–time facial expression tracking and synthesized avatars

When people speak with one another, they tend to adapt their head movements and facial expressions in response to each others' head movements and facial expressions. We present an experiment in which confederates' head movements and facial expressions were motion tracked during videoconference conversations, an avatar face was reconstructed in real time, and naive participants spoke with the avatar face. No naive participant guessed that the computer generated face was not video. Confederates' facial expressions, vocal inflections and head movements were attenuated at 1 min intervals in a fully crossed experimental design. Attenuated head movements led to increased head nods and lateral head turns, and attenuated facial expressions led to increased head nodding in both naive participants and confederates. Together, these results are consistent with a hypothesis that the dynamics of head movements in dyadicconversation include a shared equilibrium. Although both conversational partners were blind to the manipulation, when apparent head movement of one conversant was attenuated, both partners responded by increasing the velocity of their head movements.

The role of observational research in improving faculty lecturing skills: A qualitative study in an Italian dental school

Background: This pilot study is based on observational research of lecturing skills during the annual Oral Medicine course at the Milan Dentistry School.Aims: Our goals were to explore how teachers exhibited desirable lecturing skills, to observe how their attitudes and lecturing skills affected students’ attention and thereby learning, and to provide feedback.Method: We prepared a structured observational grid divided into four categories: explaining, questioning, visual aids, and lecturer attitude. The grid was filled in by a participant, nonactive researcher.Results: Two main types of lecture were observed: “traditional” and “interactive”. Both of these can result in a high level of attention among students. Among the categories, only “lecturer attitude” appeared to affect student attention. In particular, the skills of “speaking aloud” and “sustaining verbal communication with vocal inflection” appeared to have the greatest impact on lecturer attitude. The data were then presented blindly to the five lecturers, who were able to identify their own lesson.Conclusions: Our grid proved to be a valid instrument although it was very expensive. When integrated with other strategies for improving lecturing, such as student scoring, peer evaluation, and microteaching, observational research can be a cost-effective method to stimulate guided reflection and to improve the lecturing skills of faculty members.

Sound recording and the end of the Italian Lohengrin

ABSTRACTThis article compares early and mid twentieth-century Italian-language recordings of Lohengrin excerpts with German-language recordings of the same period. The production and distribution of Italian-language recordings in the United States is an extension of nineteenth-century practices, in which ‘national styles’ of singing were detachable from specific repertoires. Preserving characteristic vocal inflections and distinctive interpretations, these recordings give insight into the intersections and conflicts between the various national performing traditions that were so important to nineteenth-century operatic life. The interpretative diversity of these recordings is an index of the extent to which performance traditions and individual character were markers of cultural (and economic) value in the first decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on Elsa’s Dream and the Grail Narration, I show how this interpretative diversity declined dramatically during the course of the twentieth century. This decline was precipitated by a number of factors, including the introduction of the LP disc in 1948. But the decline of the Italian Lohengrin also attests to a paradigm shift essential to the reception of classical music in the United States: from the idea that the recording is a reproduction of a voice to one in which it functions primarily as a realization of the composer’s score.

The Power of a Song

The 4-year-olds gathered on the rug in response to the teacher’s singing cue (see Figure 1). Savannah, however, got distracted by a tambourine and spontaneously began tapping the rhythm while the rest of us sang (see Figure 2). This is not an unusual event when music is a regular part of the preschool environment. But it always feels like a small miracle when—without formal instruction in meter, beat, rhythm, or tambourine playing—a young child, caught up in the excitement of the moment, performs them all. Savannah was demonstrating examples of emerging music literacy. But of equal interest is that at the same time, each tap on the tambourine represented one syllable in language (syllabication). The heavier and lighter taps represented stress patterns in language. In one simple, spontaneous act, a 4-year-old child was demonstrating not only emerging music literacy but also emerging language literacy. And it all began with a song. A careful study of folk songs is revealing. Generally, it is the language that determines how the music will go. The rhythm, stress patterns, and phrases of the words dictate the rhythm, meter, and phrases of the music. Often the vocal inflections of the spoken words are imitated in the pitch direction of the melody. At the same time, the music intensifies the language. Each syllable of every word is strengthened by the music. The music also gives power to the meaning of the words. The children demonstrate their awareness of meaning by responding in movement. The phrase structure of the words is intensified by the musical phrases, and the natural inflections of the words are often enhanced by the melodic direction. Think of traditional children’s songs such as “Teddy Bear” or “The Wheels on the Bus.” Speak the words and notice the natural rhythm of the words. The rhythm of the song reflects the spoken language. The flow of the language is also represented in the music. “Wheels” has more emphasis than “the” when spoken. The pick-up in the music emphasizes that stress pattern. Notice that the vocal inflection when you say “teddy bear” descends or “the wheels” ascends or “round and round” descends. The melodies take the same spoken shape. Finally, consider the vocabulary and meaning taught through the singing and acting out of the words. One might say that song is simply language intensified. Helping early childhood teachers understand that singing is language development as well as music development may encourage them to provide more singing experiences with those for whom they care. Songs can also be a bridge to reading. Just as reading stories to children prepares them to understand that words can be written, so exposing them to actual music symbols helps them come to understand that songs can be written. But because the song is really language enhanced by music, beginning symbols for songs provide opportunity for language reading. One of the many ways to encourage “reading” of songs is to combine pictures, icons, and words on a mat for child exploration. The first “Teddy Bear” mat (Figure 3) provides an example. After children know the song well, show them the mat asking them what they notice. Recognize each response, and then sing the song while following the symbols. Place the mat in the free-play General Music Today Volume 21 Number 2 Winter 2008 35-38 © 2008 MENC: The National Association for Music Education 10.1177/1048371308317050

Vocal Analysis and Heart Rate as Measures of Assertiveness and Aggression

This study examined the relationship between assertiveness and such physiological features as heart rate and vocal inflections(pitch and intensity). The vocal data were assessed from a first person simulation in which participants interacted with video-based characters. During the simulation, the participants' partner (friend, family member, or acquaintance) completed inventories that asked their perceptions of the participant's assertiveness and aggressiveness for the scenes. Results found heart rate and mean intensity of speech were unique indicators of peer-rated aggressiveness. Also, standard deviation in pitch and heart rate accounted for unique variance in peer-rated assertiveness. The results suggest that physiological and verbal measures may be a useful means of distinguishing between assertiveness and aggressiveness of team members.

The Neural Substrates of Impaired Prosodic Detection in Schizophrenia and Its Sensorial Antecedents

Individuals with schizophrenia show severe deficits in their ability to decode emotions based upon vocal inflection (affective prosody). This study examined neural substrates of prosodic dysfunction in schizophrenia with voxelwise analysis of diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Affective prosodic performance was assessed in 19 patients with schizophrenia and 19 comparison subjects with the Voice Emotion Identification Task (VOICEID), along with measures of basic pitch perception and executive processing (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test). Diffusion tensor MRI fractional anisotropy valves were used for voxelwise correlation analyses. In a follow-up experiment, performance on a nonaffective prosodic perception task was assessed in an additional cohort of 24 patients and 17 comparison subjects. Patients showed significant deficits in VOICEID and Distorted Tunes Task performance. Impaired VOICEID performance correlated significantly with lower fractional anisotropy values within primary and secondary auditory pathways, orbitofrontal cortex, corpus callosum, and peri-amygdala white matter. Impaired Distorted Tunes Task performance also correlated with lower fractional anisotropy in auditory and amygdalar pathways but not prefrontal cortex. Wisconsin Card Sorting Test performance in schizophrenia correlated primarily with prefrontal fractional anisotropy. In the follow-up study, significant deficits were observed as well in nonaffective prosodic performance, along with significant intercorrelations among sensory, affective prosodic, and nonaffective measures. Schizophrenia is associated with both structural and functional disturbances at the level of primary auditory cortex. Such deficits contribute significantly to patients' inability to decode both emotional and semantic aspects of speech, highlighting the importance of sensorial abnormalities in social communicatory dysfunction in schizophrenia.

The Neural Substrates of Impaired Prosodic Detection in Schizophrenia and Its Sensorial Antecedents

Objective: Individuals with schizophrenia show severe deficits in their ability to decode emotions based upon vocal inflection (affective prosody). This study examined neural substrates of prosodic dysfunction in schizophrenia with voxelwise analysis of diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Method: Affective prosodic performance was assessed in 19 patients with schizophrenia and 19 comparison subjects with the Voice Emotion Identification Task (VOICEID), along with measures of basic pitch perception and executive processing (Wisconsin Card Sorting Test). Diffusion tensor MRI fractional anisotropy valves were used for voxelwise correlation analyses. In a follow-up experiment, performance on a nonaffective prosodic perception task was assessed in an additional cohort of 24 patients and 17 comparison subjects. Results: Patients showed significant deficits in VOICEID and Distorted Tunes Task performance. Impaired VOICEID performance correlated significantly with lower fractional anisotropy values within primary and secondary auditory pathways, orbitofrontal cortex, corpus callosum, and peri-amygdala white matter. Impaired Distorted Tunes Task performance also correlated with lower fractional anisotropy in auditory and amygdalar pathways but not prefrontal cortex. Wisconsin Card Sorting Test performance in schizophrenia correlated primarily with prefrontal fractional anisotropy. In the follow-up study, significant deficits were observed as well in nonaffective prosodic performance, along with significant intercorrelations among sensory, affective prosodic, and nonaffective measures. Conclusions: Schizophrenia is associated with both structural and functional disturbances at the level of primary auditory cortex. Such deficits contribute significantly to patients’ inability to decode both emotional and semantic aspects of speech, highlighting the importance of sensorial abnormalities in social communicatory dysfunction in schizophrenia.

Regulating and Negotiating in T'urot'u, a Korean Popular Song Style

T'Arot'u (its name derived from the Korean pronunciation of the English, trot) is a South Korean sentimental love song style performed with an abundance of vocal inflections. While this popular music has existed in the music scene of Korea for more than eight decades, it has been received differently at different times throughout its history. For instance, t'irot'u enjoyed its heyday as the dominant Korean popular music until the 1970s, and it remains popular particularly among older adults (s6ngin) and working people (s6min). According to a survey by the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) program Kayosho (Popular Song Show) in 2003, 64 out of 100 of the all-time favorite Korean popular songs were t'arot'a songs.' Hence, this grassroots popular music genre can be easily heard in such spaces as taxis, buses, marketplaces, local festivals, and noraebang (private rooms for karaoke). In addition, the social meaning of t'Yrot'a has been complicated by its relations to successive ideological structures of Korea, such as the elite nationalism of the Japanese colonial period (1910-45), the cultural imperialism of the Cold War period (1950s-1970s), and the strategic essentialism of the military dictatorship (1960s-1980s). In the beginning, even though the song style was well accepted particularly by the urban bourgeoisie during the period of modernization, the early elite nationalists considered it to be a cultural threat. Since the nationalists during the Japanese colonial period intended to canonize traditional Korean music as a high-modern Korean culture, they worried about the impact of modern popular music and favored the resurrection of traditional musics (Robinson 1998, 372). Later, in 1984, the early elite nationalists' standpoint strongly influenced the postcolonial debate over the nationality of t'arot'a.2 In fact, the postcolonial argument has relentlessly been the main issue of t'arot'a since the introduction of governmental censorship in the 1960s. During the dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s, the government viewed t'arot'u as a cultural vestige of the Japanese colony that needed to be erased. As seen in a number of cultural theses

Impression Henry Irving: The Performance in the Portrait by Jules Bastien-Lepage

A s star actor and manager of the Lyceum Theatre, Henry was among the most dominant theatrical figures of his time. His command of the Lyceum, its repertoire, company constituency, and artistic presentation was, in the tradition of the British actor/manager, absolute. His reign there lasted from 1878 until 1899, from the time he was forty until he was sixty-one, six years prior to his death. was, however, not only powerful but controversial. His choice of plays was limited for the most part to Shakespeare and select melodramas, notably to works that featured roles presumably suited to his own particular talents and inclinations. George Bernard Shaw carried on a vociferous and well-documented argument with that, among other matters, pertained to the latter's lack of interest in introducing new works-including plays by Henrik Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, or by Shaw himself. And, in spite of his considerable success and popular reception in roles from Shylock to Mephistopheles to Mathias in The Bells (1871), was not a consistent critical favorite. Although lauded for the strength and magnetic force of his stage presence, and for his success in given roles, he was critiqued and even satirized, in print and in illustrative caricature, for a range of perceived abnormalities and eccentricities having to do with his walk, tempo, vocal inflections, and range of expression and gesture-that is, for the most fundamental elements of an actor's instrument, physicalization, and interpretive choices. Ellen Terry recounts what the actor said to her once, as they were traveling together on tour in America: was thinking... how strange it is that I should have made the reputation I have as an actor, with nothing to help me -with no equipment. My legs, my voice-everything has been against me. For an actor who can't walk, can't talk, and has no face to speak of, I've done pretty well (qtd. in Story 108). Terry herself echoed the actor's own assessment: Irving at

A touch of the future: contact-expressive devices

Contact-expressive devices could improve our lives-from practical improvements that let us interact with devices when other modalities are impossible, inappropriate, or inadequate to devices that have important consequences for physical well-being. We can also imagine using contact expressions in devices that are pleasurable, playful, artistic, or otherwise important to a human's experience. This paper discusses the technical development of sensor-motor systems, tactile interfaces, and technologies that can embody and understand affect. Contact-expressive devices are technologies that understand and use touch in meaningful ways-that can distinguish between a press and a caress. Also discussed are the following issues: technical requirements and the nature of contact expressions. Although a fairly large body of research exists regarding nonverbal communication, the majority of this work is on visual expression (facial expressions, physical appearance, direction of gaze, physical posture, and other visible forms of body language) and paralinguistics (such as vocal inflection, pitch, volume, and speech rate). Work needs to begin on studies of human contact with the goal of leveraging those insights for the design of contact-expressive devices-and work needs to begin on the implementation of technologies that have rich contact-expressive range and appeal.

A comparison of clinical ratings with vocal acoustic measures of flat affect and alogia

In this report we compare clinical ratings of flat affect and alogia with objective measures of the patient's speech prosody and productivity. Thirty schizophrenic patients were evaluated with the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and the St. Hans Rating Scale for extra pyramidal side effects. Their speech was recorded and analyzed acoustically for measures of prosody and productivity. Correlations between pairs of SANS items and acoustic measures (e.g. Vocal Inflection and Fundamental Frequency Variance) were weak. The SANS item and global ratings were strongly related. Ratings of bradykinesia overlapped with the SANS ratings but not with the acoustic measures. The SANS ratings appear to be derived from global impressions, with diffuse confounding of flat affect with alogia, and with bradykinesia. Acoustic analysis has the potential to provide objective measures that may help develop operational definitions of these constructs and enhance clinical assessment.

Understanding Media in 1805: Audiovisual Hallucination in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"

Since [Scott], since a certain break or rapture that took place with [Scott], [poetry] is no longer what was understood by this word, but rather agency (or insistence) of letter in unconscious. [Poetry] is letter and hence what passes in and through unconscious.(1) I LIKE TO THINK OF THE LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL AS THE GREAT UNREAD poem of romantic period for several reasons, each of which puts a different pressure on key terms of that phrase, the unread poem. Perhaps least important of terms for my discussion is great; to advertise an unread, untaught text as great is usually merely to insist that it is qualitatively indistinguishable from texts that are already anthologized, taught, written about. But to examine concept of literary greatness in relation to Scott's Lay is valuable, I wish to suggest, because Scott's own literary career--from collector and editor of Minstrelsy of Scottish Border to his rise to prominence as single most popular poet of first decade of (British) nineteenth century to his abdication as Parnassus' chief and self-reinvention as anonymous Author of Waverley and world's most popular novelist--appears to offer an allegory of historical fortunes of conception of itself. The absence of a theory of poem seems to me a glaring blank in critical discourses of cultural studies and print culture, for, with exception of John Guillory's fine account of development of a vernacular canon in Mute Inglorious Miltons chapter of Cultural Capital and Susan Stewart's Notes on Distressed Genres, there has been little reflection on persistence in 1800 and after of what would appear, by most contemporary accounts, to be outmoded medium of poem.(2) Consider extent to which Enlightenment theories of origin of languages regarded poetry as most archaic form of discourse, and meter and rhyme chiefly as mnemonic devices for preservation of cultural history in absence of writing. The problematic archaism of a written poetry culminates with development in eighteenth century of print capitalism as a truly massive medium. Influential arguments advanced by Habermas and Anderson, among others, about normativizing and nationalizing effects of print culture presuppose that print is a more or less silent medium; by silencing actual speech differences--class, provincial, and gendered vocal inflections--print is medium of a virtual community of speakers.(3) Within such a framework, poetry's identification with residual sound effects of meter and rhyme--especially those rhymes that, as in Burns and Scott, play upon northern pronunciation--seems to threaten Enlightenment ideal of transparent communication. The most widespread solution to this evident dilemma is to identify poetry as language of passions; poetry represents that excited utterance which, according to grammarians of eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, is registered in prose only by unmeaning interjection (oh!, ah! alas!).(4) We might see here a kind of mental geography of uneven development working in concert with familiar Enlightenment and romantic ethnographic interest in rural; in same way that oral history projects like Scott's Minstrelsy attempt to fix and preserve vanishing traces of folk expression, so (written) lyric comes to be seen as an attempt to arrest semiotic babble and rapid evanishments of emotion. One understands almost immediately, in this context, transitional function of Scott's and Lake School's attempts to reanimate lyric by linking it with ballad tradition, with oral traditions still part of low and rustic life. But question remains: given prevalent understanding of poetry as a medium, as a specifically oral medium to be eventually supplanted by more efficient media of writing and of typography, how might poetry claim any but a marginal position (antiquarian or domestic) in print culture? …

On the road towards unity: the Trucial states from a British perspective, 1960–66

The United Arab Emirates, a union of Trucial States was formed in 1971, with the subsequent addition of Ras al Khaimah. Although the United Arab Emirates emerged as a stable, thriving nation-state, in 1960, at the beginning of what was to be Britain's last decade in the Arab Gulf, the future of the area was uncertain, the possibility of successful union doubtful. Covering an area of 32,000 square miles, the seven sheikhdoms that united to create the Trucial States, Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al Qaiwain, had long-standing treaties with Great Britain, the earliest made in 1820. Her Majesty's Government was responsible for the external affairs of these sheikhdoms, a responsibility carried out through the Political Resident in the Persian Gulf and Political Agents in the Trucial States. Although London recognized the right of the Rulers to control their own internal affairs there was 'an unconcealed expectation on the British side that the Political Resident's advice would be listened to; and the boundary between offering advice and enforcing it may have been as narrow as a vocal inflection'.' In 1960 the British had three major goals in the Trucial States: the preservation of stability, development of potential oil resources, and elimination of support for Arab Nationalism as promoted by champions of Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser. To achieve these ends, the British encouraged Trucial State rulers to improve the quality of life in their territories and to work together to achieve unity. Considerable British attention focused on the rulers of the two most important Trucial States, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Shakhbut al Nahyan, posed a special problem for British officials. Although oil had been found in his sheikhdom and Sheikh Shakhbut was receiving income from Trucial States Petroleum Development, Ltd., and Abu Dhabi Marine Areas Ltd., companies in the process of developing his oil fields, the Ruler refused to spend money on sorely needed public projects. Nor was he willing to spend money on his own family. When

Core negative symptoms and social functioning: West london first-episode schizophrenia study

Whereas the instability of positive symptoms over time is well recognized, the instability of negative symptoms is still debated. This controversy could be due to the fact that different negative symptoms have been studied in different phases of schizophrenia. We, therefore, hypothesized that some negative symptoms would improve whereas others would remain perfectly stable during the remission of the acute phase of illness. We further hypothesized that the changes in these negative symptoms would be linked to changes in other domains such as extrapyramidal, depressive and positive symptomatology. A broadly defined sample of schizophrenic patients was evaluated at admission and discharge of the hospital with the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symtoms (SAPS), the Montgomery and Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and the Extrapyramidal Symptoms Rating Scale (ESRS). Doses of antipsychotic medications were converted into chlorpromazine-equivalents. Fifty-seven patients (mean age 40.3 years old) were included in the sample and followed-up during their hospitalization. All the sub-scores of the SANS-SAPS decreased significantly but 4 items of the SANS belonging to the affective flattening subscale (unchanging facial expression, decreased spontaneous movements, paucity of expressive gestures and lack of vocal inflections) and one item belonging to the alogia subscale (poverty of speech) did not vary significantly, showing the necessity of taking into account the individual items of the SANS rather than the subscale scores to evaluate the course of negative symptoms. Changes in all the SANS subscores except the alogia subscore were associated with variations in scores of other scales. The change in attentional subscores was positively correlated to the change in the positive formal thought disorder subscores, probably because both belong to the same syndrome. The change in affective flattening subscores was associated with changes in depressive and akinetic scores and 28% of the variance of the change in the affective flattening subscores was explained by the change in the MADRS scores. Changes in avolition-apathy and anhedonia subscores were also associated with changes in MADRS scores but not with the change in akinesia scores.

Negative symptoms in schizophrenia: their evolution during an acute phase

Whereas the instability of positive symptoms over time is well recognized, the instability of negative symptoms is still debated. This controversy could be due to the fact that different negative symptoms have been studied in different phases of schizophrenia. We, therefore, hypothesized that some negative symptoms would improve whereas others would remain perfectly stable during the remission of the acute phase of illness. We further hypothesized that the changes in these negative symptoms would be linked to changes in other domains such as extrapyramidal, depressive and positive symptomatology. A broadly defined sample of schizophrenic patients was evaluated at admission and discharge of the hospital with the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symtoms (SAPS), the Montgomery and Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and the Extrapyramidal Symptoms Rating Scale (ESRS). Doses of antipsychotic medications were converted into chlorpromazine-equivalents. Fifty-seven patients (mean age 40.3 years old) were included in the sample and followed-up during their hospitalization. All the sub-scores of the SANS-SAPS decreased significantly but 4 items of the SANS belonging to the affective flattening subscale (unchanging facial expression, decreased spontaneous movements, paucity of expressive gestures and lack of vocal inflections) and one item belonging to the alogia subscale (poverty of speech) did not vary significantly, showing the necessity of taking into account the individual items of the SANS rather than the subscale scores to evaluate the course of negative symptoms. Changes in all the SANS subscores except the alogia subscore were associated with variations in scores of other scales. The change in attentional subscores was positively correlated to the change in the positive formal thought disorder subscores, probably because both belong to the same syndrome. The change in affective flattening subscores was associated with changes in depressive and akinetic scores and 28% of the variance of the change in the affective flattening subscores was explained by the change in the MADRS scores. Changes in avolition-apathy and anhedonia subscores were also associated with changes in MADRS scores but not with the change in akinesia scores.

The Converse of the Pen: Acts of Intimacy in the Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter.

Though historians of English literature have long labeled eighteenth century golden age of letter writing, few have paid more than lip service to unique epistolary craftsmanship of period. Bruce Redford corrects this omission with first sustained investigation of eighteenth-century familiar letter as a literary form in its own right. His study supplies reader with a critical approach and biographical perspective for appreciating genre that defined an era. Redford examines six masters of talking letter: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, William Cowper, Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole, James Boswell, and Samuel Johnson. All seek paradoxical goal of artful spontaneity. Each exploits distinctive resources of eighteenth-century letter writer: a flexible conversational manner, a repertoire of literary and social allusion, a flair for dramatic impersonation. The voices of these letter writers make distance, presence, in Samuel Richardson's phrase, by devising substitutes for gesture, vocal inflection, and physical context, turning each letter into a performance an act. The resulting verbal constructs create a mysterious tension between claims of fact and possibilities of art. Redford recovers a neglected literary form and makes possible a deeper understanding of major eighteenth-century writers who devoted much of their talent and time to the converse of pen.

Old books

Lecture on the Analysis of Vocal Inflections. By Ebenezer Porter, D. D. Andover, 1824. An Analysis of the Principles of Rhetorical Delivery. By Ebenezer Porter, D. D. Andover, 1827. Lectures on Eloquence and Style. By Ebenezer Porter, D. D. Revised for publication by Rev. Lyman Matthews. Andover, 1836.