Aphasia rehabilitation and the strange neglect of speed.

Timing data is infrequently reported in aphasiological literature and time taken is only a minor factor, where it is considered at all, in existing aphasia assessments. This is not surprising because reaction times are difficult to obtain manually, but it is a pity, because speed data should be indispensable in assessing the severity of language processing disorders and in evaluating the effects of treatment. This paper argues that reporting accuracy data without discussing speed of performance gives an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of any cognitive function. Moreover, in deciding how to treat, when to continue treatment and when to cease therapy, clinicians should have regard to both parameters: Speed and accuracy of performance. Crerar, Ellis and Dean (1996) reported a study in which the written sentence comprehension of 14 long-term agrammatic subjects was assessed and treated using a computer-based microworld. Some statistically significant and durable treatment effects were obtained after a short amount of focused therapy. Only accuracy data were reported in that (already long) paper, and interestingly, although it has been a widely read study, neither referees nor subsequent readers seemed to miss "the other side of the coin": How these participants compared with controls for their speed of processing and what effect treatment had on speed. This paper considers both aspects of the data and presents a tentative way of combining treatment effects on both accuracy and speed of performance in a single indicator. Looking at rehabilitation this way gives us a rather different perspective on which individuals benefited most from the intervention. It also demonstrates that while some subjects are capable of utilising metalinguistic skills to achieve normal accuracy scores even many years post-stroke, there is little prospect of reducing the time taken to within the normal range. Without considering speed of processing, the extent of this residual functional impairment can be overlooked.

William Hope Hodgson's borderlands: monstrosity, other worlds, and the future at the fin de siècle.

William Hope Hodgson has generally been understood as the author of several atmospheric sea-horror stories and two powerful but flawed horror science fiction novels. There has been no substantial study analysing the historical and cultural context of his fiction or its place in the Gothic, horror, and science fiction literary traditions. Through analysing the theme of borderlands, this thesis contextualises Hodgson’s novels and short stories within these traditions and within late Victorian cultural discourse. Liminal other world realms, boundaries of corporeal monstrosity, and the imagined future of the world form key elements of Hodgson’s fiction, reflecting the currents of anxiety and optimism characterising fin-de-siècle British society. Hodgson’s early career as a sailor and his interest in body-building and physical culture colour his fiction. Fin-de-siècle discourses of evolution, entropy, spiritualism, psychical research, and the occult also influence his ideas. In The House on the Borderland (1908) and The Night Land (1912), the known world brushes against other forms of reality, exposing humanity to incomprehensible horrors. In The Ghost Pirates (1909), the sea forms a liminal region on the borderland of materiality and immateriality in which other world encounters can take place. In The Night Land and The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ (1907), evolution gives rise to strange monstrous forms existing on the borderlines of species and identity. In Hodgson’s science fiction—The House on the Borderland and The Night Land—the future of the earth forms a temporal borderland of human existence shaped by fin-de-siècle fears of entropy and the heat-death of the sun. Alongside the work of other writers such as H. G. Wells and Arthur Machen, Hodgson’s four novels respond to the borderland discourses of the fin de siècle, better enabling us to understand the Gothic literature of the period as well as Hodgson’s position as a writer who offers a unique imaginative perspective on his contemporary culture.

The Museum of Atheism.

It is Christmas Eve in a mountainous, isolated prison community, the day of the baby beauty pageant. Ava is the star attraction. She's six years old. Ava's older brother Jonny hears strange noises in the attic and sees his father go out late at night with a gun with their lodger, prison warden Leo. Daniel, a man who repairs sex dolls for a living, has just moved into the area and he is Ava's biggest fan. There are rabid, wild foxes roaming the area, terrorising the community. The action culminates in a bizarre fetish party at the local strip club, a fox cull and the death of Ava. Finally, the secrets of her life are revealed.