The death of John Stuart Mill

This article surveys the fiercely contested posthumous assessments of John Stuart Mill in the newspaper and periodical press, in the months following his death in May 1873, and elicits the broader intellectual context. Judgements made in the immediate wake of Mill's death influence biographers and historians to this day and provide an illuminating aperture into the politics and shifting ideological forces of the period. The article considers how Mill's failure to control his posthumous reputation demonstrates both the inextricable intertwining of politics and character in the 1870s, and the difficulties his allies faced. In particular, it shows the sharp division between Mill's middle and working class admirers; the use of James Mill's name as a rebuke to his son; the redefinition of Malthusianism in the 1870s; and how publication of Mill's Autobiography damaged his reputation. Finally, the article considers the relative absence of both theological and Darwinian critiques of Mill.

A method to weight three categories of adaptive thermal comfort

The adaptive thermal comfort theory considers people as active rather than passive recipients in response to ambient physical thermal stimuli, in contrast with conventional, heat-balance-based, thermal comfort theory. Occupants actively interact with the environments they occupy by means of utilizing adaptations in terms of physiological, behavioural and psychological dimensions to achieve ‘real world’ thermal comfort. This paper introduces a method of quantifying the physiological, behavioural and psychological portions of the adaptation process by using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based on the case studies conducted in the UK and China. Apart from three categories of adaptations which are viewed as criteria, six possible alternatives are considered: physiological indices/health status, the indoor environment, the outdoor environment, personal physical factors, environmental control and thermal expectation. With the AHP technique, all the above-mentioned criteria, factors and corresponding elements are arranged in a hierarchy tree and quantified by using a series of pair-wise judgements. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to improve the quality of these results. The proposed quantitative weighting method provides researchers with opportunities to better understand the adaptive mechanisms and reveal the significance of each category for the achievement of adaptive thermal comfort.

A demonstration of 'broken' visual space

It has long been assumed that there is a distorted mapping between real and ‘perceived’ space, based on demonstrations of systematic errors in judgements of slant, curvature, direction and separation. Here, we have applied a direct test to the notion of a coherent visual space. In an immersive virtual environment, participants judged the relative distance of two squares displayed in separate intervals. On some trials, the virtual scene expanded by a factor of four between intervals although, in line with recent results, participants did not report any noticeable change in the scene. We found that there was no consistent depth ordering of objects that can explain the distance matches participants made in this environment (e.g. A > B > D yet also A < C < D) and hence no single one-to-one mapping between participants’ perceived space and any real 3D environment. Instead, factors that affect pairwise comparisons of distances dictate participants’ performance. These data contradict, more directly than previous experiments, the idea that the visual system builds and uses a coherent 3D internal representation of a scene.

Fuzzy analysis: a vague way of dealing with uncertainty in real estate analysis?

Risk and uncertainty are, to say the least, poorly considered by most individuals involved in real estate analysis - in both development and investment appraisal. Surveyors continue to express 'uncertainty' about the value (risk) of using relatively objective methods of analysis to account for these factors. These methods attempt to identify the risk elements more explicitly. Conventionally this is done by deriving probability distributions for the uncontrolled variables in the system. A suggested 'new' way of "being able to express our uncertainty or slight vagueness about some of the qualitative judgements and not entirely certain data required in the course of the problem..." uses the application of fuzzy logic. This paper discusses and demonstrates the terminology and methodology of fuzzy analysis. In particular it attempts a comparison of the procedures with those used in 'conventional' risk analysis approaches and critically investigates whether a fuzzy approach offers an alternative to the use of probability based analysis for dealing with aspects of risk and uncertainty in real estate analysis

Access to the countryside of England and Wales: popular leisure; commodified culture

Risk and uncertainty are, to say the least, poorly considered by most individuals involved in real estate analysis - in both development and investment appraisal. Surveyors continue to express 'uncertainty' about the value (risk) of using relatively objective methods of analysis to account for these factors. These methods attempt to identify the risk elements more explicitly. Conventionally this is done by deriving probability distributions for the uncontrolled variables in the system. A suggested 'new' way of "being able to express our uncertainty or slight vagueness about some of the qualitative judgements and not From its modern origins, associated with the urbanising effect of industrialisation, walking has remained a popular form of outdoor recreation. It has, furthermore, remained an important site of class struggle, with the 'landless' seeking to establish their moral 'citizen' right to roam over open country in contradistinction to the 'landed', who have successfully limited this right to legally-defined public rights of way. In the face of declining farm incomes, however, farmers and landowners have, apparently, modified their attitudes towards public access, but only in return for compensation and management payments under grant schemes such as Countryside Stewardship and the Countryside Premium Scheme. With the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food now seeking to extend paid access arrangements to other grant schemes, as part of its response to the European Union's Agri-Environment Regulations, access 'rights' are assuming an increasingly commodified form, thereby questioning, if not undermining, the former citizen claims. For rather than being a benefit of citizenship, the existence of limited, often poorly maintained and inadequately signposted, public rights of way has tied inextricably the extension of legally-enforceable access to the needs of the landowners and farmers. At a time of falling prosperity in agriculture, therefore, they have now exercised their discretion by annexing the populism of consumer culture to reproduce the bourgeois liberal values of the market as a principal determinant of the extension of citizen rights of access to the countryside.

Marriage value and scarcity in agricultural rents: a discussion of the findings in Childers v Ankers

Formal statutory guidance to arbitrators involved in settling disputes over rents for agricultural holdings is contained in the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986. The particular features of the agricultural letting market raise valuation problems which the Act itself has failed to satisfactorily address, most notably the degree to which marriage value and scarcity should be taken into account. The 1995 Court of Appeal case of Childers v Anker addresses several of the key issues. This paper seeks to explore the findings and practical implications of the case for rental valuers and arbitrators. It argues that sitting tenants may be seriously disadvantaged by the court's judgements, not least by having to pay rents on review which reflect elements of marriage value and possibly scarcity value.

"The Poet of Science": how scientists read their Tennyson

Tennyson’s responses to science have been thoroughly documented and discussed, but how did scientists respond to his poetry? Through examining in detail the work of three scientists who wrote at length about Tennyson--the astronomer Norman Lockyer, the physicist Oliver Lodge, and the American geologist William North Rice--it is possible to see how Tennyson went from being respected by contemporary scientists to being feted as the Poet of Science itself after his death. As a materialist, a Spiritualist, and a Darwinian Methodist respectively, Lockyer, Lodge, and Rice had very different conceptions of how science worked and what it implied about the universe, yet each looked to Tennyson and his poetry to confirm and extend his own judgements and values.

Exploring unanticipated consequences of strategy amongst stakeholder segments: the case of a European Revenue Service

This article applies FIMIX-PLS segmentation methodology to detect and explore unanticipated reactions to organisational strategy among stakeholder segments. For many large organisations today, the tendency to apply a “one-size-fits-all” strategy to members of a stakeholder population, commonly driven by a desire for simplicity, efficiency and fairness, may actually result in unanticipated consequences amongst specific subgroups within the target population. This study argues that it is critical for organisations to understand the varying and potentially harmful effects of strategic actions across differing, and previously unidentified, segments within a stakeholder population. The case of a European revenue service that currently focuses its strategic actions on building trust and compliant behaviour amongst taxpayers is used as the context for this study. FIMIX-PLS analysis is applied to a sample of 501 individual taxpayers, while a novel PLS-based approach for assessing measurement model invariance that can be applied to both reflective and formative measures is also introduced for the purpose of multi-group comparisons. The findings suggest that individual taxpayers can be split into two equal-sized segments with highly differentiated characteristics and reactions to organisational strategy and communications. Compliant behaviour in the first segment (n = 223), labelled “relationships centred on trust,” is mainly driven through positive service experiences and judgements of competence, while judgements of benevolence lead to the unanticipated reaction of increasing distrust among this group. Conversely, compliant behaviour in the second segment (n = 278), labelled “relationships centred on distrust,” is driven by the reduction of fear and scepticism towards the revenue service, which is achieved through signalling benevolence, reduced enforcement and the lower incidence of negative stories. In this segment, the use of enforcement has the unanticipated and counterproductive effect of ultimately reducing compliant behaviour.

“I still can’t question”: issues affecting EFL development in an immersion environment

This study examined the development of EFL proficiency in an immersion environment. Adult Chinese speakers of English were tested at the beginning and end of a ten-month period of immersion in the UK on their acquisition of English question forms using a timed grammaticality judgement task. Participants showed significantly faster response times after ten months, but no significant difference in accuracy of target-like judgements, suggesting that immersion benefits fluency more than accuracy.

Perceptual shift in bilingualism: brain potentials reveal plasticity in pre-attentive colour perception

The validity of the linguistic relativity principle continues to stimulate vigorous debate and research. The debate has recently shifted from the behavioural investigation arena to a more biologically grounded field, in which tangible physiological evidence for language effects on perception can be obtained. Using brain potentials in a colour oddball detection task with Greek and English speakers, a recent study suggests that language effects may exist at early stages of perceptual integration [Thierry, G., Athanasopoulos, P., Wiggett, A., Dering, B., & Kuipers, J. (2009). Unconscious effects of language-specific terminology on pre-attentive colour perception. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106, 4567–4570]. In this paper, we test whether in Greek speakers exposure to a new cultural environment (UK) with contrasting colour terminology from their native language affects early perceptual processing as indexed by an electrophysiological correlate of visual detection of colour luminance. We also report semantic mapping of native colour terms and colour similarity judgements. Results reveal convergence of linguistic descriptions, cognitive processing, and early perception of colour in bilinguals. This result demonstrates for the first time substantial plasticity in early, pre-attentive colour perception and has important implications for the mechanisms that are involved in perceptual changes during the processes of language learning and acculturation.

Self-ratings and observer-ratings of social skill: a manipulation of state social anxiety in anxious and non-anxious children

The role of state and trait anxiety on observer ratings of social skill and negatively biased self-perception of social skill was examined. Participants were aged between 7 and 13 years (mean=9.65; sd=1.77; N=102), 47 had a current anxiety diagnosis and 55 were non-anxious controls. Participants were randomly allocated to a high or low anxiety condition and asked to complete social tasks. Task instructions were adjusted across conditions to manipulate participants’ state anxiety. Observers rated anxious participants as having poorer social skills than non-anxious controls but there was no evidence that anxious participants exhibited a negative self-perception bias, relative to controls. However, as participants’ ratings of state anxiety increased, their perception of their performance became more negatively biased. The results suggest that anxious children may exhibit real impairments in social skill and that high levels of state anxiety can lead to biased judgements of social skills in anxious and non-anxious children.

The financial effects of uniform and mixed corporate social performance

Firms typically present a mixed picture of corporate social performance (CSP), with positive and negative indicators exhibited by the same firm. Thus, stakeholders’ judgements of corporate social responsibility (CSR) typically evaluate positives in the context of negatives, and vice versa. Building on social judgement theory, we present two alternative accounts of how stakeholders respond to such complexity, which provide differing implications for the financial effects of CSP: reciprocal dampening and rewarding uniformity. Echoing notable findings on strategic consistency, our US panel study finds that firms that exhibit uniformly positive or uniformly negative indicators in particular dimensions of CSP outperform firms that exhibit a mixed picture of positives and negatives, which supports the notion that stakeholders’ judgements of CSR reward uniformity.

Televised Whorf: cognitive restructuring in advanced foreign language learners as a function of audio-visual media exposure

The encoding of goal-oriented motion events varies across different languages. Speakers of languages without grammatical aspect (e.g., Swedish) tend to mention motion endpoints when describing events, e.g., “two nuns walk to a house,”, and attach importance to event endpoints when matching scenes from memory. Speakers of aspect languages (e.g., English), on the other hand, are more prone to direct attention to the ongoingness of motion events, which is reflected both in their event descriptions, e.g., “two nuns are walking.”, and in their non-verbal similarity judgements. This study examines to what extent native speakers of Swedish (n = 82) with English as a foreign language (FL) restructure their categorisation of goal-oriented motion as a function of their English proficiency and experience with the English language (e.g., exposure, learning). Seventeen monolingual native English speakers from the United Kingdom (UK) were engaged for comparison purposes. Data on motion event cognition were collected through a memory-based triads matching task, in which a target scene with an intermediate degree of endpoint orientation was matched with two alternative scenes with low and high degrees of endpoint orientation, respectively. Results showed that the preference among the Swedish speakers of L2 English to base their similarity judgements on ongoingness rather than event endpoints was correlated with their use of English in their everyday lives, such that those who often watched television in English approximated the ongoingness preference of the English native speakers. These findings suggest that event cognition patterns may be restructured through the exposure to FL audio-visual media. The results thus add to the emerging picture that learning a new language entails learning new ways of observing and reasoning about reality.

Learning to think in a second language: effects of proficiency and length of exposure in English learners of German

The aim of the current study is to investigate motion event cognition in second language learners in a higher education learning context. Based on recent findings showing that speakers of grammatical aspect languages like English attend less to the endpoint (goal) of events than speakers of non-aspect languages like Swedish in a nonverbal categorization task involving working memory (Athanasopoulos & Bylund, 2013; Bylund & Athanasopoulos, this issue), the current study asks whether native speakers of an aspect language start paying more attention to event endpoints when learning a non-aspect language. Native English and German (a non-aspect language) speakers, and English learners of L2 German, who were pursuing studies in German language and literature at an English university, were asked to match a target scene with intermediate degree of endpoint orientation with two alternate scenes with low and high degree of endpoint orientation, respectively. Results showed that, when compared to the native English speakers, the learners of German were more prone to base their similarity judgements on endpoint saliency, rather than ongoingness, primarily as a function of increasing L2 proficiency and year of university study. Further analyses revealed a non-linear relationship between length of L2 exposure and categorization patterns, subserved by a progressive strengthening of the relationship between L2 proficiency and categorization as length of exposure increased. These findings present evidence that cognitive restructuring may occur through increasing experience with an L2, but also suggest that this relationship may be complex, and unfold over a long period of time.

The anterior temporal lobes support residual comprehension in Wernicke’s aphasia

Wernicke’s aphasia occurs following a stroke to classical language comprehension regions in the left temporoparietal cortex. Consequently, auditory-verbal comprehension is significantly impaired in Wernicke’s aphasia but the capacity to comprehend visually presented materials (written words and pictures) is partially spared. This study used fMRI to investigate the neural basis of written word and picture semantic processing in Wernicke’s aphasia, with the wider aim of examining how the semantic system is altered following damage to the classical comprehension regions. Twelve participants with Wernicke’s aphasia and twelve control participants performed semantic animate-inanimate judgements and a visual height judgement baseline task. Whole brain and ROI analysis in Wernicke’s aphasia and control participants found that semantic judgements were underpinned by activation in the ventral and anterior temporal lobes bilaterally. The Wernicke’s aphasia group displayed an “over-activation” in comparison to control participants, indicating that anterior temporal lobe regions become increasingly influential following reduction in posterior semantic resources. Semantic processing of written words in Wernicke’s aphasia was additionally supported by recruitment of the right anterior superior temporal lobe, a region previously associated with recovery from auditory-verbal comprehension impairments. Overall, the results concord with models which indicate that the anterior temporal lobes are crucial for multimodal semantic processing and that these regions may be accessed without support from classic posterior comprehension regions.