The representation of majorities and minorities in the British press: A content analytic approach

A content analysis examined the way majorities and minorities are represented in the British press. An analysis of the headlines of five British newspapers, over a period of five years, revealed that the words 'majority' and 'minority' appeared 658 times. Majority headlines were most frequent (66%), more likely to emphasize the numerical size of the majority, to link majority status with political groups, to be described with positive evaluations, and to cover political issues. By contrast, minority headlines were less frequent (34%), more likely to link minority status with ethnic groups and to other social issues, and less likely to be described with positive evaluations. The implications of examining how real-life majorities and minorities are represented for our understanding of experimental research are discussed. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.

Disrupted cortical proprioceptive representation evokes symptoms of peculiarity, foreignness and swelling, but not pain

Objectives. It has been proposed that disruption of the internal proprioceptive representation, via incongruent sensory input, may underpin pathological pain states, but experimental evidence relies on conflicting visual input, which is not clinically relevant. We aimed to determine the symptomatic effect of incongruent proprioceptive input, imparted by vibration of the wrist tendons, which evokes the illusion of perpetual wrist flexion and disrupts cortical proprioceptive representation. Methods. Twenty-nine healthy and naive volunteers reported symptoms during five conditions: control, active and passive wrist flexion, extensor carpi radialis tendon vibration to evoke illusion of perpetual wrist flexion, and ulnar styloid (sham) vibration. No advice was given about possible illusions. Results. Twenty-one subjects reported the illusion of perpetual wrist flexion during tendon vibration. There was no effect of condition or of whether or not subjects reported an illusion on discomfort/pain (P > 0.28). Peculiarity, swelling and foreignness were greater during tendon vibration than during the other conditions, and greater during tendon vibration in those who reported an illusion of wrist flexion than in those who did not (P < 0.05 for all). Symptoms were reported by at least two subjects in each condition and four subjects reported systemic symptoms (e.g. nausea). Conclusions. In healthy volunteers, incongruent proprioceptive input does not cause discomfort or pain but does evoke feelings of peculiarity, swelling and foreignness in the limb.

First-principles quantum dynamics in interacting Bose gases: I. The positive P representation

The performance of the positive P phase-space representation for exact many- body quantum dynamics is investigated. Gases of interacting bosons are considered, where the full quantum equations to simulate are of a Gross-Pitaevskii form with added Gaussian noise. This method gives tractable simulations of many-body systems because the number of variables scales linearly with the spatial lattice size. An expression for the useful simulation time is obtained, and checked in numerical simulations. The dynamics of first-, second- and third-order spatial correlations are calculated for a uniform interacting 1D Bose gas subjected to a change in scattering length. Propagation of correlations is seen. A comparison is made with other recent methods. The positive P method is particularly well suited to open systems as no conservation laws are hard-wired into the calculation. It also differs from most other recent approaches in that there is no truncation of any kind.

Toddler subtraction with large sets: further evidence for an analog-magnitude representation of number

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypothesis that toddlers have access to an analog-magnitude number representation that supports numerical reasoning about relatively large numbers. Three-year-olds were presented with subtraction problems in which initial set size and proportions subtracted were systematically varied. Two sets of cookies were presented and then covered The experimenter visibly subtracted cookies from the hidden sets, and the children were asked to choose which of the resulting sets had more. In Experiment 1, performance was above chance when high proportions of objects (3 versus 6) were subtracted from large sets (of 9) and for the subset of older participants (older than 3 years, 5 months; n = 15), performance was also above chance when high proportions (10 versus 20) were subtracted from the very large sets (of 30). In Experiment 2, which was conducted exclusively with older 3-year-olds and incorporated an important methodological control, the pattern of results for the subtraction tasks was replicated In both experiments, success on the tasks was not related to counting ability. The results of these experiments support the hypothesis that young children have access to an analog-magnitude system for representing large approximate quantities, as performance on these subtraction tasks showed a Webers Law signature, and was independent of conventional number knowledge.

Dysprosodic speech following basal ganglia insult: Toward a conceptual framework for the study of cerebral representation of prosody

Progress in understanding brain/behavior relationships in adult-acquired dysprosody has led to models of cortical hemispheric representation of prosodic processing based on functional (linguistic vs affective) or physical (timing vs pitch) parameters. These explanatory perspectives have not been reconciled, and also a number of neurobehavior syndromes that include dysprosody among their neurological signs have not yet been integrated. In addition to expanding the functional perspective on prosody, some of these syndromes have implicated a significant role of subcortical nuclei in prosodic competence. In this article, two patients with acquired dysprosodic speech following damage to basal ganglia nuclei were evaluated using behavioral, acoustic, cognitive, and radiographic approaches. Selective quantitative measures were performed on each individual’s performance to provide detailed verification and clarification of clinical observations, and to test hypotheses regarding prosodic function. These studies, combined with a review of related clinical research findings, exemplify the value of a broader perspective on the neurobehavioral dysfunction underlying acquired adult dysprosodic speech, and lead to a new, proposed conceptual framework for the cerebral representation of prosody.