День: 19.09.2015

Attentional Resources

Another way of looking at processing resource issues is through the lens of attention. In particular, divided attention addresses the question of how much information can be processed at any given time. Craik (1977) wrote that one of the clearest findings in cognitive aging research is the fact that older adults are more penalized when […]

‘Middle-brow’ pornography

Mark Jankovich (2001) locates the emergence of Playboy in the 1950s in relation to a middle-brow culture of a new post-war petit bourgeoisie, which is defined against the transgressive excesses of an elite avant-garde on the one hand, and the puritanism of traditional forms of middle-brow culture on the other. In doing so, he emphasizes, […]

New images and representations of women in the Republican transition

The modernizing reforms implemented by the Qing dynasty after 1901 ultimately failed to guarantee its survival. Abroad, the court faced increasing anti-Qing rhetoric amongst radical Chinese students in Japan who blamed the ‘barbarian’ Manchu rulers for China’s plight and condemned them as a hindrance to the coun­try’s progress and unity, while Republican revolutionaries in exile […]

Enter Karla Faye Tucker

The 1998 execution of Karla Faye Tucker provided us with the first “almost — televised” execution in history. There was so much media coverage (leading up to the actual execution day) that, by the time it arrived, most of us felt we knew Karla intimately.5 The extent of this coverage was partly because she was […]

WORKING ON FEELING

Why is the emotive experience of normal adults in daily life as orderly as it is? Why, generally speaking, do people feel gay at parties, sad at funerals, happy at weddings? This question leads us to examine not conventions of appear­ance or outward comportment, but conventions oi feeling. Conventions of feeling become surprising only when […]

WORKING ON FEELING

Why is the emotive experience of normal adults in daily life as orderly as it is? Why, generally speaking, do people feel gay at parties, sad at funerals, happy at weddings? This question leads us to examine not conventions of appear­ance or outward comportment, but conventions oi feeling. Conventions of feeling become surprising only when […]

Inhibitory Loss

One popular hypothesis is that older adults have reduced processing resources due to greater difficulty inhibiting the processing of irrelevant information (Hasher & Zacks, 1988; Persad, Abeles, Zacks, & Denburg, 2002). That is, older adults have more task-irrelevant thoughts during processing and have trouble keeping them out of their minds. This dif­ference could explain why […]