Book Review: \u3cem\u3eModern Hindu Personalism: The History, Life and Thought of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī\u3c/em\u3e

Book Review of Modern Hindu Personalism: The History, Life and Thought of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī. Ferdinando Sardella. Oxford University Press, 2013, xv + 342 pp

Book Review: \u3cem\u3eDalit Theology in the Twenty-first Century: Discordant Voices, Discerning Pathways\u3c/em\u3e

A review of Dalit Theology in the Twenty-first Century: Discordant Voices, Discerning Pathways edited by Sathianathan Clarke, Deenabandhu Manchala, and Philip Vinod Peacock

Talker identification is not improved by lexical access in the absence of familiar phonology

Listeners identify talkers more accurately when they are familiar with both the sounds and words of the language being spoken. It is unknown whether lexical information alone can facilitate talker identification in the absence of familiar phonology. To dissociate the roles of familiar words and phonology, we developed English-Mandarin “hybrid” sentences, spoken in Mandarin, which can be convincingly coerced to sound like English when presented with corresponding subtitles (e.g., “wei4 gou3 chi1 kao3 li2 zhi1” becomes “we go to college”). Across two experiments, listeners learned to identify talkers in three conditions: listeners' native language (English), an unfamiliar, foreign language (Mandarin), and a foreign language paired with subtitles that primed native language lexical access (subtitled Mandarin). In Experiment 1 listeners underwent a single session of talker identity training; in Experiment 2 listeners completed three days of training. Talkers in a foreign language were identified no better when native language lexical representations were primed (subtitled Mandarin) than from foreign-language speech alone, regardless of whether they had received one or three days of talker identity training. These results suggest that the facilitatory effect of lexical access on talker identification depends on the availability of familiar phonological forms

Elmer\u27s Evolution

Spring is here! Can\u27t you hear the rumble of skates as the children zip by the house in their youthful glee? Can\u27t you hear the mingled chatter of the spring birds? Can\u27t you smell the sweetness of the pure, clean air - such a relief from that choking smog of the long winter? Can\u27t you see the first buds as they peep through the small gray tips of the dismal twigs? And can\u27t you see Elmer - his beautiful red hair and his bright eyes gleaming as they catch the ray of the warm, mellow sun? Can\u27t you see him? He\u27s standing right out there in the yard like a victorious king in the center of his domain