James M. Webb

Drawing maps from text : a test of conjoint retention

Abstract Undergraduates read a narrative text in which target features were elaborated in terms of spatial, descriptive, or both spatial and descriptive text referents. As they studied the passage, groups of subjects were instructed to draw one of three types of maps, based upon text content. The subjects drew maps with accurate geographical features, drew personal representations designed to help them remember the narrative, or drew target map features in columns. The subjects took an immediate and a delayed test covering both feature-related and nonrelated text material and, following the delayed test, attempted to reconstruct their original version of the map. Creating personal maps resulted in better text recall and yielded the highest conditional probabilities of recall for a feature-related item, given that the subjects also remembered the map feature. These results support the conjoint retention hypothesis, which emphasizes the retrieval of verbal information from jointly stored verbal-spatial memory.

Directed forgetting and feedback in written instruction

In three experiments, we examined the effects of directed forgetting messages on item recall. Using a variety of materials and conditions, we observed no main effects of such messages on recall. However, analyses of question and feedback study time, response certitude, and conditional probability revealed a number of significant effects. Effects of feedback were consistently strong and may have masked the benefits of directed forgetting. Other results were consistent with previous research in the feedback paradigm.

Sentence recall with second stratum cues

As a test of the conjoint retention hypothesis, undergraduates heard 24 simple sentences while studying a map that represented 12 features as icons and labels, or as labels only. Control subjects saw a map outline without features. Half of the sentences were directly related to map features, and half were not related to features. Subject nouns were used as retrieval cues across three trials. Noun object recall of feature-related sentences was significantly better for all groups, but the predicted interaction between map and sentence type did not occur.

War-Related Deflections of Economic Trends in Eastern and Western Civilizations

Economic trends for the Eastern and Western Civilizations were compared over the past three centuries and extrapolated into the next one. The convergence of these trends following World War I was deflected following World War II. Without this war, the combined economies of the Far East countries appeared likely to surpass the industrial output of Western countries around the turn of the 20th and the 21st centuries. The 1941–1945 war with Japan delayed the projected intersection of these trends. Extrapolation of the post-World War II trends to 2040 suggests that, without deflection of these trends, the economies of the Far East countries would be likely to surpass the economies of the Western countries around the middle of the 21st century.

Contributions to Psychohistory: XXII. Quantification of Santayana's Cultural Schism Theory

The January 12th, 1991 U.S. Congress vote giving President Bush powers to initiate military operations against Iraq was analyzed with respect to personal and religious backgrounds of the voting Senators and Representatives. Aside from party affiliation, the outcome of the vote was significantly associated with religious affiliations of the members of Congress. These empirical findings are interpreted within the theoretical context of Santayanas hypothesis that the Catholic-Protestant schism is one of the determinants of the niveau of our society.

Modeling Society as a Zero-Sum Game: An Empirical Demonstration:

An analysis of the military and educational expenditures of 2 sets of 10 countries from G. T. Kurian was conducted to assess the validity of modeling societies as zero-sum games. Analysis indicated a tendency for the economic systems of many societies to allocate national resources in favor of one interest at the expense of another.