Syftet med denna studie var att studera möjligheten att bedöma korrekthet i vittnens utsagor beroende av deltagarnas grupptillhörighet. I studien ingick 120 deltagare som antingen fick se en film med vittnesmål från fyra vittnen med enstaka centrala meningar eller läsa en text med samma meningar. De viktigaste mätningarna i denna studie gjordes efter signal detection theory (SDT). Resultaten visade att deltagarna inte skattade mycket över slumpnivå och ofta till och med under slumpnivå i sina bedömningar. I en hopslagning av betingelserna (text/film) visade analyserna att män generellt var signifikant sämre än kvinnorna på att bedöma vittnesmål, men att kvinnorna gör fler falska alarm än männen i bedömningen av textversionen.  De funna könsskillnaderna i hur vittnesmål bedöms diskuterades.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

The revisionist view of the Soviet Union’s most eminent composer, Shostakovich has been dominant in the American and British press ever since the publication of ex-Soviet journalist Solomon Volkov’s Testimony: The Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich as related and edited by Solomon Volkov in 1979. This pre-glasnost book proved to be the opportunity for music journalists to polish up their image of Shostakovich as a closet dissident who had been secretly laughing up his sleeve at the Soviet regime since 1932. This thesis suggests that Solomon Volkov faked the writing of Testimony and claiming that the book was the ‘memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich’ was dubious at best. A favourite theme of revisionist writers is the perceived relationship between Shostakovich and Stalin. This thesis reveals that there was little interaction between the two despite the wild fantasies of revisionist writers and film makers. The infamous anonymous 1936 Pravda editorial ‘Muddle Instead of Music’ has been the subject of speculation ever since it was written. In the appendix of this thesis is a translation of ‘Mysteries of Lady Macbeth’ a chapter of Leonid Maksimenkov’s Muddle Instead of Music: Stalin’s Cultural Revolution 1936-1938. Archival evidence in this chapter reveals that the Pravda editorial was a product of internal Communist Party rivalry between the Cultural Education Board and the newly-formed Arts Committee. Stalin played no part in the writing of the editorial at all. This explodes many myths that have circulated since 1936 about ‘Muddle Instead of Music’. It seems that Shostakovich was a convenient target selected at random by the ambitious head of the Arts Committee – Platon Kerzhentsev.

Six separate experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of specific retrieval procedures on recall, recognition, confidence and the confidence / accuracy relationship for these retrieval domains. In experiment I the effects of retrieval procedures were considered as part of a recognised police interview technique, the Cognitive Interview (CI), while in experiments 11,111, and IV the retrieval procedures involved discrete context manipulations. Experiments V and VI focused exclusively on the confidence / accuracy relationship for recall as a function of specific retrieval procedures and question type. Results indicated that although frequently improving the quality and quantity of recall, the Cl and other types of context reinstatement manipulation did not reliably improve recognition accuracy from lineup presentations, nor did they have a significant moderating effect upon the confidence / accuracy relationship. However in experiment TV in which a long (three month) delay was utilised significant effects of context manipulation on recognition performance were found. With regard to confidence, experiment I indicated that the Cl was responsible for a significant increase in confidence of recall but not recognition. Results from experiments II, III, and iv indicated non consistent effects of context manipulation on confidence, rating-q for either recall and recognition. With regard to the confidence / accuracy relationship, results from the initial five experiments indicated that in very few instances was confidence and accuracy significantly related. However, in experiment VI confidence and accuracy was found to be reliably and consistently related The most important finding to emerge from this research suggests the retrieval procedure undergone by a witness (interactive interview / passive questionnaire), to be an important moderator of the confidence / accuracy relationship. As such the results are supportive of Leippe's (1980) two premises in which it is suggested that as reconstructional and social influences increase, the confidence / accuracy relationship will correspondingly decrease

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Universität Zürich, 1926. / Author's autograph presentation copy. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes abstract.. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-103).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2005. / Includes abstract.. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 95-103).

No description available.

This project sets out to frame and examine the theoretical and practical challenges involved in the process and effect of translating Holocaust testimony, which has been largely overlooked in Holocaust discourses. Research pertaining to the fields of Holocaust memorialisation, historiography, literary theory, and translation studies is drawn together, with a view to shedding light on what it means to write Holocaust testimony, what it means to read it, and how these often conflicting processes affect and are affected by translation. Using a canonical testimonial text by Elie Wiesel as a case study allows the exploration of these questions to be grounded in detailed and wide-ranging textual analysis, demonstrating the extent to which translation impacts Holocaust testimony. The Holocaust is an unparalleled event in the twentieth century and testimony to it is born of a unique desire to relate one’s experiences, coupled with a certainty that these experiences cannot be expressed. This dual set of challenges requires a distinctive approach to reading testimony, which is shaped through a range of textual and paratextual features. Furthermore, the reader’s perception of the author figure is argued here to have a discernible bearing on this reading process. Translation has the potential to unsettle this reading, by undermining the readers’ belief in the author figure and in the referential status of the text. The analysis of Wiesel’s La Nuit in translation demonstrates that translation not only has a marked effect on the content and nature of this piece of testimony, but that the way in which this effect is presented to the readership is a reflection of the text’s shifting target locale and strongly impacts the reading of testimonial texts.

In this project, I defend a holistic, internalist conceptual-role theory of mental content (‘Holism’, for short). The account of communicative success which must be adopted by the Holist is generally thought to be unattractive and perhaps even untenable. The primary aim of my thesis is to show that this account is actually far more plausible than the accounts available to competing theories of mental content. Holism is thought to suffer from a special problem of communication because it entails that no two subjects ever mean the same thing by an utterance of the same word-forms, or share the same thought content. Many think that it is necessary for communicative success (or, at least, sometimes required) that the content grasped by the hearer is the same content as that which is expressed by the speaker. As such, theories such as social externalism are thought to be well-equipped to explain communicative success because they can posit shared content. Holism claims that subjects think, and speak, in their own idiosyncratic idiolects. As such, Holists must deny that it is ever required for communicative success that subjects share content. Holists must maintain instead that successful communication requires only similarity of content between speaker and hearer. This is supposed to be a serious cost of the view. In this project, I argue that it is, in fact, a virtue. Views like Holism, which can posit only mere similarity of content, are better placed to explain communicative success than views which can posit shared content. In the first part of my thesis, I argue that externalist theories of content face a dilemma when it comes to explaining communicative success. They must choose between (a), endorsing an account of communication which renders the relationship between the content expressed by the speaker and grasped by the hearer irrelevant to communicative success and (b), endorsing an account which gives implausible diagnoses as to the success and failure of communicative attempts. I argue that the reason that externalist theories face this dilemma is because they allow that content and understanding can come apart. Interestingly, it is, in part, because they posit a communal language that they face the dilemma. In contrast, the Holist’s similar content account does not face the dilemma. It can naturally incorporate understanding into its explanation of how mental content facilitates communicative success because, on Holism, understanding perfectly tracks mental content. In the second part of my thesis, I develop an account of communicative success for the Holist and defend the account from objections. The account claims that communication succeeds to the degree that content is similar across communication partners. In defending the view, I propose a criterion for similarity of content for the Holist. I also argue that (pure) internalists can agree with externalists as to the extensions of concepts and the truth-conditions of contents without the need to appeal to any factors outside of the individual. Finally, I explain how my account of communication impacts upon a theory of testimony. Most work on testimony stipulates that the content of the testimony grasped by the hearer is the same as that expressed by the speaker. I present and defend an account of testimony which claims instead that testimonial exchanges can be successful even when the content grasped by the hearer is merely similar to the content expressed by the speaker.