Meetings are complex institutional events at which participants recurrently negotiate institutional roles, which are oriented to, renegotiated, and sometimes challenged. With a view to gaining further understanding of the ongoing negotiation of roles at meetings, this article examines one specific recurring feature of meetings: the act of proposing future action. Based on microanalysis of video recordings of two-party strategy meetings, the study shows that participants orient to at least two aspects when making proposals: 1) the acceptance or rejection of the (...) proposal; and 2) questions of entitlement: who is entitled to launch a proposal, and who is entitled to accept or reject it? The study argues that there is a close interrelation between questions of entitlement, aligning and affiliating moves, and the negotiation of institutional roles. The multimodal analysis also reveals the use of various embodied practices by participants for the local negotiation of entitlement and institutional roles. (shrink)

This paper investigates how talk and practical action are coordinated during one type of activity involving professional communication: the service-­assessment sequence in hair salons. During this activity, a practical inspection of the haircut must be coupled with sequentially produced verbal acts. Our analysis of four examples reveals that there is no fixed relationship between the organization of talk and practical action. Instead, people manipulate this relationship on a moment-by-moment basis, often coordinating the two into a single, integral package, or relying (...) on one stream of action to achieve progress in the other. These findings imply that some multimodal activities that are brought into alignment may have their own, separate and independent procedural logic and sequencing patterns and that these can be brought into play to create or deal with constraints in each other. (shrink)

Klagetraditionen: Form und Funktion der Klage in den Kulturen der Antike. Edited by Margaret Jaques. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, vol. 251. Fribourg, Switzerland: Academic Press, 2011. Pp. vii + 110, illus. SF35.

Humans have great locomotor adaptability to environmental demands, which has been investigated using a split-belt treadmill with belts on both the left and right sides. Thus far, neuromuscular control in split-belt locomotor adaptation has been evaluated by analyzing muscle activities at the individual muscle level. Meanwhile, in the motor control field, the muscle synergy concept has been proposed. Muscle synergies are considered the fundamental building blocks of movement and are groups of coactive muscles and time-varying activation patterns, thereby, reflecting the (...) neurophysiological characteristics of movement. To date, it remains unclear how such muscle synergies change during the adaptation and de-adaptation processes on the split-belt treadmill. Hence, we chronologically extracted muscle synergies while walking on the split-belt treadmill and examined changes in the number, muscle weightings, and temporal activation patterns of muscle synergies. Twelve healthy young males participated, and surface electromyography signals were recorded bilaterally from 13 lower-limb muscles. Muscle synergies were extracted by applying non-negative matrix factorization to the EMG data of each leg. We found that during split-belt walking, the number of synergies in the slow leg increased while an extra synergy appeared and disappeared in the fast leg. Additionally, the areas under the temporal activation patterns in several synergies in both legs decreased. When both belts returned to the same speed, a decrease in the number of synergies and an increase in the areas under the temporal activation patterns of several synergies were temporally shown in each leg. Subsequently, the number of synergies and the areas under the temporal activation patterns returned to those of normal walking before split-belt walking. Thus, changes in the number, muscle weightings, and temporal activation patterns of synergies were noted in the split-belt locomotor adaptation, suggesting that the adaptation and de-adaptation occurred at the muscle synergy level. (shrink)

David Chalmers' dancing qualia argument is intended to show that phenomenal experiences, or qualia, are organizational invariants. The dancing qualia argument is a reductio ad absurdum, attempting to demonstrate that holding an alternative position, such as the famous inverted spectrum argument, leads one to an implausible position about the relation between consciousness and cognition. In this paper, we argue that Chalmers' dancing qualia argument fails to establish the plausibility of qualia being organizational invariants. Even stronger, we will argue that the (...) gap in the argument cannot be closed. (shrink)

What makes teaching a moral endeavor? How can we prepare classroom practitioners for engaging in that moral endeavor in meaningful and effective ways? This volume brings together leading scholars who draw upon both their academic expertise and substantial wisdom of practice to offer a variety of perspectives on the challenge of preparing today’s teachers for the moral work of teaching. Book Features: Examines the role that teacher preparation and development can play in addressing the moral work of teaching. Highlights the (...) work of leading scholars from educational psychology, educational philosophy, and teacher education. Provides compelling insights for identifying the next generation of our nation’s best teachers. Contributors: Wolfgang Althof, Karen Benson, Marvin Berkowitz, Donald Blumenfeld-Jones, Elizabeth Campbell, Julie Canniff, Mary Crawford, Lana Daly, Rebecca Evers, Catherine Fallona, Gary Fenstermacher, Anthony Holter, Lisa Johnson, Daniel Lapsley, Darcia Narvaez, Virginia Navarro, Larry Nucci, Joy Pelton, Virginia Richardson, Don Senneville, David Light Shields, Barbara Stengel, Jonatha Vare, Marilyn Watson. (shrink)

The occurrence of hiccoughs (hiccups) is very widespread and yet their neuronal origin and physiological significance are still unresolved. Several hypotheses have been proposed. Here we consider a phylogenetic perspective, starting from the concept that the ventilatory central pattern generator of lower vertebrates provides the base upon which central pattern generators of higher vertebrates develop. Hiccoughs are characterized by glottal closure during inspiration and by early development in relation to lung ventilation. They are inhibited when the concentration of inhaled CO2 (...) is increased and they can be abolished by the drug baclofen (an agonist of the GABAB receptor). These properties are shared by ventilatory motor patterns of lower vertebrates, leading to the hypothesis that hiccough is the expression of archaic motor patterns and particularly the motor pattern of gill ventilation in bimodal breathers such as most frogs. A circuit that can generate hiccoughs may persist in mammals because it has permitted the development of pattern generators for other useful functions of the pharynx and chest wall muscles, such as suckling or eupneic breathing. BioEssays 25:182–188, 2003. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

Upon doing something generous for someone with whom you are close, some kind of reciprocity may be appropriate. But it often seems wrong to actually request reciprocity. This chapter explores the wrongness in making these requests, and why they can nevertheless appear appropriate. After considering several explanations for the wrongness at issue (involving, e.g. distinguishing oughts from obligation, the suberogatory, imperfect duties, and gift-giving norms), a novel proposal is advanced. The requests are disrespectful; they express that their agent insufficiently trusts (...) the hearer to recognize their own reasons to reciprocate, and the close relationship between them morally requires this kind of trust. This proposal is articulated and situated in the recent discussion of the normativity of requests. The chapter concludes by explaining how these requests may appear appropriate. Agents in these relationships often have standing to make requests, though the standing is lacking in these particular cases. (shrink)

Works of Tran Duc Thao, a Vietnamese philosopher.