This experiment assessed the extent to which a peripheral hearing loss may confound interpretation of dichotic listening test results in assessment of central auditory deficit. A normal-hearing listener was tested monotically and dichotically with CV nonsense syllables in two conditions. In one, an EAR plug was inserted in the auditory canal to simulate a unilateral conductive hearing loss. In the second, no plus was inserted. Syllables were presented with equal intensity to the two ears for dichotic testing and testing was conducted at several different intensities. With the plug inserted, both magnitude and direction of percent ear advantage varied with test intensity even when monotic speech recognition scores exceeded 95% for both ears. When dichotic tests are used to assess central auditory deficit in patients with peripheral hearing loss, we recommend that the test intensity be at least 10 dB from both the lower and upper knees of monotic performance-intensity functions.

The beginning of Qur’an 4:34 (Men are qaww?m?n over women, with what God has preferred some over others, and with what they spend of their wealth) is often taken to legislate men’s authority over women. But many questions remain about the history of interpretations of this verse. In what ways have interpretations developed through time? Do pre-modern interpretations of this verse resemble modern interpretations, and what do such resemblances say about the attitudes of the exegetes? And what are the methods that pre-modern and modern exegetes use to arrive at their interpretations? One way of empirically examining the variety in the pre-modern heritage, the methods of the exegetes, and the use of the pre-modern heritage in modern discourse is through the genre of Qur’?n commentaries (tafs?r al-Qur’?n). This verse has always been a source of controversy: pre-modern exegeses of it are varied. In the first part of this paper, I explore some of the variations in the content and methods of pre-modern interpretation, focusing on the ways in which content and method developed through time. I argue that some of the variations in content between the earliest and later pre-modern exegeses may be due to development in the exegetes’ methods of writing exegesis.

This article describes the relationship between gender hierarchy and spiritual hierarchy in the writings of three Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī authors: al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān (d. 363/974), Jaʿfar b. Manṣūr al-Yaman (d. 380/990) and al-Muʾayyad fī’l-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 470/1078). These authors interpreted references to males and females in the Qur'an as references to spiritual teachers and their students: verses that on the outward (ẓāhir) level speak of the gender hierarchy refer, on the inner (bāṭin) level, to the spiritual hierarchy. We show that, for them, physical gender matters in the physical realm, and a worldly gender hierarchy exists, but physical gender is not always a defining factor in spiritual rankings. We shed light on the way in which these prominent Fāṭimid Ismāʿīlī thinkers view the base physical realm as a symbolic reference to higher spiritual truths, and give examples of the ways in which specific Qur'anic stories, such as that of Adam and Eve, or Joseph and Zulaykha, are interpreted as referring to the male/teacher and female/student relationship in the spiritual hierarchy. We then compare these writings to the specific defence of a female spiritual leader put forth in the Ghayāt al-mawālīd by a slightly later author, al-Khaṭṭāb (d. 533/1138–9).

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This article traces the archetypical development of emotion from individual feeling to collective action by focusing on conversion and kinship as recorded in the Qur'an and the oldest extant biography of the Prophet, the Sīra of Ibn Isḥāq. The article's first part describes an individual's experience of emotions through the conversion story of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. Conversion can result in tension with kin networks, and the second part shows how the Qur'anic discourse on kinship evolves through time. The third part examines the social impact of conversion, as told through two narratives in the Sīra. Through these examples, this article proposes a method of reading which gives insight into the function and import of emotions and emotiveness in these texts. I suggest attending not only to emotion words, whether on their own or as an expression of social hierarchies, but also to emotional tension, and to the transformation of emotional states. Tension and transformation can indicate a text's emotiveness. Stories themselves can become objects of emotive attachment for a community, and the emotiveness of a story might be why it sticks in the memory and becomes emblematic, or how it becomes convincing. Such stories can bind people together with a shared vision of the nature of their community, its mores, and its history. Emotion is not always simply an expression of individual feeling. Emotive rhetoric can convince people to do something that they do not wish to do, such as fighting jihad, and emotive stories can create an idealized image of a community. Emotion in these texts can thus be considered in three overlapping spheres: as an expression of a religious experience, as an expression of a social power dynamic, and as a means of expressing and constructing community identity.