Subjects were presented with sequences of letters six units long. The sequences were presented serially so that each letter of a sequence fell upon the same part of a viewing screen as every other one. The task was to name the letters or to name the words they formed. The principal variables were the kinds of words, the duration of a blank interval between the third and fourth letters of a sequence, and the duration of the individual letters. Correct responses were found to increase toward 100% as the duration of the letters approached about 1/3 sec. The magnitude of the interval between the third and fourth letters had little effect upon recognition. Contextual factors were found to exert influences that enabled the words to be grouped over relatively long temporal separations. A distinction can be made experimentally between naming letters and naming the word they spell. In addition, it was found that the subject could sometimes name all the letters in a sequence but got their order wrong. This is taken to indicate differences in the mechanisms associated with identifying events and identifying their temporal order.

No abstract

The industrial‐urban hypothesis has stimulated considerable empirical research on the spatial structure of agriculture. The alternative paradigm of von Thuenen has had almost no such impact on agricultural research, but has been the mainstay of urban economic analysis. The two models are compared as scientific theories of agricultural land use in an attempt to identify their similarities and contradictions. After reinterpreting several industrial‐urban studies from a von Thuenen viewpoint, an empirical discrimination between the two models is attempted with Brazilian data. A synthesis of the two paradigms provides a better explanation of agricultural structure than either alone.

The fact that crime is higher in the larger urban centers and in the central cities of metropolitan areas suggests that crime has contributed to suburbanisation. Previous studies have been unable to extricate crime from other causes of suburbanisation and central city decline. The present study of residential mobility isolates the effect of property crime from other neighborhood characteristics, such as accessibility to workplace and social composition. In Dallas it is found that the repelling effects of crime for potential movers is greater for families with children than without and for more affluent families, white and black.

The income and proce elasticity of demand for domestic water is estimated for Penang Island, Malaysia. A cross‐sectional analysis of a random sample of 1400 households indicated an income‐elasticity of zero for low‐income families (per capita income less than US$300) and an elasticity of 0.2‐0.4 for higher‐income families. A time‐series analysis of a subsample of individuals of varying income levels suggests a short‐run price elasticity of ‐0.1 to ‐0.2. The implications of these results for demand forecasting are discussed.