Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Phobic imagery'

Twenty-four anxiety disorder subjects. 12 simple phobics and 12 panic disorders with agoraphobia, were assessed for physiological response (SCL, HR and EMG) to phobic imagery scripts. Subjects were instructed to image during tape-recorded scripts of standardized neutral (Neutral) and personally relevant fear (Phobic) scripts. All scripts contained both stimulus and response cues; however, subjects were presented four versions of a script which varied in response cue (propositional) content and presentation style: a version presented non-interactively which contained no cognitive cues (meaning propositions), a version presented non-interactively which contained cognitive cues, a version presented interactively which contained no cognitive cues, and a version presented interactively which contained cognitive cues. Both diagnostic groups produced significantly increased HR and SCL in response to Phobic scripts which contained cognitive cues and were presented interactively. Phobic Scripts which contained cognitive cues and were presented non-interactively produced significantly increased arousal only in the panic disorder group as measured by HR. Simple phobics also responded with significantly increased SCL to Phobic scripts presented interactively with no cognitive cues. Neither diagnostic group responded with increased arousal to the Phobic script presented non-interactively with no cognitive cues. Contrary to previous research, these results indicate that subjects with panic disorder with agoraphobia are capable of producing significantly increased physiological arousal in response to phobic imagery. The crucial importance of imagery script content and presentation style are highlighted by the results. Furthermore, the current investigation differed from previous investigations in that the parameters of an actual therapy session were more closely approximated by having the subjects image during script presentation rather than subsequent to script presentation. Finally, frontalis EMG did not prove to be a sensitive measure of anxiety in these subject populations pointing to the need for multiple channels of physiological measurement. Implications for content and methodology of future research studies in this area are discussed.
Ph. D.

Current cognitive models (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997) emphasise the importance of negative self-images in the maintenance of social phobia. Although evidence suggests that in social phobia these images influence some cognitive, affective and behavioural responses in social situations, it is unclear how they exert their effect. The literature review examines the proposition that these images function as self-representations that have their roots in autobiographical memory. The role of self-images, within a theoretical model of self and autobiographical memory is explored (i.e., the Self-Memory System; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). A possible relationship between self-images and the working self (i.e., the current self-view) is discussed as a useful framework within which the effects of negative self-images in social phobia could be understood. Research is proposed which will begin to empirically test this relationship. The empirical paper investigates the effect of positive and negative self-images on difference aspects of the self. Negative self-images were associated with a weaker positive implicit selfesteem bias, and less positive and more negative explicit self-esteem, in both high and low socially anxious participants. Negative self-images were also associated with reduced self-concept clarity, but only in low socially anxious participants. Following social threat activation, the increase in self-esteem associated with positive selfimagery was still evident. Findings provide some support for a relationship between self-imagery and specific self-evaluative components of the self. The potential contribution of this relationship to the persistence of social phobia is discussed.

Objectives. The objective of this study was to investigate how the characteristics of self-generated and spontaneous images might differ between states of high and low anxiety, as observed in spider phobia. It was not known whether self-generated images could be used, in the same way as spontaneous images, to access core beliefs. The frequency and characteristics of spontaneous images were assessed to determine whether they are negative, recurrent, and link to early memories, as have been reported in social phobia. Design. Participants were recruited into either a spider-anxious group or a control group based upon their response (independent variable) to the Fear of Spiders Questionnaire (Muris & Mercklebach, 1996). A semi-structured interview, incorporating a within and between group design, required participants to rate the characteristics (the dependent variables) of self generated and spontaneous images. Method. A semi-structured interview was administered. Participants rated the characteristics of two images (spider and butterfly) using visual analogue scales. The downward arrow technique was used to access core beliefs associated with the self-generated and spontaneous images. Results. The spider-anxious group's spider image was more vivid, evoked more anxiety, and was perceived as having more intent than both control images. The spider-anxious group reported more negative core beliefs associated with the self-generated image and more spontaneous images, that were recurrent, negative and that linked to early traumatic experiences. Conclusions. The phenomenological characteristics of self-generated images can be reliably assessed and, in the absence of spontaneous images, can be utilised to access core beliefs in anxiety disorders. This study provides some evidence of cognitive biases and thinking errors and calls for a new cognitive model of specific phobia.

This volume contains three parts. Part 1 is a literature review. This systematically reviews evidence for maintenance factors of specific phobias in adults. The maintenance factors are derived from cognitive-behavioural models. The review includes studies which demonstrate that the maintenance factor has a causal influence on phobic symptoms. Part 2 is an empirical paper. This paper describes an exploratory study of intrusive mental imagery in adults with a specific phobia of vomiting. Information about the presence and nature of imagery was derived using quantitative semi-structured interviews. Imagery data was compared against severity of phobia data. The study also includes a single case experiment which investigates the effectiveness of imagery rescripting for phobia of vomiting. Part 3 is a critical appraisal. This paper provides reflections on the research process and an expanded discussion of the findings.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.
Thesis research directed by: Psychology. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

Este trabalho tem o objetivo de descrever o atendimento de uma paciente utilizando imagens relacionadas à sua fobia no contexto clínico. É uma proposta de um enquadre diferenciado em psicoterapia psicanalítica com o fundamento na teoria de objetos e fenômenos transicionais de Winnicott, a qual se refere a uma área para a qual contribuem tanto realidade interna, subjetiva, quanto externa, objetiva, constituindo a área do brincar. A teoria freudiana sobre a angústia é revisada desde o início, em que a fobia era considerada um sintoma o qual podia aparecer em diversas afecções psíquicas. A denominação histeria de angústia foi proposta por Freud em 1909, para descrever a entidade nosológica em que a fobia é a questão central e cujo mecanismo é semelhante ao da histeria. Este trabalho foi desenvolvido a partir do método clínico com a apresentação do estudo aprofundado de um caso. A paciente, de 37 anos, buscou atendimento para aracnofobia. No psicodiagnóstico, foi aplicado o Procedimento de Desenhos-Estórias de Walter Trinca. Para a psicoterapia, realizada em 19 atendimentos, foram compostas, junto com a paciente, duas pastas, uma com fotos que lembram aranha e outra com fotos de aranhas e de teias. O caso foi compreendido como histeria de angústia, tendo ocorrido um rápido e intenso processo psicoterapêutico. Discute-se que o imagético instaurou uma linguagem onírica nas sessões, e o onírico, assim como o brincar, é campo de simbolização. As associações a partir das imagens foram eminentemente em torno da temática da aranha, sendo tais associações comparadas ao papel que as fantasias presentes no trabalho do sonho realizado pela consciência vígil têm com relação ao conteúdo latente do sonho. Discute-se que a transicionalidade propiciada pelo imagético permitiu um trabalho de figurabilidade e, ao mesmo tempo, teria permitido a constituição de um pensar por imagens, sendo as imagens associadas a palavras ao longo do processo. A paciente conseguiu uma transformação interna, uma recriação de si em que a pulsão sexual de morte (na concepção de Laplanche) foi transformada, a partir da função objetalizante (Green), em pulsão sexual de vida, com seus processos de integração, síntese e permitindo a constituição de unidades e vínculos. Pode-se considerar que houve cura, no sentido proposto por Herrmann. Conclui-se que o presente estudo de caso evidenciou a potencialidade do uso de imagens em favorecer a simbolização e as elaborações na psicoterapia psicanalítica da fobia. Novas investigações nessa área poderão responder quanto à questão das possibilidades de generalização desta experiência
This paper aims to describe the attendance of a patient by using images related to her phobia in the clinical context. It is a proposal for a differentiated framing in psychoanalytic psychotherapy based on the theory of objects and transitional phenomena by Winnicott, which refers to an area where realities, both internal subjective and external objective contribute and constitute the area of play. The Freudian theory about anguish is reviewed from the very beginning when the phobia was considered a symptom which could appear in diverse mental disorders. The term anguish hysteria was proposed by Freud in 1909 to describe the nosological entity in which the phobia is the central question and whose mechanism is similar to that of hysteria. This work was developed by using the clinical method and a presentation of a detailed case study. A 37-year-old female patient sought treatment for arachnophobia. In her psychodiagnosis, the Drawing-and-Story Procedure by Walter Trinca was applied. Her psychotherapy was conducted in 19 attendances, for which two folders were arranged with the help of the patient, one with photographs that reminded of spiders and another with pictures of real spiders and webs. The case was understood as anguish hysteria and treated in a rapid and intense psychotherapeutic process. It is discussed that the imagery established an oniric language in the sessions and the oniric context is a field of symbolization, just like the area of play. The associations made with the use of images were predominantly around the spider theme; such associations were compared to the role played by fantasies in the dreaming activity, which is carried out by the waking consciousness, in relation to the latent content of dreams. It is discussed that the transitionality provided by the imagery allowed an activity of figurability and at the same time it would have allowed a process of thinkingby images, having images associated with words all along the way. The patient achieved her inner transformation, a re-creation of herself in which her sexual pulsion of death (in Laplanche\'s conception) was transformed from an objectalizing function (Green) into a sexual pulsion of life, with its processes of integration and synthesis, enabling the constitution of units and links. It can be considered that healing did take place, as proposed by Herrmann. It is concluded that the presentcase study demonstrated the potentiality of using images to favor symbolizations and elaborations within the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of phobias. Further investigations in this area may respond to the question of possibilities towards generalizing the experience reported herein

Cette these expose les principaux resultats de l'experience ism ayant vole en 1989 a bord de la sonde sovietique phobos-2 a destination de mars et phobos. L'instrument fonctionnant en proche infrarouge, est le premier spectro-imageur utilise pour l'etude des surfaces planetaires. Il a permis l'etude de la composition mineralogique des surfaces et de leur variabilite spatiale. Ce document contient d'autre part une revue des travaux de laboratoire relatifs a la methode et une synthese des observations spectro-photometriques de mars et phobos. L'etude a moyenne resolution (2020 km#2) des regions de tharsis et syrtis major montre une forte variabilite du materiau des regions sombres, riches en mineraux ferro-magnesiens: pyroxenes calciques (augite), peut-etre olivine. Les regions claires sont beaucoup plus uniformes du point de vue mineralogique (silicates hydrates et oxydes de fer, hematite) ce qui correspond au recouvrement de la roche par des poussieres. Les proprietes photometriques sont pourtant variables et peuvent correspondre a des variations des proprietes physiques du sol. L'etude de valles marineris favorise les hypotheses de depot sedimentaire en milieu lacustre. La partie observee de phobos montre un heterogeneite inattendue, les caracteristiques spectrales variant entre celles des chondrites carbonees les plus seches et celles de certaines chondrites ordinaires sombres, alterees

Cette etude est articulee autour de l'atmosphere de la planete mars par le spectroimageur ism embarque a bord de la sonde phobos. Entre 0. 75 et 3. 15 microns, co2, co, h20 et les poussieres en suspension peuvent etre etudies. Le co2, etant le principal constituant atmospherique, permet de restituer l'altitude de chaque spectre. La base de donnees ismad constitue la mesure d'altitude de chacun des quelque 35000 spectres enregistres par ism. Elle apparait complementaire des resultats deduits de viking au vu de sa faible incertitude relative. Quant a lui, le co est produit par photodissociation du co2. La majorite des modeles photochimiques predit qu'il est uniformement reparti sur l'ensemble de la planete. Les spectres ism montrent pourtant des variations spatiales, entre autres au-dessus des grands volcans, qui remettent en cause les modeles. En outre, un passage en revue des possibles interpretations de telles variations est entrepris. Concernant la vapeur d'eau, on observe un enrichissement des densites de colonne en 1989 par comparaison a celles determinees par le viking entre 1976/79. L'absence de tempetes globales en 1989 pourrait en etre la cause. Finalement, les poussieres atmospheriques provoquent un rougissement des spectres ism. Leur influence sur la forme des bandes atmospheriques est discutee et une taille possible proposee

Viewing fine features of object with optical instruments have become increasingly difficult as the dimensions of many features of interest have become smaller than the traditional optical resolution limit. Examples of these features can be found in semiconductor components and biological tissues. This has caused a move to non-optical methods such as scanning electron and atomic force microscopy techniques, or optical methods combined with signal processing techniques to provide clearer images of samples. This thesis presents a method to increase the resolution of an optical system. This is achieved by using principal component analysis (PCA). Once the PCA measured the object image parameters, the new clearer image can be reconstructed based on these parameters. This process works extremely well. Various aspects of samples measured by the PCA have been investigated, such as the shift of sample, the sample with different sizes, the orientation of sample and the impact of noise. These studies show that the technique is extremely robust, and has huge potential for general usage. The thesis also contains the detail of the Hough Transform technique which was used to provide the initial parameters to the PCA. From the analysis of the technique, it is concluded that the accurate measurement of the technique can be achieved by providing adequate templates of the object image for the system.

Handling large displacement optical flow is a remarkably arduous task. For instance, standard coarse-to-fine techniques often struggle to adequately deal with moving objects whose motion exceeds their size. Here we propose a learning approach to the estimation of large displacement between two non-consecutive images in a sequence on the basis of a learning set of optical flows estimated a priori between different consecutive images in the same sequence. Our method refines an initial estimate of the flow field by replacing each displacement vector by a linear combination of displacement vectors at the center of similar patches taken from a code-book built from the learning set. The key idea is to use the accurate flows estimated a priori between consecutive images to help improve the potentially less accurate flows estimated online between images further apart. Experimental results suggest the ability of a purely data-driven learning approach to handle fine scale structures with large displacements.

This research examines rural, pre-adolescent student images, concerns, questions and knowledge about the disease Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). A secondary objective is to determine if responses are influenced by gender. A qualitative survey was administered to six classes of Grade 6 students (n = 131), within two public education districts in the province of British Columbia. Student participants had no previous formal AIDS education instruction. Pupil images, concerns, questions and knowledge concerning AIDS are investigated by means of open-ended, survey questions requiring both pictorial and written responses. The study is designed, conducted and analyzed from a generative learning theory perspective. By ascertaining specific student concerns surrounding AIDS it is hoped that educators will be able to design AIDS curriculum that is both developmentally appropriate for and conceptually befitting to early adolescent needs.
Education, Faculty of
Curriculum and Pedagogy (EDCP), Department of
Graduate

Habitat classification, the process of mapping a site with its habitats, is a crucial activity for monitoring environmental biodiversity. Phase 1 classification, a 10-class four-tier hierarchical scheme, is the most widely used scheme in the UK. Currently, no automatic approaches have been developed and its classification is carried out exclusively by ecologists. This manual approach using surveyors is laborious, expensive and subjective. To this date, no automatic approach has been developed. This thesis presents the first automatic system for Phase 1 classification. Our main contribution is an Automatic Image Annotation (AIA) framework for the automatic classification of Phase 1 habitats. This framework combines five elements to annotate unseen photographs: ground-taken geo-referenced photography, low-level visual features, medium-level semantic information, random projections forests and location-based weighted predictions. Our second contribution are two fully-annotated ground-taken photograph datasets, the first publicly available databases specifically designed for the development of multimedia analysis techniques for ecological applications. Habitat 1K has over 1,000 photographs and 4,000 annotated habitats and Habitat 3K has over 3,000 images and 11,000 annotated habitats. This is the first time ground-taken photographs have been used with such ecological purposes. Our third contribution is a novel Random Forest-based classifier: Random Projection Forests (RPF). RPFs use Random Projections as a dimensionality reduction mechanism in their split nodes. This new design makes their training and testing phase more efficient than those of the traditional implementation of Random Forests. Our fourth contribution arises from the limitations that low-level features have when classifying similarly visual classes. Low-level features have been proven to be inadequate for discriminating high-level semantic concepts, such as habitat classes. Currently, only humans posses such high-level knowledge. In order to obtain this knowledge, we create a new type of feature, called medium-level features, which use a Human-In-The-Loop approach to extract crucial semantic information. Our final contribution is a location-based voting system for RPFs. We benefit from the geographical properties of habitats to weight the predictions from the RPFs according to the geographical distance between unseen test photographs and photographs in the training set. Results will show that ground-taken photographs are a promising source of information that can be successfully applied to Phase 1 classification. Experiments will demonstrate that our AIA approach outperforms traditional Random Forests in terms of recall and precision. Moreover, both our modifications, the inclusion of medium-level knowledge and a location-based voting system, greatly improve the recall and precision of even the most complex habitats. This makes our complete image-annotation system, to the best of our knowledge, the most accurate automatic alternative to manual habitat classification for the complete categorization of Phase 1 habitats.

Analisi del sottosistema di telecomunicazione e del payload ottico di una missione CubeSat nei pressi di Phobos. Nell'analisi del sottosistema di telecomunicazione sono state analizzate le metodologie di trasmissione ed è stato svolto un link budget del sistema. Per quanto concerne il payload ottico sono stati presi in considerazione tutte le tipologie di imager ottici per CubeSat, con particolare riguardo per il sensore nello spettro ultravioleto, che è stato ideato su misura per la missione.

The analysis of time-lapse microscope images is a recent popular research topic. Processing techniques have been employed in such studies to extract important information about cells—e.g., cell number or alterations of cellular features—for various tasks. However, few studies provide acceptable results in practical applications because they cannot simultaneously solve the core challenges that are shared by most cell datasets: the image contrast is extremely low; the distribution of grey scale is non-uniform; images are noisy; the number of cells is large, etc. These factors also make manual processing an extremely laborious task. To improve the efficiency of related biological analyses and disease diagnoses. This thesis establishes a framework in these directions: a new segmentation method for cell images is designed as the foundation of an automatic approach for the measurement of cellular features. The newly proposed segmentation method achieves substantial improvements in the detection of cell filopodia. An automatic measuring mechanism for cell features is established in the designed framework. The measuring component enables the system to provide quantitative information about various cell features that are useful in biological research. A novel cell-tracking framework is constructed to monitor the alterations of cells with an accuracy of cell tracking above 90%. To address the issue of processing speed, two fast-processing techniques have been developed to complete edge detection and visual tracking. For edge detection, the new detector is a hybrid approach that is based on the Canny operator and fuzzy entropy theory. The method calculates the fuzzy entropy of gradients from an image to decide the threshold for the Canny operator. For visual tracking, a newly defined feature is employed in the fast-tracking mechanism to recognize different cell events with tracking accuracy: i.e., 97.66%, and processing speed, i.e., 0.578s/frame.

Os exames de Ressonância Magnética vêm sendo muito requisitados nas diferentes especialidades médicas como complemento diagnóstico e acompanhamento evolutivo de diversas patologias. Embora seja um método diagnóstico de excelência, os pacientes que se submetem ao exame podem apresentar muito desconforto em razão do espaço restrito do aparelho. A fobia de espaços fechados é considerada um tipo de fobia específica, segundo o Manual Diagnóstico e Estatístico de Transtornos Mentais DSM 5 (APA, 2013). OBJETIVOS: Verificar se uma sessão de Terapia de Aceitação e Compromisso é tão eficaz quanto sete sessões deste mesmo modelo terapêutico no tratamento de pacientes com medo de realizar exames de Ressonância Magnética. MÉTODO: Foi realizado um ensaio clínico randomizado com dois grupos paralelos, um grupo recebeu uma sessão e o outro grupo recebeu sete sessões de tratamento de Terapia de Aceitação e Compromisso. Os participantes foram avaliados no início e ao final do tratamento a partir dos seguintes instrumentos: Inventário de Claustrofobia de Rachman e Taylor (1993), Inventário de Depressão de Beck et al. (1961) e Inventário de Ansiedade estado-traço de Spielberger, Gorsuch e Lushene (1970). O estudo foi realizado em um hospital público na cidade de São Paulo com 30 pacientes. Desfecho principal: permanecer dentro de um simulador de Ressonância Magnética por, no mínimo, trinta minutos após o término de cada um dos tratamentos. Desfechos secundários: as diferenças nos escores dos Inventários de Claustrofobia, Inventário de Depressão de Beck e Inventário de Ansiedade Estado-traço do início e do final do tratamento. RESULTADOS: 92,9% dos participantes (N) do grupo de sete sessões conseguiram realizar exame de Ressonância Magnética no simulador após o tratamento, enquanto que 50% dos participantes do grupo de uma sessão conseguiram realizar o exame no simulador (p=0,033). Dos sujeitos que tiveram melhor resposta ao tratamento, 78% eram do sexo masculino, 80% eram casados, 78% não faziam uso de medicação psiquiátrica e em relação ao diagnóstico, 20% deles tinham diagnóstico de fobia específica de Ressonância Magnética e 80% deles tinham diagnóstico de fobia de espaços fechados. Todos os sujeitos portadores do diagnóstico Fobia específica de realizar exames de Ressonância Magnética conseguiram realizar o exame no simulador independente do número de sessões. Já os portadores de fobia de espaços fechados responderam mais ao tratamento de sete sessões (92%, p=0.009). O inventário de claustrofobia evidenciou que os indivíduos do grupo sete sessões responderam ao tratamento (p=0,002) e mostrou diferenças significativas nos escores antes e depois do tratamento e que se mantiveram três meses depois. Já no inventário de Beck, observa-se melhora dos sintomas depressivos ao final do tratamento (p=0,015), porém não há diferença após três meses. Observou-se através dos coeficientes de Regressão que quanto maior a pontuação no inventário de claustrofobia e de Depressão de Beck, menor a probabilidade de conseguir permanecer no simulador. Entretanto, fazer pelo menos sete sessões de terapia aumenta a probabilidade do desfecho positivo desejado. O estudo mostrou ainda que sete sessões de terapia foram benéficas, pois mesmo com escores elevados de sintomatologia depressiva os pacientes foram bem sucedidos na realização do exame de Ressonância Magnética no simulador
The MRI exams have been in considerable demand in various medical specialties to diagnose diseases. Although it is an effective diagnostic method, patients who are subjected to the exam might present high levels of discomfort due to the confined space of the device. The phobia of enclosed spaces is considered a type of specific phobia, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 (APA, 2013). Objectives: to check if a single session of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is as effective as seven sessions of the same therapeutic model for the treatment of patients with fear of undergoing MRI exams and enclosed spaces phobia. METHODS: A randomized clinical trial study with two parallel groups was performed, one group underwent one session and the other group underwent seven sessions of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Participants were assessed at the beginning and at the end of treatment with the following instruments: Claustrophobia Inventory from Rachman and Taylor (1993), Beck Depression Inventory from beck et al. (1961) and Anxiety Inventory State - Trait from Spielberger, Gorsuch and Luschene (1970). The study was performed in a public hospital in the city of Sao Paulo with 30 patients. Main outcome: to remain in a MRI simulator for at least 30 minutes after each treatment. Secondary outcomes: compare the differences in the inventories of Claustrophobia, Beck Depression Inventory and the Anxiety Inventory Trait- State scores compared at the beginning and at the end of treatments. RESULTS: 92.9% of participants (N) on the seven sessions group were able to carry out the MRI exam simulator after treatment, while 50% of participants of the one session group were able carry out the post treatment session in the simulator (p = 0.033). From the participants who had better response to treatment, 78 % were male, 80 % were married, 78 % did not use psychiatric medication and 20 % had a diagnosis of specific MRI phobia, 80% had a diagnosis of enclosed spaces phobia. All subjects with the Specific Phobia of performing MRI exams diagnosis were able to perform at the simulator test without considering the number of treatment sessions. Those with phobia of enclosed spaces responded more to the seven sessions treatment (92 %, p = 0.009). The inventory of claustrophobia showed that individuals in the seven sessions group performed the treatment (p = 0.002), showing significant differences before and after treatment and the level of performance was the same three months later. The Beck Inventory showed that there was improvement in depressive symptoms at the end of treatment (p = 0.015), but there was no difference after three months. It was observed through the regression coefficients that the higher the score on the inventory of claustrophobia and Beck Depression Inventory, the lower the probability of performing in the simulator. However, doing at least seven sessions of therapy increases the likelihood of the desired positive outcome. The study also showed that seven therapy sessions were beneficial, because even with high scores of depressive symptoms patients were successful in the test of the MRI simulator

博士
國立臺灣師範大學
英語學系
100
This dissertation aims to explore Woolf’s encounters with the mirror both in her life and in her works. Relevant issues include her ambivalence with regard to confronting herself in the mirror (her desire to confront and her paradoxical fear of so confronting herself), her mysterious encounter with “the other face in the glass”—“the face of an animal”—while she was looking in a mirror as a young girl, and her reflections on the diverse roles of mirrors in her life and private imaginative world. My interest in investigating Woolf’s “mirror issues” was motivated by two questions she asked herself in her memoir regarding her fascination with the mirror. The first concerns her ambivalent attitude toward the mirror; the second concerns her mysterious encounter with “the other face in the glass” whether in her dreams or in her imagination. As for the first question, based on Woolf’s self-analysis in her memoir—i.e. her anxiety about the tomboy code she shared with Vanessa, her fear of violating the puritanical streak she inherited from her paternal ancestry, and her feeling of shame on looking at her own body after being seduced by her half- brother— I argue that her looking-glass phobia may come down to her fear of confronting her self, a self that has in some way been debased by the male order or tarnished by male violence. Based on this argument, I propose to investigate Woolf’s second question, that is, “whose face is the other face in the glass?”, from the perspective of her traumatic encounter with and ambivalent attitude toward male violence, at least within the male-centered value system she received from her father. In a sense, to argue that the “the other face in the glass” is both Woolf’s seducers and her own double means assuming that the seducers are inseparable from the seduced. To argue this point, I thus devote my first chapter to an exploration of Woolf’s seduction mystery from the perspective of Freud’s seduction theory, since according to Freud the seduction “event” can be purely psychological. And then, based on the self-reflexivity of the whole seduction issue as discussed at the end of Chapter One, in the second chapter I propose that “the other face in the glass” is actually the exteriorization of Woolf’s inner double. In the first two chapters of this dissertation, then, I mainly deal with Woolf’s early traumas, especially those that are related to her looking-glass complex, and their impact on her. In Chapters Three, Four and Five, I mainly deal with Woolf’s mirror images in her three novels The Voyage Out, The Waves, and Between the Acts. I am interpreting these novels in terms of the three levels of the mirror’s function of “reflecting life” in Woolf’s writings. Thus in The Voyage Out, mirrors are used only via their first-level function as representational apparatuses of the external world, which render a faithful image of everything that is reflected in them just as it normally appears, no matter from what or whose perspective it is viewed. In The Waves, mirrors take on their second-level function of representing the fluid stream of consciousness of those who look at/into them, that is, they now display not just the exterior forms of “viewers” but their self-consciousnesses, now embodied as mirror reflections. In Between the Acts, mirrors function (like narrative fiction itself) on a more fully dialectical level, representing (reflecting) the unconscious structure of viewers’ psychical operations, not just their manifest self-reflections (level 2) but also what lies hidden from themselves in these self-reflections, though it may become clear to others (level 1); such reflections or representations now taken on a deeper reality, as if they were the mirror reflections of characters’ real lives. In the Conclusion, entitled “living and writing: a reflection on reflection,” I argue that after following Woolf’s development from a Victorian daughter intrigued with her own mirror reflection into a mature woman who explored the diverse functions and influences of the mirror in/on life, and after looking at the multi-leveled functions of the mirror in these three novels, we can finally see the degree to which Woolf wants to “see through” the illusoriness of life as it appears to us and of the social and political discourses that dominate our thinking, for the latter too are in a sense nothing but mirror reflections, virtual images. Hélène Cixous in “The Laugh of Medusa” draws on the myth in which Perseus kills Medusa—the hideous witch who turns to stone any man who looks directly at her face—by seeing her reflected image in his polished shield, in order to argue that the illusory image (here of “woman”) created by the mirror is like the illusory power of logocentric male rationality. Here I follow Cixous in arguing that we should stop approaching the world via the mediation of the mirror, itself the reflective mechanism of (male, phallogocentric) ideology and socio-cultural conditioning. If the other face in the glass is her (our) multiple selves then like Cixous’ “laugh of the Medusa” it is not horrible; rather, it is beautiful and full of the energy of life.

Edges are important visual features, providing many cues to the three-dimensional structure of the world. One of these cues is edge blur. Sharp edges tend to be caused by object boundaries, while blurred edges indicate shadows, surface curvature, or defocus due to relative depth. Edge blur also drives accommodation and may be implicated in the correct development of the eye's optical power. Here we use classification image techniques to reveal the mechanisms underlying blur detection in human vision. Observers were shown a sharp and a blurred edge in white noise and had to identify the blurred edge. The resultant smoothed classification image derived from these experiments was similar to a derivative of a Gaussian filter. We also fitted a number of edge detection models (MIRAGE, N(1), and N(3)(+)) and the ideal observer to observer responses, but none performed as well as the classification image. However, observer responses were well fitted by a recently developed optimal edge detector model, coupled with a Bayesian prior on the expected blurs in the stimulus. This model outperformed the classification image when performance was measured by the Akaike Information Criterion. This result strongly suggests that humans use optimal edge detection filters to detect edges and encode their blur.

In this paper, we investigate how controlled changes to image properties and orientation affect eye movements for repeated viewings of images of natural scenes. We make changes to images by manipulating low-level image content (such as luminance or chromaticity) and/or inverting the image. We measure the effects of these manipulations on human scanpaths (the spatial and chronological path of fixations), additionally comparing these effects to those predicted by a widely used saliency model (L. Itti & C. Koch, 2000). Firstly we find that repeated viewing of a natural image does not significantly modify the previously known repeatability (S. A. Brandt & L. W. Stark, 1997; D. Noton & L. Stark, 1971) of scanpaths. Secondly we find that manipulating image features does not necessarily change the repeatability of scanpaths, but the removal of luminance information has a measurable effect. We also find that image inversion appears to affect scene perception and recognition and may alter fixation selection (although we only find an effect on scanpaths with the additional removal of luminance information). Additionally we confirm that visual saliency as defined by L. Itti and C. Koch's (2000) model is a poor predictor of real observer scanpaths and does not predict the small effects of our image manipulations on scanpaths.

Although previous studies have suggested a certain degree of right hemisphere dominance for the response of extrastriate body area (EBA) during body perception, recent evidence suggests that this functional lateralization may differ between men and women. It is unknown, however, whether and how gender differences in body perception affect appreciating the beauty of the body of conspecifics. Here, we applied five 10-Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) pulses over left and right EBA and over the vertex to investigate the contribution of visual body representations in the two hemispheres on esthetic body perception. Female and male healthy volunteers were requested to judge how much they liked opposite- and same-gender virtual model bodies or to judge their weight, thus allowing us to compare the effects of right- and left-EBA rTMS on esthetic (liking) and perceptual (weight) judgments of human bodies. The analysis of the esthetic judgments provided by women revealed that right-EBA rTMS increased the liking judgments of opposite- but not same-gender models, as compared to both vertex and left EBA stimulation. Conversely, in men the liking judgments of opposite-gender models decreased after virtual disruption of both right and left EBA as compared to vertex stimulation. Crucially, no significant effect was found for the perceptual task, showing that left- and right-EBA rTMS did not affect weight perception. Our results provide evidence of gender difference in the hemispheric asymmetry of EBA in the esthetic processing of human bodies, with women showing stronger right hemisphere dominance in comparison with men.

We identified human visual field maps, LO1 and LO2, in object-selective lateral occipital cortex. Using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), we assessed the functions of these maps in the perception of orientation and shape. TMS of LO1 disrupted orientation, but not shape, discrimination, whereas TMS of LO2 disrupted shape, but not orientation, discrimination. This double dissociation suggests that specialized and independent processing of different visual attributes occurs in LO1 and LO2.