Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Self-referential'

The combination of memory-enhancing processes of imagining and of self-reference has been shown to improve memory function, the Self-Imagining Effect (SIE), in healthy subjects and in Persons with neurological damage resulting from traumatic brain injury (TBI). Prior studies Have instructed participants to "imagine yourself' but have not confirmed that self-referential Information is being accessed in self-imagining. The current study investigated the content of Self-referential imagining which may mediate the SIE advantage. Participants, both healthy Persons and persons who had sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and suffer memory Impairment, were instructed to imagine themselves and an "other-person" interacting with various objects and to simultaneously describe their imaginings. The recorded imaginings were Scored for descriptive (location, agent, event and perception/emotion) and referential (self, other Specific, and general) elements. Findings suggest that self-imagining does access self-referential Information and is more content-rich than other-person imagining. The elements found in self-imagining were representative of episodic-like information. Other-person imagining, while not as content-rich, contained proportionately similar descriptive elements. The study provides a Better understanding of the salient features of self-imagining and may elucidate the role of self-referential Knowledge in mnemonic strategies in persons with neurological damage due to TBI.

This thesis examines a specific type of instance that bridges the divide between seeing sacred texts as merely vehicles for content and as objects themselves: self-reference. Doing so yielded a heuristic system of categories of self-reference in sacred texts based on the way the text self-describes: Inlibration, Necessity, and Untranslatability. I provide examples of these self-referential features as found in various sacred texts: the Vedas, Āgamas, Papyrus of Ani, Torah, Quran, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, and the Book of Mormon. I then examine how different theories of sacredness interact with them. What do Durkheim, Otto, Freud, or Levinas say about these? How are their theories changed when confronted with sacred texts as objects as well as containers for content? I conclude by asserting that these self-referential features can be seen as ‘self-sacralizing’ in that they: match understandings of sacredness, speak for themselves, and do not occur in mundane texts.

Motivations Ideas and delusions of reference (I/DOR) are common psychotic symptoms and can be defined as self-referential experiences in excess of the amount of evidence available in the immediate environment. A putative neurocognitive mechanism is increased automatic attention capture by self-referential (SR) information. This study was carried out to test the hypotheses that 1) compared with patients with no I/DOR, those who have the symptom have increased attentional shift to SR information and 2) there is a positive correlation between the severity of I/DOR and the extent of attentional shift to SR information. Clinical and cognitive correlates of I/DOR were also explored. Methods Patients with I/DOR (n=20, mean age 25.2±7.9 years, 4 men) and without I/DOR (n=17, mean age 28.6±8.2 years, 10 men) matched for age and education were assessed for positive symptoms, negative symptoms, mood symptoms and basic neurocognition. I/DOR were phenomenologically assessed using the Ideas of Reference Interview Scale (IRIS). In an interference task, patients were instructed to respond to computerized Stroop tasks while ignoring a voice clip presented binaurally with the subject’s own name (SON) embedded in certain trials. Within-subject differences in reaction time and accuracy between Stroop trials with and without SON were used as parameters to measure the degree of attentional shift to SR information. Between-group and within-subject differences in the reaction time and accuracy in the interference task were analysed using 2×2 mixed-ANOVA. Bivariate correlation was used to explore the relationship between IRIS scores and performance in the interference task. Stepwise linear regression analysis was used to explore the correlates of I/DOR. Results There was statistically significant interaction between conditions with and without SON and patient groups on the reaction time of the interference task (p=0.048). Simple main effects showed the mean difference of reaction time between conditions with and without SON was statistically significant in patients with I/DOR (p=0.001) but not in patients without I/DOR (p=0.862). Parameters used in the interference task correlated highly with IRIS global score and subscores on pervasiveness, self-referential discrepancy, conviction and frequency (r=0.328-0.517, range; p<0.05), unaltered by other clinical and cognitive variables except depressive symptoms and social anxiety. Regression analysis showed that I/DOR were related to depressive symptoms, social anxiety and attentional shift to SON. Discussion The significant interaction and simple main effect suggest that I/DOR are associated with a heightened attentional shift to SR information. The robust correlations between IRIS scores and attentional shift to SON provide some evidence to support the continuum hypothesis of I/DOR. The possible roles of emotions in the pathogenesis of I/DOR are discussed. Significance With the use of well-matched patient samples and an ecologically valid paradigm based on known human cognitive functions, the present study provided first empirical evidence for a theoretical link between cognitive anomaly and a key psychotic symptom. The SON paradigm provides a promising tool for further research and can potentially be developed into a neurocognitive parameter of I/DOR. The present study also shed light on the complexity of I/DOR in relation to other symptoms to inform future studies.
published_or_final_version
Psychiatry
Master
Master of Research in Medicine

The thesis traces the evolving attitudes towards rhetoric in the highly-rhetorised English-language prose of the late sixteenth century by focusing on a term that was itself subject to significant change: 'wit'. To wit's pre-existing denotations of intellectual acumen, capacity for reason and good judgement was added a novel meaning, related to the capacity for producing lively speech. As a term encompassing widely divergent meanings, many Elizabethan and early Stuart works explored 'wit' as a central theme or treated the term as significant to explorations of the human mind, its capacity for rhetoric, and the social and moral dimensions of this relationship. The research centres on how 'wit' is seen and how it corresponds to rhetorical wittiness as produced in practice, and questions the implications of this for understanding the social and moral dimensions of the authorial wit. By focusing on the early vernacular manuals of rhetoric by author such as Thomas Wilson and Roger Ascham, on Lyly's and Greene's euphuist prose, and on Thomas Lodge's and Sir Philip Sidney's prose defences of poetry, the first half of the thesis explores the term's conceptual ambiguity. Potentially both reformative and deceptive, this ambiguity becomes a useful tool for the author looking to construct a profitable persona as a Wit, or a brilliant-yet-unruly master of rhetoric. The second half of the research notes how 'wit' tends to outlive its usefulness as a multivalent term in later writings when these seek to move away from the social commodification of an author's rhetoric. Examining Sidney's theological and political aims in The New Arcadia, Thomas Nashe's carnivalesque questioning of the idea of profit, and Francis Bacon's systematic interpretation of Nature, the research suggests that rhetoric and 'wit' maintain both their significance and their ambiguity into the seventeenth century. A meta-rhetorical signpost, 'wit' comes to reflect through its use and disuse both the issues at hand and the inherent self-reflexivity of any attempt to deal directly with rhetoric.

Damage to the brain can affect the core of the individual, i.e. the self. Results from a small number of studies with amnesic individuals indicate that patients' ability to show preserved knowledge of self may vary. The present study explored self-knowledge in patients with memory impairment as a result of confabulation, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease and acquired brain damage. We found that different memory disorders differentially affected patients' self-knowledge. At least some patients showed a preserved sense of self, and were able to acquire information about another person that they had met postmorbidly. Frontal function and stability of cognitive impairments over time appear to be two variables important in determining whether patients can have a consistent and updated sense of self. We also explored the extent to which self-referential and other-referential processing might enhance memory in individuals with memory-impairment. The self-reference effect (SRE) and other-reference effect (ORE) have been consistently found in normal adults. Results indicated that patients showed a normal SRE and ORE. The SRE and ORE appeared to be at least partly dependent on degree of knowledge of the person being referenced, and were also related to general memory and frontal function. Only the SRE, however, was also related to patients' ability to improve memory as a result of emotional processing. These findings may have important implications for caregivers and healthcare professionals working with memory-impaired patients, and may pave the way to novel memory rehabilitation methods.

This thesis focuses on the problem of "autonomous agents". It is assumed that such agents want to be in a desired state which can be assessed by the agent itself when it observes the consequences of its own actions. Therefore the feedback from the motor output via the environment to the sensor input is an essential component of such a system. As a consequence an agent is defined in this thesis as a self-referential system which operates within a closed sensor- mot or-sensor feedback loop. The generic situation is that the agent is always prone to unpredictable disturbances which arrive from the outside, i.e. from its environment. These disturbances cause a deviation from the desired state (for example the organism is attacked unexpectedly or the temperature in the environment changes, ...). The simplest mechanism for managing such disturbances in an organism is to employ a reflex loop which essentially establishes reactive behaviour. Reflex loops are directly related to closed loop feedback controllers. Thus, they are robust and they do not need a built-in model of the control situation. However, reflexes have one main disadvantage, namely that they always occur 'too late'; i.e., only after a (for example, unpleasant) reflex eliciting sensor event has occurred. This defines an objective problem for the organism. This thesis provides a solution to this problem which is called Isotropic Sequence Order (ISO-) learning. The problem is solved by correlating the primary reflex and a predictive sensor input: the result is that the system learns the temporal relation between the primary reflex and the earlier sensor input and creates a new predictive reflex. This (new) predictive reflex does not have the disadvantage of the primary reflex, namely of always being too late. As a consequence the agent is able to maintain its desired input-state all the time. In terms of engineering this means that ISO learning solves the inverse controller problem for the reflex, which is mathematically proven in this thesis. Summarising, this means that the organism starts as a reactive system and learning turns the system into a pro-active system. It will be demonstrated by a real robot experiment that ISO learning can successfully learn to solve the classical obstacle avoidance task without external intervention (like rewards). In this experiment the robot has to correlate a reflex (retraction after collision) with signals of range finders (turn before the collision). After successful learning the robot generates a turning reaction before it bumps into an obstacle. Additionally it will be shown that the learning goal of 'reflex avoidance' can also, paradoxically, be used to solve an attraction task.

Background: There are multiple conflicting theories of depression and clients are frequently given contradictory explanations of their difficulties. Evidence that brings together biological, psychological and social factors of depression would be particularly useful in addressing this. The current study investigates the neural correlates of self-referential processing following psychological intervention for depression. This provides neurological evidence of how a central feature of psychological models may change following therapy. Methodology: Fourteen participants, who had received psychological intervention for depression, underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging scans whilst completing three types of cognitive task: a self-referential processing task, an other-referential processing task, and a graphical task. Participants’ neural activation during self-referential processing was compared to that of ten depressed participants and twelve control participants, which had been collected for a previous study. Results: When positive and negative self-referential processing were considered together, there was no normalisation of neural activation in the post-therapy group, despite normalisation on the BDI II. When positive and negative self-referential processing were considered separately there were fewer areas of significant neural activation during negative self-referential processing in the post-therapy group than in the depressed group. Indicating that neural activation in the post-therapy group normalised. In contrast, during positive self-referential processing, a lack of difference between the control group and the depressed group precluded the possibility of normalisation. Conclusions: The findings provide further support for the importance of the self in models of depression. In presenting neurological evidence in relation to psychological models and psychological therapy, they help bring together biological and psycho-social models of depression. It is possible that the ongoing patterns of atypical activation during self-referential processing represent a vulnerability to future episodes of depression. Possible explanations for the valence-specific findings are discussed and these are highlighted as interesting future research questions. Limitations of the research methodology are discussed and possible directions for future research are outlined.

A dominant social cognition model has construed the central socio-communicative impairments in Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) as deficits in understanding others’ minds- what other people know, intend, believe and feel. Difficulties for individuals with ASD have been well documented on “Theory of Mind” (TOM) tasks designed to tap these skills (Boucher, 2012). Recently however, research has shifted toward exploring how individuals with ASD understand their own minds, and to look at the cognitive mechanisms involved in thinking about “the self”. The present thesis is situated in the context of this emerging self-referential cognition (SRC) research, including its close connection to social cognition. This thesis explored the quantitative and qualitative differences in neurotypical (NT) adolescents and those with ASD in generating self-images (e.g. concepts such as I am a female, I am a footballer, I am kind) through use of novel fluency tasks (the ‘I Am’ and ‘(s)he is’ tasks) based on the Twenty Statements Test (TST; Kuhn and McPartland, 1954). Relationships between these tasks and social cognition (TOM measures) were also explored. The results indicated that both NT adolescents and those with ASD exhibited a self-reference effect (SRE), generating more statements about themselves than other people. The magnitude of the SREs was found to be significantly related to several TOM measures such as performance on the Mind in the Eyes task of emotion recognition. Moreover, the ASD group produced significantly less personal attributions across all fluency tasks, but a similar number of social and physical attributions, compared to the NT group. This mirrored emerging findings that indicate a specific deficit in psychological but not physical self awareness in ASD (e.g. Williams, 2010). Additionally, the ASD group were found to make significantly fewer spontaneous social stereotypes on the (s)he is tasks, such as the “Beauty is Good” stereotype, a finding which contrasts with previous research showing preserved social stereotyping in children with ASD (Fonesca et al, 2011). The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings for individuals with ASD are discussed with reference to the “absent-self hypothesis” (e.g. Frith, 2003). Additionally, the promising utility of fluency measures in capturing important aspects of SRC are also noted, including suggestions for further research.

Investigation of the neural correlates of the self has implicated a network of brain regions including the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), posterior cingulate (PCC), precuneus (pC), and inferior parietal lobule (IPL). At the same time, recent neuroimaging work has identified the Default Mode Network (DMN), a network of brain regions that are highly active at `rest' (without an active cognitive task). While the functional significance of the DMN remains unknown, converging evidence suggests that the DMN might be critical for self-referential processing (e.g., introspection). In this dissertation, I tested this hypothesis using a lesion approach. In the first experiment, I examined the critical role of the DMN hubs (MPFC, IPL) in autobiographical memory (AM) retrieval. I predicted that if the DMN hubs were critical for AM, then lesions to either the MPFC or IPL should result in AM retrieval impairments. I tested this prediction using the Iowa Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire (IAMQ), a questionnaire that assessed retrograde AM retrieval. In support of the prediction, lesions to the MPFC and IPL were associated with significant AM retrieval impairments. While not predicted, AM retrieval deficits were also associated with lesions in medial and lateral temporal cortices, regions also considered part of the DMN. In the second experiment, I tested the critical role of the DMN hubs in the self-reference effect (SRE), a well-known memory advantage conferred by self-related processing. I predicted that if the DMN hubs were critical for the SRE, then damage to the MPFC or IPL should diminish the effect. I used a standard personality trait judgment paradigm to test this prediction. In partial support of the prediction, I found that damage to the MPFC abolished the SRE with a "self" specific deficit. While IPL damage was associated with a diminished SRE, the effects were not significant. In the third experiment, I tested the hypothesis that the DMN is critical for accurate knowledge of one's personality. I predicted that if the DMN hubs are critical for accurate self-knowledge, then damage to either the MPFC or IPL should be associated with less accurate personality reports. In partial support of the prediction, MPFC and IPL groups demonstrated less accurate personality ratings. However, performance for all lesion groups was comparable and not significantly different from healthy subjects. In the fourth experiment, I sought to test the hypothesis that the DMN is critical for mind wandering (MW). I predicted that if the DMN hubs are critical for MW, then damage to the MPFC and IPL should result in decreased MW. To test this prediction, I used two approaches: 1) an experience sampling method (Sustained Attention to Response Task), and 2) a self-report measure (Imaginal Processes Inventory scale of MW). Contrary to my prediction, IPL lesions were associated with increased MW on the SART. By contrast, in support of the prediction, both MPFC and IPL lesions were associated with significant self-reported decreases in MW. Together, these experiments provide some evidence to support the hypothesis that the DMN is critical for self-referential processing. Future work might investigate the impact of DMN lesions on other self-processes (e.g., self-agency).

This thesis is a study of embedded song in ancient Greek narrative poetry. The introduction defines the terminology (embedded song is defined as the depiction of the performance of a poem within a larger poem, such as the songs of Demodocus in Homer’s Odyssey) and sets the study in the context of recent narratological work done by scholars of Classical literature. This section of the thesis also contains a brief discussion of embedded song in the Homeric epics, which will form the background of all later examples of the motif. Chapter 1 deals with embedded song in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod’s Theogony. It is argued that the occurrence of embedded song across these poems indicates that the motif is a traditional feature of early Greek hexameter poetry, while the possibility of “inter-textual” allusion between these poems is considered, but finally dismissed. Chapter 2 focuses on Pindar, Bacchylides and Corinna, and explores how lyric poets use this motif in the various sub-genres of Greek lyric. In epinician poetry, it is argued that embedded song is used as a strategy of praise and also to boost the authority of the poet-narrator by association with the embedded performers, who can be seen to have in each case a particular source of authority distinct from that of the poet narrator. Chapter 3 considers the Hellenistic poets Apollonius Rhodius and Theocritus, and how their interest in depicting oral poetry meshes with their identity as literate and literary poets. Appendix I gives a list of all the examples of embedded song I have found in Greek poetry. Appendix II gives an account of Pindar’s Hymn to Zeus, a highly fragmentary poem which almost certainly contained an embedded song, analysing this as an example of the difficulties thrown up by lyric fragments for a study of embedded narratives.

This thesis compiles a working corpus of Anglo-Saxon self-referential inscribed artifacts to examine how the inscriptions and supports utilize self-reference to push the viewer to understand the social and cultural significance of such objects. The inscriptions fall into two broad categories: personal inscriptions reinforce the prestige of the makers, owners, and commissioners associated with them, while impersonal inscriptions authorize philosophical and social discourse through the adoption of literary and oral types (i.e. genres). In addition to an analysis of specific artifacts—ranging from diminutive rings to monumental stone crosses—I provide a quantitative analysis that illustrates the different uses of languages, scripts, and object types. As opposed to literary texts, self-referential inscribed objects create internally complete hermeneutic units that connect the text’s discursive meaning with the function and significance of the thing itself. The inscriptions and their supports structure knowledge about Anglo-Saxon social relationships, liturgical practices, and cultural wisdom.

The current study investigated the effectiveness of a Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) to attenuate negative emotional processing and promote recovery following social evaluative stress. An experimental design utilising self-report, self-referential, and physiological measures of heart rate variability (HRV), skin conductance level (SCL), and heart rate (HR) was employed to investigate processes that occur during social stress and subsequent stress recovery period. Compared to participants receiving a neutral induction (n = 28), participants receiving a LKM (n = 28) reported increases in state affiliative affect. However, the differences were not significant. Although the LKM and Neutral groups showed reductions in sympathetic activity (SCL and HR) and increases in parasympathetic activity (HRV), there was no difference between the groups. In addition, no group differences were observed in self-referential processing. Moderation analyses revealed that participants in the LKM group with high trait self-criticism reported higher post-induction affiliative affect. By contrast, participants in the LKM group with high trait self-criticism exhibited more post-induction negative self-referential processing. These findings suggest that there may be marked differences between self-reported experience and behavioural experience. The current study highlights the importance of triangulating data and suggests that single induction self-compassion meditations may not promote recovery from social stress.

London Black Cab Drivers have a rich and documented history of mobile work practices that are geographically distributed and driven by situated choices for everyday work. To date mobile studies researchers have not made a close examination of these mobile working practices, hence there is a gap in mobile studies concerning this type of worker. This dissertation aims to study the evolution of Black Cab drivers' work practices since the introduction of mobile Information and Communication Technology (mICT) in their everyday work. The theoretical framework for the research is based on studies of taxi drivers' work practices, mobility research, computer supported co-operative work and organisational change promoted by IS interventions. The ontology of this research pinpoints the factors influencing the situated and idiosyncratic choice associated with the use of mICTs when carrying out planned and unplanned work. The case study references a 420-year history of "old", established work practices as a comparison framework. When compared with the "new" and situated choice of mICT-supported work, it becomes apparent that there has been a change in the dynamics of how this type of work is actually completed. Embedding and mixing elements of self-referenced work - as discretionary and independent - with working practices in which mutual interdependencies are supported by the use of mICT aids seems to provide the case for a re-negotiation of the working practices model as well as its associated organisational forms, together with a social shift in the definition of the role and skills required to perform this type of mobile work. The empirical data have been sourced from one-to-one interviews and video recordings using a combination of ethnographic methods and interpretative approaches for the data analysis. This dissertation makes a theoretical and practical contribution to mobile studies by understanding the changing of working practices; it further offers methodological insights for studying mICT-supported work. Finally, it provides a formative evaluation of the new organisational forms emerging as mICT has been introduced to everyday Black Cab work.

Background: Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) provides interventions on increasing psychological flexibility. Within ACT, a process known as fusion, suggests that individuals attach to the content of their thoughts. Limited research has assessed this process. Aim: To assess whether people who fuse with their thoughts are more likely to experience psychological distress displayed through symptoms of depression, psychological inflexibility, and have difficulties with self-esteem. A secondary aim is to assess whether the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (I RAP) can help to account for more variance of severity of depression than self-report measures alone. Method: Thirty-seven participants who were accessing mental health services for symptoms of depression, completed the study. Five self-report measures and one I RAP task that was designed to assess implicit repertoires of responding to co-ordination and containment statements were completed. Results: Lower levels of self-esteem and psychological flexibility and greater fusion were associated with experiencing a higher level of depression as measured by the DASS-21. However, the I RAP was unable to account for more of the variance of depression than self-report measures alone. Conclusion: By addressing the limitations highlighted, the IRAP may be enhanced to become a tool that can increase understanding about the functional processes underlying fusion.

A Bell in the Storm - Persistent unexplained pain and the language of the uncanny in the creative neurophenomenal reference is a doctoral work comprised of three parts. Part 1 is an exegesis Persistent unexplained pain and the language of the uncanny in the creative neurophenomenal reference; Part 2 is The Plays, A Bell in the Storm (produced by deckchair theatre in May, 2005) and the radio play To Fall Without Landing (produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission for Radio National in October 2005); and, Part 3 the book of monochord poems, Secrets of the Driftwood.

Prior research suggests that aspects of self-knowledge are relatively intact in many memory-impaired patients with acquired brain injury. Therefore, cognitive strategies that rely on preserved mechanisms of the self may be particularly effective in this population. The three studies presented in this dissertation investigated the practical utility and mnemonic mechanisms of a novel cognitive strategy designed to capitalize on self-referential processing: self-imagination. Study 1 investigated the effect of self-imagining on cued recall in memory-impaired patients with acquired brain injury and healthy controls. Sixteen patients and sixteen healthy controls intentionally encoded word pairs under four separate conditions: visual imagery, semantic elaboration, other person imagining, and self-imagining. The results revealed that self-imagining enhanced cued recall more than the other encoding conditions in patients and healthy controls. Study 2 was an initial investigation of the effect of self-imagining on free recall. Twenty healthy adults intentionally encoded word pairs under four conditions: self-imagining, a self-descriptiveness task thought to rely on access to semantic information in self-knowledge, an autobiographical memory task requiring retrieval of a self-relevant episodic memory, and a structural processing task. The results demonstrated that self-imagining improved free recall more than the other encoding conditions in healthy adults. Study 3 investigated the effect of self-imagining on free recall in memory-impaired patients with acquired brain injury and healthy controls. Fifteen patients and fifteen healthy controls intentionally encoded personality trait adjectives under five conditions: a self-imagining task, a self-descriptiveness task, an episodic autobiographical memory task, a semantic elaboration task, and a phonemic processing task. The results revealed that the advantage of self-imagining over the other cognitive strategies extended to free recall in patients. Furthermore, the results indicated that the mnemonic benefit of self-imagining was partly attributable to preserved mechanisms associated with the retrieval of semantic information in self-knowledge. The findings from this dissertation indicate that self-imagining is a self-referential cognitive strategy that generates robust and reliable mnemonic improvement in memory-impaired patients with acquired brain injury and healthy controls. Cognitive strategies that involve preserved mnemonic mechanisms of the self, such as self-imagination, may provide a new direction in cognitive rehabilitation.

The present study investigated the reliability and robustness of a new mnemonic strategy - self-imagination - in a group of memory-impaired individuals with neurological damage. Despite severe memory deficits, almost all of the participants demonstrated a self-imagination effect (SIE) for recognition memory in study 1. Moreover, the ability to benefit from self-imagination was not affected by the severity of the memory deficit. In study 3, more than half of the participants showed a SIE on a task of event-based prospective memory. The data from study 2 suggest the SIE is not attributable to semantic processing or emotional processing and indicate that self-imagination is distinct from other mnemonic strategies. Overall the findings from the present study implicate self-imagination as a new and effective mnemonic strategy. The data also indicate that when it comes to memory there is something special about processing information in relation to the self.

A Bell in the Storm - Persistent unexplained pain and the language of the uncanny in the creative neurophenomenal reference is a doctoral work comprised of three parts. Part 1 is an exegesis Persistent unexplained pain and the language of the uncanny in the creative neurophenomenal reference; Part 2 is The Plays, A Bell in the Storm (produced by deckchair theatre in May, 2005) and the radio play To Fall Without Landing (produced by the Australian Broadcasting Commission for Radio National in October 2005); and, Part 3 the book of monochord poems, Secrets of the Driftwood.

Artemisia Gentileschi’s Susanna and the Elder’s trilogy consisting of her 1610, 1622 and 1649 paintings is a self referential series based on the artist’s own feelings of betrayal by the men in her life. These works are comprised of her first canvas showing youthful fear, and a very importantly timed work in mid-career symbolizing commercial success. In these, she relates the Apocryphal tale of Susanna and the Elders to events that are happening to Gentileschi at each stage of her life and career, aging the figures of Susanna and the Elders along with the appropriate time in her own life. In the final canvas of the trilogy, Gentileschi brings the work to full circle, using the story to make peace with her past by visualizing a reconciliation with her father Orazio, from whom she had been estranged from her most of her career, both as parent and as artistic mentor.

The contradiction between architecture&rsquo
s &ldquo
autonomy&rdquo
, its existence as an entity with its own &ldquo
disciplinary specificity&rdquo
- and its social &ldquo
engagement&rdquo
, its involvement in culture, ideology and economy, has been the subject of numerous discussions in architectural discourse, initially in Europe and later in North America. It is argued in this thesis that although &ldquo
autonomy&rdquo
and &ldquo
engagement&rdquo
seem contradictory to each other, architecture&rsquo
s &ldquo
critical status&rdquo
is rooted in this contradiction. Autonomy is regarded as one of the essential sides of architecture&rsquo
s dual position. This suggests that the in-between, or in Stanford Anderson&rsquo
s terms, &ldquo
quasi-autonomous&rdquo
status of architecture can only be sustained through its existence as an entity that has a certain degree of autonomy. Autonomy is an agent for architectural discourse to isolate architecture from its involvement in the external reality and increase awareness within the discipline by concentrating on its specific knowledge. Autonomy aids architecture to pretend to be &ldquo
detached&rdquo
while in reality it is &ldquo
engaged&rdquo
. To focus on the autonomous dimension of architecture, to search for architecture&rsquo
s own intrinsic qualities, helps to produce knowledge within the discipline and provides a &ldquo
critical distance&rdquo
for architecture to resist any &ldquo
external authority&rdquo
. Thus this thesis intends to explore the potentials of the conceptualization and problematization of &ldquo
autonomy&rdquo
in architecture and its employment as a critical tool by architectural discourse to re-assess architectural practice. The private house projects designed by Boran Ekinci in Turkey are exemplified and utilized for the re-conceptualization of the term and enable the transfer of the discourse related with autonomy to the local context where the issue hardly gained a popularity. By doing so, both the appreciation of autonomy in general and reappreciation of architecture in Turkey are aimed.

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A pesquisa expõe estratégias autorreferencias investidas no editorial da revista Veja, que possibilitam a criação de vínculos de confiança e credibilidade com seu público. Descreve o perfil do jornalismo opinativo a partir da narração dos processos de produção das reportagens dando ênfase aos seus colaboradores, como repórteres e fotógrafos durante suas rotinas de trabalho. Para classificar os tipos de discursos enunciados pela seção examinada, os textos dividem-se em categorias. Após uma minuciosa análise quantitativa realizada sobre as edições do ano de 2009, elegeu-se a ?celebração profissional? como parâmetro da análise qualitativa. O estudo compara os editoriais enquanto ?Carta do Editor? e ?Carta ao Leitor?, apresenta suas características, e discorre sobre suas relações com outras seções da revista, como as imagens que acompanham os editoriais procurando comprovar o que está sendo dito em seus textos. A pesquisa identifica marcas autorreferenciais no discurso de Veja enquanto sujeito enunciador que, através da persuasão, e de forma implícita, instiga o leitor a render-se aos seus ditames.
The research seeks to study the self-referential strategies invested in the editorial of the magazine Veja that allow the creation of bonds of trust and credibility with your audience. Describes the profile of opinionated journalism from the recounting of stories of production processes with emphasis on its employees, as reporters andphotographers during their routine work. To classify the types of speeches declared by section examined, the texts are divided into categories. A detailed quantitative analysis performed on the issues of 2009, he was elected a "professional celebration" as a parameter for qualitative analysis. Compares the editorial "Letter from the Editor" and "Letter to the Reader" by presenting their characteristics, and talks are on their relationships with other sections of the magazine, as the images accompanying editorial looking to prove what is being said in their texts. Brands are identified in the self-referential of Veja discourses, characterized as enunciating subject who, through persuasion, and, implicitly encourages, the reader to surrender to its dictates.

Symmetry and symmetry-breaking have, in the last one hundred and fifty years, become incorporated as central explanatory concepts within the natural sciences and mathematics. An abbreviated review of the incorporation of symmetry within the disciplines of mathematics, physics, philosophy and biology, provides a frame within which to develop of a model of mind. This thesis combines the framework provided by symmetry and symmetry-breaking with a structural understanding of self-referential dynamics in examining the implied Kantian model of mind. It considers that Kant’s assumption of a transcendental self unnecessarily isolates consciousness from being understood as a product of complex natural processes. Kant’s structural model of mind is examined and reformulated in terms of a more fundamental form and process. The space required for any non-reductionist model of mind is proposed as being generated through an enfolding of dimensionality in the occurrence of categorical level symmetry breaking during evolutionary development. The temporally extended function is accounted for in terms of self-referential structural dynamics operating within the primary temporal asymmetry. The model of mind proposed is created through application of naturalistic explanations incorporating symmetry and has attributes that may prove of interest to non-reductionists. The phenomenological geometry established provides a framework to understand the experiential phenomenon of qualia while conforming to the requirements of a natural explanation. Information is conceived as being transmitted inwaveforms propagated across spaces of enfolded dimensionalities through structural framesdemarcating nested spaces and condensing in the synthesis of unity in the object of attention,or image, and returning to distribute, the now reformulated, information outward acrosscontextual frames and spaces. This simplified dynamic is considered to operate at all levels of natural phenomena and involves the reintroduction of Bohm’s concepts of implicate and explicate order. The result is a model of mind employing a minimum structural form and self-referential dynamics that has potential for integration across the discipline theoretic frames of the natural sciences while retaining, for the domain of conscious phenomena, an independent causal significance in terms of a temporal structuralism.

The advanced stage of capitalism that we now live in has brought many changes to the way that society consumes and produces. One of the biggest shifts to the modern economy was the use of visual culture to distract, pacify, and exert power over the masses; a cultural change French theorist Guy Debord named the Society of the Spectacle. As a result, Debord and the Situationist International developed a movement of resistance to reclaim the territories of everyday life being eroded by the spectacle through separation and alienation. Since the term was coined the use of visual culture has accelerated and become even more pervasive in the postmodern world which led Jean Baudrillard to claim that the real has been replaced by simulation and hyperreality. This thesis explores this cultural shift to determine whether the practices of resistance theorized by Debord and the Situationists are still relevant as the reach of postmodernism increases. Link to associated video file: https://vimeo.com/64727252

How distinct implicit and explicit motive systems differ has long been unclear. Schultheiss' (2001) information processing account of implicit motive arousal hypothesized that implicit motives respond to nonverbal stimuli to influence non-declarative measures of motivation and that explicit motives respond to verbal stimuli to influence declarative measures of motivation. Moreover, in individuals high in referential competence, i.e., with the ability to quickly translate non-verbal stimuli into a verbal representation, implicit motives are thought to respond to verbal stimuli and influence declarative measures of motivation and explicit motives are thought to respond to nonverbal stimuli and to influence non-declarative measures of motivation. The present study tested these hypotheses by assessing liking ratings as a declarative response format and an affective stroop task as a non-declarative response format using emotion words as verbal and emotional facial expressions as non-verbal stimuli. Individual power, affiliation, and achievement motive dispositions were assessed via the Picture Story Excercise for implicit motives and via questionnaires for explicit motives. Referential competence was assessed via a colour-naming/-reading task. I found that as expected explicit and implicit motives overall were not correlated across subjects. Moreover, implicit and explicit motives affected declarative and non-declarative responses for verbal and non-verbal stimuli. As predicted, however, implicit motives responded to verbal stimuli and influenced declarative responses more strongly for individuals high compared to those low in referential competence. Likewise, explicit motive effects were moderated by referential competence in some - but not all - of the predicted conditions. These results show that implicit and explicit motives can influence declarative and non-declarative responses to verbal and non-verbal stimuli. They support the hypothesis that referential processing is needed for implicit motives to respond to verbal stimuli and influence declarative response formats, and they partly support the hypothesis that referential processing plays a role for the influence of explicit motives. Results for explicit motives may suggest that new measures are needed to assess the referential competence to translate verbal stimuli into non-verbal representations. Overall, the findings provide support to the information processing account of implicit motive arousal by Schultheiss' (2001), suggesting that a non-verbal and non-declarative implicit motive system and a distinct verbal and declarative explicit motive system interact via referential processing, i.e., by translating information between representational formats.
Wie sich distinkte implizite und explizite Motivsysteme voneinander unterscheiden war lange unklar. Schultheiss' (2001) Informationsverarbeitungsansatz für implizite Motivanregung hat die Hypothese aufgestellt, dass implizite Motive auf nonverbale Reize reagieren um nicht-deklarative Motivationsmaße zu beeinflussen, und dass explizite Motive auf verbale Reize reagieren um deklarative Motivationsmaße zu beeinflussen. Zudem wird angenommen, dass in Individuen mit einer hohen referentiellen Kompetenz - d.h. mit der Fähigkeit nonverbale Reize schnell in eine verbale Repräsentation zu übersetzen - implizite Motive auf verbale Reize reagieren und deklarative Motivationsmaße beeinflussen, und explizite Motive auf nonverbale Reize reagieren um non-deklarative Motivationsmaße zu beeinflussen. Die aktuelle Studie hat diese Hypothesen getested indem sie Bewertungen zum individuellen Gefallen von Reizen als ein deklaratives Antwortformat und eine affektive Stroop-Aufgabe als ein nicht-deklaratives Antwortformat unter Verwendung von Emotionswörtern als verbale Reize und emotionalen Gesichtsausdrücken als nonverbalen Reizen gemessen hat. Individuelle Macht-, Anschluss-, und Leistungsmotivdispositionen wurden durch die Bildgeschichtenaufgabe für implizite Motive und durch Fragebögen für explizite Motive gemessen. Referentielle Kompetenz wurde durch eine Farb-Nennungs/-Lesen Aufgabe gemessen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass - wie erwartet - implizite und explizite Motive über Versuchspersonen hinweg nicht korreliert waren. Zudem zeigte sich insgesamt ein Einfluss von impliziten und expliziten Motiven auf deklarative und nicht-deklarative Antworten für verbale und nonverbale Reize. Wie vorhergesagt reagierten implizite Motive auf verbale Reize und beeinflussten deklarative Antworten stärker für Individuen mit einer hohen im Vergleich zu einer niedrigen referentiellen Kompetenz. Zudem wurden explizite Motiveffekte in einigen, aber nicht in allen vorhergesagten Bedingungen von referentieller Kompetenz moderiert. Diese Ergebnisse zeigen, dass implizite und explizite Motive deklarative und nicht-deklarative Antworten auf verbale und nonverbale Reize beeinflussen können. Sie unterstützen die Hypothese, dass referentielle Verarbeitung notwendig ist damit implizite Motive auf verbale Reize reagieren und deklarative Antworten beeinflussen können, und unterstützen teilweise die Hypothese, dass referentielle Verarbeitung eine Rolle für den Einfluss von expliziten Motiven spielt. Das Ergebnis für explizite Motive könnte Nahe legen, dass neue Maße notwendig sind um die referentielle Kompetenz zu messen um verbale Reize in nonverbale Repräsentationen zu übersetzen. Zusammengefasst bieten diese Befunde Unterstützung für den Informationsverarbeitungsansatz der impliziten Motivanregung von Schultheiss (2001), welcher vorschlägt, dass ein nonverbales und nicht-deklaratives implizites Motivsystem und ein distinktes verbales und deklaratives explizites Motivsystem miteinander durch referentielle Verarbeitung wechselwirken, d.h., indem Information zwischen repräsentationalen Formaten übersetzt wird.

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In this work the focus given to the printed newspaper goes beyond the function institutionalized in the social construction of reports and is focused on the notion product media to be "sold" the advertising market. The attention is back to ads that reference the vehicle of communication in which being published as self-referential ads. The main goal is to investigate the construction of newspaper in self-referential ads from daily Diário Gaúcho, owned by RBS - Rede Brasil Sul to systematize the variables present in the contracts of communication advertisements in order to find formations that indicate the mise en scène of the media product and the popular reader. Contribution of concept of articulation (HALL, 2003) aligned with cultural studies, suggests that the text and context of advertising fall within production journalism as a self-reference: the media instance strain promise and product in the same space of movement, marked by certain cultural matrices (SUNKEL, 1985). Adopts the notion of communication contract (CHARAUDEAU, 2006) as a theoretical methodological analysis of the corpus consisted of nineteen ads published in different editions of the newspaper Diário Gaúcho, between 2008 and 2009. It appears that the link between advertising and the media context fuses the joints themselves the product of the media with his audience. For Diário Gaúcho is remarkable transposition of concepts adopted in its editorial announcements: strengthens precepts of popular journalism, directed to an audience without the habit of reading. The newspaper is mise en scène as a friend of the reader, there is thus erasing the characteristics of newspaper as media product. The reader is mise en scène in two perspectives: one that celebrates the warmth, joy, color and traditions, and another that refers to position of subordination and helplessness experienced by the working classes. Advertising self-referential Diário Gaúcho builds the newspaper by subjective and emotional bias in the manner cultural matrix of symbolic-dramatic, of overlapping the contract to identification with the reader.
O enfoque dado ao jornal impresso, neste trabalho, extrapola a função institucionalizada na construção social dos relatos e direciona-se à noção de produto midiático a ser vendido pelo mercado publicitário. Nossa atenção volta-se a anúncios que referenciam o próprio veículo de comunicação em que estão sendo difundidos, anúncios que denominamos autorreferenciais. Nosso principal objetivo é investigar a construção do jornal em anúncios autorreferenciais do jornal Diário Gaúcho, pertencente ao Grupo RBS Rede Brasil Sul -, para sistematizar as variáveis presentes nos contratos de comunicação dos anúncios publicitários, a fim de encontrar formações que indiquem os modos de encenação do produto midiático e do leitor popular. O aporte do conceito de articulação (HALL, 2003), alinhado aos Estudos Culturais, permite considerarmos que o texto e o contexto da mensagem publicitária se inscrevem no espaço de produção jornalística como uma autorreferência: a instância midiática tensiona promessa e produto em um mesmo espaço de circulação, marcado por determinadas matrizes culturais (SUNKEL, 1985). Adotamos a noção de contrato de comunicação (CHARAUDEAU, 2006) como instrumento teórico-metodológico de análise do corpus, composto por dezenove anúncios veiculados em diferentes edições do jornal Diário Gaúcho, no período entre 2008 e 2009. Verificamos que a vinculação entre anúncio e contexto midiático se funde a articulações próprias do produto midiático com seu público. No caso do Diário Gaúcho, é notável a transposição de conceitos adotados em sua linha editorial aos anúncios: reforça preceitos de jornalismo popular direcionado a um público sem o hábito de leitura. O jornal é encenado como um amigo do leitor, havendo, portanto, apagamento das características do jornal como produto midiático. O leitor, por sua vez, é encenado sob duas perspectivas: uma que exalta a afetividade, a alegria, o colorido e as tradições; e outra que remete à posição de subordinação e desamparo vivenciada pelas camadas populares. A publicidade autorreferencial do Diário Gaúcho constrói o jornal pelo viés subjetivo e emocional nos moldes da matriz cultural simbólico-dramática, que imbrica o contrato à identificação com o leitor.

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This work is part of the current scenario of media coverage in the range of access to new information technologies and communication as well as the many media devices, affects different social systems and even the media themselves, changing ways of doing and relationship between the contacts and the degree of complexity of these processes and relationships. In this context, we recognize the places crowded by the media of print journalism Santa Maria - RS, by studying the strategies of production of meaning in self-referential discourse of newspapers A Razão and Diário de Santa Maria, in the campaign for municipal elections 2008. We seek to investigate what role that self-referential journalism of print media of Santa Maria seeks to establish through their discourses? From this, our specific objectives are: Contextualizing the impact of self-referentiality as a result of the change strategies of media devices as a result of mediatization; Present method of construction of selfreferential journalistic discourse the media, linking theoretical and empirical knowledge; Identify the core meanings/discursive formations and the scene of enunciation of self-referential discourses that will enable us to visualize the image of himself (discursive ethos) constructed by each newspaper; Recognize the communication contract proposed by the self-referential discourses of the newspapers in study. We used as theoretical and methodological Discourse Analysis of the French line, especially developed by Dominique Maingueneau (1997, 2006, 2008). Thus, the analysis of the discursive strategies of self-referentiality newspaper A Razão and Diário de Santa Maria helped us to verify that newspapers compete to fill posts of legitimate statements of facts or information to the public space in mediated society. This competition for places in the context of media coverage changes the processes and journalistic practices, and modes of enunciation of his discourses. Thus, the journalistic system becomes a space actorization of events and information that become news, showing its reality, how to stage makes the process of newsworthiness. Thus, it appears that apart from the competition between the media system is the journalistic competition to the place that speaks of legitimate society also mediated with the other social systems. Therefore, this study points to the need for future research should discuss and reflect the power relations of the journalistic system with other systems and points to the need to rethink this logic self-referential change the current system to a journalistic role agent democratic in contemporary public space.
O presente trabalho se inscreve no atual cenário da midiatização, em que a amplitude de acesso às novas tecnologias de informação e comunicação, bem como aos inúmeros dispositivos midiáticos, afeta os diversos sistemas sociais e, inclusive as próprias mídias, alterando os modos de fazer e o relacionamento entre os comunicantes e aumentando o grau de complexidade desses processos e relações. Nesse contexto, propomos reconhecer os lugares concorridos pelas mídias jornalísticas impressas de Santa Maria RS, por meio do estudo das estratégias de produção de sentidos no discurso autorreferencial dos jornais A Razão e Diário de Santa Maria, no período de campanha para as eleições municipais de 2008. Buscamos investigar qual é o lugar que o jornalismo autorreferencial de mídia impressa de Santa Maria busca instituir por meio dos seus discursos? A partir disso, nossos objetivos específicos são: Contextualizar a incidência da autorreferencialidade como uma consequência da mudança de estratégias dos dispositivos midiáticos em decorrência da midiatização; Apresentar o modo de construção do discurso jornalístico autorreferencial das mídias, relacionando conhecimento teórico e empírico; Identificar os núcleos de sentidos/formações discursivas e a cena da enunciação dos discursos autorreferenciais que vão nos possibilitar visualizar a imagem de si (ethos discursivo) construída por cada um dos jornais; Reconhecer o contrato de comunicação proposto pelos discursos autorreferenciais dos jornais em estudo. Para tanto, utilizamos como embasamento teóricometodológico a Análise do Discurso de linha francesa, especialmente desenvolvida por Dominique Maingueneau (1997, 2006, 2008). Desse modo, a análise das estratégias discursivas de autorreferencialidade dos jornais A Razão e Diário de Santa Maria nos possibilitaram verificar que os jornais concorrem para ocuparem os lugares de legítimos enunciadores dos fatos e informações do espaço público na sociedade midiatizada. Essa concorrência por lugares no contexto da midiatização altera os processos e práticas jornalísticas, bem como os modos de enunciação de seus discursos. Com isso, o sistema jornalístico torna-se um espaço de atorização dos acontecimentos e informações que se tornam notícia, ao mostrar a sua realidade, o modo como faz para encenar esse processo de noticiabilidade. Assim, constata-se que além da concorrência entre as mídias no sistema jornalístico há a concorrência pelo lugar de enunciador legítimo da sociedade midiatizada também com os demais sistemas sociais. Por isso, o presente trabalho aponta para a necessidade de pesquisas futuras que problematizem e reflitam as relações de poder do sistema jornalístico com os demais sistemas, bem como aponta para a necessidade de repensar a mudança dessa lógica autorreferencial do sistema jornalístico atual para um papel de agente democrático no espaço público contemporâneo.

Esta tese procura identificar quais eram os principais objetivos intelectuais e políticos de Juan Natalicio González (1897-1966), um escritor paraguaio que desempenhou um amplo leque de atividades jornalista, ensaísta, editor, político, militante do Partido Colorado e diplomata. A partir da análise de suas biografias, de seus próprios textos (autobiografia, ensaios e a revista Guarania) e do resgate feito pela historiografia, consideramos que González atingiu parcialmente suas ambições políticas, na medida em que chegou a ser presidente de seu país, foi derrubado e já não pôde voltar a ocupar um papel protagonista na cena política nacional. Por outro lado, teve grande sucesso na difusão e na consolidação da interpretação revisionista da história paraguaia, ao articular-se em diversos grupos de intelectuais latino-americanos que reproduziram amplamente sua versão da história.
This thesis seeks to identify the main intellectual and political objectives of Juan Natalicio González (1897-1966), a Paraguayan writer who played an extensive variety of activities (journalist, essayist, editor, politician, Colorado Partys member and diplomatic). From the analysis of their biographies, their own texts (autobiography, essays and magazine Guarania) and the study done by historians we consider that Gonzalez partially achieved his political ambitions, because he became president of his country but he was deposed and did not return to play a leading role in the national political scene. He succeeded in spreading and consolidation of the revisionist interpretation of Paraguayan history, after participating in various groups of Latin American intellectuals who widely reproduced his version of the history.

Predicting who will benefit from what in the treatment of psychiatric disorders is incremental to future development of psychological treatments. In the current study functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from participants with social anxiety disorder (SAD) was used to elucidate whether neural responses to negative evaluation could predict treatment response in SAD. Nine weeks prior to Internet- delivered Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (ICBT) onset, participants viewed negative social stimuli directed either at themselves or an significant other during fMRI scanning. Regression analyses including the differential activations for other-referential criticism in contrast to self-referential criticism in the posterior mid cingulate cortex (pMCC) and the lingual gyrus (LG) predicted 34% of treatment change as measured by residual gain scores on the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale Self-Report (LSAS-SR) in our sample. The final regression model, combining these measures with behavioural measures, which by themselves explained 27% of the variance, resulted in a model explaining 50% of the variance regarding treatment response. This lends additional support to the notion that further elucidating the neurobiological underpinnings of core processes in SAD, as well as the neural correlates of treatment response to CBT, would be of great value in predicting treatment outcome.

The aim of this licentiate thesis is to examine the means of self-presentation on the websites of 18 upper secondary schools in Sweden. This empirical material may be referred to as a kind of marketing since they render a highly idealized image of schools. To some extent they exaggerate what school is about, as a way for schools to promote themselves as well as to maintain their hold on the market. Self-presentations thus play an important role in the struggle to attract prospective students and keep these enrolled. The fact that self-presentations refer to schools and not companies in general—although several schools certainly strive to define themselves as such—indicates that self-presentations are not like any other marketing practice. They can also be read as a kind of imaginative documents. In this capacity, self-presentations do not only express what school is or may be interpreted as, but foremost how it envisions itself in the future. The material underlying the study consists of a selection of excerpts that were collected from the schools' webpages at different points of time during the years 2011/2012 and 2016/2017. This allowed me to study both continuities and change in the way schools are presented online. In this study, schools' self-presentations are analyzed thematically in combination with Jason Glynos and David Howarth's so called logics approach, which has been developed out of poststructuralist discourse theory and its ontological assumptions. A logic may be understood in this case as a rule or pattern governing the way a phenomenon like school is constituted. As a research strategy, logics have helped me explore, step by step, the conditions of possibility as well as impossibility of identity-formation processes. I mainly deal with four logics that comprise the overarching principles that structure what it means to be a school: business adaptation, academization, individualization and social responsibility. The empirical study thus consisted in setting out the social, political and fantasmatic aspects of these logics—which consequently served to thematically analyze the contemporary identity-formation on schools' websites. Social aspects have been a descriptive tool to study what characterizes school as presented in the empirical material, whereas political and fantasmatic aspects refer to analytical and critical perspectives. The aim has been to illuminate not only the way schools' identities are organized but also how and why this happens – in other words, what logics do to the identity-formation of schools. Importantly, the logics in question are interrelated and work together at the same time as they 'struggle' over the significance of being a school. As I argue, the identity-formation of upper secondary schools can hence be perceived as crisscrossed by competing and complementary logics that all make certain claims as to what a school is supposed to be (or not). The main task of a traditional Swedish school has been to foster democratic members of society. The findings of my study, however, question such a general understanding. In my empirical material a self-referential meaning of school rather emerges with the purpose to produce good employees; that is, a competent work-force willing to submit to the norms and values of the corporate sector. Subsequently, the boundaries between school and the surrounding world are also increasingly loosened, as business is brought into the classroom and made a premise of learning and development in accordance with the needs and interests of the labor market. However, this replacement of a traditional school is only partial. Since schools are equally dependent on the societal tradition to appear as legitimate and credible alternatives on the educational arena they cannot wholeheartedly commit themselves to a corporate identity. Hence, self-presentations often indicate a struggle to be different enough to stand out from the host of other schools, but also to be similar enough to be considered a 'proper' school. This licentiate thesis has in common with previous studies that statements about qualification and employability measures have indeed increased. A corresponding decline of statements about active citizenship and critical thinking could not be detected – but then again, educational-political aspects confirm that a traditional school may be understood as a background against which an alternative school is formed. This is a conclusion which is consistent with the findings of previous studies on school and education policy.

Whenever there is a decrease of the sensory function, whether due to a disease, trauma or to the normal aging process, a change occurs at the same time in the motor control, in body and emotions perception, in cognitive processing, in the functional activities and in the interpersonal relationships. The feeling that is generated is of loss of identity, of threat, and Self disintegration. This phenomenon of consciousness and identity is called the Self. There are many concepts of the Self but some more recent theories claim that there is only one Self. The human being is a whole and the greater this perception of the personal unit the greater physical, cognitive and emotional functionality can be reached. The Self may change when exposed to various health conditions but also due to sensory and relational experiences or due to the lack of stimulation. The stimulation we get through all sensory modalities helps build the representation we make of ourselves. However unisensory stimulation does not seem to be sufficient to promote perception of the Self as a whole. Multisensory stimulation, that it comprises meaningful and Self-referential stimuli, seems to trigger a more global consciousness of the Self. Self-referential stimuli are stimuli that are experienced as strongly related to one’s own person. The physiotherapist is a professional who distinguishes himself by the use of sensorial stimulation strategies, considered Self-referential stimulation, i.e., auditory-verbal stimulation liked to body parts and direct and prolonged manual contact with the patient´s body. But these approaches are rarely used in neurological Physiotherapy, for sensory and perceptual competences improvement and they are never used simultaneously. In reference to touch there is no concern to assess the perception that clients have about touch. Different meanings can be attributed to physical contact during therapeutic and social interactions and they may generate bonding or avoidant behaviours. If the loss of sensory function, namely the tactile sense, may lead to the disintegration of the Self, the study of this problem becomes more relevant in the elderly because it is proven that in this stage of life there is an important tactile sensory loss with implications in the motor function, in the activities of daily living and in interpersonal relationships. In this sense this thesis has as general objectives (1) to increase scientific evidence about the clinical practice of Physiotherapy; (2) to contribute to a reflection of clinical practice in Physiotherapy as it regards to the importance of sensory stimulation for the construction of the Self; (3) to allow for further understanding of the healthy aging process related to the functional and interpersonal relationships implications of tactile sensory decrease; (4) to make recommendations for enhancing the quality of provision of Physiotherapy services, specifically with regard to sensory assessment and sensory stimulation strategies. To achieve these objectives three studies were developed: (1) “Multisensory Self-referential stimulation of the lower limb – an fMRI study on healthy subjects”; (2) “Tactile Discrimination, Social Touch and Frailty criteria in elderly people”; (3) “Reliability and Validity of the European Portuguese version of the Social Touch Questionnaire”. The results and conclusions of the studies are: (1) unisensorial auditory-verbal and tactile-manual Self-referential stimulation and multisensory Self-referential stimulation elicits bilateral activations of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), of the primary motor cortex (M1)-BA4 and of the premotor cortex (BA6). These sensorimotor areas were located in the lower-limb sensorimotor representation; Self-referential multisensory stimulation related to the body, more than unisensory one, produce a brain activation map in regions that are responsible for multisensory Self-processing. This process may represent the Core-Self. This brain map is composed of cortical and subcortical midline structures - BA7 (precuneus), left BA9 (medial prefrontal cortex), left BA30 (posterior cingulated), left thalamus, bilateral superior colliculum and left posterior cerebellum) and posterior lateral cortex (such as bilateral TPJ, bilateral posterior BA13 (insula), left BA19 and left BA37). Regarding all these structures, bilateral TPJ is the one that showed the biggest activation volume; (2) the decline of sensorial tactile discrimination of the hand is related to increasing age, to the decrease in grip strength and to higher avoidance behaviours and attitudes towards social touch. Sensorial tactile discrimination of the hand also explains frailty levels in the sample evaluated in the current study, i.e. frail elders have greater loss of sensorial discrimination then pre-frail elders. According to these results hand tactile discrimination should be used in assessment and intervention protocols in pre-frail and frail elders; (3) we produced an European Portuguese version of the Social Touch Questionnaire and is a reliable, valid and comprehensive measurement tool. It is an instrument that evaluates a range of behaviours and attitudes towards the touch and can be used by different health professionals, in clinical practice and for research purposes. Regarding the general conclusions of the studies supported by scientific evidence collected, such as: (1) brain areas activated by the multisensory stimulation performed in this study (auditory-verbal + tactile-manual) are those related to the Self processing; (2) decreased tactile sensitivity of the hand in the elderly has implications in the hand strength and in behaviour and attitudes towards social touch and can lead to difficulties in functional activities, decrease in interpersonal relations and the disorganization of the Self; (3) in case of elderly people, despite the deterioration of the sensory systems there is evidence of stabilization or increase of the multisensory integration processing; we recommend to contemplate multisensory Self-referential stimulation composed of unisensory auditory-verbal stimulus requesting to feel specific body parts and unisensory tactile-manual stimulation of the same body parts, when planning intervention strategies for healthy aging with the aim of maintaining the integrity of the elderly Self. According to the conclusions obtained in the developed studies some recommendations are presented for a more appropriate and comprehensive clinical reasoning that can lead to a more effective clinical practice in Physiotherapy.
Sempre que ocorre uma alteração da função sensitiva, quer seja devida a uma doença, a um trauma ou ao processo normal de envelhecimento, surge simultaneamente uma alteração no controlo motor, na perceção do corpo e das emoções, na cognição, nas atividades da vida diária e na participação do individuo enquanto “ser” social. O sentimento que é gerado é de perda de identidade, de ameaça e de desintegração da perceção do indivíduo como um todo. Este fenómeno de consciência pessoal é designado por Self. Na literatura são relatados vários conceitos do Self mas algumas teorias mais recentes afirmam que existe um único Self. O ser humano é um todo e quanto maior for a perceção de unidade pessoal maior funcionalidade física, cognitiva e emocional poderá ser alcançada. O Self pode alterar-se de acordo com a exposição a diferentes condições de saúde mas também devido a experiências sensoriais e relacionais que sejam relevantes para o indivíduo, ou ainda devido à falta de estimulação. A estimulação que recebemos através de todas as modalidades sensoriais ajuda a construir a representação que fazemos de nós próprios. No entanto a estimulação unisensorial parece não ser suficiente para promover a perceção do Self como um todo, sendo que, a estimulação multissensorial, desde que seja composta por estímulos significativos para o indivíduo e referenciados ao Self, parece desencadear uma consciência mais global do Self. Os estímulos referenciados ao Self são estímulos que estão relacionados fortemente com a própria pessoa, sobretudo com a perceção do seu corpo. O fisioterapeuta é um profissional que se diferencia pela utilização de estratégias de estimulação sensorial que podem ser consideradas referenciadas ao Self, tais como a estimulação verbal apelando para sentir partes do corpo e o contacto direto e prolongado das suas mãos com o corpo do utente. No entanto estas estratégias raramente são usadas na Fisioterapia com o objetivo de melhoria das competências sensoriais e percetivas e quando são aplicadas nunca são usadas em simultâneo. No que se refere a estratégias de avaliação e de intervenção que utilizam o toque, verifica-se também que não existe um cuidado sistemático em avaliar a perceção que os utentes fazem do contacto físico que é estabelecido. No entanto, diferentes significados poderão ser atribuídos a esse contacto físico durante as interações terapêuticas, podendo gerar atitudes e comportamentos de evitamento ao toque. Isto pode inviabilizar a relação terapêutica e afetar os resultados esperados. Se a perda de função sensorial, nomeadamente a função sensorial tátil pode conduzir a uma desintegração do Self, o estudo deste problema torna-se mais relevante nos idosos pois a evidência aponta para a existência de uma perda sensorial importante nesta etapa de vida, com implicações na função motora, nas atividades do dia-a-dia e nas relações interpessoais. Face ao exposto esta tese possuiu como objetivos gerais (1) aumentar a evidência científica acerca da prática clínica da Fisioterapia; (2) contribuir para uma reflexão acerca da prática clínica da Fisioterapia no que se refere à importância da estimulação sensorial na construção do Self; (3) permitir uma melhor compreensão do processo de envelhecimento saudável relacionado com as implicações do declínio da sensibilidade tátil na funcionalidade e nas relações interpessoais; (4) efetuar um conjunto de recomendações para o aumento da qualidade da prestação de serviços prestados pela Fisioterapia, especificamente relacionados com a avaliação da função sensorial e com as estratégias de estimulação sensorial. Para alcançar estes objetivos foram realizados três estudos: (1) “Multisensory Self-referential stimulation of the lower limb – an fMRI study on healthy subjects”; (2) “Tactile Discrimination, Social Touch and Frailty criteria in elderly people”; (3) “Reliability and Validity of the European Portuguese version of the Social Touch Questionnaire”. Os principais resultados e conclusões dos estudos são: (1) a estimulação unisensorial auditiva-verbal e tátil-manual referenciada ao Self, assim como a estimulação multisensorial (auditiva-verbal + tátil-manual) referenciada ao Self promovem ativações bilaterais da Junção Temporo Parietal (JTP), do córtex somatosensorial primário (S1), do córtex motor primário (M1)-BA4 e do córtex prémotor-BA6. Estas áreas sensoriomotoras foram localizadas na representação sensoriomotora dos membros inferiores; a estimulação multisensorial referenciada ao Self, comparada com a estimulação unisensorial, produz um mapa de ativação cerebral constituído por regiões que, segundo a literatura, são responsáveis pelo processamento multisensorial do Self. Este processo poderá representar o Core-Self (também designado por Eu nuclear). O mapa cerebral encontrado é composto por estruturas corticais e subcorticais da linha média do cérebro - BA7 (precuneo), BA9 esquerda (córtex pré-frontal medial), BA30 esquerda (cíngulo posterior), tálamo esquerdo, colículo superior bilateral e cerebelo posterior esquerdo, assim como pelo córtex lateral posterior - JTP bilateral, BA13 (insula posterior bilateral), BA19 esquerda e BA37 esquerda. Em relação a todas estas estruturas, a JTP bilateral foi a que mostrou maior volume de ativação; (2) o declínio da sensibilidade discriminativa da mão está relacionado com o aumento da idade, com a diminuição da força de preensão e com maior quantidade de comportamentos e atitudes de evitamento relacionados com o toque. A sensibilidade discriminativa da mão também constitui uma variável explicativa dos níveis de fragilidade da amostra de idosos selecionada para o estudo, ou seja, os idosos frágeis possuem maior perda da sensibilidade discriminativa da mão do que os idosos pré frágeis. De acordo com estes resultados recomendamos que a sensibilidade discriminativa da mão seja usada nos protocolos de avaliação e de intervenção em idosos frágeis ou em risco de se tornar frágeis; (3) produzimos uma versão Portuguesa-Europeia do “Social Touch Questionnaire” e demonstrámos que é um instrumento de medida confiável, válido e de fácil compreensão. É um instrumento que avalia uma variedade de comportamentos e atitudes relacionados com o toque social e que poderá ser utilizado por diferentes profissionais de saúde, tanto na prática clínica como na investigação. Tendo em conta as conclusões gerais dos estudos e tomando como suporte a evidência científica recolhida, tais como: (1) as áreas cerebrais ativadas com a estimulação multisensorial realizada neste trabalho (auditiva-verbal + tátil-manual) são as relacionadas com o processamento do Self, (2) a diminuição da sensibilidade tátil da mão no idoso tem implicações na força da mão e nos comportamentos e atitudes face a toque podendo conduzir a dificuldades nas atividades funcionais, a uma diminuição nas relações interpessoais e à desorganização do Self; (3) no caso dos idosos, apesar do declínio dos sistemas sensoriais, existe evidência que o processamento multisensorial cerebral estabiliza ou pode mesmo aumentar; propomos que no planeamento da intervenção para um envelhecimento saudável, cujos objetivos sejam a manutenção ou o aumento da funcionalidade e a manutenção da integridade do Self, seja contemplada a estratégia de estimulação multisensorial referenciada ao Self proposta nesta tese. De acordo com as conclusões obtidas nos estudos desenvolvidos são feitas algumas recomendações para um raciocínio clínico mais adequado e abrangente que possa conduzir a uma prática clínica em Fisioterapia mais eficaz.

Professional Doctorate - Doctor of Clinical Psychology (DCP)
Single-symptom research has resulted in valuable contributions to our understanding of psychotic symptoms. Despite a high rate of occurrence, it remains that relatively little research has been undertaken in the area of delusions of reference. One kind of delusion of reference, known as delusions of communication (DoC), involves mistaken beliefs that others are communicating with the self in subtle and mysterious ways. Preliminary evidence suggests that these delusions are similar to auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in that what seems to be communicated concerns the self and originates from the self, although the origin is not recognised but attributed externally, though in the case of DoC the impairments in reality discrimination occur for non- verbal material. However, no direct evidence has been provided so far that it is the patients’ unwanted thoughts about themselves that are externalised. It was anticipated that the current research would provide direct evidence that people with DoC perceive their own implicit and explicit self-evaluations as being communicated to them through gestures. It was hypothesised that people with DoC would be more likely to perceive a gesture as present when it was not, that they would make more negative interpretations of gestures, and that negative interpretations made by people with DoC would be more likely if they had endorsed negative traits as self-descriptive. It was also anticipated that negative interpretations would be more likely to be made by people with DoC if they had both endorsed and recalled negative self-descriptive traits. It was hypothesised that people with DoC would be most likely to make negative interpretations of gestures if they had recalled negative traits, however had not endorsed these traits as self-descriptive previously. Patients between the ages of 18 and 60 on the wards of psychiatric inpatient facilities were recruited for the study. The Self Referential Incidental Recall Task (SRIRT) was used to identify traits that participants either perceived as applying to themselves, or feared could apply to them. Video clips were presented to test errors of gesture interpretation. Error rates were analysed with generalised linear models with a binomial distribution and a logit link function with severity ratings as predictors. Age, gender, age at onset, number of hospital admissions, acuity, and IQ were entered as covariates. Contrary to the hypotheses, severity of DoC was not an independent predictor, though it did enter into two highly significant interactions with AVH. When both hallucinations and delusions were severe, the rate of total errors and of errors in which non-gestures were seen as gestures or SRIRT words, was greatly increased. Covariates that were predictive of errors were anxiety, number of hospital admissions, lower levels of depression, and lower IQ scores. The strengths, limitations, and implications of the research results are discussed, along with future directions.

碩士
國立中山大學
經濟學研究所
104
This paper considers a monetary model with different specifications on expectations such as the rational expectation, the adaptive expectation and the self-referential learning. This paper aims to examine if the statistical properties of nominal exchange rates implied by the three alternative specifications of expectations are similar to those implied by exchange rate data. The statistical properties in this paper are the slope coefficient of long-term exchange rates prediction equation, the variance ratio and out-of-sample test. The results from Taiwan and Korea indicate that the adaptive learning is the one which the best describe statistical properties of nominal exchange rates.

The conceptual model of emotion regulation (ER) of Gross and Thompson (2007) introduces families of ER strategies ordered on a temporal scale. This scale has been attributed implications both for the grouping strategies but also for the neurocognitive processing. The two event-related potential (ERP) studies of emotional regulation presented here focus on emotional regulation at different temporal distances, as well as, different stages of cognitive processing. Trying to discern if various neural processes could be disentangled by looking at different stages of the late positive potential (LPP). The theoretical background begins with the neurocognitive science of emotionality and visits cognitive processing at both early and late stages before summating results of the contemporary research of emotional regulation. 39 participants were enrolled within the two experiments aiming to compare the efficiency of different strategies in reducing negative social emotion induced by photographs of angry faces. Technical difficulties discourage conclusions about how temporal distancing is most effectively adapted. Results suggest self-focused distancing strategies are more effective than situation-focused reappraisal and could be preferred for therapeutic purposes based on greater observed LPP effect.

Os meios de comunicação estão envolvidos na constituição do mundo social. A discrepância entre o mundo real e o mundo mediático impõe averiguações. Ao utilizar-se a si mesmo como referência para a cobertura jornalística, produção noticiosa e exposição de opiniões, os meios de comunicação constituem um simulacro do real que se tende a ocupar com pseudoacontecimentos: reportam-se a acontecimentos cuja origem são os próprios meios, numa lógica autorreferencial. Paralelamente, a publicação de opiniões da elite levanta questões relacionadas com o enquadramento dos acontecimentos nos espaços de comentário político. Em vez de ser o evento a governar a cobertura, são os meios, através dos comentadores, que a determinam. Será que o comentador político privilegia o enquadramento autorreferencial? Em que medida? Além da preferência por este tipo de quadros, concluiu-se a extrema relevância de quadros gerais, divididos em jogo-estratégia e personalização; todos com predomínio sobre quadros substantivos.
The media are involved in the construction of the social world. The discrepancy between the real world and the media world impose investigations. Using itself as a reference for journalistic coverage, news production and opinion publication, the media constitute a simulacrum of reality which tends to focus on pseudo-events: reporting events whose origins are the media themselves, creating a self-referential logic. At the same time, publishing opinions of the elite rises questions related to the framing of events within media political commentary. Replacing the event, the media are the ones who, through commentators, determine the coverage. Does the political commentator give privilege to self-referential framing? To which extent? Besides the preference for these type of frames, we also found extreme relevance of generic frames, divided between game frame and personalization frame; all of them dominated over issue-related or substance frames.