In this dissertation, I tell the story of midcentury attempts to establish, develop, and study bibliotherapy in the US. I follow three groups-hospital librarians, psychologists and psychiatrists, and language arts educators-from the 1930s to the 1960s, when each in its own ways expressed belief in the therapeutic power of reading and set out to enact that belief as a legitimate practice in the evolving contexts of its profession and in the broader culture. These professionals tried to learn what happened within people during and after reading, and they attempted to use what they learned to apply reading toward healthy ends. Today, therapeutic reading has become commonplace to the extent that it seems natural. In this dissertation, I aim to recover and explore the midcentury processes by which therapeutic reading came to seem at once natural, medical, and scientific. I argue that midcentury bibliotherapy functioned in concert with an evolving cultural narrative that I call "reading for health." The reading for health narrative gathers up into a coherent story various and deep beliefs and commonplaces about the power of books over our minds and our bodies. In midcentury bibliotherapy, reading for health was reinvigorated as a story about the marriage of science and culture, a unity narrative that claimed the iconic book-capable of swaying minds and societies alike, and burnished with all that western civilization signified-for the professions that applied reading toward their healthy ends. As I demonstrate, however, these narratives were not confined to discrete professions, but functioned as a part of a larger cultural movement set upon the shifting fault lines of the humanities and science. Each of the groups I follow took an avid interest in what I have called the embodied reader. Rather than viewing reading as an act of a disembodied mind, they understood the practice as a psychosomatic experience in which mind and body could not be disconnected. Moreover, they believed that reading could capitalize on the embodied nature of thought and affect, and engender healthy effects. In this way, the embodied reader was constructed as a new, modern locus of both the literary experience and the therapeutic ethos. By valuing above all else how reading could be used to achieve health, advocates of bibliotherapy fashioned a form of applied humanities, one that defined the meaning and judged the value of books in terms of their utility and efficacy. In so doing, they contributed to the development of a form of the medicalized humanities that now resonates in three contemporary sites: (1.) the study and use of bibliotherapy in clinical psychology; (2.) the dominant and naturalized approach to books known as therapeutic reading; and (3.) the medical humanities. / Ph. D.

Although Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are quickly becoming a reality, there is much that needs to be understood before mainstream commercialization can occur. One critical issue is the interplay between multiple fields of engineering. Whereas the first part of this work is a granular treatment of a specific issue, the second part simultaneously examines numerous fields within the transportation industry. In the surge to understand and develop AVs, researchers tend to study specific subdivisions within the "vehicle engineering umbrella". In particular, mechanical and civil engineers study vehicle dynamics in two different levels of specificity. Mechanical engineers typically investigate small-scale dynamic behavior which applies to a single vehicle, such as vehicle-terrain interactions or the behavior of mechanical components. On the other hand, civil engineers tend to study kinematic behavior: the behavior of platoons as it pertains to large-scale traffic flow. Regardless of the scale of study, each subdivision has a set of performance metrics. Due to the differences among subdivisions, some performance metrics may (unintentionally) compete. Compromises must be made in the design stage to produce a vehicle which caters to an appropriate audience. The first part of this work features two major contributions to bridge the gap between the dynamic and kinematic perspectives. One is the application of Design Envelopes that establishes a framework to balance constraints and assess design tradeoffs arising from each viewpoints. Three Design Envelopes are introduced to reach compromises on a vehicle's velocity, acceleration, and jerk. Another contribution is a methodology to tune the parameters of a car-following model analytically. Current tuning practices require empirically collected traffic count data, which is cumbersome to obtain. Analytically parameterizing car-following models facilitates more robust planning and encompasses both the dynamic and kinematic perspectives. The second contribution utilizes these Design Envelopes to improve a currently-existing speed profile generator. Integrating the Design Envelopes reformulates the existing algorithm as a constrained LQR problem, which enhances ride comfort and maintains dynamic stability for not just one vehicle, but a platoon. Simulations demonstrate that the refined algorithm can reduce the travel time on a specific route by 3-4.4%. More importantly, the simulations demonstrate it is possible to synthesize multiple engineering fields to enhance AV design. The second part of this work features two contributions aimed at revisions to modern-day highway design policies based on the concept of combining microscopic and macroscopic principles. One common belief is that AVs should drive better than the best human drivers, which suggests operating at or close to the vehicle's theoretical handling limits. Operating in this manner requires a thorough understanding of the associated risks, particularly the risks stemming from uncertainty. This is especially pertinent as there are many inherently probabilistic quantities that are conveniently treated as deterministic in vehicle performance simulations, such as the coefficient of friction. This is a questionable practice when operating on the precipice of compromised safety. Thus, the second part of this work probabilistically examines the chance of handling loss given the amount of tire-road friction and driver acceleration. The result is a mathematically rigorous quantification of a safety margin for various road conditions and driver ability levels. Changes to the official US highway design handbook are recommended based on the findings. / Doctor of Philosophy / Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are quickly becoming a reality. In the surge to understand and develop AVs, researchers tend to study specific subdivisions within the vehicle engineering umbrella. In particular, mechanical and civil engineers study vehicle dynamics in two different levels of specificity. Mechanical engineers typically investigate the dynamics of a single vehicle, such as vehicle-terrain interactions or how various mechanical components operate. On the other hand, civil engineers tend to study traffic flow, which involves platoons (large groups of vehicles). Regardless of the scale of study, each subdivision has a set of performance metrics. Due to the differences among subdivisions, some performance metrics may (unintentionally) compete. Compromises must be made in the design stage to produce a vehicle which caters to an appropriate audience. This work features four main contributions. The first contribution is the application of Design Envelopes that establishes a framework to balance constraints arising from the different ways of studying vehicle dynamics. Three Design Envelopes are introduced to reach compromises on various facets of a vehicle's behavior, such as the vehicle's speed. The second contribution utilizes these Design Envelopes to improve a currently-existing speed profile generator. The current speed profile generator determines how to smoothly transition between two speeds (such as needing to decelerate to remain under a speed limit), but the ride may be uncomfortable to passengers. Integrating the Design Envelopes into the algorithm enhances the ride comfort for not just one vehicle, but a platoon. Simulations demonstrate that the refined algorithm can reduce the travel time on a specific route by 3-4.4%. The third contribution examines how horizontal curves on highways are designed, and a revision based on an acceleration-based safety margin is proposed. Finally, the fourth contribution considers important design variables probabilistically to establish a link between a motorist's acceleration and the chance of a tire skidding failure, which can impact the way straightaway road segments are designed to accommodate sudden braking maneuvers. As a whole, this work demonstrates it is possible to synthesize multiple engineering fields to enhance both current and future (full-scale AV implementation) roadway design.

Mental rotation skills predict later achievement in STEM (Wai, Lubinski, & Benbow, 2009). Prior research shows that children’s mental rotation skills improve after training (Hawes, Gilligan-Lee, & Mix, 2022; Uttal et al., 2013). However, most studies have used dynamic stimuli where children see objects rotating. We hypothesized that reading books that practice mental rotation with only static images could improve children’ mental rotation skills. We preregistered a pretest-training-posttest design with 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 80). Children completed a mental rotation assessment at pretest, four to six reading days with an experimenter over two weeks in one of two randomly-assigned conditions (Mental Rotation Book Condition versus Control Book Condition), and a mental rotation assessment at posttest. The Mental Rotation Books involved mental rotation practice while the Control Books did not. Consistent with our hypothesis, condition was a significant predictor of posttest mental rotation accuracy, controlling for age, verbal ability, and pretest mental rotation accuracy. Children in the Mental Rotation Book condition significantly improved from pretest (M = .59, SD = .24) to posttest (M = .75, SD = .21), while the control group did not. However, condition was not a significant predictor of posttest mental transformation skills, math achievement, or spatial vocabulary, controlling for age, verbal ability, and respective pretest scores. Book-reading may be a scalable method for improving mental rotation skills in early childhood and warrants further intervention studies using book-reading at home or in schools to improve spatial skills. / Psychology

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The purpose of this study is to identify how parents perceive dialogic book reading workshops that they participate in, and how cultural backgrounds affect these perspectives. Four native English-speaking mothers, and one Spanish-speaking mother with preschool-age children participated in this study. After two dialogic book reading workshops, parents participated in focus groups to discuss their perceptions. Participants noted three positive themes including motivators like incentives and childcare, positive influences, and effective adaptations in their reading routines with their children, and how the workshops were structured with helpful facilitators, supplemental materials, and content. Participants suggested various ideas for improvement. The Spanish-speaking participant mentioned more familial benefits, while the English-speaking participants focused on individual benefits. Overall, parents perceive dialogic book reading workshops as positive experiences that positively impact their families across cultures.

Denna artikel går igenom utveklingen av spelupplevelsen och vår konceptuella start och slut, för att gestalta upplevelser hos personer med autism och ADHD. Vigår igenom ett flertal anledningar till varför och vilket behov som finns av rekonstruktion av diagnoserna autism och ADHD inom media, särskilt i denna tid och rum. / This article goes through our development of the game experience and our conceptual beginning and end, to portrait the viewpoint of people with autism and ADHD. We go through a plethora of reasons behind the why and the need of this reconstruction of portraying autism and ADHD within media, especially now during our time and age.

The purposes of this study are to make an investigation of practices used in a number of selected schools in selecting library materials for the school libraries and to evaluate these practices against criteria developed from a study of recommended standards and practices in the fields of library science and education.

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