No description available.

The role of various sources of proactive and retroactive interference in Delayed-Matching-to-Sample (DMTS) performance of five capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) was examined in a series of four experiments. The DMTS trials were presented in a semi-automated Wisconsin General Test Apparatus (WGTA) with junk objects serving as stimuli. The first experiment assessed the effects of delay interval (10 or 40 seconds), sample reward (present or absent), and nature of delay interval stimulation (dark or illuminated) on DMTS performance when sample and choice stimuli are drawn from a large pool of stimuli. Performance was better when the sample response was rewarded than when it was not. Correct responding was initially more frequent after dark delays than after illuminated delays; however, with continued training the effects of delay interval illumination disappeared. There was no significant difference in performance with a 10 second and a 40 second delay interval. The second experiment consisted of two replications of Experiment I: one with the sample and choice stimuli drawn from a large pool (480) of objects and the other with stimuli drawn from a small pool (2) of objects. When stimuli were drawn from the small pool of objects, performance was markedly poorer than when stimuli were drawn from the large pool. A significant delay interval effect was observed in the small pool task, but as in Experiment I no such effect was observed when stimuli were drawn from a large pool. Performance was poorer on the small pool condition when the delay interval was illuminated than when the houselights were extinguished. However, unlike the effect observed in Experiment I, illuminated delay performance decrements persisted after continued training. No illumination effect was observed for the large pool replication of Experiment II. In both the large and small pool replications, performance was again inferior after nonrewarded sample responses than after rewarded sample responses. Experiment III was designed to test the hypothesis that animals learn to use delay interval stimuli as cues to remember sample stimuli. After extended training on the small stimulus pool condition with delay intervals illuminated, a number of probe trials were presented. On probe trials, the stimuli previously displayed to the subjects during the delay interval (a yellow and white opaque screen) and the stimuli previously displayed during the intertrial interval (a black opaque screen) were reversed. Contrary to the predictions of the retention-cue hypothesis, DMTS performance was no lower on probe trials than on control trials. The final experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that emotionally significant events occurring after the sample presentation period can disrupt DMTS performance by displacing the sample stimulus trace from a limited capacity memory store. In order to insure that the effects of the independent variable not be obscured by floor effect, an intermediate sized (52) pool of objects was used in this experiment. After a pretraining phase, a number of probe trials were presented with a novel sample incentive. As predicted, performance was significantly poorer when the type of incentive was unexpected than when it was expected. These results were interpreted as evidence that animals are more sensitive to the effects of retroactive interference when proactive interference is high (small stimulus pool) than when it is low (large stimulus pool). It was also suggested that emotional reactions can serve as powerful sources of retroactive interference in DMTS performance. These effects occur regardless of whether the emotional response is negative (sample nonreward) or positive (novel sample reward).

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 25-28, 1993 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / A very restrictive down-range flight area for a small ground-to-air missile required the interruption of the flight after the missile had flown past a specialized target and telemetry data had been transmitted to a receiving station. Explosive bolts separated the missile into two sections and cables loosely attaching the two sections caused the system to tumble and therefore interrupt the flight. Because of the high dynamic forces exerted on the attaching cables, soft material "shock absorbers" were used to assure the integrity of the cables.

In a fast-paced office setting, information workers inevitably experience expected and unexpected interruptions daily. As the volume and the diversity of information and application types grow, the impact of frequent interruptions on their task performance gets more severe. To manage the negative effects of interruptions on work performance, workers often engage in task management activities to ensure they are better prepared to resume suspended task less stressfully. However, managing tasks causes additional cognitive burden and a time cost to users who already are experiencing the tight attention and time economies. This dissertation presents an approach to augmenting users' task performance by allowing them to manage and retrieve desired work contexts with ease. The Context Browser, the implementation of the proposed approach, is designed to help the users to explore narratives of their workspace manner and restore their previous work contexts. The goals of implementing the Context Browser are to 1) unload the users? burden of taking care of their task-related or task status information promptly and thus help them focus solely on executing a given task, 2) allow them to browse their previous workspace intuitively, and 3) enhance continuity of their tasks by supporting them to retrieve desired work context more quickly and easily. In order to validate the proposed approach, a user study comparing task performances of the group with the Context Browser to the one without the Context Browser was conducted. The study produced both quantitative and qualitative results. The study confirmed that with the Context Browser subjects expressed better quantitative numbers than the ones without. Subjects using the Context Browser were able to restore and retrieve their desired work setting and task-related information more quickly and correctly. Qualitative results showed that the subjects using the Context Browser found that various contextual cues and the interfaces responsible for providing the cues offered effective artifacts to help them recover both cognitive and work contexts, while the other subjects experienced a difficult time in restoring the desired contexts that were necessary to perform their assigned tasks. In addition, we re-invited 6 subjects from the group without the Context Browser 6 weeks after the study. We asked them to perform the same tasks as the ones they did 6 weeks before with the Context Browser. It showed that with the Context Browser they outperformed their previous performance even after a lengthy period.

Thèse (de maîtrise)--Université Laval, 2009. / Bibliogr.: f. [85]-89. Publié aussi en version électronique dans la Collection Mémoires et thèses électroniques.

This paper examines whether controlling for the type of career interruption has different effects on men's and women's wages. One argument for the persistence of the gender wage gap is that previously researchers have used poor measures of experience to estimate men's and women's wages. This paper extends the career interruption literature by estimating men's and women's wages including controls for both the type and timing of interruptions. Findings show similar wage effects for men's and women's wages while controlling for the type of interruption. These results are consistent with the basic human capital model, but are inconsistent with previous empirical research.

No description available.

Dans le domaine de la médecine fœtale, lorsqu’un fœtus ou un embryon est atteint d’une pathologie grave ou lorsqu’il risque de mettre en péril une grossesse multiple, les décisions que les couples sont amenés à prendre sont toutes lourdes de conséquences et d’une grande complexité. Pour les pathologies fœtales, les seules alternatives sont l’interruption médicale de grossesse (IMG) ou la naissance d’un enfant malade ou handicapé. Pour les grossesses multiples, quand un des co-fœtus est atteint d’une maladie grave ou met en danger la survie du ou des co-fœtus, les futurs parents sont coincés entre la non intervention ou l’interruption sélective de grossesse (ISG) pour le fœtus atteint. Enfin, quand le nombre d’embryons qui se développent dans l’utérus est supérieur à deux, la décision met en balance le risque de mettre au monde de grands prématurés vs la réduction embryonnaire (RE). L’objectif général de cette thèse est de : Comparer, en France et au Québec, la portée de l’implication des différent(e)s acteur(trice)s qui interagissent avec les couples dans le contexte de la médecine fœtale, dès qu’ils ont reçus un diagnostic ou un pronostic susceptible de mener à un arrêt de vie(s) fœtale(s) pour des raisons médicales, jusqu’à ce que leur décision soit prise. Les trois objectifs spécifiques sont: 1) Comparer les IMG, ISG et RE pour dégager les itinéraires thérapeutiques des couples susceptibles d’y recourir. 2) Déterminer les acteur(trice)s impliqué(e)s dans ces itinéraires tout au long des processus décisionnels des couples, ainsi que la perception de leur place, et des rôles qu’ils doivent jouer. 3) Connaître les perceptions et l’expérience des couples en regard de leurs interactions avec ces acteur(trice)s lors de ces processus, ainsi que les enjeux éthiques qui en découlent. Cette recherche a pu être réalisée à partir d’un devis ethnographique qui a nécessité 380 heures d’observation participante ainsi que 48 entrevues semi-dirigées auprès de couples, de médecins, d’infirmières et de sages-femmes. L’analyse a permis d’identifier les acteur(trice)s dont les interactions ont le plus d’impacts sur les couples confrontés à une anomalie fœtale ou à une grossesse multiple et de les subdiviser en deux types : les acteur(trice)s centraux et périphériques. Il a ensuite été possible de faire émerger des différences majeures entre les points de vue et les attitudes des obstétricien(ne)s français(e)s et québécois(e)s concernant la prise en charge des couples en regard de l’information, la prise de décision et le soutien. Inversement, les attentes et les besoins des couples français et québécois par rapport à cette prise en charge sont plutôt convergeants. Enfin, les résultats de cette étude ont menés à une analyse critique des enjeux éthiques émergeants de ces différences et similitudes.

Cette étude se propose de réfléchir la ou les formes prises par un théâtre politique sur les territoires français et allemand des années 1995 à 2015. L'enjeu est d'évaluer les stratégies esthétiques développées par les artistes afin de renouveler les modalités du politique au théâtre, alors que l'édifice idéologique et théorique qui soutenait jusqu'alors une telle dimension semble révolu. La reprise dans notre titre de l'assertion paradoxale du théoricien allemand Hans-Thies Lehmann – une « "interruption" du politique dans le champ du théâtre politique contemporain » – permet d'introduire et de circonscrire les grands axes de cette problématique. Est-ce que l'interruption apparente et rhétorique du politique dans le discours des artistes est à lire comme une fin du politique ou au contraire comme une suspension momentanée de ses catégories, constituant une stratégie destinée à contourner la situation postmoderne d'aporie critique ? Cette question se propose d'être appréhendée par le biais de l'analyse transversale des différents discours artistiques. Le terme de discours comprend aussi bien les représentations que les propos méta-artistiques et les entretiens. La méthode permet de dépasser les oppositions apparentes au profit d'une approche prenant en compte toute la complexité et les contradictions du problème. Ces oppositions prennent bien souvent la forme, dans les propos des artistes, d'un refus de se voir affilier à un théâtre politique historique alors que les spectacles en prolongent et en renouvellent paradoxalement les modalités esthétiques. / The present study aims at observing the form or forms taken by a political theatre in France and Germany in the period between 1995 and 2015. At stake is an evaluation of the aesthetic strategies developed by artists so as to renew the ways of representing politics in the theatre when the ideological and theoretical structures which, until then, underpinned this dimension seem to have collapsed. The title’s quote of the German academic Hans-Thies Lehmann’s paradoxical assertion: an “interruption of politics in the contemporary political theatre” introduces and defines the limits of the domain under scrutiny. Is the illusory and rhetorical interruption of politics in the artists’ discourse to be understood as the end for the theme or, on the contrary, as a momentary suspension of its categories aiming at working around the post-modern situation of political aporia ? We propose to address the question by means of a transversal analysis of different artistic discourses. In the notion of discourse we intend to include the plays as well as meta-artistic declarations and interviews. This method aims at overcoming the apparent oppositions in order to find a way to take into account the complexities and contradictions of the problem. These oppositions often take the form, in the artists’ words, of a refusal to be affiliated to a historical political theatre whereas, paradoxically, the plays prolong and rejuvenate the aesthetic conventions of this theatre.

Protection of a human foetus The aim of this thesis is to deal with the protection of the human foetus in the scope of the Czech legal environment as well as in the relation with the international law. The work provides the insight into the specific law areas as constitutional law, criminal law and also private law and deals with the specific rules contended in the single act as the Interruption of the pregnancy act and the new Specific medical services act. The substantial part of the legal discussion is supported by examination of the decisions of the courts both international and national which reflect the protection of human foetus. The thesis focuses on the protection of human foetus in its complexity and shall provide the comparative material which compares the protection of the human foetus within the specific law disciplines. The analysis of single legal problems and issues of the protection of the human foetus is not exhaustive and focuses on the protection and state of the human foetus in specific statutes. The protection of the human foetus represents quite discussable issue which provides a large number of questions to be answered and leads to the discussions which are reflected in this work. The key issue is researched under the actual conditions of the legal system and also with the...