This report takes as its subject the Anglo-Saxon text of The Wonders of the East, a medieval liber monstrum which appears in three English manuscripts from the 11th and 12th centuries. It argues that Wonders is a uniquely English text, and that the use of the vernacular is an attempt to spread and validate English usage across various literary and scientific forms. The first section examines briefly the relationships between the three manuscripts, then turns to one in particular, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius B.v., for the remainder of the study. This first section will also detail the contents of each of the three manuscripts, and the various thematic and linguistic connections between them. The second section turns to the text and illustrations of Wonders, and will consider the use and significance of distinctly “English” vocabulary in describing foreign monsters. It will show that the use of vernacular neologisms to describe foreign spaces and monstrous creatures is an attempt to explore the potential uses of English, and was inspired by a political and cultural environment which encouraged the use of the vernacular in an attempt to grow a national identity. The third section examines a brief passage describing the wondrous creatures known as the donestre, and will show examine the anxieties revealed in the naming and renaming of these creatures. It then explores the relationship between the visual representation and textual description of the donestre, and the implications of the discrepancies therein, to our understanding of the text. The fourth section reads The Wonders of the East as a map. First, it unpacks the myriad potential meanings held within the medieval map; then, it examines the structural and thematic concerns of the text, and the ways in which those concerns work to literally map English onto the Eastern world. My final section considers the implications of my reading of Wonders. It shows that this reading, by acknowledging for the first time, the distinct “Englishness” of the text, opens up Wonders to further study from a number of theoretical and disciplinary viewpoint. / text

Three of the major controversial issues in the field of intellectual styles are: 1) whether or not styles can be changed; 2) whether or not styles are value-laden; 3) whether styles are distinct from or they are part of personality traits. The main purpose of this research was to address these three issues by 1) exploring the socialization process of students’ thinking styles through tracing the change of thinking styles over one year and examining the competing influence of students’ perceived parenting styles, perceived learning environment, and personality traits on their thinking styles; and 2) exploring the role of thinking styles in students developmental outcomes with regard to career decision self-efficacy and subjective well-being. The research adopted a quantitatively-driven mixed method design and it involved three phases: the pilot study (a quantitative study), the main study (a longitudinal, quantitative study), and the follow-up study (a qualitative study). The pilot study validated a series of inventories that were subsequently utilized in the main study and preliminarily explored the relevant relationships among three hundred and forty-one Chinese university students from Shanghai, mainland China. In the main study, nine hundred and twenty-six students from the same university responded to a questionnaire consisting of the modified inventories and some demographic information at the beginning of an academic year. One year later, they responded to the same questionnaire again. After that, based on the results of the main study, 29 students were selected to participate in a follow up study that involved individual face-to-face interviews. Results of the main study generally supported the research hypotheses. With regard to the malleability of thinking styles, the research found that students’ thinking styles changed over one year and the change of thinking styles can be at least partially attributed to the two environmental factors (i.e., parenting styles and learning environments). These findings suggest that, albeit relatively stable, thinking styles can be socialized/changed. With regard to the role of thinking styles in student development, results indicated that mainly Type I thinking styles (characterized by creativity, nonconformity, and autonomy) positively contributed to students’ career decision self-efficacy and subjective well-being. Furthermore, Type I thinking styles were also major mediators in the relationships of parenting styles and learning environments to career decision self-efficacy and subjective well-being. These findings suggest that thinking styles are value-laden, with Type I thinking styles being more adaptive than other styles. With regard to the relationship between personality and thinking styles, results indicated that thinking styles and personality traits overlapped with each other to limited extents and both of them made unique contributions to student development. Moreover, thinking styles were more malleable than personality traits. These findings suggest that styles are distinct from rather than subordinate to personality traits. Results from the follow-up interview study further confirmed the results of the main study and provided explanatory information on how the identified relationships happened. Generally speaking, the present research has both theoretical and practical implications. It significantly contributes to the discussion on the aforementioned major controversial issues in the field of styles. Furthermore, based on the research findings, specific suggestions on how to optimize the development of students’ thinking styles are provided for parents, teachers, and university administrators. Finally, the limitations of this research and the recommendation for future studies are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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Intrusive cognitions are a natural occurrence within our stream of consciousness, however, when they become repetitive, negative, distressing, and difficult to control, they may warrant clinical concern. Thought suppression is a common control strategy used to manage intrusive thoughts even though research suggests it may actually exacerbate the problem. Conversely, acceptance-based interventions have gained recent attention as an alternative strategy for managing distressing internal experiences. Only preliminary research has focused on the psycho- and neurophysiological bases of intrusive cognitions, and their relationship to cognitive control strategies. Evidence suggests that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) may be a brain region critically involved in this process. The present investigation compared the subjective, behavioral, and physiological effects of a thought suppression and acceptance strategy in a sample of university students with high or low obsessive-compulsive (OC) characteristics who were exposed to an emotion-evoking film clip. Participants were instructed either to suppress or accept any intrusive cognitions during a rest period after the film clip, while monitoring for the number of intrusions. Next, psychophysiological signals and reaction times were measured while participants performed a variant of the Stroop task. The commission of errors during a forced choice task generates an error-related negativity (ERN), which is believed to index activity in the ACC. Results showed that self-reported intrusions during the rest interval were greater for the acceptance group and the high-OC group. Correlations suggested that participants who reported more effort at suppression also indicated more distress about their thoughts, whereas those who reported more acceptance indicated less distress. During Stroop task errors, the ERN was apparent as a maximal frontal negativity, and was larger for the suppression group than the acceptance group at a frontal scalp site (Fz), but not a central scalp site (Cz). Correlations between self-reported intrusions at rest and ERN amplitude indicated that participants who reported fewer intrusions demonstrated enhanced ERNs, a marker for increased ACC activity. These findings may be interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that thought suppression is associated with increased ACC activity and greater self-reported discomfort with the intrusions.

In an attempt to show how rational explanation of human and animal behaviour has a place in the scientific explanation of our physical world, Fodor advances the language of thought hypothesis. The purpose of this dissertation is to argue that, contrary to the language of thought hypothesis, we need not possess a linguistic internal representational system distinct from any natural language to serve as the medium of thinking. I accept that we have an internal representational system, but by analyzing Fodor's theory of content, I show Fodor's argument that the internal system must be as expressive as any natural language, which he uses in arguing that the internal system is the linguistic medium of thought, is unsound. Distinguishing an informational theory of content from a causal theory of content, which Fodor conflates, I argue that internal representations, whose content is determined by information they carry, cannot be related in a way that corresponds to semantic associations between terms in natural languages, reflecting actual associations of items in the world. Furthermore, provided certain animal cognition, which is homogeneous with human cognition, can be explained without requiring that the internal system possess anything corresponding to the logical connectives, the internal system need not possess anything corresponding to the logical connectives. I give such an explanation of animal cognition by developing an approach to content in the Rylean/Dennettian tradition, based on the notion of embodied cognition, in which animals embody the hypotheses they entertain in virtue of their total dispositional state, rather than explicitly representing them. It follows that there are two features of natural languages, semantic associations of terms and possessing logical connectives, that the internal system need not have. Hence a rational interpretation of linguistic behaviour need not be derived from an intentional interpretation of the transformations on int

Disordered speech has long been recognized as one of the core features of schizophrenia; it is stable across the course of the disorder, and has been identified as a rate limiter of functional outcome (e.g., social skills, scholastic achievement, vocational success). While much of the recent research on thought disorder has focused on the mechanisms behind disordered speech, we have observed a very limited transfer to clinical applications that promote gains in communication skills. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a novel treatment, Structured Therapy for the Enhancement of Purposeful Speech (STEPS), based in behavioural learning principles, to increase goal-directed speech in individuals with schizophrenia. The current study is one of the first to evaluate an intervention specifically aimed at increasing the core symptom of disorganized speech and evaluating change across multiple indicators of discourse. STEPS is based in principles of operant conditioning, wherein sessions take place three times per week for a total of three weeks. In a single-case multiple baseline design, participants (N=3) received positive reinforcement for engaging in goal-directed speech and directive feedback for committing speech errors, thereby increasing or decreasing frequency of that behaviour, respectively. Participants were assessed before, during, and after treatment on a series of thought disorder and speech coherence measures. Primary outcome measures included change in frequency of communication errors within sessions over the course of treatment and severity of thought disorder on standard disorder measures at three assessments points. Participants demonstrated a significant reduction in number of communication errors across unstructured conversations and structured storytelling components such that all participants engaged in significantly more goal-directed communication during treatment sessions compared to baseline performance. Furthermore, all participants were rated as expressing less severe disconnected speech according to a gold-standard measure of thought disorder. Effective communication is central to successful social interactions from building new interpersonal relationships, advocating for oneself to medical professionals, to demonstrating appropriate skills during interviews. The results of this study suggest that this symptom is amenable to change and can be treated in order to promote real-world functional gains. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2012-08-28 14:24:36.471

In the literature on reflection in teaching, authors frequently lament the lack of clarity in understandings of this concept, despite its wide acceptance as a phenomenon beneficial to teaching and learning. This dissertation reports a study of this literature that attempts to clarify the meaning of reflection and to establish a methodology for examining such a complex concept. Three analyses, each intended to explore the literature on reflection from a different perspective, comprise the study. The first is an analysis of the literature on reflection in three professional communities---continuing professional development, higher education and teacher education---to establish general themes in this literature. The second analysis examines definitions of reflection from the three communities, focusing in particular on processes and rationales of reflection. The third analysis explores a variety of critiques of reflection to determine predominant epistemologies and recurring themes in the literature. The merging of the results of the three analyses leads to a framework for understanding reflection. This integrative framework highlights the importance of underlying epistemologies as the bases for different understandings of reflection and shows the intricate interrelationships among four major themes in the literature: the processes involved in reflection, the rationales behind it, the context in which it occurs, and its connection to action. The framework also points to the link between the self and the reflective context, the possibilities of reflection in-, on-, for-, and as-action, the unclear connection between the cognitive and affective processes and the movement from internal to external rationales. The study contributes both conceptually and methodologically by making sense of the range of ways reflection has been understood and by providing a possible model for exploring a complex concept. It provides a consistent language for discussing reflection, demonstrates the complexities of the concept and the interrelationships of the themes contained in the literature, allows for the situating of individual works within the literature, increases understanding of the connection of reflection and action, and helps to position the concept of reflection within broader theories of cognition and social practice.

This thesis explores the nature of ambivalence in Maori political thought as expressed during John Ballance's tour of seven Maori districts in 1885. A microhistorical study of Maori speeches recorded during the tour, undertaken by Ballance as minister of Native Affairs, reveals three overlapping points regarding Maori political thought in the late nineteenth century. Firstly, despite a lack of power in processes of government and the effects of numerous land laws, Maori remained optimistic at the possibility of gaining equality, an optimism generated by the very act of Ballance's visit to Maori communities. Secondly, optimism was grounded in a pragmatic approach to state power, one that acknowledged the realities of the colonial government's positionin the New Zealand political system. Thirdly, a strongly held desire for equality, in combination with a pragmatic approach to state power, explains why Maori continued to seek solutions through the colonial government in the late nineteenth century. These three implicit positions can be seen in the greetings, criticisms and requests made by Maori leaders during the twelve hui that constituted Ballance's tour. In combination, these points suggest an ambivalence in the conceptual bases of Maori political thought in the late nineteenth century. This argument challenges existing interpretations of late nineteenth century Maori political activity, particularly the idea that Maori increasingly sought 'autonomy' in their own sphere. By adopting the approach of the microhistorian, this thesis opens a brief and unique window onto a period between the New Zealand wars and the resurgent protest movements of the 1890s, one that historians have yet to capture.