The question of whether words can be identified without spatial attention has been a topic of considerable interest over the last five and a half decades, but the literature has yielded mixed conclusions. Some studies show substantial effects of distractor words which are argued to appear outside of spatial attention, whereas a small number of other studies show no evidence of such effects. I argue that at least some of the discrepant results can be understood in terms of failures to optimally focus attention at the cued location. The present experiments manipulated the proportion of valid trials to encourage distributed (Experiments 1 and 3) or focused (Experiments 2 and 4) spatial attention. Participants read aloud a target word, and the impact of a simultaneously presented distractor word was assessed. Semantic and repetition distractor effects were present when conditions promoted distributed spatial attention, but distractor effects were absent when conditions promoted focused spatial attention. These data are consistent with the proposal that (1) the allocation of spatial attention across displays is strongly context-dependent and (2) spatial attention is a necessary preliminary to lexical/semantic processing.

The present thesis investigated how words are processed within the context of visual search. Both explicit and implicit measures were used to assess whether spatial attention is a prerequisite for words to undergo processing. In the explicit search task, subjects searched a display and indicated whether a word was present or absent among nonword distractors. In the implicit task, priming was employed to index word processing. Subjects viewed the same search displays that were used in the explicit task, however, the displays were presented briefly and were followed by a single target letter string to which subjects performed a lexical decision. In Experiments 3 through 6, in which the target was always presented at fixation, no priming was evident. In Experiments 7 and 8 when the location of the target moved from trial to trial, priming was observed. It is argued that attentional resources are narrowly allocated to a location in visual space when target location is certain but diffusely allocated when target location is uncertain. Furthermore, processing only occurs for words that fall within the suffusion of this strategically pliable attentional beam. The results are also interpreted within the domains of perceptual cuing and attentional capture.

Purpose: the purpose of this thesis is to explore how entrepreneurial business within Chinese education and training service industry to conduct Word-of-Mouth marketing and to further investigate the factors that influence the effectiveness of WOM marketing during customer purchase decision making process. Based on the purpose above, the authors aim to investigate whether there is a relationship between input and output WOM in terms of those factors. Method: the authors used both inductive and deductive approaches to fulfill the exploratory and descriptive purposes. In order to gather primary data, the authors applied multiple methods which combine qualitative and quantitative studies. Respectively, interviews and questionnaires were being used. Result and analysis: the authors obtained the empirical findings from six interviews and ninety two questionnaires. From which, the authors selected the most useful information related to the topic of this thesis based on the previous theories and models. In terms of the qualitative data analysis, a comprehensive summary was extracted. As for the quantitative data analysis, the authors used the SPSS software and then interpret the data according to previous theories and models. Conclusion: in this final part, the authors answered the five research questions. And concluded that based on the internal and external information management, the company should have an Integrated Marketing Communication approach to WOM marketing. Furthermore, the factors that have influence on customer purchase decision making process are six channels and eight attributes for the case company. The importance level of those factors will be further discussed in order to gain implications.

Allt fler kunder söker sig i dag till så kallade tredjepartskanaler på internet för att boka hotell. En tredjepartskanal är en hemsida som samlar ett flertal hotell som kunden kan jämföra och välja mellan. I anslutning till dessa internetbaserade tredjepartskanaler finns vanligtvis kommentarsfält där kunder som tidigare bott på hotellen kan dela med sig av sin upplevelse genom kommentarer, det vill säga word-of-mouth. Dessa kommentarer har enligt forskning stor inverkan på kommande kunders köpbeslut, vilket motiverar en studie som undersöker hotells kunskap och arbete med word-of-mouth. Detta undersöks genom en kvalitativ fallstudie av svenska hotell. Undersökningen visar att kunskapen på flera håll är begränsad och att det operativa arbetet med word-of-mouth i många fall kan förbättras.

Virtual communities have become more and more popular in the Internet world. Members of a virtual community can disseminate information rapidly to create word- of-mouth (WOM) effect in marketing. Therefore, in-depth studies of the increase use of word-of-mouth marketing in the electronic world become more important. The object of this study is to use "the virtual book club¡¨, as the subject to investigate the factors that may affect member attitudes by the word-of-mouth. Four main factors were included in the research framework as independent variables, which are the knowledge of the message sender, knowledge of the receiver, quality of the message, and relationship strength between the sender and the receiver. Trust between the sender and the receiver is treated as a mediating factor. The dependent variable is the receiver¡¦s attitude. A quasi-experimental design was conducted and the findings include the following: 1. The knowledge level of the send can significantly affect the trust of the receiver. 2. The strength of the relationship can significantly affect the trust. 3. The quality of the message content can significantly influence the receiver¡¦s attitude.

When an individual experienced that the assumptions are different with the ones when he/she made decisions, and if the actual or imaginational current situations might be better given the information then, a kind of negative emotion named ¡§regret¡¨ emerges. Previous studies found that regret played similar roles in terms of satisfaction, repurchase behavior and intention of complain: regret lowers the satisfaction and repurchase behavior, and indirectly affects the intention of complain through low satisfaction. However, different results are found in the realm of willingness of word-of-mouth communications. Thus, this research combines the work of Zeelenberg & Pieters (2004a) and daily observations for the sake of discussing whether impression management factors causes consumers not to conduct negative word-of-mouth communications albeit regretting their previous decisions ¡V or even carry out positive word-of-mouth communications in extreme cases. The study served scenario design as the main method. Experiment 1 was used in determining the relation between subjects¡¦ word-of-mouth communication behaviorsand their level of regret. The decision category ¡§switch and maintain¡¨ is an indicatorof the subjects¡¦ level of regret. The results indicate that when subjects perceive¡§higher level of regret if experienced¡¨ (i.e. the decision category of switch), theywould possess significantly higher level of effect in word-of-mouth communications then subjects in the other category. The thesis added impression management in experiment 2, they are ¡udependence¡vand¡uself-monitoring¡v, in order to test whether would subjects be affected due to impression management behaviors in terms of the willingness to conduct negative word-of-mouth communications. The results indicate that whether the decision categories or level of experienced regret are served as the measurement of emotions, ¡§level of dependent¡¨ and ¡§level of self-monitoring¡¨ play significant harmonizing roles in communicating negative word-of-mouth information. Significant decrease of such willingness is found in the category of high level of dependent.

The concept ¡§World Cafe Community¡¨, which is proposed by Juanita Brown and David Issacs, is becoming a new method for team learning. According to Peter Senge¡¦s opinion, ¡§World Cafe¡¨ is just a detail implementation to a deeply dialogue, which is a method for achieving team learning. The main meaning of ¡§World Cafe¡¨ is through group discussion and idea exchange to realize brain storming. However, ¡§World Cafe¡¨ is helpful for diversified communications, but some of the concrete operation details are not suitable for Eastern. The main purpose of this study is to develop a serious of action researches to improve the operation details in the ¡§World Cafe¡¨ model. Through holding three conferences with ¡§World Cafe¡¨, some improved skills in team communication are introduced in each conference. We hope use these improved skills to find out a suitable model of organizational communication and knowledge sharing in holding ¡§World Cafe¡¨ in Eastern societies. This study proposed some improvements such as a new entire printed page, mind-mapping, and talking stick, which could impress participators about the discussion contents and processes. These improvements also make the discussed issues focused. Therefore, the suggested improvements by this study can make people who are not familiar with ¡§World Cafe¡¨ quickly understand the communicated and shared key point and hence, create more team brain storming.

Although technology is well developed, personal data is well spread in internet ,too. We can see a lot of privacy invasion in PTT. People can find a lot of data about someone from his name or movie. People are afraid of being caught in internet. But why some people support this kind of privacy invasion but some don¡¦t. What is the main factor? This study uses description and different kind of event to observe if description can affect people¡¦s decision toward privacy invasion. We separate description into violate and non-violate, and we use two stage survey to observe when people face different kind of description, is there any different between violate and non-violate description toward privacy decision making. In the end, we find how sex, description, and event affect privacy decision making, and we bring up a suggestion of privacy situational desion and the main factor toward privacy decision making.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101-105).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 120 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 101-108).