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No description available.

The biopsychosocial model (BPSM) offers a potential explanation for why individuals perform differently in pressurised motivated performance situations (e.g., sporting competitions). The aim of this thesis was to test the predictions of the BPSM to further our understanding of performance variability under pressure. Specifically, the BPSM suggests that individuals’ respond to a pressurised situation with either a challenge or threat state, with the former resulting in better performance. Three experimental studies were conducted to test this proposition and examine the immediate effect of challenge and threat states on the performance of laboratory-based motor tasks and real competition. Across all studies, a challenge state resulted in, or was associated with, superior performance. Importantly, this finding was consistent across different samples and research designs. In two of these studies, the proposed mechanisms (emotional, attentional, and behavioural) through which challenge and threat states might influence performance were also investigated. In both studies, a challenge state was associated with more favourable emotions (less anxiety and more facilitative interpretations) and attention (longer quiet eye durations and less conscious processing). Furthermore, in one study, a challenge state was also associated with more effective behaviour (lower muscle activity and superior clubhead movements). Crucially, mediation analyses indicated that challenge and threat states influenced performance by impacting the quality of task-related movements. The BPSM predicts that a range of factors influence whether an individual responds to a pressurised situation with a challenge or threat state (psychological and physical danger, familiarity, uncertainty, required effort, skills, knowledge and abilities, and the availability of support). In a fourth experimental study, two of these antecedents were examined; perceived required effort and support availability. In this study, although perceptions of support availability had limited impact, perceptions of low required effort led to a challenge state and better performance than perceptions of high required effort.

No description available.

No description available.

The main focus of this PhD project is the development and validation of a psychometric instrument for the measurement of individual dispositions towards rules and principles. Literature review and focus groups were used to generate insights into the reasons why individuals prefer rules and principles. On the basis of that review, an initial item pool was created covering the conceptual space of dispositions towards rules and principles. The final instrument consists of 10 items, 5 items each for the rules and principles subscales. The psychometric analysis suggested that it is valid and reliable. The instrument has sound predictive power and was able to significantly predict individuals’ behavioral intentions in relation to rules and principles across contexts. I found there were gender and ethnic differences in the relationship between dispositions towards rules and principles scores and behavioural intentions. This PhD is relevant to an emerging literature in behavioural accounting research that examines how practitioners’ personal characteristics and styles affect financial reporting practice.

Text in Afrikaans / Die verhaal wat hier vertel word is die van 'n jongeling wat sy ouerhuis verlaat om vir homself te sorg. Dit is die verhaal van die postmodernistiese wetenskaplike wat na 'n tydperk van modernistiese adolessensie moet afstand doen van die geborgenheid van sy kosmiese bestaan om 'n volwasse selfaangewesenheid nate streef. Maar wanneer hy homself (be)vind as die ek wat elke psigo-fisiese en rasioneel-empiriese werklikheid voorafgaan, is dit net om te ontdek dat hierdie ek nog ervaring nog wese is, dat hy hier niks anders (is) nie as 'n verwantskap van hierdie lewe met die dood. Om iets hiervan te begryp moet hy homself as 'n Lacaanse fallus aanskou. Hy is die beeld van die lewensvloed wat sy rol slegs in versluiering kan speel. Sy konstruksie verg altyd alreeds sy destruksie. Al wat (is) is sy masker, 'n persona, 'n vertolkte karakter waaraan die vertolking onttrek en 'n onbeslisbaarheid gepredikeer word · 'n bepaalde/bepalende dekonstruksie. / The story told here is one of a lad who leaves his parental home to take care of himself. It is the story of the postmodern scientist who after a period of modernistic adolescence must give up the safe security of his cosmic existence in the quest for an adult self reliance. But when he finds himself as the I who precedes every psychophysical and rational-empirical reality, it is only to discover that this I is neither experience nor being, that here he (is) nothing but the relationship of this life with death. In order to grasp something of this, he has to see himself as a Lacanian phallus.He is the image of the vital flow that can play its role only when veiled. His construction always already requires his destruction. What (is) is his mask, a persona, an interpreted character from whom the interpretation is being withdrawn and an undecidability predicated- a determinated/determinating deconstruction. / Psychology / D. Phil (Sielkunde)

Text in Afrikaans / Die verhaal wat hier vertel word is die van 'n jongeling wat sy ouerhuis verlaat om vir homself te sorg. Dit is die verhaal van die postmodernistiese wetenskaplike wat na 'n tydperk van modernistiese adolessensie moet afstand doen van die geborgenheid van sy kosmiese bestaan om 'n volwasse selfaangewesenheid nate streef. Maar wanneer hy homself (be)vind as die ek wat elke psigo-fisiese en rasioneel-empiriese werklikheid voorafgaan, is dit net om te ontdek dat hierdie ek nog ervaring nog wese is, dat hy hier niks anders (is) nie as 'n verwantskap van hierdie lewe met die dood. Om iets hiervan te begryp moet hy homself as 'n Lacaanse fallus aanskou. Hy is die beeld van die lewensvloed wat sy rol slegs in versluiering kan speel. Sy konstruksie verg altyd alreeds sy destruksie. Al wat (is) is sy masker, 'n persona, 'n vertolkte karakter waaraan die vertolking onttrek en 'n onbeslisbaarheid gepredikeer word · 'n bepaalde/bepalende dekonstruksie. / The story told here is one of a lad who leaves his parental home to take care of himself. It is the story of the postmodern scientist who after a period of modernistic adolescence must give up the safe security of his cosmic existence in the quest for an adult self reliance. But when he finds himself as the I who precedes every psychophysical and rational-empirical reality, it is only to discover that this I is neither experience nor being, that here he (is) nothing but the relationship of this life with death. In order to grasp something of this, he has to see himself as a Lacanian phallus.He is the image of the vital flow that can play its role only when veiled. His construction always already requires his destruction. What (is) is his mask, a persona, an interpreted character from whom the interpretation is being withdrawn and an undecidability predicated- a determinated/determinating deconstruction. / Psychology / D. Phil (Sielkunde)

But : comparer le processus de transformation intérieure au cours de la psychothérapie par le Jeu de Sable avec la transformation du néophyte au cours des rites d’initiation chez les Chamans, dans l’Alchimie et dans les cultes à mystères en Egypte et en Grèce. Méthodologie : Analyse de 856 photos des jeux de sable construits par 28 enfants de 4 à 12 ans. Conclusion : Il existe une similitude entre le processus de transformation vécu en psychothérapie et la première des trois étapes de l'initiation vécue par le néophyte. On retrouve dans les jeux de sable des scénarios archétypiques qui peuvent être classés dans des catégories spécifiques associées aux différentes étapes de la transformation intérieure décrites dans les mythes initiatiques. / Aim : comparison between the stages of inner transformation in Sandplay therapy with children and the stages of initiation in the Mystery cults of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, in Alchemy and in Shamanism. Sample : 28 children from 4 to 12 years old. Instrument of analysis : 856 photos made during the therapy. Results : We report on a similarity between the process of transformation in Sandplay therapy and the first stage of initiation in the different cultures. We found out that in Sandplay therapy the archetypes appeared according to the own internal logic of the transformation process described in the great myths. The archetypes can be classified in categories, which are specific to different stages of the inner transformation.

This thesis is about expanded narrative, a new field of experimental narrative practices that are not represented by single subjects or by categories such as ‘interactive’. It is defined by works that present a challenge to the form, fiction or nonfiction, in terms of the content, structure, style of writing or audience engagement. Extending the cognitive term ‘perceptual multistability’, that refers to switching between interpretations experienced when we look at an ambiguous figures, such as, the Necker cube, this thesis develops the position that expanded narrative practices and specifically locative narrative, a genera of expanded narrative, hold the potential to prompt the experiential effects of multi-stability. The metaphor of multi-stability introduced here stands in for three aspects of experience: language, perception and belief. While ambiguity and misperceptions have been recognised in the literature of experiential narrative practices, further exposition is required. The thesis asks what are the conditions in which the qualities of the metaphor of multi-stability may be prompted and what framework usefully articulates the parameters of experience? Drawing upon the writings of the philosopher William James, subsequent pragmatists, cognitive neuroscience and narratology, it explores how a radical empiricist perspective can form the basis of a non-foundational experiential framework that questions the status of knowledge and the problems of translation between experience and narrative interpretation. It suggests that the subjective classification of imagined and perceptual objects can be affected by the relations between the narrative form, the environment and the participant’s beliefs. The major contributions of the thesis are (1) the development of the Jamesian experiential framework that sets up cross-disciplinary parameters for the thematics of experience to engage with the ontological and epistemological challenges of evaluating and designing for multistability presents; (2) a relational approach to interpretation and coding participants’ feedback of locative narratives; (3) that is employed in the development of a collection of speculative strategies for evoking the effect of the metaphor of multi-stability, based on the development of four published locative narrative apps and ten prototypes. While highly contingent, participant introspective accounts of experience are central here to the methodology, the process of serial hypothesis forming and the iterative development of prototypes and locative narrative case studies. This research does not attempt to draw causal connections from science to that of narrative experience or vice versa. The thesis first considers the field of expanded narrative and the semantic and pragmatic framings of the term narrative and narratological framings of language as multi-stable. It goes on to examine the antecedent and coexistent practices of locative narrative. The epistemological implications for misperception, the function of representation and intentionality in perception are examined in relation to the environmentally situated perceptual, interpretative, aesthetic and emotional dimensions of experience. This research contributes to research in narrative and creative practices. It extends the form of locative narrative with the concept of multi-stability that has a wider application with the field of expanded narrative, creative practice and narratology.