The research was a continuation of a study on the relation of non-verbal imagery to learning, with special reference to the use of visual images in the learning process. The new enquiry was planned to study the relation of the non-verbal imagery to learning when the material used was sense material as opposed to nonsense material. The subjects, 6 adults and 4 children were required to learn series of 5 variants of the same shape associated with a nonsense name and of 5 examples of the same type of object associated with a sense name. The learning of each series was tested by immediate recalls of the material on each learning occasion, and by general tests, one at the end of the learning periods and a second five weeks later. Findings 1. Words and especially analogy played the greatest part in recall. 2. Concepts were important factors in learning. 3. The amount of visual imagery reported was meagre. 4. The children, In proportion to the number of correct recalls, reported more visual imagery than the adults. Their imagery tended to be of whole objects, and in some cases was of the eidetic type. 5. The main cause of failure to recall was confusion either between the members of the same set or between the sets. CONCLUSION. For recall of Individual items from visual data which fall into classes visual photographic imagery is of less value than concepts, analogy, verbal description and other forms of words. This is independent of whether the individual items are what is called sense or nonsense material.

This thesis attempts to show that the present ambiguity in the use of the term "image" causes serious confusion of thought, both in Literary Criticism and in Psychological research concerned with Literature. Part I. is an investigation of the causes of this ambiguity. It consists of an historical survey of the use of the term in English Rhetoric, Criticism and Psychology, prefaced by a consideration of the concept "image" in Greek and Latin writers. The claim is made, that the confusion does not become serious till the Nineteenth Century, when the use of image as meaning figure of speech first became general. Part II. is an account of experiments investigating the use of sensory images in figures of speech by subjects who were not imageless thinkers. Experiment I A tested the subjects' use of spontaneous analogy by means of coloured shapes drawn or verbally described after an interval for forgetting. In I B the material consisted of black shapes with inappropriate titles compelling the subject to accept or refuse the analogy therein suggested. An analogy was developed in different ways through various stages: overt comparison and consequent oscillation of attention; "unter-schiebung" involving partial unification of the images representing the objects compared; identification or coalescence of images implying unification of attention. Experiments II A and B investigated the subjects' use of images in the apprehension of figures of speech in Literature by means of introspective records. Such an apprehension demanded Imaginal activity (similar to that noted in Experiments I A and B) which attempts to eliminate the necessity for oscillation of attention. Some subjects found satisfaction in unifying the images involved, others by eliminating one element in the analogy. The adequate apprehension of the figure of speech demanded an organisation or configuration of images, modified, consciously or sub-consciously according to a definite end.

Autobiographical memory has been theorized to serve as an adaptive function in coping with negative mood state. To gain a better understanding of whether autobiographical memory changes with negative mood state, a number of experiments examined the relative accessibility of cognitive content and ability to recall specific event memories in those who had a previous history of depression or showed some aspects of current depressive symptoms. Five separate studies involved 288 participants and examined the effects of negative mood components on autobiographical recall. Studies 1 – 4 examined the autobiographical content by cueing content using a cue word technique to evoke autobiographical memories by means of a modified version of the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986). Negative mood state was induced by Velten mood induction technique, and self-reported mood was measured using University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology Mood Adjective Checklist (UWIST-MACL; Matthews, Jones & Chamberlain, 1990) before and after mood induction. The ability to recall specific event memories was measured in Study 5 by the Sentence Completion for Events from the Past Test (SCEPT; Raes, Hermans, Williams, & Eelen, 2007). The results indicate that negative mood does influence autobiographical recall in terms of content and memory. These results indicate that autobiographical memory is a phenomenon that is in part dependent on negative mood state and in part dependent on current depressive symptoms and history of depression. Increased rumination was particularly responsive to induced negative mood state in those with current depressive symptoms. Reduced levels of activity, alertness, loss of interest and diminished pleasure are aspects of negative mood that seem to be particularly important components of mood state at the time of recall. To gain further insights into mood state effects in autobiographical recall, future directions in mood research should focus on and differentiate between the separate mood state components that are more important in bringing about changes in recalled content, especially in those with either a history of depression or showing current depressive symptoms.

Elaborated Intrusion (EI) Theory posits that craving involves mental imagery in the same sensory modalities as the craved substance or activity. Visual imagery predominates, therefore craving should selectively interfere with performance on visual task, and conversely visual tasks should interfere with craving. This thesis reports tests of this prediction, both in the laboratory and real-world settings, to provide a basis for designing practical tasks for interfering with cravings in a natural environment. Contrary to predictions, experiments 1 and 2 showed no effect of craving on visual or verbal task performance. There were, however, effects of task performance on craving in experiment 2. Experiment 3 found that playing Tetris reduced craving relative to a no-task control (watching a load screen), but was no more effective than digit recall or counting in ones. Experiments 4 and 5 both compared the effects of visual pattern recall with digit recall, with contradictory results. Experiment 4 showed an effect of low load visual task on craving, but not verbal; whereas Experiment 5 found no impact of either task. Overall, the findings are consistent with the assumption that craving involves controlled cognitive processes, but do not clearly support or disprove the hypothesis that visual processes are key. Experiment 6 focussed on interfering with naturally occurring cravings in a laboratory setting. Playing the computer game Tetris reduced cravings compared to a no task control. The final study of this thesis examined cravings in a natural environment. Participants were lent an iPod with either a questionnaire-only task, or a task with the questionnaire and Tetris installed on it. They were prompted by SMS to complete the task at pseudo-random intervals across the day over the course of a week. Mixed effects regression and multilevel growth curve modelling showed that Tetris was effective at decreasing naturally occurring cravings in a natural environment but the binary measure used, did not find a reduction in indulgence rates, however other more sensitive measures may. In contrast to the literature reviewed, the findings from this thesis are more consistent with craving involving general cognitive effort rather than modality-specific processes. Games such as Tetris appear to have potential as take-home tasks in future research and to help people manage their cravings.

Notre sujet de recherche porte sur l’étude de patients psychotiques et alcoolo-dépendants (CIM-10) qui évoluent sur les dimensions psychologiques de la créativité, des émotions (reconnaissance, expression et régulation émotionnelle) et des cognitions (perception, attention, mémoire, fonctions exécutives) lors d’une intervention de psychothérapie à médiation musicale de groupe au sein d’un hôpital de réhabilitation psychiatrique stationnaire. Nous appliquons une méthodologie quantitative et qualitative intégrée pour une période de huit mois d’intervention thérapeutique. Six études scientifiques (articles) composent le contenu de cette thèse :Étude 1 : Mise en évidence du processus créatif (artistique et musical). Étude 2 : L’élaboration de schémas d’observation clinique. Étude 3 : L’évolution du malade psychique sur la dimension des émotions.Étude 4 : La dimension cognitive : Capacités d’attention et de mémorisation lors du processus thérapeutique.Étude 5 : Études structurales en psychothérapie à médiation musicale de groupe.Étude 6 : Le groupe thérapeutique comme objet de recherche en réhabilitation psychiatrique stationnaire. Les résultats des études quantitatives confirment l’existence d’un impact favorable du sonore sur les dimensions psychologiques et sur le comportement observable, tout en prenant en considération l’existence de différences significatives entre les sous-groupes cliniques des patients psychotiques (schizophrénie) et des patients alcoolo-dépendants. Finalement, la mise en place de programmes d’intervention psychothérapeutique spécialisés, adaptés aux diagnostiques préalables et aux besoins spécifiques des patients, est discutée / Our research theme relates to the evolution of psychiatric patients on the psychological dimensions of creativity, emotions and cognitions during music psychotherapy within a long-term care psychiatric hospital. The research objectives, carried out via a mixed quantitative and qualitative methodology, focus the subject of sound influence on the human body, so as the developement of the therapeutic relationship and latent processes during therapy sessions. Six scientifical studies (articles) are going to compose the content of this thesis : Study 1 : Revealing the creative process in music psychotherapy. Study 2 : The development of observational frames in the arts psychotherapies. Study 3 : The patient’s evolution on the psychological dimension of emotions.Study 4 : The cognitive dimension : Attention and mnestic capacities during the therapeutic process.Study 5 : Structural studies to resume group music psychotherapy intervention. Study 6 : The therapeutic group as a research object in long-term psychiatric care. The results of the studies tend to confirm the existence of a favourable sound impact on psychological dimensions, by taking into account significant differences between the clinical sets of psychotics (schizophrenia) and alcoholo-dependent patients. Finally, reflections on the implementation of specialized psychotherapeutic intervention programmes, adapted to initial diagnosis and patient’s demands, are presented

This thesis explores the ability of data visualisation to enable knowl-edge discovery in digital collections. Its emphasis lies on time-based visualisations, such as timelines. Although timelines are among the earliest examples of graphical renderings of data, they are often used merely as devices for linear storytelling and not as tools for visual analysis. Investigating this type of visualisation reveals the particular challenges of digital timelines for scholarly research. In addition, the intersection between the key issues of time-wise visualisation and digital collections acts as a focal point. Departing from authored temporal descriptions in collections data, the research examines how curatorial decisions influence collec-tions data and how these decisions may be made manifest in timeline visualisations. The thesis contributes a new understanding of the knowledge embedded in digital collections and provides practical and conceptual means for making this knowledge accessible and usable. The case is made that digital collections are not simply represen-tations of physical archives. Digital collections record not only what is known about the content of an archive. Collections data contains traces of institutional decisions and curatorial biases, as well as data related to administrative procedures. Such ‘hidden data’ – information that has not been explicitly recorded, but is nevertheless present in the dataset – is crucial for drawing informed conclusions from dig-itised cultural collections and can be exposed through appropriately designed visualisation tools. The research takes a practice-led and collaborative approach, work-ing closely with cultural institutions and their curators. Functional prototypes address issues of visualising large cultural datasets and the representation of uncertain and multiple temporal descriptions that are typically found in digital collections. The prototypes act as means towards an improved understanding of and a critical engagement with the time-wise visualisation of col-lections data. Two example implementations put the design principles that have emerged into practice and demonstrate how such tools may assist in knowledge discovery in cultural collections. Calls for new visualisation tools that are suitable for the purposes of humanities research are widespread in the scholarly community. However, the present thesis shows that gaining new insights into digital collections does not only require technological advancement, but also an epistemological shift in working with digital collections. This shift is expressed in the kind of questions that curators have started seeking to answer through visualisation. Digitisation requires and affords new ways of interrogating collections that depart from putting the collected artefact and its creator at the centre of human-istic enquiry. Instead, digital collections need to be seen as artefacts themselves. Recognising this leads curators to address self-reflective research questions that seek to study the history of an institution and the influence that individuals have had on the holdings of a collection; questions that so far escaped their areas of research.

Previous researchers have often speculated about the role of risk taking in creativity, however this association has rarely been systematically investigated. This thesis explores the association between domain specific risk taking and creativity in human participants. It presents a systematic review of the speculations and scientific studies which aimed at uncovering the association between creativity and risk taking in various populations. This discussion aims to bring together the current knowledge centred around the link between risk taking and creativity and poses two overarching questions – Are creative individuals risk takers and if so, is this association domain specific? In five studies, the present research investigated these questions and found that creativity is strongly associated with risk taking in the social domain (but not in the financial, ethical, health/ safety or recreational domains). Additionally, with an aim to further disentangle the association between creativity and risk taking in specific populations and social situations, this thesis explored creativity in a specific group of individuals (sexual minority) who are speculated to be highly creative and are known to be more likely to take health/ safety risks such as smoking tobacco, consuming illegal drugs or engaging in unsafe sexual encounters. It was found that sexual minority (specifically bisexual individuals) were highly creative and were also more likely to take risks in various domains. As opposed to the sexual minority, another group of individuals in which creativity and risk taking are hypothesised to be different, consists of individuals who subscribe to the right-wing socio-political ideologies. As predicted, individuals who affiliated to the right-wing socio-political ideologies (in the United States) were found to be low on creativity and were significantly less likely to take risks, specifically in the social domain. A mediating role of social risk taking on the relationship between sociopolitical attitudes and creativity was also found. The research work presented in this thesis illustrates the role that social risk taking plays in creativity and paves way for the development of new ways to foster creativity.

La philosophie a tendance à ne pas concevoir le désir comme une notion historiquement connotée, mais plutôt comme un concept immuable. Le présent travail, au contraire, se propose de fournir des éléments pour l’élaboration philosophique d’une histoire du désir contemporain, s’articulant à travers des dispositifs et des discontinuités, des tendances et des moments de rupture. Notre objectif n’est pas de rédiger l’Histoire du désir et ses récentes transformations. En revanche, on se propose d’un côté de fournir des éléments pour pouvoir penser, philosophiquement, l’existence d’une histoire du désir, pour la fonder théoriquement ; de l’autre, de mettre en évidence, sans aucune prétention d’exhaustivité, certains des caractères définissant le désir de nos jours, certaines parmi les mutations qui, en premier lieu, nous ont suggéré l’existence d’une telle histoire encore toute à explorer. L’élaboration d’une telle histoire a été effectuée à partir d’une convergence entre la pensée de Deleuze, Foucault et Lyotard autour des notions principales structurant les présent travail : le désir, l’histoire, la notion de dispositif et celle de discontinuité. Néanmoins, nous avons croisé la pensée de ces auteurs avec d’autres, dans la tentative de souligner une convergence générationnelle. Dans l’histoire du désir contemporain on a reconnu un privilège à l’écran – à comprendre en tant que dispositif, au sens foucaldien du terme – à partir duquel on élaborera des tentatives de périodisation et on identifiera des discontinuités. Faire une histoire du désir contemporain signifie pour nous se demander comment l’on désire selon les écrans. / Philosophy tends to consider desire not as a historical notion, but rather as an immutable concept. Our work, however, aims to provide some elements for a philosophical elaboration of a history of contemporary desire, alternating dispositifs and discontinuity, tendencies and moments of rupture. Our purpose is absolutely not to define The History of desire and of its recent transformations. On the contrary, on one side we try to provide some theoretical elements in order to start thinking, philosophically, to a historicity of desire. On the other, without any claim of completeness, we try to identify some features defining the status of contemporary desire, by analysing some among the many mutations of desire which characterise our times and inspired this research in the first place. The elaboration of such a history mainly results from a convergence among the thoughts of Deleuze, Foucault and Lyotard, around the fundamental notions structuring this work, such as desire, history, dispositif, discontinuity. Nevertheless, we will often compare the thoughts of those authors with others, in order to highlight a sort of generational convergence. In the history of contemporary desire, we acknowledged a privilege to the screen – that has to be understood as a dispositif, in the large sense that Foucault gave at this notion. Thanks to its privilege, the screen will be the starting point for a periodisation of the history of contemporary desire and the identification of its discontinuities. How do we desire according to screens?