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No description available.

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Brothers is a novel about Evan Floyd, a twenty-one year old college student who battles alcoholism, and his attempt to track down whoever injured his twin brother, Will. Evan meets Rolando Villanueva, a star on the local high school soccer team and the half-brother of Victor Villanueva, the man who hospitalized Will. The novel’s chapters alternate focal characters, as the novel’s first chapter employs a third-person, limited omniscient point of view with Evan as the focal character. The story remains in a third-person, limited omniscient point of view in the chapters where Rolando acts as the focal character. In addition to these two points of view, Edison Floyd, Evan and Will’s father, acts as a third focal character during a flashback sequence. The critical introduction for the novel examines how the focalization functions throughout the text.

Non-Player Character (NPC) believability is a game aspect that can be exploited to increase a game's replayability, but little research has been conducted on the topic. One method for enhancing a NPC's believability is to integrate human-like behaviours into their design, so that they react to players in a realistic and interesting way. A large part of human behaviour can be explained by their emotions; therefore it was selected as the inspiration for the GLaDOS system. Two psychological theories of emotion, Lazarus's cognitive appraisal and Plutchik's psycho-evolutionary synthesis, guided the design of the GLaDOS system, although several components are not unique to these theories. An implementation of the design was created as a "mod" for the popular CRPG "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim" to test its feasibility within the context of a commercial game. This task required an additional psychological model, PAD space, to map appraisal values to emotion codes and intensities. Feasibility testing was done via a user study to determine if the GLaDOS system increases player engagement when compared to the original game. While the objective analysis found that there were no significant differences between the two versions, subjective participant responses expressed a strong affinity for the GLaDOS system. Since player engagement is inherently subjective, it is encouraging to see positive responses from participants. This indicates that the GLaDOS system, and NPC believability in general, is one aspect of video games that has the potential to increase a game's replayability and should be investigated further. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / Realistic video game characters are a desirable game component to increase a game's value. Even if the game's ending does not change, realistic character behaviours encourage players to replay a game multiple times to see what happens along the way. This is closer to tabletop games where players know the game's outcome, but still play because no two sessions are alike. Despite its advantages, few developments have been made towards realistic game characters. An easily recognizable factor of human decision-making and behaviour is emotion and integrating emotion into character design is one way to improve their realism. The GLaDOS system is a proof-of-concept product that incorporates psychological models of emotion into its design. To test its impact on player engagement, the system was implemented as an extension for the popular computer game "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim". Preliminary test results are promising and show that further development could prove fruitful.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Education))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2008.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether higher levels of 4-H leadership positively correlate with higher levels of emotional intelligence. Also, this study sought to determine whether the Texas 4-H program enhances emotional intelligence through their character education program. A final purpose was to determine if these traits were reflected in the leadership of the 2005-2006 Texas 4-H Council. When character development variables were measured against gender, only three were found to be significantly different. There was also little significance when the character development variables were measured against the type of school (public, private, home) the Council members attended. There was no relationship between character development and years in the 4-H program. The Total EQ score obtained by the Texas 4-H Council members was about average (97). Usually a score in this range is obtained by a group that functions very well in some or most areas of emotional intelligence. A score of 100 represents effective emotional functioning. Overall, females on Council had higher scores for all five of the Emotional Quotient domains and, therefore, for the Total Emotional Quotient score. There was no relationship between emotional intelligence and years in the 4-H program and no difference in character education and emotional intelligence levels for Texas 4-H Council officers versus Texas 4-H Council members. However, the author did find that there was a positive relationship between character education and emotional intelligence.