Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2008. / Title from document title page. Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-160).

Literature suggests that aspects of social cognition, as well as neuropsychological difficulties play a key role in the development and maintenance of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms in brain injury survivors. The present study aimed to explore the direct relationship between measures of neuropsychological function and social cognition, and psychological outcomes related to PTSD. A quantitative, cross-sectional, correlational design was employed, using correlational and multivariate regression methods of analysis. Forty-nine adult brain injury survivors were administered a range of measures of neuropsychological function (memory, executive function and attention); social cognition (Mentalization, emotion recognition, social judgment making and emotion-based decision-making) and Psychological outcomes related to PTSD (depression, anxiety, anger and PTSD symptoms). Significant relationships were found between measures of Mentalization, attention and memory, and symptoms relating to depression and PTSD. Selective visual attention and Mentalization were found to account for 37% of the relevant variance for depressive symptoms, while Mentalization and delayed memory recall accounted for 24% of the relevant variance for PTSD symptoms. Different measures of Mentalization showed unexpected correlation directions, which had significant implications for the role Mentalization might play in maintaining PTSD symptoms. The findings suggest an association between aspects of social cognition and neuropsychological functioning, and psychological outcomes related to PTSD. It is thought that impairments in these areas could play a role in maintaining these outcomes in Acquired Brain Injury survivors.

Cognitive complaints are common following an acquired brain injury and require careful assessment in order to guide treatment and care. There is a need for brief, comprehensive and psychometrically valid tests of cognitive function that can be used in neuro-rehabilitation services by a range of health professionals. The Short Parallel Assessments of Neuropsychological Status (SPANS) was purpose-designed to meet this need. The current study assessed the reliability, discriminative validity and factor structure of the SPANS. Participants were 61 people with an acquired brain injury, 35 people with a long-term neurological condition, and 122 healthy controls. Cronbach’s alphas were adequate to excellent for the clinical groups though poor for the healthy controls due to limited variance in the scores. Receiver operating characteristic curves showed that SPANS indices were significantly able to discriminate between people with a neurological condition and healthy controls as well as between left and right hemisphere damage. Exploratory factor analysis suggested the retention of 25 subtests representing three factors that largely followed the purported structure of the test: Memory and Learning, Language, and Visual-motor Performance. Limitations of the study, clinical/theoretical implications and research directions are considered. It is concluded that the SPANS is a reliable and valid tool for the assessment of cognitive function in people with an acquired brain injury, though further validation studies are required.

A substantial body of previous research suggests that the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) plays an important role in multiple aspects of emotion. These aspects include, but are not limited to, (1) generating, (2) experiencing, and (3) regulating one's own emotional state, as well as (4) facilitating the use of emotion-related information within goal-directed cognition and action selection. However, there is considerable controversy with regard to the distinct functional roles of various MPFC subregions. In this dissertation, I first provide a review of the theoretical and experimental literature to date in order to defend a plausible model of the hierarchical neural processes associated with each of the aspects of emotion highlighted above. This model proposes that different MPFC subregions each play distinct, but interactive, roles at or near the top of the respective hierarchical systems associated with those aspects of emotion. After reviewing this model, I then provide a description of four experiments that test the predictions of this model's claims regarding the roles of three distinct MPFC subregions: the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). These experiments provide independent support for the claims that (1) rACC plays an important role in representing the conceptual meaning of one's felt emotional reactions, (2) DMPFC plays an important role in maintaining representations of one's own emotions within a consciously accessible state, and (3) VMPFC plays an important role in both appraising the emotional significance of one's current situation and triggering the somatic/visceral reactions associated with the generation of an emotional response. In the concluding section of the dissertation, I then integrate these findings together with the larger model and discuss important directions for future research as well as ways in which the model might be extended to include insights from recent advances in theoretical neuroscience associated with predictive coding.

This study analyzes the relationship between the access to capital and the individual's construction of gender as presented in six Latin American cinematic depictions from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico that focus the point of view on young women in the urban space. David Harvey's theory on the urbanization of consciousness is used to analyze the females' relationship to family, class, community and state in terms of how each of these elements will impact the access to capital. The interaction with these factors determine that capital will also impact the construction of gender in the city-space. The films analyzed are as follows: Perfume de Violetas (2000) directed by Maryse Sistach, Àngel de fuego (1991) directed by Dana Rotberg Un día de suerte (2002) directed by Sandra Gugliotta, Hoy y mañana (2006) by Alejandro Chomsky, Uma Vida em Segredo (2001) by Suzana Amaral and Antônia (2006), by Tata Amaral. Film theory, feminist film theory, and gender studies are applied in the analysis of films.

Figure-ground perception can be modeled as a competitive process with mutual inhibition between shape properties on opposite sides of an edge. This dissertation reports brain-based evidence that such competitive inhibition can be induced by access to preexisting object memory representations during figure assignment. Silhouette stimuli were used in which the balance of properties along an edge biased the inner, bounded, region to be seen as a novel figure. Experimental silhouettes (EXP) suggested familiar objects on their outside edges, which nonetheless appeared as shapeless grounds. Control silhouettes (CON) suggested novel shapes on the outside.In an initial task, human observers categorized masked EXP and CON silhouettes (175 ms exposure) as "novel" versus a third group of silhouettes depicting "familiar" objects on the inside. Signal detection measures verified that observers were unconscious of the familiar shapes within the EXP stimuli. Across three experiments, novel categorizations were highly accurate with shorter RTs for EXP than CON. Event-related potential (ERP) indices of observers' brain activity (Experiments 2 and 3) revealed a Late Potential (~300 ms) to be less positive for EXP than CON, a reduction in neural activity consistent with the presence of greater competitive inhibition for EXP stimuli. After controlling for stimulus confounds (Experiment 3), the P1 ERP (~100 ms) was larger for EXP than CON conditions, perhaps reflecting unconscious access to object memories.In a second task, observers were informed about familiar shapes suggested on the outsides of the EXP silhouettes before viewing masked (Experiments 1 and 2) or unmasked (Experiment 3) EXP and CON silhouettes to report whether they saw familiar shapes on the outside. Experiment 3 observers were more accurate to categorize CON vs. EXP stimuli as novel vs. familiar, with shorter RTs for EXP than CON. Task 2 N170 ERPs (~170 ms) were larger for EXP than CON in Experiments 2 and 3, reflecting the conscious perception of familiar shape in the outsides of EXP silhouettes. LP magnitudes were greater for CON than EXP, although ERP polarity was dependent on the presence/absence of a mask. Task 2 LPs may reflect competitive inhibition or longer processing times for CON stimuli.

No description available.

For those living in resource rich countries such as Canada a positive HIV diagnosis no longer means an imminent death. In response to this change, numerous treatment and therapeutic institutions have arisen to assist individuals with managing their illness. Illness narratives then, the stories people tell and retell about their illness experience, are constructed by and within this multiplicity of medical frameworks that can interact in ways that are both complimentary and contradictory. Drawing on ethnographic data obtained through two months of participant observation and seven in-depth interviews at an HIV/AIDS treatment facility in Vancouver, British Columbia I discuss how illness narratives reveal the presence of and an orientation towards the powerful discourses of medicine. Some of the frameworks evident in the narratives I examine include biomedical understandings of health and disease, support group dialogues on self-empowerment, tenets of complementary and alternative medicines, clinical models of low-threshold access to health care, notions of health services as a human right, and addiction treatment concepts. In order to afford a place for the institutional discourses of medicine in my analysis, the subjective experience of illness is contextualized with reference to it’s situatedness amongst the myriad of other voices that both construct and constrain narrative production. Ultimately, I seek to demonstrate how the incorporation of disparate institutional voices into a subjective story of illness reflects the development of a unique orientation to the institutions of medicine an understanding that I conceptualize as medical consciousness.

A distinction between ruminative and reflective forms of dispositional self-focus is introduced and the theoretical utility of this distinction is evaluated in a program of eight studies. Study 1 examined for the presence of this distinction among natural language trait descriptors. Study 2 evaluated whether this distinction provided a sufficient summary of relations between the Fenigstein, Scheier and Buss (1975) Self-Consciousness scales and the Five Factor Model of personality (FFM). In Study 3, two brief questionnaire measures of ruminative and reflective tendencies were developed, and their convergent and discriminant validity evaluated with respect to the FFM, and the Fenigstein et al. (1975) Public Self- Consciousness (PUSC) and Private Self-Consciousness (PRSC) scales. Study 4 investigated the extent to which rumination and reflection separately account for PRSC associations with measures of psychological distress (e.g., Beck Depression scale) and intellective dispositions (e.g., Need for Cognition scale), respectively. Study 5 evaluated, using a sample of dormitory roommates, the extent to which self-estimates of ruminativeness and reflectiveness correspond with the judgments of a knowledgeable observer. Studies 6, 7, and 8 evaluated the extent to which the traits of rumination and reflection separately account for previously reported PRSC associations with three theoretically relevant criteria of private self-consciousness: state indices of self-focused attention (Study 6), the asymmetry effect in self-other similarity judgments (Study 7), and research volunteerism (Study 8). Findings suggest that the PRSC scale confounds two relatively independent, and motivationally distinct dispositions, rumination and reflection, and that latent ruminative and reflective components of PRSC scores separately and fully account for PRSC correlates and effects. These findings provide a straight forward explanation of the "self-absorption" paradox implicit in the PRSC research literature, i.e., the consistent but apparently contradictory finding of more accurate and extensive self-knowledge, yet higher levels of subjective psychological distress, among persons high in private self-consciousness. It is likely that the PRSC's associations with psychological distress are uniquely due to its neurotic component (rumination), and that the PRSC's self-knowledge effects are uniquely due its intellective component (reflection). It is argued that rumination and reflection represent statistically and functionally independent self-focusing tendencies. Their strong and unique associations with the FFM dimensions of neuroticism and openness, respectively, imply a basic dichotomy of self-attentive motives: anxiety/fear and curiosity/exploration: rumination represents a useful summary conception of self-attentiveness motivated by perceived threats, losses, or injustices to the self; reflection represents a useful summary conception of self-attentiveness motivated by intrinsic curiosity, or epistemic interest in the self. It is concluded that the spatial metaphor of "direction" may not be an appropriate basis for a useful scientific conception of dispositional self-consciousness. The concept of a purely cognitive tendency to have attention chronically directed toward the self versus away from the self, construed independently of the emotional and motivational determinants of such a tendency, is probably untenable.

This thesis is divided into two chapters, the first being an examination of conspiracy and paranoia in Libra, while the second focuses on the relationship between art and terror in Mao II, “In the Ruins of the Future,” Falling Man, and Point Omega. The study traces how DeLillo’s works have evolved over the years, focusing on the creation of counternarratives. Readers are given a glimpse of American culture and shown the power of narrative, ultimately shedding light on the future of our collective consciousness.