Thesis (M.A.)--The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2009. / Directed by Susan D. Calkins; submitted to the Dept. of Psychology. Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 17, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 30-39).

Thesis (M. A.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2006. / Title from PDF title page screen. Advisor: Wesley D. Allan ; submitted to the Dept. of Psychology. Includes bibliographical references (p. 43-49).

Thesis (MA)--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

Entrepreneurs tend to have emotional fluctuations in entrepreneurial process because of the incredible uncertainties embedded in the process (Judge and Douglas, 2013). The negative emotions such as stress, fear of failure and hopelessness may arouse and exert detrimental effects on entrepreneurs. Besides, there are also positive EEs (entrepreneurial emotions) such as satisfaction, passion, hopefulness and self-assurance. The relation between faith and EEs has been indicated in some research works (e.g. Bellu and Fiume, 2007; Tombaugh et al., 2011). With a further literature review, we found the gap between the two fields- FAW (faith at work) and EEs.  Accordingly, we came up with our research purpose which is to explore the influence of faith on EEs at the individual level.  In order to fulfill the research purpose, a qualitative study based on abduction is conducted. Empirical data is collected from seven entrepreneurs from Sweden in the form of semi-structured interviews. Bycombining the Four E’s model – four integrated dimensions of faith manifestation with seven identified EEs from the literature, the empirical research is conducted.           Our empirical findings confirmed the theories, and additional findings are acquired regarding EEs. The outcome indicates the positive impact of faith on EEs. More specifically, faith orientation in entrepreneurial process does not only promote positive emotions such as satisfaction, passion and altruistic love, but also helps overcome the negative emotions such as stress, fear of failure and doubts or withdraw their negative effects. It comes to the conclusion that faith-oriented entrepreneurs tend to have a stable state of their emotions during entrepreneurial process.

This dissertation explores Wittgenstein’s views on the mind-body problem. It is possible to provide an examination of Wittgenstein’s approach by tracing the evolution of the theory of mind and the mind-body problem, by considering the current ways of dealing with the mind-body problem, and Wittgenstein’s critique of the notion of the mind. Wittgenstein’s views on the nature of philosophy and the relationship between philosophy and psychology make it possible to understand and as this dissertation argues – see beyond – the conceptual confusion that has since arisen out of philosophic tradition that perpetuates a ‘myth of the mind’. Schools of thought such as the Cartesians and cognitivists have attempted, through the construction of various elaborate theories, to solve the ‘riddle’ of the mind and to address the so-called ‘mind-body problem’. Cognitive science, in particular, has used the tradition and the myth of the mind as a basis for its research. Wittgenstein shows that such thinking is particularly muddled. By examining Wittgenstein’s approach to the mind-body problem, it is argued here that theories based on the tradition of the ‘myth of the mind’ are inherently flawed. Wittgenstein uses his methods, consisting of his notions of ‘grammar’, ‘language games’ and the re-arrangement of concepts, to extrapolate meaning and to see through the conceptual confusions that the use of language causes and that give rise to the mind-body problem . / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

The digital music industry has expanded dramatically during the past decades, which results in the generation of enormous amounts of music data. Along with the Internet, the growing volume of quantitative data about users (e.g., users’ behaviors and preferences) can be easily collected nowadays. All these factors have the potential to produce big data in the music industry. By utilizing big data analysis of music related data, music can be better semantically understood (e.g., genres and emotions), and the user’s high-level needs such as automatic recognition and annotation can be satisfied. For example, many commercial music companies such as Pandora, Spotify, and Last.fm have already attempted to use big data and machine learn- ing related techniques to drastically alter music search and discovery. According to musicology and psychology theories, music can reflect our heart and soul, while emotion is the core component of music that expresses the complex and conscious experience. However, there is insufficient research in this field. Consequently, due to the impact of emotion conveyed by music, retrieval and discovery of useful music information at the emotion level from big music data are extremely important. Over the past decades, researchers have made great strides in automated systems for music retrieval and recommendation. Music is a temporal art, involving specific emotion expression. But while it is easy for human beings to recognize emotions expressed by music, it is still a challenge for automated systems to recognize them. Although some significant emotion models (e.g., Hevner’s adjective circle, Arousal- Valence model, Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance model) established upon the discrete emotion theory and dimensional emotion theory have been widely adopted in the fi of emotion research, they still suffer from limitations due to the scalability and specificity in music domain. As a result, the effectiveness and availability of music retrieval and recommendation at the emotion level are still unsatisfactory. This thesis makes contribution at theoretical, technical, and empirical level. First of all, a hybrid musical emotion model named “Resonance-Arousal-Valence (RAV)” is proposed and well constructed at the beginning. It explores the computational and time-varying expressions of musical emotions. Furthermore, dependent on the RAV musical emotion model, a joint emotion space model (JESM) combines musical audio features and emotion tags feature is constructed. Second, corresponding to static musical emotion representation and time-varying musical emotion representation, two methods of music retrieval at the emotion level are designed: (1) a unified framework for music retrieval in joint emotion space; (2) dynamic time warping (DTW) for music retrieval by using time-varying music emotions. Furthermore, automatic music emotion annotation and segmentation are naturally conducted. Third, following the theory of affective computing (e.g., emotion intensity decay, and emotion state transition), an intelligent affective system for music recommendation is designed, where conditional random fi lds (CRF) is applied to predict the listener’s dynamic emotion state based on his or her personal historical music listening list in a session. Finally, the experiment dataset is well created and pro- posed systems are also implemented. Empirical results (recognition, retrieval, and recommendation) regarding accuracy compared to previous techniques are also presented, which demonstrates that the proposed methods enable an advanced degree of effectiveness of emotion-based music retrieval and recommendation. Keywords: Music and emotion, Music information retrieval, Music emotion recognition, Annotation and retrieval, Music recommendation, Affective computing, Time series analysis, Acoustic features, Ranking, Multi-objective optimization

Evidence suggests that computer assisted interventions (CAI) have advantages over other types of instruction when teaching children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). A growing number of technology based tools for use in educational settings have been developed to address specific deficits associated with ASD; namely poor facial expression recognition. Given the proliferation of CAIs, there is an urgent need to test their application in real world and clinical settings. Based on previous research on the success of CAIs to support children with ASD in this area, this research was developed as a small scale pilot study to explore the feasibility and potential educational benefits of the relatively new CAI; Let’s Face It! Scrapbook (LFI!). This study examined the viability of the LFI! program in a clinical setting in which two groups of children with ASD worked one-on-one with behavioural interventionists to develop necessary life skills. The experimental condition (n=3) which received natural environment teaching (NET) of emotions plus LFI! exercises preformed better on tasks of facial expressions recognition in post-tests than the control condition (n=3) which received only natural environment teaching. Participating behavioural interventionists reporting on their experiences using the app. preferred this method of teaching citing the greater available teaching material, the enriched level of engagement required between client and interventionist, and the fun nature of the program. Though small in nature, the results of this pilot study would suggest that the LFI! program is a viable tool for use when training facial expression recognition with clients with ASD in clinical settings. / Graduate

L’extension des limites (boundary extension, Intraub & Richardson, 1989) fait référence à unedistorsion de la mémoire visuo-spatiale survenant suite à la perception de scènes. Celle-ci setraduit par une tendance à surestimer l’étendue de la scène préalablement perçue,l’observateur se remémorant des détails que ne contenait pas la scène originale, mais que lecontexte rend plausible d’inférer. Bien que décrite comme robuste, quelques recherchesmenées ces dernières années en suggèrent la modulation par certaines caractéristiques propresà l’observateur (Mathews & Mackintosh, 2004 ; Munger, Owens, & Conway, 2005).L’ensemble des études présentées ici s’inscrit dans cette lignée, en testant à la fois le rôle desconnaissances préalables - que celles-ci soient relatives à la structure environnante de la scèneperçue, ou qu’il s’agisse de connaissances expertes - et le rôle de la réactivité de l’individu àcertains stimuli de nature émotionnelle. L’ensemble des résultats observés fait état d’unemodulation de l’extension (i.e. réduction, voire annulation) par les facteurs décrits ci-dessus. / Boundary extension phenomenon (Intraub & Richardson, 1989) refers to a memory distortionoccuring when an observer tends to remember a perceived scene. Subjects generally tend tooverestimate the scope of the scene, including to their representation details that the originalscene did not contain, but likely to be present. Although BE is described as a robustphenomenon, observer’s chacteristics can modulate it (Mathews & Mackintosh, 2004 ;Munger, Owens, & Conway, 2005). Studies exposed here intend to examine in more detailthis question, by testing the effects of knowledge relative to larger scene context, expertknowledge, or reactivity of the observer to emotional stimuli on the phenomenon. Our resultsshow a modulation of BE (i.e. reduction, or disappearance) by these factors

Begränsad forskning har gjorts om den positiva emotionen beundran som associerats med motivation till handling. Förståelse av värden och emotioner tyder på att beundran kan främja psykisk hälsa genom värdeuppfyllelse. Syftet var att förstå vilka aspekter som ingår i upplevelsen av beundran och om beundran kan motivera och leda till handling för att möjliggöra värdeuppfyllelse. Utav 8 intervjuer, kunde 5 teman och 6 subteman urskiljas genom en fenomenologiskt inspirerad analys. Dessa var temana: positiv upplevelse, avundsjuka, förvåning, reflektion, vägledning samt subtemana: det kändes bra, varm känsla, stolthet, hoppfullhet, inspiration som tillhör positiv upplevelse samt tankegång förändrade känsla och tillskrivande av motiv som tillhör reflektion. Hur beundran kan motivera till självförbättring och imitation och även handling uppvisades. Avundsjuka kunde övergå till beundran, utifrån tidigare forskning ges förslag på hur detta kan ske. Beundran som emotion framstår som ett lovande område för att främja psykisk hälsa och rekommenderas därför att utforskas vidare.

In this dissertation, I develop and defend a kind of somatic theory of the emotions; namely, a somatic-perceptual theory of the emotions. On this account, emotions are perceptions of physiological changes. The majority of emotion theorists, however, hold some kind of a cognitive theory of the emotions. I argue, in opposition to these theories, that cognition is never necessary for emotion. Somatic theories of the emotions have never been well-received in philosophy and psychology. This is mainly because they are often perceived as being ill-equipped to explain many of the things that a theory of the emotions ought to account for. In particular, it is argued that somatic theories of the emotions fail to take into account the fact that emotions are typically directed toward an intentional object. Somatic theories, it is argued, are also unable to explain how to distinguish between different emotions associated with identical physiological responses. Moreover, since on my view emotions are a form of perception, my view would seem to allow for the bodily perceptions constituting emotions to occur unconsciously. However, in philosophy, the notion of unconscious emotions is problematic, because in ordinary language, emotions just are feelings – and feelings are, by definition, conscious. Using philosophical arguments and empirical evidence from neuroscience and psychology, I argue that my somatic-perceptual theory of the emotions is able to account both for the intentional nature of the emotions and the distinctiveness of different emotions just as well as leading cognitive theories of the emotions. This is significant because these objections have not yet been adequately met by other somatic theories of the emotions. I also embrace the implication that on my view, emotions can be unconscious, and show that my somatic-perceptual theory provides a framework for thinking about poorly understood psychological conditions, such as alexithymia. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)