L’apparition du concept de littératie — né autour des années 1980 d’une préoccupation quant aux taux alarmants d’illettrisme des populations occidentales scolarisées, et d’un problème définitionnel concernant la notion d’illettrisme et les performances très inégales des gens qualifiés d’illettrés — va induire un changement de perspective dans les études sur la lecture. Alors que depuis le début du siècle dernier, on s’était surtout intéressé aux lecteurs en difficultés et aux illettrés, on s’aperçoit de plus en plus, en effet, que pour comprendre quelles compétences fonctionnelles les illettrés ne maîtrisent pas, il faut s’entendre sur le niveau de maîtrise à développer en lecture. Néanmoins, il est extrêmement difficile, encore aujourd’hui, de déterminer ce qu’est ou ce que peut être l’expertise en lecture. Ce projet de recherche a donc pour but de déterminer les caractéristiques spécifiques à l’expertise en lecture à partir d’une synthèse documentaire, afin d’établir les différentes caractéristiques des bons lecteurs telles que définies par différents chercheurs œuvrant en psychologie, en éducation ou encore en sociologie, puis d’observations et d’entretiens avec des professionnels des communications, réputés lecteurs experts dans le cadre de ce mémoire de recherche. Les éléments de l’expertise en lecture ont été regroupés à la suite de l’analyse documentaire en trois grandes catégories : 1. la compréhension; 2. les habiletés infraconscientes; 3. les stratégies de lecture. Nous nous sommes servi des résultats de cette synthèse documentaire pour présenter, dans un premier temps, une ébauche de schématisation afin de faire le point sur les différentes caractéristiques connues de l’expertise en lecture. Nous avons aussi rencontré des spécialistes des communications, réputés lecteurs experts, afin d’observer si leurs habitudes de lecture ainsi que les différentes stratégies et habiletés de lecture qu’ils utilisent concordaient avec cette première schématisation. Ces professionnels des communications ont été rencontrés à deux reprises : une première fois pour les filmer pendant leurs lectures et la seconde fois pour discuter avec eux, à partir des enregistrements vidéo, de leurs habitudes de lecture et des stratégies qu’ils utilisent quotidiennement. Les résultats de l’analyse des vidéos et des entretiens nous ont permis de proposer une deuxième schématisation de l’expertise en lecture, plus représentative de leur réalité de professionnels des communications et de lecteurs experts.

The fundamental preoccupations of this research align with emergent literature on neoliberal conservation—understood as an amalgamation of ideology and techniques informed by the premise that natures can only be 'saved' through their submission to capital and its subsequent revaluation in capitalist terms. This literature shift attention "from how nature is used in and through the expansion of capitalism to how nature is conserved in and through the expansion of capitalism" (Büscher et al. 2012:6), thus opening up a new set of anthropological interrogations. To investigate this phenomenon this work centers on the use of sport trophy-hunting as a neoliberal conservation strategy in the Americas, where recent changes in policy and practice mark the creation of wildlife enclosures in the hands of private capital. Despite the fact that these neoliberal reforms in conservation have the capacity "of repositioning community resources within a new system of meaning, altering the material realities of social relations within the community, modifying human-ecological interactions, and introducing new forms of governance" (MacDonald 2005), little systematic research and social analysis has been conducted exploring this phenomenon. Responding to this gap, this doctoral dissertation examines the social effects of market-oriented conservation through extended ethnographic research among the Comcaac (Seri), a former hunting and gathering society living along the coast of the Gulf of California in the Sonoran desert of Northern Mexico. The research documents the bighorn sheep sport trophy-hunting program taking place in Comcaac territory, in order to better understand the processes contributing to the production and performance of indigenous environmental expertise; in turn, this work produces new insights into how morality, individualism and collective effort are affected by neoliberal logics involved in the management of wildlife, while documenting concomitant local renegotiation of power, knowledge and wealth.

High quality decision-making can be produced through a sophisticated analytical process in addition to an intuitive process. A high quality intuitive process is dependent on an extensive repertoire of previous patterns generated by decision outcomes. Intuition is frequently poorly understood and often dismissed as unreliable and irrelevant. Yet there is a noteworthy sector within the literature that suggests otherwise (Glöckner, 2009; Smith, 2007). Termed dual-process (Evans, 2010), the combined strength of intuition and analysis forms the basis of how expert ski guides make decisions in avalanche terrain. Typically, the quality of the decision process is described as being contingent on the evolved expertise of the decision maker. Deliberate practice (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993) aimed at the development of context specific expertise provides the foundation. Ski guides are charged with the role of conducting guests through a constantly changing, hazardous environment with the goal of maximizing the guests’ rewards, within a risk envelope that does not eliminate the potential for a fatality. The challenge for ski guides is to formulate an operational context within a feedback environment that is plagued with inconsistencies and burdened with massive negative consequences. The ski guide decision process is influenced by the depth and breadth of expertise, with rapid pattern recognition generating a sense of confidence. However misleading environmental feedback can complicate the perception of decision quality. When nothing bad happens, poor decisions can masquerade as good ones. This may support the development of a faulty pattern recognition process. Research that helps to describe the innovative practices and extant knowledge of mountain guiding will help to harmonise theory and practice. There is considerable knowledge entrenched within the daily activities of the Canadian mechanized ski industry, as the average annual fatality rate is just under one and a half fatalities per 100,000 skier days. However it is arguable that even this number of fatalities is too many and all efforts should be made to reduce the number of fatalities. Data were contributed over two seasons (2008/09 and 2009/10) by a self-selected group of 35 heli-ski and snowcat-ski guides working in British Columbia. Mixed methods were used to analyse three sources of data. An initial quantitative analysis of the participants’ background experience and 96 event reports (62 good day reports and 34 near-miss reports) was used to provoke qualitative questions of interview data. The findings of this study address the issue of how and when intuition plays a role in ski guide decision-making. Decision-making in avalanche terrain is a complex process and professional guides have well developed strategies to help them manage the challenges. Years of training in analytical decision processes are supported by a wealth of available snowpack and weather information. Guiding teams provide a valuable peer support network to further the sophistication of the decision process. Yet despite the wealth of information available to support an analytical decision, most decisions are influenced by an intuitive factor.

This thesis is set in the context of the automotive industry where launches of new products with high levels of technical innovations are becoming increasingly complex for consumers to comprehend. Car manufacturers need to understand consumer perceptions of new models so they can categorise their products form the consumer perspective, to obtain a more accurate indication as to where their products fit within the increasingly defined consumer segments. Situational and personal variables now play the most important roles in marketing. In the area of nested segmentation consumer variables are only concerned with their needs, attitudes, motivations and perceptions and overlook any previous experience, exposure or familiarity that a consumer may or may not have had with the product. It is argued here that consumers have differing perceptions of newness and that asking how new and new to whom would be valid questions for marketers when introducing new products. If car manufacturers can categorise their products in terms of newness for specific consumers based on their levels of Expertise, Involvement and Familiarity with the product, manufacturers will be able to target appropriate markets more effectively. To explore this area a mixed methods research approach was applied. This research found that the level of Involvement with the product, from a motivational aspect, gave rise to different levels of interest and enthusiasm between consumers and has a direct impact on how different types of consumers view new products. In addition the differing levels of consumer knowledge highlights the need to improve targeting of marketing communications so that manufacturers provide a better understanding of complex new products to consumers. Current mass marketing methods based on consumer demographics are no longer sufficient. This research found that a consumer s level of Expertise, Involvement and Familiarity (EIF) with a specific product can be captured using a multi-dimensional scale to measure consumer product knowledge and provide an accurate consumer segmentation tool. By offering different explanations of product innovations to these consumer segments, according to a customer's EIF, marketers will achieve more effective targeting, reduce marketing costs and increase marketing campaign response.

Question and answer (Q&A) forums, as a way for seeking expertise on the Internet, have seen rapid growth in popularity in recent years. The expertise available on most such forums is voluntary, provided by individuals willing to invest their resources for no monetary remuneration. While these forums provide easy access to expertise, the expertise available is often lacking in quality and depth. Two major reasons for this are, the time investment required to participate in such forums, and the lack of a mechanism for identifying experts for specialized questions. We believe a Q&A recommender engine can ameliorate this problem significantly. The two primary contributions of this work are: a) a hierarchical Bayesian model based Q&A recommender, and b) a discussion of metrics to measure the performance of such a Q&A recommender. Two new metrics, responder load and questioner satisfaction, are suggested based on this discussion. These metrics are used to evaluate the performance of the recommender system on datasets harvested from the Yahoo! Answers website. / text

Humans have a strong natural ability to remember item locations. In graphical user interfaces, this ability is one of the primary mechanisms by which users become efficient. However, there are two ways in which modern applications often fail to exploit the potential of spatial memory. First, they overuse hierarchical structures such as cascading menus, which slows down interaction for expert users who already know item locations; and second, they move items around, most commonly in response to changing display geometry. The three goals of this thesis are therefore to (1) develop a better understanding of human spatial memory in the context of user interfaces; (2) design and validate efficient command-selection interfaces based on the strength of spatial memory; and (3) design and validate interface strategies that allow users to maintain spatial memory even when display geometry changes. Addressing goal (1), a comprehensive literature review of spatial memory for user interfaces is presented. The review covers underlying psychological models of spatial memory, the observable properties of spatial memory, and existing applications of spatial memory to human-computer interaction. In addition to informing the research in this thesis, the review is intended to provide a useful summary of the state of spatial memory research for scientists in HCI, as well as providing a set of design guidelines on spatial memory for practitioners. Addressing goal (2), this thesis presents the design and evaluation of two related user interface techniques, CommandMaps and StencilMaps. The CommandMap is a spatially stable interface with a flattened hierarchy, intended as a replacement for cascading menu systems. Theoretical performance predictions indicate that CommandMaps should be significantly faster than traditional user interfaces such as menus and the Microsoft Office Ribbon, and laboratory-based empirical studies of command selection confirm these predictions. These positive results motivated the design and implementation of two real-world CommandMap user interfaces based on Microsoft Word and Pinta (an open-source image editing application). Evaluation results confirmed that CommandMaps continue to demonstrate performance and subjective advantages in the context of actual tasks, including interleaved command selection, typing, and direct manipulation. Qualitative data gathered from interviews, questionnaires, and conversations provide substantial insight into users' reactions to CommandMaps, leading to a set of design recommendations regarding when and how they should be implemented in real applications. One design limitation identified during CommandMap evaluations was that novice users could be initially overwhelmed by the number of controls displayed at once. To address this concern, an extension to the CommandMap, called a StencilMap, was designed and evaluated. By using a stencil overlay to de-emphasise more advanced controls, the StencilMap directs users' visual search to a subset of controls they are most likely to need. Then, when novice users progress to the full interface, they can utilise their existing knowledge of command locations. An initial study shows that stencils are more effective at guiding visual search than ephemeral adaptation, another subset emphasis technique; however, users' spatial learning decreases as the amount of guidance increases. A second study compared StencilMaps to a palette-based subset interface, which displays the most likely commands in a ready-to-hand tool panel. Results show that StencilMaps enable stronger learning of the full UI compared to the palette approach. Addressing goal (3), this thesis presents an investigation of how interfaces can be adapted to changing interface constraints while still supporting the user's memory for item locations. A human factors study on spatially consistent transformations was conducted, with results showing that people's spatial memory is only minimally disrupted by geometric transformations (such as scaling, translation, or perspective distortion), as long as the set of items in a display is transformed as a whole. This idea is then applied to a file browser layout: by scaling the item grid when the parent window is resized, rather than reflowing items, memory for item locations can be maintained. A second study validates this idea, showing that a scaling interface outperforms both reflow and scrolling-based techniques for revisitation when windows are resized. In summary, the contributions of this thesis are: (1) an in-depth literature review of spatial memory in psychology and HCI, which is intended to inform designers and future researchers as well as the material in this thesis; (2) the design, implementation and evaluation of a new interface, the CommandMap, which shows that spatial stability and hierarchy flattening enable a high ceiling of expert performance; (3) the design of a stencil overlay technique to help novice users find commands, and an evaluation highlighting the key trade-off between helping users and allowing them to learn; and (4) empirical evidence showing that most types of whole-interface transformations have a small effect on spatial memory, and that correspondingly, scaling interfaces outperform reflowing interfaces under changing window constraints.

The proliferation of market-based policy instruments for governing the global forest commons has resulted in a proposed internationalization of the institutional arrangements, policy standards, and certification practices for assessing the ‘quality’ of forest management systems worldwide. Yet, like other global environmental governance systems before it, proposals for a universalized approach to forest certification have yet to come to fruition. Drawing on insights provided by Malaysia’s efforts to develop and operationalize the Malaysian Timber Certification Scheme (MTCS), I argue that standardization of forest certification systems worldwide is an unlikely and, more importantly, undesirable approach to forest governance. The central findings of this dissertation are thus as follows: 1) Despite many ‘on paper’ changes, the Malaysian Timber Certification Council (MTCC) remains the most powerful actor within the MTCS. As an end result of an uneven distribution of rulemaking authority within the MTCS, the quasi state MTCC continues to dominate a distinctively monopolar MTCS institutional environment; 2) The current configuration of organizations involved in the day-to-day operations of the MTCS is reliant on a small, insular and tight knit group of similarly trained individuals who rely upon a single episteme that elevates state-conferred knowledge above all other ways of knowing; and, 3) Despite this state-derived episteme being a central component of the MTCS epistemic community, the audit process is far more ad hoc than planned. Instead of following a bureaucraticallyprescribed checklist approach to auditing, MTCS auditors simultaneously draw on the technical skill set that auditing demands (technê) and a more localized and contingent performance of their expertise (mētis) in order to make informed judgments. In summary, the MTCC and its scheme represent a highly contextualized approach to forest certification that values national priorities and local circumstances over international standards and norms. As a result, the case of Malaysia’s national forest certification scheme simultaneously challenges the state-derived episteme through which forestry experts are professionalized and, more broadly, the notion that forest certification systems can ever be fully standardized.

This dissertation examines how differences between the strategic-systems audit approach and the traditional, transaction-based audit approach affect the content and complexity of client business knowledge in long-term memory, how these mental representations develop with experience, and how the representations affect risk assessment. Knowledge of the client?s business is essential to conducting an effective and efficient audit, but researchers have devoted little attention to how this knowledge is represented in memory and what effect it has on audit judgment. Moreover, proponents of the strategic-systems approach argue that this approach leads to the formation of a more-complex client business model and results in better audit judgments than the transaction-based approach. The study?s results contradict these claims, with the strategic-systems auditors having less-complex models than their TBA counterparts. Also, no experience-related differences were found in the client models, and risk assessments were only weakly affected by content and complexity differences between client models. After a variety of supplemental analyses, it was concluded that there is no evidence from this dissertation to suggest that the SSA methodology does not result in an auditor possessing an enhanced knowledge of the client?s business compared to that possessed by an auditor employing a traditional audit approach.

Inspired by Michael Foucault’s "technologies of the self" and Jacques Rancière's idea of the politics of aesthetics, specifically, his concept of "the distribution of the sensible", this thesis examines two groups of people who actively pursue creativity in China today: first, a group of Chinese youth who seek their identity as creative writers through their participation in the Xin Gainian Zuowen Dasai, or the New Concept Writing Competition, held by Mengya magazine since 1998; second, a group of men and women who are grouped together under the name of "Dafen painters", who pursue their creative identities as oil painters either for their own artistic dreams or for better lives. Through these two cases, this thesis explores the relationship between creative practices and individuals’ identity formation, and attempts to achieve a better understanding of how the formation of these identities relate to broader desires for creative identity in China’s society today. This paper argues that an individual's own desire for creative expression and recognition in fact acts to diminish their ability to engage in truly creative expression, and that the attempts at recognition reconfigure groups to block individuals from finding opportunities to express their creative identities.

Cette recherche interroge les fonctionnements et les formes d'engagement associatif au sein d'organisations de défense des consommateurs situées à Valparaíso (Chili) et en Moselle. Il s'agit ici de comprendre comment, dans des associations institutionnalisées ou en plein processus d'institutionnalisation, l'articulation complexe entre la volonté de former un contre-pouvoir et la nécessité, pour ce faire, de techniciser l'action allant jusqu'à la professionnaliser, agit sur les manières de s'engager dans ces associations. Cette étude s'inscrit à la croisée des chemins de la sociologie des associations, du travail et des organisations ainsi que de la sociologie des mouvements sociaux. / This research questions the mechanisms and the form of associative commitment in consumer organisations in Valparaíso (Chile) and in Moselle (France). The point is to understand how the complex connexion between the will to form forces of opposition and the need to technicize their action so much that it pushes to professionalization acts on the commitment in institutionalized organisations. Thus, this study is at the meeting point of organizational studies, industrial sociology and the sociological studies of social movements.