Rankningar är ett prestationsmått som fått ökad spridning i samhället. Studier har visat att rankningslistor kan leda till att organisationer blir lika varandra genom att det sker en anpassning till mätningarna. Det finns ett ökat intresse bland akademiska forskare och praktiker kring vilka konsekvenser rankningar får för organisationer, och det krävs vidare studier för att klargöra detta. I denna studie utforskades vilka konsekvenser rankningslistan Patienttoppen har haft för landstingsägda respektive privata vårdcentraler i Uppsala. Fyra verksamhetschefer och landstingets primärvårdsdirektör har intervjuats. Resultatet har visat på skillnader i huruvida rankningslistan har haft konsekvenser för vårdcentralerna. Det har varit variation mellan de privata vårdcentralernas konsekvenser, då rankningslistan till viss del inneburit verksamhetsförändringar för den ena vårdcentralen men inte för den andra. För de landstingsägda vårdcentralerna och primärvårdsdirektören har rankningslistan inte haft några konsekvenser.

Phonetic accommodation is the process whereby speakers in an interaction modify their speech in response to their interlocutor. The social-psychological theory of Communication Accommodation Theory (Giles 1973) predicts that speakers will converge towards (become more similar to) their interlocutors in order to decrease social distance, whereas they will diverge from (become less similar to) their interlocutors to accentuate distinctiveness or show disdain. Previous studies have found that phonetic accommodation is affected by many social, situational and linguistic factors (Abrego-Collier et al. 2011; Black 2012; Babel 2009, 2010, 2012; Babel et al. 2012; Kim, Horton & Bradlow 2011; Nielsen 2011; Pardo et al. 2012). With respect to accommodation across dialects, a handful of studies have suggested that the perceptual salience of the various differences between two dialects might affect the pattern; however, these studies make conflicting predictions. Trudgill (1986) predicts that speakers will converge more towards the more salient dialectal differences, while Kim et al. (2011) and Babel (2009, 2010) suggest the opposite: that speakers will converge on the less salient differences. This thesis investigates how the perceptual salience of 6 differences between Buenos Aires Spanish and Madrid Spanish affect the pattern of phonetic accommodation in conversation. The results are considered both in terms of the magnitude of the changes that the participants make as well as the direction of the change (convergence or divergence). The results show that perceptual salience has a significant effect on the magnitude of the change, with all participants making greater changes as perceptual salience increases. On the other hand, perceptual salience was found not to have a consistent effect for all speakers on the likelihood of converging or diverging on the dialectal differences. I argue that the lack of consistent effect of salience on the direction of the change stems from individual differences in motivation to take on the opposing dialect norms and issues of personal identity, whereas the very consistent effect of salience on the magnitude of the change suggests that there is something more basic or systematic about how salience interacts with the extent to which speakers accommodate.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the most common phonetic and phonological difficulties in the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. The study has been based on the following questions: Which difficulties can teachers encounter when teaching phonetics and phonology? Which difficulties can students encounter when learning phonetics and phonology? How is phonetics and phonology taught? In order to be able to investigate the difficulties, a questionnaire has been handed out to five experienced teachers. The results of the questionnaires, together with the theory, has been analysed in the analysis. The outcome of the analysis shows that several difficulties can be detected in both the teaching and in the learning process. The results of the questionnaires also show us that the teachers mostly teach phonetics the same way: through repetition and imitation, the conductive method, and very few think outside of the box to encounter new methods.

During the period between 1640 and 1700, over forty works were produced by authors identifying themselves as “T. S.” In the field of early modern literary studies, one T. S. has been particularly important to scholars because of this author’s imitative version of John Bunyan’s popular allegory titled The Second Part of the Pilgrim’s Progress (1682). This work by T. S., who has become known as Thomas Sherman, achieves minor success and prompts Bunyan to write his own authentic sequel. My research has uncovered an attribution history that identifies four additional texts—Divine Breathings (circa 1671); Youth’s Tragedy (1671); Youth’s Comedy (1680); Divine Breathings, the Second Part (1680)—and credits all of them to a Thomas Sherman. Of the five works attributed to this author, the most impressive printing history belongs to the earliest offering, Divine Breathings, or a Pious Soul Thirsting after Christ in a Hundred Pathetical Meditations, which appears in over 60 printings from 1671 to 1883 in England, Scotland, and North America. My research scrutinizes this attribution history and raises questions about identifying this T. S. as Thomas Sherman. Based on internal and external evidence, I argue that T. S. is not the author of Divine Breathings but establishes his authorial identity as an imitative writer who actively participates in the genre of Protestant meditational literature by providing sequels (i.e., Divine Breathings …the Second Part and Second Part of the Pilgrim’s Progress).

Memetics is a Darwinian approach to evolution of culture proposed in late 1970s. This thesis proposes an approach to Memetics, which is an effort to overcome some of the problems involved. It is argued in this thesis that units of cultural evolution are functional abstraction of physical reality and are realized within the boundaries of our cognitive processes. The boundaries of human cognitive processes are defined by Clark and Chalmers (1998) in their extended cognition hypothesis according to which, human cognition is understood as a part of the cultural environment. Therefore human cognition and cultural environment can best be understood by studying them together. As for identifying these units, an extended functionalist approach has been proposed and an empirical cultural transmission study has been conducted and explored in the thesis.

Imitation is a fundamental way of acquiring knowledge in human development. In their theory of goal-directed imitation (GOADI), Wohlschl&auml / ger et al. (2003) divide the representation of observed movements into hierarchically organized aspects the highest of which is usually the goal. In a face-to-face imitation task young children usually copy the (spatial) goal of the body movement in terms of perceptual mirror symmetry rather than match them conceptually onto their own body, as adults do. We refer to these imitation schemes as &ldquo / mirroring&rdquo / and &ldquo / matching&rdquo / respectively. In the present study, we investigate the effects of age and perspective of the child with respect to the experimenter (0&deg / , 90&deg / , 180&deg / ) in two imitation tasks, a hand-to-ear and a cup-grasping task. Moreover, we evaluate the developmental changes in the imitative behavior of children from a dynamical systems perspective. Children were supposed to imitate the movements of the experimenter. Tasks were conducted on 4.5- to 11-year-old Iranian pre-school and elementary school children (81 female, 84 male). Imitation scores for the spatial goal were analyzed in terms of mirroring or matching. Imitation schemes varied according to age and perspective in both tasks. Overall, older children&rsquo / s imitations of movements were more adult-like as established by an adult Iranian control group than those of the younger ones. They rather matched than mirrored observed movements. In the 180&deg / and 90&deg / conditions the mirroring scheme was predominant, but in 0&deg / matching was predominant. GOADI was confirmed / however it was qualified by the child&#039 / s perspective on the experimenter. Children&rsquo / s imitations showed a non-linear shift from perceptually-based mirroring to conceptually-based matching of observed movements onto their own body. This shift happens between 6 and 8-9 years of age. The amount of matching depends not only on age but also on control parameters such as spatial perspective, task demands, and exposure.

<p>This thesis analyzes the product cycles of five different product groups within the Swedish machinery export during the time period 1964-2003.</p><p>The result is that even though Sweden is a preferable region to launch new products and adopt new technologies, according to the product cycle models, the production is approaching a decreasing regional specialisation.</p>

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the enabling role that agent based simulation plays in business and policy. The aforementioned issue has been addressed in this dissertation through three distinct, but related essays. The first essay is a literature review of different research applications of agent based simulation in various business disciplines, such as finance, economics, information systems, management, marketing and accounting. Various agent based simulation tools to develop computational models are discussed. The second essay uses an agent-based simulation approach to study important properties of the widely used most popular news recommender systems (NRS). This essay highlights the major limitations of most popular NRS in terms of: (i) susceptibility towards manipulation and (ii) unduly penalizing the article which may have "just" missed making the cutoff in most popular list. A probabilistic variant of recommendation has been introduced as an alternative to most popular list. Classical results from urn models are used to derive theoretical results for special cases, and to study specific properties of the probabilistic recommender. In addition to simulations, various statistical methodologies are used, such as regression based methodologies as part of a broader decision analysis tool. The third essay views firms as agents in building regression based empirical models to investigate the impact of outsourcing on firms. Using an economy wide panel data of outsourcing expenses of firms, the third essay first investigates the value addition by the IT backgrounds of project owners in managing IT related projects. Then it investigates the impact of peer-pressure on a firm's outsourcing behavior.

With reductions in the age criterion for cochlear implantation, the need for age-appropriate measures of speech perception skills has increased. One recently developed tool that shows great promise for the clinical assessment of auditory speech perception capacity in young children with cochlear implants is the On-Line Imitative Test of Speech-Pattern Contrast Perception (OlimSpac). The OlimSpac requires a child to imitate nonword utterances by providing a verbal response. The child's perceptual abilities are inferred from the child's productions through having a listener, who is masked to the stimulus select the utterance produced by the child in an eight-alternative force-choice task. Although the OlimSpac has the potential for use in children with cochlear implants, the specific role of measured speech production abilities on performance has yet to be systematically examined. Thus, the main objective of the present study was to examine the influence of speech production abilities on OlimSpac performance in an auditory-visual (A-V) and auditory-only (A-O) condition in young children with cochlear implants relative to an articulation-matched sample of normal hearing peers. A secondary objective was to determine whether the presentation modality affected a child's OlimSpac performance. A matched pair design was used to compare the OlimSpac performance of ten children with cochlear implants (ages 29 to 76 months) to normal hearing peers (ages 27 to 73 months). Each child with cochlear implants was matched to a child with normal hearing from a sampled population of 22 normal hearing participants based on word-level articulation skills, as measured by the GFTA-2, accounting for hearing age and gender. The OlimSpac software generated a score for a single contrast and a single presentation modality (A-V or A-O). The score was based on eight binary trials. Due to the small trial size, individual contrast scores were interpreted as pass/fail, given that only a score of seven or eight is significantly better than chance. Therefore, OlimSpac performance was determined by a composite score reflecting the average across all six contrasts, based on 48 binary trials. Average composite scores for both the A-V and A-O conditions were lower, albeit not significant, for young children with cochlear implants compared to their articulation-matched controls. Examination of individual phonemic contrast scores revealed that the articulation-matched sample of normal hearing participants most often failed the post-alveolar consonant place contrast, whereas children with cochlear implants most often failed the consonant voicing contrast. There were also no significant within group difference in speech perception performance between the A-V and A-O conditions of the OlimSpac. The results of this study demonstrated that children with cochlear implants achieved similar speech perception performance to their articulation-matched normal hearing peers. Although children's speech production abilities partially influenced their OlimSpac performance, knowledge of word-level articulation skills allows clinicians to make appropriate judgments when interpreting composite scores, thus validating the OlimSpac as an indirect measure of a child's speech perception capacity and a direct measure of speech perception skills. Objective scores obtained from a child's OlimSpac performance may be used to assess outcomes of cochlear implant use, guide cochlear implant mapping, and plan habilitative intervention. A greater understanding of the potential effect of speech production performance on estimates of speech perception ability may also assist in highlighting other developmental, linguistic and/or cognitive delays masked by a child's hearing loss.

Cette thèse porte sur l'expérience des dispositifs interactifs en art actuel. Elle examine plus spécifiquement l'effet du geste interfacé sur la perception. Comment les modalités interactives modifient-elles la corporéité, la perception et l'expérience esthétique? Pour examiner cette question, l'installation interactive sert de lieu laboratoire. En privilégiant la méthode phénoménologique pragmatique et la sémiotique peircéenne, la traversée d'installations interactives exemplaires poursuit une approche empirique fondée sur l'expérimentation directe et l'observation participante. La première partie de la thèse amorce la traversée de l'installation interactive. Le chapitre I présente la problématique de l'expérience perceptuelle interactive, son cadre méthodologique et quelques définitions. Le corpus d'analyse comprend quatre installations interactives représentatives des quatre groupes suivants : 1- la sollicitation de la présence ou de la mobilité du corps; 2- le maniement d'objets intermédiaires; 3- la projection du souffle ou de la voix; et 4- la manipulation d'un clavier, d'une manette, d'un bouton, d'un casque, d'un gant ou d'une pédale. Les cas types sont respectivement : 1- Taken de David Rokeby; 2- Cubes à sons/bruits/babils de Catherine Béchard & Sabin Hudon; 3- BrainStorm de Jean Dubois; et 4- Mécanique Générale de Thierry Guibert. Étant donné que l'interactivité sollicite un engagement qui mobilise autrement le corps, la perception et l'action, la thèse examine comment l'investissement d'un dispositif interactif modifie la perception, devenue interactive, et mobilise le schéma corporel de manière inédite. C'est ce que la traversée de l'installation interactive nous permet d'expérimenter, d'observer, de décrire et d'interpréter, si nous voulons saisir les effets sensori-perceptifs et les répercussions sur notre mode de vie et d'apprentissage. À titre d'hypothèse, l'expérience esthétique interactive se démarque par l'impact du geste interfacé sur la perception durant la situation négociée, comparativement à l'état polysensoriel de la situation initiale. Dès son entrée dans le lieu, le participant baigne dans une configuration scénographique qui brouille sa sensorialité. Devant une installation en attente, il cherche comment entrer en contact avec une interface et activer la mise en œuvre. Le geste interfacé, c'est-à-dire un geste du corps relié à une interface d'entrée, actualise une dimension virtuelle sous une forme sensible sur la scène physique et écranique. Un circuit interactif entre geste humain, dispositif interactif et réponse machinique déploie alors graduellement la proposition et, ce faisant, modifie les modalités perceptives. Le participant interprète la proposition, comme un musicien sa partition, jusqu'au moment où il la désinvestit pour diverses raisons. Toutefois son interprétation exécutoire donne lieu à une interprétation réflexive. La deuxième partie de la thèse élabore l'expérience en trois temps des quatre cas types. Dans les chapitres II et III, la thèse présente les expériences première, deuxième et troisième de chaque cas, en écho aux catégories phanéroscopiques du sémioticien Charles Sanders Peirce. L'expérience première a fait émerger un trajet type en trois étapes. À cet effet, le récit à la première personne, utilisé pour rendre compte de l'expérimentation directe, favorise une lecture expérientielle et complète le récit à la troisième personne de l'observation. Par la suite, le chapitre IV établit les points de connexion entre les cas avec l'éclairage de la neurophysiologie, entre autres, pour le double corporel appareillé et la perçaction. La troisième et dernière partie approfondit l'expérience perceptuelle interactive. Le chapitre V, à partir de l'expérience des œuvres, poursuit un questionnement sur le reflet spéculaire ou l'augmentation, le mimétisme et la performance, qui contribuent à l'apprentissage d'un savoir-faire singulier et pluriel. Puis, le chapitre VI effectue une description de l'installation interactive au sens générique, qui débouche sur une définition provisoire. Celle-ci est suivie d'une description au sens expérientiel, qui mène à une deuxième définition pour alors discuter l'efficience esthétique comparativement à l'efficacité générique. En guise de prospective, la conclusion propose une modélisation de la démarche perceptuelle interactive pour le « participant chercheur » devant toute installation interactive ainsi que divers sentiers à défricher par des recherches multidisciplinaires additionnelles, entre autres l'examen du potentiel thérapeutique de certains dispositifs artistiques interactifs et la tenue de récits à la première personne de lecture expérientielle. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Installation interactive, Dispositif interactif, Interactivité, Perception, Sensorialité, Corps appareillé, Corporéité, Geste interfacé, Mimétisme, Performance, Apprentissage, Expérience esthétique, Savoir-faire, Phénoménologie pragmatique, Récits à la première personne, Lecture expérientielle, Écriture expérientielle, Sémiotique