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<p>The accurate diagnosis of disorders of consciousness presents substantial difficulty because of the reliance on behaviour-based assessment tools. A patient may be covertly aware but unable to indicate their state due to physical impairments. Neuroimaging researchers have begun to seek alternate methods of assessment that rely on brain responses rather than behavioural ones. To this end, mental imagery has been employed as a voluntary cognitive activity that can be measured with fMRI or EEG to indicate awareness. In this dissertation I examine the advantages and limitations of these two imaging techniques and argue that EEG is more suitable for this patient population. I expand upon existing mental imagery research by exploring additional tasks that have not been applied to this problem, in order to address three previously unanswered questions that are central to the development of imagery-based diagnostic tools. First, do individuals differ on which imagery tasks produce the most reliable activation? Second, can the robustness of brain activation during imagery be predicted from familiarity with the imagined activity? Third, do fMRI and EEG provide converging evidence about individual imagery performance? In order to answer these questions, 6 mental imagery tasks were examined using simultaneous EEG and fMRI recordings, in combination with participant ratings. The findings revealed that, of the mental imagery tasks studied, mental arithmetic consistently produced the most robust activation at the single subject level. Additionally, there was no relationship between participants’ familiarity with an activity and the level of brain activation during performance. The key finding demonstrated that EEG and fMRI were in agreement on both of these questions, lending support to the increasing use of EEG over fMRI in disorders of consciousness.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Brown is often regarded among the most monumental decisions ever rendered by the United States Supreme Court. Its legacy includes a body of case law affecting the shape and meaning of school desegregation over the past fifty years. However, school desegregation and the transition of Brown from courtroom jurisprudence to a manifestation of equal educational opportunities for African American and other minority students has not been characterized by steady, forward progress. This research project is about Brown’s evolutionary transition vis-à-vis public school desegregation law. A comprehensive overview of the Brown v. Board of Education litigation and its affect on school desegregation is provided. The timeframe for the study primarily covers the years following the Brown decisions from 1954 to 2002. However, the study also emphasizes the legal and historical details that led to Brown. In addition, a review is included of the June 2003 United States Supreme Court decisions in the University of Michigan cases that addressed affirmative action issues, which is relative to Brown. The body of case law and information associated with Brown was immense. Therefore, specific litigation was selected for review and analysis. The basis for litigation selection is discussed in each chapter relative to the section’s content. The litigation analysis is addressed from four perspectives: the Historical Perspective: "Separate-But-Equal" Era, the Brown Decisions, the Seminal Desegregation Era, and the Contemporary Desegregation Era. Since the research was so extensive, it is beyond the study’s scope to exhaust all avenues of school desegregation case law in Brown’s progeny. Brown offered the promise and hope of better educational opportunities for African American children in the United States. In the face of contemporary measures that consistently show achievement for African American children lagging behind that of their white and Asian counterparts, this project was motivated by a desire to explore the course of action, from a legal perspective, that resulted in unfulfilled expectations of Brown. / Ph. D.

The present study examined the role of emotion regulation (ER) in individuals who endorsed social anxiety symptoms found in taijin kyofusho (TKS) and social anxiety disorder (SAD) in a young adult sample. More specifically, the study sought to examine the role of self-conscious emotions of shame and embarrassment with respect to TKS and SAD. Participants were administered a series of questionnaires during the first phase of the study and, during the second phase, a diagnostic clinical interview and additional questionnaires were administered along with an experimental social evaluative task and recording of electrical cardiac impulses. Descriptively, social anxiety symptoms were expected to be associated with less adaptive ER strategies. Additionally, differences between individuals who endorsed TKS and SAD symptoms were expected such that TKS would be associated more so with shame and SAD with embarrassment. It was hypothesized that ER would mediate the relationship between embarrassment and shame and their hypothesized anxiety counterparts (SAD or TKS). Findings revealed an association between shame and TKS, and embarrassment and SAD. However, less adaptive ER strategies were not related to social anxiety symptoms and ER did not mediate the relationship between self-conscious emotions and social anxiety. The present findings suggest that shame and embarrassment can play a role in the clinical manifestations of SAD and TKS. Implications regarding the role of these emotions and ER were examined. / Ph. D.

Form, space, rhythm, order, symmetry, balance, repetition, proportion and scale are few from a long checklist of principles that, if followed carefully by the designer, will result in "beautiful" architecture, or so I was told. However, what exactly is "beautiful"? In his book "The beautiful necessity" (1910, p.34) Claude Fayette Bragdon suggests that "Beauty is the name we give to truth we cannot understand". This statement implies that there is a hidden quality within each building, or even within each space, a quality that we can sense but cannot make sense of, a quality very similar to having a soul. The soul seems to linger on the threshold that divides two opposite worlds, it is always in-between. Between the dream and the awake, between the physical and the imaginary, between the conscious and the subconscious and between the real and the unreal. In this thesis, the "real" world consists of an animation studio (the program), the studio's staff and visitors, the selected site located in Alexandria, and it is bound by the building methods, materials and codes. The "unreal" world consists of four fictional characters that, assumingly, emerged from my subconscious and who live in a fictional dimension that overlaps ours.   The different encounters within the "real" world and within the "unreal" world, and also the interactions between the "real" and the "unreal" worlds are translated into an architectural language as an attempt to investigate the soul. / Master of Architecture

In his bildungsroman Sons and Lovers, published in 1913, D. H. Lawrence portrays the disharmonious life conditions of the coal-mining communities in England at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. While the main focus of the novel is the mother’s excessive love towards one of the sons, the reader also encounters the father of the family, Walter Morel. Mr. Morel is perceived as a brutal, vain and ignorant man. The readership might imply this description to be accurate in terms of Morel’s behavior. However, this essay argues that there are underlying reasons for his extreme attitudes and actions. Thus, the aim of this essay is to identify and explain the underlying reasons as to why Mr. Morel behaves in such a neurotic way in the presence of his family. The close reading of the novel and the use of Freudian psychoanalysis illustrated with the help of the Neurotic Fear Principle, provide evidence that there is a correlation between Mr. Morel’s attitude and the social and economic conditions in the coal-mining community. Consequently, this essay presents Morel as the embodiment of the severe consequences of industrialism, and how deeply they impact his relationship to his family.

The phenomenon of sustainability is one of the hottest topics in today's society because ofthe ongoing climate crisis that threatens the well-being of the planet. The fast fashionindustry is one of the world's most polluting industries that is continuously faced withchallenges when it comes to implementing sustainability in its operations. The main purposeof this industry is to produce large quantities of clothing at low prices with a short life cycleto be able to regularly launch new fashion campaigns, which triggers impulse buyingbehaviour among consumers. In order to protect the planet, it is important that there is achange in consumer attitudes, while demands must be placed on fast fashion companies thatcan make them integrate sustainability into their business models. According to previousresearch, there is a weak correlation between sustainable consumers' attitudes and theiractual purchasing behaviour regarding apparel consumption, which leads to the creation ofan attitude-behaviour gap. The fundamental purpose of this study is to find out how internal and external circumstancesinfluence sustainable consumers' buying behaviour and make them turn to fast fashioncompanies despite the positive attitude they initially had. This will contribute to increasedknowledge and understanding of the attitude-behaviour gap and the circumstances that leadto the emergence of this phenomenon. Thus, the study intends to answer the followingproblem formulation: What circumstances influence conscious consumers to purchase fast fashion? The literature review of in the study is based on previous research in the areas of attitude-behaviour gap, consumer decision making process, theory of planned behaviour, externaland internal circumstances. In order to be able to answer the research question, the thesisauthors have chosen to start from a qualitative research method. In the study, a total of 8female respondents between the ages of 24-28 participated and these respondents have beenselected using a so-called snowball sample, in order to be able to include individuals with asustainable mindset, which is relevant for this study. In order for the interview participantsto feel comfortable talking openly about the topic, thesis authors have therefore avoided toinclude family and friends in the interviews. The authors have instead used their contactnetworks to get in touch with relevant respondents to this study. The results of the study show that external and internal circumstances- compromisingproduct attributes, limiting conditions and perceived risk, collectively contribute to thecreation of an attitude-behaviour gap and cause sustainable consumers to choose to turn tofast fashion companies when buying clothes.

In modern times, there is an increasing tendency to use "us versus them" rhetoric in the political realm. Motivated reasoning literature offers a solution as to how group conflict contributes to outgroup bias. People may develop negative feelings towards outgroups in order to reduce cognitive dissonance and feel better about their judgments. Nevertheless, this is not the situation for everyone. My research aims to understand how peoples’ predisposed tendencies may affect the level of their out-group bias. Drawing from the distinction between shame (a negative sense of identity) and guilt (a response to a specific behavior) in psychology, I hypothesized that self-conscious emotions would moderate the relationship between information about in-group transgressions and out-group bias. To test this, I conducted a survey experiment with three different groups: Men/Women, White/Black people, and Democrats/Republicans. Participants were randomly assigned to watch videos depicting misbehavior from their respective group. Results showed that the proneness to self-conscious emotions did moderate the relationship to some extent, although the connection between shame and guilt proneness was more complex than anticipated. Criticizing one's in-group generally caused people to experience cognitive dissonance and reinforced out-group bias, particularly among those who were highly prone to both shame and guilt. The three-way interaction between treatment, shame proneness, and guilt proneness varied across and within the different identity categories, suggesting that there is no single theory that can entirely explain the degree of out-group bias. / Political Science

This paper explores the concept of well-being both in theoretical and practical applications. When it comes to well-being policy, it is apparent that the government’s goal ought to be to maximize the well-being of the citizens within that particular society. In order to do so effectively, there must be a foundational understanding both of the concept of well-being itself, as well as how it functions in application. I argue that preference-based approaches to well-being, which often emply GDP as a key metric, fail to adequately reflect the well-being of a nation’s citizens. I suggest that the Capabilities Approach offers a superior approach to well-being both in theory and in practice. Though it is possible that there are other equal or better options, I find that the Capabilities Approach successfully reaches the genuine depths of a person’s well-being without allowing for one individual’s well-being to impede on another’s. While it is evident that the capabilities approach still faces a number of hurdles and room for development, I hope to have argued that it is a step forward from traditional as well as subjective approaches to well-being. With further research and development, it is evident that this shift will allow for development decisions that are unbiased, equally considering the interests of all citizens, and thus a step forward towards truly increasing the well-being of humans throughout the world.

When the target of a reaching movement is displaced suddenly, people update their movement to take account of the jump, correcting their trajectory online to end the movement at the new target location. These corrections are initiated too rapidly to be conscious, and occur when they are uninstructed (Pisella et al., 2000) or the participant is unaware of the change in location (Goodale et al., 1986). These findings have been taken as evidence that fast corrections occur automatically, and the spatial updating of reach trajectories has become known as the ‘automatic pilot’ (Pisella et al., 2000). This thesis set out to investigate the cognitive, attentional and neurological aspects of the automatic pilot, in three series of related experiments, all employing a double-step reaching task. Experiments 1 - 4 investigated how strongly automatic reach corrections are, by manipulating the influence of conscious intention and cognitive load. These experiments confirmed that the automatic pilot is at most weakly automatic, as correction efficiency is enhanced by an explicit instruction to follow target jumps and, conversely, corrections can be overridden by an intention to resist them. However, voluntary inhibition of the automatic pilot can be disrupted by placing participants under heavy cognitive load, whilst voluntary enhancement is unaffected by this manipulation. Thus, voluntary suppression of the automatic pilot is effortful, but enhancement towards greater responsiveness is seemingly effortless. Experiments 5 - 8 explored the properties of the visual target displacement that drive the automatic pilot response in a double-step reaching task. These experiments demonstrate that correction efficiency is lawfully related to jump salience, but that the onset of the new target location drives correction responses more powerfully than the offset of the original target. However, the maximal correction rates obtained from a simultaneous onset and offset, were too great to be attributed simply to the additive influences of onsets and offsets. The onset and offset components of the target jump are thus synergistic. It is suggested that this reflects the contribution of an apparent motion signal induced by simultaneous onset and offsets, which strongly drives the automatic pilot system. Experiment 9 examined an asymmetry in correction efficiency, favouring rightward over leftward target jumps, evident throughout the earlier experiments. Correction efficiency was assessed for right- and left-handed participants responding to rightward and leftward target jumps. The pattern of results indicated that each hand is advantaged for responding to ipsilaterallydirected jumps, which may reflect biomechanical or hemispheric compatibility effects. However, there was also an overall differential advantage for rightward jumps, which was independent of handedness, or hand used. This suggests a left-hemispheric advantage for automatic correction behaviour, independent of handedness. Finally, Experiments 10 - 14 considered whether the automatic pilot deficit in optic ataxia is simply a manifestation of the more general misreaching deficit. Across several different target conditions, the pattern of online correction in optic ataxia refuted a simple misreaching explanation, suggesting that it is a specific functional consequence of dorsal stream damage.