Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2007. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-123).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Waikato, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-278)

This document takes a critical look at the first lean principle, Value. The meaning of value is ivestigated in: 1.) general context, 2.) product development context and 3.) the business literature context. Insights about the linkages between the value perspective and customer value are also covered. / Lean Aerospace Initiative

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Murdoch University, 2008. / Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts and Education. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 275-306)

A remarkable feature of the human mind is its capacity to momentarily disengage from the immediate environment in order to contemplate hypothetical future scenarios. This thesis focuses on human prospection, investigating some of the methods used to assess it, its cognitive properties and the functional relevance of this extraordinary ability to anticipate and pre-experience future contingencies. Two experiments carried out with young healthy participants show that the methods used to elicit prospection, the temporal distance and the valence of envisioned events, may affect its content as well as its characteristics. Two studies involving healthy participants of different ages as well as amnesic patients investigate the contribution of long-term memory to scene construction processes. The results provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that a common underlying memory-related factor, the capacity to construct a rich narrative, can influence the descriptions of a-temporal, future and current scenes alike. The third issue concerns the relationship between episodic future simulation and prospective memory. Five experiments with young healthy participants show that mentally pre-experiencing future contingencies associated to an intended action aids prospective remembering, over and above deep encoding processing. Overall, the results of the experiments discussed in the present thesis strengthen the view of prospection as a complex process, which, far from being encapsulated in a single cognitive function, impinges upon a constellation of constituent abilities, which may be adaptively used to anticipate and guide future behaviour.

M.A. (Philosophy) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

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Enthusiasm for developing creativity in the individual has been remarkably widespread - at least in America - over the past twenty-five years or so. The armed services, the arts and sciences, educational institutions, businesses and industries are recognising to a greater and greater extent, the urgent necessity of developing this relatively neglected aspect of people is personalities. Their reasons differ, of course, and usually the welfare of the individual himself is not the main concern. This is perhaps fortunate, as advances made on philanthropic grounds alone have never progressed very rapidly. In business and industry, new ideas are urgently needed for survival - this was especially evident after World War II which was, in the end, really a battle of ideas. The importance of this implication has not decreased with distance in time from that conflagration, indeed, individuals in the armed services are probably the people most deeply involved in and the most concerned with the problem of developing creative thought. "We are in a mortal struggle for the survival of our way of life", writes Guilford. "The need (for developing creativity) is a national crisis" says Anderson*. Intro., p. 1.

This dissertation identified and addressed four of the unresolved issues pertaining to the proposition that nonabsolute/ relativistic (N/R) thinking is one of the possible unifying commonalities underlying the selected models of postformal reasoning, namely Problem Finding, Dialectical Reasoning, Relativistic Operations and Reflective Judgment. A total of 254 participants aged 10 to 48 and attending Grade 5 to doctoral studies were involved. Each participant was administered eight tests in pencil-and-paper format to measure eight different constructs of thinking. Different specific hypotheses were evaluated through different statistical approaches. The four identified issues were addressed as follows: Firstly, nonabsolute/ relativistic thinking was reconceptualized and operationally defined as a multidimensional and multilevel construct. Two dimensions were proposed: the basic form and the epistemic view. Within the basic form dimension, two levels were proposed: the formal and the postformal forms. Secondly, a battery of three tests was specifically designed by Arlin and the author to measure the different dimensions and levels of nonabsolute/ relativistic thinking. Thirdly, strong empirical evidence was obtained supporting the general hypothesis that nonabsolute/ relativistic thinking is a possible unifying commonality underlying the four selected postformal models. Within the construct of nonabsolute/ relativistic thinking, two dimensions, the basic form and the epistemic view, can be differentiated as hypothesized. Fourthly, empirical evidence was also obtained supporting the general hypothesis that nonabsolute/ relativistic thinking is an instance of both formal and postformal reasoning. Specifically within the basic form dimension, two qualitatively different forms, the formal and the postformal, can be differentiated as hypothesized. Findings also suggested that the development of a nonabsolute epistemic view might play a crucial role in the development of the postformal form. Therefore, the emergence of the postformal form can be explained by a paradigm shift from an absolute to a nonabsolute epistemic view. Performances in the tests of the postformal form and of the epistemic view in combination were found to be good predictors of performances in the selected postformal tests. Significant implications of the findings are that nonabsolute/ relativistic thinking represents a form of metamorphosis from closed-system to open-system thinking and it might serve as a potential springboard in the development of higher order thinking. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

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