Rats given a footshock 2 min after placement in a box subsequently freeze much more in that box than rats given the shock immediately upon placement. This lack of freezing following the immediate-shock is termed the immediate-shock deficit (ISD), and it is presumed to reflect a learning failure. The purpose of my dissertation was to examine possible mechanisms for the ISD and to further characterize one-trial context fear conditioning. Experiment 1a found the ISD data pattern, but freezing was weak in the delay procedure. Experiment 1b used a smaller box and found enhanced freezing only in the delay procedure. Also, for the delay-shock rats, freezing was distributed on the test day such that freezing increased up to about the time that shock was given on the conditioning day and then decreased. Experiments 2a and 2b used the opioid blocker naloxone to see if the ISD was due to a reduced potency of the immediate-shock brought about by opioid analgesia. The results argued no. Also, for the first time, more freezing and defecation was found in immediate rats than in no-shock control rats. This finding was strengthened by the results of Experiment 3 which measured escape, side preference, side and nose crossings, freezing, and defecation. For each measure, the immediate-shock rats behaved more like the delay-shock rats than no-shock rats. The results of Experiments 2a, 2b, and 3 argue that the ISD is not a complete failure of learning, but instead is only a partial reduction in learning. Experiment 4 found that freezing after experiencing an immediate-shock is not an unconditional effect of shock, but instead reflects learning. Experiment 4 also found that rats shocked 2.5, 15, or 405 s after placement in box freeze less than rats shocked 45 or 135 s after placement. These results suggest that the ISD can be subsumed as a specific instance of a more general interstimulus interval (ISI) effect. Experiments 5a, 5b, and 5c, taken together, determined that an immediate-shock, while only weakly conditioning the context in which it was delivered, could condition other cues that enjoy a more favorable ISI with that shock. This result further suggests that the ISD is not due to any reduced shock potency, but due instead to an unfavorable ISI. The parallel between many of the results found here with those seen in more complex but better studied Pavlovian conditioning models argues that the one-trial context fear conditioning preparation can serve as a simple model system for studying Pavlovian conditioning.

<p> The central topic of this research is an examination of the philosophical assumptions of depth psychology as they relate to splitting in depth psychology. The intention of the researcher was to examine this topic from multiple perspectives. The researcher utilized a qualitative methodology, dialogical hermeneutics, to compare the influences and assumptions of the differing schools of depth psychology. </p><p> Depth psychology is the study of mental functioning that includes and values unconscious mental processes. Over the past 100 years, numerous splits, dissensions, and modifications have occurred. Splits have occurred between individuals and between factions within institutes, resulting in an ever-increasing plurality of depth psychological training schools. Such infighting has resulted in an erosion of prestige, which has left the discipline in danger of dissolution. </p><p> The primary questions of this research were these: What are the fundamental philosophical assumptions underlying depth psychology in general and do these philosophical assumptions contribute to splitting within the field of depth psychology? </p><p> One of the most basic assumptions of depth psychology held that nature is dualistic and that human beings are divided within and amongst themselves, which led to a belief in the reality of opposites, an ever-present ontological struggle between polar forces. This assumption was consistently maintained in Jung's psychological system and present but inconsistently held by Freud. Jung believed that there was a fundamental unity in nature that was divided. Freud did not. Jung believed that the problem of the opposites could be transcended, leading to a higher level of integration and assimilation. Freud did not. Freud's influences flowed from objective, deterministic, and rational, materialistic assumptions, whereas Jung's epistemology was more influenced by the idealistic and romantic traditions, which emphasized a subjective, irrational, and teleological approach to knowledge. Freud understood splitting as simply conflictual, whereas Jung saw splitting as conflictual but also purposive, leading towards wholeness. Their positions reflected a philosophical split in the culture that has persisted since classical times, between objective and subjective approaches to understanding reality. Their respective personalities pulled them toward opposing sides of this classic ontological divide. </p><p> The researcher concluded that knowledge inevitably and necessarily develops through conflict, best approached with awareness and tempered with tolerance. </p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, 1990. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-09, Section: B, page: 4589.

<p> 2-Shapes (Stuebe, 2017), an art-based antecedent intervention, was introduced as an intervention to regulate disruptive behaviors in this study. The researcher was interested in discovering whether this art-based antecedent activity could help manage self-regulation in a K3 student during group time. The goal of this art-based antecedent study was to provide a meaningful intervention to a child that supports self-regulation, improves self-awareness, and supports intrapersonal and interpersonal thought processes to manage changing conditions. The results of the study revealed the importance of completing a thorough Functional Behavioral Assessment followed by a Functional Analysis to understand the function of a class of disruptive behaviors exhibited by a K3 child. The interview process prior to any assessments may answer many of the questions researchers have about the function of target behaviors and should be completed thoroughly with a great deal of thought and detail. This study demonstrated the need for addressing these steps in determining an appropriate intervention. Results from a Functional Analysis performed after the data collection process determined that the function of the disruptive behavior was attention and that this intervention, if proven effective, would have been addressing the function of attention and therefore would have been an effective treatment for the identified child. </p><p>

The research presented in this thesis was designed to investigate whether and how the temporal synchrony and spatial congruence of non-visual cues with visual targets could work together to improve the discrimination and identification of visual targets in neurologically-healthy adult humans. The speed and accuracy of participants’ responses were compared following the presence or absence of temporally synchronous and/or spatially congruent or incongruent auditory, vibrotactile, and audiotactile cues in the context of dynamic visual search and rapidly-masked visual target identification. The understanding of the effects of auditory, vibrotactile, and audiotactile cues derived from these laboratory-based tasks was then applied to an air traffic control simulation involving the detection and resolution of potential conflicts (represented as visual targets amidst dynamic and cluttered visual stimuli). The results of the experiments reported in this thesis demonstrate that, in the laboratory-based setting, temporally synchronous and spatially informative non-visual cues both gave rise to significant improvements in participants’ performance, and the combination of temporal and spatial cuing gave rise to additional improvements in visual target identification performance. In the real-world setting, however, only the temporally synchronous unimodal auditory and bimodal audiotactile cues gave rise to a consistent facilitation of participants’ visual target detection performance. The mechanisms and accounts proposed to explain the effects of spatial and temporal cuing, namely multisensory integration and attention, are examined and discussed with respect to the observed improvements in participants’ visual target identification performance.

Neural responses in the primate ventral visual system become more complex in the later stages of the pathway. For example, not only do neurons in IT cortex respond to complete objects, they also learn to respond invariantly with respect to the viewing angle of an object and also with respect to the location of an object. These types of neural responses have helped guide past research with VisNet, a computational model of the primate ventral visual pathway that self-organises during learning. In particular, previous research has focussed on presenting to the model one object at a time during training, and has placed emphasis on the transform invariant response properties of the output neurons of the model that consequently develop. This doctoral thesis extends previous VisNet research and investigates the performance of the model with a range of more challenging and ecologically valid training paradigms. For example, when multiple objects are presented to the network during training, or when objects partially occlude one another during training. The different mechanisms that help output neurons to develop object selective, transform invariant responses during learning are proposed and explored. Such mechanisms include the statistical decoupling of objects through multiple object pairings, and the separation of object representations by independent motion. Consideration is also given to the heterogeneous response properties of neurons that develop during learning. For example, although IT neurons demonstrate a number of differing invariances, they also convey spatial information and view specific information about the objects presented on the retina. A updated, scaled-up version of the VisNet model, with a significantly larger retina, is introduced in order to explore these heterogeneous neural response properties.

Distraction during driving is one of the leading contributors to injury and mortality rates in traffic accidents. The aim of this current thesis was to consider 1) whether oculomotor and electrophysiological metrics could act as markers of cognitive distraction; 2) whether decrements in hazard perception performance caused by secondary cognitive task demand are to some extent due to cognitive load interfering with processes of alerting, orienting, inhibitory control and visual search; 3) what elements of secondary cognitive tasks have the greatest impact on hazard perception performance; and 4) whether the susceptibility of previously identified markers of cognitive distraction are affected by primary task difficulty. Over the course of four Experiments we recorded the effects of secondary cognitive task demand on behavioural, oculomotor and electrophysiological metrics during a variety of low-level and complex visual tasks. Taken together the experiments of this thesis have demonstrated that secondary cognitive task demand interferes with not just one but every component process of hazard perception performance that was examined. Next, this research has demonstrated that measures such as blink rates, saccade peak velocities, the spread of fixations along the horizontal axis as well as reductions in alpha and beta power output may be reliable indicators of secondary cognitive task demand regardless of the type of primary task. Finally we have shown that the co-registration of eye movements, EEG and ERP measures is a viable method with which to study the cognitive processes involved in visual processing within low level and complex visual tasks.

Some studies of stroke patients with semantic deficits have found no effect of word frequency on semantic tasks, as well as inconsistent performance across items and tasks. A deficit in semantic control has been suggested as the source of the deficit - i.e., an inability to focus on semantic features appropriate to the task. In the present study, two stroke patients performed significantly better in single-distractor versions (low semantic control) than multiple-distractor versions of semantic tasks (high semantic control) of comprehension tasks, which appears consistent with the semantic control hypothesis. On the other hand, two aphasic patients showed substantially better performance for auditory than visual presentation of words in comprehension tasks – a finding that is not expected on the basis of semantic control. Experiment 1 evaluated whether performance on a multiple-distractor comprehension task could be predicted solely on the basis of performance on a single-distractor version using Luce’s choice axiom. Single distractor performance significantly predicted performance and no convincing evidence was obtained for a role for semantic control. Experiment 2, which examined the modality effect, showed that for one of the patients, worse performance with auditory presentation was most likely due to rapid decay of phonological representations. For the other, worse performance was most likely due to a disruption to phonological representations of words or to their connection to semantic representations. In all, the results suggest that word comprehension deficits in aphasia can result from a variety of sources and not all are due to semantic control deficits.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Elizabeth A.L. Stine-Morrow. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-117) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> When an individual has suffered from repeated abuses during childhood, an intrapsychic conflict arises in which inner persecutory figures terrorize other, more vulnerable aspects of the personality (Kalsched, 1996). The aim of this dissertation is to explore how the archetype of the Self, an organizing and integrating principle within the psyche (Jung, 1952/1954), can activate within the adult trauma survivor the aggressive energies of the warrior as a means to mitigate the inner persecution that arises out of traumatic experience. </p><p> Norse myth and the epic poem <i>Beowulf,</i> both rich in war and warring, are used as the hermeneutical texts to illustrate the hypothesis regarding the function of the Self and the warrior in the face of trauma. Mythic figures such as Odin&mdash;as the Self, Thor and Beowulf&mdash;as warriors, and Loki, Grendel, and Grendel's mother&mdash;as inner persecutors, demonstrate the interplay between the Self-warrior-inner persecutory triad that can evolve out of traumatic experience. Texts on trauma, the archetype of the warrior, and the experiences of the modern warrior provide further hermeneutical material for the research. </p><p> Findings from this study indicate that archetypal warrior energies have the capacity to lessen the influence of negative internal forces within the trauma survivor, effectively breaking a form of trance commonly induced by the experience of cumulative childhood trauma. Results demonstrate that the warrior archetype has a maturational arc. In its mature form, the warrior is capable of forming cooperative relationships with formerly negative inner aspects, once the warrior's efforts have softened the impact of those aspects upon the ego. Surprisingly, studied texts also reveal that former inner persecutors, once they are brought into greater relatedness with the whole of the psyche, contain within them numerous gifts for the benefit of the overall personality. </p><p> This dissertation infers that any subject under investigation may benefit from the rich material found within the study of Norse myth and the archetype of the warrior, both topics of which practitioners within the field of depth psychology have generally overlooked. </p><p> Keywords: trauma, child abuse, warrior, trickster, Jung, Norse myth, <i> Beowulf.</i></p>