Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Nursing. Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on October 10, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Previous research has shown that orienting attention in time can help to improve behavioural outcomes. However, the extent to which temporal orienting can be preserved in ageing and in the context of neurological disorders remains unresolved. This thesis therefore explores temporal expectations in the healthy ageing and diseased brain by taking a neuropsychological approach. To begin, I provide an overview of the literature in <b>Chapter 1</b> most relevant for the following investigation. Four chapters of experiments then follow. To examine the effects of ageing on temporal expectation, the performance of healthy young adults and healthy older adults is presented and the results are discussed in <b>Chapter 2</b> and <b>3</b>. Though it had been previously shown that older adults seem to experience an expectation deficit on temporal expectation tasks, these chapters demonstrate the preservation of temporal expectation in ageing. On their own, these findings represent an important and novel contribution to the literature; however, this research is incapable of establishing the causal mechanisms involved in temporal expectation. To explore the causal role of relevant brain regions in temporal expectation, <b>Chapter 4</b> and <b>5</b> investigate the effects of temporal orienting in participants with damage to the basal ganglia - a brain region strongly implicated in temporal processing. In <b>Chapter 4</b>, the role of the basal ganglia in temporal expectations is examined using data collected from participants with Parkinson's disease and contrasts their performance with age-matched healthy controls. To complement this investigation, and to provide converging evidence for the basal ganglia's role in temporal expectations, Chapter 5 investigates the behavioural performance of individuals with focal lesions to the basal ganglia. The findings in this thesis are discussed in their wider context in Chapter 6, and directions for future research are proposed.

Dual-process models of recognition memory propose that recognition memory can be supported by either a general sense of familiarity or the recollection of the encoding context. One source of evidence supporting dual-process models comes from event-related potential (ERP) studies of recognition memory, which have identified distinct patterns of neural activity associated with familiarity and recollection (the mid frontal and left parietal old/new effects, respectively). In this thesis, dual-process accounts of recognition memory were investigated in a series of ERP studies using three categories of stimulus: previously unknown faces, famous faces, and names. For previously unknown faces, familiarity was associated with activity over posterior scalp electrodes while recollection was associated with topographically dissociable activity over anterior electrodes. These dissociable patterns of activity support dual-process models. However, the typical pattern of old/new effects was only observed for stimuli associated with pre-existing representations (i.e., names and famous faces), suggesting that the presence/absence of pre-existing representations may determine the particular retrieval processes that support recognition memory. Furthermore, recollection was associated with two different patterns of activity (anterior and left parietal effects), suggesting that recollection is not a homogenous process. Dual-process theories may represent an important starting point for investigating recognition memory, but neither familiarity nor recollection appear to be functionally homogenous processes when theorizing is constrained by the analysis of scalp recorded electrophysiological activity.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, Psychiatry. Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on August 13, 2009). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

The concept of art experience among beholders is well-known but lacks empirical studies on everyday art experiences among laypersons. In this bachelor thesis, the appearance of layperson beholders’ art experience is explored by a qualitative interview study method. Eleven chosen responders are individually interviewed at Härnösand Art Gallery beholding the same assorted visual artwork. Descriptions and narratives are compared to artists’ intentions as shown in a separate interview. The theoretical approach leans on psychology and perception in art, focusing on the aesthetics of reception. Although a small-scale investigation in a rather narrow context, the investigation shows interesting findings: It highlights the frequency and intensity of everyday art experience in laypersons and the easiness of defining pictorial art from other informative or commercial pictures. Further, it highlights that the process of art experience perception has a strong hold of autonomy and is perceived as very personal and part of own personality. It also shows the rapid perception and endurance of mood as response and interpretation in contrast to the continuous processing of details and meaning. Lastly, the comparison of the artist’s intention and the beholders’ experience shows concordance.These properties of everyday common art experience can be a causal factor for the general prevalence of art in society.

In Francia, tra la fine del XIX e l’inizio del XX secolo, sorge una nuova forma esperienziale, quella del cinema. Nello stesso contesto, il movimento corporeo diventa oggetto di studio da parte di una serie di discipline, in particolar modo l’estetica e la psicofisiologia, che si ridefiniscono reciprocamente in un costante dialogo con le nuove tecnologie visive. Esiste una relazione tra questi due eventi? Il presente lavoro mira a costruire un’archeologia dell’esperienza cinematografica attraverso l’analisi dei testi di estetica sperimentale, psicologia della percezione e neurologia che emergono nell’orizzonte culturale francese tra il 1875 e il 1905. Il primo capitolo si concentra sulle teorie estetiche di Guyau, Séailles e Souriau, in cui la bellezza del movimento è concettualizzata seguendo un processo di progressiva meccanizzazione del corpo. Nel secondo capitolo viene analizzato il dibattito psicologico interno alla «Revue Philosophique» (1876), dove il corpo diviene medium capace di rendere visibile e registrabile il mondo soggettivo. Infine, nel terzo capitolo vengono studiate le ricerche estetiche e iconografiche che hanno luogo presso la clinica della Salpêtrière diretta da Charcot, pubblicate nella «Nouvelle Iconographie» (1888). Da queste, nasce una nuova morfologia del corpo in movimento, sostenuta dal progresso dei metodi grafici fino all’avvento del cinema. / In France, between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century, a new experience rises, that of cinema. In the same context, the bodily movement becomes the object of study of a huge range of disciplines, especially aesthetics and psychophysiology, which redefine each other in a constant dialogue with new visual technologies. Is there a relationship between these two events? This work aims to build an archaeology of the cinematic experience through the analysis of texts of experimental aesthetics, psychology of perception and neurology that emerge in the French cultural context between 1875 and 1905. The first chapter focuses on the aesthetic theories of Guyau, Séailles and Souriau, where the beauty of movement is conceptualized following a process of gradual mechanization of the body. The second chapter analyzes the psychological debate inside the «Revue Philosophique» (1876), where the body becomes a medium capable of making the subjective world visible and adjustable. Finally, in the third chapter we investigate the aesthetic and iconographic researches that took place in Charcot’s clinic at the Salpêtrière, published in the «Nouvelle Iconographie» (1888). From these arises a new morphology of the body in motion, supported by the progress of graphical methods until the advent of cinema.

The doctoral thesis preliminary focuses on the comparison of concepts of creation in music and architecture and to explore the connection and possible blending of both arts. The main focus of the dissertation is the research of the parallel between the composition of music and architecture, in their characters, means of composition and methods. The methods of approaching the topic were the analysis's of music and architectural materials such as dedicated books, magazines, internet articles, as well as audio recordings, realisations of architectonic works, printed materials on acoustics, psychology of perception and aesthetics as well as own experience and knowledge in the field of music and architecture and the experiment in composition. Results of the dissertation are theoretical conclusions enlightening the given topic and the practical experiment in the form of the analysis of the music composition and the application of its compositional methods into the architectonic design.

This study provides a precise definition of the term 'Kafkaesque' by enriching literary criticism with scientific theory and practice, including an experiment on readers' responses to Kafka. Dictionary definitions justify taking the term back to its textual origins in Kafka's works, and the works can fruitfully be analysed by investigating how readers engage with them through cognitive processes of imagination. Modern scientific developments posit that vision, imagination, and consciousness should be conceived of not in terms of static pictorialism – reducible to the notion of 'pictures in the head' – but in terms of enaction, i.e. as an ongoing interaction with the external world around us. Most traditional nineteenth-century Realist texts are based on pictorialist assumptions, while Kafka's texts evoke perception non-pictorially and are therefore more cognitively realistic. In his personal writings, Kafka wrestles with problems entailed by pictorialist conceptions of vision, imagination, and the function of language, and comes to enactivist solutions: evocation of perception that does not result in painting static tableaux with words. In his fictional works, Kafka correspondingly evolves a cognitively realistic way of writing to evoke fictional worlds that directly engage the cognitive processes of their readers; Der Proceß is a prime example of the 'Kafkaesque' text and reading experience, defined by being compelling yet simultaneously unsettling. Modulations in narrative perspective and evocation of emotion as enactive also contribute to the experience of the 'Kafkaesque' as compelling; yet Kafka's texts simultaneously unsettle by preventing straightforward emotional identification with the protagonists, and destabilising deep-rooted concepts of selfhood as singular and unified. The theoretical discussion of the 'Kafkaesque' experience as compelling yet unsettling is complemented and refined by an experiment testing readers' responses to a short story by Kafka. The term 'Kafkaesque realism' denotes Kafka's compelling yet unsettling non-pictorial evocation of perception of the fictional world. Kafkaesque realism falls into the broader category of 'cognitive realism', which provides a framework for analysing fictional texts more generally.

Die vorliegende Arbeit entwickelt in Anlehnung an Foucaults Konzept des Dispositivs und in Auseinandersetzung mit aktuellen Autoren der Architektursoziologie ein Begriffsinstrumentarium, mit welchem Architektur als symbolisch institutionalisierte Deutungsmacht in ihren sozial-effektiven Wirkungen analysiert werden kann. Hierfür wird ein theoretisches Modell zur soziologischen Erklärung architekturpsychologischer Wirkungszusammenhänge erarbeitet und am Beispiel der Neuen Synagoge zu Dresden demonstrativ zur Anwendung gebracht. Dabei wird anhand von Experteninterviews mit ehemals entscheidungsbemächtigten Akteuren der Produktionsprozess der Synagoge in seinen diskursiven Entscheidungssituationen und institutionellen Zwangsmechanismen historisch rekonstruiert.