The purpose of this study was to determine whether and to what extent free association following exposure to written material would affect the memory of that material, and whether the effect upon memory would vary with age of the subject. A test of learning (immediate retention) resulted in a significant difference in performance between young and old women--the older learning less. Free association was not found to be significant as a mnemonic aid to either age group, and was compared with characteristics of other more common mnemonics. Suggestions for additional research are discussed.

Devenu clef de lecture des enjeux internationaux dans le nouveau désordre mondial, le crime organisé transnational concurrence l’État par ses propres moyens de coercition et investit la sphère publique de telle manière que, dans certaines régions du monde, son influence est indispensable pour remporter une élection ou un marché public. Il va même jusqu’à agir au détriment des engagements des États en matière de préservation de l’environnement ou du patrimoine, de politique urbaine ou de non-prolifération des armes de destruction massive. Dans quelle mesure les changements géopolitiques et les mutations juridiques en ex-URSS ont eu des conséquences sur la nature et l’évolution du crime organisé russe postsoviétique ? Anciennement garants des traditions carcérales, la nouvelle génération des Voleurs dans la loi (Vory v zakone) s’est largement développée durant la transition démocratique avant d’investir durablement les États occidentaux, au point qu’Interpol qualifie cette organisation de « grave menace pour le développement économique ». D’une part, seront étudiés la « sous-culture criminelle russophone » bien spécifique, la typologie et la structure des groupes criminels russes, ainsi que le contexte juridique de leur développement en Russie et en Géorgie. D’autre part, sera analysée l’évolution en Europe occidentale de cette criminalité russophone, davantage qualifiable « d’association de type mafieux » par ses liens politiques et ses activités économiques « légalisées ». L’étude des réponses juridiques de différentes législations sur le blanchiment de capitaux établit que la confiscation élargie sur le modèle italien reste le principal instrument de lutte efficace. / From disruptive element to key factor of international stakes in the new world disorder, transnational organized crime competes with the State with its own coercive means and invests in public sector in a way it becomes inevitable in some parts of the world to win an election or obtain a procurement contract, often in spite of international agreements on environmental preservation, protection of holdings or town planning or even non-proliferation of weapons of mass-destruction. To what extent did the geopolitical and legal changes and their consequences in the ex-USSR impact the nature and evolution of post-soviet organized crime? Formerly guardians of the prison criminal traditions, the new generation of Thieves in Law (Vory v zakone) has developed throughout the democratic transition and expanded in Western Europe to such extent Interpol considers it a tremendous threat to economic development, international security and Russian democratic institutions. The first part will study the indigenous Russian-speaking criminal prison “culture” and give an analyzed overview of the structure of current types of Russian criminal groups and the legal context that led to their development in Russia and Georgia throughout the democratic transition. On the second hand, I will study the expansion in Western Europe of Russian-speaking criminality which can be qualified as “association of mafia-type” (cf. Art. 416bis of the Italian Criminal Code) because of its political links and its “legalized” profits. Forfeiture and seizure on the Italian legal model remain the most effective instrument as established from the study of different legislations against money laundering.

The purpose of this study was to research what effect a game narrative can have on players’ colour expectations in a game scene. To answer the proposed research question a practical experiment was conducted. 6 testers were given one narrative belonging to a non-existent game and were then tasked with colouring a 2D image said to belong to the same game, based on this narrative. They then repeated the process a second time with a new narrative. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted in an attempt to determine the reasoning behind the participants’ colour choices and any eventual factors that might have affected said choices. Clear indications suggesting that the narrative did indeed affect the colour expectations of players in a game scene was found. The analysis further showed patterns indicating that low values of saturation and brightness were associated with negative concepts, while high values of saturation and brightness were associated with positive concepts. The analysis also led to a hypothesis suggesting that the cultural background of one of the participants had a major impact on the participant’s interpretation of the narrative, which resulted in a result that differed from the other participants’ results. / Syftet med den här studien var att studera vilken effekt ett spelnarrativ kan ha på spelares färgförväntningar i en spelscen. För att kunna svara på forskningsfrågan genomförde vi ett praktiskt experiment. 6 testare i åldrarna 20 – 30, alla speldesignstudenter, gavs ett narrativ tillhörande ett icke-existerande spel. De fick sen i uppgift att färglägga en 2D bild tillhörande samma spel, baserat på narrativet. De blev sedan ombedda att läsa ett andra narrativ och upprepa färgläggningsprocessen, nu baserat på det andra narrativet istället. Efter detta hölls en semi-strukturerad intervju med testaren för att avgöra anledningar till färgvalen och faktorer som skulle kunnat påverka valen. Det fanns tydliga indikationer att narrativen påverkade färgassociationerna i spelscenen. Analysen visade på att låga värden i mättnad och intensitet var associerade med negativa koncept, medan höga värden i mättnad och intensitet var associerade med positiva koncept. Analysen ledde också till en hypotes att den kulturella bakgrunden hos en av testarna hade stor påverkan på testarens tolkning av narrativet, vilket resulterade i ett resultat som skilde sig från de andra testarnas resultat.

Family, twin, and adoption studies have indicated that human intelligence quotient (IQ) has significant genetic components. We performed a low-density genome-wide association analysis with a family-based association test to identify genetic variants influencing IQ, as measured by Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale full-score IQ (FSIQ). We examined 11,120 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from the Affymetrix GeneChips 10K mapping array genotyped in 292 nuclear families from Genetic Analysis Workshop 14, a subset from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA). A replication analysis was performed using part of International Multi-Center ADHD Genetics Project (IMAGE) dataset. Twenty-two SNPs were identified as having suggestive associations with IQ (p<10-3) in the COGA sample and eleven of the SNPs were located within known genes. In particular, NTM at 11q25 (rs411280, p=0.000764) and NR3C2 at 4q31.1 (rs3846329, p=0.000675) were two novel genes which have not been associated with IQ in other studies. It has been reported that NTM might play a role in late-onset Alzheimer disease while NR3C2 may be associated with cognitive function and major depression. The associations of these two genes were well-replicated by single-marker and haplotype analyses in the IMAGE sample. In conclusion, our findings provide evidence that chromosome regions of 11q25 and 4q31.1 contain genes affecting IQ. This study will serve as a resource for replication in other populations.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第20278号 / 医博第4237号 / 新制||医||1021(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 森田 智視, 教授 佐藤 俊哉, 教授 中山 健夫 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

This dissertation explores the point and process by which American colonists transformed from subjects to citizens. Upon learning of Boston radicals’ destruction of East India tea, Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, a collection of punitive measures designed to rein in that seaport town. In response, American communities from Massachusetts to Georgia drafted resistance resolutions calling on colonists to refrain from importing British merchandise, exporting American resources, and partaking in frivolous pastimes. Boston’s suffering, these communities declared, presented a threat to every colonist. Grassroots activists next called for a Continental Congress to coordinate and enforce a pan-colonial resistance movement to pressure Parliament’s repeal of the Coercive Acts. Once convened, delegates of the First Continental Congress drafted the Articles of Association which incorporated many directives already circulating in the town and county resolutions. Traditionally presented as a colonial boycott of British manufactures, the Association regulated cultural as well as commercial practices. It advised colonists to avoid waste and extravagance and singled out horse racing, cockfighting, theatergoing, and other displays of leisure as examples of moral decay. Echoing the grassroots resolutions, Congress also urged colonists to commit to nonimportation and non-consumption of British wares and nonexportation of American goods. Through these directives, Congress sought to achieve imperial reconciliation and colonial moral regeneration, yet its commitment to self-preservation reveals it focused more on restoring American virtue than returning harmony to the empire. To enforce the Articles of Association, Congress recommended towns and counties to create Committees of Inspection and Observation. Composed of locally elected men, these committees regulated their neighbors’ behavior and condemned violators of the Association as enemies of America. Using colonial newspapers, private letters, pamphlets, Congress’s official journals, Peter Force’s American Archives, and a wealth of other primary and secondary literature, this dissertation reveals how the Continental Association organized local communities of suffering. Members of these communities voluntarily suspended cultural and commercial practices to protect political identities they felt were in danger. In the process, those sacrificing in the common cause separated from the broader imperial community and formed an American political community. / History

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

A robust associative self network automatically biases attention, memory, and impression formation in a heuristic-like way. This thesis examines whether this self-heuristic underlies association formation of novel person and object representations to the self network and how this structure influences perceptions. This was tested across three experiments. The first employed an implicit task to assess whether self-similar individuals were represented with greater association strength to self-concept than self-dissimilar individuals. The second used an implicit task to measure whether newly-owned, previously-owned, and unowned objects exhibited different association strength with self-concept. The third determined the impact of minimal self-similarity to another individual, presented either before or after encoding, on memory for encoded information about them. Results of these experiments support three conclusions summarizing how a self-heuristic affects perceptions of novel stimuli. First, self-relevance automatically biases cognitive representation of novel self-similar (versus self-dissimilar) people and owned (versus unowned) objects, evidenced by stronger implicit association strength between these stimuli and self-concept. Next, this representation biases memory accuracy and errors in favour of heuristic-consistent information, even in contexts of minimal self-similarity. Finally, representation of self-similar people and owned objects relative to the self network biases perception through first-order effects, whereby unrelated concepts sharing an association to the self-network can influence one-another. Owned objects were automatically more favourably evaluated due to a first-order association with self-positivity. Perception of well-established self-knowledge was malleable based on response pairing with first-order associated self-similar or self-dissimilar individuals. Finally, when memory retrieval for self-similar and self-dissimilar individuals failed, responses were predicted based on first-order associated personality traits. These conclusions provide novel support for the existence of an automatic and ubiquitous self-heuristic that biases representation formation and subsequent perception of novel people and objects. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / A highly accessible network of self-representation biases attention and memory in favour of self-relevant information. I investigated how this network mediates representation of novel people and novel objects, stimulus categories that have received little attention in the social cognitive literature. An implicit test of cognitive association strength (i.e. the Implicit Association Test) revealed that novel self-similar (versus self-dissimilar) people and owned (versus unowned) objects are immediately associated to the self network. The new representations led to perceptual biases through first-order associations, whereby strictly self-relevant information was generalized to self-similar people and owned objects. For instance, even minimal self-similarity to a novel individual biased memory retrieval and reconstruction so that the retrieved information was consistent with the expectation of self-similarity. Together, the findings highlight the ubiquity and automaticity with which self-associations mediate cognitive representations and consequent perceptions of novel people and objects in realistic social situations.