This study compared the relative importance of attentional capacity and processing speed accounts of cognitive aging with regard to how well they predict age differences in episodic and working memory performance. Two research projects were completed involving 150 and 100 right-handed adults between the ages of 18 and 90. In Study 1, each participant was administered measures of attentional capacity, processing speed and episodic memory. In Study 2 the processing speed measures were chosen to reduce the involvement of perceptual scanning and memory ability, and multiple measures of dual-task performance were used. Two working memory tasks were also administered along with the same episodic memory measures used in Study 1. The results of the studies revealed the following: (1) Measures of attentional capacity shared relatively smaller proportions of age-related episodic memory variance (14-45%) than measures of processing speed (60-87%). (2) Measures of attentional capacity shared very small proportions of age-related episodic memory variance (1-2%) independent of speed of processing. In contrast, measures of processing speed shared substantial proportions of age-related episodic memory variance (37-76%) that were independent of attentional capacity performance. (3) Measures of attentional capacity and processing speed shared comparable proportions of age-related working memory variance (58 and 65%) as well as comparable proportions of shared variance that was independent of the other mediator (10% attentional capacity; 17% processing speed). (4) The age-attentional capacity relations were attenuated to a large extent when performance on processing speed measures was controlled for (77-88%). In contrast the age-processing speed attenuations after control of attentional capacity performance were much smaller (6-55%). Taken together, these results provide little support for any predictive utility of the attentional capacity construct independent of processing speed ability in accounting for age-episodic memory relations although they are consistent with the notion that attentional capacity might mediate aspects of age-related working memory change. In contrast, these results contribute to the large body of evidence consistent with the notion that age-related decrements in the speed of executing relatively simple processing operations might be responsible for age-related differences in several cognitive domains.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Abstract The purpose of the 6-week qualitative study was to explore how Grade 1 children responded to five picturebooks by Anthony Browne during interactive read-alouds. The 13 participants and the other non-participants were organized into four mixed gender and mixed reading-ability groups. Data included transcripts from 20 small group read-aloud sessions and field notes that documented additional student affective responses to the texts. Other data included the children’s drawings that were completed after each picturebook small group read-aloud session, as well as transcripts of the students’ individual interviews about their artistic responses. Coding of student conversation turns during the read-aloud sessions revealed the identification of six categories of statements. These six categories were then applied to the students’ individual interview data to facilitate comparison between the two settings. The artwork and interviews of three students were analyzed as three individual cases and represented a sample of student readers of differing abilities. Data analysis of the read-aloud session transcripts revealed that labeling statements accounted for approximately one-third of all student comments. The remaining students’ statements were categorized as following: approximately one-quarter were character description, one-fifth were ‘other,’ (i.e. indecipherable statements and/or off-topic comments), approximately one-tenth were character feeling, less than one-tenth were autobiographical, and a small amount were intertextual in nature. The comparison of the three focus children’s individual interviews to their small group conversations revealed that the children generated a greater number of autobiographical statements during the individual interviews about their art. Implications for research and pedagogy included teaching and conducting research about visual literacy that involves pre- and post-treatment study, and examining children’s conversations about characters in picturebooks by numerous authors. / Graduate

This essay focuses on the reception of Yahya Hassan’s debut YAHYA HASSAN in Swedish media, mainly daily newspapers. Following the work of Magnus Nilsson it analyzes the “reading strategy of the politics of identity” in “immigrant literature” and outlines structural racism in the literary scene. By bringing attention to the critics’ use of this reading strategy, it is possible to unveil the “ethnic filter” through which literature by Swedish authors with a “non-Swedish identity” is being read in contemporary Swedish literary criticism. The concept of “immigrant literature” is discussed as a discourse, rather than as an empirical category. This essay aims to show how the Swedish critics read YAHYA HASSAN through the ethnic filter as a work of “immigrant literature”. The Swedish critics read the collection of poems as a political statement, and had difficulties defining Hassans work as poetry. Rather, it was read as an autobiographical novel in a working class tradition. There had been a long discussion in Swedish literary criticism about the autofictional genre, including a moral debate about the line between fact and fiction in autobiographical works. However, this was left almost unmentioned and Hassans poems were read as true and authentic depictions, something that the author himself contributed to in various ways. The essay also outlines the debate in Swedish media where critics discussed the author’s responsibility as an immigrant, a debate where many critics articulated a fear that the experiences depicted in Hassan’s poems could further inspire an already growing racist movement.

Es planteja el caràcter bifront del gènere autobiogràfic. Siegfried Sassoon, poeta i combatent de la Primera Guerra Mundial, és l'autor de les memòries de George Sherston que narren la infantesa i joventut del protagonista en l'entorn rural idíl·lic del sud d'Anglaterra i, després, la seva participació al front occidental. Tanmateix, resulta difícil adscriure aquestes memòries a la ficció pel sol fet que els noms de l'autor i el narrador-protagonista no coincideixin. La trilogia autobiogràfica de Sherston narra amb precisió documental les vicissituds biogràfiques més rellevants de Sassoon. Ficció i autobiografia, història i memòria configuren alguns dels trets distintius d'una narració que explora i explota la hibridesa genèrica. / The dual nature of the autobiography genre is approached. Siegfried Sassoon, poet and combatant in the First World War, is the author of the memoirs of George Sherston, which narrate the childhood and youth of the protagonist in the idyllic rural environment of southern England followed by his participation on the Western Front. However, it is difficult to label these memoirs as fiction only because the names of the author and the narrator-protagonist are not the same. Sherston's autobiographical trilogy narrates with documentary accuracy the most relevant biographical vicissitudes of Sassoon. Fiction and autobiography, history and memory make up some of the distinctive traits of a narrative that explores and exploits the hybridism of the genre.

The complex functioning of the human body produces the biological, historical and environmental contingencies of lived existence. These experiences of embodiment are chiasmic, dialectical and dialogical, and underpin the narrative dilemmas we create through the storied nature of our attempts to make sense of them. In testifying my own embodiment this autobiographical form of sensual scholarship emphasizes the subjective basis for my body’s psychology. By developing the complicating action segments of my life story told through interview data into a chronologically-ordered and textually- layered account of personally significant memories, I craft a story of my panicking body. My upbringing was influenced by discourses that reinforced parental and family affiliation at the expense of my feeling body. Unravelling my need to exercise as a contingency of this affiliation provides retrospective meaning to the distress my panicking caused. Situating my feelings, thoughts, emotions and actions within the broader constraints of my family’s history, community, religion and culture reveals the contingent nature of my embodiment. Describing the shifting contingencies of a life lived since my upbringing in the small, rural town of Inglewood, New Zealand, provides the opportunity to recognize and to re-align the dialectics of identity that help to make up my body’s psychology. Juxtaposing this narrative meaning-making are my revelations of experiential integration achieved through the flow of exercise. Understood as an extension of my body’s fundamental sensuality, this evolutionally-refined capacity for engagement underpins my lived experiencing. Together these sentient and reflexive forms of testimony confirm the inherence of my sensuality and the circumstance of self-hood, and invite you, the reader, to explore the workings of your own body. By revealing the sensual and symbolic strands of my embodiment this story of human contingency reveals something of the fleshy consciousness that we all share, not by speaking for anyone else, but by calling attention to the taken-for-granted nature of its unfolding. By arguing for a psychology more relevant to lived experiencing, my thesis questions the body of Western science and, in particular, psychology’s version of it. Articulating the felt nature of my experiencing situates my mind back in my body and, in doing so, fleshes out its psychology. While the insights shared here are personal, the relevance of the felt-body is found in the ways it becomes discoursed and narrated.

During my years as a Cabinet Minister in New Zealand, the relationship between a Minister and his key officials was strongly modelled on the Westminster system as then applied in Britain. As in Britain, the ministers were the product of the political and parliamentary processes. The leader of the political party with the majority in the House was called upon by the Queen's representative (our Governor General) to form the new Government. All Ministerial appointees were necessarily chosen entirely from members then in Parliament. As in Britain, also, the key officials to serve each Minister in their portfolios were provided by the career Public Service, the long-serving body of officials who were there to advise and manage the system for successive governments. The Minister did not choose his departmental head, nor did that departmental head choose his minister. There were many assumptions inherited from the past which helped to make the relationship work. Policy decisions were shaped by the Minister representing the political side of the equation. Execution and management was carried out by the head official, responsible for the operation of the bureaucratic machine he headed. In explaining my thesis message - "Managing Change as a Minister of the Crown" - a very strong autobiographical dimension to my experience and comments is inevitable. In the political setting, the relationship between Minister and Head of Department, though a key factor, is but one of many. All change affects many people - some positively and beneficially, and some the reverse. The effects of change can be anticipated rather than actually felt. Perceptions can sometimes become bigger problems to manage than realised consequences. Change in politics invariably reaches out far beyond those obviously and directly affected. Handling change therefore involves making plans for how one can best point the change in a forward-looking and constructive way, and put a socially positive spin on one's efforts and the outcome. If one's efforts are done openly, and one's arguments are well founded, real progress can be made. One of life's constants is change itself. It affects us all in some measure. In communities categorized as "developed", it can be particularly fast and sweeping. This means, inevitably, that the forms of its infrastructures - from public services to business enterprises - which enable society and the economy to function effectively must adapt, and constructively, to those changes. From my experience, in facing a variety of problems calling for change in handling portfolio responsibilities, I have found every case is different from the others, and each solution had to be shaped to meet the characteristics of that particular case. The only common denominator I would call the "people factor". Compounding the challenge, that "people factor" had to be fashioned as appropriate for the personalities with whom I was working, and the characteristics of the problem being addressed. I did, however, find that there were some common fundamentals in the "people factor" which I address in my conclusion. They helped facilitate co-operation in managing change.

In the Time of the Butterflies é um romance da escritora dominicana-americana Julia Alvarez sobre a vida e a morte das Borboletas, Las Mariposas, codinome das irmãs Mirabal, membros de um movimento clandestino contra o regime ditatorial de Rafael Leonidas Trujillo na República Dominicana, que se tornaram símbolos da luta contra o Trujillato depois de serem assassinadas a mando do ditador. Essa dissertação tem como objetivo expor como forma literária e contexto social estão diretamente relacionados nesse romance. Ela defende a ideia de que o borramento de três gêneros literários distintos metaficção historiográfica, autobiografia e bildungsroman reflete o questionamento das fronteiras entre o privado e o público, o pessoal e o político, o eu e o outro, o individual e o coletivo, a literatura e a história, fato e ficção e história e subjetividade. Ela também tenta mostrar como a problematização dessas dicotomias implica na contestação de noções pré-concebidas de identidade, história e nação / In the Time of the Butterflies is a novel by the Dominican-American writer Julia Alvarez on the life and death of the Butterflies, Las Mariposas, codename of the Mirabal sisters in the national underground movement that fought against the dictatorial regime of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The novel is an attempt to re-member the sisters assassination under the dictators orders, a story that has never been officially told. This dissertation aims to expose how literary form and political content are related in this novel. It argues that the blurring of three distinct literary genres historiographic metafiction, autobiography and the bildungsroman reflects the questioning of the boundaries between private and public, personal and political, self and other, individual and collective, literature and history, fact and fiction as well as history and subjectivity. It also tries to show how the problematizing of these dichotomies de-naturalizes received notions of identity, history and nation

Although Samuel Beckett's plays indicate his abiding interest in the complex functioning of memory, little has been written on the topic. The aim of this study, therefore, is to examine the wide-ranging, specific approaches towards recall and forgetting that he reflects in his drama. Because conversational strategies are grounded in cognitive processes, the interplay between memory and discourse will also be probed. The thesis foregrounds Beckett's profound distrust of memory functioning, as well as his conviction that `yesterday' has dangerous power to `deform'. Through his own perception and his psychological study of dysfunctional, decaying and trauma-charged memories, he is able to apply a comprehensive knowledge-base to the creation of his time-damaged characters. In the scrutiny of their autobiographical memories, the reconstructive and imaginative components become apparent. These are mainly shown to alienate characters from one another, so that Beckett's claim that memory can remedy suffering becomes questionable. The investigation is informed by a variety of critical disciplines, as well as insights derived from the Proust Monograph. Beckett's investigation of the psychology of the 1930s is evaluated, in addition to current medical and psychological research into gerontology, amnesia, dementia, and the repressed or obsessive memories of the neurotic. Conway's work on the characteristic features of autobiographical memory illuminates relevant Beckett plays. An appraisal of discourse studies focuses on language and power, phatic communication and the multiple speech acts that reflect the functioning of normal and dysfunctional memory. Reference to the work of Lacan and Derrida enhances discussion of the inadequacy of language. To give due attention to the theatrical component of Beckett's drama, enactment, performance criticism and audience reception of his plays are discussed. / English Studies / D.Litt. et Phil.

VALE NETO, Isac Ferreira do. Batalhas da memória: A escrita militante de Rodolfo Teófilo. 2006. 217f. – Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-graduação em História, Fortaleza (CE), 2006. / Submitted by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-10-10T13:12:37Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2006-DIS-IFVNETO.pdf: 1234719 bytes, checksum: d65969487989d00de87c6469cf7788f6 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo(marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2013-10-10T14:24:03Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2006-DIS-IFVNETO.pdf: 1234719 bytes, checksum: d65969487989d00de87c6469cf7788f6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-10-10T14:24:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2006-DIS-IFVNETO.pdf: 1234719 bytes, checksum: d65969487989d00de87c6469cf7788f6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Esta pesquisa tratou de interpretar as relações historicamente constituídas entre o farmacêutico, letrado e benemérito cearense Rodolfo Teófilo (1853-1932) e sua produção escrita. Acompanhando a historicidade da biografia de Rodolfo Teófilo busquei compreender como ele se utilizou de seus livros como lugar de memória para defender sua posição de intelectual e benemérito diante de seus contemporâneos e especialmente perante a posteridade. Ao interpretar suas obras busquei ainda analisar suas concepções sobre o fazer historiográfico, bem como as características autobiográficas presentes em seus livros.