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The concept of sleep disturbance is rather vague. Many people claim to suffer from sleep disturbance, but yet find it hard to describe exactly what they mean by the label in subjective terms. Sleep researchers have a similar problem, it is difficult to describe what is meant by sleep disturbance either in an objective or a subjective way, and harder still to relate sleep disturbance to sleepiness shown the following day.

This study focuses on evaluating a system containing five different mappings of physical movement parameters to auditory parameters. Physical parameter variables such as size, location, among others, were obtained by using a motion tracking system, where the two hands of the user would work as rigid bodies. Translating these variables to auditory parameter variables gave the ability to control different parameters of MIDI files. The aim of the study was to determine how well a total of five participants, all with prior musical knowledge and experience, could adapt to the system concerning both user generated data as well as overall user experience. The study showed that the participants developed a positive personal engagement with the system and this way of audio and music alteration. Exploring the initial mappings of the system established ideas for future development of the system in potential forthcoming work.

In many musical cultures, people synchronise their bodies to the rhythmic patterns of the music, and such embodied engagements are one of the most overtly enjoyable forms of musical appreciation. However, the ways in which rhythmic structure, body-movement and pleasure are related remains unclear. The present thesis directs a broadly psychological, yet multi-methodological and interdisciplinary, approach towards this relationship, centring on the rhythmic structure of syncopation in groove-based funk music. Through perceptual experiments, computational modelling, rating surveys, neuroimaging and motion-capture recording, syncopation was found to relate, in primarily negatively linear and inverted U-shaped ways, to finger-tapping performance, perceptions of stability, subjective desire to move and feelings of pleasure, neural activity in motor and reward areas, and force, synchrony and periodicity in body-movements. These relationships also depended on individuals’ musical training, dancing experience and groove familiarity. Ecological and embodied theories of perception and a phenomenology of groove provide a backdrop to the empirical findings, on the basis of which it is suggested that the different relationships between syncopation in groove and perceptual, subjective, neural and corporeal attributes interact in reciprocal ways. It is proposed that syncopation invites the body to physically enact the musical structure and directly participate in the rhythms of groove, due to the perceptual tension and ‘open spaces’ afforded by the perception of metric events in syncopation. In groove, body, mind and music extend into each other and this distributed musical process has affective significance. Since the physical pleasures of dancing to music are such a historically and culturally ubiquitous phenomenon, the empirical findings and theoretical proposals of this thesis make significant contributions towards a much-needed coupling of affective and embodied theories of music.

Screening individuals for concealed knowledge has traditionally been the purview of professional interrogators investigating a crime. But the ability to detect when a person is hiding important information would be of high value to many other fields and functions. This dissertation proposes design principles for and reports on an implementation and empirical evaluation of a non-invasive, automated system for human screening. The screening system design (termed an automated screening kiosk or ASK) is patterned after a standard interviewing method called the Concealed Information Test (CIT), which is built on theories explaining psychophysiological and behavioral effects of human orienting and defensive responses. As part of testing the ASK proof of concept, I propose and empirically examine alternative indicators of concealed knowledge in a CIT. Specifically, I propose kinesic rigidity as a viable cue, propose and instantiate an automated method for capturing rigidity, and test its viability using a traditional CIT experiment. I also examine oculomotor behavior using a mock security screening experiment using an ASK system design. Participants in this second experiment packed a fake improvised explosive device (IED) in a bag and were screened by an ASK system. Results indicate that the ASK design, if implemented within a highly controlled framework such as the CIT, has potential to overcome barriers to more widespread application of concealed knowledge testing in government and business settings.

This thesis deals with questions about the built environment in relation to the education of the body. The purpose of the thesis is to illustrate and discuss prerequisites for physical literacy and education in school gymnasiums. The aim of the study was to examine how discourses about body and body movement are related to questions about knowledge and education within physical education in school (PE). Using discourse analysis I explore how discursive practices such as rooms and talk produce, reproduce and change discourses about body, movement and knowledge. The discursive practices that I have focused on are the designing of rooms for physical education as well as PE teachers’ ways of expressing themselves regarding these kinds of rooms. The empirical material that has been analyzed consists of rooms used for physical education, interviews with PE teachers and text material from a journal for PE teachers. The results of the analysis suggest that some discourses can be described as strong and/or dominant and some as weaker. One example is the dominant discourse about body movement as competition and performance. Another example is the strong, although not dominant discourse about body movement as practice within which the body is (re)produced as a learning body. A third one is the weak discourse about movement as experiencing one’s body. One of the conclusions of the study is that a more open design of rooms for physical education would enhance the possibilities for the practice discourse and the experience discourse to grow stronger, which would be desirable considering the emphasis on learning and positive experiences of body movement in the syllabus for PE. Another conclusion is that if the practice discourse would be more clearly materialized in the gymnasiums, it could mean that other discursive practices too such as teachers’ and pupils’ speech acts and body acts within PE could change more easily.

Orientador: Eliana Ayoub / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-13T13:02:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Silva_PaulaCristinadaCosta_D.pdf: 10984165 bytes, checksum: 56f825341efe00ef34f04c62b4992ff4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: Este trabalho tem como objetivo primordial discutir possibilidades de ensino-aprendizado da Capoeira na educação física escolar compreendendo-a como uma linguagem na qual sua gestualidade, sua musicalidade, seus aspectos históricos e sua ritualidade compõem um acervo a ser apropriado pelos alunos de modo que eles possam compreendê-la e praticá-la. Nessa perspectiva, foi desenvolvida uma pesquisa que englobou um trabalho de campo dividido em duas fases: 1º. Curso de Capoeira para professores de educação física que atuam no ensino fundamental da rede pública da Região Metropolitana de Campinas; 2ª. Acompanhamento das aulas de Capoeira desenvolvidas por duas professoras no contexto da educação física, para turmas de 1ª a 4ª série do ensino fundamental. A análise do curso de Capoeira para professores procurou focalizar as apropriações realizadas por eles, as interrelações que poderiam ser estabelecidas com sua prática docente e em que medida os assuntos tratados no curso foram suficientes para que desenvolvessem as aulas de Capoeira nas escolas. O acompanhamento e análise das aulas de educação física que abordaram a Capoeira tiveram como finalidade perceber como as professoras trabalharam com os conhecimentos estudados no curso e de que forma esses conhecimentos foram tratados junto aos seus alunos. Como considerações finais da pesquisa, pode-se afirmar que o curso de Capoeira para os professores foi bastante positivo, pois eles tiveram contato com os diferentes aspectos dessa manifestação permitindo que se apropriassem de um repertório básico de gestos, músicas, elementos históricos, lendas e rituais que constituem a Capoeira. Dois pontos que merecem destaque na análise dos resultados gerados nesse curso são: a participação de um Mestre de Capoeira na mediação do processo de ensino-aprendizado dos professores, fato que se mostrou bastante positivo; e a insegurança demonstrada por alguns professores para ministrar o conhecimento Capoeira em suas aulas, que suscitou reflexões sobre o ensino-aprendizado relativo a esse conhecimento na formação continuada de professores de educação física. No que se refere às aulas de educação física que abordaram o tema Capoeira nas escolas, foi percebido que o trabalho das professoras analisadas teve uma boa repercussão entre a maioria dos alunos permitindo que compreendessem a Capoeira como uma linguagem composta por gestos, histórias, músicas e ritos. Porém, notou-se que o seu ensino-aprendizado poderia ser aprofundado se fosse realizado conjuntamente com outras disciplinas, em especial, com o componente curricular: Arte. Por fim, constatou-se que a Capoeira pode constituir-se como um conhecimento relevante que possui um acervo gestual próprio e específico a ser tratado na educação física escolar privilegiando a abordagem das produções culturais do povo brasileiro, merecendo, portanto, ser estudado nas escolas. / Abstract: This work has as the main objective to discuss possibilities of Capoeira's teach-learning on school physical education understanding it like a language which the gestuality, musicality, historical aspects and the rituality make up a collection to be appropriate for the way that students could understand and practice. In this perspective a search was developed that involved a field work divided in two steps: 1st Capoeira's course to physical education that works for public elementary school in the Metropolitan Region of Campinas; 2nd Follow up of Capoeira classes developing by two teachers in the context of physical education classes from 1st to the 4th grade of basic school. The analysis of Capoeira's course for teachers looked for focalized the appropriation realized for it, the inter-relations that could be established with the professor practice and how the subjects discussed at the course had been enough to developing Capoeira classes at schools. The physical education classes follow up and analysis that deal with Capoeira had the aim of to realize how teachers work with the course's knowledge and how this knowledge was discussed with your students. To sum up the search I can say that Capoeira's course for teachers was very positive because they had contact with different aspects of this manifestation allowing that they appropriate of a basic gesture, music, historic elements, legends and ritual amount that Capoeira consists. However, there were two points that deserves prominence in the analysis of the results generated in this course: a Capoeira's Masters involvement in the teachers teach-learning process, this was a very positive attitude and the insecurity showed by some teachers to teach the knowledge about Capoeira in their classes, this cause a reflect on how to be occur the teach-learning about this knowledge in the continued formation of physical education's teachers. Talking about physical education classes that deal with Capoeira at the schools was realized that the teachers analyzed had a good repercussion for the most of students allowing Capoeira comprehension like a language consists of gestures, histories, music and ritual. Than realized that the teach- learning could be deeper if was make with others subjects, especially, with the grade of Arts. Finally, one evidence that Capoeira can be a relevant knowledge that possesses a proper and specific gestures amount to be treated on school physical education privileging the boarding of the cultural productions of the Brazilian people deserving to be studied in the schools. / Doutorado / Educação, Conhecimento, Linguagem e Arte / Doutor em Educação

Judgement of personality based on recordings of dance and gait (obtained using Motion Capture) This study raises the question if it is possible to assess personality traits based on body movement while dancing and walking if we isolate movement from other non-verbal cues. The theoretical part of the study lists theoretical concepts associated with this question and summarizes previous research on the subject. The main part of this study is empirical research: the movement of 21 women was filmed using Motion Capture technology which captures human movement by recording the coordinates of key segments of the body. A virtual female character was used to re-create the movement of the research participants. The resulting footage was then presented to 187 raters, who scored segments of it on two sets of personality scales. The comparison of the raters' scores and self-assesed personality of the participant is subject to the analytical part of this study. The results showed several correlations between assesments of personality traits and self-assesed personality traits, but those were never the same traits (i. e. extraversion was never recognized as extraversion, but possibly manifested itself thorugh ratings of other traits). We also found several more general factors on which the raters' assessments of...

This thesis aims to create an easy to play exergame that can be used by office workers in theirday-to-day work to battle the long-term consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. A sedentarylifestyle can lead to serious health risks such as obesity and diabetes. This gives exergames anopportunity to be implemented in the daily life of the affected. Exergames have evolved frombeing solely playable from their own console such as Wii or Xbox Kinect to only needing a webcamera, making it accessible and portable for office workers and others all around the globe. Theonly thing left is the actual exergames themselves. The goal of this thesis is to expand an existinglibrary of exergames with a unique boxing game. The research questions are as follows, 1: Howshould the game be designed to incite large body movements? 2: How will achieving higherscores impact the players' movement? Answering research question one will involve a lot of trialand error and creative thinking to come up with a solution that answers the question but alsofeels good to play. Research question two will require user data collected during the gameplay tobe analyzed to see relations between the total movement and the total score. Tracking elbows todetect whether a cube is hit as well as having cubes always spawn on opposite sides is anefficient way to incite large body movements as the player needs to rotate the entire upper bodyand reach further than tracking the wrists would have required. The analyzed user data showedthat there was a linear relation between achieving a higher score and the total movementexercised during the game. Gaps between the right-hand elbow and left-hand elbows’ totalmovement were also found.