Learning and experience shape mate preferences in many species. My thesis investigates the role of experience on mating behavior of male and female sailfin mollies (Poecilia latipinna). In the first chapter I explore whether adult experience influences male sailfin molly mate preference for their sexual parasite, the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), and whether experience could account for reproductive character displacement (RCD) of male mate preference in this species. Sailfin males from sympatric populations show a stronger preference for conspecific females over Amazon mollies than do males from allopatric populations. I exposed males from sympatric and allopatric populations to either a sailfin female or an Amazon prior to a mating trial with an Amazon. For the allopatric population, males with recent experience with an Amazon directed fewer mating behaviors towards an Amazon during mating trials than did males with recent experience with a sailfin. Males from the sympatric population, however, performed the same amount of mating behaviors towards an Amazon regardless of experience. Thus adult experience influences mating preferences and suggests that experience may play a role in RCD in this species. In the second chapter I investigate whether a learned sensory bias could influence female mate preferences. Sensory biases that influence mate preferences can arise through selection on the sensory system in foraging and predator detection domains. I tested whether a learned preference originating outside of the mating domain, specifically a color-based food preference, can be transferred to a color-based preference for a male trait. I trained female sailfin mollies to associate either green or blue with food and then tested their preference for animated male sailfins featuring either a blue or green spot. I found that females did not prefer the male with the same color spot to which they had been conditioned. I discuss the problem of learned preference transfer and suggest directions for future research into the role of learning in sensory bias. / text

This dissertation contributes to the literature on resiliency and character strengths. College students (N = 223) were administered questionnaires to determine the hassles they experienced in the last month, as well as their levels of life satisfaction, resiliency, and the four character strengths of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, Gratitude, Humility/Modesty, and Love. Reponses to the Ego Resiliency Scale were used to divide students into the following three groups: resilient, moderate-resilient, and low-resilient. Self-reported levels of life satisfaction, Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, Gratitude, Humility/Modesty, and Love were compared across the three groups to determine whether they were significantly related to resiliency. The results indicate that Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, Gratitude, and Humility/Modesty had a significant relationship with resiliency, but that Love did not. Resilient students' levels of Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence as well as Gratitude were significantly higher than those of low-resilient students. However, resilient students' levels of Humility/Modesty were significantly lower than those of low-resilient students. Although Love was not significantly related to resiliency, the levels of Love for resilient students were relatively higher than those of low-resilient students. Life satisfaction also was significantly related to resiliency. Resilient students' levels of life satisfaction were significantly higher than those of low-resilient students. Gratitude and Love predicted students' levels of life satisfaction. Therefore, Gratitude seems to be the essential character strength related to both resiliency and life satisfaction among college students.

本研究旨在探討高中生的教師品格教學、父母品格教養、批判思考能力、品格信念及品格行為之關係。研究參與者來自台北縣市公立高中二、三年級，有效樣本計538人。本研究採用的研究工具包括「品格行為量表」、「品格信念量表」、「品格教學行為量表」、「父親品格教養行為量表」、「母親品格教養行為量表」及「批判思考測驗—第一級」（CTT-Ⅰ）。資料分析所用的統計方法包括描述統計、單因子多變量變異數分析及線性模式分析。本研究主要發現如下： 1.就學校教師而言，大多身兼導師的國文、英文、數學科老師，對高中生品格影響最為深遠；就一般對象而言，母親及父親對孩子的品格影響最大。 2.不同性別的高中生在品格信念及品格行為上均有顯著差異：在品格信念方面，女生顯著優於男生，尤其在「責任」、「關懷」及「公民性」等指標的信念；在品格行為方面，女生亦顯著優於男生，尤在「值得信賴」、「公平」「關懷」及「公民性」等指標的表現。 3.不同年級的高中生在品格信念及品格行為上沒有顯著差異。 4.不同父母的教育程度的高中生在品格信念及品格行為上沒有顯著差異。 5.高中生品格信念及品格行為會相互影響：亦即品格信念程度愈高者，其本身品格行為表現愈好；品格行為表現愈佳者，擁有的品格信念程度愈高。 6.教師的品格教學行為對高中生的品格信念及品格行為有顯著效果，亦即知覺教師品格教學程度愈高者，其品格信念也愈強，品格行為表現程度也愈佳。 7.父母的品格教養行為對高中生的品格信念及品格行為有顯著效果，亦即知覺父母品格教養程度愈高者，其品格信念也愈強，品格行為表現程度也愈佳。 8.高中生批判思考能力對品格信念和品格行為沒有顯著的正向效果。 9.就高中生品格行為發展之子模式而言，教師品格教學行為及父母品格教養會互動之後，分別對品格信念及品格行為產生直接和間接的影響，且品格信念和品格行為間會相互影響。 最後，本研究依據上述的研究結果進行討論，並提出相關建議以供教師教學、父母教養及後續研究之參考。 / The main purpose of this study was to explore the relationships among teachers’ character teaching, parents’ character parenting, critical-thinking abilities, character beliefs, and character behaviors of high school students. The participants included 538 students sampled from six high schools in Taipei City. The employed instruments in this study were the Inventory of Character Behaviors, the Inventory of Character Beliefs, the Inventory of Character Teaching, the Inventory of Father’s Character Parenting, the Inventory of Mother’s Character Parenting, and the Critical-thinking Test, LevelⅠ. The employed analysis methods included Descriptive Statistics, One-Way Multiple Analysis of Variance, and Structural Equation Modeling. The main findings of this study were as follows: 1.As for school teachers, Chinese, English and Mathematical teachers who usually serve as tutors had the greatest effect on the high school students’ character development; as for general subjects, mothers and fathers had the most profound effect on the high school students’ character development. 2.There were significant gender differences on character beliefs and character behaviors. Specifically, the females outperformed the males in character beliefs, especially in “responsibility”, “caring”, and “citizenship”; moreover, the females outperformed the males in character behaviors, especially in “trust worthiness”, “fairness”, and “citizenship”. 3.There were no significant differences on character beliefs and character behaviors between the second graders and the third graders. 4.There were no significant differences on character beliefs and character behaviors among the three parents’ educational levels. 5.The relationships of character beliefs and character behaviors among the high school students were bi-directional. In other words, those who had stronger character beliefs performed more character behaviors and those who performed more character behaviors had stronger character beliefs. 6.The teachers’ character teaching had significant effects on the high school students’ character beliefs and character behaviors. Specifically, those who perceived higher degree of character teaching had higher character beliefs and performed more character behaviors. 7.The parents’ character teaching had significant effects on the high school students’ character beliefs and character behaviors. Specifically, those who perceived higher degree of character parenting had stronger character beliefs and performed more character behaviors. 8.The high school students’ critical-thinking abilities had no positive effects on their character beliefs and character behaviors. 9.In terms of the Model for the development of high school students’ characters, teachers’ character teaching and parents’ character parenting interactively influenced, both directly and indirectly, the high school students’ character beliefs and character behaviors; meanwhile, character beliefs and character behaviors influence each other. Finally, the researcher proposed some suggestions for educational instructions, parental upbringing, and future studies.

This study, contextualized within the critical debate on Shakespearean dramatic character, examines how the “character effect”— or the audience’s impression of a character’s ontological reality— is produced. Approaching character from the perspective of linguistic pragmatics, I contend that character effects are produced by the counterpoint between characters’ pragmatic use of language and the allegorical meanings that underpin characters’ utterances in a theatrical context. These allegorical meanings, which Shakespeare conveys through his characters to the audience, dialogically interact with characters’ textually or historically scripted roles and converge with their speech to create the impression that characters control language and have extra-textual lives of their own. I thus demonstrate that the interiority ascribed to character is a function of its anteriority. Following the introductory chapter, which lays out the critical history of Shakespearean character and a pragmatic methodology, each of the remaining chapters explores the particular speech habits of a complex and larger-than-life Shakespearean character who is also a self-conscious user of language. Chapter 2 examines how Falstaff’s conversational implicatures produce the character effect of his vitality. Chapter 3 looks at how Cleopatra’s performative use of report creates her sexual charisma. Chapter 4 focuses on how Henry V’s rhetorical argumentation works to create the effect of his moral ambivalence. / Thesis (Ph.D, English) -- Queen's University, 2013-06-28 14:41:27.453

Landscape Character Assessment (LCA) provides a structured approach to identifying the character and distinctiveness about the landscape. It is a tool used to identify what makes a location unique, a set of techniques and procedures used to map differences between landscapes based on their physical, cultural and historical characteristics. Although the UK has committed to assessing all of its landscapes by signing the European Landscape Convention in 2006, only 60% of coverage has been achieved. The majority of LCAs are carried out by professional environment or landscape consultancies rather than ‘in-house’. Geographical Information Systems are increasingly being used to collate and analyse data and produce character maps. This research presents a Spatial Decision Support System (LCA-SDSS) based in ArcGIS 9.3 that can be used to support decision makers in conducting a LCA. The LCA-SDSS provides a method for storing data, a model base for the assessment of Landform, Ground Type, Land Cover & Cultural attributes and a method for the user to interact with the resulting maps. Using the Tamar Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) as a study area the SDSS was developed and tested, resulting in character maps for each stage of the modelling and a final characterisation map. These maps were compared to a LCA conducted by a professional environmental consultant and were found to have produced a good quality assessment as verified by the end user at the Tamar Valley AONB Partnership.

This thesis argues for a reading of Virginia Woolf’s work based on notions of character and characterisation as a primary interpretative perspective. The bulk of Woolf scholarship, particularly in recent years, has not been directed towards the study of character, due to both general theoretical discomfort with the category of character, and a sense that Woolf’s work in particular, as that of a feminist and modernist writer, may not respond well to traditional readings of character. However, Woolf’s exploration of the human self and its relations with other people is best understood by looking at her formal experiments in characterisation. Her writing was consistently engaged with questions of character, as an examination of her early journalism makes clear. In the years before the publication of her first novel, Woolf articulated a broad theory of character in her reviews of contemporary literature and in essays on Gissing and Dostoyevsky. In The Voyage Out, Woolf began a writing career of experiment in character, examining a continuum of character ranging from complete nonidentification to a consuming over-identification. A key element here is the introduction of the notion of the Theophrastan type as an alternative form of fictional characterisation that corresponds to a way of knowing real people. In Jacob’s Room, Woolf continued to focus on the speculative nature of characterisation and its demands for imaginative identification demonstrated by her short story collection Monday & Tuesday. The importance of this issue is clear from the debates she engaged in with Arnold Bennett during the 1920s, a debate re-framed in this paper as focussing on characterisation. Jacob’s Room initiates a quest for an elusive ‘essence’ of character that may, or may not, exist outside of the structuring forms of social life, and may or may not be accessible through speculative imaginative identification. This elusive essence of character is a primary focus of Mrs. Dalloway, a novel which explores the ways the self can be shaped under social pressures into more permanent and stable structures. This is explored in the novel in a series of metaphors circling around treasure and jewels. While alert to the role of exterior factors, including time and memory, the novel maintains at least the possibility that some more internal form of the self exists and can be represented in fiction. This possibility is explored further in Woolf’s short story cycle Mrs. Dalloway’s Party, and leads into To the Lighthouse’s study of character and its ability to represent essential or internal aspects of self, the self as it exists in relation to other selves, and ultimately a projected or created version of character that reconciles this complexity. This is again carried out through the use of a extensive chain of metaphors which function symbolically in the text, and through a meditation on the nature of the relationship between real people and their fictional counterparts. While the novel offers no clear resolution, it gestures towards a type of characterisation, and hence a type of relationship, based on limited understanding and acceptance. This notion is picked up in The Waves, a novel which both explores the continuity of the self as represented by character over time - something that is also important in The Years - and explores the ways that characters can be represented and the implications this has for the types of unity that can, for good or for ill, be achieved. Again, a notion of a limited character, closer in form to caricature than to the whole and rounded characters often associated with Woolf, is proposed by the novel as a possible solution to the problem of character. In Woolf’s last two novels, The Years and Between the Acts, many of these themes reappear, and Woolf simultaneously situates her characters more firmly than ever in a comprehensible physical and social context, and uses them to explore areas where language and rationality cease to function.

Computer graphics is the act of bringing the imagination of creative people to life. It’s something that helps bring out what cannot be sought after in real life and realized through artistic talent and technical skills. For me, computer graphics is a way to tell the stories no one dared to look after and bring to life the characters that help tell these stories in an engaging and uplifting way. This bachelor thesis report is a project seeking the knowledge about the appeal and characterizations of inanimate objects. How to bring the lifeless to life by comparing how the established artists do, and at the end try and recreate my own characters by using the same aspects as they all work towards.

The work under consideration scrutinizes the distortion of Arab character in mass media, literature, and cinematography. This research argues that Western culture systematically and consistently projects grotesque images of Arabs, as rich people supporting terrorism and violence in an innocent world, which contributes to the perception of Arabs as terrorists, rich, greedy, and killers of children. The work illustrates that Arabs are constantly vilified in a variety of ways especially in film and literature. The paper will critically examine two films The Rules of Engagement and Exodus and two novels Broken Bridge and The Pirate. Chapter one serving as the Introduction, each following chapter will be dedicated to the critical examination of each film and novel. Chapter two will focus on both Broken Bridge and Exodus both examine the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the film. Chapter three will examine the novel, The Pirate. Chapter four will analyze The Rules of Engagement. While also summarizing my argument, the conclusion will offer new ways to analyze the misconceptions of Arab stereotypes as depicted in fiction and film.

An actor’s duty to the play is to present the most fully formed and vivid interpretation of the character. To do so, the actor must have an understanding of how that particular character developed their own sense of identity. This should be constructed not from the actor’s personal experience but from an informed imaginative experience founded on research and analysis. As pedagogues we are challenged with attempting to give young actors the skills for such an analysis. I have developed a formula to aid the actor in creating the foundations for such an interpretation founded upon the sociological understanding of identity and symbolic interactivity. I also lay out a plan for a college course designed to teach preprofessional actors this method for character analysis.

This study investigated the Uncanny Valley and whether using stylization and design may mitigate the negative effects of it. A survey was carried out where respondents had to rate a series of images, which where edited to be stylized in progressively higher degrees, in appeal and realism. All levels of stylization saw small gradual decreases in realism, whilst values of appeal remained static until the three last images where it diminished. Possibly there may be a way of designing characters to have a limited degree of realism whilst not evoking the eeriness associated with the Uncanny Valley.