This thesis attempts to show that the present ambiguity in the use of the term "image" causes serious confusion of thought, both in Literary Criticism and in Psychological research concerned with Literature. Part I. is an investigation of the causes of this ambiguity. It consists of an historical survey of the use of the term in English Rhetoric, Criticism and Psychology, prefaced by a consideration of the concept "image" in Greek and Latin writers. The claim is made, that the confusion does not become serious till the Nineteenth Century, when the use of image as meaning figure of speech first became general. Part II. is an account of experiments investigating the use of sensory images in figures of speech by subjects who were not imageless thinkers. Experiment I A tested the subjects' use of spontaneous analogy by means of coloured shapes drawn or verbally described after an interval for forgetting. In I B the material consisted of black shapes with inappropriate titles compelling the subject to accept or refuse the analogy therein suggested. An analogy was developed in different ways through various stages: overt comparison and consequent oscillation of attention; "unter-schiebung" involving partial unification of the images representing the objects compared; identification or coalescence of images implying unification of attention. Experiments II A and B investigated the subjects' use of images in the apprehension of figures of speech in Literature by means of introspective records. Such an apprehension demanded Imaginal activity (similar to that noted in Experiments I A and B) which attempts to eliminate the necessity for oscillation of attention. Some subjects found satisfaction in unifying the images involved, others by eliminating one element in the analogy. The adequate apprehension of the figure of speech demanded an organisation or configuration of images, modified, consciously or sub-consciously according to a definite end.

Section I reports the findings of previous investigators into problems of speed of performance on mental tests and the effect of distraction on speed and accuracy of performance. The majority of the subjects of the investigation were psychoneurotic in-patients and the tests used were progressive Matrices, the Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale, the Thematic Apperception Test and the Porteus Mazes. Section II deals with the scores obtained by individuals suffering from different forms of psychoneurotic illness on Progressive Matrices and the Mill Hill Vocabulary Scale and the ratio between these scores when Progressive Matrices is used with and without a time limit. The main finding is that anxiety states, reactive depressives and obsessionals have a considerably higher general intellectual ability: vocabulary ratio than psychopaths and hysterics. This result is contrary to previous findings. An explanation of this difference, partly in terms of speed of performance, is offered. Section III is concerned principally with the productivity and fluency of subjects on the Thematic Apperception Test and subsidiarity with analysis of the content of their stories. Section IV deals with temperamental differences, particularly with regard to speed of performance, on the Porteus Mazes. Experiments are reported in Section V which were designed to determine the effect of distraction and of electroconvulsive therapy on Maze performance in general and on psychomotor retardation in particular. Section VI interrelates the results reported in the preceding Sections and shows that there are significant though relatively low, correlations between the speeds of performance on the tests used. The main concern has, however, been with the significance of the findings for diagnostic and psychodynamic purposes rather than with the existence or non-existence of a general speed factor. Section VII contains a general summary together with the main conclusions to be drawn from the investigation.

<p> Vectors, defined by distance and direction information, can represent the spatial relationships between reference objects and target objects. Reference boundaries help to define the space and are mathematically definable by lines, while reference landmarks define specific locations and are definable by points. How do vectors, containing two sources of information relate references and targets? Congruent with neuroscientific evidence we argued that humans rely differentially on distance and direction information when recalling the spatial location of objects. We showed that direction information was better encoded or remembered than distance information relative to landmarks, and that distance information was better encoded or remembered than direction information relative to boundaries. We proposed that the type of reference influences the fidelity of distance and direction information in the spatial representation. </p><p>

The aim of the study was to examine the relationships between 'rigidity', particularly as shown by older people, and the ability to adapt to Decimal Currency. The first part of this thesis discusses the age changes with respect to rigidity and flexibility which have been found in previous experimental work. Because of the slowing of central neural processes and because of the less efficient use of stimulus redundancy there is a lowering of the levels of complexity which can be dealt with effectively. These changes result in a decline in the ability to deal logically with new stimuli and therefore a decrease in practical adaptability. People will also be more rigid at any age if they are less proficient at the cognitive and perceptual abstract manipulation of information. Thirdly, rigidity may be due to attitudes and personality e.g. living to a routine, rejecting new ideas and adhering to the conventional way of doing things. The tests chosen for measuring rigidity and Decimal adaptation were administered to an adult subject sample. The results showed that logical reasoning was the most important factor in adaptation. Feelings of insecurity and resistence to change were important personality factors. Age itself was not an effective variable, and older people were only less adaptable if they were less able on abstract intelligence or higher on the rigidity measures.

Experiments were conducted to examine vigilance during sleep and to test some aspects of Snyder's (1966) theory of dreaming. This theory suggests that the function of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep is to activate the organism and produce a sentinel awakening at the end of the REM period for the purpose of vigilance. Evidence was found that alert wakings occurred in human Ss throughout sleep from all types of sleep. The rate of waking was highest in REM sleep and a majority of the awakenings from REM sleep occurred at the end of periods of REM sleep. Awakening latency in REM sleep was significantly less than in stage 2 when using an overt response criterion of waking. This was not true however for an EEG criterion of awakening. This supports the notion that during REM sleep, response threshold rather than perceptual threshold, is reduced when compared with stage 2. Studies of performance after arousal indicated that, on some tasks, performance after REM sleep was superior to trials after stage 2 sleep. However, the differences in performance were small when time of night effects were controlled, performance after REM sleep was superior to trials after slow wave sleep, hut the differences were not as large as had been expected. The short awakening latency in REM sleep and better performance after REM sleep supports Snyder's notion that REM sleep provides activation in preparation for vigilant "behaviour. The data on spontaneous awakenings also support his suggestion that an important aspect of the REM sleep phenomenon is the "brief awakening that occurs at the end of REM sleep. While several aspects of Snyder's theory are supported, the results are significant rather than overwhelming, and one is left with the impression that human REM sleep is not completely explained by a vigilance model.

Following the work of Dixon (1971) some experiments were performed to investigate two aspects of perception without awareness, the handling of emotional stimuli and the relation between subliminal perception and selective attention. Apparatus was designed which utilized the phenomenon of binocular rivalry, so that an image (above identification level when presented alone) could be masked by a brighter image to the other eye and thus perceived without awareness. An experiment of Smith et al. (1959) was replicated with improved controls. It was shown that responses to words presented outside of awareness tended to be meaning-related, the same words yielding structure-related responses when presented supraliminally. Spence (1967) proposed an explanation of perceptual defence in terms of the interaction of arousal and memory. Some experimental support for this idea was obtained. Further experiments on the handling of emotive stimuli led to the conclusion that individual differences in perception are an important factor to be controlled. Similarly, further to Brown (1965,1971) it was concluded that the stimulus characteristics of emotive words used as experimental stimuli need to be better controlled. An explanation of word association phenomena in terms of the interaction of arousal and attention was discussed and the perceptual defence and WAT situations contrasted. Finally, two brief experiments illustrated aspects of the selective attention paradigm relevant to perception without awareness: pre-attentive processes (Neisser, 1967) and incidental stimulation (Eagle et al, 1966). Following a review of selective attention experiments, including evidence of unattended channel processing, some tentative proposals were made which might encompass the material presented. Utilizing a model suggested by MacKay (1972) it was proposed that the phenomena of perception without awareness represent the functioning of an early stage in the normal perceptual process essential both to the handling of emotive stimuli and the selection of inputs to awareness.

To increase the high frequency speech information available to the sensory-neural deaf, with low-frequency residual hearing only, a frequency "recoding" device was constructed which "shifts" a selected band of high frequency speech information and superimposes it on the low frequency range, in a manner designed to maintain the 'speechlike' nature of the "recoded" input signal (patent applied for). The design and evaluation of the "recoding" device are considered in the context of factors likely to be involved in the acquisition of "recoded" speech, e.g. the separation of sounds that are ' speechlike' from those that are not, by the ear-brain system, the interaction in speech processing of auditory, visual and kinaesthetic cues, and the influence of already established strategies for processing "non-recoded" speech on the acquisition of altered strategies for "recoded" speech. The 'speechlike' nature and the utility of the "recoding" were assessed (a) in a simulation study involving normal hearing subjects under simulated deafness conditions, and (b) in a validation study with sensory-neural deaf children. In the simulation study significant improvements in the ability to imitate CVC nonsense syllables were brought about both by "recoding" and by visual cues (from articulatory movements) without formal discrimination or3imitation training, the "recoded" high frequency information contributing in particular to imitation of "manner" and "place" of articulation of phonemes with major energy components in the "recoded" High Frequency region (HF phonemes). Further, in the validation study, "recoding" produced a significant improvement in the articulation learning of HF phonemes, indicating (together with the simulation study findings) that the "recoded" signals were sufficiently 'speechlike' to be of use to the ear-brain system in speech processing. It was concluded therefore that the generality of utility (to the hearing impaired) of the "recoding" mode proposed, merits serious further investigation.

This thesis is concerned with influences of noise and time of day on test expectations in recall and recognition. In Chapter 1 the similarities and differences between recall and recognition memory are discussed, while the literature on noise and time of day is reviewed in Chapter 2. In the following chapters relevant information from the memory and arousal area are combined to form a theoretical and experimental framework. The first four studies examine recall and recognition performance following recall and recognition instructions. It was found that recall-instructed subjects produced a significantly larger primacy effect than recognition-instructed subjects on tests of ordered and free recall (Experiment 1 and 2). The results of the two subsequent experiments suggest this is mediated by differences occurring at input, and is due to increased rehearsal by subjects expecting a recall test. In Experiments 5 and 6 time of day was manipulated and an interaction was obtained between time of day and instruction suggesting that the differences in strategies between recall and recognition test expectations are enhanced in the afternoon. At this time recall-instructed subjects performed better and recognition-instructed subjects performed worse on a test of free recall. A similar interaction, but between noise and instruction was obtained in Experiment 7. The results of Experiment 8 further support the notion that noise may reduce the amount of rehearsal engaged in by subjects expecting a recognition test. In the final study subjects performed a semantic orienting task and noise improved the recall of highly associated items while impairing the recall of nonassociated words. This suggests noise may enhance semantic processing when this is required by the task. It is concluded that the effect of noise and time of day are, at least in part, determined by the nature of the task requirements.

Chapter 1 reviews the literature on the effects of noise within three memory paradigms. This review shows a general trend indicating that noise increases reliance on order information. Chapter 2 thus attempts to establish a relationship between the recall of order information and the use of phonological coding and suggests that noise, in some way, interferes with the efficiency with which phonological codes are used. Chapters 3--6 then describe ten experiments carried out to test this hypothesis. Experiments 1--4 showed that noise improved serial order recall of acoustically similar letters and that noise effects were more likely to be observed in conditions where rehearsal depended on some internally stored representation rather than being guided by visually available items. Experiments 5 and 6 investigated the effects of noise on recognition and a free recall task and generally found no effects. Experiments 7 and 8 showed that overt rehearsal of items in noise was slower. Experiment 9 then showed that slowing of rehearsal had different consequences on memory performance depending on the spoken length of the to-be-remembered items. A model was described to explain the improvement in recall of acoustically similar items presented in noise, as well as the impairment in recall of dissimilar items and of words of long spoken length. Experiment 10 showed that retrieval of phonological codes was impaired by noise while no effects were observed on the retrieval of semantic codes. This was suggested as being responsible for the preference which subjects show for adopting maintenance rehearsal strategies, which may in turn produce the effects observed in noise of improvement in order recall but impairment in semantic processing. The final chapter integrates the above evidence in an attempt to explain the strategic nature of noise effects on memory performance.

Field independence was described by Witkin et al (1962) as the ability to separate an item perceived from its context. Here most experiments have used visually presented material where the subject was shown a simple geometrical figure and then a complex one containing the simple figure as part of it: the subject's task was to find and point out where the simple figure was hidden. Recent work has suggested that the skills involved in Witkin's tests might be associated with particular cultural backgrounds. This extension of Witkin's theory of field independence by Wober linked visual phenomena with those of a social and maturational nature: the ability to separate visual items from their context was shown to be aligned with the development of a sense of personal identity ; the person was considered to be an item set in a context or social field, be it family or society around him: an individual, depending on the way he was socialized as a child, may perceive the world analytically, if he did he was labelled field independent, if not he was field dependent. Intro. p.1.