Doctor of Philosophy / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Amber V. Vennum / Sexual desire is important to personal and relational well-being but inevitably declines over time in committed relationships. Individuals, further, commonly report times when they desire more or less sex than their partners (desire discrepancy) which is negatively associated with both relationship and sexual satisfaction. How partner’s make meaning out of (i.e., attributions about their partner’s lower desire for sex) and respond (pursue, withdraw or engage) to moments of discrepant desire is likely influenced by the extent to which partners are able to maintain a clear sense of self in the context of physical and emotional closeness (i.e., their level of differentiation), although this has yet to be tested. Through two studies, I explored the types of attributions and behaviors in response to desire discrepancies and how negative attributions and behaviors mediate the link between differentiation and sexual desire. Specifically in Study 1, I analyzed open-ended responses from 463 participants, using deductive content analysis to examine types of negative attributions and behaviors in response to moments of desire discrepancy. In Study 2, using the findings from Study 1, I developed items to quantitatively measure specific negative attributions and behaviors in response to desire discrepancies. Using a sample of 511 participants, I refined the factor structure of the Desire Discrepancy Attributions and Behaviors Scale and used a path analysis to examine how differentiation is associated with sexual desire both directly and indirectly through negative attributions, emotions, and behaviors (pursue-withdraw). Results indicated that an individual’s level of differentiation is positively associated with sexual desire and this link is significantly mediated by negative attributions and certain negative behaviors. The clinical implications and areas for future research based on the findings of this study are discussed.

Doctor of Philosophy / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Amber V. Vennum / Sexual desire is important to personal and relational well-being but inevitably declines over time in committed relationships. Individuals, further, commonly report times when they desire more or less sex than their partners (desire discrepancy) which is negatively associated with both relationship and sexual satisfaction. How partner’s make meaning out of (i.e., attributions about their partner’s lower desire for sex) and respond (pursue, withdraw or engage) to moments of discrepant desire is likely influenced by the extent to which partners are able to maintain a clear sense of self in the context of physical and emotional closeness (i.e., their level of differentiation), although this has yet to be tested. Through two studies, I explored the types of attributions and behaviors in response to desire discrepancies and how negative attributions and behaviors mediate the link between differentiation and sexual desire. Specifically in Study 1, I analyzed open-ended responses from 463 participants, using deductive content analysis to examine types of negative attributions and behaviors in response to moments of desire discrepancy. In Study 2, using the findings from Study 1, I developed items to quantitatively measure specific negative attributions and behaviors in response to desire discrepancies. Using a sample of 511 participants, I refined the factor structure of the Desire Discrepancy Attributions and Behaviors Scale and used a path analysis to examine how differentiation is associated with sexual desire both directly and indirectly through negative attributions, emotions, and behaviors (pursue-withdraw). Results indicated that an individual’s level of differentiation is positively associated with sexual desire and this link is significantly mediated by negative attributions and certain negative behaviors. The clinical implications and areas for future research based on the findings of this study are discussed.

Procrastination has been a concept that has recently gained attention. Current research has provided data that suggests there is a positive relationship between committed action (goal setting) and procrastination (Gagnon, Dionne, & Pychyl, 2016). This study had collected data from self-report only using a procrastination scale that has been globally validated (Steel, 2010). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) interacts with a person’s psychological flexibility, which can be described as the ability to contact the present moment and then adapt to changes in that moment (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2011). Committed action is just part of the six components that make up ACT. Committed action as a concept is concerned with the goals we take on a daily basis that bring us closer to our values. It stands to reason, that the more a person commits to these actions, the less they might procrastinate. The current study extends the existing literature by exploring the possible effect committed action (goal setting) sessions may have on the relationship between procrastination and committed action by examining discussion question turn in across two groups. The outcomes of this analysis may lend to the literature concerning developing a more effective classroom setting (Bijou, 1970). The current study’s purpose is then to increase the level of understanding we have concerning procrastination through a committed action intervention.

The purpose of the current study is to evaluate to determine whether or not two components of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, committed actions and values, would have an impact on decreasing potential academic procrastination and increasing minutes work engagement (Hayes et al., 2001). Using a concurrent multiple baseline design, three participants recorded schoolwork activity in minutes throughout the study. The two interventions consisted of one phase where participants identified and acted in accordance with their personal values. The second intervention participants identified, created and applied S.M.A.R.T. goals to their daily lives (Muñoz-Olano & Hurtado-Parrado, 2017). Two participants had recorded an increase in minutes worked daily (Covington, 2000). Implications of these results and future research is discussed. Keywords: academic procrastination, values, S.M.A.R.T. goals, committed actions, ACT

En s’engageant massivement dans l’affaire Dreyfus, les écrivains n’ont pas seulement redéfini les formes de l’engagement, ils ont aussi mis leur plume au service d’une cause politique. Des articles écrits au cœur de la polémique aux romans inspirés de l’affaire, l’affaire Dreyfus est donc devenue un objet littéraire, interrogeant la frontière et les relations entre l’Histoire et la fiction. L’affaire Dreyfus a tout d’abord été une prise de conscience collective construite autour d’un discours idéologique sous-jacent. Les années qui ont précédé l’affaire ont été marquées par la genèse de cette bataille littéraire : la mise en place des discours idéologiques qui allaient s’affronter, l’émergence des formes de la mobilisation collective qui allaient servir au mouvement des intellectuels ont créé le terrain sur lequel l’affaire Dreyfus a eu lieu. Au cœur des événements, ce sont essentiellement les témoignages privés qui révèlent l’impact de l’affaire dans le milieu des écrivains : un mouvement qui a bouleversé la société littéraire jusque dans ses cercles intimes, dont la force de mobilisation ne laissait que peu de place aux voix dissidentes. La dimension collective de cette mobilisation a par ailleurs directement influencé le texte de l’affaire Dreyfus : dessinant entre les discours polémiques un intertexte à la fois idéologique et stylistique, les écrivains ont construit au croisement de leurs articles de combat une rhétorique dreyfusarde. Prolongeant cette vision littéraire collective, les œuvres de fiction ont donné une postérité littéraire à l’affaire Dreyfus au confluent des différents regards et sensibilités des écrivains / Through their massive commitment in the Dreyfus Affair, French writers have not only redefined the ways of commitment, they have also used their writing as a weapon to defend their political cause. From the articles written during the battle to the novels based on the Affair, the Dreyfus Affair has thus become a litterary object, questionning the frontier between History and Fiction. The Affair was a case of collective awareness linked to an underlying ideological debate. This litterary battle was born before the actual Affair began : the writers defined the main guidelines of the ideological debate and employed the means of collective mobilization, creating the background in which the Dreyfus Affair took place. During the battle itself, they privately expressed how much the Affair turned the litterary world upside down, leaving little room for dissident voices. The collective aspect of the mobilization has moreover directly influenced the Dreyfus littérature : creating between the lines of the debate an ideological and rhetorical unity, French writers have built this public controversy over common references. Influenced by this collective litterary vision, the fiction works based on the Affair gave it a litterary posterity at the crossroads of different sensitivities

Romancier, essayiste, ancien secrétaire général de la Asociación Colegial de Escritores de España, Andrés Sorel (Ségovie, 1937) est surtout connu pour son activité de militant antifranquiste. Il a pourtant publié à ce jour quinze romans et un nombre considérable d'essais. Depuis les années soixante, toute son œuvre est écrite sous le signe de l’engagement, ce qui peut expliquer en partie une forme de mise à l'écart du marché éditorial. Cette thèse vise à analyser comment sa dissidence intellectuelle contre l’idéologie dominante se construit dans sa production romanesque. On tentera de définir les contours de l’engagement, que ce soit à travers son rôle d’intellectuel, dans ses aspects les plus controversés, ou à travers les caractéristiques de son écriture engagée, dans sa dimension textuelle et avant-textuelle. On analysera également comment les marqueurs de l’engagement se développent dans la construction du narrateur, de ses personnages et de la temporalité. En prêtant toujours une attention égale au contenu idéologique et à sa mise en forme, Sorel conçoit l’écriture comme un exercice de réhabilitation de la mémoire des vaincus, s'inscrivant ainsi – et d'une certaine façon inaugurant – le « roman de la mémoire » qui domine le panorama littéraire de l'Espagne de ces deux dernières décennies. Il s’agit donc d'analyser la tension dialectique qui se joue entre un récit fictionnel et des modalités qui empruntent au factuel, notamment à l'essai. À travers la pluralité des témoignages littéraires, les textes de Sorel cherchent ainsi à faire émerger les vérités cachées et à redonner une voix à ceux qui en ont été privés. On étudiera par quels dispositifs formels ses récits constituent un contre-pouvoir contre le discours dominant des régimes autoritaires, totalitaires ou démocratiques. En dernier lieu, on analysera la dimension pragmatique d’une écriture qui prétend transformer la réalité, pour saisir le degré de visibilité de son discours littéraire et de sa présence médiatique, ainsi que la façon dont ses romans sont perçus par la critique littéraire. On cherchera enfin à esquisser les typologies du lecteur véhiculées par le récit, que ce soit pour les légitimer ou pour les rejeter. / As a novelist, essayist, and former general secretary of the Asociación Colegial de Escritores de España, Andrés Sorel (Segovia, 1937) is best known for his anti-Franco activism. To this day, he has published fifteen novels and a considerable number of essays. Since the nineteen sixties, all his work has been written under the sign of commitment, which may partly explain his side-lining from the editorial market. This thesis aims at analyzing how his intellectual disagreement with the dominant ideology is built up in his novelistic production. We will attempt to define the outlines of commitment, whether through his part as an intellectual, in its most controversial aspects, or through the characteristics of his committed writing, in its textual and pre-textual dimension. We will also analyze how the markers of commitment develop in the construction of the narrator, his characters and temporality. By always paying equal attention to the ideological content and its shaping, Sorel conceives writing as an exercise of rehabilitation of the memory of the vanquished, thus becoming a part of – and in a certain way launching – the "novel of the memory" which has dominated the literary panorama of Spain for the last two decades. It is therefore a matter of analyzing the dialectical tension that is played out between a fictional narrative and a method that uses factual elements, especially experimenting. Through the plurality of literary testimonies, Sorel’s texts seek to bring out the hidden truths and give a voice to those who have been deprived of it. We will study the formal devices through which his stories establish a counter power against the dominant discourse of authoritarian, totalitarian or democratic regimes. Lastly, we will analyze the pragmatic dimension of a writing style that claims to transform reality, in order to grasp the degree of visibility of its literary discourse and its media presence, as well as the way in which his novels are perceived by literary criticism. We will finally try to outline the reader types conveyed by the story, whether to legitimize or to reject them.

Negalima teigti, kad nužudymą padarę asmenys ir jų nusikaltimas nesulauktų tyrėjų dėmesio. Atvirkščiai, tiek Lietuvoje, tiek pasaulyje šia problema užsiiminėjo daugelis labiausiai žinomų kriminologų, buvo atliekami platūs tyrimai, buvo parašyta daug darbų, taip pat ir padariusių didelį poveikį visai kriminologijos mokslo raidai. Mūsų tyrimas pirmą kartą vykdė sisteminę nužudymo veiksnių, apibūdintų pagrindinėse kriminologinėse teorijose ir išaiškintų vykdant tyrimus kitose šalyse, tyrimą Lietuvoje. Disertacijoje pirmą kartą atlikta sisteminė nužudymų teorijų ir tyrimo rezultatų apžvalga ir sisteminimas, ištirtas jų pasireiškimas Lietuvos sąlygomis. Disertacijos indėlis į bendrąjį kriminologijos mokslo vystymąsi siejamas su asmenų, padariusių nužudymus, raidos retrospektyvos tyrimu bei jų asmenybės raidos ir ypatumais įvairiais vystymosi etapais išaiškinimu. Disertaciniame darbe išnagrinėta žudikų gyvenimo retrospektyva, įvertintas jų gyvenimo kelias, išskiriami esminiai jų gyvenimo kelio faktoriai, turintys įtakos galimam nužudymų padarymui, retrospektyvinio tyrimo metu gautų duomenų pagrindu sukurta asmenų, padariusiųjų nužudymus (žudikų), tipologija. Tipologijos pagrindu gali būti kuriamos smurtinio nusikalstamo elgesio prevencijos programos. Tyrimo rezultatai gali būti panaudoti tolesniems šios srities tyrimams kitų nusikaltėlių atžvilgiu, taip pat organizuojant asmenų, padariusių nužudymus ir nuteistų, resocializaciją. / One could not state that persons who committed murders and their crimes have been left aside without any regard of investigators. On the contrary, both in Lithuania and in the world this problem has been analyzed by a number of well-known criminologists, wide studies have been performed, many works written, including those with a great impact on the development of the criminology. Within this research, murder factors described in the major criminological theories and cleared in studies of other countries are systematically analyzed in Lithuania for the first time. The systematic review of murder theories and research results was performed in the dissertation for the first time; also their exhibition under Lithuanian conditions was examined. The contribution of the dissertation into the general development of the criminology is referable to a murderer, the analysis of the development retrospective and the exposition of their personal development and peculiarities in different stages of the development. The dissertation analyzes the life retrospective of murderers, also assesses their lives, and distinguishes key factors of their lives leading to a likely murder. The murderer typology was created on the grounds of the data of the retrospective study. This typology may be employed in creating the prevention programme of violent criminal behaviour. The study results can be used in further researches of this field in respect of other criminals, also in the resocialization of... [to full text]

The general area of developing, applying and studying new and parallel models of computation is motivated by a need to overcome the limits of current Von Neumann based architectures. A key area of research in understanding how new technology can be applied to Al problem solving is through using logic languages. Logic programming languages provide a procedural interpretation for sentences of first order logic, mainly using a class of sentence called Horn clauses. Horn clauses are open to a wide variety of parallel evaluation models, giving possible speed-ups and alternative parallel models of execution. The research in this thesis is concerned with investigating one class of parallel logic language known as Committed Choice Non-Deterministic languages. The investigation considers the inherent parallel behaviour of Al programs implemented in the CCND languages and the effect of various alternatives open to language implementors and designers. This is achieved by considering how various Al programming techniques map to alternative language designs and the behaviour of these Al programs on alternative implementations of these languages. The aim of this work is to investigate how Al programming techniques are affected (qualitatively and quantitatively) by particular language features. The qualitative evaluation is a consideration of how Al programs can be mapped to the various CCND languages. The applications considered are general search algorithms (which focuses on the committed choice nature of the languages); chart parsing (which focuses on the differences between safe and unsafe languages); and meta-level inference (which focuses on the difference between deep and flat languages). The quantitative evaluation considers the inherent parallel behaviour of the resulting programs and the effect of possible implementation alternatives on this inherent behaviour. To carry out this quantitative evaluation we have implemented a system which improves on the current interpreter based evaluation systems. The new system has an improved model of execution and allows several

Syftet med studien var att undersöka om medarbetare och chefer har samma bild av systematiskt kvalitetsarbete samt hur deras upplevelse av delaktighet och engagerat ledarskap är i det systematiska kvalitetsarbetet.   Studien utgick från en hermeneutisk och deduktiv ansats. Insamling av data har varit utifrån kvantitativ design med en survey-undersökning baserat på studiens teoretiska ramverk, syfte och frågeställningar.   Resultatet i studien baseras på 53 respondenters svar varav sju enhetschefer och 46 medarbetare från en verksamhet inom socialt arbete. Resultatet har visat att bilden av systematiskt kvalitetsarbete är olika då det finns skillnader i om det görs regelbundna egenkontroller, mätningar av kundnöjdhet och om verksamheten följer socialstyrelsens SOSFS 2011:9. Båda grupperna upplevde delaktighet med undantag för att få tid till samarbete med kollegor och upplevelse i att ha fullt ansvar för kvalitetsarbetet. Enhetschefer upplever att det finns ett engagerat ledarskap medans medarbetare inte upplever att det finns i lika hög grad. / The purpose of the study was to investigate whether employees and managers have the same picture of systematic quality work as well as how their experience of participation and committed leadership is in the systematic quality work.   The study was based on a hermeneutic and deductive approach. Collection of data has been based on quantitative design with a survey study based on the study's theoretical framework, purpose and issues. The results of the study are based on 53 respondents' responses, of which seven are managers and 46 employees from a organization in social. The result has shown that the picture of systematic quality work is different as there are differences in whether regular self-checks, customer satisfaction measurements and whether the business follows the Socialstyrelsens SOSFS 2011: 9. Both groups experienced participation with the exception of allowing time for collaboration with colleagues and experience in having full responsibility for the quality work. Unit managers feel that there is committed leadership while employees do not feel that there is an equal degree. / <p>2020-06-26</p>

Nombreux sont les écrivains malgaches francophones vivant en exil, tirant de cette expérience personnelle leur sujet ; un itinéraire culturel dont le point de départ est le bilinguisme et la volonté d’échapper à l’embrigadement que suggère l’insularité. Cela donne au texte le cachet de l’œuvre accomplie: liant à la fois la volonté d’aller à la rencontre de l’autre et la quête de soi, livrant de fait, l’intime, le profond à la surface, à l’universel. L’écriture est perçue et vécue en tant qu’acte cathartique contre l’égarement de l’ego sans doute mais surtout de l’environnement soumis, offert et dévoilé à l’écrivain ; une fin utopique peut-être, mais néanmoins essentielle pour celui qui entrevoit la création littéraire comme une épée pourfendant les faiblesses de la réalité, servant à se rapprocher, à entrevoir et à modeler les caractéristiques de son monde idéal. Avec, évidemment, la complicité du double imaginaire du créateur, ce jumeau sombre par lequel Faulkner désigne le narrateur. Se dégage la difficulté de vivre avec l’autre, une coexistence annonciatrice d’un phénomène de scission, d’assimilation, pour une mise en exergue de l’espace et de la psychologie des protagonistes: complexité et dialectique du caractère où révolte et soumission, héroïsme et apathie, s’entremêlent pour dévoiler l’itinéraire commun et le parcours individuel de leur créateur qui prend le choix de la réalité décadente comme matière de l’inspiration romanesque. En somme, si la littérature malgache d’expression française est fortement enracinée dans la culture malgache, elle met aussi face à une écriture qui constitue un espace de rencontre et de tension avec l’autre, où le français apparaît comme la langue de l’ouverture, salutaire ou non. / Many Malagasy French speaking authors live in exile and make their personal experience their topic ; their personal experience represents a cultural itinerary arising from their bilingualism and their will to escape from regimentation due to insularity. Their personal experience provides to their text the achieved work character, combining their will to meet the other and their will to look for themselves, therefore revealing their depths, their inmost being to the universe. Writing is perceived and experienced as a cathartic action probably against self distraction but chiefly against the distraction of the environment which has been submitted, offered and revealed to the author. This purpose may appear utopian, nevertheless it appears essential for the one who foresees literary creation as a sword assailing the weaknesses of reality in order to get closer, foresee and make the characteristics of his ideal world. This creation occurs obviously with the complicity of the author imaginary double, this dark twin [« jumeau sombre »] by which Mr Faulkner refers to the narrator. From all this it emerges a difficulty to live with the other, a coexistence that forewarns a splitting and assimilating phenomena tending to highlight the space and psychology of protagonists: the complexity and dialectic of the character intermixing rebellion and submission, heroism and apathy finally reveals the common itinerary and individual background of the author who decides to draw his romantic inspiration from the decadent reality. In short if the Malagasy French language literature is deeply rooted into Malagasy culture, it also offers a writing allowing to meet and interact with the other and therefore makes the French language an open-minded language.