Six experiments were conducted to examine the factors modulating the size of age differences in recollection. The research presented in the current thesis was guided by the notions of self-initiated processing and environmental support. Older and younger adults’ performance in recollection was measured by Jacoby’s (1990) process dissociation procedure (PDP); the age differences as a function of self-initiated processing demands of the task and the amount of support provided to the participants were assessed by manipulating the encoding (Experiments 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3) and retrieval (Experiments 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3) contexts. Experiments 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 examined interactions of aging and encoding contexts. Recollection under baseline conditions (i.e. visually presented words) was contrasted with recollection of items encoded under contexts that are assumed to enhance memory. The results showed differential age-related patterns of benefits from encoding conditions: Presenting pictures with words benefited older adults more than younger adults; word generation benefited both groups equally; and presenting sound effects with visual words benefited younger more than older adults. Experiments 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3 investigated age-related changes in retrieval processes and their interactions with retrieval contexts. In each of the three experiments, some of the test lists were constructed so that participants had to recollect specific aspects of the encoding event to differentiate between the to-be-included and to-be-excluded items, whereas other test lists were constructed so that they only had to recollect general aspects. Older adults showed reduced levels of recollection than younger adults for the high-specificity test lists only (Experiment 3.1). Encoding manipulations improved (Experiment 3.2) or reduced (Experiment 3.3) recollection performance but the effects did not interact with test, whereas DA at retrieval (Experiment 3.3) in younger adults partly mimicked aging. In summary, the six experiments showed that older adults have greater difficulties in spontaneously carrying out distinctive and integrative processes at encoding, and in accessing specific information at retrieval compared to their younger counterparts. These age-related changes further interact with the processing demanded or afforded by the encoding and retrieval conditions.

La tesi consta de:A.- Marc teòric, compost pel capítol I, II, i IIIB.- Context, capítol IVC.- Marc pràctic, amb el capítol VD .- Resultats amb els capítols Vi; VII; VIII; IX; i XE.- BibliografiaAnnexosAlguns dels eixos sobre el que es sustenta la tesi són:- La idea d' infant- Els corrents d'atenció i cura vigents en el món occidental - La importància al respecte dels drets dels infants L'atenció a la infància s'ha de prevees presenta com una forma més de construcció social, ja que la bona qualitat de la mateixa és una garantia pel futur. Així ho han entès els països socialment desenvolupats, front la vulnerabilitat i fragilitat en les que es desenvolupen els infants de les edats petits dels països en vies de desenvolupament.Per prevenir riscos, cal partir de paràmetres de "normalitat", per això s'han analitzat indicadors emprats per mesurar la qualitat dels serveis encara que bona part d'ells estan pensats per donar més pautes de prevenció, s que d'acció.En el treball de camp es descriuen i emmarquen els tres barris de l'Hospitalet en que s'ha centrat l'estudi: Collablanc-Torrassa; El Gornal; Sant Josep En l'anàlisi posterior, es constata que la ciutat en el seu conjunt té força quantitat de centres, serveis, programes, associacions i iniciatives socials per resoldre els problemes immediats que se'ls plantegen.Els àmbits estudiats, són: sanitat; educació serveis socials, disminució immigració i lleure i culturaPer assegurar-ne la coneixença real es va partir de la recollida de dades a diferents agents i emprant instruments variats Es van recollir les opinions de 31 responsables, 116 professionals i de 238 famílies dels centres, servei i programes existents, mitjançant: visites, entrevistes i qüestionaris.Com a conclusions es destaquen- la necessitat d'unificar els missatges que es donen a les famílies en relació amb l'atenció als infants- que les mares continuen tenint protagonisme en les primeres edats dels infants i que la composició pare, mare fill/fills és la predominat en la població analitzada.- que hi ha coincidència en els objectius i activitats que es marquen responsables i professionals es centren en la intervenció directa amb els infants en tots i cadascun dels àmbits analitzats. - les famílies opinen que se les escolta prou i que s'atén bé els infants, compartint la percepció que en tenen responsables i professionals.- les dificultats coincidents és la manca de recursos sobre tot personals per atendre la demanda que cada cop arriba més als centres, serveis i programes de tots els àmbits.- els professionals destaquen la poca possibilitat d'aturar-se a reflexionar i a planificar la tasca amb una mica de perspectiva.- hi ha coincidència a considerar que cal coordinar més i millor les accions que cadascú fa, com una forma immediata de treure el màxim partit als recursos existents.- és manifesta la carència de serveis per atendre la infància de 0 a 3 anys a tota la ciutat i cal repensar algun dels centres, serveis i programes existents i d'optimitzar el funcionament d'alguns altres tant per aquesta franja d'edat, de 3 a 6 anys i de tota la infància en general .La síntesi final fóra que cal considerar la infància com un component actiu del teixit social de la ciutat. Atendre-la com es mereix fóra el millor termòmetre per mesurar les expectatives que vers l'Administració té la ciutadania. / Thesis consists of:A.- Theoretical setting, chapters I, II and III.B.- Context, chapter IVC.- Practical setting, chapter VD.- Results, chapters VI, VII, VIII, IX and XC.- BibliographyAppendicesSome points that the thesis is based are:- The meaning of children- Present-day attention and care in western culture- The importance of respecting children rightsAttention to children must be introduced as another way of social construction, because the quality of this attention is a guarantee for the future. This is the meaning of children attention in countries with a social development. But in countries with a low development, kids are in a situation of vulnerability and fragility.In order to prevent dangers, we must start from the parameters of "normality", and to do that, indicators to measure the quality of the services have been analysed, even though most of them are prepared to give rules of prevention rather than action. This field-work describes and defines three districts in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat: Collblanc-Torrassa, El Gornal and Sant Josep. A subsequent analysis confirms that the city has plenty of centres, services, programs, associations and social initiatives in order to resolve the most immediate problems.The areas studied in the work are: public health, education, social services, diminution, immigration and leisure and culture.To be assured of realistic information the data were collected from different agents and using varied instruments such as opinions of 31 people in position of responsability, 116 professionals and 238 families of the existing centres, services and programs, by visits, interviews and tests.Conclusions which stand out- The necessity to unify the messages that the families receive about the children's care.- Mother still being the protagonist in the first years of children, and the composition father, mother, children is the predominant in the analysed population.- There is a coincidence in the objectives and activities of responsible people and professionals; their objective is a direct intervention with children in all of the areas analysed .- Families think their opinions are valued, and that the children are well cared for. This is the same opinion of people in position of responsibility and professionals.- The coincident difficulties are the lack of resources (particularly of people) to deal with the requests of centres, services and programs of all areas.- Professionals throw into relief the few possibilities to have time to think and to plan the task with a little of perspective.- There is a coincidence to consider that it's necessary a best and better coordination action, that's the way to have the best results of the existing resources.- It's evident the lack of services to attend to children from 0 to 3 years old in the whole city. Some centres, services and programs have to be revised and the use of other centres must be optimised not only for this age but also for the whole childhood.The final conclusion is that infancy must be considered as an active component of our society. Looking after infancy properly would be the best thermometer to measure the expectatives of citizens about the authorities.

The absolute polarization of contextual and tabula rasa urban models has long been advanced, even blatantly promoted, within the discipline. Taken for granted as foils, the exclusive championing and application of context or tabula rasa has only served to undermine the agency of the contemporary city. Producing an ineffectual and one-dimensional duality, cities have been reduced to futilely choose between the old and the new. A city of contradictory extremes, the clash between these concepts is embodied in the urbanism of Shanghai. With the impetus of China’s “Economic Miracle,” a previously unheard of scale and speed of urbanization has been achieved throughout the country with the creation of “instant cities.” Embraced as testing grounds for contemporary urbanism, the characteristics and conditions of the instant cities have been enthusiastically and almost universally adopted, leading to a primacy of tabula rasa and vertical development. Partially transformed by this model of erasure, Shanghai’s urbanism is defined by confrontation as the urban models of the past and present collide. The duality manifest by this conflict compels an examination of the seemingly agonistic roles of context and erasure in the city. The ambition of this thesis is to eliminate such distinctions; the choice between contextual and tabula rasa approaches does not work. This false choice produces either a conservative preservationist tourist attraction or a generic and totalizing vertical city. The shallow tendencies of both approaches threaten the city as a multiple and collective space of possibility. By adopting a broader view of context and collapsing present dualities, this project seeks to create complexity and new confrontations through an urban morphology shaped by architecture. Moving beyond contextual preservation and tabula rasa, this thesis seeks to engage and create another reality using that juxtaposition to open new relationships within the city.

No description available.

Practicing the retrieval of some information can lead to poorer retrieval of other related information; this phenomenon is called retrieval-induced forgetting. This pattern has been explained as the result of inhibition of the related information during retrieval practice (Anderson, 2003). A core assumption of this inhibition account is that, to be suppressed, the related information must compete with the target information at the time of practice. Four experiments are reported that test this competition assumption. Two experiments showed that retrieval-induced forgetting did not occur without specific retrieval practice of the target items, replicating and extending prior findings. Two further experiments then showed that retrieval-induced forgetting did occur, however, when competition between target information and related information during retrieval practice was eliminated, undermining the competition assumption and hence the inhibition account. A new explanation of retrieval-induced forgetting is introduced that emphasizes context change between study, retrieval practice, and test.

Is it really possible to create a (literary) text? It is actually impossible as to create an authentic text we need an authentic context which is impossible to create. So all the literary txets we have are not authentic and are not created authentically.

In a fast-paced office setting, information workers inevitably experience expected and unexpected interruptions daily. As the volume and the diversity of information and application types grow, the impact of frequent interruptions on their task performance gets more severe. To manage the negative effects of interruptions on work performance, workers often engage in task management activities to ensure they are better prepared to resume suspended task less stressfully. However, managing tasks causes additional cognitive burden and a time cost to users who already are experiencing the tight attention and time economies. This dissertation presents an approach to augmenting users' task performance by allowing them to manage and retrieve desired work contexts with ease. The Context Browser, the implementation of the proposed approach, is designed to help the users to explore narratives of their workspace manner and restore their previous work contexts. The goals of implementing the Context Browser are to 1) unload the users? burden of taking care of their task-related or task status information promptly and thus help them focus solely on executing a given task, 2) allow them to browse their previous workspace intuitively, and 3) enhance continuity of their tasks by supporting them to retrieve desired work context more quickly and easily. In order to validate the proposed approach, a user study comparing task performances of the group with the Context Browser to the one without the Context Browser was conducted. The study produced both quantitative and qualitative results. The study confirmed that with the Context Browser subjects expressed better quantitative numbers than the ones without. Subjects using the Context Browser were able to restore and retrieve their desired work setting and task-related information more quickly and correctly. Qualitative results showed that the subjects using the Context Browser found that various contextual cues and the interfaces responsible for providing the cues offered effective artifacts to help them recover both cognitive and work contexts, while the other subjects experienced a difficult time in restoring the desired contexts that were necessary to perform their assigned tasks. In addition, we re-invited 6 subjects from the group without the Context Browser 6 weeks after the study. We asked them to perform the same tasks as the ones they did 6 weeks before with the Context Browser. It showed that with the Context Browser they outperformed their previous performance even after a lengthy period.

TV commercials play an important role for consumers¡¦ purchasing behavior. As the competition being fierce in the financial goods market, the banks weight the commercial effect with the sales of issued cards. What kind of commercials elicit the most effective advertising result? A successful commercial precisely transmits the message to the target consumers, and it must be logical and convincing for consumers¡¦ demand. What kind of TV commercials will attract the desire of purchasing? This study is based on content analysis approach to analyze 49 TV commercials about cash cards in Taiwan, intends to probe the commercial types for the corporations to meet the consumers¡¦ need efficiently. After statistical analysis, find it as follows mainly: 1. Cash card commercials are mostly drama-oriented expression, and the main purpose is for promotion or service. The ¡¥static¡¦ type is vocal and narrative. 2. Commercial contexts are physical surroundings indoors and outdoors, designed for the interpersonal interaction of more than three people, with voice-over to communicate, and provide abundant information. 3. Commercials show the most powerful influence on symbolic needs, which are the needs for social relationship and the sense of self-achievement. 4. Commercials shape the cash cards as perceptual and low-involvement goods.

No description available.

This dissertation develops and empirically tests a theory of political participation that posits that the local economic context moderates the effects of individuals’ socioeconomic status by influencing their prospective financial outlooks. These perceptions, in turn, affect individuals’ likelihood of engaging in various political activities. I examine the theory using indicators of economic vitality and status both for the entire population and for racial and ethnic group-specific economic conditions. This two-pronged approach allows me to assess the extent to which group-specific conditions are more salient for minority group members than are more traditional contextual (full population) measures that reflect the economic status of the entire population. Thus, such questions as whether blacks’ financial outlooks are influenced more by the visibility of black-owned businesses or by the total visibility of business activity are addressed. Hypotheses are tested using the 1992 National Election Study, the 1995 Texas Minority Survey, and economic data collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, 1992 Economic Census. Results indicate that the financial perceptions of blacks and Latinos are significantly related to levels of political activity while the financial outlooks of Asians and whites are not significantly related to their political activity.