Virtual simulations and serious games (video game-based technologies applied to teaching and learning) have been incorporated in the teaching and training curricula of a large number of professions including medicine/surgery. Despite their benefits, there are open, fundamental issues regarding simulation quality, multi-modal cue interaction, and the resulting effect on visual quality perception and ultimately on knowledge transfer and retention. Here the results of a series of seven studies that examined the effect of background sound (contextually related and non-related with respect to the visual scene) on the perception of visual quality (defined with respect to texture resolution, polygon count) presented in stereoscopic and non-stereoscopic 3D. Results indicate that the perception of visual quality is dependent on ambient (background) sound. The results of these studies have implications for designers and developers of serious games who typically strive for high quality virtual worlds despite the computational burden associated with doing so. The results of these studies also bring us closer to understanding the role of quality, multi-modal interactions, and their effect on visual quality perception. This thesis is part of a larger effort in developing an understanding of virtual environment rendering quality, multi-modal interactions, user-specific factors and their effect on knowledge transfer and retention. / UOIT

Flight simulators are widely used by the military, civil and commercial aviation. Visual cues are an essential part of helicopter flight. The required cues for hover are especially large due to closeness to the ground and small movements. In this thesis, density and height parameters of the 3D (Three Dimensional) objects in the scene are analyzed to find their effect on hovering and low altitude flight. An experiment is conducted using a PC-based flight simulator with three LCD monitors and flight control set. Ten professional military pilots participated in the experiment. v Results revealed that object density and object height are effective on the horizontal and vertical hovering performance. There is a peak point after which increasing the density does not improve the performance. In low altitude flight, altitude control is positively affected by smaller object height. However, pilots prefer the scenes composed of the high and mixture objects while hovering and flying at low altitude. Distance estimation is affected by the interaction of the object density and height.

Stereoscopic displays provide 3D vision usually with the help of additional equipment such as shutter glasses and head gears. As a new stereoscopic display technology, autostereoscopic 3D Displays provide 3D vision without additional equipment. Previous studies of depth and distance estimation with autostereoscopic displays indicate the users do not exhibit better performance in 3D. Yet, they claim 3D displays provide higher immersiveness. In this study, perception of the angle of a 3D shape is investigated by comparing 2D, 3D and Real perception cases. An experiment is conducted using an autostereoscopic 3D display. Forty people have participated in the experiment. They were asked to estimate the vertex angle and draw the projections of the object from two different viewpoints. It is found that users can better estimate the angles on a cone when viewed from the top on an autostereoscopic display. This may contribute positively to 3D understanding of the scene. Results revealed that participants make more accurate angle estimation in autostereoscopic 3D displays than in traditional 2D displays. In general, the participants&rsquo / angle drawings were slightly higher than their angle estimations. Moreover, the participants overestimated 35, 65 and 90 degree angles and underestimated 115 degree angle in autostereoscopic 3D display.

It can be observed that the anti-normative behaviors occur more frequently in Computer-Mediated-Communication than in face-to-face communication. Internet often let people feel less restraint to use rude or threatening language, leashing harsh criticisms, venting anger or hatred. Thus, the issues surrounding ¡§Toxic Disinhibition¡¨ have attracted more and more concern from society and academia. Our empirical study tries to get the whole picture and proposed a more comprehensive model integrating diverse factors and involving the synthesis of different viewpoints. Accordingly, this paper proceeds to examine and integrate the two important aspects, (1) Internet attributes in which reduced social cue, social presence, controllability, and the fluidity of the identity and (2) psychological state, especially theories of deindividuation.Moreover, different from most prior researches, we consider deindividuation as an important mediating role, not just an antecedent of toxic disinhibition. An empirical survey methodology is applied to test the research model and six hypotheses are developed in this study, and then we use PLS to analyze it. Our empirical results showed that the essential mediating role of deindividuation, also confirming the highly significant with toxic disinhibition. Moreover, we identify major factors that may affect deindividuation. We find that except for reduced social cue, reduced social presence, controllability and fluidity of identity also has significant impact on deindividuation, and then cause toxic disinhibition. In sum, unlike much prior research that has focused on only a limited aspect of toxic disinhibition, we take integrated view and proposed a more comprehensive model therefore be useful to a better understanding of the nature of toxic disinhibition. And this study provides some suggestions for the online disinhibition research.

Title from PDF of title page. / Document formatted into pages; contains 43 pages. / Thesis (M.A.)--University of South Florida, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. / Text (Electronic thesis) in PDF format. / ABSTRACT: Processing Implicit and Explicit Representations (PIER2) is a model of memory that makes predictions about memory performance based on the interaction of known and newly acquired information by studying how implicitly activated associates affect episodic memory. Nelson and Zhang (2000) found a significant effect of cue connectivity in a multiple regression analysis of the variables known to affect cued recall, but at that time no manipulational experiments had studied the cue connectivity effect in the laboratory. The present paper presents a series of three experiments designed to investigate the effect of cue connectivity in the context of the PIER2 memory model to determine the importance of this variable in the prediction of cued recall. / ABSTRACT: Results of the experiments were inconsistent, and a revised regression analysis performed on an updated version of Nelson and Zhang's (2000) cued recall database indicated that cue connectivity was no longer a significant predictor of cued recall performance. It was concluded that PIER2's equations do not need to be modified to include the influence of retrieval cue attributes. / System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader. / Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Expectancy theory provides a useful framework within which to examine the link between cognitive representations of anticipated alcohol related outcomes and affective processes that ought to shape behavior at the level of implicit, or automatic, processing. The role of affect in alcohol expectancies is an important one as it reflects the approach-avoid contingency associated with reward learning presumed to underlie addictive processes. This study examined the relationship between affect and expectancy operation by using suboptimally presented alcohol related cues to prime affectively congruent evaluations of otherwise unrelated targets. Hypotheses predicted that drinkers who reported higher positive and arousing expectancies for alcohol outcomes would make affective evaluations (but not semantic categorizations) more accurately when target stimuli were preceded with an alcohol picture or word prime. Analysis of drinking and expectancy variables revealed positive relationships between drinking frequency and social/physical pleasure expectancies, as well as tension reduction expectancies. No relationships were found between drinking quantity and expectancies. Evaluation response accuracy was not related to alcohol expectancies. Discussion centers on potential reasons for lack of findings, including experimenter error and design limitations.

Tobacco smoking has been associated with the development, protraction, and exacerbation of chronically painful conditions. Conversely, there is reason to believe that smokers may be motivated to use tobacco as a means of coping with their pain. To date, no controlled, experimental studies have tested for a causal relationship between pain and smoking motivation. The primary aim of the current study was to test the hypothesis that laboratory-induced cold-pressor pain would enhance smoking motivation, as measured by self-reported urge to smoke and observation of immediate smoking behavior. The effect of a smoking cue was also tested. Smokers (n = 132) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in this 2 (Pain Manipulation) X 2 (Smoking Cue Manipulation) crossed factorial between-subjects design. Results indicated that both pain induction and the presence of smoking cues increased urge ratings, and pain induction also produced a shorter latency to smoke. The relationship between pain and increased urge to smoke was partially mediated by pain-induced negative affect. This study provides the first experimental evidence that situational pain can be a potent motivator of smoking.

"provet berör ju betyget, och sen göra bra ifrån sig" - en studie av hur elever i årskurs 5 uppfattar bedömning är en undersökning om hur elever erfar bedömning  i klassrummet. Studiens syfte är att ta reda på elevers uppfattningar och upplevelser kring bedömning och i vilka situationer de ser sig bli bedömda. Vår problemformulering är * Hur erfar elever bedömning i klassrummet? Vår problemprecisering är * När i klassrummet uppfattar elever att de blir bedömda? * Hur upplever elever att bli bedömda? Undersökningen genomfördes med hjälp av en fokusgruppsintervju. Resultatet visar på skilda uppfattningar kring hur elever erfar bedömning. Studien har en fenomenografiskt inspirerad ansats. Intervjun visade att elever uppfattar prov, test, redovisning, tala högt i klassrummet och utvecklingssamtal som bedömningsformer med olika användningssyften.

This thesis argues that how-to manuals and cue sheets are indicative of ideal performance practice amongst musicians from the silent film era. Pre-scored music was widely practiced amongst musicians. How-to manuals and cue sheets helped the musician accurately and consistently accompany a film. Authors of period manuals include W. Tyacke George, Edith Lang and George West, Ernst Luz and George Tootell. Compilers of cue sheet include James C. Bradford, Ernst Luz, Edward Kilenyi and Michael P. Krueger. Cue by cue analyses of The Cat and the Canary and The Gaucho show a high repetition of music, establishing continuity between the music played and the image on the screen. This shows how compilers associated music and film. These manuals and cue sheets prove that the musician community strove for a close connection between the image on screen and accompaniment. By 1920, arbitrary improvisation was unacceptable.

This study presents a contrastive analysis of the pronominal uses of this and that in academic written discourse. As data, the pronominal uses of this and that are retrieved from journal articles on linguistics. From these journals, 586 articles are scanned for the pronominal uses of this and that and 198 tokens are analysed. The contrastive analysis is done in terms of the kind and span of referents this and that pick out in discourse, the types of centering transitions they signal and the rhetorical relations in which they are used. In order to investigate the types of transition they signal, the version of centering theory proposed by Grosz and Sidner (1986) and Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein (1995) is used. Also, Marcu&rsquo / s version (2000) of Rhetorical Structure Theory is used to analyze the rhetorical relations in which the expressions are used. The study also investigate the possible factors that lead an addresser to select one deictic expression instead of the other. The study concludes that this and that are cue phrases rather than discourse markers that construct local and global coherence.