The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the possibilities of using 3D perspective displays in different military settings, and to illustrate the limitations of 3D displays, that is, when 2D displays are to be preferred. More specifically, this thesis explores (a) readability during vibrations, (b) perception aspects on perspective aircraft displays, and (c) the value of spatial cues in 3D air traffic displays in military settings. The results show, for example, that vertical vibrations influence recognition performance negatively. The recognition of 2D and 3D symbols, as well as judgment of relations between symbols on a 3D display, may indeed be an arduous task. Results, further, indicate improved performance for relation judgments between objects in 3D space in dynamic rather than static scenarios in tactical indicators. In situations where perception of a direction nevertheless is problematic, enhancements like, for example, drop-lines may improve performance. From a practical point of view the goal has been to investigate the possibility to develop and use a 3D perspective display in an airplane like JAS 39 Gripen. A general conclusion is that 3D displays indeed can be used in many situations but it is important to seriously consider any possible limitations of 3D displays. The future work should be focused on implementing and testing the tactical display in a real setting with real military pilots.

Research on counteractive control theory suggests that exposure to food cues should bolster the dieting goal in restrained individuals. However, other research has found food cues to increase eating. The present study investigates whether cue specificity influences whether counteractive control or hyper-responsiveness to food cues takes precedence in dieters’ food selection and eating behavior. Restrained eaters were assigned to view a cookie, cake, or flower cue, then they selected a snack to take (apple or cookie). Participants also had an opportunity to eat cookies. Results showed that restrained participants exposed to the cake cue chose the apple more often than those receiving any other cue; exposure to a tempting cue not specific to the snack offered elicited counteractive control. However, participants exposed to either food cue ate more cookies than those exposed to the neutral cue. The role of food cue specificity in counteractive control and its limits are examined.

Research on counteractive control theory suggests that exposure to food cues should bolster the dieting goal in restrained individuals. However, other research has found food cues to increase eating. The present study investigates whether cue specificity influences whether counteractive control or hyper-responsiveness to food cues takes precedence in dieters’ food selection and eating behavior. Restrained eaters were assigned to view a cookie, cake, or flower cue, then they selected a snack to take (apple or cookie). Participants also had an opportunity to eat cookies. Results showed that restrained participants exposed to the cake cue chose the apple more often than those receiving any other cue; exposure to a tempting cue not specific to the snack offered elicited counteractive control. However, participants exposed to either food cue ate more cookies than those exposed to the neutral cue. The role of food cue specificity in counteractive control and its limits are examined.

In this report, the author investigates the process of encoding cultural cues into advertisements targeting the African American market. More specifically, this study focuses on advertising professional’s perceptions of African American culture, and using them to create relationships between brands and the African American community. While the cues integrated into an advertisement’s message seek to prompt a favorable response from African Americans, they also communicate perceptions of African American identity and culture to society. This report is an analysis of three in-depth case studies, which give insight into the production process of target marketing for the African American market. This process includes learning about culture, generating ideas relevant to the culture, and integrating that knowledge into advertisements intended to influence consumer behavior through mass communication. / text

This dissertation is a collection of three essays examining the relationship between immigrant political rhetoric and identity among Latinos in the United States. To achieve this task, this study uses empirical evidence from a national survey and original data collected from experiments in New York City and Los Angeles. The first essay identifies three forms of Latino identity most relevant to political decision-making: national origin, pan-ethnic, and American. I find that levels of acculturation as defined by immigrant status and English language strongly predict American identification. Latino identities inform support on immigrant issues. Latinos with higher perceptions of national origin and pan-ethnic interests are more pro-immigrant on issues pertaining to the rights of undocumented immigrants. The second essay investigates how exposure to explicit and implicit cues within anti-immigrant rhetoric shape the voting decisions of non-Mexican Latino groups in New York City. I test the effects of pan-ethnic, nationality-based, and counter-stereotypical political appeals on candidate support. I find that nationality-based appeals directly or indirectly targeting Mexican immigrants do not activate identity in vote choice, only explicit, pan-ethnic cues implicating all Latino immigrants activate "Latino" group interests in voting decisions. The third essay tests whether political processes of collective identity observed among non-Mexicans in New York City are generalizable to Mexican and non-Mexicans in Border States. Conversely, I find that only nationality-based political appeals targeting Mexicans activate Mexican group interests in vote choice. These results do not extend to non-Mexicans. Anti-immigrant messages did not activate identity in voting. Overall, these findings suggest that identity activation in the context of threat may work differently for Mexican and non-Mexican Latino groups in the United States.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, 2003. / Vita. Bibliography: 160-180.

Studies of metaphors in teaching and learning have underlined the important role of metaphors in reasoning, but have sometimes failed to show the effect of metaphor on how scientific concepts are represented, and have sometimes overlooked hidden metaphors in their attempts to be explicit about how metaphor functions. This study investigates metaphor in the context of teaching environmental science. It does not assume any simple correlation between surface linguistic cues and the presence or kind of metaphor. Two theoretical approaches have been chosen, Systemic Functional Linguistics (M. Halliday) which sees language as a social construction of meaning, and Image Schema (M Johnson and G Lakoff) which has developed in cognitive science and cognitive linguistics. These two approaches are used to discuss examples of metaphors from a number of lessons which have been observed and video-recorded, and in a variety of textbooks used as resource materials in teaching environmental science. The choice of environmental science as the subject matter arises from two of its distinct characteristics. One is the fact that ideology triggers and shapes the interests, decisions and choices of materials, issues, arguments, reasons, etc. But there is nothing like one unique ideology, on the contrary conflicts of different ideologies raise differences about what will be selected and how it will be represented. At this point there is a special role taken on by metaphor. Metaphors provide the means for creating differences and similarities, thus bringing together or keeping apart ideologies. Second, the teaching of environmental science does not appear as the teaching of science only, bounded from anything else, but is a blend of accounts of scientific and commonsense knowledge. Metaphors appear at the overlapping points where this blending takes place. It is not the purpose of the thesis to question, or to contribute to, the theoretical perspectives adopted. Rather, its interest is in how these perspectives provide, each in their own way, insights into the nature of the discourse of teaching environmental science, and thus to raise questions about its effectiveness.

The ambient temperature of an environment has potential to influence many aspects of the behavior and physiology of small-bodied ectotherms, including brush-legged Wolf spiders Schizocosa ocreata (Hentz, 1844) (Araneae: Lycosidae). Temperature varies significantly, and often unpredictably, in their habitat throughout the spring breeding season, and is known to influence male Schizocosa courtship behavior. Currently unknown is what effect fluctuations in ambient temperature alone might have on critical, non-behavioral sexual signals such as female silk and chemical cues. We collected cues from mature, virgin females and subjected each sample to one of three thermal treatments (40°C, 20°C, or -12°C), at constant humidity. We presented treated female cues to mature males and recorded male response across treatment types as a behavioral indicator of signal degradation. There were no significant differences across treatments in the frequency or duration of male behaviors, including critical courtship and exploratory behaviors. Our results suggest that thermally induced degradation of female sexual signals is negligible for this species and likely has little or no influence on male behavior.

This thesis documents the design and implementation of an augmented reality (AR) application that could be extended to support group brainstorming tasks remotely. Additionally, it chronicles our investigation into the helpfulness of traditional collaborative cues in this novel application of augmented reality. We implemented IdeaSpace, an interactive application that emulates an affinity diagramming environment on an AR headset. In our application, users can organize and manipulate virtual sticky notes around a central virtual board. We performed a user study, with each session requiring users to perform an affinity diagramming clustering task with and without common collaborative cues. Our results indicate that the presence or absence of cues has little effect on this task, or that other factors played a larger role than cue condition, such as learning effects. Our results also show that our application's usability could be improved. We conclude this document with a discussion of our results and the design implications that may arise from them. / Master of Science / Our project was aimed at creating an app for modern augmented reality headsets that could help people perform group brainstorming sessions remotely from each other. We were also interested in finding out the benefits or downsides of some of the design decisions that recent research in remote augmented reality recommends, such as lines showing where a user is focusing and visualizations for a user's head and hands. In our app, which we dubbed IdeaSpace, users were faced with a virtual corkboard and a number of virtual sticky notes, similar to what they might expect in a traditional brainstorming session. We ran three-person study sessions comparing design techniques recommended by literature to an absence of such techniques and did not find they helped much in our task. We also found that our application was not as usable as we had hoped and could be improved in future iterations. We conclude our paper discussing what our results might mean and what can be learned for the future.