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PhD / In design literature, how designers think and how they design have been identified as a reflection of how they interact with their sketches. Sketching in architectural design is still a central concern which shapes our understanding of the design process and the development of new tools. Sketching not only serves as a visual aid to store and retrieve conceptualisations, but as a medium to facilitate more ideas, and to revise and refine these ideas. This thesis examined how mental imagery and sketching is used in designing by conducting a protocol analysis study with six expert architects. Each architect was required to think aloud and design under two different conditions: one in which s/he had access to sketching and one in which s/he was blindfolded (s/he did not have access to sketching). At the end of the blindfold condition the architects were required to quickly sketch what they held in their minds. The architects were able to come up with satisfying design solutions and some reported that using their imagery could be another way of designing. The resulting sketches were assessed by judges and were found to have no significant differences in overall quality. Expert architects were able to construct and maintain the design of a building without having access to sketching. The analysis of the blindfold and sketching design protocols did not demonstrate any differences in the quantity of cognitive actions in perceptual, conceptual, functional and evaluative categories. Each architect’s cognitive structure and designing behaviour in the blindfold activity mimicked her/his cognitive structure and designing behaviour in the sketching activity. The analysis of links between the design ideas demonstrated that architects’ performance in idea development was higher under the blindfold condition, compared to their sketching condition. It was also found that architects’ blindfold design performance was improved when they were more familiar with the site layout. These results imply that expert designers may not need sketching as a medium for their reflective conversation with the situation. This study indicates that constructing internal representations can be a strong tool for designing. Future studies may show that designers may not need sketching for the generation of certain designs during the early phases of conceptual designing.

Cotton crop condition was assessed from an analysis of multispectral aerial video imagery. Visible-near infrared imagery of two cotton fields was collected towards the end of the 1990 crop. The digital analysis was based on image classification, and the accuracies were assessed using the Kappa coefficient of agreement. The earliest of three images proved to be best for distinguishing plant variety. Vegetation index images were better for estimating potential yield than the original multispectral image; so too were multi-channel images that were transformed using vegetation indices or principal component analysis. The seedbed preparation rig used, the nitrogen application rate and three plant varieties, a weed species and two cotton cultivars, could all be discriminated from the imagery. Accuracies were moderate for the discrimination of plant variety, tillage treatment and nitrogen treatment, and low for the estimation of potential yield.

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The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effectiveness of using imagery in eliminating post-rest warm-up decrement (WUD) in the volleyball serve, and to assess whether individual differences in imagery ability mediated any possible reductions in WUD. Thirty-nine State level volleyball players were placed into one of 3 groups, High Imagery, Control, and Low Imagery, based on their scores on the Vividness of Movement Imagery Questionnaire (VMIQ). Players served 15 balls at a designated target area, rested for 10 minutes, and then attempted 5 more serves. During the last 2 minutes of the rest period, the players in the High and Low Imagery groups engaged in imagery of successful serving every 10 seconds, for a total of 12 repetitions. The Control group continued to read a magazine article. To ensure adherence to the imagery instructions, players were evaluated at completion of testing. Results revealed the High Imagery group was significantly better on serving performance post-rest, however there was no significant differences when comparing the mean of the last 3 pre-rest trials with the first post-rest trial. The interaction approached significance (p_= .091) and suggested that the High Imagery group may have benefited from the use of imagery. These findings have implications for the Nacson and Schmidt's (1971) activity-set hypothesis that states that an appropriate task will reduce WUD. It may need to include the effect individual differences, such as imagery ability, may have on the performance of that task.

Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is characterised by impairments to motor control and learning, the cause of which remains unclear. Recently, researchers have used cognitive neuroscientific approaches to explore the basis of poor coordination in children, with one hypothesis suggesting that an internal modelling deficit (IMD) is one of the underlying causes of DCD. The aim of this thesis was to further test the IMD hypothesis using a motor imagery paradigm - the mental rotation of hands. Versions of this task were used in all studies to assess motor imagery ability, with an additional whole-body task used in Studies 2 and 3. Further, an alphanumeric rotation task was used in Studies 1 and 2 to assess visual imagery ability. Studies 1 and 2 provided varying levels of support for the IMD hypothesis. In Study 1, only a subgroup of DCD children performed differently from other children in the study on the hand tasks, but tighter task constraints in Study 2 led to overall group differences between DCD and controls in terms of accuracy. The DCD group were also significantly less accurate than controls in the whole-body task, but there were no group differences in either Study 1 or 2 on the visual imagery task. Interestingly, in Study 2, there was an indication that children with severe levels of motor impairment were less accurate than children with less severe motor impairment, suggesting that motor impairment level could play a role in the severity of motor imagery deficits. Study 3 was designed to explore the impact of motor impairment severity on motor imagery ability further. The results confirmed that children with severe DCD had greater motor imagery impairment than children with mild DCD - children with severe DCD performed less accurately than both controls and those with mild DCD in the hand task with instructions and the controls in the whole-body task. Further, those children with mild DCD were able to respond somewhat to motor imagery instructions, whereas those with severe DCD were not. This study provided support to the IMD hypothesis, though the deficit was shown to be dependent on a number of factors. Chapter 5 presents a reasoned account of these various findings and their implications are discussed. It is concluded that motor imagery deficits are evident in many children with DCD, but more so in children with severe motor impairment. A general imagery deficit was ruled out based on the findings of Studies 1 and 2 which showed that visual imagery processes appear intact in children with DCD. Taken together with previous imagery and IMD studies, and related research on feedforward control in DCD, it is concluded that the deficits in motor imagery observed in this thesis are consistent with the hypothesis that an IMD is one likely causal factor in the disorder, particularly in more severe DCD. The observation of differing response patterns between children with mild and severe forms of DCD has important implications for developing a theory of DCD and for remediation.

<p>Participants claiming to be good at evoking vivid olfactory images are assumed to have better access to odor memory. It was hypothesized that this would be reflected in better odor naming and recognition task performance. Two extreme groups of participants high and low in self-reported olfactory imagery ability were exposed to familiar and unfamiliar odors in an incidental learning session. This was followed by an episodic odor recognition and odor naming task 20 minutes later. Imagery ability was unrelated to naming and recognition. This might indicate that if high imagers have a better access to odor memory, it is not due to a stronger link between language and odor memory or better incidental encoding.</p>

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2005. / Bibliography: leaves 101-125.

Participants claiming to be good at evoking vivid olfactory images are assumed to have better access to odor memory. It was hypothesized that this would be reflected in better odor naming and recognition task performance. Two extreme groups of participants high and low in self-reported olfactory imagery ability were exposed to familiar and unfamiliar odors in an incidental learning session. This was followed by an episodic odor recognition and odor naming task 20 minutes later. Imagery ability was unrelated to naming and recognition. This might indicate that if high imagers have a better access to odor memory, it is not due to a stronger link between language and odor memory or better incidental encoding.

Plant imagery abounds in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's novel-poem, Aurora Leigh, and critical readings have not thoroughly explored the meaning of and intent behind that imagery. Plant metaphor and images in Aurora Leigh are used to challenge the concept of Victorian women's inherently inferior "nature" and to present an argument for female equality. When traced throughout the work, plant imagery foreshadows Aurora and Marian's ultimate personal independence and familial harmony and helps the reader to understand the poem's controversial ending. Ties to three of Browning's literary influences in the selection of plant images are explored: Emanuel Swedenborg, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Each of these three understood and used nature imagery to significant effect in their own writings, and Browning adopted and developed those images in her work.