This thesis is aimed at addressing a lacuna in previous scholarship on the development of the martyr cult in the pivotal fourth century. Recent work on the martyr cult has avoided a diachronic approach to the topic. Consequently through their synchronic approach, issues of the early fifth century have been conflated and presented alongside those from the early fourth, with little discussion of the development of the martyr cult during the intervening decades. One aim of this work is to address the progression of the martyr cult from its pre-Christian origins through its adaptations in the fourth and early fifth century. Through a discussion of power dynamics with a critical eye towards the political situation of various influential figures in the fourth and early fifth centuries, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which Constantine, Damasus, Ambrose, Augustine, and others sought to craft cultural memory around the martyr shrine. Many of them did this through the erection of structures over pre-existing graves. Others made deliberate choices as to which martyrs to commemorate. Some utilized the dissemination of the saints’ relics as a means to expanding their own influence. Finally several sought to govern which behaviours were acceptable at the martyrs’ feasts. In nearly every instance these choices these men advanced their own agendas. In many cases the martyr cult was a decisive tool for the augmentation and solidification of civil and religious authority. Despite their goals these men were unable to create the uniformity they desired within the martyr cult. The meaning associated with the graves of the saints could never be determined unidirectionally. Meaning and the power to influence others through the martyr cult was the product of a dialogue. That dialogue included the leaders and the laity in the Christian community as well as a new group: pilgrims. Pilgrimage created a network within Christianity which ultimately led to a catholic Christian cultural memory surrounding the martyrs’ graves. This homogenized understanding of the martyr cult enabled it to become one of the most identifiable features of Christianity in subsequent centuries.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Previous research has shown that ingestion of sucrose or injection of glucose following a learning experience can improve an animal's memory for that experience. The present work was directed towards elucidating the mechanisms by which sucrose and glucose produce this effect. Memory was tested by determining the effects of post-training injections of various substances on a conditioned emotional response. Glucose itself exerted a dose-dependent bidirectional action on retention. This action was shown not to depend on particular blood glucose levels. Insulin did not improve retention at any of the doses tested. Fructose, a sugar that does not cross the blood-brain barrier produced a dose-response effect on retention similar to that of glucose suggesting that fructose and glucose may act through a common peripheral mechanism. The observation of a memory improvement following injections of either 2-deoxyglucose or 3-O-methylgucose, two non-metabolized glucose analogs, suggested that the effect of glucose on retention may be due to an action on glucose transport and not to any metabolic effects of glucose. Two peripheral organs were examined for their possible involvement in the memory-improving action of glucose. This action was shown not to be dependent on the adrenal medulla which has been implicated in the action of other mnemoactive treatments. Partial denervation of the liver produced a partial attenuation of the effect of glucose on retention. The results are discussed in terms of the action of reinforcers on endogenous physiological mechanisms that modulate memory consolidation.

Laboratory methods for studying memory blocking and recovery include directed forgetting, retrieval-induced forgetting, and retrieval bias or memory blocking procedures. These methods primarily use word lists. For example, striking, reversible forgetting effects have been reported for both emotional (e.g., expletives) and non-emotional (e.g., tools) categorized lists of words. The present study examined forgetting and recovery of richer, more episodic materials. Participants studied a series of brief narrative passages varying in emotional intensity, such as a vignette involving torture or child abuse (emotional) vs. vignettes about cycling or insects (non-emotional). Free recall of the 1-word titles of the vignettes (e.g., Torture, Cyclist) showed a strong memory blocking effect, and cues from the stories on a subsequent cued recall test reversed the effect. In a second experiment, vignette-related pictures inserted into an incidental picture naming task triggered some recovery of initially forgotten vignettes, as shown on a post-test. Both emotional and non-emotional stories were susceptible to this reversible memory blocking effect.

No description available.

Graduate

Previous neurophysiological and behavioural studies have shown that attention can be guided by the contents of working memory (WM), and that such guidance can be involuntary even when it is detrimental to the task at hand. In three experiments, this thesis investigated whether the guidance of visual attention from WM could be generalized from a specific stimulus or a task to a category. Experiment 1 tested whether maintaining a set of stimuli of a specific category in WM would influence participants' deployment of visual attention to favour other stimuli that belonged to the same category. Experiment 2 further manipulated the interval between the onset of a critical prime (i.e., a stimulus in the same category as the stimuli held in WM) and the target to determine whether the results of Experiment 1 were associated with the lack of time for attention to be focused onto the critical prime. In both experiments, the stimuli held in WM never appeared in the prime display. In Experiment 3, the identity of the prime was manipulated so that it matched the stimuli held in WM on half of the trials. The results showed that when the stimuli held in WM never reappeared in the prime display (Experiments 1 and 2) there was no evidence that maintaining specific stimuli in WM biased the distribution of attention to other stimuli within the same category. However, when the stimuli held in WM could reappear in the prime display on some trials (Experiment 3), the participants whose reaction times were relatively fast showed evidence for category-based WM guidance of attention when the critical prime item was a new stimulus in the same category as the stimuli held in WM. In contrast, the participants whose reaction times were relatively slow showed a non-spatially specific cost when the critical prime was one of the WM items than when it was a new item in the same category. These results showed that category-based WM could guide the deployment of visual attention under certain conditions. It further suggests that the relationship between WM and attention is more complex than what is outlined by the biased competition theory and related theories of attention.

No description available.