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The purpose of this study was to examine whether cueing strategies embedded in computer delivered text messages affected the recall and comprehension of students who differed in their field dependent-independent cognitive style orientations. Two hundred thirty-eight undergraduate students of Virginia Tech participated the study, and 219 sets of valid data were used for the statistical analyses. All participants were given the Group Embedded Figures Test to determine their level of field dependence-independence. They were then randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups that varied in their use of cueing strategy. The first treatment group featured computer delivered text messages with color-highlighted-keywords, the second group featured the same textual content with color-highlighted-key-phrases, and the third group was a control group that featured the same content and employed no cueing strategy. Participants were administered two tests following the treatments, one that assessed knowledge of terminology and another that assessed comprehension. A 3 x 3 Analysis of Variance was conducted to explore the main effects for field dependency and cueing strategy and any interaction effect between the two factors. The results showed that field independents outperformed field dependents in all tests. There were no significant differences for the three treatments; the cueing strategies employed in this study had no effect on participants' learning. A significant interaction was seen between field dependency and cueing strategy. However, the results of a one-way ANOVA are unexpected: the cueing strategies employed did not improve field dependents' performance on the assessments and actually hindered the performance of field independents. / Ph. D.

Attempts by behavior scientists to test interventions designed to promote environmentally-responsible behavior (ERB) have been documented for decades. Numerous behavioral scientists have looked to community-based interventions to decrease environment-destructive behaviors, as well as to increase environmental-protective behaviors (Geller, 1995). Litter is one of the most obvious examples of environmental degradation. Litter, defined here as misplaced waste material (Geller, Winett, & Everett, 1982), is a form of environmental pollution that not only degrades the quality of the environment but also proves costly to taxpayers. A wide variety of ecological and monetary benefits result from a decrease in litter. The current research examined the effectiveness of positive vs. negative antecedent messages to reduce littering behavior. A methodology similar to that used by Geller, Witmer, and Orebaugh (1976), in which handbills containing weekly supermarket specials and special anti-litter message prompts were distributed at local community shopping centers, was used in the current research. In the first study, handbills with no anti-litter messages were distributed for a one-week period to determine percentage of handbills that were littered, and to serve as a baseline. The total percentage of handbills littered was 38.5. A second, web-based, study was conducted to determine the six specific (three positive or gain-framed, and three negative or loss-framed) anti-litter antecedent messages to be added to the handbills. In the third study, handbills with anti-litter messages were distributed for a two-week period. Upon addition of anti-litter prompts, results revealed 36.09% of distributed handbills were littered. Although no significant interactions were found, several significant main effects were found for store location, distribution period, and gender. The gender effect, indicating women littered at significantly higher rates than males, is notable. Survey research in the area of gender differences related to environmental concerns often has often shown modest differences between men and women, with women frequently displaying greater levels of environmental concern as compared to men. Based on behavioral observations (instead of self-report measures frequently used in previous research), the present research demonstrated significantly more women littering than men. Although slightly more handbills, in terms of total handbill numbers, containing positive antecedents were littered as compared to those containing negative antecedents (which might be interpreted as stronger impact of loss-framed messages), this difference was not statistically significant. Similarly, there were no statistically significant differences found among each of the six anti-litter messages. Comparisons of Study 1 (baseline) and Study 2 (prompting intervention) revealed significantly more littered handbills in the baseline condition as compared to the anti-litter message condition. These results indicate a beneficial anti-litter effect of the prompts added to handbills. Conclusions based on the findings of the three studies within the present research are discussed. Implications for policies, public campaigns, and follow-up research designs are noted. Suggestions for future research involving message prompts and ERBs are offered. / Ph. D.

Cette thèse est composée de trois volumes : le mémoire principal et deux volumes d’annexes. Elle présente une étude comparée d’images (photographies, dessins de presse, cartes, publicités) parues dans L’Express et Le Nouvel Observateur depuis 1967 (guerre des Six Jours) à 1983 (élimination politique de Yasser Arafat de la scène proche-orientale). Il ne s’agit pas de réécrire une nouvelle histoire des relations israélo-palestiniennes mais plutôt de comprendre comment l’agencement de l’image dans l’article de presse oriente notre perception de l’information. Ainsi l’image instrumentalisée devient un outil indispensable non seulement pour critiquer l’attitude du gouvernement israélien mais aussi pour condamner le terrorisme palestinien. Nous avons dégagé huit objets iconographiques regroupés en deux catégories : « l’image-illustration », « l’image-message ». Nous avons analysé la place de l’image dans l’article, l’importance de l’agencement de celui-ci pour mettre en évidence les liens existant entre les différents objets le composant. Ces images, seules ou multiples et scénarisées, ne cessent d’interpeller sur le danger de la colonisation des territoires occupés. Elles dénoncent aussi l’inanité des actes terroristes. Par contre, elles célèbrent tout espoir de paix, si ténu soit-il. / This thesis is made up of three volumes : the main dissertation and two volumes of appendices. The study outlines a comparative study of images (photographs, sketches, maps, ads) published in L’Express and Le Nouvel Observateur, from 1967 (Six Day War) to 1983 (Yasser Arafat’s political demise on the Middle-Eastern stage). The intention is not to re-write the history of the Israeli-Palestinian relations, but rather to understand how images in the print media influence our perception of the information. The use of images thus become an essential tool, not only to criticize the Israeli Government’s attitude, but also to denounce Palestinian terrorism. We have selected eight iconographic objects which we further divided into two categories : "illustration-image″ and "message-image″. We have analyzed the place of the image in the article and the text relating to it in order to highlight the sum of the constituent parts. Such images, single or multiple and scripted, never cease to stress the dangers of the colonization of the occupied Territories. They also condemn the pointlessness of the terrorist acts. On the other hand, they celebrate every potential hope for peace, no matter how faint.

Message Authentication Codes (MACs) are valuable tools for ensuring the integrity of messages. MACs may be built around a keyed hash function. Our main motivation was to prove that universal hash functions can be employed as underlying primitives of MACs in order to provide provable security in ultra-low-power applications such as the next generation self-powered sensor networks. The idea of using a universal hash function (NH) was explored in the construction of UMAC. This work presents three variations on NH, namely PH, PR and WH. The first hash function we propose, PH, produces a hash of length 2w and is shown to be 2^(-w)-almost universal. The other two hash functions, i.e. PR and WH, reach optimality and are proven to be universal hash functions with half the hash length of w. In addition, these schemes are simple enough to allow for efficient constructions. To the best of our knowledge the proposed hash functions are the first ones specifically designed for low-power hardware implementations. We achieve drastic power savings of up to 59% and speedup of up to 7.4 times over NH. Note that the speed improvement and the power reduction are accomplished simultaneously. Moreover, we show how the technique of multi- hashing and the Toeplitz approach can be combined to reduce the power and energy consumption even further while maintaining the same security level with a very slight increase in the amount of key material. At low frequencies the power and energy reductions are achieved simultaneously while keeping the hashing time constant. We develope formulae for estimation of leakage and dynamic power consumptions as well as energy consumption based on the frequency and the Toeplitz parameter t. We introduce a powerful method for scaling WH according to specific energy and power consumption requirements. This enables us to optimize the hash function implementation for use in ultra-low-power applications such as "Smart Dust" motes, RFIDs, and Piconet nodes. Our simulation results indicate that the implementation of WH-16 consumes only 2.95 ìW 500 kHz. It can therefore be integrated into a self- powered device. By virtue of their security and implementation features mentioned above, we believe that the proposed universal hash functions fill an important gap in cryptographic hardware applications.

Men are much less likely to seek out mental health care services than women, despite having equally significant mental health related needs. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of the construction and delivery of intervention messages designed to encourage men to seek help for mental health concerns. 225 men in the United States were randomly assigned to one of 4 vignette conditions featuring a pro-mental health help seeking message, varying based on the gender of the sender of the message (male vs. female) and based on the inclusion of information concerning misconceptions about therapy (inclusion vs. exclusion of information). A male message sender and a message that included information about misconceptions regarding therapy were both predicted to contribute to higher mental health help seeking intentions for men, and particularly so for men who conform strongly to masculine gender role norms. These hypotheses were not supported; however, the results replicated prior findings indicating that men who conform strongly to masculine gender role norms are less open to seeking help for mental health concerns. Additionally, men’s conformity to the specific masculine norms of self-reliance and violence both at least partially moderated the impact of message sender gender upon help seeking intentions. Further research should continue to investigate the potential effects of message sender gender and message content on men’s help seeking intentions by presenting the pro-help seeking message in person and by presenting a message that more explicitly challenges typical masculine attitudes about mental health care.

The constantly evolving use of social media as a marketing tool is commonly known, and the opportunities for companies to get feedback about how successful their marketing is, have grown just as much. Today's companies take great financial risks when choosing marketing material in the traditional marketing way, but as the social network Instagram is free to use, the biggest risk here is to lose followers, and thus potential customers. This study aims to investigate what consumers actually want to see in the direct marketing they themselves have chosen to receive; what the consumers find most appealing and what makes them feel the greatest desire to buy. For this study seven semi-structured interviews were held with seven women all in the age between 16 and 25. They shared their everyday habits on the social media platform Instagram and were shown 15 Instagram pictures from five major fashion companies. The women expressed their spontaneous feelings when the pictures were shown, just as if the images had been found in their own Instagram feed. The images shown consisted of two, by us, defined messages divided into a five-degree scale, where the scale was ranked accordingly: extremely rational, rational, mixed, emotional and extremely emotional messages. The interviewees also commented on their preferences regarding the content of the pictures, if it was up to their own choosing. After analyzing all interviews, we have come to the conclusion that both the rational and the emotional image categories are preferable to the others. These two stand out from the five-degree scale as both more appealing and creating a greater desire to buy. The extreme ends of each category does not suit marketing on Instagram for different reasons. With this information, we hope to help companies with their marketing strategy on Instagram. This thesis is written in Swedish. / Användningen av sociala medier som marknadsföringsverktyg växer ständigt, och så även möjligheterna för företag att få återkoppling angående hur framgångsrik deras marknadsföring är. Dagens företag tar stora ekonomiska risker när de väljer marknadsföringsmaterial på det traditionella sättet, men när det på sociala mediet Instagram är gratis att skapa ett konto blir den största risken att förlora följare och därmed potentiella kunder. Den här studien undersöker vad konsumenter faktiskt önskar att se i den direktreklam de självmant väljer att följa, vad som mest tilltalar dem och vad som får dem att känna mest köplust. Studien består av sju semistrukturerade intervjuer med kvinnor i åldrarna 16-25 som berättar om sina vanor på det sociala mediet Instagram. De sju kvinnorna visades 15 Instagrambilder från fem stora modeföretag och fick uttrycka sina spontana känslor inför dessa, likt ifall bilderna hade funnits i intervjupersonernas Instagramflöde. Bilderna bestod av två budskap som var uppdelade på en femgradig skala, där skalan rangordnades efter kategorierna extremt rationellt, rationellt, mixat, emotionellt och extremt emotionellt budskap. Intervjupersonerna kommenterade även vilka preferenser de hade angående bildernas innehåll ifall de själva fick välja. Efter att ha analyserat alla intervjuer menar vi att både de rationella och de emotionella bildkategorierna är att föredra, de står ut på den femgradiga skalan som både mer tilltalande och mer skapande av köplust. De extrema kategorierna av båda budskapen passar inte marknadsföring på Instagram av olika skäl. Med den här informationen hoppas vi kan hjälpa företag med deras marknadsföringsstrategi på Instagram.