The benefits of observing a model when acquiring a new motor skill are well known, however, there is little research on the influence of viewing angle of the model. The purpose of the present experiment was to assess whether a looking-glass (face on) or subjective (facing away) viewing angle would result in different acquisition and retention levels when learning a complex Zumba dance sequence. Greater cognitive effort was expected during the looking-glass condition, consequently resulting in slower acquisition but greater physical performance scores and error recognition/identification. Thirty females were evenly divided into the looking-glass or subjective group and began with the pre-test phase to assess degrees of motivation, self-efficacy, and physical performance. Participants were then lead through six acquisition dances, within which they performed the to-be-learned sequence 18 times. An assessment of cognitive effort followed, then post-test performances and error recognition/identification scores were obtained to conclude the study. While both the looking-glass and subjective conditions demonstrated equal rates of acquisition (p>.05), the looking-glass group performed significantly fewer errors during the post-test (p<.05) and were significantly better at identifying errors when a video of the dance sequence was shown from the same viewing angle as the acquisition phase (p<.05). No differences were reported between the two conditions with respect to cognitive effort (p>.05). Based on the results of this study, the looking-glass viewing angle appears to result in better learning of a dance sequence, but cannot be explained by cognitive effort.

Vi ställs dagligen inför väldigt många val och beroende på vilka val vi väljer att göra kommer dessa till stor del att påverka hur vi lever vårt liv och även hur tillfreds vi kommer att vara med livet. Vi baserar många av våra val på känslomässiga förutsägelser som är våra antaganden om hur framtida händelser kommer att påverka oss känslomässigt. Våra känslomässiga förutsägelser är dessvärre ofta påverkade av olika bias som gör att vi missbedömer hur starkt och under hur lång tid vi kommer att reagera känslomässigt på kommande händelser, vilket i sin tur påverkar vilka val vi kommer att göra. Den här uppsatsen kommer att undersöka hur våra känslomässiga förutsägelser påverkar vårt subjektiva välbefinnande och även hur förståelse för detta skulle kunna användas i psykologisk coachning i form av interventioner för att hjälpa människor att göra fler val som leder till ett ökat subjektivt välbefinnande.

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El camp d'Experiència d'Usuari consta d'una àmplia gamma d'aspectes diferents sobre la interacció amb productes o serveis. L'experiència d'usuari difereix del paradigma objectiu basat en el rendiment, centrant-se en un punt de vista més ampli on les necessitats d'usuaris, els desitjos i les fantasies tenen un paper important en el procés de presa de decisions dels usuaris. L'enfocament d' hipòtesi i validació utilitzant anàlisi quantitatiu té dificultats per tractar, d'una manera estructurada, altres tipus d'informació que aspectes estrictament relacionats amb l'ús dels productes (per exemple les emocions) on els resultats obtinguts són efímers i complexos.Els aspectes d'experiència d'usuari que impliquen sentiments relacionats amb necessitats inherents, desitjos i fantasies s'anomenen informació subjectiva sobre l'experiència. Per obtenir aquesta classe d'informació, l'experiència d'usuari s'analitza segons la relació psicològica entre usuaris i productes o serveis. Aquesta tesi descriu el canvi de paradigme que proposa la psicologia constructivista i la seva pertinència per a l'aplicació en l'obtenenció d'informació subjective sobre l'experiència d'usuari en les primeres fases del disseny de producte. Primerament, una visió de conjunt general del punt de vista proposat presenta les bases de la psicologia constructivista aplicables al camp de l'experiència d'usuari. Després, differents estudis exploratoris il·lustren, amb exemples, com s'haurien d'utilitzar aquestes tècniques com eines d'obtenció d'informació subjectiva:- La tècnica dels paisatges experiencials utilitza la graella cognitive, una aproximació alternativista al constructivisme, per obtenir informació sobre la resposta dels consumidors a un cert grup de productes i els requeriments d'ús.- El procediments de restricció utilitzen tècniques d'escalament (aproximació discursiva al constructivisme) per aconseguir informació nuclear sobre valors que una persona té. Aplicat a disseny de producte serveix per augmentar el nivell de precisió, obtenint informació que relaciona atributs emocionals, funcionals i físics del producte. - El mètode de generació de metàfores sensorials es pot considerar una aproximació retòrica al constructivisme i utilitza productes, objectes i contextos com vehicles per transmetre coneixement tàcit.- La visualització de necessitats i desitjos latents és una aproximació narrativa al constructivisme. Utilitza presentacions de vídeo per desvelar comportaments d'interaccions futures que compleixen els desitjos i les aspiracions dels usuaris.Les tècniques per a l'obteció d'informació subjectiva sobre l'experiencia d'usuari proposades en aquesta tesi doctoral (SEGIT) emergeixen de l'anàlisi de les avantatges i febleses dels estudis exploratoris anteriors. Es poden considerar com un conjunt de tècniques (exploratives i projectives) per ser utilitzades durant el procés de disseny com a eina inspiradora per guiar el procés creatiu (una tècnica de generació d'idees d'experiència per desenvolupar nous conceptes d'interacció) i un model per a la validació de resposta futura dels consumidors. La informació obtinguda amb el mètode de SEGIT s'analitza per a propòsits inspiradors i informatius:- Des d'un punt de vista inspirador, el conjunt de tècniques proporcionen aspectes clau per al procés d'inspiració. Les tècniques exploratòries permeten obtenir idees detallades i justificades i les tècniques projectives conceptes amb un nivell alt d'abstracció i coherència al mateix temps. - Des d'un punt de vista informatiu, aquest conjunt de tècniques es poden utilitzar per obtenir informació sobre la preferència de compra dels consumidors. Alhora que analitza diferents variables que afecten la fiabilitat dels resultats obtinguts.En conclusió, la visió sobre el disseny de la interacció presentat en aquesta tesi doctoral i les tècniques proposades mostren un camí optimista per explorar amb el propòsit de millorar l'acceptació de noves tecnologies en la vida quotidiana. / The field of User Experience (UX) consists of a wide range of different aspects about the interaction with products or services. User experience differs from the performance-based objective paradigm, focusing on a wider point of view where users needs, desires and fantasies have a role in the users decision-making process. Quantitative analysis and hypothesis and validation approaches have difficulties to deal, in a structured way, with information other than that, which is strictly related to aspects regarding product usage (i.e. emotions and affect, social interaction) and the results obtained are ephemeral and complex to measure. The aspects of user experience that involve feelings related to inherent needs, desires and fantasies are called subjective experience information. To obtain this kind of information, user experience analyzes the psychological relationship between users and products or services. This thesis describes constructivist psychology and its relevance for user experience research in early stages of product development. First, a general overview of the proposed point of view introduces constructivist psychology to user experience practitioners. Then several exploratory studies illustrate, with examples, how these techniques should be used as subjective user experience information gathering tools:- The experience landscapes technique use the repertory grid as an alternativist approach to constructivism for gathering information about consumers' response to a certain group of products and extract users' experience requirements. - The tightening procedure uses laddering techniques (discursive approach to constructivism) to get core information, the values a person holds. In order to increase the level of accuracy, obtaining design relevant information that relates emotional, functional and physical product attributes.- The sensory metaphor generation method can be considered a rhetorical approach to constructivism and uses products, objects and contexts as carriers of meaning of subjective experiences.- The visualization of inner needs and desires technique is a narrative approach to constructivism. It uses video presentations to unveil future interactions behaviours that fulfil users' desires and aspirations. The Subjective Experience Gathering and Inspiring Techniques proposed in this PhD thesis (SEGIT) emerges from the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of those exploratory studies. It can be considered a set of techniques (explorative and projective techniques) to be used throughout the design process as an inspirational tool to guide the creative process, a generation technique of experience ideas to develop interaction concepts and a model for consumers' future response validation. The information obtained with the SEGIT method is analyzed for inspirational and informational purposes:- From an inspirational point of view, the set of techniques provide key aspects of the inspiration process in relation to exploratory (detailed and complete ideas) and projective techniques (concepts with high level of abstraction and coherence at the same time). In addition, results show that different aspects like the participants' linguistic abilities and practitioners' guiding skills affect consistency.- From an informational point of view this set of techniques can be used to obtain subjective experience construing profiles about consumers' product preference. At the same time the results show how variables like participants' cognitive complexity of consumers' response and the cognitive structure of the valuation process affect its reliability.In conclusion, the approach to interaction design presented by this research and the proposed techniques for inspirational and informational purposes show an optimistic path to explore with the aim to help designers to bring peoples' sensorial experience and technology closer together.

In this paper, I will try to answer the question how the aesthetic idea in Kant’s aesthetic theory accounts for the universal validity of the subjective judgment of taste, and what the nature of the aesthetic idea is that makes such account possible. This claim about universal validity of the subjective judgment of taste in Kant’s philosophy is regarded to be problematic because of the seeming contradiction between the subjectivity of a judgment and its universality. What can solve this contradiction, from my point of view, is the role of the aesthetic idea that it plays in the judgment of taste and the subjective principle that puts cognitive powers of mind in a harmonious free relationship. The main feature that makes the aesthetic idea the source of the universal validity is its universal communicability expressed in the universally pleasurable feeling of the judgment of taste.

Sexuality is being recognized by the medical community as an increasingly important factor for well-being in older adults. Age and well-being are important factors that contribute to older adults’ sexuality. Subjective age and attitudes towards aging are known to impact physical and mental wellness for adults over 40. However, there is no research that looks at the impact of subject age and aging attitudes on older adult sexuality. This secondary analysis of longitudinal Mid-Life in the United States (MIDUS) study data will explore the relationship between subjective age and attitudes toward aging from MIDUS Wave I on sexual activity, frequency of sex, quality of sex, and interest in sex, among adults 40 and older from MIDUS Wave II. Data were analyzed to determine the relationship between the independent variables subjective age and aging expectations on the four dependent sexuality variables.The interaction terms subjective age by aging expectations, subjective age by gender, aging expectations by gender. A three way interaction between subjective age, aging expectations, and gender was also included in the analyses.Subjective age was significantly associated with quality of sex and interest in sex such that the older people felt, the less likely they were to rate their sex life positively or put much thought and/or effort into sex. Aging expectations were significantly associated with quality of sex such that the worse people felt about getting old, the less likely they were to have good quality sex later in life. Neither subjective age nor aging expectations had an impact on the behavioural variables number of sex partners and frequency of sex. None of the interaction terms tested were statistically significant. As such, people who feel better about aging and who feel younger than their actual age are more likely to rate the quality of the sexual aspects of their lives positively and are also more likely to put thought and effort into their sex lives.

As digital communication of television content becomes more pervasive, and as networks supporting such communication become increasingly diverse, the long-standing problem of assessing video quality by objective measurements becomes particularly important. Content owners as well as content distributors stand to benefit from rapid objective measurements that correlate well with subjective assessments, and further, do not depend on the availability of the original reference video. This thesis investigates different techniques of subjective and objective video evaluation. Our research recommends a functional quality metric called Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) where failure refers to video artifacts deemed to be perceptually noticeable, and investigates objective measurements that correlate well with subjective evaluations of MTBF. Work has been done for determining the usefulness of some existing objective metric by noting their correlation with MTBF. The research also includes experimentation with network-induced artifacts, and a study on statistical methods for correlating candidate objective measurements with the subjective metric. The statistical significance and spread properties for the correlations are studied, and a comparison of subjective MTBF with the existing subjective measure of MOS is performed. These results suggest that MTBF has a direct and predictable relationship with MOS, and that they have similar variations across different viewers. The research is particularly concerned with the development of new no-reference objective metrics that are easy to compute in real time, as well as correlate better than current metrics with the intuitively appealing MTBF measure. The approach to obtaining greater subjective relevance has included the study of better spatial-temporal models for noise-masking and test data pooling in video perception. A new objective metric, 'Automatic Video Quality' metric (AVQ) is described and shown to be implemented in real time with a high degree of correlation with actual subjective scores, with the correlation values approaching the correlations of metrics that use full or partial reference. This is metric does not need any reference to the original video, and when used to display MPEG2 streams, calculates and indicates the video quality in terms of MTBF. Certain diagnostics like the amount of compression and network artifacts are also shown.

The past research concerning pets mostly focused on the assistance rendered by pets. Due to the climate of lesser child and never-go marry, more and more people treat pets like their children indeed. What they care does not limit to practical purposes such as guard and accompany, but also the pet¡¦s needs. They are willing to offer their pets all sorts of foods, goods and services so that their pets are happy with. On the other hand, the video technology reaches its maturity and is widely applied to mobile communication, house monitoring, and kindergarten monitoring. In addition, such technology is accessed to pet hotels, pet parlors, pet sitters and pet clinics where the pet owners can surf on their 3G phones to watch their pets at any time. This study aims to explore the pet owners¡¦ recognition of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and use intention in terms of video technology. This study is based on the framework of TAM, using raising attitude as external variable whereas subjective norm as independent variable to willingness to use. The questionnaires were sent to the pet owners through random sampling in Taiwan. 481 copies were retrieved and conducted SPSS and AMOS analysis. The findings indicate that all hypotheses are validated except two hypotheses- one is the pet owners ¡¥s mental propensity toward their pets is not related to the perceived ease of use of video technology, the other is perceived ease of use is not related to use intention. Therefore, the results confirm that¡G1. The feelings of the pet owners for their pets incur positive impact on their recognition toward the perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use of video technology, 2. With subjective norm, the pet owners are more willing to use video technology. 3. If video technology facilitated easy caring for pets, the pet owners could easily recognize its perceived usefulness. 4. If the pet owners consider video technology perceived usefulness for keeping their pets, they have no intention to use such device to care about their pets. 5. For pet business sectors, it is imperative to make use of video technology in order to convince the pet owners of its conveniences which can be always appealing to the pet owners.

Younger and older adults’ susceptibility to the continued influence of inferences in memory was examined using a paradigm implemented by Wilkes and Leatherbarrow. Research has shown that younger adults have difficulty forgetting inferences they make after reading a passage, even if the information that the inferences are based on is later shown to be untrue. The current study examined the effects of these inferences on memory in the lab and tested whether older adults, like younger adults, are influenced by the lingering effects of these false inferences. In addition, this study examined the nature of these inferences, by examining younger and older adults’ subjective experiences and confidence associated with factual recall and incorrect inference recall. Results showed that younger and older adults are equally susceptible to the continued influence of inferences. Both younger and older adults gave primarily remember judgments to factual questions but primarily believe judgments to inference questions. This is an important finding because it demonstrates that people may go against what they remember or know occurred because of a lingering belief that the information might still be true. Also, the finding that participants do actually give more believe responses to inference questions is important because it demonstrates that there is a third state of awareness that people will readily use when making inferences. Participants were also more confident when making remember and know judgments compared to believe judgments. This is an interesting finding because it supports the theory that both remember and know judgments can be associated with high confidence.

This study examined the role of personality variables in the relationship between subjective well-being and loss of relationships through death or parental divorce. The purpose of this study was to explore the role of extraversion, neuroticism, and locus of control as moderating variables between loss of relationship and subjective well-being in college students. Given the prevalence of loss through either death or parental divorce in college students and potential long-term effects on subjective well-being, the current study attempted to further knowledge in this area. Thus, this study aimed to better understand how life events are moderated by personality in influencing an individual’s subjective well-being. This study predicted that individuals who had experienced a loss of relationship would have a lower subjective well-being than individuals who had not experienced a loss of relationship. This hypothesis was not supported by the data which found that individuals who experienced a loss of relationship did not report lower levels of subjective well-being than individuals who had not experienced a loss of relationship. Additionally, it was expected that individuals who reported higher levels of neuroticism and who had an internal locus of control would have a lower subjective well-being. Again, these hypotheses were not supported, and the results indicated that individuals with higher levels of neuroticism also reported higher levels of positive affect and neuroticism was positively correlated with life satisfaction. Furthermore, individuals who reported higher levels of extraversion did not report lower levels of negative affect or life satisfaction. Finally, this study hypothesized that a loss of relationship through death would result in lower levels of subjective well-being. However, the results of this study indicated that individuals with a loss of relationship through death did not report lower levels of subjective well-being when compared to individuals without a loss of relationship through death. The results of this study further the literature on loss of relationship through death and parental divorce and on subjective well-being. This study provides support for the subjective well-being research and provides contrasting findings in regards to personality variables. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are also addressed.