This thesis explores the transformative potential of the co-authorship dynamic between game developers and players in The Squared Circle, an abstract video game designed to facilitate personality development. Drawing inspiration from existentialist philosophy, psychotherapy, and game design, the study examines the intricate interplay between gameplay mechanics, narrative depth, and psychological exploration. Employing a research-through-design methodology, the researcher analyzes The Squared Circle’s elements through psychological, philosophical, and ludological literature. The game's initial focus on engaging gameplay mechanics evolved to incorporate textual significance and symbolic play, inspired by Carl Jung's theory of Individuation. Through playtesting, observations, and interviews, the study investigates the psychological and philosophical effects of the game. Players engage in symbolic representation and journaling, delving into their unconscious aspects and exploring personal experiences within the game world. The co-authorship dynamic fosters introspection expands self-understanding, and invites transformative experiences. The findings highlight the significance of journaling and symbolic play as tools for personal growth and self-expression within the game. Players navigate the symbolic landscape, uncover hidden meanings, and co-create their own narrative, leading to increased self-awareness and psychological integration. This research contributes to understanding games as a medium for personal transformation and psychological exploration. The study underscores the importance of co-authorship, journaling, and symbolic representation in designing games that facilitate introspection, meaningful experiences, and the development of the player's personality.

In this thesis examples of spectral triples, which represent fractal sets, are examined and new insights into their noncommutative geometries are obtained. Firstly, starting with Connes' spectral triple for a non-empty compact totally disconnected subset E of {R} with no isolated points, we develop a noncommutative coarse multifractal formalism. Specifically, we show how multifractal properties of a measure supported on E can be expressed in terms of a spectral triple and the Dixmier trace of certain operators. If E satisfies a given porosity condition, then we prove that the coarse multifractal box-counting dimension can be recovered. We show that for a self-similar measure μ, given by an iterated function system S defined on a compact subset of {R} satisfying the strong separation condition, our noncommutative coarse multifractal formalism gives rise to a noncommutative integral which recovers the self-similar multifractal measure ν associated to μ, and we establish a relationship between the noncommutative volume of such a noncommutative integral and the measure theoretical entropy of ν with respect to S. Secondly, motivated by the results of Antonescu-Ivan and Christensen, we construct a family of (1, +)-summable spectral triples for a one-sided topologically exact subshift of finite type (∑{{A}} {{N}}, σ). These spectral triples are constructed using equilibrium measures obtained from the Perron-Frobenius-Ruelle operator, whose potential function is non-arithemetic and Hölder continuous. We show that the Connes' pseudo-metric, given by any one of these spectral triples, is a metric and that the metric topology agrees with the weak*-topology on the state space {S}(C(∑{{A}} {{N}}); {C}). For each equilibrium measure ν[subscript(φ)] we show that the noncommuative volume of the associated spectral triple is equal to the reciprocal of the measure theoretical entropy of ν[subscript(φ)] with respect to the left shift σ (where it is assumed, without loss of generality, that the pressure of the potential function is equal to zero). We also show that the measure ν[subscript(φ)] can be fully recovered from the noncommutative integration theory.

The estimated prevalence of Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2007 was approximately 6,5-6,6 per 1000 children. Symbolic play is, one of the diagnostic criteria in the cases of ASD. In preschool, symbolic play is predominant form of play. However, children with ASD show lower levels of symbolic play. It takes them more time to start with symbolic play and have problems in performance of it. Nevertheless, they might even never develop symbolic play skills. The need for interventions targeting symbolic play of children with ASD is increasing. Generally speaking, there appear to be very limited number of symbolic play interventions for children with ASD. Even if done, most have been performed in laboratory conditions. The interventions that have been undertaken to support symbolic play have taken form of being child centered, peer mediated or adult mediated, with emphasized role of caregivers as interventionists. The aim of this systematic literature review is to address parents and teachers implemented interventions targeting symbolic play of preschool aged children with ASD, with an emphasis on characteristics of these interventions and pretend play sequences. Findings reveal that interventions implemented by either parents or teachers in natural environment give positive outcomes in terms of symbolic play and its instances of preschool aged children with ASD. The review presented a limited number of studies dealing with this kind of interventions. Since all interventions show that symbolic play can be facilitated in this population, special attention should be payed to the methods used to improve symbolic play behaviours and defining and dividing symbolic play. More focus should be put on implementing interventions targeting symbolic play of children with ASD by caregivers, i.e. parents and teachers, in natural context. Inclusion of peers in these kinds of interventions emerges as possible and potentially successful as well.The estimated prevalence of Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2007 was approximately 6,5-6,6 per 1000 children. Symbolic play is, one of the diagnostic criteria in the cases of ASD. In preschool, symbolic play is predominant form of play. However, children with ASD show lower levels of symbolic play. It takes them more time to start with symbolic play and have problems in performance of it. Nevertheless, they might even never develop symbolic play skills. The need for interventions targeting symbolic play of children with ASD is increasing. Generally speaking, there appear to be very limited number of symbolic play interventions for children with ASD. Even if done, most have been performed in laboratory conditions. The interventions that have been undertaken to support symbolic play have taken form of being child centered, peer mediated or adult mediated, with emphasized role of caregivers as interventionists. The aim of this systematic literature review is to address parents and teachers implemented interventions targeting symbolic play of preschool aged children with ASD, with an emphasis on characteristics of these interventions and pretend play sequences. Findings reveal that interventions implemented by either parents or teachers in natural environment give positive outcomes in terms of symbolic play and its instances of preschool aged children with ASD. The review presented a limited number of studies dealing with this kind of interventions. Since all interventions show that symbolic play can be facilitated in this population, special attention should be payed to the methods used to improve symbolic play behaviours and defining and dividing symbolic play. More focus should be put on implementing interventions targeting symbolic play of children with ASD by caregivers, i.e. parents and teachers, in natural context. Inclusion of peers in these kinds of interventions emerges as possible and potentially successful as well.

Submitted by admin tede (tede@pucgoias.edu.br) on 2018-11-06T17:07:16Z No. of bitstreams: 1 LEONARDO RODRIGUES DE VELASCO.pdf: 1209057 bytes, checksum: a019cd3d1cb75a5fa84744bc22ded5ac (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-11-06T17:07:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 LEONARDO RODRIGUES DE VELASCO.pdf: 1209057 bytes, checksum: a019cd3d1cb75a5fa84744bc22ded5ac (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-08-22 / VELASCO, Leonardo Rodrigues de. Borders of the religious field: Adaptations to the market of symbolic goods.Master's Dissertation (Post-graduation Program in Religion Sciences) - Pontificia Universidade Católica de Goiás, 2018. This research intends to analyze the displacement of the religious field in the Brazilian symbolic goods market. Starting from an investigation of the concept of religious field as proposed by Pierre Bourdieu, we demonstrate how the boundaries of this field deteriorate nowadays with the entry of new agents and techniques. For such, we analyze five distinguished religious agents – Priest Marcelo Rossi, Priest Fábio de Melo, Augusto Cury, Cristiano Cardoso e Renato Cardoso –, proving how they – by using digital media or self-help literature – can offer their symbolic goods to the demand of individuals in search of beliefs. That said, we have traditional institutions and new agents that, dealing with the liquidity of post-modernity, create and reconfigure models to reach the individuals search for affirmation in the world. Through those considerations, we aim to show how the individual’s subjectivity dictates the course of the symbolic goods offer in the religious field. Finally, we intend to contribute, by means of examples in the Brazilian context, with the view that the actual Western society goes through considerable reconfigurations, which question the notion itself of religious field. / VELASCO, Leonardo Rodrigues de. Fronteiras do campo religioso: daptações ao mercado de bens simbólicos. Dissertação de Mestrado (Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Goiás, 2018. Esta pesquisa tem como propósito analisar o deslocamento do campo religioso no mercado de bens simbólicos brasileiro. Partindo de uma investigação do conceito de campo religioso proposto por Pierre Bourdieu, demonstramos como as fronteiras desse campo se deterioram na atualidade com a entrada de novos agentes e novas técnicas. Para tal, analisamos cinco agentes do religioso diferentes – Pe. Marcelo Rossi, Pe. Fábio de Melo, Augusto Cury, Cristiane Cardoso e Renato Cardoso – comprovando como estes – por meio do uso de mídias digitais ou de literatura de autoajuda – conseguem ofertar seus bens simbólicos à demanda de indivíduos em busca de crenças. Isto posto, temos instituições tradicionais e novos agentes que, lidando com a liquidez da pós-modernidade, criam e reconfiguram modelos para atingir à busca por afirmação dos indivíduos no mundo. Mediante tais considerações, buscamos apresentar como a subjetividade do indivíduo dita os rumos das ofertas de bens simbólicos no campo religioso. Finalmente pretendemos contribuir, por meio de exemplos do contexto brasileiro, com a visão de que a sociedade ocidental atual passa por reconfigurações consideráveis, que questionam a própria noção de campo religioso.

Formal verification techniques are growing increasingly vital for the development of safety-critical software and hardware in practice. Techniques such as requirements-based design and model checking for system verification have been successfully used to verify systems for air traffic control, airplane separation assurance, autopilots, CPU logic designs, life-support, medical equipment, and other functions that ensure human safety. Formal behavioral specifications written early in the system-design process and communicated across all design phases increase the efficiency, consistency, and quality of the system under development. We argue that to prevent introducing design or verification errors, it is crucial to test specifications for satisfiability. We advocate for the adaptation of a new sanity check via satisfiability checking for property assurance. Our focus here is on specifications expressed in Linear Temporal Logic (LTL). We demonstrate that LTL satisfiability checking reduces to model checking and satisfiability checking for the specification, its complement, and a conjunction of all properties should be performed as a first step to LTL model checking. We report on an experimental investigation of LTL satisfiability checking. We introduce a large set of rigorous benchmarks to enable objective evaluation of LTL-to-automaton algorithms in terms of scalability, performance, correctness, and size of the automata produced. For explicit model checking, we use the Spin model checker; we tested all LTL-to-explicit automaton translation tools that were publicly available when we conducted our study. For symbolic model checking, we use CadenceSMV, NuSMV, and SAL-SMC for both LTL-to-symbolic automaton translation and to perform the satisfiability check. Our experiments result in two major findings. First, scalability, correctness, and other debilitating performance issues afflict most LTL translation tools. Second, for LTL satisfiability checking, the symbolic approach is clearly superior to the explicit approach. Ironically, the explicit approach to LTL-to-automata had been heavily studied while only one algorithm existed for LTL-to-symbolic automata. Since 1994, there had been essentially no new progress in encoding symbolic automata for BDD-based analysis. Therefore, we introduce a set of 30 symbolic automata encodings. The set consists of novel combinations of existing constructs, such as different LTL formula normal forms, with a novel transition-labeled symbolic automaton form, a new way to encode transitions, and new BDD variable orders based on algorithms for tree decomposition of graphs. An extensive set of experiments demonstrates that these encodings translate to significant, sometimes exponential, improvement over the current standard encoding for symbolic LTL satisfiability checking. Building upon these ideas, we return to the explicit automata domain and focus on the most common type of specifications used in industrial practice: safety properties. We show that we can exploit the inherent determinism of safety properties to create a set of 26 explicit automata encodings comprised of novel aspects including: state numbers versus state labels versus a state look-up table, finite versus infinite acceptance conditions, forward-looking versus backward-looking transition encodings, assignment-based versus BDD-based alphabet representation, state and transition minimization, edge abbreviation, trap-state elimination, and determinization either on-the-fly or up-front using the subset construction. We conduct an extensive experimental evaluation and identify an encoding that offers the best performance in explicit LTL model checking time and is constantly faster than the previous best explicit automaton encoding algorithm.

The existing literature in marketing and consumer behavior tends to adopt a somewhat static view of membership and belonging, focusing on the status uncertainty that surrounds new group aspirants. In the literature, the portrayal of becoming a member is one of a logical step-by-step process as members move toward the top of the social hierarchy and secure status. An underlying assumption of this process is that once an individual secures membership through status, that individual is no longer uncertain about their membership or belonging. This thesis presents an alternative to this static step-by-step view and introduces the idea of the belonging paradox. A belonging paradox is a recursive cycle of an unsolvable duality of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion that can result from idiosyncratic factors such as gender, race, disability or self-doubt. This thesis also develops a new conceptual framework or perspective on the concept of belonging by integrating Uncertainty-Identity Theory, Self-Verification Theory and Symbolic Self-Completion Theory into a more dynamic and fluid understanding about the nature of belonging. Through the introduction of the belonging paradox and the new conceptual framework of belonging, a more comprehensive understanding of belonging emerges. Specifically, the belonging paradox suggests that beyond the initial stages of striving for group membership, uncertainty of belonging can continue to be a pervasive, continuous struggle even for committed hardcore group members. Through an analysis of the skateboarding subculture, this thesis illustrates how members continuously construct and shape their own belonging experience within groups. It also demonstrates the different ways members use consumption to try to cope with the duality and constant tension of the belonging paradox as well as explores the link between uncertainty and the ability to play with identities. This leads to a number of theoretical and managerial contributions. / Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2011-11-27 17:42:26.54

Submitted by Cássia Santos (cassia.bcufg@gmail.com) on 2016-05-19T12:13:03Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Thiago Vasconcelos Ribeiro - 2015.pdf: 6650465 bytes, checksum: fff568c1c2d14350be65c2a484d804fb (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-05-19T13:05:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Thiago Vasconcelos Ribeiro - 2015.pdf: 6650465 bytes, checksum: fff568c1c2d14350be65c2a484d804fb (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-05-19T13:05:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Thiago Vasconcelos Ribeiro - 2015.pdf: 6650465 bytes, checksum: fff568c1c2d14350be65c2a484d804fb (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-09-30 / The dissertation “The Subfield Brazilian Research in Science Education STS (SCIENCETECHNOLOGY- SOCIETY): a construction space” presents the results of an investigation that aimed to characterize the social space formed by researchers and institutions responsible for production and reproduction of research in science education STS in Brazil. To build the object of research, we used the theoretical framework involving the notion of field, developed by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, synthesized in central concepts such as field, symbolic capital, habitus, illusio, symbolic violence, etc. In the construction of the methodology and analysis used was the Bardin’s Analysis of Content, updated to the way of thinking relational characteristic of implicit praxiological knowledge the notion of field in the form of a Relational Content Analysis. Data were built with originating from the information provided by the agents involved in the research in science education STS in Lattes Platform, through the Curriculum Lattes of each. The analyzes produced allowed signal to the existence of a form of symbolic market of cultural production, a scientific field involving the dispute of symbolic capital, about a hierarchy of positions that characterize and differentiate the dominant researchers and researchers dominated in the structure of symbolic struggles of research in science education STS. The analyzes allowed, yet, show some effects of symbolic violence by ruling on the Subfield Brazilian Research in Science Education STS. / A dissertação “O Subcampo Brasileiro de Pesquisa em Ensino de Ciências CTS (CIÊNCIATECNOLOGIA- SOCIEDADE): um espaço em construção” apresenta os resultados de uma investigação que teve como objetivo caracterizar o espaço social formado pelos pesquisadores e instituições responsáveis pela produção e reprodução das pesquisas em ensino de ciências CTS no Brasil. Para a construção do objeto de pesquisa, foi empregado o aporte teórico envolvendo a noção de campo, desenvolvido pelo sociólogo francês Pierre Bourdieu, sintetizado em conceitos centrais como campo, capitais simbólicos, habitus, illusio, violência simbólica, etc. Na construção da metodologia e das análises foi empregada a Analise de Conteúdo de Bardin, atualizada para o modo de pensar relacional característico do conhecimento praxiológico implícita na noção de campo, na forma de uma Análise de Conteúdo Relacional. Os dados analisados foram construídos tendo por fonte as informações disponibilizadas pelos agentes envolvidos na pesquisa em ensino de ciências CTS na Plataforma Lattes, por meio do Currículo Lattes de cada um deles. As análises produzidas permitiram sinalizar para a existência de uma forma de mercado simbólico de produção cultural, um campo científico, envolvendo a disputa de capitais simbólicos, em torno de uma hierarquia de posições que caracterizam e diferenciam os pesquisadores dominantes e os pesquisadores dominados na estrutura das lutas simbólicas das pesquisas em ensino de ciências CTS. As análises permitiram, ainda, evidenciar alguns efeitos de violência simbólica exercida pelos dominantes sobre o Subcampo Brasileiro de Pesquisa em Ensino de Ciências CTS.

This explorative qualitative research investigates whether there is a difference in the symbolic meanings between the bulimic’s behaviour of purposefully expelling food versus the anorexic’s deprivation of food by administering the Thematic Apperceptive Test, as well as, conducting in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews with two bulimic women, two anorexic women of the restrictive sub-type and one anorexic woman of the binge-eating/ purging sub-type, whose ages ranged from twenty-one to thirty-five years of age. Both the conscious and unconscious themes that emerge from their stated relationship with food and their TAT responses are explored, with particular interest being focused on whether the symbolic meaning of food is in essence a “symbolic equation” for an object, specifically the mother and parental couple. The concept of “symbolic equation” is explored analytically from a Kleinian perspective to ascertain whether it is not food, per se that the anorexic is depriving herself of or that the bulimic suddenly and uncontrollably ingests, but then rapidly and violently expels. On the contrary, it appears that the refusal to introject or the ambivalent battle between introjection and expulsion of food is used as a disguise for the underlying conflictual object relation/s. The modified version of the Bellak Scoring System (1986) was used to analyse their TAT responses in order to elicit the themes that represent their internal worlds and object relations. Individual thematic content analysis was conducted on each interview transcript separately, and then a comparative analysis performed to explore commonalities and differences across the transcripts and TAT responses amongst the three anorexic women as a group and the bulimic women as a separate group. After which, the two different eating disorder groups were compared to explore both their differences and similarities. The findings suggest that a variety of conscious and unconscious motives might best be understood within the historical context of each participant’s early development and family dynamics. It appears that the anorexic is unconsciously motivated, at least partly, by her desire to repudiate any experience of dependency, separateness, loss, frustration, envy, fear, guilt and helplessness. Conversely, the bulimic appears to be motivated, at least partly, by the repetitive magical quest to restore a ‘good’ self-object bond and to stifle her destructiveness. Nonetheless, underlying both the anorexic’s and the bulimic’s illness is an ambivalent struggle with internalising a gainful and durable link to an object, which can in some way be permitted to be ‘good’. This appears to have its origin in the mother-daughter relationship, father-daughter relationship, parental couple, as well as, the triangular space between the mother-daughter-father link. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Psychology / unrestricted

No description available.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 J63 / Master of Science