Representational modes of thinking employed by children aged thirteen and fourteen, and their relationship to performance in standardised tests of ability, measures of creativity and personality

This thesis proposes that despite many experimental studies of thinking, and the development of models of thinking, such as Bruner's (1966) enactive, iconic and symbolic developmental modes, the imagery and inner verbal strategies used by children need further investigation to establish a coherent, theoretical basis from which to create experimental curricula for direct improvement of those strategies. Five hundred and twenty-three first, second and third year comprehensive school children were tested on 'recall' imagery, using a modified Betts Imagery Test; and a test of dual-coding processes (Paivio, 1971, p.179), by the P/W Visual/Verbal Questionnaire, measuring 'applied imagery' and inner verbalising. Three lines of investigation were pursued: 1. An investigation a. of hypothetical representational strategy differences between boys and girls; and b. the extent to which strategies change with increasing age. 2. The second and third year children's use of representational processes, were taken separately and compared with performance measures of perception, field independence, creativity, self-sufficiency and self-concept. 3. The second and third year children were categorised into four dual-coding strategy groups: a. High Visual/High Verbal b. Low Visual/High Verbal c. High Visual/Low Verbal d. Low Visual/Low Verbal These groups were compared on the same performance measures. The main result indicates that: 1. A hierarchy of dual-coding strategy use can be identified that is significantly related (.01, Binomial Test) to success or failure in the performance measures: the High Visual/High Verbal group registering the highest scores, the Low Visual/High Verbal and High Visual/Low Verbal groups registering intermediate scores, and the Low Visual/Low Verbal group registering the lowest scores on the performance measures. Subsidiary results indicate that: 2. Boys' use of visual strategies declines, and of verbal strategies increases, with age; girls' recall imagery strategy increases with age. Educational implications from the main result are discussed, the establishment of experimental curricula proposed, and further research suggested.

A systems and cybernetic perspective on complex problem solving

This thesis is concerned with Organisational Problem Solving. The work reflects the complexities of organisational problem situations and the eclectic approach that has been necessary to gain an understanding of the processes involved. The thesis is structured into three main parts. Part I describes the author's understanding of problems and suitable approaches. Chapter 2 identifies the Transcendental Realist (TR) view of science (Harre 1970, Bhaskar 1975) as the best general framework for identifying suitable approaches to complex organisational problems. Chapter 3 discusses the relationship between Checkland's methodology (1972) and TR. The need to generate iconic (explanatory) models of the problem situation is identified and the ability of viable system modelling to supplement the modelling stage of the methodology is explored in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 builds further on the methodology to produce an original iconic model of the methodological process. The model characterises the mechanisms of organisational problem situations as well as desirable procedural steps. The Weltanschauungen (W's) or "world views" of key actors is recognised as central to the mechanisms involved. Part II describes the experience which prompted the theoretical investigation. Chapter 6 describes the first year of the project. The success of this stage is attributed to the predominance of a single W. Chapter 7 describes the changes in the organisation which made the remaining phase of the project difficult. These difficulties are attributed to a failure to recognise the importance of differing W's. Part III revisits the theoretical and organisational issues. Chapter 8 identifies a range of techniques embodying W's which are compatible with .the framework of Part I and which might usefully supplement it. Chapter 9 characterises possible W's in the sponsoring organisation. Throughout the work, an attempt 1s made to reflect the process as well as the product of the author's leaving.

May the contact lens force be with you

FULL TEXT: Like many people one of my favourite pastimes over the holiday season is to watch the great movies that are offered on the television channels and new releases in the movie theatres or catching up on those DVDs that you have been wanting to watch all year. Recently we had the new ‘Star Wars’ movie, ‘The Force Awakens’, which is reckoned to become the highest grossing movie of all time, and the latest offering from James Bond, ‘Spectre’ (which included, for the car aficionados amongst you, the gorgeous new Aston Martin DB10). It is always amusing to see how vision correction or eye injury is dealt with by movie makers. Spy movies and science fiction movies have a freehand to design aliens with multiples eyes on stalks or retina scanning door locks or goggles that can see through walls. Eye surgery is usually shown in some kind of day case simplified laser treatment that gives instant results, apart from the great scene in the original ‘Terminator’ movie where Arnold Schwarzenegger's android character encounters an injury to one eye and then proceeds to remove the humanoid covering to this mechanical eye over a bathroom sink. I suppose it is much more difficult to try and include contact lenses in such movies. Although you may recall the film ‘Charlie's Angels’, which did have a scene where one of the Angels wore a contact lens that had a retinal image imprinted on it so she could by-pass a retinal scan door lock and an Eddy Murphy spy movie ‘I-Spy’, where he wore contact lenses that had electronic gadgetry that allowed whatever he was looking at to be beamed back to someone else, a kind of remote video camera device. Maybe we aren’t quite there in terms of devices available but these things are probably not the behest of science fiction anymore as the technology does exist to put these things together. The technology to incorporate electronics into contact lenses is being developed and I am sure we will be reporting on it in the near future. In the meantime we can continue to enjoy the unrealistic scenes of eye swapping as in the film ‘Minority Report’ (with Tom Cruise). Much more closely to home, than in a galaxy far far away, in this issue you can find articles on topics much nearer to the closer future. More and more optometrists in the UK are becoming registered for therapeutic work as independent prescribers and the number is likely to rise in the near future. These practitioners will be interested in the review paper by Michael Doughty, who is a member of the CLAE editorial panel (soon to be renamed the Jedi Council!), on prescribing drugs as part of the management of chronic meibomian gland dysfunction. Contact lenses play an active role in myopia control and orthokeratology has been used not only to help provide refractive correction but also in the retardation of myopia. In this issue there are three articles related to this topic. Firstly, an excellent paper looking at the link between higher spherical equivalent refractive errors and the association with slower axial elongation. Secondly, a paper that discusses the effectiveness and safety of overnight orthokeratology with high-permeability lens material. Finally, a paper that looks at the stabilisation of early adult-onset myopia. Whilst we are always eager for new and exciting developments in contact lenses and related instrumentation in this issue of CLAE there is a demonstration of a novel and practical use of a smartphone to assisted anterior segment imaging and suggestions of this may be used in telemedicine. It is not hard to imagine someone taking an image remotely and transmitting that back to a central diagnostic centre with the relevant expertise housed in one place where the information can be interpreted and instruction given back to the remote site. Back to ‘Star Wars’ and you will recall in the film ‘The Phantom Menace’ when Qui-Gon Jinn first meets Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine he takes a sample of his blood and sends a scan of it back to Obi-Wan Kenobi to send for analysis and they find that the boy has the highest midichlorian count ever seen. On behalf of the CLAE Editorial board (or Jedi Council) and the BCLA Council (the Senate of the Republic) we wish for you a great 2016 and ‘may the contact lens force be with you’. Or let me put that another way ‘the CLAE Editorial Board and BCLA Council, on behalf of, a great 2016, we wish for you!’

A working memory bias for alcohol-related stimuli depends on drinking score

We tested 44 participants with respect to their working memory (WM) performance on alcohol-related versus neutral visual stimuli. Previously an alcohol attentional bias (AAB) had been reported using these stimuli, where the attention of frequent drinkers was automatically drawn toward alcohol-related items (e.g., beer bottle). The present study set out to provide evidence for an alcohol memory bias (AMB) that would persist over longer time-scales than the AAB. The WM task we used required memorizing 4 stimuli in their correct locations and a visual interference task was administered during a 4-sec delay interval. A subsequent probe required participants to indicate whether a stimulus was shown in the correct or incorrect location. For each participant we calculated a drinking score based on 3 items derived from the Alcohol Use Questionnaire, and we observed that higher scorers better remembered alcohol-related images compared with lower scorers, particularly when these were presented in their correct locations upon recall. This provides first evidence for an AMB. It is important to highlight that this effect persisted over a 4-sec delay period including a visual interference task that erased iconic memories and diverted attention away from the encoded items, thus the AMB cannot be reduced to the previously reported AAB. Our finding calls for further investigation of alcohol-related cognitive biases in WM, and we propose a preliminary model that may guide future research. © 2012 American Psychological Association.

8 steps for managing green innovation in the automotive industry

The car is dead, long live the car! We are about to celebrate 100 years of Ford model T, the most iconic symbol of the popularisation of cars as the means of personal mobility. The automotive industry is going through an incredible journey of redefining its purpose and the traditional characteristics of its products. More than ever, car manufacturers will need to develop and effectively implement a meaningful green innovation strategy if they want to survive in the new automotive era.

Margetinggeschichte:Die Genese einer modernen Sozialtechnik, Hartmut Berghoff

Book revew: Marketinggeschichte: die Genese einer modernen Sozialtechnik [Marketing history: The genesis of a modern social technique], edited by Hartmut Berghoff, Frankfurt/Main, Campus Verlag, 2007, 409 pp., illus., [euro]30.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-3-593-38323-1. This edited volume is the result of a workshop at Göttingen University in 2006 and combines a number of different approaches to the research into the history of marketing in Germany's economy and society. The majority of contributions loosely focus around the occurrence of a ‘marketing revolution’ in the 1970s, which ties in with interpretations of the Americanisation of German business. This revolution replaced the indigenous German idea of Absatzwirtschaft (the economics of sales) with the American-influenced idea of Marketing, which was less functionally oriented and more strategic, and which aimed to connect processes within the firm in order to allow a greater focus on the consumer. The entire volume is framed by Hartmut Berghoff's substantial and informative introduction, which introduces a number of actors and trends beyond the content of the volume. Throughout the various contributions, authors provide explanations of the timing and nature of marketing revolutions. Alexander Engel identifies an earlier revolution in the marketing of dyes, which undergoes major change with the emergence of chemical dyes. While the natural dyestuff had been a commodity, with producers removed from consumers via a global network of traders, chemical dyes were products and were branded at an early stage. This was a fundamental change in the nature of production and sales. As Roman Rossfeld shows in his contribution on the Swiss chocolate industry (which focuses almost exclusively on Suchard), even companies that produced non-essential consumer goods which had always required some measure of labelling grappled for years with the need to develop fewer and higher impact brands, as well as an efficient sales operation. A good example for the classical ‘marketing revolution’ of the 1970s is the German automobile industry. Ingo Köhler convincingly argues that the crisis situation of German car manufacturers – the change from a seller's to a buyer's market, appreciation of the German mark which undermines exports, the oil crises coupled with higher inflation and greater frugality of consumers and the emergence of new competitors – lead companies to refocus from production to the demands of the consumer. While he highlights the role of Ford in responding most rapidly to these problems, he does not address whether the multinational was potentially transferring American knowledge to the German market. Similarly, Paul Erker illustrates that a marketing revolution in transport and logistics happened much later, because the market remained highly regulated until the 1980s. Both Paul Erker and Uwe Spiekermann in their contribution, present comparisons of two different sectors or companies (the tire manufacturer Continental and the logistics company Dachser, and agriculture and trade, respectively). In both cases, however, it remains unclear why these examples were chosen for comparison, as both seem to have little in common and are not always effectively used to demonstrate differences. The weakest section of the book is the development of marketing as an academic discipline. The attempt at sketching the phases in the evolution of marketing as an academic discipline by Ursula Hansen and Matthias Bode opens with an undergraduate-level explanation on the methodology of historical periodisation that seems extraneous. Considerably stronger is the section on the wider societal impact of marketing, and Anja Kruke shows how the new techniques of opinion research was accepted by politics and business – surprisingly more readily by politicians than their commercial counterparts. In terms of contemporary personalities, Hans Domizlaff emerges as one fascinating figure of German marketing history, which several contributors refer to and whose career as the German cigarette manufacturer Reemtsma is critically analysed by Tino Jacobs. Domizlaff was Germany's own ‘marketing guru’, whose successful campaigns led to the wide-ranging reception of his ideas about the nature of good branding and marketing. These are variously described as intuitive, elitist, and sachlich, a German concept of a sober, fact-based, and ‘no frills’ approach. Domizlaff did not believe in market research. Rather, he saw the genius of the individual advertiser as key to intuitively ascertaining the people's moods, wishes, and desires. This seems to have made him peculiarly suited to the tastes of the German middle class, according to Thomas Mergel's contribution on the nature of political marketing in the republic. Especially in politics, any form of hard sales tactics were severely frowned upon and considered to demean the citizen as incapable of making an informed choice, a mentality that he dates back to the traditions of nineteenth-century liberalism. Part of this disdain of ‘selling politics like toothpaste’ was also founded on the highly effective use of branding by the National Socialists, who identified their party through the use of an increasingly standardised image of Adolf Hitler and the swastika. Alexander Schug extends on previous research that criticised the simplistic notion of Hitler's charisma as the only explanation of the popular success and distances his approach from those who see it in terms of propaganda and demagogy. He argues that the NSDAP used the tools of advertising and branding precisely because they had to introduce their new ideology into a political marketplace dominated by more established parties. In this they were undoubtedly successful, more so than they intended: as bakers sold swastika cookies and butchers formed Führer heads out of lard, the NSDAP sought to regain control over the now effectively iconic images that constituted their brand, which was in danger of being trivialised and devalued. Key to understanding the history of marketing in Germany is on the one hand the exchange of ideas with the United States, and on the other the impact of national-socialist policies, and the question whether they were a force of modernisation or retardation. The general argument in the volume appears to favour the latter explanation. In the 1930s, some of the leading marketing experts emigrated to the USA, leaving German academia and business isolated. The aftermath of the Second World War left a country that needed to increase production to satisfy consumer demand, and there was little interest in advanced sales techniques. Although the Nazis were progressive in applying new marketing methods to their political campaign, this retarded the adoption of sales techniques in politics for a long time. Germany saw the development of idiosyncratic approaches by people like Domizlaff in the 1930s and 1940s, when it lost some leading thinkers, and only engaged with American marketing conceptions in the 1960s and 1970s, when consumers eventually became more important than producers.

Future of contact lens usage

I was recently part of a small committee looking at higher qualifications in contact lens practice and the discussion turned to future technologies. There was mention of different materials and different applications of contact lenses. Drug delivery with contact lenses was discussed as this has been talked about in the literature for a while. The first paper I could find that talked about using contact lenses for drug delivery dates back over 40 years. There was a review paper in CLAE in 2008 that looked specifically at this too [1]. However, where are these products? Why are we not seeing them in the market place? Maybe the technology is not quite there yet, or maybe patents are prohibiting usage or maybe the market is not big enough to develop such products? We do have lenses on the market with slow release of lubricating agents but not therapeutic agents used for ocular or systemic conditions. Contact lenses with pathogen detectors may be part of our contact lens armoury of the future and again we can already see papers in the literature that have trialled this technology for glucose monitoring in diabetics or lactate concentration in the tear film. Future contact lenses may incorporate better optics based on aberration control and we see this starting to emerge with aspheric designs designed to minimise spherical aberration. Irregular corneas can be fitted with topography based designs and again this technology exists and is being used by some manufacturers in their designs already. Moreover, the topography based fitting of irregular corneas is certainly something we see a lot of today and CLAE has seen many articles related to this over the last decade or so. What about further into the future? Well one interesting area must the 3-dimensional contact lenses, or contact lenses with electronic devices built in that simulate a display screen. A little like the virtual display spectacles that are already sold by electronics companies. It does not take much of a stretch of the imagination to see a large electronic company taking this technology on and making it viable. Will we see people on the train watching movies on these electronic virtual reality contact lenses? I think we will, but when is harder to know.

What's new pussycat? A genealogy of animal celebrity

Animal celebrity is a human creation informing us about our socially constructed natural world. It is relational, expressive of cultural proclivities, political power plays and the quotidian everyday, as well as serious philosophical reflections on the meaning of being human. This article attempts to outline some key contours in the genealogy of animal celebrity, showing how popular culture, including fairground attractions, public relations, Hollywood movies, documentary films, zoo attractions, commercial sport and mediatised moral panics - particularly those accompanying scientific developments such as cloning - help to order, categorise and license aspects of human understanding and feelings. The nature of [animal] charisma and celebrity are explored with assistance from Jumbo the Elephant, Guy the Gorilla, Paul the clairvoyant octopus, Uggie the film star, Nénette the orang-utan and Dolly the sheep. It argues that the issue of what it is to be human lies beneath the celebritised surface or, as Donna Haraway noted, the issue 'of having to face oneself'. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Virtual Encyclopaedia of the Bulgarian Iconography

East-Christian icon art is recognised as one of the most significant areas of the art of painting. Regrettably, it is still being neglected in the digital documentation and the registry of the art of painting. The accessibility to that large part of mankind's cultural and historical ancestry would be enhanced greatly if icons of all possible kinds and origins were digitised, classified, and „exhibited“ in the Internet. That would allow the preservation and even the future digital restoration of a large number of rare specimens of the East-Christian art of painting. This article aims to introduce how modern techniques from the area of digital libraries can be used for implementing the demonstrative multimedia library “Virtual encyclopaedia of the Bulgarian iconography ” 4, containing a large number of Bulgarian iconic art masterpieces and iconography of various authors, periods and schools.

Transgressing community:the case of Muslims in a twenty-first-century British city

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in Birmingham, UK – a city significant for its sizeable Muslim population and its iconic role in the history of minority ethnic settlement in Britain – to consider how associations of place and ethnicity work in different ways to inform ideas about ‘Muslim community’ in twenty-first-century Britain. The paper charts happenings around a local event in an area of majority Asian settlement and how representations of the area as a place of Muslim community were used to implicate it in the ‘war on terror’. The paper goes on to show how this sensibility is disrupted by Muslims themselves through alternative engagements with space and ethnicity. The paper argues that these offer a ground for making Muslim community in ways that actively engage with histories and patterns of ethnic settlement in the city rather than being determined by them.

Attitudes to language in literary sources:beyond post-colonialism in nigerian literature

All societies display attitudes to (varieties of) languages that tell us about the relative status of the groups that are associated to them. One method to document these is the systematic study of public discourses, including literary production. How (varieties of) languages are used, mentioned and characterised in a literary work tells us about their social status, and any change in this status should therefore be followed by changes in judgements on languages. This is demonstrated by the present paper with reference to the language attitudes in Nigeria, on the basis of two iconic Nigerian novels 2004 Purple Hibiscus and in 1958 classic postcolonial Things Fall Apart, separated by nearly fifty years. Ibo as well as Pidgin, Nigerian and European Englishes are presented in Purple Hibiscus in nuanced complementary configurations. A strong axiological polarisation is by contrast offered in Things Fall Apart between Ibo speakers and Ibo interpreters who are presented as cruel and ridiculous traitors siding with the English colonising power whose language, curiously, is not commented upon. Showing how a replicable method applied to language judgements can document social organisation and change, these results validate the view that the Nigerian society and culture has moved beyond the historically situated postcolonialist movement to embrace a globalised paradigm. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

Transgressing community:the case of Muslims in a twenty-first-century British city

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in Birmingham, UK - a city significant for its sizeable Muslim population and its iconic role in the history of minority ethnic settlement in Britain - to consider how associations of place and ethnicity work in different ways to inform ideas about 'Muslim community' in twenty-first-century Britain. The paper charts happenings around a local event in an area of majority Asian settlement and how representations of the area as a place of Muslim community were used to implicate it in the 'war on terror'. The paper goes on to show how this sensibility is disrupted by Muslims themselves through alternative engagements with space and ethnicity. The paper argues that these offer a ground for making Muslim community in ways that actively engage with histories and patterns of ethnic settlement in the city rather than being determined by them.

An investigation of how foreign language departments at American colleges and universities view American Sign Language

Corwin and Wilcox (1985) sent surveys to more than 100 American colleges and universities to determine the policies on the matter of accepting American Sign Language (ASL) as a foreign language. Their results indicated that 81% of those surveyed rejected ASL as a foreign/modern language equivalent. The most frequently stated opposition to ASL was that it lacked a culture. Some of the other objections to ASL were: ASL is not foreign; there is no written form and therefore no original body of literature; it is a derivative of English; and it is indigenous to the United States and hence not foreign. Based on the work of Corwin and Wilcox this study sent surveys to 222 American colleges and universities. Noting an expanding cognizance and social awareness of ASL and deafness (as seen in the increasing number of movies, plays, television programs, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and related news stories), this study sought to find out if ASL was now considered an acceptable foreign language equivalent. The hypothesis of this study was that change has occurred since the 1985 study: that a significant percent of post secondary schools accepting ASL as a foreign/modern language equivalent has increased. The 165 colleges and universities that responded to this author's survey confirmed there has been a significant shift towards the acceptance of ASL. Only 50% of the respondents objected to ASL as a foreign language equivalent, a significant decrease from the 1985 findings. Of those who objected to granting ASL foreign language credit, the reasons were similar to those of the Corwin and Wilcox study, except that the belief in an absence of a Deaf culture dropped from the top reason listed, to the fifth. That ASL is not foreign was listed as the most frequent objection in this study. One important change which may account for increased acceptance of ASL, is that 16 states (compared to 10 in 1985) now have policies stating that ASL is acceptable as a foreign language equivalent. Two-year colleges, in this study, were more likely to accept ASL than were four-year colleges and universities. Neither two- nor four-year colleges and universities are likely to include ASL in their foreign language departments, and most schools that have foreign language entrance requirements are unlikely to accept ASL. In colleges and universities where ASL was already offered in some department within the system, there was a significantly higher likelihood that foreign language credit was given for ASL. Respondents from states with laws governing the inclusion of ASL did not usually know their state had a policy. Most respondents, 84%, indicated their knowledge on the topic of ASL was fair to poor. ^

Sociocultural complexities of ecosystem restoration: Remaking identity, landscape and belonging in the Florida Everglades

The Florida Everglades is a highly diverse socionatural landscape that historically spanned much of the south Florida peninsula. Today, the Florida Everglades is an iconic but highly contested conservation landscape. It is the site of one of the world's largest publicly funded ecological restoration programs, estimated to cost over $8 billion (U.S. GAO 2007), and it is home to over two million acres of federally protected lands, including the Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park. However, local people's values, practices and histories overlap and often conflict with the global and eco-centric values linked to Everglades environmental conservation efforts, sparking environmental conflict. My dissertation research examined the cultural politics of nature associated with two Everglades conservation and ecological restoration projects: 1) the creation and stewardship of the Big Cypress National Preserve, and 2) the Tamiami Trail project at the northern boundary of Everglades National Park. Using multiple research methods including ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, participant observation, surveys and semi-structured interviews, I documented how these two projects have shaped environmental claims-making strategies to Everglades nature on the part of environmental NGOs, the National Park Service and local white outdoorsmen. In particular, I examined the emergence of an oppositional white identity called the Gladesmen Culture. My findings include the following: 1) just as different forms of nature are historically produced, contingent and power-laden, so too are different claims to Everglades nature; 2) identity politics are an integral dimension of Everglades environmental conflicts; and 3) the Big Cypress region's history and contemporary conflicts are shaped by the broader political economy of development in south Florida. My dissertation concluded that identity politics, class and property relations have played a key, although not always obvious, role in shaping Everglades history and environmental claims-making, and that they continue to influence contemporary Everglades environmental conflicts.

The creation of Huey P. Newton

The purpose of this study was to examine the creation of Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party in 1966. I argued that Huey P. Newton was a creation of several elements: the black ghetto of Oakland; the rise of Black Power and the death of non-violence in the civil rights movement; the New Left and its factions; and, the Black Panther Party through the "Free Huey" campaign. The "Free Huey" campaign that arose from Newton's imprisonment in 1968, constructed an iconic image of Newton that he inherited on his release in 1970. This study will contextualize Newton and refute the claims of Hugh Pearson, author of the 1994, The Shadow of the Panther, who deemed Newton as a common criminal, not worthy of historical debate.