Cultural and Individual Differences in Metaphorical Representations of Time

Abstract concepts cannot be directly perceived through senses. How do people represent abstract concepts in their minds? According to the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, people tend to rely on concrete experiences to understand abstract concepts. For instance, cognitive science has shown that time is a metaphorically constituted conception, understood relative to concepts like space. Across many languages, the “past” is associated with the “back” and the “future” is associated with the “front”. However, space-time mappings in people’s spoken metaphors are not always consistent with the implicit mental metaphors they are using to conceptualize time in their minds, suggesting a dissociation between temporal language and temporal thought. Beyond the influences of language, the Temporal Focus Hypothesis proposes that people’s spatial conceptions of time are shaped by their attentional focus on temporal events. In general, people conceptualize the past as being in front to the extent that their culture is past-oriented, and the future as being in front to the extent that their culture is future-oriented. Recent lines of research have provided preliminary evidence that people’s implicit space-time mappings are malleable and likely result from multiple factors related to temporal focus, ranging from those relating to contextual features, such as cultural attitudes toward time, to those more tightly tied to the individual, such as age-related differences. By building upon and extending these findings, the overall aim of this thesis is to ascertain the generalizability of the Temporal Focus Hypothesis and further investigate the range of factors that may influence people’s spatializations of time, focusing specifically on previously unexplored within-cultural differences (Study 1), political ideology (Study 2), religion (Studies 3-6), real life experiences (Studies 7 to 9), pregnancy (Study 10), temporal landmarks (Studies 11 to 13), circadian rhythms and chronotype (Studies 14 to 16), and personality (Studies 17 to 19). Together, these studies demonstrate that people’s implicit space-time mappings may vary according to their temporal focus, which can be explained by the Temporal Focus Hypothesis. The findings of these studies also shed new light on the Temporal Focus Hypothesis by extending the range of factors that may influence people’s conceptions of time, and reveal the malleability and flexibility of time representations

Remapping the U.S. Southwest : Early Mexican American Literature and the Production of Transnational Counterspaces, 1885-1958

This dissertation brings to light a legacy of Mexican American spatial resilience that troubles Anglo-centric constructions of the Southwest, its history, and cultural formation as a byproduct of westward expansionism. This project argues that early Mexican American writers offer an alternative paradigm of transnationalism for understanding the literature, culture, and geography of the U.S. Southwest as it has been imagined in Anglo American cultural production about the region. For early Mexican American writers, the Southwest was not a quaint literary region but a space of historic transnational zones of contact, commerce, and cultural geography where they maintained degrees of agency. I examine the writings of María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Fray Angélico Chávez, Federico Ronstadt, and Américo Paredes for their transnational counterspaces. I use this term, which draws from spatial theories by Henri Lefebvre and Edward Soja, to describe their vocalizations of the Southwest produced in the face of their respective Anglo counterparts such as Willa Cather and other members of the Santa Fe and Taos writers colonies, Walter Noble Burns, J. Frank Dobie, and Walter Prescott Webb. I take an interdisciplinary approach dialoging with Chicano/a, borderlands, and American literary studies within a historical framework to chart how early Mexican American writings reclaim the region by mapping transnational heritages belonging to Mexican American and Chicano/a communities

3D Generalization of brain model to visualize and analyze neuroanatomical data

Neuroscientists present data in a 3D form in order to convey a better real world visualization and understanding of the localization of data in relation to brain anatomy and structure. The problem with the visualization of cortical surface of the brain is that the brain has multiple, deep folds and the resulting structural overlap can hide data interweaved within the folds. On one hand, a 2D representation can result in a distorted view that may lead to incorrect localization and analysis of the data. On the other hand, a realistic 3D representation may interfere with our judgment or analysis by showing too many details. Alternatively, a 3D generalization can be used to simplify the model of the brain in order to visualize the hidden data and smooth some of the details. This dissertation addresses the following research question: Is 3D generalization of a brain model a viable approach for visualizing neuroanatomical data