An investigation of perception without awareness

Following the work of Dixon (1971) some experiments were performed to investigate two aspects of perception without awareness, the handling of emotional stimuli and the relation between subliminal perception and selective attention. Apparatus was designed which utilized the phenomenon of binocular rivalry, so that an image (above identification level when presented alone) could be masked by a brighter image to the other eye and thus perceived without awareness. An experiment of Smith et al. (1959) was replicated with improved controls. It was shown that responses to words presented outside of awareness tended to be meaning-related, the same words yielding structure-related responses when presented supraliminally. Spence (1967) proposed an explanation of perceptual defence in terms of the interaction of arousal and memory. Some experimental support for this idea was obtained. Further experiments on the handling of emotive stimuli led to the conclusion that individual differences in perception are an important factor to be controlled. Similarly, further to Brown (1965,1971) it was concluded that the stimulus characteristics of emotive words used as experimental stimuli need to be better controlled. An explanation of word association phenomena in terms of the interaction of arousal and attention was discussed and the perceptual defence and WAT situations contrasted. Finally, two brief experiments illustrated aspects of the selective attention paradigm relevant to perception without awareness: pre-attentive processes (Neisser, 1967) and incidental stimulation (Eagle et al, 1966). Following a review of selective attention experiments, including evidence of unattended channel processing, some tentative proposals were made which might encompass the material presented. Utilizing a model suggested by MacKay (1972) it was proposed that the phenomena of perception without awareness represent the functioning of an early stage in the normal perceptual process essential both to the handling of emotive stimuli and the selection of inputs to awareness.<p

Security and privacy of incentive-driven mechanisms

While cryptographic tools offer practical security and privacy supported by theory and formal proofs, there are often gaps between the theory and intricacies of the real world. This is especially apparent in the realm of game theoretic applications where protocol participants are motivated by incentives and preferences on the protocol outcome. These incentives can lead to additional requirements or unexpected attack vectors, making standard cryptographic concepts inapplicable. The goal of this thesis is to bridge some of the gaps between cryptography and incentive-driven mechanisms. The thesis will consist of three main research threads, each studying the privacy or security of a game-theoretic scenario in non-standard cryptographic frameworks in order to satisfy the scenario’s unique requirements. Our first scenario is preference aggregation, where we will analyze the privacy of voting rules while requiring the rules to be deterministic. Then, we will study games, and how to achieve collusion-freeness (and its composable version, collusion-preservation) in the decentralized setting. Finally, we explore the robustness of Nakamoto-style proof-of-work blockchains against 51% attacks when the main security assumption of honest majority fails. Most of the results in this thesis are also published in the following (in order): Ch. 3: [103], Ch. 4: [47], and Ch. 5: [104]. Our first focus is preference aggregation—in particular voting rules. Specifically, we answer the crucial question: How private is the voting rule we use and the voting information we release? This natural and seemingly simple question was sidestepped in previous works, where randomization was added to voting rules in order to achieve the widely-known notion of differential privacy (DP). Yet, randomness in an election can be undesirable, and may alter voter incentives and strategies. In this chapter of our thesis, we expand and improve upon previous works and study deterministic voting rules. In a similarly well-accepted framework of distributional differential privacy (DDP), we develop new techniques in analyzing and comparing the privacy of voting rules—leading to a new measure to contrast different rules in addition to existing ones in the field of social choice. We learn the positive message that even vote tallies have very limited privacy leakage that decreases quickly in the number of votes, and a surprising fact that outputting the winner using different voting rules can result in asymptotically different privacy leakage. Having studied privacy in the context of parties with preferences and incentives, we turn our attention to the secure implementation of games. Specifically, we study the issue of collusion and how to avoid it. Collusion, or subliminal communication, can introduce undesirable coalitions in games that allow malicious parties, e.g. cheating poker players, a wider set of strategies. Standard cryptographic security is insufficient to address the issue, spurring on a line of work that defined and constructed collusion-free (CF), or its composable version, collusion-preserving (CP) protocols. Unfortunately, they all required strong assumptions on the communication medium, such as physical presence of the parties, or a restrictive star-topology network with a trusted mediator in the center. In fact, CF is impossible without restricted communication, and CP is conjectured to always require a mediator. Thus, circumventing these impossibilities is necessary to truly implement games in a decentralized setting. Fortunately, in the rational setting, the attacker can also be assumed to have utility. By ensuring collusion is only possible by sending incorrect, penalizable messages, and composing our protocol with a blockchain protocol as the source of the penalization, we prove our protocol as CP against incentive-driven attackers in a framework of rational cryptography called rational protocol design (RPD). Lastly, it is also useful to analyze the security of the blockchain and its associated cryptocurrencies—cryptographic transaction ledger protocols with embedded monetary value— using a rational cryptography framework like RPD. Our last chapter studies the incentives of attackers that perform 51% attacks by breaking the main security assumption of honest majority in proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum Classic. Previous works abstracted the blockchain protocol and the attacker’s actions, analyzing 51% attacks via various techniques in economics or probability theory. This leads open the question of exploring this attack in a model closer to standard cryptographic analyses. We answer this question by working in the RPD framework. Improving upon previous analyses that geared towards only mining rewards, we construct utility functions that model the incentives of 51% attackers. Under the RPD framework, we are able to determine when an attacker is incentivized to attack a given instantiation of the blockchain protocol. More importantly, we can make general statements that indicate changes to protocol parameters to make it secure against all rational attackers under these incentives

Some experiments on the paranormal cognition of drawings, with special reference to personality and attitudinal variables

The four studies reported in this dissertation were all investigations of the conditions influencing the occurrence of 'general extrasensory perception* (GESP) between pairs of persons. All studies employed the drawing-reproduction tech¬ nique, in which a person designated as 'agent' concentrates upon a line-drawing depicting some randomly-chosen object, while simultaneously a sensorially-isolated 'percipient' attempts to guess the content of this 'target-drawing' and is required to respond by making a drawing of his or her mental impressions. A single test consisted of ten such picture-guessing trials, three minutes each trial, with no concurrent feedback to the percipient.The drawing-technique is almost a century old, and accordingly a review of the more important milestones in the history of its use is given. This thesis also makes a number of contributions both to the methods for objectively quantifying degree of target-response resemblance, and to the techniques for determining statistical significance.The four experiments collectively enable the drawing of four conclusions: (l) contrary to popular belief, the existence of a close emotional relationship between agent and percipient is neither necessary nor sufficient for the occurrence of GESP; (2) group-performance over the ten-trial ESP-test tends to fluctuate rather unpredictably, although there was some evidence that it conforms to a U-shaped or a linear trend; (3) the scores on an 11-item 'Sheep-Goat Scale' (designed to measure belief in, and experience of, cognitive psi) gave some significantly positive correlations with GESP-scoring, provided that agent and percipient were not in a mutually close relationship with each other; the claim to have experienced at least one instance of telepathy was the most significant predictor of GESP, thus retrospectively providing some validation for the truth of such claims; and (4) th^ Sheep-Goat Scale-scores of the agents were more strongly related to GESP-scoring than were those of the percipients, prompting an analogy with goal-oriented psychokinesis; it is suggested that this phenomenon can be subsumed under a mere general 'goal-accomplishment' principle, called by the author "psychopraxia

Evidence-based clinical decision-making : Conceptual and empirical foundations for an integrative psychological and neurobiological transtheoretical metamodel

The dialogue between psychotherapy and neuroscience is ongoing. Previous meta-analytic research suggests that 35% of psychotherapy outcome variance is not fully explained, whereas 30% is attributed to patient variables, 15% to therapeutic relationship, 10% to specific therapeutic techniques, 7% to therapist variables and 3% to other factors (Norcross & Wampold, 2019). Several authors emphasize the need for integrative, metatheoretical or transtheoretical approaches to enhance conceptual understanding of clinical phenomena, augmenting psychotherapy responsiveness to patients’ significant variables, such as maladaptive patterns, states of mind, relational styles, emotional difficulties, neurocognitive deficits, and psychological needs. The present doctoral proposal aims to respond to these claims through the establishment of preliminary conceptual and empirical foundations for an Integrative Psychological and Neurobiological Transtheoretical Metamodel. First, an extensive literature review of the relationships between psychotherapy and neuroscience was performed to establish theoretical and conceptual integration of different components of the presently proposed model. Second, several methodological aspects were described to systematize the complex data acquisition process. Third, seven studies were conducted, and implications of the results were discussed. Fourth, an integrative discussion was elaborated, emphasizing the major and general implications of the results for clinical practice and future research. The first empirical study aimed to develop and/or adapt self-report assessment measures to evaluate several psychological variables (e.g., metacognition, states of mind), which resulted in five scientific articles. Thus, the Metacognitive Self-assessment Scale (Pedone et al., 2017) and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems – 32 (IIP-32, Barkham et al., 1998) were validated and adapted to European Portuguese. The State of Mind Questionnaire (SMQ, Faustino et al., 2021b, Emotional Processing Difficulties Scale – R (EPDS-R, Faustino et al., in press) and the Clinical Decision-Making Inventory (Faustino & Vasco, in press) were developed. All instruments showed satisfactory psychometric properties. Nevertheless, the SMQ showed low reliability in the composite scales in smaller subsamples. For the second empirical study, the main aims were to explore the complex relationships between early disorder determinants, maladaptive schemas and states of mind, defensive maneuvers and critical consequences, mental skills and processes, and adaptive self-domains. This was performed with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results showed significant sequential and mediational models between maladaptive schemas, defensive maneuvers and dysfunctional consequences, mental abilities and processes, and adaptive self-domains with psychological needs. Maladaptive schemas and states of mind were both predictors and mediators in several models. However, the relationship between maladaptive schematic functioning and symptomatology had less significant mediations with the same variables. For the third study, the main aims were to explore the relationships of early disorder determinants, maladaptive schematic functioning and states of mind, defensive maneuvers and dysfunctional consequences, mental abilities and processes, and adaptive self-domains, with several neurocognitive variables. Executive functions were negatively correlated with maladaptive schematic functioning and with defensive maneuvers and dysfunctional consequences. Memory only correlated with psychological needs, self-confidence and with dysfunctional interpersonal cycles. These results emphasize previous assumptions that there is a difference between self-report questionnaires and neuropsychological assessment measures which may difficult the integrated study of psychological and neurocognitive processes. The fourth study aimed to explore the associations of affective subliminal processing with dispositional states and contextual states, defined in the present work as early disorder determinants, schematic functioning, and defensive maneuvers and dysfunctional consequences, mental abilities and processes, and adaptive self-domains. Results showed strong correlations between maladaptive schematic functioning, coping responses, emotional processing difficulties, and expressive suppression with behavioral responses. Dispositional traits and contextual states seem to be associated with affective processing, especially when it comes to the neutral valence of the subliminal stimuli. ERPs waveforms showed an amplitude modulation with a temporal progression: in the first 100 msec the waveform amplitude was highest to the negative condition; Later on, in the time windows after 350 msec, the neutral condition was the one that elicited the ERPs’ heist amplitude. These indexes a cascade of reactions, first a priority to nonconscious negative stimulation; and after that, a later processing phase of affective-cognitive interpretation (350msc) in which neutral stimuli acquire a meaning according to schemas. The fifth study explored the diagnostic and or transdiagnostic potential of early disorder determinants, maladaptive schematic functioning and states of mind, defensive maneuvers and dysfunctional consequences, mental abilities and processes, and adaptive self-domains. Results showed that only early complex trauma and expressive suppression were not statistically different in two subsamples. Individuals in the low-symptoms sub-sample reported lower levels of maladaptive schematic functioning, defensive maneuvers, and psychological inflexibility than individuals in the higher-symptoms subsample. The sixth study was focused on the exploration of the temporal stability of maladaptive schematic functioning and states of mind, defensive maneuvers and dysfunctional consequences, mental abilities, and adaptive self-domains. Results showed significant differences between moment one and two, with a descending pattern in the mean scores of dysfunctional variables. An inverse pattern was found regarding the adaptive variables. However, mean scores of some variables, such as early maladaptive schemas, emotional schemas, psychological needs, and cognitive reappraisal were not statistically significant. The seventh study aimed to explore associations of early disorder determinants, maladaptive schemas and states of mind, defensive maneuvers and critical consequences, mental skills and processes and adaptive self-domains, with an empirical based clinical profile (e.g., psychotherapy and motivational stage, coping styles). Results showed significant negative correlations between maladaptive schematic functioning and stage process, motivational stage, therapeutic relationship, attachment style, reactance, and coping style. An inverse pattern was found regarding the adaptive variables. These preliminary results seem to support a theoretically- and empirically-based integrative and transtheoretical metamodel focused on unifying psychotherapy and neuroscience into a coherent framework. Further research is required to augment and enhance the presently proposed model

Security of Ubiquitous Computing Systems

The chapters in this open access book arise out of the EU Cost Action project Cryptacus, the objective of which was to improve and adapt existent cryptanalysis methodologies and tools to the ubiquitous computing framework. The cryptanalysis implemented lies along four axes: cryptographic models, cryptanalysis of building blocks, hardware and software security engineering, and security assessment of real-world systems. The authors are top-class researchers in security and cryptography, and the contributions are of value to researchers and practitioners in these domains. This book is open access under a CC BY license

Animal-Robot Interactions: Electrocommunication, Sensory Ecology, and Group Dynamics in a Mormyrid Weakly Electric Fish

Mormyrid weakly electric fish possess a specialized electrosensory system. During the process of active electrolocation, these animals perceive self-generated electric organ dis-charges (EOD) and are thereby able to detect objects in their nearby environment. The EOD is a short, biphasic pulse, which is simultaneously used to communicate with conspe-cifics. There are two principles according to which information exchange occurs during electrocommunication. The waveform of the EOD constitutes a relatively stable identity marker that signals species, gender, and status of an individual. In contrast, the temporal sequence of inter-discharge intervals (IDI) is highly variable and encodes context-specific information. Modifications of IDI-duration not only alter the instantaneous discharge fre-quency but also enable the generation of specific signaling patterns and interactive dis-charge sequences. One such interactive discharge behavior is the so-called echo response, during which a fish responds with a constant latency of only a few milliseconds to the EOD of a conspecific. Animals can synchronize their signaling sequences by mutually generating echoes to each other's signals over a coherent period. Although active electrolocation and electrocommunication are mediated by different types of electroreceptor organs and neural pathways, an unambiguous assignment of electromotor behavior to only one of the two functions is often problematic. In this thesis, the significance of IDI-based signaling sequences during motor and electro-motor interactions of the mormyrid fish Mormyrus rume proboscirostris were investigated. To this end, different electrical playback sequences of species-specific EODs were generated via mobile fish dummies, and the motor and electromotor responses of live fish were analyzed. In Part One of this thesis, electrocommunication strategies of the fish were analyzed, and particularly the functions of double pulses, discharge regularizations, and echo responses were examined in an adaptive context. Double pulses were classified as an aggressive mo-tivation signal, whereas regularizations may have a communicative function during the early stages of the sequential assessment of a potential opponent. In this context, discharge synchronization by means of echo responses may enable a mutual assessment for the net benefit of both contestants. Because echo responses occur in various behavioral contexts, and artificial echoes of the dummy evoked increased echoing by the fish, it was hypothesized that the echo response serves a more general purpose by enabling mutual allocation of social attention between two fish. In Part Two of this thesis, a biomimetic robotic fish was designed to investigate the senso-ry basis on which fish followed the dummy. It was shown that electrical playback signals induced following-behavior in live fish, whereas biomimetic motility patterns had no ef-fect. By subsequently reducing the mobile dummy to only the electric signaling sequence from the perspective of the fish, it could be shown that passive perception of electrical communication signals is also involved in mediating the spatial coordination of social in-teractions. This passive perception is likely mediated by the same electroreceptor organs that are used during electrocommunication. The EOD can therefore be considered to be an essential social stimulus that makes it possible to integrate a dummy into a group of weak-ly electric fish as an artificial conspecific. The influence of an interactively signaling mobile dummy fish on small groups of up to four individuals was investigated in Part Three of this thesis. Typical schooling behavior was a rare occurrence in this context. However, EOD-synchronizations through mutual echo responses between two fish, or between a fish and the interactive dummy, were fre-quently observed during social interactions in small groups. Motor interactions during synchronization episodes supported the hypothesis that mormyrids may use discharge synchronizations between individuals to allocate social attention, and the echo response may thus adopt a particularly useful function during communication in groups.Schwach elektrische Fisch aus der Familie der Mormyriden verfügen über ein spezialisier-tes elektrosensorisches Sinnessystem. In einem Prozess, der als aktive Elektroortung be-zeichnet wird, sind diese Tiere in der Lage, selbstgenerierte elektrische Organentladungen (EOD) wahrzunehmen, und dadurch Objekte in ihrer unmittelbaren Nähe zu detektieren. Das EOD ist ein kurzer bipolarer Puls, der gleichzeitig auch zur Kommunikation mit Artge-nossen dient. Informationsaustausch während der Elektrokommunikation basiert auf zwei verschiedenen Prinzipien: Die Wellenform des EOD stellt einen relativ konstanten Identi-tätsmarker dar, der beispielsweise Art, Geschlecht und Status eines Individuums signali-siert. Die zeitliche Abfolge der Intervalle zwischen den EODs ist hingegen höchst variabel und kodiert kontextspezifische Information. Durch Modifikation der Intervalldauer ändert sich nicht nur die Entladungsfrequenz, sondern es können auch spezifische Signalmuster und interaktive Entladungssequenzen generiert werden. Ein interaktives Entladungsver-halten stellt beispielsweise die Echoantwort dar, bei der ein Fisch mit einer konstanten Latenz von wenigen Millisekunden auf das EOD eines Artgenossen reagiert. Zwei Tiere können ihre Entladungssequenzen synchronisieren, indem sie ihre Signale über einen kohärenten Zeitraum gegenseitig mit Echos beantworten. Obwohl aktive Elektroortung und Elektrokommunikation über unterschiedliche Rezeptororgansysteme und neuronale Pfade vermittelt werden, ist eine eindeutige Zuordnung der elektromotorischen Verhal-tensäußerungen der Fische zu nur einer der beiden Funktionen oft problematisch. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde die Bedeutung intervallbasierter EOD-Sequenzen für motorische und elektromotorische Interaktionen des Mormyriden Mormyrus rume proboscirostris erforscht. Hierzu wurden verschiedene elektrische Playbacksequenzen artspezifischer EODs generiert und durch mobile Fischattrappen wiedergegeben. Die mo-torischen und elektromotorischen Verhaltensreaktionen der Fische wurden analysiert. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit wurden Elektrokommunikationsstrategien der Fische analysiert und die adaptive Funktion insbesondere von Doppelpulsen, Entladungsregularisierungen und Echoantworten untersucht. Doppelpulse wurden als aggressives Motivationssignal kategorisiert, wohingegen die Kommunikationsfunktion von Regularisierungen im gegen-seitigen Einschätzen zu Beginn einer kompetitiven Begegnung zu liegen scheint. Entla-dungssynchronisation durch gegenseitige Echoantworten kann dabei eine Einschätzung des Gegenübers zum Vorteil beider Parteien erleichtern. Da Echoantworten in verschiede-nen Verhaltenssituationen auftreten und artifizielle Echoantworten der Attrappe vermehrt zu Echos vonseiten der Fische führten, wurde postuliert, dass die Echoantwort eine generellere Funktion bei der Fokussierung gegenseitiger sozialer Aufmerksamkeit über-nehmen kann. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wurde ein biomimetischer Fischroboter konstruiert, um zu untersuchen, auf welcher sensorischen Grundlage die Fische der Attrappe folgen. Es konnte gezeigt werden, dass elektrische Playbacksignale, nicht aber biomimetische Bewe-gungsmuster, Folgeverhalten der Fische induzieren. In einem weiteren Schritt konnte durch die Reduktion der Attrappe auf die elektrischen Signalsequenzen aus der Perspektive der Versuchsfische gezeigt werden, dass passive Wahrnehmung elektrischer Kommu-nikationssignale auch bei der räumlichen Koordination sozialer Interaktionen von Bedeu-tung ist. Dies wird mutmaßlich über die gleichen Rezeptororgane vermittelt, die auch für die Elektrokommunikation verantwortlich sind. Das EOD kann daher als ein soziales Signal betrachtet werden, das es ermöglicht, eine Attrappe als künstlichen Artgenossen in eine Gruppe schwach elektrischer Fische zu integrieren. Der Einfluss einer elektrisch interaktiven mobilen Fischattrappe auf kleine Gruppen von bis zu vier Individuen wurde im dritten Teil der Arbeit getestet. Typisches Schwarmver-halten konnte in diesem Zusammenhang nur selten beobachtet werden. In kleinen Gruppen kam es während sozialer Interaktionen jedoch häufig zu EOD-Synchronisationen durch Echoantworten zwischen zwei Fischen, oder zwischen einem Fisch und der interaktiven Attrappe. Motorische Verhaltensinteraktionen im Zeitraum dieser Synchronisationen stützen die Hypothese, dass Mormyriden durch elektrische Entladungssynchronisation soziale Aufmerksamkeit zwischen Individuen herstellen können, und die Echoantwort somit besonders in Gruppen eine nützliche Kommunikationsfunktion übernehmen kann

Security of Ubiquitous Computing Systems

The chapters in this open access book arise out of the EU Cost Action project Cryptacus, the objective of which was to improve and adapt existent cryptanalysis methodologies and tools to the ubiquitous computing framework. The cryptanalysis implemented lies along four axes: cryptographic models, cryptanalysis of building blocks, hardware and software security engineering, and security assessment of real-world systems. The authors are top-class researchers in security and cryptography, and the contributions are of value to researchers and practitioners in these domains. This book is open access under a CC BY license

Waves, Pulses, and the Theory of Neural Masses

 It is a truism that systems as complex as vertebrate nervous systems are more than the sum of their parts. What is meant is that the interconnection of numbers of neurons gives rise to collective properties belonging to the neural populations and not to the neurons taken one at a time. The purpose of this essay is to explore some facets of the nature of neural collective properties.   Conventional wisdom holds that such properties emerge from the interconnection of finite numbers of neurons in discrete chains and networks, which are logical and anatomical counterparts of the Jacksonian-Sherringtonian heirarchy of reflex arcs. According to a popular analogy, neurons are like the electronic components of a television receiver which can be connected in a certain way or set of ways to give the properties of the receiver. The central thesis of this essay is the idea that, when neurons strongly interact in sufficiently large numbers (on the order of 10' or more), new collective properties emerge that demand a different kind or level of conceptualization.   An analogy equivalent to that given above is the notion that temperature and pressure exist only for a mass, in contrast to the thermal kinetic energy of molecules in the mass. The suggestion is that certain interactive phenomena in vertebrate brains occur only as broadly distributed and continuous events or waves across masses of neurons, and that in some instances these cooperative phenomena may be essential aspects of normal brain function. The task is to describe some of these wave phenomena in terms of underlying collective properties, and to do so in such a way as to minimize confusion between observables and principles. Again by analogy, brain potentials (EEG waves) appear to have somewhat the relation to wave activity of neural masses that flow patterns have to temperature and pressure waves in atmospheric storms. They are observable side effects that are of interest mainly because they give access to the internal dynamics.   The approach used is to review the historical interplay between ideas concerning neural networks and masses, to develop a set of rules for describing neural masses as dynamic entities, and then to discuss some of the implications of those rules for neurophysiology.   Throughout the development the emphasis is placed on the idea of graded neural synaptic interaction, because it is interaction of neurons that gives rise to something more than the sum of parts. Neurons are connected to each other by structural synaptic linkages. For each neuron there is a certain density of these anatomical connections, referring to the number and size of contacts of each neuron with its neighbors within each unit volume of neural mass. But the significant quantity is the momentary functional or effective connection density, which denotes the level of transfer of influence across a given set of connections at a given time and place. If, for example, a volley arrives on an afferent path to a neuron that is in an absolute refractory state, the functional connection density is zero, even though the anatomical connection density is nonzero.   Two kinds of massive connections are distinguished. The first is a one-way or forward connection from one neuron to neurons in another mass; the second is feedback connection of one neuron with many others in the same mass. Both types give rise to mass actions of many neurons, but only the second gives rise to the collective properties of interest in the present context. That is, neural interactions based on functional interconnection densities give rise to wave phenomena, and, as is shown for some of the neural masses in the mammalian olfactory system, the observable effects of wave patterns in turn provide the means for measuring the intensities of interactions

Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities: Contexts, Forms & Practices is a volume of essays that provides a detailed account of born-digital literature by artists and scholars who have contributed to its birth and evolution. Rather than offering a prescriptive definition of electronic literature, this book takes an ontological approach through descriptive exploration, treating electronic literature from the perspective of the digital humanities (DH)––that is, as an area of scholarship and practice that exists at the juncture between the literary and the algorithmic. The domain of DH is typically segmented into the two seemingly disparate strands of criticism and building, with scholars either studying the synthesis between cultural expression and screens or the use of technology to make artifacts in themselves. This book regards electronic literature as fundamentally DH in that it synthesizes these two constituents. Electronic Literature as Digital Humanities provides a context for the development of the field, informed by the forms and practices that have emerged throughout the DH moment, and finally, offers resources for others interested in learning more about electronic literature