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Apropos of Everything: Navigating Life with Genre (AoE) is a hybrid critical/creative portfolio which proposes a new theory of Genre, Creativity and Consciousness, named The Social Consciousness Theory (SoCo). By reclaiming and recalibrating the concept of Genre as conceived by literary tradition, the thesis reconceptualises Genre's function in the creative process and in human life through a comprehensive interdisciplinary investigation. Synthesising knowledge from Biology, Sociology, and Psychology with Creative Writing theory, scholarship, and practice, SoCo proposes a comprehensive, critical and scientific theory of Genre which asserts its central function in the processes of creativity and consciousness. Furthermore, SoCo investigates Genre's potential as a heuristic or analogy for understanding how humans achieve creativity. The thesis identifies a significant gap in a variety of current biological and psychological theories which utilise an approach centralising the concept of story. The gap emerges because of a failure to recognise the pivotal function served by Genre in story-construction. This thesis argues that by recognising Genre's role in the creative process, profound interdisciplinary insights can be achieved with regard to two fundamental critical concepts; creativity and consciousness. The thesis proposes Genre as a heuristic with significant analogical reach which aids the conceptualisation of creative development from biological evolution to the trajectories of literary genres. Existing Genre Theory does not account for the breadth of Genre's applicability as a concept nor realise its interdisciplinary indications. Writing in 1999, Simonton predicted the construction of "a distinct theoretical system that will accommodate all creative activities in a coherent fashion" (247). This thesis attempts to construct the "modern synthesis" which Simonton speaks of. This enquiry asks to what extent and in what ways Genre can be conceptualised as a process analogous with non-explicit sense-and-respond mechanisms present in the most basic organisms, drawing largely from Antonio Damasio's body of work, and, furthermore, considers the implications that such a conceptualisation invokes with regard to creative, therapeutic, and critical practice; creative and critical literary, psychological, sociological, and biological theory; and, finally, the benefits of utilising the concept in everyday life. The thesis constitutes a rich mutual exchange across multiple disciplines as opposed to traditional "one-way" perspectives. The approach illuminates the utility of Genre when conceptualised in a different way based on scientific research, and thus facilitates a reassessment of the concept in terms of creative practice. The major conclusions, implications, and outcomes of the thesis are as follows: (1) That consciousness is analogous to the creative process, product, or play, and that consciousness emerges, and thus creativity is born, too, from generic competence and individual experimentation. (2) That our "self" can be defined as a genre and furthermore adopts and is shaped by a perspective early in childhood experience; that the perspective is, broadly speaking, tragic or comic; that this comic or tragic perspective shapes our behaviours, interpretations, and social identity; and, finally, that with the help of the new conceptual tools provided by SoCo, we can change that perspective; (3) That through utilising the new SoCo theory it is possible to mount a new theory of Comedy; and (4) That SoCo can be utilised to reconceptualise and start meaningful and affective dialogues about contentious social issues and to effect real change in the dominant social consciousness and its current codes about different genres of experience. Not only does the current thesis constitute significant and innovative development of existing Creativity, Creative Writing, Consciousness, and Genre Theory, but each one of these implications has vast potential for a wide-range of contributions to multiple fields including creative practice; psychological and therapeutic practice; self-help; intersectionality, social justice and reform; and experimental scientific research. Two appendices demonstrate the immediate utility of the theory presented in the field of Creative Writing Theory and Practice-Based research: (1) Towards a SoCo Prosaics - a creative foray and critical apparatus for applying SoCo to literary practice; (2) CANADA - a novel informed by SoCo theory and the prosaics. The three elements of the thesis come together to achieve a comprehensive and creative bid for a new way of understanding both literature and also life.

Cognitive task analysis (CTA) has evolved over the past half century to capture the mental decisions and analysis that experts have learned to implement when solving complex problems. Since expertise is largely automated and nonconscious, a variety of observation and interview strategies have been developed to identify the most critical cognitive elements of expertise so that they can be included in training and in machine learning. While considerable evidence exists to support the learning and performance benefits of a number of CTA strategies, some of these strategies are much more time consuming and expensive to implement. The goal of this study is to test the cost-effectiveness of two different versions of a specific CTA strategy that has been tested successfully in many different experiments. The approach is called the ATI Cognitive Task Analysis System (ATI-CTA). In current version of ATI-CTA three experts receive a structured interview and each expert is asked to edit a summary of their interview. After all three experts have reviewed their summary; the three edited versions are combined into a "gold standard" version of the strategy used by the experts. In this experiment, a new approach was added whereby only one expert was interviewed and corrected their interview and then two additional experts reviewed and corrected the first expert's version. The task chosen for this experiment was army recruiting. Six of the Army's top recruiters were randomly assigned to one of the two CTA interview strategies and separately interviewed on the subject of how to conduct the Army Interview for prospective recruits. Three subject-matter experts (SMEs) gave full ATI-CTA interviews that were transcribed and coded into a CTA report format. These three reports were then used to compile the gold standard (GS) for an approach that was designated the "3i+3r method." A fourth expert was given a full CTA interview and that experts report was then given to a fifth and sixth SME to review and correct. The final result was designated the "1i+3r GS." This method required significantly less time from the three experts. Time and cost tracking was carried out throughout the process and the number of decision steps elicited from each GS was calculated using two raters. Inter-rater reliability was calculated to be 93% in agreement for the 3i+3r method and 97% in agreement for the 1i+3r method. Results indicated that the 1i+3R method captured a greater number decisions steps (1i+3r = 35 and 3i+3r = 28), took less time (1i+3r = 26 hrs. and 3i+3r = 78.5 hrs.); and cost less (1i+3r = $1574.10 and 3i+3r = $5,235.55) than the 3i+3r method. The conclusion of the study is that the less demanding 1i+3R method appeared to result in the identification of more decision steps in about 1/3 of the time and 30 percent of the cost of the 3i+3r method. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]