Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1973. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2008. / Additional advisors: Ted Benditt, Sue Kim, Lawrence Wharton. Description based on contents viewed Feb. 11, 2009; title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 9).

No description available.

An historical introduction is made tying authoritarianism with ambiguity tolerance. Ambiguity tolerance is a personality variable in its own right, often associated with authoritarianism yet remaining separate from it. Ambiguity intolerance is defined as the tendency to perceive and interpret information that is marked by vague, fragmented, incomplete, inconsistent, contradictory, or unclear meaning as actual or potential sources of psychological threat. Ambiguity tolerance is defined as the tendency to perceive ambiguous situations as challenging and desirable. Efforts to measure ambiguity tolerance have met with varied success, however, it was not until Norton (197S) developed the Measurement of Ambiguity Tolerance (MAT-50) that accurate measurement became a possibility. The present study presents data that provides some construct validity to the MAT-SO. College students were administered the MAT-SO and divided into two groups: tolerants and intolerants. It was hypothesized that individuals who were in the intolerant group would produce more anxiety (as measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory) when presented with an ambiguous situation (the Rorschach inkblot test) than individuals in the tolerant group. The hypothesis was confirmed, individuals in the intolerant group displayed more state as well as trait anxiety than those in the tolerant group. Recommendations are made suggesting that future research use subjects from a less homogenous group.

This dissertation consists of three chapters focusing on behaviour under risk and ambiguity. The first chapter analysed the best method to communicate risk information to weather forecast users whilst the last two analysed smallholder farmers’ and students’ decision making on crop selection when presented with uncertainty information of drought. In the first chapter, experimental economics methods were used to assess forecast user understanding of information in temperature forecast. We tested whether undergraduate students presented with uncertainty information (90th percent confidence intervals) in a table and bar graph format were able to correctly understand the forecast and use the extra information to choose the “correct" (most probable) outcome than if they are presented with a deterministic forecast. Participants from the University of Exeter were asked to choose the most probable temperature outcome between a set of “lotteries” based on the temperature up to five days ahead. If they chose a true statement, participants were rewarded with a cash payment. Results indicate that on average participants provided with uncertainty information performed better than those without. Statistical analysis indicates a possible learning effect as the experiment progressed. The second chapter assesses if there are gender differences in the behaviour of smallholder Zimbabwean farmers when faced with risk and ambiguity. The risk and ambiguity preferences of male and female farmers were elicited using a modified Holt and Laury (2002) field experiment. Farmers were asked to choose whether or not to adopt a new drought tolerant variety under different probabilities of a drought occurring. Subjects in one group were presented with known probabilities whilst another group was presented with ambiguous probabilities (range). Most of the farmers’ exhibited extreme ambiguity and risk aversion and female farmers were more averse. Results indicate heterogeneity and the need to disaggregate samples when analysing research results as there maybe underlying factors affecting different groups. The third chapter elicited the risk and ambiguity attitudes of vocational college students in Zimbabwe. Results indicate that in general, students were both risk averse and ambiguity averse. Those presented with the risk treatment were less risk averse compared with those shown the ambiguity treatment. Participants who were presented with the ambiguity treatment behaved as pessimists and perhaps made decisions based on probability of drought that was higher than the provided centre of the range. We found gender differences in risk attitudes: contrary to the norm, female participants were less risk averse compared to their male counterparts. This is however when all subjects are pooled together. Results also indicate that a higher certain payoff perhaps incentivises consistency and increases risk aversion. The data seems to indicate anchoring effects from varying the order the probability of drought was presented.

This study investigates how ambiguous qualities in a tangible user interface can generate collaboration between the users of the artifact. The goal of the ambiguous qualities is to not have an interface with a generally accepted way of interaction. In this manner the participants are challenged in their own perception of what a tangible user interface consists of. Interactions with physical objects instead of a standard mouse/keyboard input can explore new techniques of interaction.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis explores the processing of lexical ambiguity: words with several unrelated meanings (homonymy) or many related senses (polysemy). Chapter I provides a literature overview of studies investigating this topic. Chapters 2 and 3 pursue a first goal: to investigate whether effects are influenced by the methodology of defining lexical ambiguity. The results support the hypothesis (Rodd, Gaskell, & Marslen- Wilson, 2002) that studies using questionnaires to define lexical ambiguity (e.g. Rubenstein, Garfield, & Millikan, 1970) found a polysemy advantage rather than a homonymy advantage. Questionnaire-based ambiguity classifications are more similar to dictionary-defined polysemy than to homonymy (Experiment 1). Moreover, earlier findings (e.g. Rodd et al., 2002) of a polysemy advantage and homonymy disadvantage are replicated, and the questionnaire-based classifications result in effects more similar to the former than to the latter (Experiments 2 to 4). Chapters 4 to 6 pursue a second goal: to explore the effects of polysemy and homonymy with new stimuli. Chapters 4 and 5 indicate that polysemy effects are sensitive to concreteness (Experiments 5 & 6), frequency (Experiment 7), and level of processing (Experiment 8). Furthermore, polysemy effects seem to take place relatively late (Experiment 9). In contrast, Chapter 6 does not find any effects of homonymy (Experiments 10 to 12). Chapter 7 pursues a third goal: to test whether the relationship between senses plays a role in word processing. Sense relationship influences word recognition (Experiments 13 & 16), but not semantic categorization (Experiment 14). The temporal locus of the lexical decision effect cannot be determined (Experiment 15). Finally, Chapter 8 shows that the current findings fit reasonably well within an account by Rodd, Gaskell, and Marslen- Wilson (2004), and suggests possible directions for further research.

No description available.