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WPI’s global and off-campus IQPs, rich with real-world sponsors/projects and increasingly diverse teams, require that both faculty and students navigate a network of ambiguous situations and relationships. Despite the increasing adoption of project-based learning as a preferred educational model across higher education, and the prevalence of project-based work in STEM careers, research on how to best prepare students and faculty to identify and navigate ambiguity inherent to project-based learning is limited. Seeking to fill this important gap, this graduate thesis advances a pilot qualitative study focused on how students in domestic and off campus IQPs experience and navigate ambiguity in their IQPs. The thesis presents preliminary grounded theory regarding the types of ambiguity experienced by students, how students navigate through the ambiguity, and elements that appear to impact a student’s success in that navigation.

Three experiments were conducted to provide a better understanding about the fundamental processes involved in Chinese speech recognition. Specifically, we intended to answer three questions. First, are subsyllabic units like individual phonemes or whole syllables the basic encoding units in Chinese speech recognition? Second, does tone play a significant role in generating candidate words before correct identification? Third, how can the different meanings of homophones be resolved? In Experiment 1, we used the gating paradigm to explore the three issues. Results suggested that both subsyllabic (onset) and syllabic representations were important in recognizing Chinese monosyllables. Tonal constraints emerged only when context was available. And context also facilitated homophone recognition. In Experiment 2, the visual-world paradigm was used to verify the major findings in gating. While the salience of syllable and the absence of tonal constraints without context were replicated, the onset effect was greatly diminished. Further analyses suggested that acoustic similarity might also play a role in speech recognition. Experiment 3 also employed the visual-world paradigm. The resolution of Chinese homophones was found to be influenced by relative meaning frequency and context position. Based on these findings and those from related studies, we proposed a model of Chinese speech perception, in which initially, segmental and suprasegmental types of information were processed in separate but interacting pathways. Outputs from the two pathways were then combined at a later time point and jointly activated the corresponding morpheme. Implications of the model and its relations to previous findings are discussed. / Tsang, Yiu Kei. / Adviser: Hsuan-Chih Chen. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 72-11, Section: B, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-174). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese; some appendices include Chinese characters.

This dissertation adds to the current understanding of contests. Contests are a class of games in which players compete for a prize be expending resources. Some portion of the resources expended cannot be recuperated, even in the event of a loss. Each chapter extends standard models to incorporate realistic features such as nonprobabilistic uncertainty, budgets, dynamics, or intermediate outcomes. Chapter 1 introduces ambiguity aversion to the all-pay auction and war of attrition. Increasing ambiguity causes low types to bid lower and high types to bid higher, in the all-pay auction. In the war of attrition, ambiguity can uniformly decrease the bids. A revenue ranking for the all-pay auction, war of attrition, and standard sealed bid auctions is provided. These results are consistent with much of the experimental literature. Chapter 2 continues the discussion of ambiguity aversion. The main result is a characterization of the set of increasing equilibria in games like the all-pay auction and war of attrition. Unlike with subjective expected utility, even when beliefs are independent of type, an increasing equilibrium may not exist. Sufficient conditions are provided for such an equilibrium to exist. Chapter 3 models endogenous budgets in sequential elimination contests. Contestants depend on a strategic group of players to provide resources that will be spent in the contest. We analyze the effect of timing and spending rules on aggregate spending. When budgets are not replenished between stages, spending is higher. When unspent resources are refunded, total spending is higher than when all spending is a sunk costs. Chapter 4 introduces an all-pay auction game with an intermediate outcome between winning and losing. When bids are sufficiently different, the player with the highest bid wins a prize, and the other player receives nothing . When bids are close, the outcome is called a tie, and each player receives an intermediate prize. Ties are common in sports, political competition, and war. Equilibrium is characterized for a set of parameters where the tying region is relatively large.

The classical mean-variance model, proposed by Harry Markowitz in 1952, has been one of the most powerful tools in the field of portfolio optimization. In this model, parameters are estimated by their sample counterparts. However, this leads to estimation risk, which the model completely ignores. In addition, the mean-variance model fails to incorporate behavioral aspects of investment decisions. To remedy the problem, the notion of ambiguity aversion has been addressed by several papers where investors acknowledge uncertainty in the estimation of mean returns. We extend the idea to the variances and correlation coefficient of the portfolio, and study their impact. The performance of the portfolio is measured in terms of its Sharpe ratio. We consider different cases where one parameter is assumed to be perfectly estimated by the sample counterpart whereas the other parameters introduce ambiguity, and vice versa, and investigate which parameter has what impact on the performance of the portfolio.

Two different types of games are used to measure subjects¡¦ attitudes towards risk and ambiguity in this paper. In GAME 1, subjects are provided with a series of binary choices and a fill-in question for every set of tasks. In GAME 2, subjects are asked to play an auction game. Gains and losses stimulate subjects¡¦ different attitudes toward risk. It also happens when we measure subjects¡¦ attitude toward ambiguity. However, the results of Game 1 and Game 2 lack strong correlation with each other. While answering the series of binary choices in Game 1, subjects are risk averse/ambiguity averse over gains, and risk seeking/ambiguity seeking over losses. While answering the fill-in question in Game 1, subjects are risk neutral/ambiguity neutral over gains, and risk seeking/ambiguity seeking over losses. In GAME 2, we measure the attitude toward risk or attitude by the deviation from the case of neutrality or by risk indexes/ambiguity indexes. Analyzing the deviation, we conclude: (1) In the gains domain with high average probabilities to win, subjects are risk averse/ambiguity averse, but in the case of low average probabilities to win, subjects are risk seeking/ambiguity seeking. On the other hand, in the losses domain with high average probabilities to loss, subjects are risk seeking/ambiguity seeking, but when with low average probabilities to loss, subjects are risk aversion/ambiguity aversion. (2) The correlation between the attitudes toward risk and ambiguity gains is significantly greater than that over losses. (3) In the gains domain, the level of ambiguity aversion of subjects significantly increases with the ambiguous ranges of games. However, in the losses domain, the relation between those two is weak or non-significant. Analyzing the data with the risk indexes and the ambiguity indexes, we have two conclusions identical to the above. However, in the gains domain, the level of ambiguity aversion of subjects significantly increases with the ambiguity range of the games while we have the opposite result in the losses domain.

The concept of competence hypothesis identified by Heath and Tversky (1991) proposes that ambiguity aversion is affected by the subjective competence level of participants. When people feel knowledgeable or skillful in a field, they would rather bet on their own judgment even with uncertainty. However, when participants do not feel knowledgeable or skillful, they prefer betting on the unambiguous chance event. Therefore, the bias of ambiguity aversion is conditional on the subjective competence level of the participants. Our study selects managers of open and domestic stock type mutual funds to be study objects. There are 12 months during the study period, starting from April 2004 and ending in March 2005. In the first part of this paper, we investigate whether the competence effect influences professional managers¡¦ behaviors. We explore the relation between manager competence and mutual fund holding bias by conducting multiple regression analysis. Our study finds competence effect in the behaviors of mutual fund managers. A positive relation exists between manager competence and mutual fund holding electronic stocks bias. When manager competence is high, the mutual fund holdings in electronics stocks will be either more or less than the market. That is, weighting of holding electronics categorized stocks in mutual fund clearly deviate from the weighting of electronics categorized stocks in the market. However, when manager competence is not high, weighting of holding electronics categorized stocks in mutual fund follows that in the market. The other hypothesis proposes that manager competence is not relevant to the £] of mutual fund portfolio. Secondly, we explore the factors that affect manager competence by conducting logistic regression analysis. Among the five variables which may affect mutual fund manager competence, we find ¡§fund size¡¨ the only factor that is positively relevant to mutual fund manager competence. In other words, the larger the mutual funds, the more likely that managers will perceive themselves as skillful and knowledgeable. The other four variables are the manager¡¦s previous fund management experience, educational level, gender, and performance of mutual fund in the past year. They are not related to competence.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2000. / Some citations in Hebrew. Bibliography: leaves [101]-107.

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Concepts in transparency have evolved, given the improvements in constructive technologies, new theories in architecture, and social behavior. In this thesis, I will try to articulate the transition in the concepts of transparency, initiating with literal and phenomenal transparency that Colin Rowe and Slutzky discussed in their essay, Transparency, Literal and Phenomenal and propose ambiguous space, a new understanding of transparency through current case studies in architecture.