An ethological study was undertaken in two primary schools in Natal to assess the effect of schistosome infections on the ordinary behaviour of schoolchildren in endemic areas. The following topics are discussed :- 1. The life cycle of the parasite, the possibility of an evolved tolerance of it, the likely limits of such tolerance, the possibility of selective exposure of certain kinds of children to the parasite, and the role of severity of infection in impairment. 2. Appropriate measures for investigating the impairment of the human host centring around the measurement of activity in the context of social interaction. 3. An ethological approach to evaluating human response to disease. Results indicate that there is selective exposure of more active, sociable children to the disease. In low-level infections of both Schistosoma haematobium and Schistosoma mansoni there is little evidence of a drop in energetic activity under normal conditions. In subjects with higher egg counts or simultaneous infections with both schistosomes, activity levels drop generally, and especially under hot, humid weather conditions where the drop in activity is greater than that for control subjects. This work throws doubt on earlier studies indicating that the parasite had no behavioural effect on humans: these studies did not control for selective exposure and may have used methods of low sensitivity and doubtful relevance to everyday life. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, 1981.

This thesis addresses itself to the problem of observing, interpreting and explaining ongoing behaviour in the natural environment. It maintains that the ,intention of the actor is the primary characteristic of behaviour and is concerned with how observers attribute intentions to the actions of others. Naive observers were asked to segment the behaviour of infants exhibited to them on a video tape and having done so to describe that behaviour in their own terms. The behaviour sequences selected for observation were relatively "simple",i.e. the behaviour of infants and young children, in order to gain some possible guidelines for a study of more "complex" adult behaviour. The sequences were interpreted on two levels, at the perceptual level and at the level of meaning. It was assumed that by instructing subjects to divide the observed behaviour into perceived segments and subsequently to describe those segments, that some guidelines as to how to proceed with a study of action would emerge. The findings suggest that "naive observers do identify meaningful segments in the ongoing stream of behaviour but that inter-observer agreement about the precise timing of the changes was not high, a finding which differs from studies on adult behaviour. Attributed meanings were also individual, suggesting that the actions observed are not tied specifically to the physical movements of the child but are subject to a range of meaning depending on the observer's individual interpretation. General trends in meaning were, however, observed for the children of different ages. These trends were identified by categorizing the attributions into "functional" categories, developed from a study of early utterances and are assumed to be continuous with later "uses" that language serves. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1982.

Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted