The logical structure of this thesis demanded a three part presentation. Part I of this thesis provides an historical analysis of global marine ideologies and values, and establishes a framework and justification for the research. The chronological analysis in Part I reveals that humans lived in harmony with the environment throughout most of history. It was not until the twentieth century that technological developments and the burgeoning human population began to take its toll. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries disciplines such as astronomy, physics and chemistry became distinct from philosophy. The most recent discipline to develop has been psychology, a science that is barely one hundred years old. In the past, psychological investigation ignored the natural world until in recent years the new paradigm of environmental psychology has emerged. Expanding on the notion of phenomenological psychology, a systems-oriented approach demands a holistic world view in contrast to analysing parts of a system. From this perspective, the present research adopted a biosocial multidisciplinary approach to the study of the human/marine environment interface. Part II is concerned with the theory and method in the study of marine and coastal environments. The theoretical concept of consumer socialisation assumes that learning takes place during interaction with socialisation agents such as family, peers, cultural influences and the media. To test the paradigm of social learning theory in familial (informal) and peer collaborative (formal) circumstances, two research studies were carried out. First, a three generational sample of five families in Auckland, New Zealand, were interviewed to test intergenerational commonalities and differences in social, cultural and economic values pertaining to marine environmental issues. Content analysis supported the notion that mechanisms associated with consumer socialisation theory were evident in the rhetorical constructs of participants. Predictions that environmentally aware parents and grandparents would have children with similar attitudes, and adjacent generations would have more closely aligned attitudes and beliefs than nonadjacent generations, were supported. Further, interactive dialogue resulted in contradictions and coercion, strategies associated with attitude change within the theoretical model of social learning. The second research study investigated the effects of collaborative learning on cognitive development. In contrast to the systemic approach of experiential learning, the traditional lecture format fails to address the student as a total person. Based on this premise, an interactive simulation game with a focus on marine conservation, and the corresponding effects on learning and behaviour, was developed in the present study. Decisions relating to conservation versus economic development of the marine environment were manipulated by the introduction of role-play in the context of the simulation game, which was based on an imaginary island governed by eight ministries. Following rigorous pilot testing, the final version of the simulation game was field tested with one hundred and fifty-four students aged between twelve and fifteen years at three Auckland, New Zealand, high schools. Results revealed first, a significant effect of role-play on decision-making and second, a significant difference between control and experimental groups in correct answers to knowledge-based questionnaires, confirming the effectiveness of peer interaction through simulation as a teaching device. Students began to construct their own cognitive understanding of environmental issues and problems faced by government departments with divergent agendas. Once this point was reached it was not difficult for participants to consider social, economic and environmental factors in terms of real-life situations. The results of both studies are summarised in the final chapter. Findings revealed that socialisation processes are instrumental in developing orientation towards environmental issues. Furthermore, interpersonal communication has the power to alter cognitive structures. Justification for concern about marine environmental protection, and the urgency associated with the development of educational mechanisms, was evident from the results of this research. Implications for future interaction with marine biosocial systems, limitations of the study and directions for further research, are defined in the closing sections of this thesis.

Three studies were undertaken with high school students, unified by the goal of informing prevention programmes in high schools. The first study used a questionnaire to gather information from 373 students about their experiences of emotional, physical and/or sexual violence across heterosexual dating, peer and family relationships. Although girls and boys reported similar rates of all types of violence, the emotional consequences for girls were more adverse, girls were more likely to talk to someone about it and more likely to terminate the relationship. There was a correlation between violence victimisation in dating relationships and in the family. Experiences of peer violence were similar for boys and girls, although girls reported significantly more sexual harassment and boys significantly more physical violence. The two remaining studies in the research used a discourse analytic approach to examine the talk of students. One study used 12 group interviews in which 101 students were invited to talk about their perceptions of dating relationships and the violence that occurred within them. The key strand in the analysis of this talk was the social construction of masculine and feminine identities. Boys commonly drew on the discourses of naturalness, the sexually driven male and the patriarchal discourse. For girls, the prevailing discourses were the discourse of the body, the discourse of 'emphasised femininity' (traditional femininity) and, as with the boys, the patriarchal discourse. The other study involved analysis of 24 individual interviews with girls, who had themselves been in relationships with boyfriends that involved violence. Their stories were commonly threaded with the romantic narrative, but although girls at times positioned themselves within the passivity of romantic discourse and 'emphasised femininity', they also positioned themselves in the contradictory discourse of feminism. The high levels of reported violence in the questionnaire study supported a need for dating violence prevention programmes in schools as well as suggesting specific areas to target within programmes. The group interview study strongly indicated the need to foster alternative constructions of masculinity and femininity and the individual interview study pointed to the need to alert teenagers to the fusion of love and violence through exposing the trappings of romantic discourse.

Experimental extensions and theoretical explanations of a psychoacoustic experiment concerning temporal summation of human hearing are investigated. The experiment has the well-established result that, ceteris paribus, a brief tone burst is more readily letected than a brief gap in a tone. Two models, one based on the neuroelectrical activity of the auditory nerve and one on energy-detection theory, are presented and developed in detail: both are shown capable of predicting the result of the bursts and gaps experiment. Seven experiments are reported. Experiment 1 found the reaction time to the start of a faint tone embedded in noise generally shorter than that to its end. Experiment 2 examined the effect of rise/decay time on the detectability of brief bursts of, or gaps in, broadband noise: when the energy change was constant, 1here was no effect except at long (100 msec) rise/decay times. Experiments 3 and 4 assessed the detectability of bursts of, and gaps in, a tone embedded in noise where energy change to noise power per cycle was constant but duration varied. The data demonstrate that the effect of duration on detectability was different for burst than gap events, a result predicted by both models. Experiment 5 showed that, when the energy in and duration of a tone burst in noise were constant but the temporal distribution of the burst energy varied, detectability remained unchanged. The repetition rate of noise bursts and gaps in continuous noise was varied without effect on detectability in Experiment 6. Bursts, however, were consistently mere detectable than gaps. Experiment 7 compared the detectability of increments and decrements of a continuous tone embedded in noise. The quantitative predictions of the two models are compared with the data resulting from Experiments 3, 5, and 7. The qualitative results of these and the other experiments are also discussed in terms of their theoretical implications. Taken all together, the experiments do not definitely favour either model over the other.

Background Depictions of mental illnesses in the mass media have been analysed and criticised for more than forty years with little improvement, and that has serious implications for the ongoing efforts to destigmatise both mental illnesses and those who suffer from them. Aims To examine media depictions of mental illnesses within a social constructionist framework. To identify why media depictions take the form they do and to indicate ways in which such practices may be more effectively addressed. Method Items chosen from factual media genres were subjected to discourse analysis. This form of analysis attends to the preferred meaning of the items and how that meaning is constructed within the item. Exemplars of such analysis are contrasted with the content analyses more commonly performed on media materials before reporting analyses of items from everyday media reports and of materials that were expected to be less stigmatising. Results Irrespective of the form of analysis it is found that media depictions of mental illnesses are dominated by representations of dangerousness, criminal violence, unpredictability, and social incompetence. The same features were found in a destigmatisation documentary and a series of backgrounders on mental health services, in both of which madness was utilised to create interest and drama. It is argued that these characteristics occur because media personnel, like most laypersons, represent mental illnesses as forms of madness. Conclusions That my social constructionist analysis is able to account for the lack of change in media depictions over forty years. That the preference for a public mental health approach to destigmatisation is misplaced because it is unable to address the fear generated by lay understandings of mental illnesses. That the attempt to avoid conflation of the person with the disorder in Diagnostic and Statistical Manuals beginning in 1980 was an inadequate step in an appropriate direction in that it sought to remind clinicians that a mental disorder does not make a person non-human. The thesis findings are interpreted as showing that destigmatisation requires a new way of depicting mental illnesses, one that privileges the individual's experience and their ordinary humanness.

This is a description of the phonology, morphology and syntax of Namakir, a language of the Oceanic subgroup of Austronesian, which is spoken on some six small islands of the Shepherd Islands, central Vanuatu. My perspective on Namakir is that of a person trained in linguistics, who carried out linguistic fieldwork for the purpose of grammatical description. In addition I contributed to ethnographic work as well as compiling data for a dictionary, part of which is appended to the present description. Namakir is a conservative language which retains many features that make Oceanic languages unique. Thus it is a valuable witness for comparative and reconstructive work in Oceanic linguistics. The physical, social and historical setting of Namakir is detailed in the introductory chapter. A section on theoretical issues concerning the descriptive enterprise is included. The chapter on phonology outlines the Namakir consonant and vowel inventories, with due emphasis on the glottal stop which, as a reflex of the Proto-Oceanic glottal stop, is a unique occurence in Vanuatu languages Sections on phonotactics, stress and phonological processes add to the basic description of segments. In the chapter on morphophonemics the dynamics of derivational processes are explored. A major section deals with consonant alternation, a phenomenon widely discussed in Oceanic Linguistics. The major form classes are detailed in the next chapter. Nominals, determiners, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are established as word categories and paradigm tables are provided for comprehensive overviews. The last chapter on Namakir syntax provides a systematic description of noun phrase and verb phrase. Possessive constructions receive special attention as they exhibit a number of unusual features. The verb phrase is discussed within the framework of the Oceanic definition of verb and periphery which include subject markers as well as pronominal objects. The Namakir mood and aspectual system is presented in detail. A major section deals with serial verb constructions in relation to current descriptive theories. The concluding sections discuss selected items regarding complex sentence structures. Negation and question sentences, existential and comparative sentence types are included. Coordination together with direct and indirect speech is noted to use forms of a quotative verb, being especially significant in the organisation of narrative sequences. Relative and temporal clauses share a single overt marker. A morpheme-to-morpheme glossed narrative is appended to demonstrate narrative style. A substantial Namakir-English-Bislama wordlist is added as a repository of data collected during fieldwork.

Pigeons were studied in concurrent chain schedules in which the terminal links were variable-interval (aperiodic) and fixed-interval (periodic) schedules. Choice was studied at various maintained percentages of body weight, (Experiment 1) and after various amounts of food had been pre-fed (Experiment 2). No effects on choice of the level of deprivation were found except in those choice conditions in which both terminal-link schedules were variable-interval schedules. Choice behaviour was further studied with equal, but increased magazine durations (Experiment 3) and no reliable effects were found. Explicit discrimination training established control over choice behaviour by the amounts pre-fed (Experiment 4) and generalisation gradiets of choice showed that this control was reliable. The differences found between aperiodic and periodic schedules were probably related to the different patterns of behaviour maintained by these schedules and an attempt was made to relate the results to overall models of behaviour and the 'value' of food.

It is often claimed that applied behaviour analysis is founded on basic behavioural concepts involving the direct extrapolation of data from the experimental laboratory to the analysis of human behaviour. It is claimed that such an approach gives theoretical coherence to a set of procedures, and avoids the pitfalls associated with a collection of unrelated techniques. This presumed experimental base is said to make applied behaviour analysis more rigorous, more effective, more systematic, and easier to teach and learn than other approaches to the modification of human behaviour. There is reason to believe, however, that the link between experimental and applied behaviour analysis is more one of commitment than reality. Previous authors have shown that research findings from the experimental analysis of behaviour are becoming increasingly isolated from other areas of psychology in general. The present study provides evidence that such findings are also isolated from applied behaviour analysis in particular. Experimental data are seldom cited in applied work and, when they are, it is seldom specific or current data to which references are made. It is argued that this state of affairs is attributable to the acceptance, by applied behaviour analysis, of a model of behaviour whose complexity is insufficient to cope with the complex interactive nature of human behaviour. The present work provides an outline of the current applied behaviour analytic model, and then proceeds to discuss some of the major types of data of which the model takes no significant account. An extensive examination of data from the experimental analysis of choice behaviour is given, which reveals the level of complexity to which application may be made. Suggestions as to the practical utilization of these data are made, with particular reference to the areas of self-control and commitment. A case study involving the use of a commitment procedure in the treatment of an exhibitionist and another concerning the application of experimentally-derived procedures to a self-control problem, provide clinical evidence of the usefulness of the direct incorporation of experimental data. Following these applied case studies, a number of other areas of experimental research are examined with respect to their relevance to applied behaviour analysis. Significant data from the study of multiple-schedule interactions, stimulus control, and two specific types of analyses of reinforcement phenomena are outlined and suggestions made concerning their applied potential. Further, data which could determine the limits of the applicability of experimental data, in the context of biological constraints on behaviour, are shown to be capable of further increasing the utility of applied behaviour analytic techniques. Finally, the implications of the data analyzed are discussed in terms of the future training of applied behaviour analysts.

Lesions were placed in several areas of the telencephalon and diencephalon of the brain of the pigeon and the effects on the acquisition of inhibitory dimensional and inhibitory stimulus control were observed. The experimental tasks consisted of both visual and auditory interdimensional discriminations each of which had two components: In the first the stimuli were presented successively on the one response key (the main key) according to a multiple variable-interval extinction schedule. In the second the multiple schedule still obtained but a changeover key was added which, when pecked, changed the main-key stimulus, together with its associated schedule of reinforcement, to the next in a randomly ordered series. The use of these two components allowed the separation of two aspects of inhibitory control in learning: response reduction and stimulus reduction thereby permitting the assessment of discriminative ability in the absence of the confounding factor of response reduction. Inhibitory dimensional and inhibitory stimulus control were assessed by post-discrimination generalization tests and combined-cue tests, respectively. It was found that lesions to areas considered limbic - hippocampus, septum, anterior dorsomedial thalamus - had no effect on the learning of a visual discrimination. Lesions to the dorsolateral thalamus produced a complete inability to learn this discrimination, presumably due to disruption of visual fibres en route to the telecephalon. Lesions to the Wulst produced a visual discrimination learning deficit in some birds but not in others, an inconsistency not accounted for by differences in lesion size. Wulst lesions also produced an auditory discrimination learning deficit and in this case the larger the lesion, the larger the deficit. Lesions to ectostriatum produced a deficit in the visual task and lesions to Field L, an auditory projection area, produced a deficit in the auditory task, but not in the visual task. However, in most cases the discrimination learning deficit which was produced was confined to the multiple schedule where the animal had no control over the presentation or duration of the stimuli. Once the changeover key was introduced most birds obtained the learning criterion very quickly by "switching out" of the negative stimulus. This effective changeover responding, together with unimpaired inhibitory dimensional or inhibitory stimulus control, suggested that although the initial learning deficit might be described in terms of an inability to withhold responding in the presence of stimuli previously correlated with reinforcement, this inability could not readily be explained in terms of a lesion-induced impairment in an inhibitory process.

Young drivers have high rates of injury in New Zealand and throughout the Western world. It is commonly perceived that a major reason for this is their tendency to engage in unsafe driving behaviours, something that has frequently been labelled ‘risk taking’. A study of the literature suggested that the term ‘risk taking’ has been used in a variety of different ways and may have obscured our understanding of young people’s motives. Theories and research reviewed on the causes of unsafe driving behaviour amongst adolescents revealed a variety of potential contributors, ranging from the individual to the social. There is little evidence to implicate young women as unsafe drivers, who are most at risk as passengers. A survey of sixth form students (n=626) found high levels of unlicensed driving, breaking the rules associated with a restricted licence, failing to wear a seat belt in the back seat, speeding and being the passenger of a drinking driver. In addition, the survey found significantly more males than females reported: driving, engaging in unsafe driving behaviours, drinking and driving, speeding on the open road, breaking the night curfew associated with being on a restricted licence and dangerous thought patterns. Females were more likely to have been the passenger of a drinking driver after the last party they attended. Interviews with a sub-sample of those surveyed (n=16) revealed a number of scenarios that led to unsafe driving. These included: peer group dynamics, the adolescent sub-culture, emotional stress, an apparent lack of awareness of risk, and practical considerations. The interviews also indicated a lack of policing of the rules associated with the Graduated Driver Licensing System (G.D.L.S.). Interventions aimed at changing the behaviour of young drivers are examined and driver education is looked at in some detail. Problems with methodology made it difficult to reach clear conclusions about the efficacy of past programmes. Health education literature was analysed to ascertain what may be the ingredients of effective programmes for driving safety. An intervention study was carried out that compared a group of sixth form students who received a programme for driving safety (n=176) with a control group (n=146). Measures of attitudes, knowledge and self-reported behaviours yielded no significant differences between the two groups in either the post-test or the follow-up. A variety of reasons for this outcome are put forward, including the programme’s emphasis on thinking processes and its low fear approach. The recommendations that are made for decreasing the teenage road injury rate include: better policing of the G.D.L.S., education programmes and media campaigns that focus on the young male’s sense of personal immunity from risk, and increased availability of safe transport on occasions when young people are drinking. It is stressed that comprehensive safety plans that target all age groups are likely to have the greatest impact.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the immediate consequences of concussion. Previous work had either concentrated on memory defects only, included cases of cerebral damage as well as concussion, or examined residual defects persisting after the period of impaired consciousness had ended. It was hoped to determine which function or functions might be affected in concussion by testing only young adult cases of 'pure' concussion in the immediate post-traumatic period. In the main experiment a paced serial addition task was administered to a mildly concussed (MC) and seriously concussed (SC) group at twenty-four-hourly intervals during the hospital period, and thirty to forty days after discharge. A normal control and hospital control group were given the task at similar time intervals. Recent concussion impaired performance and SC Ss needed almost five times as long as controls to process each correct response while MC Ss were about twenty per cent slower, However, responses were qualitatively similar in all groups, and concussed Ss differed only in producing many more late response errors. At retest the MC group had regained control level, but although SC Ss had significantly improved PASAT scores they were still poorer than the other three groups. Experiments II and III investigated stages in the information transmission process which may have produced restricted information processing shown by PASAT results. Reaction and movement times were not longer than normal, although central processing time was. MC Ss did not have significantly slower non-symbolic RTs, or symbolic two- and four-choice RTs, but they differed significantly from controls on eight- and ten-choice symbolic trials. Again this difference between groups was not found at retest four weeks later. Results suggested inefficient 'pigeon-holing' (Broadbent, 1971) as a possible factor in reduced information transmission following concussion. However, a message repetition task indicated no difference between concussed and non-concussed Ss in use of this mechanism. Message repetition also demonstrated that patients had no difficulty in auditory perception of verbal material. In the third stage, normal Ss were given message repetition with and without a concurrent distracting task. Performance during distraction was sufficiently similar to that of recently concussed Ss to suggest that the patient group may have been poorer than controls on the same task only because they also had reduced processing capacity. When given PASAT with a secondary paced task, performance of another group of normal Ss was almost identical to concussed Ss in the first experiment. Finally, to test the possibility that reduced processing capacity was the result of increased distractability, that is, processing task-irrelevant stimuli, an attention task (speech shadowing) was given to a small group of MC Ss and normal controls. There were no instances of intrusions or interference from an irrelevant message to indicate a defect in selective attention, although MC Ss had significantly lower shadowing scores. It was concluded that reduction in processing capacity produced by concussion was a function of patients' lower level of arousal, and that performance resembled that reported in the literature from sleep-deprived Ss and cases of brain-stem damage or dysfunction. A feature of results was the extremely competent performance exhibited by concussion patients, given a reduction in total capacity. Similar optimizing behaviour was evident during distraction tasks, and it was suggested that ability to monitor and control distribution of available processing space by instructions ('set') is a general characteristic of ordered behaviour. This ability was not disturbed by degrees of concussion sustained by experimental Ss in this study. Amnesic symptoms of the immediate post-traumatic period were considered in terms of lowered arousal level. It was proposed that these might be explained by a combination of two factors: (i) processing space insufficient to store items while responding to them, and (ii) tagging of items in storage with levels of concurrent background activity, and thus 'state-dependent' memory. Evidence for a processing deficit existing after termination of the period of PTA was reviewed, and the possibility of permanent effect in terms of increased disability following repeated concussions. Some aspects of results important in considering rehabilitation programmes for head-injured patients were noted.