Two age groups of infants were tested for their ability to learn an AAB or ABA repetition generalization in sequences of musical chords. The 4-month-olds, but not the 7.5-month-olds, successfully learned the generalization. Another group of 7.5-month-old infants successfully learned a generalization across melodies that all ended on a particular scale degree, even though the key of the melodies was varied. A survey of a musical corpus of children's songs reveals that AAB and ABA patterns do not occur more frequently than chance, while phrases frequently end on particular scale degrees. Together, these findings suggest that infants learn to constrain the set of generalizations they consider in order to favor those that rely upon features of the input that have proved reliable in their previous experience, specifically experience with a particular input domain. This raises the possibility that experience may play a significant role in parsing infants' environments into domains.

Despite the growing popularity of goal orientation research, three questions remain largely unanswered: (1) are there 3 factors of goal orientation or only 2; (2) what predicts goal orientation; and (3) is goal orientation domain specific? To help answer these questions, 177 undergraduates were given a questionnaire assessing, in both the academic and athletic domains, (a) learning, prove, and avoid goals, (b) self-perceived ability, ability, and implicit theories, and (c) high-school grade point average, intrinsic motivation, internal motivation, self-efficacy, locus of control, need for achievement, desire to win, and fear of negative evaluation. The results suggest that learning, prove, and avoid goals can be empirically distinguished, that they are domain specific, but that they are not predicted well by ability, self-perceived ability, or implicit theories. Discussion centers on the need for a pattern approach to the prediction of goal orientation and stresses the importance of examining the interactions among learning, prove, and avoid goals. The overriding conclusion, however, is that goal orientation is not a useful construct. / Master of Science

PSD-95/Dlg/ZO-1 (PDZ) domain - PDZ binding motif (PBM) interactions have been one of the most well studied protein-protein interaction systems through biochemical, biophysical and high-throughput screening (HTS) strategies. This has allowed us to understand the mechanism of individual PDZ-PBM interactions and the re-engineering of PBMs to bind tighter or to gain or lose certain specificity. However, there are several thousand native PDZ domains whose biological ligands remain unknown. Because of the low sequence identity among PDZ domain homologues, promiscuous binding profiles (defined as a PDZ domain that can accommodate a set of PBMs or a PBM that can be recognized by many PDZ domains), and context-dependent interaction mechanism, we have an inadequate understanding of the general molecular mechanisms that determine the PDZ-PBM specificity. Therefore, predicting PDZ specificity has been elusive. In addition, no de novo PBM ligand or artificial non-native PDZ domain have been successfully designed. This reflects the general challenges in understanding the general principles of PDZ-ligand interactions, namely that they are context-dependent, exhibit weak binding affinity, narrow binding energy range, and larger interaction surface than other protein-ligand interactions. Together, PDZ domains make good model systems to investigate the fundamental principles of protein-protein interactions with a wide spectrum of biomedical implications. My studies suggest that understanding PBM specificity with the set of structural positions forming the binding pocket can connect sequence, structure and function of a PDZ domain in a general context. They also suggest that this way of understanding the specificity will shed light on prediction and engineering of specificity rationally. Structural analysis on most of the available PDZ domain structures was established to support the principle (Chapter I). The principle was tested against two different types of PBM; C-terminal PBM (Chapter II) and internal PBM (Chapter III), and shown to support better understanding and design of PDZ domain specificity. We further applied the principle to design de novo PDZ domains, and the preliminary data hints that it is optimistic to engineer PDZ domain specificity (Appendix A and B).

The goal of this project was to investigate the relationship between executive attention and specific linguistic and control processes during goal-directed tasks in aphasia. Its central premise was that PWA often possess dissociable impairments in linguistic processes and in the mechanisms that control and efficiently utilize those processes. The motivation for this claim was based on observations that PWA often present with deficits in the online processing of linguistic information, which in some instances have been interpreted as evidence for impaired linguistic operations, but in others has been interpreted as evidence for impaired control of language processing due to more general cognitive constraints. The current work tested claims regarding the Executive Attention model (Engle and Kane, 2004) in aphasia and its relation to varying task sets in linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks. 20 PWA and 23 matched controls were tested on four tasks measuring executive attention in verbal and nonverbal domains using word-picture interference, semantic and perceptual go/no-go, and spatial Stroop designs. Participants were also tested on lexical decision and numerosity judgment tasks with varying speed and accuracy-focused instructions, with performance modeled using the Diffusion Model (Ratcliff, 1978). Overall, the current work found evidence for the predicted domain-general and domain-specific impairments in executive attention at the level of individual PWA. However, these executive attention deficits did not appear to be associated with difficulties adapting to shifting speed-accuracy constraints. In addition, group-level patterns of performance across experiments suggest an additional related executive control deficit in the area of generating and maintaining arbitrary stimulus-response mappings. This study also demonstrated the appropriateness and potential applicability of the diffusion model in aphasia research, and diffusion model analyses found that PWA had difficulty adjusting their nondecision times in response to speed constraints, had lower drift rates in lexical decision, which reflected inefficient processing of lexical information, and had a disproportionately difficult time efficiently processing easy stimuli in lexical and numerosity tasks.

Immersive virtual environments (VEs) are broadly applicable to situations where a user can directly perceive and interact with three-dimensional (3D) virtual objects. Currently, successful interactive applications of VEs are limited. Some interactive applications in the AEC (architecture / engineering / construction) domain have not yet benefited from applying VEs. A review of prior work has suggested that 3D interaction has not reached a level that meets real-world task requirements. Most interaction techniques pay little attention to the application contexts. When designers assemble these techniques to develop an interactive system, the interfaces often have very simple and not highly useful UIs. In this work, we describe a domain-specific design approach (DSD) that utilizes pervasive and accurate domain knowledge for interaction design. The purpose of this dissertation is to study the effects of domain knowledge on interaction design. The DSD approach uses a three-level interaction design framework to represents a continuous design space of interaction. The framework has generative power to suggest alternative interaction techniques. We choose the AEC domain as the subject of study. Cloning and object manipulation for massing study are the two example tasks to provide practical and empirical evidences for applying the DSD. This dissertation presents several important results of the knowledge use in the DSD approach. First, the DSD approach provides a theoretical foundation for designing 3D interaction. Techniques produced using DSD result in more useful real-world applications, at least in the domain of AEC. Second, the three-level interaction design framework forms a continuum of design and expands our understanding of 3D interaction design to a level that addresses real-world use. Third, this research proposes an integrated system design approach that integrates DSD and the usability engineering process. Fourth, this work produces a large set of empirical results and observations that demonstrate the effectiveness of domain-knowledge use in designing interaction techniques and applications. Finally, we apply domain-specific interaction techniques to real world applications and create a fairly complex application with improved usefulness. / Ph. D.

The purpose of the present study was to analyze the significance ofcreativity for network behavior. Similar to other network behavioral studiesthe multidimensional approach was utilized where networking was dividedinto sub dimensions with external and internal counterparts. The domainspecific approach to creativity was used in order to attempt to determinewhich creative domain is significant for different networking behaviors.106 individuals participated in the study and the sample is considered anon-random convenience sample. The results showed that certain networkbehaviors interacted with different creative domains. The creative domainof everyday and verbal creativity were both unique predictors of networkbehavior and were the creative domains who were the most relevant.Structural facets in the form of work experience, organizational size andbiological gender were also explored. Work experience was shown to be aweak moderating variable to the relationship of network behavior andcreativity. Organizational size had no significant results and biologicalgender was significant for two of the creative domains: Math / scientificand artistic creativity. Results from the present study provide furtherevidence towards an area which is relatively new. The findings can be usedto create an empirical foundation in recruitment scenarios which mayrequire individuals with particular set of psychological traits. / Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka interaktionen mellannätverksbeteende och kreativitet, samt att analysera om kreativitet är avsignifikant betydelse för nätverksbeteende. I linje med tidigare forskningom nätverksbeteende är denna studie av multidimensionell karaktär, därnätverksbeteende delas upp i interna samt externa komponenter. Dendomänspecifika paradigmen för kreativitet användes för att undersökavilka av de kreativa domänerna som är mest relevanta vidnätverksbeteende. 106 individer deltog i studien och urvalet var ettbekvämlighetsurval. Resultatet visade att några av de kreativa domäneninteragerade med nätverksbeteende, där vardaglig samt verbal kreativitetvar av högst relevans samt även unika prediktorer för nätverksbeteende. Destrukturella faktorerna arbetslivserfarenhet, organisationsstorlek samtbiologiskt kön undersöktes också. Arbetslivserfarenhet visade sig ha enmodererande effekt i relation till sambandet nätverksbeteende ochkreativitet, medan organisationsstorlek inte hade någon signifikant effekt.Resultatet för biologiskt kön indikerade att de kreativa domänenmatematisk/vetenskaplig och konstnärlig kreativitet var signifikanta, därmän skattade sig som något mer kreativa än vad kvinnor gjorde. Studiensresultat kan användas för att skapa en evidensbaserad grund irekryteringssammanhang samt i utformningen av psykometriska tester.

The aim was to examine whether measurements of creativity as a domain general trait can explain possible connections between a domain general creative performance and one of the creative domain specific areas, humor. Another aim was to examine whether the maladaptive humor styles can explain possible differences in creative performances. An Internet-based survey was used on 281 students from a Swedish university. The survey was composed of three parts consisting of three separate measuring instruments – Sense of Humor Questionnaire (SHQ-6) was used to measure the respondents’ sense of humor, Humor Style Questionnaire (HSQ) measured the respondents’ humor style and Alternate Uses Test (AUT) gave the respondents an opportunity to account for their creative performances. The results showed no significant correlations between the respondents’ sense of humor and their creative performances. Neither could the maladaptive humor styles explain any significant differences in creative performances. However it was found that a low degree of self-defeating humor style had a significant interaction effect on differences in elaboration between low and high degrees of aggressive humor style.

Die Verhaltenswissenschaften betrachten menschliche Entscheidungsprozesse aus zwei komplementären Perspektiven: Form und Funktion. Formfragen behandeln wie Denkprozesse ablaufen, Funktionsfragen behandeln, welche Ziele das resultierende Verhalten erfüllt. Die vorliegende Dissertation argumentiert für die Integration von Form und Funktion. Ein Schritt zur Integration von Form und Funktion besteh darin, Prozessmodelle aus der Kognitionspsychologie in die evolutionäre Psychologie und Verhaltensbiologie (welche sich häufig mit Funktionsfragen befassen) einzuführen. Studie 1 untersucht die Eigenschaften kognitiver Prozessmodelle. Ich schlage ein Rahmenmodell für allgemeine kognitive Prozessmodelle vor, mit Hilfe dessen Prozessmodelle entwickelt werden können. In Studie 2 untersuche ich Klassifikation aus Perspektive der Form und Funktion. Verhalten sich Menschen gemäss einer statistischen Annahme, die sich in der Informatik als robust gegenüber ihrer Verletzung herausstellte? Daten aus zwei Lernexperimenten und Modellierung mittels eines neuen probabilistischen Lernmodells zeigen, dass Menschen zu Beginn des Lernprozesses gemäß dem statistischen Prinzip der klassenkonditionalen Unabhängigkeit kategorisieren. In Studie 3 geht es um Risikoentscheidungen aus der Perspektive der Form und Funktion. Sind Informationsverarbeitungsprozesse abhängig von der Zielgröße der Entscheidung? Ich messe Prozess- und Verhaltensindikatoren in zehn Risikodomänen welche die evolutionären Ziele wiederspiegeln. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass Risikoeinstellungen domänenspezifisch sind. Insbesondere sind Frauen nicht universell risiko-averser als Männer. Auf der Prozessebene hat die Valenz der entscheidungsrelevanten Argumente geringeren Einfluss auf die Domänenunterschiede als die am häufigsten genannten Aspekte für/gegen das Risikoverhalten. / The behavioral sciences investigate human decision processes from two complementary perspectives: form and function. Formal questions include the processes that lead to decisions, functional aspects include the goals which the resulting behavior meets. This dissertation argues for the integration of form and functional questions. One step towards a form-function integration is introducing cognitive process models into evolutionary psychology and behavioral biology (which are mostly asking about the goals of behavior). Study 1 investigates the properties of cognitive process models. I suggest the first general framework for building cognitive process models. In study 2 I investigate human category learning from a functional and form centered perspective. Do humans, when learning a novel categorization task, follow a statistical principle which was been shown to perform the goals of correct classification robustly even in the face of violations of the underlying assumption? Data from two learning experiments and cognitive modeling with a novel probabilistic learning model show that humans start classifying by following the statistical principle of class-conditional independence of features. Study 3 investigates risk attitudes from the perspective of form and function. Does the information people process relate to the goals of risky behavior? I measure process- and behavioral indicators in ten domains of risks which represent different evolutionary goals. The results show that not only do risk attitudes differ across domains, but also that females are not universally less risk taking than males. Further, on the process level, the valence of the aspects related to perceived risks is less related to peoples’ risk propensities compared to the most frequently mentioned aspects.

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This thesis explores to what extent Multinomial Naive Bayes (MNB) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) classifiers can be used to determine the polarity of news, specifically the news coverage of Sweden by the Russian state-funded news outlets RT and Sputnik. Three experiments are conducted.  In the first experiment, an MNB and an SVM classifier are trained with the Large Movie Review Dataset (Maas et al., 2011) with a varying number of samples to determine how training data size affects classifier performance.  In the second experiment, the classifiers are trained with 300 positive, negative, and neutral news articles (Agarwal et al., 2019) and tested on 95 RT and Sputnik news articles about Sweden (Bengtsson, 2019) to determine if the domain specificity of the training data outweighs its limited size.  In the third experiment, the movie-trained classifiers are put up against the domain-specific classifiers to determine if well-trained classifiers from another domain perform better than relatively untrained, domain-specific classifiers.  Four different types of feature sets (unigrams, unigrams without stop words removal, bigrams, trigrams) were used in the experiments. Some of the model parameters (TF-IDF vs. feature count and SVM’s C parameter) were optimized with 10-fold cross-validation.  Other than the superior performance of SVM, the results highlight the need for comprehensive and domain-specific training data when conducting machine learning tasks, as well as the benefits of feature engineering, and to a limited extent, the removal of stop words. Interestingly, the classifiers performed the best on the negative news articles, which made up most of the test set (and possibly of Russian news coverage of Sweden in general).