Thesis (MEng (Electronic Eng))--University of South Australia, 1994

Psychologists, legal practitioners and scholars share the knowledge that honest eyewitnesses can err in their attempts to identify the perpetrator of a crime. This thesis reports an experimental investigation of the extent to which expert evidence and judicial instruction can improve juror ability to discriminate between accurate and inaccurate identifications. Special attention is also paid to the logic of inferences which have been made by psychologists regarding the efficacy of expert evidence, and compares methodologies adopting direct measures of participant Sensitivity to Eyewitness Accuracy (SEA) with those that can only indirectly assess this construct. Study 1 surveys the knowledge and opinions of legal professionals regarding eyewitness identification issues (n = 35), showing that respondents expressed doubts that judicial instructions would exert an effect equivalent to that of eyewitness expert evidence. Accordingly, Experiments 1 to 4 (Experiment 1, n = 104; Experiment 2, n = 238; Experiment 3, n = 228; Experiment 4, n = 297) were conducted to directly assess the relative impacts of judicial instruction and expert evidence on participant juror SEA. The methodology utilised in these investigations incorporated the testimony of real eyewitnesses to a staged crime scenario in order to assess the impact of instruction on juror ability to discriminate between known accurate and known inaccurate eyewitnesses. Overall, little evidence was found to support the notion that expert evidence is more effective than judicial instruction, as no significant association was identified between instruction type and SEA. This result was found to hold irrespective of the objective quality of the expert?s testimony (accurate or erroneous). In light of the results from Experiments 1 to 4, Experiment 5 was designed to investigate why the experts were not able to improve the discrimination accuracy of the jurors. This study focused on the extent to which participants of varying levels of expertise could correctly classify eyewitness accuracy. The results of Experiment 5 (n = 145) suggest that experts were no better able to discriminate between accurate and inaccurate eyewitnesses than novice laypeople. Overall, the evidence reported in this thesis raises serious questions regarding the utility of eyewitness expertise in the completion of eyewitness discrimination tasks.

Ecological patterns and processes influence ecosystem function at scales from nanometres to global scales depending on the organisms involved. Predicting the presence and abundance of species, at scales appropriate to the organisms and the underlying processes, is central to ecology. Models of species’ distributions can provide important insights into pattern-process-scale relationships including the relative importance of various environmental factors and their interactions that influence habitat selection at the individual and population levels. Mapping current and potential distributions informs the conservation of threatened species by providing spatial information on where a species is likely to occur and the identification of habitat elements and their spatial configurations which influence occupancy and persistence. The aim of this thesis was to incorporate the principles of pattern, process and scale in the identification of habitat associations for threatened species within a species’ distribution modelling framework. Accurate modelling of species’ distributions depends on robust sampling designs, reliable data input and appropriate statistical methodologies that align with the ecological model. I applied a range of innovative statistical methods to various sources of data to identify important habitat associations for a threatened species at different scales and tested the discriminative ability of the resultant models. I integrated the results from extensive field sampling and expert elicitation to build connectivity networks using graph theory algorithms to identify important conservation priorities for threatened species. The threatened brush-tailed rock-wallaby (Petrogale penicillata) was chosen as a suitable study species for quantifying habitat relationships at multiple spatial scales using species’ distribution modelling. The distribution of brush-tailed rock-wallabies is restricted to a set of suitable habitat characteristics related to rocky terrain supporting cliffs and boulder piles that occur infrequently across a landscape. At the site scale, they require suitable resting and refuge sites provided by rocky habitats, while at a landscape scale their dispersal is dependent on the connectivity of suitable habitats. The species is listed as threatened throughout eastern Australia and endangered in some states. Information about its current distribution and occupancy status is essential to support habitat conservation and threat management. The first chapter provides a broad view of the literature on modelling of species’ distributions and the thesis aims and structure. In chapter 2, I assess the ecological scale relevant to habitat modelling for the brush-tailed rock-wallaby. In chapter 3 I test whether habitat models from one region can be extrapolated to neighbouring regions. I use a novel approach and elicitation tool in chapter 4 to collect expert knowledge and assess it with a comprehensive set of field data in a Bayesian framework. In chapter 5 I assess whether landscape connectivity is a determinant of site occupancy by using graph theory algorithms to identify important habitat patches and dispersal pathways for rock-wallaby movement in fragmented landscapes. The final chapter synthesises the individual chapters’ findings within the context of species’ distribution modelling. Management implications are discussed for the conservation of the brush-tailed rock-wallaby and its habitat network. Wider implications are also suggested for other rock-wallaby species and species living in similar environments. The results of the thesis showed the habitat of the brush-tailed rock-wallaby was affected by site-scale and landscape-scale factors, supporting the need for a multi-scale approach when investigating species-environment associations. I found that models performed well within a region at both scales. Extrapolating the models to neighbouring regions resulted in good predictive performance at the site scale but substantially poorer predictive performance at the landscape scale. When there is insufficient field data to build robust data models, management bodies would benefit from incorporating expert knowledge. The study demonstrates the potential errors in using experts with knowledge gained from outside the area of interest. Finally, I highlight the importance of accounting for the landscape connectivity between patches from the perspective of the individual animal. Least cost analysis, using graph theory algorithms, provides a cost-efficient and effective framework for identifying landscape connectivity patterns and key paths and patches to help inform suitable land management strategies for conservation of threatened species. There is much pressure from conservation and management agencies to produce models of species’ distributions that could be potentially be used in other regions or with similar species. The thesis combines ecological theory with rigorous statistical methodology to test different modelling techniques for species distribution modelling. It demonstrates how a combination of expert knowledge, extensive field data and landscape connectivity measures successfully predicts ecological relationships at a number of scales. Species’ distribution models can benefit from applying a robust sampling design and suitable modelling techniques to various data sources to generate ecologically-based information to improve our understanding of species-habitat associations and provide a reliable component to incorporate into conservation planning. This thesis therefore provides important advances to spatial ecology and ecological modelling of species distributions and management of threatened species.

Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 1997

PhD / In design literature, how designers think and how they design have been identified as a reflection of how they interact with their sketches. Sketching in architectural design is still a central concern which shapes our understanding of the design process and the development of new tools. Sketching not only serves as a visual aid to store and retrieve conceptualisations, but as a medium to facilitate more ideas, and to revise and refine these ideas. This thesis examined how mental imagery and sketching is used in designing by conducting a protocol analysis study with six expert architects. Each architect was required to think aloud and design under two different conditions: one in which s/he had access to sketching and one in which s/he was blindfolded (s/he did not have access to sketching). At the end of the blindfold condition the architects were required to quickly sketch what they held in their minds. The architects were able to come up with satisfying design solutions and some reported that using their imagery could be another way of designing. The resulting sketches were assessed by judges and were found to have no significant differences in overall quality. Expert architects were able to construct and maintain the design of a building without having access to sketching. The analysis of the blindfold and sketching design protocols did not demonstrate any differences in the quantity of cognitive actions in perceptual, conceptual, functional and evaluative categories. Each architect’s cognitive structure and designing behaviour in the blindfold activity mimicked her/his cognitive structure and designing behaviour in the sketching activity. The analysis of links between the design ideas demonstrated that architects’ performance in idea development was higher under the blindfold condition, compared to their sketching condition. It was also found that architects’ blindfold design performance was improved when they were more familiar with the site layout. These results imply that expert designers may not need sketching as a medium for their reflective conversation with the situation. This study indicates that constructing internal representations can be a strong tool for designing. Future studies may show that designers may not need sketching for the generation of certain designs during the early phases of conceptual designing.

Introduction: Clinical reasoning plays a crucial role in the provision of quality medical care. The consequences of poor clinical reasoning affect not only the patient concerned but the cost and effectiveness of the entire health care system. The aims of this thesis are three-fold: to monitor the development of clinical reasoning in students enrolled in a graduate-entry, problem-based learning program in a large medical school; to compare the clinical reasoning of these students at graduation with that of graduates of a traditional undergraduate course; and to gain insight into the nature of the clinical reasoning process which may be applicable to the teaching and evaluation of medical curricula. Methods: Two methods have been used to assess clinical reasoning. The first method, the Clinical Reasoning Problems (CRPs), was developed to meet specific criteria established for this study. A CRP is a short clinical scenario that provides information about a patient’s presentation, history and physical examination. It is designed to assess the first three steps in the clinical reasoning process – identification and interpretation of pertinent data, and hypothesis generation. Subjects are required to nominate the two most likely diagnoses and to identify and interpret the clinical features that they considered in arriving at each diagnosis. Responses are marked using a scoring system based on, and derived from, those of a reference group of experienced general practitioners (GPs). The CRPs are presented as a set of ten problems, each taking about ten minutes to complete. The second method used was the Diagnostic Thinking Inventory (DTI). This is a questionnaire designed to probe clinical reasoning style by assessing two aspects of clinical reasoning: flexibility of thinking and the degree of structure of knowledge in memory. In this way, and because it is not tied to a specific clinical scenario, it provides an assessment of reasoning style that is independent of the content of a subject’s knowledge base. Subjects: Subjects were volunteer medical students from the last cohort of the undergraduate course and the first three cohorts of the new, graduate-entry MBBS Program at the University of Queensland. The reference group consisted of twenty-two GPs voluntarily recruited from all areas of Queensland. Results: Evaluation of the CRPs showed them to be a reliable and valid method for the assessment of clinical reasoning skill over a range of competence levels. The reliability of the DTI was similar to that found in other studies. Analysis of data collected using these methods showed that scores on both the CRPs and the DTI increased significantly in all student cohorts throughout the MBBS Program. Factors which influence performance on one or other of these indicators include stage of progression through the MBBS, gender, academic background and pre-admission interview score. Analysis of the causes of poor performance on the CRPs strongly suggests that medical students in the latter part of the MBBS have reached an intermediate stage in the development of reasoning expertise. This stage is characterised by the possession of a large but poorly structured body of knowledge. Subsequent examination of the CRP responses of the 21 reference GPs led to the classification of six of the GPs as diagnostic experts on the basis of their response patterns. Comparison of these GPs with the remaining 15 in the reference group has provided valuable information about the clinical reasoning characteristics of diagnostic experts and the relationship of the clinical reasoning process to diagnostic expertise. The principal finding was that integration of clinical data - the ability to connect relevant, accurately interpreted clinical information in such a way as to lead to the correct diagnosis - is the most critical step in the clinical reasoning process. This step is commonly disregarded or under-emphasised in the literature. Conclusion: This thesis indicates that both the style, and level of skill, of clinical reasoning develops significantly in MBBS students throughout their undergraduate medical education. In addition, it has demonstrated that the ability to integrate clinical information is a distinguishing characteristic of the clinical reasoning process of diagnostic experts. Although it is accepted that further development into true expertise can only occur as a result of extensive independent clinical experience, these findings are highly relevant to both the teaching and evaluation of medical curricula.

In order to satisfy increasing demand for better, smarter, more flexible land resource information an alternative form of representation is proposed. That representation is to be achieved through the coupling of Expert System methods and Geographic Information Systems. Instead of representing resource information using entities such as soil types, defined by rigid boundaries on a map, a more fluid presentation is proposed. Individual resource attributes will be represented by surfaces that describe their probability of occurrence, at a number of levels, across a landscape. Such flexible representations, which are designed to better capture the mental models behind their creation, are capable of being combined and synthesised to answer a wide range of resource queries.An investigation of methods of knowledge representation in a number of fields of research, led to the belief that a Bayesian Network provides a representational calculus that is appropriate to the "fuzzy" and imprecise conceptual models used in resource assessment. The fundamental mathematical principles of such networks have been tailored to provide a representation that is in tune with the intuitive processes of a surveyor's thinking.Software has been written to demonstrate the method and tested on a variety of data sets from Australia and overseas. These tests and demonstrations have used a range of densities of knowledge and range of acuity in evidential data. In general the results accord with the mental models used as drivers. A number of operational facets of the method have been highlighted during these demonstrations and attention has been given to a discussion of them.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1989. / Bibliography; leaves 71-73.

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-88).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2007. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.