Facilitative interactions can have a powerful influence on the structure of plant communities and must be accounted for in efforts to restore disturbed and invaded habitats, such as the now rare coastal sage scrub (CSS) of California. In this study, I tested for evidence of facilitative effects by the native shrubs Eriogonum fasciculatum var. foliolosum and Artemisia californica on germination and survival of the CSS native annual forb Phacelia distans. P. distans seeds were planted near patches of native shrubs, both under the shrub canopy where any facilitative effects should be strongest, and 0.5 m away in the more exposed grassland. To determine whether the shrub-forb relationship was affected by the presence of invasive annuals, E. fasciculatum sites were assigned either invasive annual removal or non-removal control treatment; no removal treatments were carried out for A. californica. P. distans had significantly higher germination but lower survivorship under the canopy of E. fasciculatum. The results showed no overall effect of invasive removal, but there was a weak interaction effect with location; in shrub-canopy plots, invasive species further lowered survivorship. A. californica showed neither facilitative nor negative effects of this shrub species on either germination or survivorship of P. distans, in contrast with the results for E. fasciculatum. Although E. fasciculatum appears to facilitate the germination of native forbs under its canopy, it also seems to have a negative effect on survival. The weak interaction between location and removal to further decrease survival under the canopy when invasives are present, and the abundance of grasses growing under the canopy, suggest that native shrubs may facilitate the growth of invasive annuals as well as the germination of natives. Consequently, controlling invasive grass abundance may be necessary to capture the benefits of shrub facilitation for the restoration of native CSS herbs.

In the 40th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes toward the Public Schools, Americans rated discipline as the second largest problem facing public education (Bushaw & Gallup, 2008). This poses a substantial problem for administrators as they strive to employ school reform policies, address public demands and meet the needs of contemporary students. A review of literature revealed a large body of research which examines disciplinary practice; however, it also showcased a literary gap regarding administrative disciplinary philosophies. This multiple case study highlights disciplinary philosophies possessed by five secondary school administrators. Analysis included utilizing the Administrator Discipline Facilitation Continuum; an adapted discipline continuum developed to analyze administrator disciplinary philosophies. The versatility of the continuum is discussed, as well as implications for its use and future development.

Psychometrists have to be capable of stimulating growth and of assisting employees during psychometric assessments, seeing that the content of the instruments used might bring about psychological trauma. Graduate psychometrists often lack the interpersonal skills and knowledge, as well as the intrapersonal awareness, to sufficiently fulfil a helping role in the workplace. The objectives of this research were to conceptualise helping and the competencies associated with helping from the literature, to investigate what the content and methodology of a helping skills training programme should include, and to evaluate the effects of a helping skills training programme for psychometrists. The participants were Industrial Psychology Honours students from the School of Human Resource Sciences at the North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus. The entire population comprising 22 (N = 22) students were utilised. The stratified random sampling technique was used to divide the participants into the experimental and comparison groups. Three measuring instruments (Carkhuff scales, Personal Growth Initiative Scale and the Scales of Psychological Well-being) were administered before and after the training programme. The training programme in helping skills was administered to the experimental group first, where after their interpersonal skills and intrapersonal awareness were assessed during the post-tests. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach alpha coefficients, correlations and an Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used to analyse the data. The ANCOVA analysis confirmed the statistical and practical significance of three core dimensions of helping, namely empathy, respect and genuineness among the members of the experimental group, as well as the improvement in the helping skills of Responding to content and Personalising meaning. However, the dimension of concreteness did not show significant improvement. There was also no statistical or practical significant differences between the experimental and comparison group for personal growth or psychological well-being. However, one dimension of psychological well-being, namely purpose in life, improved in the experimental group. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Psychometrists have to be capable of stimulating growth and of assisting employees during psychometric assessments, seeing that the content of the instruments used might bring about psychological trauma. Graduate psychometrists often lack the interpersonal skills and knowledge, as well as the intrapersonal awareness, to sufficiently fulfil a helping role in the workplace. The objectives of this research were to conceptualise helping and the competencies associated with helping from the literature, to investigate what the content and methodology of a helping skills training programme should include, and to evaluate the effects of a helping skills training programme for psychometrists. The participants were Industrial Psychology Honours students from the School of Human Resource Sciences at the North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus. The entire population comprising 22 (N = 22) students were utilised. The stratified random sampling technique was used to divide the participants into the experimental and comparison groups. Three measuring instruments (Carkhuff scales, Personal Growth Initiative Scale and the Scales of Psychological Well-being) were administered before and after the training programme. The training programme in helping skills was administered to the experimental group first, where after their interpersonal skills and intrapersonal awareness were assessed during the post-tests. Descriptive statistics, Cronbach alpha coefficients, correlations and an Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were used to analyse the data. The ANCOVA analysis confirmed the statistical and practical significance of three core dimensions of helping, namely empathy, respect and genuineness among the members of the experimental group, as well as the improvement in the helping skills of Responding to content and Personalising meaning. However, the dimension of concreteness did not show significant improvement. There was also no statistical or practical significant differences between the experimental and comparison group for personal growth or psychological well-being. However, one dimension of psychological well-being, namely purpose in life, improved in the experimental group. / Thesis (M.Com. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011.

Researchers who study pointing facilitation have identified the ability to identify--during motion--the likely target of a user's pointing gesture, as a necessary precursor to pointing facilitation in modern computer interfaces. To address this need, we develop and analyze how an understanding of the underlying characteristics of motion can enhance our ability to predict the target or endpoint of a goal-directed movement in graphical user interfaces. Using established laws of motion and an analysis of users' kinematic profiles, we demonstrate that the initial 90% of motion is primarly balistic and submovements are limited to the last 10% of gesture movement. Through experimentation, we demonstrate that target constraint and the intended use of a target has either a minimal effect on the motion profile or affects the last 10% of motion. Therefore, we demonstrate that any technique that models the intial 90% of gesture motion will not be affected by target constraint or intended use. Given, these results, we develop a technique to model the initial ballistic motion to predict user endpoint by adopting principles from the minimum jerk principle. Based on this principle, we derive an equation to model the initial ballistic phase of movement in order to predict movement distance and direction. We demonstrate through experimentation that we can successfully model pointing motion to identify a region of likely targets on the computer display. Next, we characterize the effects of target size and target distance on prediction accuracy. We demonstrate that there exists a linear relationship between prediction accuracy and target distance and that this relationship can be leveraged to create a probabilistic model for each target on the computer display. We then demonstrate how these probabilities could be used to enable pointing facilitation in modern computer interfaces. Finally, we demonstrate that the results from our evaluation of our technique are supported by the current motor control literature. In addition, we show that our technique provides optimal accuracy for any optimal accuracy when prediction of motion endpoint is performed using only the ballistic components of motion and before 90% of motion distance.

Previous research has indicated that exercising with other people improves interest and engagement in physical activity (e.g., Christensen, Schmidt, Budtz-Jorgensen, & Avlund, 2006; Estabrooks & Carron, 1999). However, the degree of socializing with other people engaged in by exercisers has not been manipulated in previous studies. In the present study, the amount of socializing during exercise was manipulated in order to evaluate the effect of social connection on motivation to exercise. Two perspectives on the role of socializing in exercising were considered and discussed – Social Facilitation (Zajonc, 1965) and Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000). In order to test the importance of social contact during exercise, previously inactive women between the ages of 18-30 were randomly assigned to exercise for 12 sessions in one of three conditions. In the “social partner condition”, two participants exercised together and also discussed personal topics. In the “non-social partner condition”, two participants exercised together, but did not discuss personal topics. Lastly, in the “exercise alone condition”, participants exercised alone. In general, it was hypothesized that the social partner condition would lead to the greatest improvements in satisfaction of the psychological need for relatedness, subjective vitality, motivation to exercise, amount of physical activity, fitness level, affect, interest, and effort in exercise. Non-social partners were expected to experience some benefits from exercising with a partner, but not to the same extent as those in the social partner condition. Participants who exercised alone were expected to experience the fewest improvements. The partner relationships were also examined more closely, with the expectation that pairings that were more interpersonally complementary (that is, more similar on affiliation, and reciprocal on dominance) would positively affect outcomes. Further, partners were expected to become more similar in their exercise behaviour and motivation due to their repeated interactions over the course of the study. A one-month follow-up session assessed whether motivation and exercise behaviour observed at the end of the study changed or were sustained over time. The hypotheses were partially supported. Overall, exercise contributed to improved vitality, fitness, and affect, with few differences amongst the conditions. Participants in both partner conditions reported greater relatedness, or social connection, after a month of exercising together, than the exercise alone condition participants. Some interesting motivational patterns emerged at the end of the study and at a one-month follow-up, with some indication that the social partner condition most greatly benefited motivation. Interpersonal complementarity positively impacted competence, relatedness, and fitness, but surprisingly had a negative impact on vitality. Partners did not become more similar to one another over the course of the study, suggesting a lack of mutual influence. The findings are discussed within the context of Self-Determination Theory and Social Facilitation. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature that indicates that the social aspects of physical activity are essential for physical and mental wellbeing. Further research is required to evaluate how social factors can be utilized to promote greater enjoyment of and adherence to physical activity.

Most animals grow substantially during their lifetime and change in competitive ability, predatory capacity and their susceptibility to predation as they grow. This thesis addresses the implications of this on regulation and dynamics within populations as well as between population interactions. In size-structured populations either reproduction or maturation may be more limiting. If juveniles are competitively superior, the competitive bottleneck will be in the adults and reproduction will be limiting. Mortality will in this case result in overcompensation in juvenile biomass through increased reproduction. Compensation in biomass was demonstrated in Daphnia pulex populations subjected to size-independent mortality, where juvenile biomass did not decrease when a substantial harvest was imposed due to increase per capita fecundity. This supported that juveniles were superior competitors and that population cycles seen in Daphnia are juvenile-driven. Compensatory responses in biomass may lead to that predators facilitate eachothers existence by feeding on a common prey, a phenomenon coined emergent facilitation. In an experimental test of the mechanism behind emergent facilitation it was demonstrated that the invertebrate predator Bythotrephes longimanus was favoured by thinning of its prey Holopedium gibberum. The thinning mimicked fish predation and targeted large individuals while Bythotrephes preferrs small prey. Size dependent predation also occurs within populations, i.e. cannibalism, were large individuals feed on smaller conspecifics. Two populations of the common guppy (Poecilia reticulata) originating from different environments were demonstrated to differ in cannibalistic degree. Cannibalism was also affected by the presence of refuges and females and juveniles from one population were better adapted to structural complexity than the other. The effects of these differences in cannibalism on population regulation and dynamics were studied in long term population experiments. Both populations were regulated by cannibalism in the absence of refuges, and displayed cannibal-driven cycles with suppression of recruitment and high population variability. The presence of refuges decreased density dependence and population variability and harvesting of large females in the absence of refuges led to population extinctions in the more cannibalistic population. The less cannibalistic population had higher population biomass and stronger density-dependence in the presence of refuges. When refuges were present, cohort competition increased and cycles with short periodicity were seen. Large individuals were not only cannibals, but could successfully prey on other species. Small and large guppies were allowed to invade resident populations of Heterandria formosa. Small invaders failed while large invaders succeeded as predation from large invaders broke up the competitive bottleneck that the resident population imposed on juveniles of the invader.

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, 2000. / A thesis submitted in completion of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Social Ecology, University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, November, 2000. Bibliography : leaves 351-358.

Thesis (D.B.A.)--University of Western Australia, 2006.

Thesis (doctoral)--Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references.