High labour turnover and associated costs have been subjects of considerable debate in the hospitality industry. Central to this ongoing discussion is understanding why hospitality management graduates leave the industry. Research studies suggest some answers, such as the nature of work conditions in the industry or a lack of career planning by hospitality students. This doctoral thesis is concerned with the process of leaving the hospitality industry. It explores the interplay between self-efficacy and career inheritance, and its influence on career commitment by gaining insights into how hospitality management graduates arrived at the decision to leave the hospitality industry. In the context of the changing nature of careers, from traditional linear to flexible protean, this interdisciplinary research provides insights into the process that leads to the individual leaving the hospitality industry. Career commitment, conceptualised as a psychological contract between the individual and a chosen career, informs this process of leaving, which is further explored using the interplay between the concepts of self-efficacy and career inheritance. Drawing on life history methodology, which allows for an exploration of unique life experiences and an in-depth understanding of academic and career decisions, semi-structured interviews were conducted with hospitality management graduates no longer employed in the hospitality industry. Underpinning and informing data collection and analysis was critical realism, with its unique perspective on epistemology as constructed, and ontology as realist yet stratified. The interview data were analysed thematically, which involved coding participants’ responses into pre-assigned and emergent themes. Empirical evidence reveals that the decision to leave the hospitality industry is a result of a cumulative power of events. The concept of the leaving process is the original theoretical contribution of this thesis, which explains the interaction between the three concepts indicated above. It demonstrates that exiting the industry is a developmental journey punctuated by significant career turning points. The speed of decline in commitment, which is representative of the duration of leaving, is dependent on the interaction between career inheritance and self-efficacy. Alongside an integrative definition of career, characteristics of a career manager and the principles of the legacy of hospitality as further research findings, this doctoral thesis concludes by proposing a collaborative approach to career management. Limitations of this study are evaluated and avenues to further research are also proposed.

Perceptual learning occurs because observers become more sensitive to informative aspects of the stimuli. Learning the informative aspects of one stimulus set does not transfer to another stimulus set of the same class. In this dissertation, the argument will be made that if observers learn how to discover informative aspects, learning will be more generalizable. However, discovery requires that the informative aspects are not easily apparent. To this end, stimulus orientation structure can be manipulated to contain informative structure in one orientation band, and non-informative structure in the other orientation band. Such a manipulation was inspired by research on face perception: Faces are best identified when decisions are based more on the horizontal relative to the vertical facial structure. Hence, the first three chapters focus on understanding the horizontal bias during face identification, and the final two chapters introduce a novel stimulus set for which horizontal bias may be learned. Chapter 2 identifies a neural marker of horizontal bias that is correlated with face identification accuracy, suggesting that we can predict how well observers identify faces based on their neural sensitivity to horizontal relative to vertical structure. Chapter 3 shows that when face identification accuracy declines due to healthy ageing, so too do behavioural and neural horizontal bias, but Chapter 4 shows that perceptual learning can increase horizontal bias in healthy older adults. Chapter 5 uses texture stimuli and shows that observers can learn to discover informative horizontal structure embedded in uninformative vertical structure. Chapter 6 extends these findings to show that adequate practice results in learning that generalizes to novel textures for which the orientation-selective processing is relevant. The results presented inform our understanding of the neural representations associated with orientation-selective processing, and suggest that observers can learn to discover informative structure conveyed by a particular orientation band. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

La capacité humaine de reconnaitre et d’identifier de nombreux individus uniquement grâce à leur voix est unique et peut s’avérer cruciale pour certaines enquêtes. La méconnaissance de cette capacité jette cependant de l’ombre sur les applications dites « légales » de la phonétique. Le travail de thèse présenté ici a comme objectif principal de mieux définir les différents processus liés au traitement des voix dans le cerveau et les paramètres affectant ce traitement. Dans une première expérience, les potentiels évoqués (PÉs) ont été utilisés pour démontrer que les voix intimement familières sont traitées différemment des voix inconnues, même si ces dernières sont fréquemment répétées. Cette expérience a également permis de mieux définir les notions de reconnaissance et d’identification de la voix et les processus qui leur sont associés (respectivement les composantes P2 et LPC). Aussi, une distinction importante entre la reconnaissance de voix intimement familières (P2) et inconnues, mais répétées (N250) a été observée. En plus d’apporter des clarifications terminologiques plus-que-nécessaires, cette première étude est la première à distinguer clairement la reconnaissance et l’identification de locuteurs en termes de PÉs. Cette contribution est majeure, tout particulièrement en ce qui a trait aux applications légales qu’elle recèle. Une seconde expérience s’est concentrée sur l’effet des modalités d’apprentissage sur l’identification de voix apprises. Plus spécifiquement, les PÉs ont été analysés suite à la présentation de voix apprises à l’aide des modalités auditive, audiovisuelle et audiovisuelle interactive. Si les mêmes composantes (P2 et LPC) ont été observées pour les trois conditions d’apprentissage, l’étendue de ces réponses variait. L’analyse des composantes impliquées a révélé un « effet d’ombrage du visage » (face overshadowing effect, FOE) tel qu’illustré par une réponse atténuée suite à la présentation de voix apprise à l’aide d’information audiovisuelle par rapport celles apprises avec dans la condition audio seulement. La simulation d’interaction à l’apprentissage à quant à elle provoqué une réponse plus importante sur la LPC en comparaison avec la condition audiovisuelle passive. De manière générale, les données rapportées dans les expériences 1 et 2 sont congruentes et indiquent que la P2 et la LPC sont des marqueurs fiables des processus de reconnaissance et d’identification de locuteurs. Les implications fondamentales et en phonétique légale seront discutées. / The human ability to recognize and identify speakers by their voices is unique and can be critical in criminal investigations. However, the lack of knowledge on the working of this capacity overshadows its application in the field of “forensic phonetics”. The main objective of this thesis is to characterize the processing of voices in the human brain and the parameters that influence it. In a first experiment, event related potentials (ERPs) were used to establish that intimately familiar voices are processed differently from unknown voices, even when the latter are repeated. This experiment also served to establish a clear distinction between neural components of speaker recognition and identification supported by corresponding ERP components (respectively the P2 and the LPC). An essential contrast between the processes underlying the recognition of intimately familiar voices (P2) and that of unknown but previously heard voices (N250) was also observed. In addition to clarifying the terminology of voice processing, the first study in this thesis is the first to unambiguously distinguish between speaker recognition and identification in terms of ERPs. This contribution is major, especially when it comes to applications of voice processing in forensic phonetics. A second experiment focused more specifically on the effects of learning modalities on later speaker identification. ERPs to trained voices were analysed along with behavioral responses of speaker identification following a learning phase where participants were trained on voices in three modalities : audio only, audiovisual and audiovisual interactive. Although the ERP responses for the trained voices showed effects on the same components (P2 and LPC) across the three training conditions, the range of these responses varied. The analysis of these components first revealed a face overshadowing effect (FOE) resulting in an impaired encoding of voice information. This well documented effect resulted in a smaller LPC for the audiovisual condition compared to the audio only condition. However, effects of the audiovisual interactive condition appeared to minimize this FOE when compared to the passive audiovisual condition. Overall, the data presented in both experiments is generally congruent and indicate that the P2 and the LPC are reliable electrophysiological markers of speaker recognition and identification. The implications of these findings for current voice processing models and for the field of forensic phonetics are discussed.