Thesis (B.A. (Hons.))-- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1976.

Dissertation (DPhil)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

No description available.

No description available.

The study was intended to determine interobserver agreement for studying social interaction among young children in a natural setting. Social interaction was categorized into parallel, associative, and cooperative play. The observational setting included a sandbox with miniature toys. The sample of pre and primary school-level children was drawn from two private schools located in a medium-sized city. Forty children, ranging in age from four to seven years were selected on a voluntary basis. Three students from The University of Arizona along with the investigator served as observers. The student observers received training from the investigator prior to the commencement of the study. The observed data was scored to include both frequency and time spent on each category. Two procedures for computing interobserver agreement were utilized. These procedures yielded results indicating interobserver agreement ranging from 68% to 90% agreement. These results indicated adequate reliability of the observational procedures used in the study. In addition to reliability of observational procedures the findings also indicated that the observed frequency of parallel play was highest for subjects of all ages, whereas the observed frequency of cooperative play was found to be the lowest for all subjects. Additionally findings indicated that there were no significant differences in the difficulty of observing any category of social interaction of children of varying ages. Educational and social implications of the findings were discussed.

This thesis addresses itself to the problem of observing, interpreting and explaining ongoing behaviour in the natural environment. It maintains that the ,intention of the actor is the primary characteristic of behaviour and is concerned with how observers attribute intentions to the actions of others. Naive observers were asked to segment the behaviour of infants exhibited to them on a video tape and having done so to describe that behaviour in their own terms. The behaviour sequences selected for observation were relatively "simple",i.e. the behaviour of infants and young children, in order to gain some possible guidelines for a study of more "complex" adult behaviour. The sequences were interpreted on two levels, at the perceptual level and at the level of meaning. It was assumed that by instructing subjects to divide the observed behaviour into perceived segments and subsequently to describe those segments, that some guidelines as to how to proceed with a study of action would emerge. The findings suggest that "naive observers do identify meaningful segments in the ongoing stream of behaviour but that inter-observer agreement about the precise timing of the changes was not high, a finding which differs from studies on adult behaviour. Attributed meanings were also individual, suggesting that the actions observed are not tied specifically to the physical movements of the child but are subject to a range of meaning depending on the observer's individual interpretation. General trends in meaning were, however, observed for the children of different ages. These trends were identified by categorizing the attributions into "functional" categories, developed from a study of early utterances and are assumed to be continuous with later "uses" that language serves. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1982.

No description available.

Anthropological classics such as E. H. Man's On the Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands (1883) and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown's The Andaman Islanders (1922) are generally regarded as products of an emergent nineteenth century social science. These anthropological classics were accepted by contemporaries as authoritative statements in their authors' fields of competence, and the ethnographic 'pictures' of the aborigines they presented were accepted as accurate descriptions of indigenous life. The following thesis argues for an alternative approach to the history of the production of anthropological knowledge. It begins by exploring the gradual codification of observational practices in the nineteenth century British anthropology. The codification of ethnographic observation is examined in the case of anthropological manuals published between 1840 and 1892, and their methodological impact on the possibilities of data collection are discussed. Ethnographic observation is then approached from the point of view of media use, and the relationship between drawing and photography is discussed in relation to nineteenth century physical and cultural anthropology. The codification of ethnographic observation and the anthropological use of various representational media are the problematic for an intensive exploration of the production of anthropological knowledge in the Andaman Islands. The approach adopted focuses on unacknowledged strategies and marginalized knowledge which were nevertheless directly implicated in the production of ethnographic texts. Following this approach, the discipline of Anthropology comes to seem less an isolated intellectual activity, and more a residue of broad social, cultural, and political processes. Drawing on this perspective, the works of Man and Radcliffe-Brown on the Andaman Islanders are treated as the culmination of a history of representation that is built on and incorporates administrative strategies, representational media and s

Thesis (M.S.)--Missouri University of Science and Technology, 2008. / Vita. The entire thesis text is included in file. Title from title screen of thesis/dissertation PDF file (viewed June 18, 2009) Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1971. / Vita. Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.