No description available.

No description available.

This study examines the effects of maternal teaching style on the developing problem-solving abilities of children with Down Syndrome. Mothers were divided into two groups of three each, mothers with positive expectations versus mothers with negative expectations. Mothers and children were videotaped while the mother taught the child to construct a small pyramid from 21 interlocking blocks and again when the child attempted the task independently. The tapes were coded and analyzed to examine maternal instructional style and subsequent independent child performance. Mothers who were considered to have positive expectations towards their children used appropriate scaffolding behaviors significantly more often than the mothers who were considered to have negative expectations towards their children. The children of mothers who were effective scaffolders were significantly more adept and independent problem-solvers than the children whose mothers were not effective scaffolders. The more contingent the mother's instructions were, the more independent and successful the child appeared. Scaffolding is discussed in terms of its benefits for instructing children with Down Syndrome.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of problem-based learning (PBL) as an alternative teaching method in biology. Eighty-one, ninth grade biology students worked collaboratively in groups, of 2 or 3, to generate a fictitious patient case, which was then exchanged, for other students to solve. This process was repeated on two occasions. Data from pre/post questionnaires and groups' verbal and written protocols were analyzed. Results showed that certain cognitive processes strengthened over time. Significant improvements were also noted in the quality and content of students' written scenarios and solutions, and in students' interest in working collaboratively. Overall, this study confirms that PBL has numerous benefits and holds great potential as an instructional method in biology.

Research in decision making has identified the importance of prior knowledge and heuristics on decision making behaviour. These develop with experience in a fashion similar to how domain experts develop specialized knowledge structures and heuristic reasoning patterns. This research is extended to the domain of health and lay decision making in a series of studies characterizing conceptualizations of health and illness, information-seeking strategies, and the impact of medical information on lay decision making. Lay subjects included those with diabetes, heart disease, and no identified ongoing medical diagnosis. / Semi-structured interviews and think aloud methodology were employed. Interviews focused on understanding of health and illness, prior knowledge and beliefs, and decision making. In Study One, subjects were presented with health-related problem scenarios and instructed to think aloud as they reasoned through them to make decisions. In Study Two, subjects (lay and medical) were presented with a telecommunications device and scenarios of data to enter into the system. All data were audiorecorded, transcribed, and analyzed for factors and strategies related to information-seeking and decision making behaviours. / Lay understanding of health and illness was characterized as feeling well and functioning in everyday life. The knowledge used in making decisions was based on experience and socio-cultural tradition. Knowledge about disease was found to be decoupled from decisions to act related to illness. Additional information was sought using four criteria grounded in common experience: accessibility, familiarity, complexity, and credibility. These characteristics influenced interactions between lay people and domain experts, such as health care providers, and with technology designed by experts for lay users. / Both technical and lay people make decisions with incomplete information and uncertain outcomes. For lay people making decisions about health-related issues, this incomplete knowledge is filled in based on everyday life rather than medical and scientific facts.

This thesis has investigated the positive and negative analogical transfer in which we proposed three hypotheses that shed more light on the process of human behaviour in problem solving. We have found that people exhibited both positive and negative analogical transfer in the conducted study. The positive and negative transfer depends on two factor process; search space and type of transformation. This predication was tested in an experiment with four conditions by using matchsticks arithmetic problems. Results have indicated the activation of positive transfer in the problems that share the same search space and type of transformation. On the other hand, negative transfer was activated when the problem search space and type of transformation were different. Results have also indicated, in several comparisons that were made, a simultaneous activation of both positive and negative transfer.

The unique language of mathematics incorporates words, numbers, symbols and diagrams. These elements and their associated mathematical concepts introduce reading and comprehension requirements that are not experienced in other disciplines. It is the responsibility of teachers to ensure that students are educated about, and encouraged to apply mathematical language in a variety of contexts. This is essential to the development of mathematical problem solving, where word problems often feature in classroom instruction and assessment, and where mathematical language is expected within student responses. Mathematics teachers need to be mindful that the validity of test items used to assess student mathematical problem solving ability are not influenced by other variables such as vocabulary comprehension difficulty. This study discusses the vocabulary which Year 9 students identify as difficult when undertaking word problem tasks in pen and paper test situations. To challenge generalised assumptions that teachers may make, this study focused on development of an instrument to monitor and evaluate the vocabulary comprehension of individual students within the classroom, and with respect to their particular school context. Analyses of findings support the requirement of reading proficiency in mathematics, and in particular, of vocabulary comprehension to student performance on mathematical problem solving assessment comprised of word problems.

The Piagetian invisible displacement task has been used extensively in the field of comparative cognition to measure representational capacity. In the task a desirable object is hidden beneath one of several hiding boxes via a displacement device, such as a small opaque container. Success on the task is deemed to require that the invisible trajectory of the object be mentally represented and its current location inferred. That is, the task is supposed to measure the ability to ”think” of something that is occurring outside of direct perception. However, simple associative strategies may also lead to success in the absence of stringent control conditions. Among mammals, only great apes and domestic dogs have consistently performed above chance on the invisible displacement task. There is much converging evidence from other tasks to suggest that great apes have a capacity for representational thought. However, dogs have shown few signs of possessing the representational abilities generally thought necessary to pass the task. Thus, in Chapter 2, four experiments investigated how dogs (n = 35) find an object that has been invisibly displaced behind one of three opaque boxes under four control conditions devised to separate associative search strategies from performance based on mental representation. Strategies involving experimenter cue-use, search at the last or first box visited by the displacement device, and search at boxes adjacent to the displacement device were systematically controlled for. Dogs passed invisible displacements, but only if the device used to displace the object was adjacent to the target box following displacements. These results suggest that the search behaviour of dogs was guided by simple associative rules rather than mental representation of the past trajectory of the object. In contrast, Experiment 5 found that, on the same task, 18- and 24-month-old children (n = 21) showed no disparity between trials in which the displacement device was adjacent or non-adjacent to the target box. In Chapter 3, two chimpanzees were tested on single invisible displacements under the same four control conditions that were administered to dogs. In contrast to dogs, chimpanzees showed no indications of utilizing these simple strategies, suggesting that their capacity to mentally represent single invisible displacements is comparable to that of 18- to 24-month-old children. Chapter 4 followed up reports of children and apes' difficulty with double invisible displacements in which an object is hidden at two non-adjacent boxes in a linear array. Experiment 1 eliminated the possibility that chimpanzees' previous poor performance was due to the hiding direction of the displacement device. Subjects failed double non-adjacent displacements, showing a tendency to select adjacent boxes. In Experiments 2 and 3, chimpanzees and 24-month-old children were tested on a new adaptation of the task involving four hiding boxes presented in a diamondshaped array on a vertical plane. Both species performed above chance on double invisible displacements using this format, suggesting that previous poor performance was due to a response bias or inhibition problem rather than a fundamental limitation in representational capacity. In Chapter 5, I conducted a pilot study examining the performance of siamangs and a spider monkey on single and double invisible displacements. Performance was mixed but provides some promising evidence that invisible displacements are within the capacity of siamangs. In contrast to siamangs and chimpanzees, but like dogs, the spider monkey showed a significant tendency to search at a box adjacent to the displacement device on single invisible displacements. However, the spider monkey performed above chance on an impromptu test of single invisible displacements presented in the vertical format. Further study is needed to eliminate alternative associative strategies in these two species. In Chapter 6, I discuss the findings of the studies with dogs, chimpanzees, 2- year-old children, siamangs, and a spider monkey on invisible displacement understanding. The results highlight the importance of associative strategies and inhibition problems. The thesis presents strong evidence for stage 6 invisible displacement understanding, and thus representational thought, in chimpanzees and 2- year-old children, but suggests that dogs are capable of only stage 5 object permanence understanding.

The Piagetian invisible displacement task has been used extensively in the field of comparative cognition to measure representational capacity. In the task a desirable object is hidden beneath one of several hiding boxes via a displacement device, such as a small opaque container. Success on the task is deemed to require that the invisible trajectory of the object be mentally represented and its current location inferred. That is, the task is supposed to measure the ability to ”think” of something that is occurring outside of direct perception. However, simple associative strategies may also lead to success in the absence of stringent control conditions. Among mammals, only great apes and domestic dogs have consistently performed above chance on the invisible displacement task. There is much converging evidence from other tasks to suggest that great apes have a capacity for representational thought. However, dogs have shown few signs of possessing the representational abilities generally thought necessary to pass the task. Thus, in Chapter 2, four experiments investigated how dogs (n = 35) find an object that has been invisibly displaced behind one of three opaque boxes under four control conditions devised to separate associative search strategies from performance based on mental representation. Strategies involving experimenter cue-use, search at the last or first box visited by the displacement device, and search at boxes adjacent to the displacement device were systematically controlled for. Dogs passed invisible displacements, but only if the device used to displace the object was adjacent to the target box following displacements. These results suggest that the search behaviour of dogs was guided by simple associative rules rather than mental representation of the past trajectory of the object. In contrast, Experiment 5 found that, on the same task, 18- and 24-month-old children (n = 21) showed no disparity between trials in which the displacement device was adjacent or non-adjacent to the target box. In Chapter 3, two chimpanzees were tested on single invisible displacements under the same four control conditions that were administered to dogs. In contrast to dogs, chimpanzees showed no indications of utilizing these simple strategies, suggesting that their capacity to mentally represent single invisible displacements is comparable to that of 18- to 24-month-old children. Chapter 4 followed up reports of children and apes' difficulty with double invisible displacements in which an object is hidden at two non-adjacent boxes in a linear array. Experiment 1 eliminated the possibility that chimpanzees' previous poor performance was due to the hiding direction of the displacement device. Subjects failed double non-adjacent displacements, showing a tendency to select adjacent boxes. In Experiments 2 and 3, chimpanzees and 24-month-old children were tested on a new adaptation of the task involving four hiding boxes presented in a diamondshaped array on a vertical plane. Both species performed above chance on double invisible displacements using this format, suggesting that previous poor performance was due to a response bias or inhibition problem rather than a fundamental limitation in representational capacity. In Chapter 5, I conducted a pilot study examining the performance of siamangs and a spider monkey on single and double invisible displacements. Performance was mixed but provides some promising evidence that invisible displacements are within the capacity of siamangs. In contrast to siamangs and chimpanzees, but like dogs, the spider monkey showed a significant tendency to search at a box adjacent to the displacement device on single invisible displacements. However, the spider monkey performed above chance on an impromptu test of single invisible displacements presented in the vertical format. Further study is needed to eliminate alternative associative strategies in these two species. In Chapter 6, I discuss the findings of the studies with dogs, chimpanzees, 2- year-old children, siamangs, and a spider monkey on invisible displacement understanding. The results highlight the importance of associative strategies and inhibition problems. The thesis presents strong evidence for stage 6 invisible displacement understanding, and thus representational thought, in chimpanzees and 2- year-old children, but suggests that dogs are capable of only stage 5 object permanence understanding.

In 1996 the Police Service of Western Australia embarked on a major and ongoing period of change regarding all aspects of local policing. Part of this program involved the adoption of a number of practices that included an undertaking to pay increased attention to issues such as a customer focus, problem solving, a commitment to developing and motivating personnel, a localised delivery of policing services and improved management practices. This research was conducted for the purpose of uncovering the factors that create the unique environment of the Police Service of Western Australia and exploring how these might impact upon the manner in which officers conduct their daily duties. More specifically the purpose was to determine if there existed any aspects of organizational culture or structure that have an influence on the ability and/or willingness of officers to carry out their duties according to the processes and procedures of either the problem solving or the problem-oriented policing philosophy. The research methodology was guided by the grounded theory approach. Twenty-eight interviews were conducted with constables, sergeants, inspectors and superintendents as it was considered that these ranks best represented the views of the members of the organization in terms of numbers and those most affected by day-to-day events. The data analysis revealed the existence of 13 factors that all exhibit negative aspects and collectively create a Basic Social Problem that has been termed “Feeling Vulnerable”. Although all of these factors have been well known for many years, the current research integrates these in a new way in order to produce a model of the organization that demonstrates how they combine to create an environment that is counter-productive to the implementation of a problem-solving or problem-oriented approach to policing by members of The Police Service of Western Australia at many levels. The Basic Social Process disclosed by the current research has been termed “Controlling By Avoidance”. It is based on four tactics used by officers to control their working environment. The employment of one or more of these tactics by officers is designed to give the impression of engaging with issues while simultaneously exerting control over events in order to prevent the occurrence of outcomes that experience tells them are likely to have undesirable personal consequences. The intention is to create an environment where they hope to be safe from the consequences of problems that will inevitably occur at some time. As well as providing an explanation for the conduct of officers under the problem solving model the analysis also provides an insight into why the organization has apparently avoided coming to grips with the implementation of the full Goldstein model of problem-oriented policing. This appears to be due to concerns on the part of senior management about the likelihood of a loss of control over subordinate ranks and the personal problems that this would generate for them. Recommendations are made about the need to adopt the Goldstein model and the steps required to successfully implement this approach are listed.