Thesis (D.P.E.)--Indiana University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-92).

Thesis (D. Ed. Min.)--Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-132).

Many of the tool-using activities of both chimpanzees and children involve a complex mixture of interconnected causal relationships between a tool and a reward, and much of this tool-use is thought to be acquired, at least in part, by social learning. However, despite the considerable research effort focused on both causal understanding and social learning, few studies have directly addressed the potential interaction between these areas. It seems likely that the way in which an individual learns to use a tool through observation will be significantly influenced by its understanding of the causal relationships that it observes. This thesis presents a series of nine experiments with 3- to 7-year-old chimpanzees and 3- 6-year-old children, designed to investigate whether causal information is involved in determining which social learning strategy they employ. The first set of experiments demonstrated that chimpanzees could be influence to switch between imitation and emulation to solve the same task, by altering the availability of causal information. When causal information was available, by presenting a tool-use task in a transparent condition, chimpanzees were found to reproduce only the results of a model's behaviour, consistent with emulation. However, when the availability of causal information was restricted, by presenting the same task in an opaque condition, the chimpanzees included a greater proportion of the model's behaviour, consistent with imitation. The second set of experiments revealed that chimpanzees could learn specific causal information by observation, such as the significance of tool-reward contact. However, they may be overwhelmed by observing multiple causal relationships, or those involving unobservable causal principles, such as gravity or force. The common view that the widespread evidence for emulation in chimpanzee social learning studies indicates a deficit of imitative capacity may therefore be misleading. The results of this thesis suggest more generally that when causal information is available, chimpanzees tend to use emulation. They are also able to imitate, but do so mainly in situations where emulation is not possible. Thus, the availability of causal information plays an important role in chimpanzee social learning, by determining which learning strategy is employed, and ultimately the degree of behavioural fidelity that is achieved, hi contrast, the studies with children revealed that they imitate the actions that they observe without appearing to consider the causal efficiency of their behaviour. This may be due to a greater focus on the actions of a demonstrator rather than the results or goals of their behaviour, and a greater tendency to interpret those actions as intentional.

Culture is an important means by which both human and non-human animals transmit useful behaviours between individuals and generations. Amongst animals, chimpanzees live particularly varied cultural lives. However, the processes and factors that influence whether chimpanzees will be motivated to copy an observed behaviour are poorly understood. In this thesis, I explore various factors and their influence on social learning decisions in chimpanzees. In turn, the chapters examine the influence of (i) rank-bias towards copying dominant individuals, (ii) majority and contextual influences and finally (iii) individual differences in proclivity for social learning. In my first experiment, I found evidence that chimpanzees are highly motivated to copy the behaviour of subordinate demonstrators and innovators in an open-diffusion puzzle-box paradigm. In contrast, behaviours seeded by dominant individuals were not transmitted as faithfully. This finding has important implications for our understanding of the emergence of novel traditions. In my second experiment, I found that some chimpanzees are highly motivated to relinquish an existing behaviour to adopt an equally rewarding alternative if it is consistently demonstrated by just one or two individuals within a group context, but not in a dyadic context. This contrasts with prior studies which argue that chimpanzees are highly conservative and may hint at a hitherto unrecognised process by which conformity-like behaviour might occur. Finally, I performed a novel type of ‘meta' analysis on 16 social learning studies carried out at our research site to determine whether individuals demonstrated consistency in their social learning behaviour across experimental contexts. Strong evidence for individual differences in social information use was found, with females more likely to use social information than males. No effect of age, research experience or rearing history was found. This presents a promising new method of studying individual differences in behaviour using the accumulated findings of previous work at a study site.

Background: Research has shown that mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) can be effective in the treatment and management of a variety of psychological and physical health conditions. Whilst under researched, there is growing evidence to support the use of MBIs with individuals with intellectual disabilities (IDs) who may require adaptation to existing MBIs as a result of cognitive or other impairments. Method: This research dossier describes the development of an 8-week mindfulness group for adults with IDs. Two mindfulness groups were delivered by community practitioners. Participants completed self-report measures of anxiety and depression pre-intervention, postintervention and at follow-up. Participants were interviewed for their experience of the group and assessed for their ability to understand and engage with the basic concepts of mindfulness. Results: Participants reported a decrease in anxiety post-intervention which continued to decrease at follow-up five weeks after the final session of the mindfulness group. Selfreported depression also decreased post-intervention, however there was a slight increase at follow-up although this remained lower than baseline. The decrease in self-reported depression from pre-intervention to post-intervention was statistically significant. Participants were able to engage with, understand, enjoy and benefit from the mindfulness group and appreciated having the opportunity to meet with similar people with similar experiences. Conclusion: Results indicate that the mindfulness group had some positive effect on selfreported anxiety and depression states. Participant feedback coupled with the researcher’s own reflections offer direction for further adaptations that could be made to the mindfulness group and support the need for further research in this area.

This study explores the relationship between identity and learning, in particular the concepts of ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’ in respect of professional, vocational education. Adopting a case study approach, the study focuses on the quantity surveying discipline and the degree programme offered by my institution, and one specific cohort on same. As they progressed through their studies, an in-depth exploration of the formation of identity (ies) and the dispositions adopted towards learning was undertaken, involving two key milestones: at Level 1 (first year) when the participants had almost completed their studies, and again at Level 3 (third year) when the participants had returned from their period of professional placement. The conclusions of my study raise a number of issues for professional, vocational education in general, and more specifically, the provision of quantity surveying education within my institution. The outcomes of this investigation highlight three key areas for further attention: the tensions inherent in providing discipline-orientated programmes within a semesterised, modularised, more generic-focused system of delivery; issues surrounding the provision of professional placement opportunities including the emotional aspects of same; and the resultant impacts on dispositions and identity, ‘belonging’ and ‘becoming’.

Recent research suggests that visual-verbal paired associate learning (PAL) taps a crossmodal associative learning mechanism involved in reading acquisition. However, evidence from children with dyslexia indicates that deficits in visual-verbal PAL are strongly linked to the verbal demands of the task. The research presented in this thesis had two overarching aims: first, to dissociate crossmodal and verbal demands in driving the PAL-reading relationship, and second, to assess the hypothesis that visual-verbal PAL plays a causal role in reading development. To address the first aim, a series of experiments examined the relationship between reading ability and PAL tasks differing in modality (crossmodal, unimodal) and output demand (visual, verbal). The results supported a verbal account of the PAL-reading relationship. In typically developing children and children with dyslexia, only tasks with a verbal output demand (i.e., visual-verbal PAL, verbal-verbal PAL) demonstrated a relationship with reading ability. In children with dyslexia, poor performance was isolated to difficulties learning novel phonological forms, rather than difficulties specific to crossmodal associative learning. Furthermore, the ability to learn novel phonological forms was found to fully explain visual-verbal PAL performance across reading abilities. In a final experiment, the causal role of visual-verbal PAL in reading development was assessed. The results of a longitudinal study from the start to the end of kindergarten showed that visual-verbal PAL measured in pre-readers did not predict reading ability at the end of kindergarten. Instead, PAL performance was influenced by learning to read.

Data are presented in seven chapters that address the reciprocal relationship between oral vocabulary and reading development. Chapter 2 explores exception word reading in poor comprehenders longitudinally, finding deficits that are pervasive over a period of two years. The results support the hypothesis that weak oral vocabulary skills are causally related to poor exception word reading in this group. In Chapter 3, orthographic and semantic skills in poor comprehenders are investigated in a word learning paradigm. This chapter provides evidence that poor comprehenders have more difficulty learning and retaining semantic information than orthographic information. A similar paradigm is described in Chapter 4 to investigate predictors of orthographic and semantic learning. In a large group of typically developing readers, this demonstrates that decoding is the strongest predictor of orthographic learning while existing oral vocabulary knowledge is the strongest predictor of semantic learning. In Chapters 5 and 6 orthographic and semantic skills in poor comprehenders and children with dyslexia are compared using standard off-line tasks (Chapter 5) and an online word learning experiment (Chapter 6). These chapters indicate similarities as well as differences in the reading and language profiles of these groups. Chapter 7 adopts a different approach by using a word learning study to investigate the benefit of teaching new oral vocabulary in the presence of orthography.

This thesis addresses decision mechanisms in foraging situations, using laboratory experiments with European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris). Building on previous work from the Behavioural Ecology Research Group, I chose the Sequential Choice Model (SCM; reviewed in Kacelnik et al., 2011 − Appendix 1) as a starting point, and tested its premises and predictions generalising it to different experimental protocols. Classical decision models do not relate choice preferences to behaviour towards isolated options, and assume that choices involve time-consuming evaluations of all alternatives. However, previous work found that starlings’ responses to isolated options predict preference in choices, and that response times to single-option encounters are not reliably longer than response times in choices. Since, in the wild, options are normally encountered sequentially, dealing with isolated options can be considered of greater biological, and possibly psychological, significance than simultaneous decisions. Following this rationale, the SCM postulates that when multiple simultaneous stimuli are met they are processed in parallel, each competing against the memory of background opportunities, rather than comparing present options to each other. At the time of launching this research, these ideas had only been applied to protocols involving just two deterministic alternatives and offering no chance to explore the influence of learning history (i.e., how animals learn to choose; see Chapter 4). To increase their relevance and offer more rigorous tests, I generalised them to situations with multiple (see Chapters 2, 4 and 5), and in some cases probabilistic alternatives (see Chapter 3), controlling the learning regime. I combined these extensions with tests of economic rationality (see Chapter 6), a concept that is presently facing sustained debates. Integrating the result of all experimental chapters (see Chapter 7), my results support the notion that behaviour in single-option encounters is fundamental to understand choice behaviour. The important issue of whether choices involve a decision time cost or the opposite, a shortening of response times, remains unsolved, as neither could be evidenced reliably.

The ability to prioritize information enables us to think and take action without being overwhelmed by external stimuli or internal thoughts and feelings. Neuroticism is associated with altered processing of emotional information but differences in the processing of emotional information may arise from basic differences in information processing, such as altered processes of attention, changes in sensitivity to salient information, or differences in the ability to encode conjunctions of information. Through this thesis, I explore the relationship between neuroticism and processing of non-emotional information, with a particular focus on learning about combinations of information. Associative learning paradigms were used to test ability to learn about combinations of information and neuroticism was observed to be associated with strong non-linear discrimination learning. The tendency to focus on specific details was associated with weak non-linear discrimination learning. A novel model of associative learning is presented, offering an account for how variation in the ability to engage in non-linear discrimination learning might be understood. Mechanisms underlying the association between neuroticism and strong non-linear discrimination learning were explored. Neuroticism was not found to be associated with a tendency to focus on specific details or shifts in attention towards goal relevant information. Neuroticism was not found to be associated with enhanced ability to identify feature conjunctions, altered sensitivity to the relative validity of stimuli or pre-exposure of stimuli. The importance of understanding individual differences in processes of associative and the value of associative learning tasks to look at information processing biases underlying neuroticism are discussed.