Research in judgement and decision-making has identified numerous ways in which human decisions are likely to be biased, deviating systematically from the behaviour one would expect if humans were fully rational 'Econs', maximizing their utility with perfect self-control. Suboptimal decision-making as a result of these biases imposes large costs on individuals and society. In this thesis I investigate experimentally how decision-making can be improved, focusing on the health domain, where errors ultimately become a matter of life and death. Chapter 1: Providing feedback has been shown to be an effective way to change behaviour across several domains, including energy use and the workplace. However, there is little evidence on the effect of providing feedback in high stakes environments, where people make risky decisions with potentially catastrophic losses. In the first chapter I conduct a field experiment that provides feedback and information in such a context - emergency healthcare. Understanding the drivers of patients' decision-making relating to their demand for healthcare services and how they can be directed to the most appropriate services at any given time is a challenge for health systems across many countries. This trial aimed to reduce avoidable Emergency Department (A&E) attendances by sending a personal feedback letter to people who recently attended an Emergency Department but whose health concerns could have been dealt with elsewhere. Patients were randomly allocated to either receive a follow-up letter with information on alternatives to A&E or no letter (usual care). Overall, I do not find a statistically significant difference between the re-attendance rates of patients who did and did not receive the letters. However, the effect of the intervention interacted significantly with patient age, especially in men. I develop a conceptual framework that explores possible explanations for these heterogeneous effects. Chapter 2: Policy interventions drawing on insights from behavioural sciences are increasingly popular and have been successfully applied across a number of different policy areas. However, little attention has been paid to the extent to which the effects of repeated behavioural interventions are sustained over time. In the second chapter I study this question through a natural field experiment in the English National Health Service (NHS). The intervention consists of changing the salience of waiting time on the clinicians' e-Referral Service (ERS) interface. Waiting longer can negatively affect patients' health gains from receiving treatment, so referring patients to services with shorter waiting times can be of benefit. I find, through a stepped wedge trial, that putting a simple alert against services with high waiting times leads to a 35 percent reduction in the share of referrals to these services. The effect of the intervention is sustained over time and does not vary with prior referral habits. A small, low-cost intervention increasing the salience of waiting time to clinicians has a powerful and sustained effect on the choices of their patients. Chapter 3: Behavioural attitudes toward risk and time, as well as behavioural biases such as present bias, are thought to be important drivers of unhealthy lifestyle choices. While the first two chapters of this thesis take behavioural biases as given, the third chapter makes a first attempt at exploring the possibility of training the mind to alter these attitudes and biases, in particular relating to health-related behaviours, using a randomized controlled experiment. The intervention we consider is a well-known psychological technique called "mindfulness", which is believed to improve self-control and reduce stress. We conduct an experiment with 139 participants, around half of whom receive a four-week mindfulness training, while the other half are asked to watch a four-week series of historical documentaries. We find strong evidence that mindfulness training reduces perceived stress, but only weak evidence of its impact on behavioural traits and health-related behaviours. We do not see that engagement with mindfulness training is correlated with behavioural characteristics such as impulsiveness and impatience. Our findings have significant implications for a new domain of research on training the mind to alter behavioural traits and biases that play important roles in lifestyle.

<p><strong>The escalating extinction of wildlife puts a high pressure on the standard of ex situ conservation. Some animals may spend several generations in captivity which may affect their natural behaviors and also a future reintroduction into the wild. Observations of animal behavior among captive animals are crucial for the understanding of ex situ conservation effects on behavior and in order to introduce and improve environmental enrichment. This study investigates activity and enclosure use of a sand cat (<em>Felis margarita</em>) at Parken zoo in Eskilstuna Sweden. Direct observations of behavior and movements were carried out and audience impact was also analyzed. The sand cat in the present study showed no behavioural response to the audience but it had some effect on his location in the enclosure. I also found that he was more active during late afternoon after feeding time and that he slept most during the forenoon. He used the whole enclosure to some extent but he spent most of his time in the cave, the front and the middle of the enclosure. Although he did not show any typical stereotypic behavior he had some odd habits that could probably be prevented through environmental enrichment. </strong><strong></strong></p>

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The escalating extinction of wildlife puts a high pressure on the standard of ex situ conservation. Some animals may spend several generations in captivity which may affect their natural behaviors and also a future reintroduction into the wild. Observations of animal behavior among captive animals are crucial for the understanding of ex situ conservation effects on behavior and in order to introduce and improve environmental enrichment. This study investigates activity and enclosure use of a sand cat (Felis margarita) at Parken zoo in Eskilstuna Sweden. Direct observations of behavior and movements were carried out and audience impact was also analyzed. The sand cat in the present study showed no behavioural response to the audience but it had some effect on his location in the enclosure. I also found that he was more active during late afternoon after feeding time and that he slept most during the forenoon. He used the whole enclosure to some extent but he spent most of his time in the cave, the front and the middle of the enclosure. Although he did not show any typical stereotypic behavior he had some odd habits that could probably be prevented through environmental enrichment.

Repeated focal electrical stimulation of the brain results in kindling, the development of generalized seizures that progress in length and severity as more seizures are elicited. Barnes et al. (2001) paired one context (CS+) with kindling stimulation of the amygdala, and another context (CS-) with sham stimulation. They found conditioned anticipatory fear responses in the CS+, a conditioned place aversion to the CS+, and more intense convulsions in the CS+ than in the CS- in a probe trial. The present experiment was an attempt to replicate the findings, and to extend them by recording electroencephalographs (EEG). As well, I tested for conditioned effects on afterdischarge threshold (ADT). Rats received 45 pairings in each context before a conditioned place preference/aversion test, to determine whether the stimulation and seizures were rewarding or punishing. After more pairings, rats received suprathreshold stimulation in each context (switch test). Ictal measures in this test included afterdischarge duration, clonus duration, latency to clonus, class of convulsion, and falls. After more pairings, ADT was measured in each context. I partially replicated the findings of Barnes et al., in that conditioned anticipatory responses and conditioned place aversion were found. However, there were no conditioned effects on any ictal measures, including ADT. I conclude that conditioning is unlikely to play a major role in epileptogenesis.

Everyday experience suggests that certain people can find their way to a destination easily, while others have considerable difficulty. This dissertation focused on gaining a greater understanding of navigational strategies that can facilitate or hinder an individual’s wayfinding performance. The first study was conducted to gain a broad idea of various factors that may influence navigational performance. Participants were guided through a building and then asked to find their way to a destination. It was found that good navigators made fewer errors in traversing a learned route than did poor navigators. They were also better at recognizing landmarks they had seen along the route, recalling the appropriate directions to be turned at each landmark, and at drawing the correct pathways on a map drawing task. A discriminant analysis revealed that the best predictor of determining navigational performance was the ability to form spatial relationships between landmarks. Results from the first study demonstrated that good navigators were better at determining spatial relationships between landmarks, but it did not address whether this was due to spatial relationships between distances and/or angles. The focus of the second study was to gain a greater understanding of the degree to which distance and angular information are used by good and poor navigators in determining spatial relationships between landmarks. Results showed that neither a distance nor an angular strategy were preferred in either group of wayfinders. An analysis of navigators initial heading angle error to a target location suggested that good wayfinders may be more efficient at finding their way because they appear to plan routes prior to initiating self-locomotion. Such pre-planning was confirmed by the fact that good wayfinders’ initial heading direction error was significantly less than in poor wayfinders. Poor wayfinders appear to head in a random direction and then attempt to determine target locations. The use of landmark information may be useful in certain contexts, but this may not always be the most efficient strategy. The last experiment was aimed at determining whether good navigators adjust strategies used (landmark vs. street), depending on contextual factors. Differences in strategies used were not found, however the results suggest that good navigators appear to be more skilled at navigating in environments rich with streets compared to poor wayfinders. Good and poor navigators were equally skilled at navigating in environments rich in landmarks. It appears that the ability to determine spatial relationships between landmarks is the strongest predictor of navigational performance compared to a wide range of other navigational skills.

According to prospect-refuge theory, humans prefer to be in spaces that afford protection from threat (refuge), but also provide large fields of view (prospect). These preferences are said to arise from the adaptive advantages of such locations with respect to both avoidance of predation from refuge and survey of opportunities for resource collection by prospect. Prospect-refuge theory in the past has traditionally only been applied to human beings, but many of the same contingencies governing spatial preference ought to also hold true in other animals. If people's spatial preferences are influenced by prospect-refuge considerations, then such preferences ought to be found in other animals that are subject to the same pressures to find safety and resources. The overall objective of this study was to explore spatial preferences of the Mongolian gerbil in situations in which prospect-refuge theory makes specific predictions about which regions of an environment will be preferred. Gerbils were placed in an arena containing three dome shaped refuges that varied in the amount of prospect and refuge. A predator was released during the trial to examine how contextual factors may influence the degree of prospect and refuge preferred. There was a preference for an enclosed refuge at stimulus onset even though this was not reflective of what happened prior to stimulus onset, which suggests there was a shift in preferring refuges with greater concealment upon exposure to a threatening stimulus. These results indicate that shelter preference does in fact depend on contextual factors. An explicit comparison of these preferences in widely divergent species may help to place theories of spatial preference on a firmer biological footing, and may provide a greater understanding of how the principles of spatial cognition might underpin parts of the design process.

In two experiments we evaluated whether memory for item locations across trials can improve visual search performance. Measuring both response times and eye movements we examined how visual search performance is influenced by a progressive change in item locations across successive search trials. The positions of items in the search displays were slightly shifted across successive displays and the degree of shift (trial-to-trial stability) was varied across participants. In addition, at the beginning of a trial we either presented only the current target (no-preview) or current and the next target (preview). This allowed us to evaluate performance under preview and under load, as participants on some trials held a future target in working memory. We found that search performance improved with increased stability. In addition, we demonstrate direct links between the accuracy with which an item is observed on one trial and the facility of search for that item during later trials, implicating a strong influence of trial-to-trial memory. Finally, we found that previewing a target improved performance particularly under load. Overall, our results support a model of search in which relatively slow top-down information guides and constrains the deployment of fast perceptual processes.

According to prospect-refuge theory, humans prefer to be in spaces that afford protection from threat (refuge), but also provide large fields of view (prospect). These preferences are said to arise from the adaptive advantages of such locations with respect to both avoidance of predation from refuge and survey of opportunities for resource collection by prospect. Prospect-refuge theory in the past has traditionally only been applied to human beings, but many of the same contingencies governing spatial preference ought to also hold true in other animals. If people's spatial preferences are influenced by prospect-refuge considerations, then such preferences ought to be found in other animals that are subject to the same pressures to find safety and resources. The overall objective of this study was to explore spatial preferences of the Mongolian gerbil in situations in which prospect-refuge theory makes specific predictions about which regions of an environment will be preferred. Gerbils were placed in an arena containing three dome shaped refuges that varied in the amount of prospect and refuge. A predator was released during the trial to examine how contextual factors may influence the degree of prospect and refuge preferred. There was a preference for an enclosed refuge at stimulus onset even though this was not reflective of what happened prior to stimulus onset, which suggests there was a shift in preferring refuges with greater concealment upon exposure to a threatening stimulus. These results indicate that shelter preference does in fact depend on contextual factors. An explicit comparison of these preferences in widely divergent species may help to place theories of spatial preference on a firmer biological footing, and may provide a greater understanding of how the principles of spatial cognition might underpin parts of the design process.

In two experiments we evaluated whether memory for item locations across trials can improve visual search performance. Measuring both response times and eye movements we examined how visual search performance is influenced by a progressive change in item locations across successive search trials. The positions of items in the search displays were slightly shifted across successive displays and the degree of shift (trial-to-trial stability) was varied across participants. In addition, at the beginning of a trial we either presented only the current target (no-preview) or current and the next target (preview). This allowed us to evaluate performance under preview and under load, as participants on some trials held a future target in working memory. We found that search performance improved with increased stability. In addition, we demonstrate direct links between the accuracy with which an item is observed on one trial and the facility of search for that item during later trials, implicating a strong influence of trial-to-trial memory. Finally, we found that previewing a target improved performance particularly under load. Overall, our results support a model of search in which relatively slow top-down information guides and constrains the deployment of fast perceptual processes.