Previous research has investigated intentional retrieval of contextual information and contextual influences on object identification and word recognition, yet few studies have systematically investigated context effects in episodic memory for objects. To address this issue, unique objects on a white background or embedded in a visually rich context were presented to participants. At test, the object was presented either in the original or a different context. Chapter 2 demonstrated that a context shift decrement (CSD)--decreased recognition performance when context is changed between encoding and retrieval--was observed. In four studies with young adults, the CSD was not attenuated by encoding or retrieval manipulations. Chapter 3 revealed that the CSD was resistant to aging and neuropsychological status. Importantly, older adults classified as high MTL performed better on the recognition task than those classified as low MTL, and as well as young adults, supporting the successful aging hypothesis. Chapter 4 focused on elucidating the neural correlates of the CSD using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Right PHG activation during encoding was associated with subsequent recognition of objects in the context change condition. This same region was activated during recognition, suggesting it may automatically reinstate visual contextual information. Overall, the CSD is attributed to the automatic and obligatory binding of object and context information in episodic memory that results in an integrated representation, mediated by the hippocampal complex.

Proenvironmental behavior (PEB) studies have largely taken a person-centered approach under the assumption that behavior is primarily determined by person attributes. Studies measure knowledge, values, environmentalism, attitudes, etc. - all of which apparently reside in the individual and are posited to cause pro/anti-environmental intention. Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that intention only leads to behavior roughly 30% of the time. One reason this breakdown may exist is that half of the "causal" story is missing, which is how much the context (setting/situation) controls behavior. This study attempted to enhance the empirical literature by relying on an evolutionary foundation focused on an empirical investigation of extant contexts that present to-be-solved adaptive problems and that display affordances and cues to adaptive behavior. Furthermore, this study compares the predictive efficacy of both the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) constructs and new evolutionary and functionalist constructs of life history strategy, environmentalism (conceived more as past behavioral history) and consumerism. This study simultaneously contrast-tested this new evolutionarily and contextually-driven approach with the conventional person-centered approach using the same subjects to empirically determine which approach accounts for the most variance (i.e. a multiple working hypothesis format). The dependent variable presented a closer approximation to real behavior in real-life situations as depicted in written multidimensional vignettes, instead of measuring intention alone in a contextual vacuum. Environmental and non-environmental settings were included, as well as theoretically driven situational dimensions that varied systematically to strategically "cue" specific adaptive problems. This study approach relied on the notion that only when the person by context relationship is studied simultaneously can PEB be better predicted. Results confirmed that settings carried a significant proportion of variance in the collapsed 16 situations tested. The TPB paradigm predicted aggregate behavior; however, it (along with measured specific intentions) did not predict specific behavioral choices in the unique situations. Overall results were mixed but suggested that new lines of research attending to the contexts and social situations in which environmental behavior occurs can provide a better basis for understanding and affecting changes in behavior toward environmental ends, as will be required for achieving long-term environmental sustainability.

The academic study of how people respond to adverse life experiences has been dominated by Western conceptualisations of distress, resilience and growth. The current literature base regarding responses to adversity has been criticised for focusing on one response trajectory (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; PTSD). This criticism stems from the privileging of Western understandings of the self and for negating to consider sufficiently the role of context (the available social, cultural and political discourses). The significance of this void in the literature is that it has led to the development of models and theories which could be considered culturally insensitive, if applied outside of the context from which they have derived. This research addresses the highlighted gap in the literature by exploring how the context of Sierra Leone influences how people respond to the experience of Civil War and continuing adversity. Nine in-depth interviews were carried out within two ‘mental health’ organisations in Sierra Leone. The participants were nine individuals and one group, consisting of both ‘patients’ and staff members. The qualitative methodology of Narrative Analysis was used to analyse both the stories people told and the stories which may have remained unexpressed. A focus was placed during analysis on the role of context and the dialogic process. The main findings of the research indicated that the cultural resources within Sierra Leone both influenced and constrained the narratives which individuals were able to tell. ‘Stories of Survival’ seemed to be told through two dominant social narratives of ‘Bear it, and Forget’ and ‘Because of Almighty God, we Forgive’. ‘Stories of Resistance’ however, demonstrate what was implied but often left unsaid, this is characterised by two main unexpressed stories; ‘We Cannot Forget’ and ‘Why God?’. Furthermore, findings suggest that it is the relationship between the dominant social narratives and individual meaning-making which influences the trajectory of stories told. The implications of this research request a commitment to valuing the role of social context in conceptualisations of distress, resilience and growth following adversity. Finally, the need to establish ways of offering support to individuals and communities, which fully considers the role of social context, is emphasised. This paper concludes by exploring the relevance of social content for the planning of services, training programmes and continuing clinical practice.

Natural language is characterised by enormous linguistic variation (e.g., Fetzer (2003)). Such variation is not random, but is determined by a number of contextual factors. These factors encapsulate the socio-cultural conventions of a speech community and dictate the socially acceptable, i.e. polite, use of language. Producing polite language may not always be a trivial task. The ability to assess a situation with respect to a hearer’s social, cultural or emotional needs constitutes a crucial facet of a speaker’s social and linguistic competence. It is surprising then that it is also a facet which, to date, has received very little attention from researchers in the natural language generation community. Linguistic variation occurs in all linguistic sub-domains including the language of education (Person et al., 1995). Thanks to being relatively more constrained (and hence more predictable with respect to its intentional aspects than normal conversations), teachers’ language is taken in this thesis as a starting point for building a formal, computational model of language generation based on the theory of linguistic politeness. To date, the most formalised theory of linguistic politeness is that by Brown and Levinson (1987), in which face constitutes the central notion. With its two dimensions of Autonomy and Approval, face can be used to characterise different linguistic choices available to speakers in a systematic way. In this thesis, the basic idea of face is applied in the analysis of teachers’ corrective responses produced in real one-to-one and classroom dialogues, and it is redefined to suit the educational context. A computational model of selecting corrective responses is developed which demonstrates how the two dimensions of face can be derived from a situation and how they can be used to classify the many linguistic choices available to teachers. The model is fully implemented using a combination of naive Bayesian Networks and Case-Based Reasoning techniques. The evaluation of the model confirms the validity of the model, by demonstrating that politeness-based natural language generation in the context of teachers’ corrective responses can be used to model linguistic variation and that the resulting language is not singnificantly different from that produced by a human in identical situations.

Cette recherche a pour objet d'identifier les comportements stratégiques des petites entreprises laitières algériennes dans un contexte de transition caractérisé par la concurrence. Elle montre également que les comportements stratégiques des petites entreprises laitières présentent des caractéristiques particulières, et sont susceptibles d'apporter une réponse au besoin de développement de cette petite structure. La méthodologie étant le système stratégique au travers l'étude de cas qualitative, une approche multicritère est adoptée. Permettre de mettre en lumière une série de résultats, d'une part, une typologie de trois types de comportement stratégique des petites entreprises laitières, d'autre part, a montré l'importance des variables environnementales et entrepreneuriales. Néanmoins l'analyse organisationnelle reste un point déterminant dans l'analyse des comportements stratégiques. Cette analyse a montré que la rentabilité des dix petites entreprises laitières est fortement tributaire de la matière première « poudre de lait ». Finalement cette thèse se pose entre autre la question de la spécificité de la petite entreprise en faisant de la variable entrepreneuriale un rôle central dans l'analyse stratégique / This research aims at identifying the strategic behaviours of the Algerian small dairy firms in a transition context. It also shows that the strategic behaviours of the small dairy firms present some specific characteristics and are likely to bring an answer to the need for development of this little structure. As methodology is the strategic system through a qualitative case study, a multi-criteria approach has been adopted. Highlighting a series of results on a one hand, and a typology of three types of strategic behaviours adopted by these small dairy firms on the other hand, has shown the importance of the environmental and entrepreneurial variables. Nevertheless, the organizational analysis is still a determining point in the analysis of strategic behaviours. This analysis has shown that the profitability of ten small dairy firms is largely dependent on the raw material that is dried milk. Finally, in this thesis, we are faced, amongst other things, with the specificity of the small company itself, giving a central role to the entrepreneurial variable in the strategic analysis

Hippocampal lesions impair memory for context in some tasks but not others. Factors that may contribute include: a) whether context is encoded in configurally or elementally; b) whether lesions are performed before or after acquisition of contextual information. c) the size of the lesion. This study compared the effects of pre- vs post-acquisition hippocampal lesions on performance of a novel context-dependent odour discrimination task that required explicit processing of the contextual features. As the task required a configuration to be formed between context, odour and reward, it was hypothesised that the hippocampus would be essential for the acquisition and performance of this task. Pre-surgery training consisted of simultaneous presentations of a context-dependent and a context-independent odour discrimination task. In the context dependent task, odour A but not odour B was rewarded in context 1, whereas odour B but not odour A was rewarded in context 2. In the context independent task, odour C was rewarded in both contexts, whereas odour D was rewarded in neither. Rats took around 60 days to reach criterion level (2 days >80% correct on both tasks). Subsequently, they received either bilateral ibotenic acid lesions of the hippocampus or sham surgery. After a 14 day recovery period, post-surgery testing began. On the first 2 days of post-operative testing, lesioned animals were significantly impaired on the CD task, but not on the CI task. Thereafter they performed as well as controls. Thus, the data demonstrate that although the hippocampus normally contributes to the retention of contextual information, it is not necessary for the performance of this context dependent odour discrimination task. Other areas can take over these functional demands in its absence. However, the involvement of the hippocampus cannot be completely disregarded due to the high degree of correlation between spared hippocampal tissue and the immediate post-surgery performance level of the animals (i.e. larger the volume of tissue spared the higher the initial degree of accuracy on the CD task). These findings were shown to be highly replicable, regardless of whether the odorous stimuli were presented simultaneously or successively. Furthermore, the hippocampal and extra-hippocampal methods of task resolution were not identical. When a cue conflict situation arose between intra-maze and selfmotion cues, it affected the two groups in a differentially. The ambiguity between cues had a highly detrimental affect on the performance of the intact animals; yet the hippocampal lesioned animals appeared oblivious to the inconsistency. They continued to perform the context dependent odour discrimination task as normal. Thus although apparently able to process the major contextual cues, the hippocampal lesioned animals had a deficit in detecting and responding to more subtle distinctions that were not integral to normal success on the task. In the final aspect of this thesis, hippocampal lesioned animals were found to demonstrate no deficits in the acquisition of new variants of the context dependent odour discrimination task (new odours / contexts), thus the hippocampus is not essential for learning contextual discriminations. Overall, the hypothesis that the hippocampus would be necessary for contextual representations, is unsupported by this thesis. Nevertheless, if present during training, the hippocampus will contribute to the retention of contextual stimuli and provides a more all encompassing view of ‘context’ than other areas can achieve alone.

This thesis documents the everyday experiences of adults with disabilities living in a rural area of South Africa. Given South Africa’s tumultuous history, characterised by human rights violations incurred through cultural, political and racial disputes, and the country’s current state of socio-economic and political turmoil, violence has come to represent a core feature in the lives of many South Africans. This, together with the impact of unemployment, food insecurity and unequal power distribution, has significantly affected the ways in which many people make sense of their life experiences. Despite the fact that exposure to unequal power dynamics, violence, marginalisation and exclusion are documented to dominate the life experiences of people with disabilities, little is understood about the ways in which these aspects manifest in the interpretation and reconstruction of experiences. Previous research into the field of disability studies has depended primarily on quantitative measures, or on the reports of family members and caregivers as proxies, perpetuating the cycle of voicelessness and marginalization amongst adults with disabilities. Those studies which have adopted qualitative measures in order to explore the psychosocial experiences of disability have focussed largely on the limitations imposed by physical access, and have relied predominantly on the medical and social models of disability, or on the World Health Organisation’s International Classification on Functioning, Disability and Health (WHO ICF, 2001). These models consider the psychosocial experience of disability to be universal, and do not adequately take into account the impact of cultural and contextual variables. This has negatively impacted on the establishment of a research repository upon which evidence-based practice has been developed. This thesis aimed to explore and document the lived experiences of 30 adults with a variety of disabilities, living in 12 rural villages in the Mpumalanga Province of South Africa. A combination of narrative inquiry and participant observation was employed in order to examine the relationship between personal and social interpretations of experience. Data analysis was conducted using a combination of Clandinin and Connelly’s (2000) Three Dimensional Narrative Inquiry Space, Harré’s Positioning Theory (1990, 1993, & 2009), and Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Results revealed that narratives were plurivocal in nature, giving rise to a complex relationship between personal and social interpretations of experience. The findings highlighted the impact of cultural norms, values and roles on making sense of experiences associated with disability. Four new types of narrative emerged, none of which conformed to the current interpretations of lived experience as reported in the literature. All of the narratives were pervaded by the embodied experience of violence, including evidence of structural, physical, psychological and sexual violence, as well as violence by means of deprivation. This gave rise to a sense of moral decay and highlighted the ways in which abuse of power has become woven into lived experience. In this way insight was gained into the complex interplay between impairment, exclusion, high mortality rates, violence, and poverty in rural areas. Narrative inquiry proved to be a particularly useful tool for providing insight into disability as a socio-cultural construct, drawing attention to a variety of clinical, policy and theoretical implications. These gave rise to a number of broader philosophical questions pertaining to the role of memory, vulnerability and responsibility, and the ways in which all citizens have the potential to be complicit in denying the reality of lived experience amongst vulnerable members of society. These findings demand attention to the ways in which governments, communities and individuals conceive of what it means to be human, and consequently how the ethics of care is embraced within society.

This report presents results of an empirical study which investigated how two grade 9 Arts and Culture teachers incorporated mathematics in their Arts and Culture lessons in their classrooms in South Africa. The study was implemented through concept mapping activities undertaken by these Arts and Culture teachers. Data was collected from these concept mapping activities and follow-up interviews with teachers. The analysis of the collected data revealed that teachers grapple with the notion of integration, particularly, when it comes to the transfer knowledge and skills across different learning contexts. Lack of proper training, insufficient teacher knowledge and inadequate support from curriculum designers seem to be the most inhibiting factors for teachers to navigate successfully through the notion of integrated teaching and learning. However, in a bid to deal with these new pedagogical challenges, it was observed that teachers resort to other forms of integration, such as relying on students in order to forge links between subjects of learning. The analysis of data from this study raised important pedagogical issues about the link between integrated teaching and teacher content knowledge, and the apparent need for teachers to transform their identities. Drawing from the theory of situated learning, this study has argued that, although integration between fields of learning is desirable in teaching and learning, it is highly problematic in actual practice. For instance, through this study, it was observed that Arts and Culture teachers struggle to use their knowledge of Arts and Culture and mathematics in order to forge connections between the two fields of learning. The study has also drawn from Bernstein‟s theoretical constructs in order to argue that teachers, particularly those in different learning fields like Arts and Culture and mathematics, intuitively posses different „pedagogical codes‟ which account for their inability to negotiate meaning across different learning contexts. Finally, the study has explored and exploited the argument presented through the van Hiele‟s theoretical framework that students turn to progress quicker in geometry (mathematics) when learning takes place in different styles. I have subsequently used this theoretical framework to argue that connections between Arts and Culture and mathematics should be encouraged at school level, as Arts and Culture could provide an exciting pedagogical environment for the teaching and learning of mathematics, which is often construed to be abstract.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Johannesburg, October 2012. / Unable to load abstract.

Faculty of Humanities School of Education 8802108f / Phenomenography is an area of research which focuses on identifying and describing the qualitatively different ways in which people understand phenomena in the world around them. In this research, a group of first-year chemical engineering students at the University of the Witwatersrand were interviewed in order to explore their perceptions of certain aspects of the learning context of their compulsory engineering course, Introduction to Process and Materials Engineering. The findings comprise descriptions of their different perceptions concerning the organization, content, teaching and assessment practices in the course as well as their perceptions of certain aspects of constructivism on which the course is based. Students’ perceptions which influence their approach to learning are categorized according to whether or not they encourage a deep approach to learning. Finally, the implications of these findings for future course development are discussed.