Designers do not merely develop concepts; they are increasingly involved in testing product concepts and learning consumer preference. However, designers’ decision making processes in these tasks have been little studied. In the two essays, I apply decision making frameworks to concept testing and preference learning to study consumer’s and designer’s biases. In my first essay, I study consumer bias in concept testing. When consumers test new products, they are often asked to choose which product they prefer. However, a choice question can elicit biased preference because consumers simply choose the product that is superior on the attribute serving their purchase purpose. My studies show that when consumers are asked to predict which product they will enjoy more, they are more likely to prefer the product that actually reflects their consumption utility. These findings suggest that making trade-offs is avoided in the choice question, but is encouraged in the enjoyment prediction question. Thus, a simple change of question format, in otherwise identical product comparisons, elicits different answers. This holds true when product attributes are easy to evaluate; when product attributes are hard to evaluate, changing question format does not affect consumer choice. My second essay examines designer bias in preference learning. When designers predict consumer preference for a product, they often base their predictions on consumer preference for similar products. However, this categorization-based strategy can result in biased predictions because categorical similarity is not diagnostic for preference prediction. I conducted two studies by applying a Multiple Cue Probability Learning experiment to a designer’s prediction task. I found that when subjects used a sequential learning strategy, making a sequence of predictions and receiving feedback, they increased prediction accuracy by 14% on average. When they made predictions with multiple sets, with a break between each set during which they reflected on what they had learned, their prediction accuracy further improved by 7% on average. In sum, I demonstrate bias and propose approaches to avoid them in two design tasks. My two essays show that the decision making frameworks are crucial in understanding and improving the successful outcome of the design process.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-26T13:30:47Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 1787058 bytes, checksum: 9eecdb20460409c66b549cfa0f842314 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-07-24 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / O manejo de habitat, uma abordagem do controle biológico conservativo, o tem como objetivo alterar habitats através da manipula ção de recursos de origem vegetal na paisagem para melhorar a disponibilidade de recursos para os inimigos naturais. As plantas daninhas têm sido amplamente usadas para esse fim em agroecossistemas devido ao seu potencial de fornecer recursos al- ternativos para os inimigos naturais, mesmo quando as densidades de pragas são baixas. No entanto, há uma escassez de informações relativas aos recursos fornecidos por plantas daninhas e suas interações com os inimigos naturais. Para que o manejo de habitat seja uma prática funcional, ́é necessário o conhecimento detalhado do comportamento de forrageamento e da capacidade sensorial de inimigos naturais. A fim de contribuir para esse entendimento, estudei a atratividade e os efeitos de recursos fornecidos pela planta daninha Bidens pilosa, conhecida como picão-preto, utilizando plantas de tomate como a cultura principal, para o predador generalista Cycloneda sanguinea. As fêmeas de C. sanguinea são capazes de reconhecer os sinais químicos do picão-preto, mas elas não discriminam entre os estímulos do picão-preto ou das plantas de tomate. No campo, a ocorrência de C. sanguinea no picão-preto não depende da presença de pulgoẽs e isso só é evolutivamente estável a se a joaninha obtém vantagens da visita na planta. Os recursos alternativos fornecidos pelo picão-preto e pelas plantas de tomate, em conjunto ou não, não afetou a taxa de oviposição de C. sanguinea, tanto na presença quanto na ausência de pulgões. Entretanto, uma dieta com apenas os recursos fornecidos pelas plantas testadas aqui não é suficiente para promover a a sua oviposição. Porém, estes recursos podem aumentar a sobrevivência de casais de joaninhas adultas de forma significativa. A sobrevivência de C. e sanguinea foi significativamente maior na combinação picão-preto e plantas de tomate do que no tomate sozinho, mas não foi diferente do picão-preto somente. Concluindo, C. sanguinea pode usar pistas químicas do picão-preto durante o forrageamento e os recursos oferecidos pela planta podem permitir que este predador persista no campo quando os recursos-presa são escassos, o que pode levar a uma melhora na sua eficiência como agente de controle e biológico. / Habitat management is a conservation biological control approach that aims to alter habitats through manipulating plant-based resources in the landscape to increase the availability of resources for natural enemies. Weed commu- nities have been adopted for habitat management in agroecosystems due to their potential to supply food resources to natural enemies, even when pest densities are low. However, there is a paucity of information pertaining to the resources provided by non-crop weeds and their interactions with natural enemies. To make the management of non-crop weeds a functional practice, detailed knowledge of the behavior and sensory ability of natural enemies is necessary. In order to contribute to such understanding, I studied the attrac- tiveness and the effects of resources provided by the weed hairy beggarticks (non-crop), using tomato plant as the main crop, on the generalist predator Cycloneda sanguinea. I found that C. sanguinea females are able to recognize cues from hairy beggarticks but they do not discriminate between cues from hairy beggarticks or tomato plants. In the field, the occurrence of C. san- guinea on hairy beggarticks plants does not depend on the presence of aphids and it is only evolutionary stable if the ladybird gains advantage from visiting the plant. The alternative resources provided by the hairy beggarticks and tomato plants, either together or separate, did not affect the oviposition rate of C. sanguinea, both in the presence and absence of aphid prey. Hence, a diet with only the resources provided by the plants is not enough to promote their oviposition. Nevertheless, these resources were found to increase adult survivorship significantly. Survival of C. sanguinea was significantly higher on the combination of tomato plants plus hairy beggarticks than on tomato plants alone but was not different from hairy beggarticks alone. Concluding, C. sanguinea can use cues from hairy beggarticks when foraging and the re- sources offered by plants may allow them to persist in the field when prey resources are scarce which might improve its efficiency as biological control agent.

The late positive potential (LPP) is an event-related potential (ERP) component associated with increased affective processing. Studies have shown that stimuli with high evolutionary significance (e.g. a threatening face) induce increased activity over centro-parietal areas of the brain. In an electrophysiological context, this is hypothesized to be indexed by greater LPP amplitudes. The facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR) is a facial-masculinity metric which refers to cheekbone width, divided by upper facial height (top of the lip to between the brows). For the first time, LPP amplitudes were examined in subjects upon observing faces with high vs. low facial fWHRs. Prior studies suggest that faces with high fWHRs are perceived as more threatening than faces with low fWHRs. Consequently, fWHR has by some researchers been proposed to serve as a cue of threat. Two separate tasks in the present study were used to investigate this. In the aggression task, males with high fWHRs were judged as more aggressive. Moreover, when put in a threatening context, high fWHR faces also elicited greater LPP amplitudes in subjects compared to faces with low fWHRs. Conversely, in the self-regulation task, differences in LPP amplitudes did not reach significance. In this task, statistical power was low due to few blocks/trials in the ERP experiment and subjects were not primed on threat, which may explain the non-significant results. Taken together, the results provide modest support to the theory that fWHR serve as a cue of threat. Future studies will need to take the present study’s limitations into consideration

A imagem mental e a memória visual têm sido consideradas como componentes distintos na codificação da informação, e associados a processos diferentes da memória de trabalho. Evidências experimentais mostram, por exemplo, que o desempenho em tarefas de memória baseadas na geração de imagem mentais (imaginação visual) sofre a interferência do ruído visual dinâmico (RVD), mas não se observa o mesmo efeito em tarefas de memória visual baseadas na percepção visual (memória visual). Embora várias evidências mostrem que tarefas de imaginação e de memória visual sejam baseadas em processos cognitivos diferentes, isso não descarta a possibilidade de utilizarem também processos em comum e que alguns resultados experimentais que apontam diferenças entre as duas tarefas resultem de diferenças metodológicas entre os paradigmas utilizados para estuda-las. Nosso objetivo foi equiparar as tarefas de imagem mental visual e memória visual por meio de tarefas de reconhecimento, com o paradigma de dicas retroativas espaciais. Sequências de letras romanas na forma visual (tarefa de memória visual) e acústicas (tarefa de imagem mental visual) foram apresentadas em quatro localizações espaciais diferentes. No primeiro e segundo experimento analisou-se o tempo do curso de recuperação tanto para o processo de imagem quanto para o processo de memória. No terceiro experimento, comparou-se a estrutura das representações dos dois componentes, por meio da apresentação do RVD durante a etapa de geração e recuperação. Nossos resultados mostram que não há diferenças no armazenamento da informação visual durante o período proposto, porém o RVD afeta a eficiência do processo de recuperação, isto é o tempo de resposta, sendo a representação da imagem mental visual mais suscetível ao ruído. No entanto, o processo temporal da recuperação é diferente para os dois componentes, principalmente para imaginação que requer mais tempo para recuperar a informação do que a memória. Os dados corroboram a relevância do paradigma de dicas retroativas que indica que a atenção espacial é requisitada em representações de organização espacial, independente se são visualizadas ou imaginadas. / The mental image and visual memory have been considered as different components in the coding of information, and associate to different processes of working memory. Experimental evidence demonstrate, that Dynamic Visual Noise (DVN) impairs the performance of memory tasks based on mental image generation (visual imagination), but have no effect on memory tasks based on visual perception (visual memory). Although several evidences demonstrate that imagination and visual memory tasks have cognitive distinct processes, it doesnt rule out the possibility that they share common processes and that some experimental results that indicate differences between the cognitive processes are resulted from different methodological paradigms used to studied them. Our objective was to equate tasks of visual mental imagery and visual memory, using a recognition task and spatial retro-cue paradigm. Sequences of roman letters were presented in visual (visual memory task) and acoustic (visual mental imagery task) forms, each letter presented in four different spatial locations. The first and second experiment analyzed the time of the retrieval course for imaging process and for the memory process. In the third experiment, we compared the structure of the representations of the two components, with the presentation of DVN during the stage of generating and retrieval. Our results demonstrated that there are no differences in the storage of visual information during the retrieval period and that the DVN only affect the retrieval process efficiency, principally the imagination process. However, the retrievals time course is different for both components, since imagination requires more time than memory to retrieval information. The retro-cue paradigm reveals that spatial attention is required in representation with spatial organization based on visual perception or imagination

Submitted by Cristiano Amaral (cristiano.ab.castro@gmail.com) on 2013-03-29T12:07:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Versão Final Revisada Pós Banca.pdf: 5123662 bytes, checksum: 8f45db0b7df686fbca7c29913288d95c (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzinei Teles Garcia Garcia (suzinei.garcia@fgv.br) on 2013-04-01T13:25:15Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Versão Final Revisada Pós Banca.pdf: 5123662 bytes, checksum: 8f45db0b7df686fbca7c29913288d95c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2013-04-01T13:29:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Versão Final Revisada Pós Banca.pdf: 5123662 bytes, checksum: 8f45db0b7df686fbca7c29913288d95c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-01 / The Cue Utilization Theory establishes that all products are made of multiples cues that may be seen as surrogates for the intangible attributes that make up any given product. However, the results of many years of research have yet yielded little consensus as to the impact generated by the use of such cues. This research aims to contribute to the discussion about the importance of intrinsic cues by investigating the effects that the use of product cues that confirm the product claim may have on Claim Credibility (measured through Ad Credibility), and also on consumers’ Purchase Intention and Perceived Risk toward the product. An experiment was designed to test such effects and the results suggest the effects of the use of Claim Confirming Product Cues depend on consumer’s level of awareness about such cue, and that when consumers are aware of it, Ad Credibility and Purchase Intention increase, as Perceived Risk decreases. Such results may have implications to academicians and practitioners, as well as may provide insights for future research.

This study investigates the signal processing required in order to allow for the evaluation of hearing perception prediction models at low signal-to-noise Ratios (SNR). It focusses on speech enhancement and the estimation of the cues from which speech may be recognized, specifically where these cues are estimated from severely degraded speech (SNR ranging from -10 dB to -3 dB). This research has application in the field of cochlear implants (CI), where a listener would hear degraded speech due to several distortions introduced by the biophysical interface (e.g. frequency and amplitude discretization). These difficulties can also be interpreted as a loss in signal quality due to a specific type of noise. The ability to investigate perception in low SNR conditions may have application in the development of CI signal processing algorithms to counter the effects of noise. In the military domain a speech signal may be degraded intentionally by enemy forces or unintentionally owing to engine noise, for example. The ability to analyse and predict perception can be used for algorithm development to counter the unintentional or intentional interference or to predict perception degradation if low SNR conditions cannot be avoided. A previously documented perception model (Svirsky, 2000) is used to illustrate that the proposed signal processing steps can indeed be used to estimate the various cues used by the perception model at SNRs successfully as low as -10 dB. AFRIKAANS : Hierdie studie ondersoek die seinprosessering wat nodig is om ’n gehoorpersepsievoorspellingmodel te evalueer by lae sein-tot-ruis-verhoudings. Hierdie studie fokus op spraakverbetering en die estimasie van spraakeienskappe wat gebruik kan word tydens spraakherkenning, spesifiek waar hierdie eienskappe beraam word vir ernstig gedegradeerde spraak (sein-tot-ruisverhoudings van -10 dB tot -3 dB). Hierdie navorsing is van toepassing in die veld van kogleêre inplantings, waar die luisteraar degradering van spraak ervaar weens die bio-fisiese koppelvlak (bv. diskrete frekwensie en amplitude). Hierdie degradering kan gesien word as ’n verlies aan seinkwaliteit weens ’n spesifieke tipe ruis. Die vermoë om persepsie te ondersoek by lae sein-tot-ruis kan toegepas word tydens die ontwikkeling van kogleêre inplantingseinprosesseringalgoritmes om die effekte van ruis teen te werk. In die militêre omgewing kan spraak deur vyandige magte gedegradeer word, of degradering van spraak kan plaasvind as gevolg van bv. enjingeraas. Die vermoë om persepsie te ondersoek en te voorspel in die teenwoordigheid van ruis kan gebruik word vir algoritme-ontwikkeling om die ruis teen te werk of om die verlies aan persepsie te voorspel waar lae sein-tot-ruis verhoudings nie vermy kan word nie. ’n Voorheen gedokumenteerde persepsiemodel (Svirsky, 2000) word gebruik om te demonstreer dat die voorgestelde seinprosesseringstappe wel suksesvol gebruik kan word om die spraakeienskappe te beraam wat deur die persepsiemodel benodig word by sein-tot-ruis verhouding so laag as -10 dB. Copyright / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

Cruciale dans les apprentissages scolaires, la mémoire de travail (MDT) se développe avec l’avancée en âge. De précédente études ont démontré que la négligence du but contribuait au faible contrôle exécutif des enfants d’âge préscolaire. Par conséquent, présenter des indices de but durant une tâche améliore les performances des enfants dans des tâches d’inhibition et de flexibilité. Paradoxalement, quasiment aucune étude ne s’est interrogée sur le rôle que pourrait jouer un défaut de maintien du but dans les faibles performances des enfants les plus jeunes lors de tâches de MDT. Dans cette thèse, ce sujet a été traité en introduisant, durant la réalisation de tâches de MDT, des indices de but pouvant être exogènes (visuels ou auditivo-verbaux), exogènes et associés à un indiçage endogène (effectuer une gestuelle porteuse de sens), ou prendre la forme d’un jeu de rôle. Les résultats ont indiqué 1) que les enfants d’âge préscolaire répétaient plus fréquemment en présence d’un indiçage visuel sans toutefois que cela n’impacte les scores de rappel ; 2) qu’une association d’un indiçage exogène à un indiçage endogène améliore la MDT des enfants ; 3) qu’effectuer en premier une condition de jeu de rôle permettait aux enfants de conserver le même niveau de performances en MDT dans une condition subséquente sans jeu de rôle. Toutefois, A) un indiçage auditivo-verbal a détérioré les performances de rappel des enfants ; B) l’effet bénéfique de l’association des indiçages exogène et endogène n’a pas été reproduit ; C) l’effet bénéfique du jeu de rôle observé dans les études d’Istomina (1948) et de Bertrand et Camos (2015) ne fut pas répliqué. / Crucial in academic learning, working memory (WM) develops with age. Previous studies have shown that goal neglect contributed to kindergarteners’ poor executive control. Hence, presenting goal cues during a task improves children's performance in inhibition and switching tasks. Paradoxically, almost no study has questioned the role that failure to maintain the goal might play in the poor performance of younger children in WM tasks. In this thesis, this topic was been treated by introducing, during the retention interval in a Brown-Peterson task and in a simple or complex span task, goal cues that can be exogenous (visual or auditory-verbal), exogenous associated to an endogenous cueing (perform meaningful gestures) or taking the form of a role play. Results showed that 1) preschoolers rehearsed more frequently with a visual cue without improvement in their recall performance; 2) an association of an exogenous cue with an endogenous cue has improved kindergarteners’ WM performance; 3) performing a role play first allowed kindergarteners to maintain the same level of WM performance during a subsequent condition without role playing. However, A) an auditory-verbal cue was detrimental to kindergarteners’ recall; B) the beneficial effect of the association of exogenous and endogenous cues was not replicated; and C) the beneficial effect of role playing observed in Istomina (1948) and Bertrand and Camos (2015) was not replicated. This thesis proposes an opening towards the study of goal maintenance in visuo-spatial complex span tasks contrary to Brown-Peterson verbal tasks.

This study is concerned with Swedish as a school subject, with teachers in Swedish and with the relevance of teacher training, all of which I discuss in the perspective of professionalism. When it comes to content, the Swedish subject is characterized by disruption. The informants describe different subjects, but communicative skills seem to be their most important objective. And among the informants the collective view on the Swedish subject is that of Swedish as Skills. Furthermore, the concept of integrated studies in secondary school is interpreted and construed in two different ways, formal subject integration and one that might be called “true” subject integration. The study also points to discrepancies between teacher education and the profession. One such discrepancy concerns the core of Swedish as a subject. Another concerns the teaching and responsibility of children with reading and writing disabilities and other states of difficulties, such as ADHD. The teachers in this study did not get such proficiency during teacher training, and this causes frustration and feelings of inadequacy. At the same time the Swedish educational authorities presuppose that this area is the concern of every teacher, and not solely the concern of teachers of the Swedish subject. The subject concept, the use and ideology of steering documents, subject integration as well as the status of teacher training are factors that seem to have an impact on the autonomy and status of teachers.

BACKGROUND: Alcohol use disorders (AUDs) affect 15 million people nationwide, 4% of which are adolescents (ages 12-17) and adolescents who binge drink significantly increase their likelihood of suffering from an AUD in adulthood. Research shows that cues (i.e. flavors) paired with alcohol (EtOH) produce significant cue-induced alcohol craving and contribute to relapse in adolescent and adult populations. However, there is a lack of research focused on how cues that accompany EtOH drinking during adolescence, affect EtOH craving later in life. The current study sought to examine the sex- and developmental-dependent effects of adolescent exposure to flavor cues associated with EtOH on operant-lick behavior and cue-induced dopamine (DA) levels within the nucleus accumbens shell (AcbSh; reward structure) in adulthood. METHODS: Adolescent alcohol-preferring (P) rats were randomly assigned to one of 4 groups and received 24 hr. access to three bottles on their home cage: Paired: 0.1% blueberry flavor extract (BB) + 15% v/v EtOH and 2 water bottles; Unpaired: 0.1% BB, 15% v/v EtOH, and water; 15% EtOH alone, and 2 water bottles; BB alone and 2 water bottles. Home cage fluid consumption was measured for 2-weeks. On the third week bottles were removed and all animals underwent 9 days of operant training using an operant sipper paradigm. This consisted of two sipper spouts connected to the computer by a lickometer, which registered tongue contacts with the sipper tube (Paired: BB+EtOH or water; Unpaired BB or EtOH; EtOH alone: EtOH or water; BB alone: BB or water). When the fixed ratio (FR) requirement for number of licks/tongue contacts was met, a liquid delivery solenoid dispensed 0.05 ml of fluid into the sipper tube. Following the final operant session all rats remained in their home-cage for approximately 40 days until adulthood at which point they were returned to the operant chambers and tested for appetitive and consummatory behavior in response to the flavor cue (all rats: BB or water; NO EtOH). Two weeks after the final operant session all rats underwent microdialysis testing to examine cue-induced DA levels in the AcbSh. RESULTS: Data indicated that animals in the paired group exhibited a significantly greater level of licking at the BB sipper and a significantly greater level of DA release in response to the flavor cue compared to the other groups. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the data suggest that cues paired with EtOH during adolescence may produce persistent changes to the behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms that contribute to an increased risk of developing an AUD later in life.

This thesis presents methods useful in a bin picking application, such as detection and representation of local features, pose estimation and multi-cue integration. The scene tensor is a representation of multiple line or edge segments and was first introduced by Nordberg in [30]. A method for estimating scene tensors from gray-scale images is presented. The method is based on orientation tensors, where the scene tensor can be estimated by correlations of the elements in the orientation tensor with a number of 1D filters. Mechanisms for analyzing the scene tensor are described and an algorithm for detecting interest points and estimating feature parameters is presented. It is shown that the algorithm works on a wide spectrum of images with good result. Representations that are invariant with respect to a set of transformations are useful in many applications, such as pose estimation, tracking and wide baseline stereo. The scene tensor itself is not invariant and three different methods for implementing an invariant representation based on the scene tensor is presented. One is based on a non-linear transformation of the scene tensor and is invariant to perspective transformations. Two versions of a tensor doublet is presented, which is based on a geometry of two interest points and is invariant to translation, rotation and scaling. The tensor doublet is used in a framework for view centered pose estimation of 3D objects. It is shown that the pose estimation algorithm has good performance even though the object is occluded and has a different scale compared to the training situation. An industrial implementation of a bin picking application have to cope with several different types of objects. All pose estimation algorithms use some kind of model and there is yet no model that can cope with all kinds of situations and objects. This thesis presents a method for integrating cues from several pose estimation algorithms for increasing the system stability. It is also shown that the same framework can also be used for increasing the accuracy of the system by using cues from several views of the object. An extensive test with several different objects, lighting conditions and backgrounds shows that multi-cue integration makes the system more robust and increases the accuracy. Finally, a system for bin picking is presented, built from the previous parts of this thesis. An eye in hand setup is used with a standard industrial robot arm. It is shown that the system works for real bin-picking situations with a positioning error below 1 mm and an orientation error below 1o degree for most of the different situations. / <p>Report code: LiU-TEK-LIC-2005:15.</p>