The thesis deals with the connection between the way the mathematical word problems are formulated and their being understood correctly by the pupils. The main focus is on the semantic cues present in the assignment of the word problem. The thesis can be divided into two parts. The first part, which provides the theoretical framework for the whole thesis, contains the definition of a word problem. The phases of word problems solving and the possible classification of word problems are mentioned. More attention is paid to the problems with translation cues; new concepts of asymmetric context and symmetric context, called semantic cues, are introduced. An overview of several related research studies from abroad follows. The core of the thesis lies in its second part, containing a study that examines whether the pupils would be more successful in solving problems with asymmetric contexts than in solving problems with symmetric contexts. The influence had been examined on two types of problems and four age categories of pupils and students. The research was carried out through the short tests and it was attended by the total of 503 pupils of selected elementary schools and grammar schools in Prague and students of the Faculty of Education of Charles University. A higher success rate for the asymmetric...

Les travaux de recherche de cette thèse portent sur l'amélioration des capacités sociales d'un système conversationnel en interaction avec un humain. Lorsque le système n'est pas dédié à une tâche particulière, il doit tenir compte de difficultés relevant de l'interaction sociale elle-même. L'humour est un mécanisme naturel dans les interactions sociales. Nous considérons un humour-machine comme une simulation de comportements simplifiés des capacités humoristiques humaines: dérision, blagues, jeux de mots. Les travaux de cette thèse s'appuient sur des théories issues de domaines variés en sociologie, psychologie, neurosciences et linguistique pour l'intégration de cet humour-machine dans un système robotique. Implémentées dans certains systèmes de dialogue, ces capacités humoristiques sont cependant rarement utilisées pour pouvoir choisir les comportements à générer du robot. Dans nos travaux, la mise en œuvre des comportements humoristiques du système en conversation est réalisée en utilisant la théorie des rites d'interaction. L'estimation de la face de l'interlocuteur permet de diriger le comportement du robot dans la conversation casuelle humoristique. Les facteurs expressifs d'une perte ou d'une valorisation de la face sont liés à des états mentaux exprimés dans une situation donnée. Pour réaliser cette estimation de la face, nous étudions, à partir de corpus créés à cet effet, les réactions comportementales, affectives et expressives des participants à différents types d'humour réalisés par le robot et ayant des impacts variables sur celle-ci (l'humour prenant pour cible le robot, le participant ou un autre sujet). Les réactions des participants à l'humour sont établies sur une représentation multi-niveaux d'indices émotionnels, comportementaux et linguistiques, extraits à partir de l'audio.Des règles sont ainsi construites à partir de l'apprentissage automatique de ces indices issus des corpus, concernant l'appréciation de la réaction des participants à l'humour et la mise à jour de l'estimation de la face présentée du participant. Leur implémentation dans un système automatique nous permet de les évaluer. De nombreuses expérimentations ont été menées avec des publics variés : personnes âgées, adultes, adolescents. Enfin, l'utilisation des préférences du participant à l'humour dans la conversation fait émerger des questions éthiques, notamment face au pouvoir persuasif et manipulateur de l'humour. / This doctoral dissertation is about the improvement of social capacities of a conversationnal system to interact with humans. When the system is not dedicated to one particular task, it must take into account the inherent difficulties of social interaction it-self. Humor is a natural mechanism present in social interactions. We consider humour in a robotic system as a simulation of simplified behaviors from human humor : derision, jokes, puns. This work is based on theories issued from various research domains as sociology, psychology, neurosciences and linguistics to enable integration of humor in a robotic system. Implemented in some dialog systems, humorous capacities are however rarely used when programming the robot’s behavior. In our study, the humourous behavior is implemented in the system by using the ritual theory of face-work. The face analysis of the interlocutor can be used to direct the robot’s reactions during a casual humorous talk. In order to evaluate the faces of participants in interaction, we study, using data collections created for this purpose, the participant’s behavior, emotionnal and expressive responses to different types of humor (humorous act targeting the robot, the participant or a neutral subject). Participant's reaction to humor are made upon a multi-level processing of emotionnal, linguistic and behavioral cues.Machine learning is used to extract rules defining appreciation or not and update the participant's face evaluation in regards of the humorous act produced by the robot. An implementation of these rules in an automatic dialog system allows us to evaluate their accuracy. Numerous experiments were carried out on various populations : elderly persons, adults, teenagers. Finally, the use of the participant’s preferences in the conversation raises ethical questions, in particular against the persuasive and manipulative power of humor.

In the context of the world's increasing environmental challenges and the rise of green consumerism, promoting sustainable consumer behavior is more important than ever. This study aims at extending the understanding of consumers' purchase  intention of  environmentally friendly cosmetic products. With a theoretical starting point in theories of green promotion and the theory of planned behavior, a total of ten hypotheses and sub-hypotheses were formulated to answer the research question how green promotional cues can be used to affect consumers' beliefs and increase purchase intention. Central concepts in the study’s constructed conceptual framework are intrinsic cues which represent concrete characteristics of a product such as ingredients and formula, and extrinsic cues which are attributes not present within the product itself such as packaging and brand. A quantitative approach using an online survey in an experimental vignette designed questionnaire generated responses from a sample of 325 participants in three treatment groups, and the data was subsequently examined through statistical analysis. The study’s main findings show that intrinsic cues have a stronger influence on purchase intention than extrinsic cues but that extrinsic cues seem to have a stronger influence on consumers’ subjective beliefs. The study provides implications on how cosmetic companies can use the insights generated by the study when developing promotional strategies for green cosmetics.

Visual cues have previously been classified as visual exproprioceptive, when defining the relative position of the body within the environment and are continuously updated while moving (online), and visual exteroceptive when describing static features of the environment which are typically elaborated offline (feedforward). However peripheral visual cues involved in the control of movement have not previously been clearly defined using this classification. Hence the role played by peripheral visual cues in the planning and/or online control of movement remains unclear. The aim of this thesis was to provide a systematic understanding of the importance of peripheral visual cues in several types of movement, namely overground locomotion, adaptive gait, postural stability and reaching and grasping. 3D motion capture techniques were used to collect limb and whole body kinematics during such movements. Visual peripheral cues were manipulated by visual field occlusion conditions or by the employment of point-lights in a dark room. Results showed that the visual cues provided by different parts of the peripheral visual field are mainly used for online fine tuning of limb trajectory towards a target (either a floor-based obstacle or an object to grasp). The absence of peripheral visual cues while moving disrupted the spatio-temporal dynamic relationship between subject and target and resulted in increased margins of safety between body and target and increased time and variability of several dependent measures. These findings argue in favour of the classification of peripheral visual cues as visual exproprioceptive.

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Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communication / Curtis Matthews / The objective of this study is to shed light on the interaction between the theory of selective exposure and social identity theory. Both of these theories describe aspects regarding how individuals expose themselves to information. However, the driving question of the study was to investigate the behavior of individuals whom experience cognitive dissonance from an inconsistent political message, but are receiving that message from a member of their perceived in-group. The expectation was that moderating variables, such as strength of identification with an ideology as well as the level of knowledge would impact who would engage in selective exposure and choose to disregard in-group cues, or choose inconsistent messages to stay true to in-group pressures. In a Qualtrics experiment, participants (n=189) were divided into different groups, attitude consistent and attitude inconsistent and were exposed to a series of tweets. Each tweet was politically charged, with the attitude-consistent group presenting consistent messages paired with in-group cues, and in the attitude-inconsistent group presenting a dissonant message was paired with the in-group cue, and visa versa. Two factors revealed themselves to impact results and message choice — knowledge and strength of identification. Results revealed that individuals who had a high level of knowledge chose the consistent message more often than those with low knowledge. The strength of ideology variable influenced differences in both the speed in which they made decisions on which tweet to select, as well as how quickly they identified with an ideology level. This result revealed that those who are strongly identified with an ideology make decisions regarding political messages and ideology faster than those who are weakly identified. The current study contributes to the plethora of literature regarding these two theories and the political science area of study by supporting knowledge as a moderating variable between cognitive dissonance and social identity pressures. It also provides insight into the trends and patterns that can arise when time/speed are utilized as a variable to shed light on group identification differences. The insights with the variables of time, strength of ideology, level of knowledge, could lead to numerous future studies.

The world of animation has painted an inspiring image of what the robots of the future could be. Taking the robots R2D2 and C3PO from the Star Wars films as representative examples, these robots are portrayed as being more than just machines, rather, they are presented as intelligent and capable social peers, exhibiting many of the traits that people have also. These robots have the ability to interact with people, understand us, and even relate to us in very personal ways through a wide repertoire of social cues. As robotic technologies continue to make their way into society at large, there is a growing trend toward making social robots. The field of Human-Robot Interaction concerns itself with studying, developing and realising these socially capable machines, equipping them with a very rich variety of capabilities that allow them to interact with people in natural and intuitive ways, ranging from the use of natural language, body language and facial gestures, to more unique ways such as expression through colours and abstract sounds. This thesis studies the use of abstract, expressive sounds, like those used iconically by the robot R2D2. These are termed Non-Linguistic Utterances (NLUs) and are a means of communication which has a rich history in film and animation. However, very little is understood about how such expressive sounds may be utilised by social robots, and how people respond to these. This work presents a series of experiments aimed at understanding how NLUs can be utilised by a social robot in order to convey affective meaning to people both young and old, and what factors impact on the production and perception of NLUs. Firstly, it is shown that not all robots should use NLUs. The morphology of the robot matters. People perceive NLUs differently across different robots, and not always in a desired manner. Next it is shown that people readily project affective meaning onto NLUs though not in a coherent manner. Furthermore, people's affective inferences are not subtle, rather they are drawn to well established, basic affect prototypes. Moreover, it is shown that the valence of the situation in which an NLU is made, overrides the initial valence of the NLU itself: situational context biases how people perceive utterances made by a robot, and through this, coherence between people in their affective inferences is found to increase. Finally, it is uncovered that NLUs are best not used as a replacement to natural language (as they are by R2D2), rather, people show a preference for them being used alongside natural language where they can play a supportive role by providing essential social cues.

Online retailing has grown rapidly and nowadays consumers’ needs become more and more demanding. Mass customization satisfies the need of customers for individuality. However, in order for retailers to offer a satisfying shopping experience, they need to take into account their retail environment. In online retailing, atmospherics play a significant role in consumers’ attitudes towards the store. The present study aims to analyze the role of high task-relevant atmospheric cues, thus those atmospherics that are strongly connected with the shopping goal, such as verbal content, display methods and navigation aids. Furthermore, the author will analyze the effect of the above atmospherics on consumers’ response towards the online mass customization environment. In order for the purpose to be fulfilled, semi-structured interviews were conducted in a purposive sample of ten participants. The results were analyzed based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response model. Finally, high task-relevant atmospheric cues are strongly related to the consumers’ final response by provoking either positive or negative emotions. More specifically, verbal content and display methods have a crucial effect on consumers’ end response. On the other hand, navigation aids contribute to a pleasant online experience but they do not affect final consumers; response significantly. Conclusively, the present study aims to be considered as a useful tool for marketing purposes as it can provide knowledge on how consumers behave in a mass customization online environment in the fashion industry. Such knowledge may appear crucial for professionals who want to meet their customers’ needs directly and effectively.

<p>Juvenile nucleus pulposus (NP) cells of the intervertebral disc (IVD) are large, vacuolated cells that form cell clusters with numerous cell-cell interactions. With maturation and aging, NP cells lose their ability to form these cell clusters, with associated changes in NP cell phenotype, morphology and proteoglycan synthesis that may contribute to IVD degeneration. Studies demonstrate healthy, juvenile NP cells exhibit potential for preservation of multi-cell clusters and NP cell phenotype when cultured upon soft, laminin-containing substrates; however, the mechanisms that regulate metabolism and phenotype of these NP cells are not understood. N-cadherin is a cell adhesion molecule that is present in juvenile NP cells, but disappears with age. The goal of this dissertation was to reveal the role of N-cadherin for NP cells in multi-cell clusters that contribute to the maintenance of the juvenile NP cell morphology and phenotype in vitro, and to evaluate the potential for laminin- functionalized poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG-LM) hydrogels to promote human NP cells towards a juvenile NP cell phenotype. </p><p>In this dissertation, juvenile porcine IVD cells were promoted to form cell clusters in vitro, and analyzed for preservation of the juvenile NP phenotype on soft, laminin-rich hydrogels. In the first part of this dissertation, preservation of the porcine juvenile NP cell phenotype and presence of N-cadherin was analyzed by culturing porcine NP cells on soft, laminin-rich or PEG-LM hydrogels. Secondly, cadherin-blocking experiments were performed to prevent cluster formation in order to study the importance of cluster formation in NP cell signaling. Finally, human IVD cells were cultured on PEG-LM hydrogels to investigate the potential to revert degenerate, human NP cells toward a juvenile NP cell phenotype and morphology. </p><p>Findings reveal soft (<500 Pa), laminin-rich substrates promote NP cell clustering, a key feature of the juvenile NP cell that is associated with N-cadherin positive expression. Additionally, N-cadherin-mediated cell-clustering regulates NP cell matrix production and gene expression of NP-specific and NP-matrix related markers. Inhibition of N-cadherin-mediated contacts resulted in decreased expression of juvenile NP cell features. Finally, juvenile human NP cells are also able to form N-cadherin positive cell clusters on soft, PEG-LM hydrogels with higher expression of juvenile NP cell features compared to culturing on stiff PEG-LM hydrogels. Some degenerate, human NP cells are also able to form N-cadherin positive cell clusters with some features of the juvenile NP cell. </p><p>The studies presented in this dissertation support the proposed hypothesis and establish the importance of soft, laminin-rich substrates in promoting NP cell clustering behaviors with associated features of a juvenile cell phenotype and morphology. Additionally, these studies establish a regulatory role for N-cadherin in juvenile NP cells and suggest that preservation of N-cadherin-mediated cell-cell contacts is important for preserving the juvenile NP cell phenotype and morphology. Furthermore, findings from this dissertation reveal the ability to promote degenerate, mature human NP cells towards a juvenile NP cell phenotype, demonstrating the potential to use PEG-LM hydrogels as a means for autologous cell delivery for the restoration of healthy IVD.</p> / Dissertation