Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Hospitality Management / Chihyung Ok / Carol W. Shanklin / Impulse buying has gained interest from both researchers and practitioners because of its contribution to sales and profits. The past decade has seen a dramatic increase in the number of mobile food vending in the United States. Open-air selling by vendors may encourage consumers to buy food on impulse. Food sold on streets involves sensory cues that strongly induce impulse buying. Unlike normal buying behavior, impulse buying is greatly affected by emotion, but it may also be explained by cognition. Although impulse buying of food is a prevalent phenomenon, little academic research has been conducted regarding food consumption impulse. Further, there remains a lack of clear understanding of the link between emotions and impulse buying. The purpose of this study was to explore and empirically test consumers’ impulse buying behavior of food from street vendors and to identify determinants such as sensory cues, arousal and pleasure as emotional responses, perceived risk as a cognitive response, and the urge to buy impulsively. In particular, Study 1 proposed a theoretical model identifying the effects of sensory cues on arousal, pleasure, and perceived risk and, in turn, the urge to buy impulsively and impulse buying behavior. Study 2 proposed food neophobia and perceived human crowding as a possible moderator that may function in the relationship between emotions and impulse buying. Data were collected from 361 consumers who were 18 years or older and had purchased food from mobile vendors at a participating festival or event in the United States. The proposed relationships were tested using structural equation modeling and hierarchical multiple regression analysis. In terms of direct effects, Study 1 found that sensory cues were positively related to arousal, pleasure, and the urge to buy impulsively and were negatively related to perceived risk; arousal and pleasure were positively associated with the urge to buy impulsively; perceived risk was negatively associated with the urge to buy impulsively; and the urge to buy impulsively was positively linked with impulse buying behavior. Further, arousal, pleasure, and perceived risk partially mediated the relationship between sensory cues and the urge to buy impulsively. Study 2 concluded that perceived human crowding moderates the effect of arousal and pleasure on the urge to buy impulsively and, in turn, impulse buying behavior. Food neophobia had no moderating effect. The study findings add to the understanding of consumer impulse buying in the context of street food. In addition to its contribution to the literature, practical applications that mobile food businesses could use to attract and retain customers are provided. The study concludes with general discussions of limitations and areas for future research.

In resurgence, a target behavior (R1) is acquired in an initial phase and extinguished in a second phase while an alternative behavior (R2) is reinforced. When reinforcement for the second response is removed, however, R1 behavior returns or “resurges.” The resurgence paradigm may have implications for understanding relapse after behavioral interventions in humans such as contingency management, or CM, in which (for example) drug users can earn vouchers contingent upon drug abstinence. The present experiments examined the effectiveness of a putative retrieval cue for treatment in attenuating the resurgence effects and determined the likely mechanism by which this cue functions. Experiment 1 established that a 2-second cue associated with delivery of the alternative reinforcer in Phase 2 can attenuate R1 resurgence and promote R2 behavior during testing. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this effect occurs regardless of whether the cue is delivered contingently or noncontingently on responding during the resurgence test, and Experiment 3 demonstrated that for the cue to be effective in reducing resurgence, it must be paired with alternative reinforcement during Phase 2. This might mean that pairing the cue with reinforcement serves to maintain attention to the cue. Experiment 4 suggested that a cue paired with alternative reinforcement did not serve as a conditioned reinforcer in that making it contingent on a new behavior did not increase the likelihood of that behavior. Experiment 5 demonstrated that the cue must be experienced in sessions that also include the extinction of R1. Experiment 6 found that a cue produced by R1 during the second phase of a resurgence paradigm (analogous to a conditioned inhibitor) does not attenuate resurgence of an extinguished instrumental response. Together, the results suggest that a neutral cue can serve as an effective cue that attenuates resurgence if it is first paired with alternative reinforcement and presented in sessions in which R1 is extinguished. One way to view the results is that creating greater generalization between the extinction context and the testing context results in less resurgence.

In binaural hearing aids, several beamforming algorithms can be used. These beamformers aim to enhance the target speech signal and preserve the binaural cues of the target source (e.g. with constraints on the target). However, the binaural cues of the other directional sources as well the background noise are often lost after processing. This affects the global impression of the acoustic scene, and it limits the perceptual separation of the sources by the hearing aids users. To help the hearing aids users to localize all the sound sources, it is important to keep the binaural cues of all directional sources and the background noise. Therefore, this work is devoted to find the best trade-off between the noise/interferers reduction and the cues preservations not only for the directional interferers but also for the background noise based on selection and mixing processes. In this thesis, some classification decision algorithms, which are based on different criteria such as the power, the power difference, and the coherence, are proposed to complete the selection and mixing processes. Simulations are completed using recorded signals provided by a hearing aid manufacturer to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm under different realistic acoustic scenarios. After detailed testing using different complex acoustic scenarios and different beamforming configurations, the results indicate that some of the proposed classification decision algorithms show good promise, in particular the classification decision algorithm based on coherence.

The theories of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) and self-perception (Bern, 1965) are reviewed in terms of the "insufficient justification" and "observer replication" laboratory paradigms. The controversy generated by their competing explanatory claims was evaluated in three separate contexts: as debate, theory, and metatheory. In a debating context it was concluded that Ben got the better of the controversy by observing the input requirements of his theory and marshalling against his critics evidence generated by their own failure to do likewise. Analytical and epistemological errors committed by the dissonance theory advocates were major factors in this csnclusion. With respect to the more substantive context of theory-testing, it was concluded that Bern failed to establish the plausibility of the cognitive process postulated by the self-perception theory. A unique counter-instance was cited to demonstrate that self-perception is not a wholly viable alternative analysis of cognitive dissonance phenomena. In addition, an examination of Bern's adherence to a functional analysis in conjunction with a simulation methodology raised doubts that such a strategy could deliver the desired information concerning plausibility of the self-perception process. When viewed at the level of metatheory, however, Bern was considered to have had a substantial influence upon the working commitments of a small community of his colleagues. This conclusion was derived from a metaphorical application of Kuhn's (1962) thesis concerning scientific revolutions to events in the recent history of Social Psychology. In this view, the self-perception theory is an historical marker which brings clearly into focus the transition of attitudinal research from a motivational-consistency "paradigm" to an information processing/attributional "paradigm". Three experiments are reported which make use of Bern's credibility cueing procedure to articulate the newer "paradigm". The first experiment provides support for a fundamental hypothesis derived from the self-perception theory. Subjects' recall of a task was systematically influenced by external discriminative stimuli for self-credibility when internal memory cues were relatively weak, but net when such cues were relatively strong. The use of a statistic which takes into account subjects' differential guessing strategies increased confidence in the self-perception interpretation of these results. The second experiment attempted to extend the credibility cueing effect beyond the traditional impersonal cueing situation to one involving interpersonal discriminative stimuli for self-credibility. Although procedural insights rendered the results inconclusive, a serendipitous observation was made. The results suggested a novel hypothesis that different stimulus persons could have differential effects on subjects' self-credibility. A third experiment provided support for this hypothesis. When one live interviewer was manipulated as a discriminative stimulus for self-credibility, subjects' recall of a task was systematically influenced in accord with self-perception predictions. These effects did net occur in the presence of a second live interviewer. Speculation was advanced concerning the psychological basis for differential credibility cueing properties of parties to social interactions with particular reference to the credibility cueing potential of police interrogations. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.) PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Motion perception is critical to navigation within the environment and has been studied primarily in the unisensory visual domain. However, the real world is not unisensory, but contains motion information from several modalities. With the billions of sensory stimuli our brains receive every second, many complex processes must be executed in order to properly filter relevant motion related information. In transparent motion, when there are more than one velocity fields within the same visual space, our brains must be able to separate out conflicting forms of motion utilizing environmental cues. But even in unimodal visual situations, one often uses information from other modalities for guidance. We studied this phenomenon in psychophysics with cross-modal (visual and auditory) cues and their role in detecting transparent motion. To further examine these ideas, using a single subject we explored the spatiotemporal characteristics of the neural substrates involved in utilizing these different cues in motion detection during magnetoencephalography (MEG). Another dimension of motion perception is involved when the observer is moving and, therefore, must deal with self-motion and changing environmental cues. To better understand this idea we used a visual search psychophysical task that has been well studied in our lab to determine whether subjects use a simple relative-motion computation to detect moving objects during self-motion or whether they utilize scene context when detecting object motion and how this might change when given a cross-modal auditory cue. To find the spatiotemporal neural characteristics involved in this process, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and MEG were performed separately in elderly subjects (healthy and a stroke patient) and compared with previous studies of young healthy subjects doing the same task. / 2031-01-01

This paper explores how religious elites affect public opinion through focusing on the role of the pope, by asking the question if the publication of a papal encyclical can influence attitudes about religion. Using the Unexpected Event during Survey Design, this paper connects data from the European Social Survey 7 to investigate if respondents' answers about their attitudes towards religion changed, due to the publication of a papal encyclical. Situating itself in the theory of elite cues, the object of this research is to show that religion is an important influence in the shaping of attitudes and that the pope, as an example of a religious elite, is a relevant actor in shaping opinions across Europe. This research finds that the publication of the encyclical does not make a significant difference in attitudes among individuals, however there is an increase in level of religiosity, primarily for countries with strong pre-existing attachments towards religion.

This study used variables from the Protective Action Decision Model to guide data collection about 262 residents' responses to the 2009 Samoa M8.1 earthquake and tsunami. The results show that earthquake shaking, combined with knowledge that this can cause a tsunami, was the most common source of first awareness about a possible tsunami and that broadcast media were the most common first social sources of warnings. Radio was an important source of additional information, as were face-to-face contacts and phone calls. Contrary to previous research, few of the recommended elements of a warning message were communicated to those at risk and none of these message elements was significantly correlated with evacuation. Nonetheless, two thirds of coastal residents and half of inland residents began evacuations within 15. min after the earthquake. Those who had participated in earthquake hazard awareness meetings had higher risk perceptions but were no more likely to evacuate to higher ground or evacuate promptly. This study's results are broadly consistent with previous findings on disaster response but raise a number of unresolved questions about behavioral response to rapid onset disasters.

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Previous research has examined the process through which employees use the cues present within their work environments to form justice perceptions, suggesting the potential for individual employee characteristics to influence this justice perception formation process. In two studies (an experimental study and a field study where longitudinal data were collected from employees in a new work environment), I investigated whether gender influenced how employees processed non-simultaneously presented justice cues when forming their overall justice perceptions. Drawing on the gender selectivity hypothesis and fairness heuristic/uncertainty management theories, I predicted that the justice cues employees encounter later (rather than earlier) would be processed more deliberately by women as compared to men (i.e., I expected justice cues presented later would more strongly predict the overall justice perceptions of women compared to men, and that women’s justice perceptions would change more over time than men’s). Study 1 experimental results showed no gender x (in)justice cue order effect on justice perceptions. Study 2 field results did not show that women’s justice perceptions varied more than men’s, nor did the first justice perception formed predict later justice perceptions more strongly for men compared to women. These (replicated) null effects suggest follow-up research is needed, which may require a re-examination of how gender and organizational justice have been positioned theoretically in the literature. Additionally, if further replicated, these attentional patterns, which seem gender invariant, hint at the practical importance of considering how justice is cued by organizational authorities, and how justice can be enacted in ways that reinforce the equitable and respectful treatment of employees.

This work introduces new binaural beamforming algorithms for hearing aids, with a robustness to errors in the estimate of the target speaker direction of arrival (DOA) and a good trade-off between noise reduction and preservation of the noise/interferers spatial impression. Three robust designs are proposed, and their robustness is confirmed by simulation results. These robust designs are a combination of binaural and monaural beamformers using two different microphone configurations: one for low frequency components and one for high frequency components. The robust designs are also found to be robust to mismatch between the anechoic propagation models used for the beamformers designs and the reverberant propagation models used to generate the signals at the microphones in the simulations. To preserve the binaural cues of the noise/interferers in the binaural beamformer outputs, a method based on a mixing/selection of different available binaural signals is proposed, using a classification from the phase and magnitude of a complex coherence function. This method is added as a post processor to the beamforming designs robust to target DOA mismatch. Simulation results show that the resulting mixed binaural output signals have a good binaural cues preservation level that outperform the benchmark design, with significant noise reduction and low target distortion. Since knowledge of source DOAs is important for beamforming noise reduction, a beamformer-based broadband multi-source DOA detection system is also developed in the thesis, using information from different frequencies or sub‐bands to obtain global estimates of sources DOAs. Simulation results shows that using one beamformer on each side is capable of detecting the DOAs of active sources under several acoustic scenarios, including scenarios with one, two, or three sources, and with or without the presence of some level of diffuse noise.