The present study investigated the effect of a commons simulation and fines on a generalization test that incorporated several features important in the real world. Two hundred and seventy-five volunteer college students in groups of seven participated in this study. Approximately one-half received exposure to the commons simulation and one-half did not. One-half of the groups in each treatment level received two posttests with a fine option available and the other one-half received two posttests without this option. The two posttests differed in that one was played with a large unknown referent group and the other was played with the immediate group of seven. The results showed that some generalization from the commons simulation to the large posttest does occur. However, subjects in the large group do not cooperate (act in the common group interest) more or defect (act in the individual interest) less, but become more cautious as a result of the simulation exposure and withdraw from the commons when playing with a large and unknown referent group.

Preservice special education teachers need to develop essential teaching skills to competently address student academics and behavior in the classroom. TeachLivETM is a sophisticated virtual simulation that has recently emerged in teacher preparation programs to supplement traditional didactic instruction and field experiences. Teacher educators can engineer scenarios in TeachLivETM to cumulatively build in complexity, allowing preservice teachers to incrementally interleave target skills in increasingly difficult situations. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of TeachLivETM on preservice special education teachers’ delivery of error correction, specific praise, and praise around in the virtual environment and in authentic classroom settings. Four preservice special educators who were teaching on provisional licenses in upper elementary language arts classrooms participated in this multiple baseline study across target skills. Participants attended weekly TeachLivETM sessions as a group, where they engaged in three short teaching turns followed by structured feedback. Participants’ proficiency with the target skills was analyzed on three weekly assessments. First, participants’ mastery of current and previous target skills was measured during their third teaching turn of the intervention session (i.e., TeachLivETM training assessment). Next, participants’ proficiency with all skills, including those that had not been targeted yet in intervention, were measured immediately following intervention sessions (i.e., TeachLivETM comprehensive assessment). Finally, teachers submitted a weekly video recording of a lesson in their real classroom (i.e. classroom generalization assessment). Repeated practice and feedback in TeachLivETM promoted participants’ mastery of essential target skills. Specifically, all participants demonstrated proficiency with error correction, specific praise, and praise around on both the TeachLivETM training assessment and the more complex TeachLivETM comprehensive assessment, with a strong pattern of generalized performance to authentic classroom settings. Participants maintained proficiency with the majority of the target skills in both environments when assessed approximately one month after intervention was discontinued. Implications of the study are discussed, including the power of interleaved practice in TeachLivETM and how generalization and maintenance may be impacted by the degree of alignment between virtual and real teaching scenarios.

Researchers studying diet selection of ungulate herbivores have generally considered plant palatability independent of animals' dietary history. However, more recent studies demonstrate that experiences within the life of an animal strongly influence plant selection. We are beginning to understand how food preferences and aversions are formed through gastro-intestinal feedback. My research specifically examines factors that influence the formation of conditioned flavor aversions in the generalist herbivore, sheep. I first examined how variability of food toxicity affects the intake of those foods. I determined that sheep apparently have several mechanisms for regulating intake of toxic foods regardless of whether or not toxic variation can be detected through flavor changes. When changes in flavor correspond to changes in toxicity, animals adjusted intake based on an increase or decrease in toxin concentration. When toxic variation was not detectable through flavor, animals adopted a conservative strategy of eating an amount based on the maximum toxin dose they had experienced.' I was also interested in how illness following the consumption of one food influences the selection of other foods. In diet selection, animals may generalize selection responses among foods with similar flavors. Generalization may be particularly important in the selection of novel foods, i.e., a new food may look, smell, or taste like a familiar food that is preferred or avoided. In several experiments on the generalization of flavor aversions I found that: 1) sheep generalize aversions from familiar to novel foods when both foods had a flavor in common; 2) the more sick an animal got after eating a food the greater the aversion formed to the food and the greater the generalization of that aversion to new foods; 3) the salience or intensity of flavor did not affect the strength of conditioned flavor aversions in sheep on the generalization of the aversion, but this may not always be the case; 4) flavor intensity strongly influenced the acceptance of a novel food. A novel food (wheat) with a strong flavor (3% added ground oregano) was more avoided than a novel food (wheat) with a mild flavor (1% oregano added).

Everyone, including children with developmental disabilities, encounters stimuli they find aversive every day (e.g., the sound of a classmate tapping their pencil). These aversive stimuli may not be problematic for typically developing individuals, because they learn to behave in ways that allow them to escape or avoid this aversive stimulation. They could, for example, mand (i.e., request) for something to be changed in the environment (e.g., ask their classmates to stop tapping their pencils). A child with developmental disabilities, however, may not have the communication skills necessary to request the termination of aversive stimuli, which may result in frequent exposure to aversive situations. For these children, it may be useful to acquire a general mand (e.g., saying, "No, thank you") which could be used to avoid or terminate a variety of aversive stimuli. Previous researchers teaching mands for negative reinforcement have focused on replacing problem behavior maintained by escape from task demands. The current study extended the literature on teaching mands for negative reinforcement by teaching children with developmental disabilities to mand for escape from a variety of nonpreferred stimuli, while assessing generalization to untrained stimuli and settings. Participants were two school-aged boys with autism who engaged in problem behavior when they encountered nonpreferred stimuli, and did not use an appropriate mand for negative reinforcement. First, we employed a non-preferred stimulus assessment to identify stimuli for subsequent use in mand training. Next, we conducted mand training sequentially across nonpreferred stimuli until sufficient exemplars were trained for generalization to untrained stimuli to occur. Finally, we conducted probes to assess generalization of the mand response to nontraining contexts outside of the experimental setting. For both participants, training was required across two stimuli before cross-stimulus generalization was observed. Because generalization did not bring the mand to criterion levels with the third stimulus, for either participant, training was introduced to facilitate acquisition. The mand response was acquired with a fourth stimulus in the absence of training. Through the inclusion of appropriate control conditions, we showed that the stimulus control of the mand response was appropriate, occurring almost exclusively in the presence of nonpreferred stimuli. In addition, we showed decreases in problem behavior, for both participants, which corresponded to acquisition of the mand response. We also provided evidence of generalization to nontraining contexts. We discuss limitations of the current study and present suggestions for future research.

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This thesis explores data anonymization techniques within the context of a Swedish municipality with a focus on safeguarding data privacy, enhancement of decision-making, and assessing re-identification risks. The investigation, grounded in a literature review and an experimental study, employed the ARX anonymization tool on a sample municipality employee database. Three distinct human resource management (HRM) datasets, analogous to the employee database, were created and anonymized using the ARX tool to ascertain the efficacy and re-identification risks of the employed techniques.  A key finding indicates an inverse relationship between dataset size and re-identification risk, enhancing data utility with larger datasets. This suggests that larger datasets are more conducive to anonymization, motivating organizations to engage in anonymization efforts for internal analytics and open data publishing.  The study contributes to Information Security discourse, emphasizing the criticality of data anonymization in preserving privacy and ensuring data utility in the era of big data. The research faced constraints due to privacy considerations, necessitating the use of similar, rather than actual, datasets, potentially affecting the results and limiting full representation for future techniques. The thesis primarily addresses HRM applications, indicating the scope for future research into other municipal or organizational governance areas. In conclusion, it underscores the necessity of data anonymization in the face of tightening regulations and sophisticated privacy breaches. This positions the organization strategically for compliance, minimizes data breach risks and upholds anonymization as a fundamental principle of Information Security.

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