Default inheritance reasoning is a propositional approach to non monotonic reasoning designed to model reasoning with natural language generics. Inheritance reasoners model sets of natural language generics as directed acyclicgraphs,and inference corresponds to the specification of paths through those networks. A proliferation of inheritance proof theories exist in the literature along with extensive debate about the most reasonable way to construct inferences, based on intuitions about interpretations of particular inheritance networks. There has not been an accepted semantics for inheritance which unifies the set of possible proof theories, which would help identify truly ill motivated proof theories. This thesis attempts to clarify the inheritance literature in the three ways indicated in the title: psychological plausibility, proof theory and semantics.

Coherence describes the validity of the internal rules that drive the behaviors of a virtual environment (VE) in presenting a credible scenario. A VR system with a high level of coherence could lead to strong plausibility illusion, which is a key component of the sense of presence. There are few existing studies centered around coherence, and they tend to put the user in a passive role when experiencing the VE without emphasizing on their active participation in the interaction. This dissertation makes up this gap by connecting the concept of coherence with fundamental 3D user interface design that focuses on the algorithms that map the user's actions to the VE's behaviors. Specifically, we inspect the design of coherent interactions for two complicated tasks, namely travel and object manipulation. For travel, we propose a family of redirected walking techniques called "narrative driven cell-based redirection", which lets the user traverse a VE that's much larger than the physical space without breaking the coherence of the scenario. For object manipulation, we propose the novel concept of physics coherence to capture whether an interface conforms to the rules of physics and design several novel techniques that try to balance between physics coherence and usability. Together, we provide some useful tools for designing coherent interactions and discuss how coherence affects user experience in VR interaction. / Doctor of Philosophy / To create a virtual reality (VR) experience that feels plausible, it’s important to consider the validity of the internal rules that drive the behaviors of the virtual environment (VE), which we call “coherence” of a VR system. We discuss how to support coherence in two types of fundamental VR interaction. The first one is travel, which concerns moving the viewpoint around following the user’s intention. For this task, we propose a family of novel interaction techniques called “narrative driven cell-based redirection”, which lets the user traverse a VE that’s much larger than the physical space without breaking the coherence of the scenario. The second one is object manipulation, which is about controlling a virtual object using hand input. For this task, we propose the novel concept of physics coherence to capture whether the interaction conforms to the rules of physics and design several novel techniques that try to balance between physics coherence and controllability. Together, we provide some useful tools for designing coherent interactions and discuss how coherence affects user experience in VR interaction.

Traditional economic theory suggests that consumers are likely to prepay for a product/ service that appears to be heavily discounted. However, in reality, many consumers do not think and act to achieve that goal. This is evident in consumer's psychological and behavioral responses toward a new type of price promotion, namely social coupons (SCs) (i.e., online coupons that offer consumers a substantial discount with a long redemption period when they prepay for a retailer's products/services). Such responses generate vital impacts not only on consumers themselves in terms of saving maximization but also on service retailers (e.g., sit-down dining restaurants) and SC providers (e.g., Groupon and LivingSocial) in terms of revenue maximization generated from offering SC campaigns. This dissertation aims to provide insights to the literature in price promotions, specifically SCs. Guided by mental accounting theory (i.e., consumers open a mental account when costs are incurred and close a mental account when benefits are received), this dissertation is structured in the form of two separate empirical essays. While Essay 1, "Prepaying Less is Preferable to Saving More: The Role of Pain of Prepayment Aversion in Social Coupon Purchasing Decision", focuses on opening a SC mental account (i.e., cost incurred), Essay 2, "Superfluous Spending: The Role of Neglected Mental Budget Depletion in Spending Decision when Redeeming Social Coupons", focuses on closing a SC mental account (i.e., benefit received). Essay 1 explored why consumers purchase SCs featuring a low-implausible face value (i.e., a face value that is lower than the normal price range expected by consumers for a particular type of service)? Findings across five experiments revealed that consumers' likelihood of purchasing SCs featuring a low-implausible (vs. plausible) face value was greater when a coupon price for SCs featuring a low-implausible face value was lower than willingness-to-prepay for a SC (WTPP-SC), while a coupon price for SCs featuring a plausible face value was higher than WTPP-SC. Furthermore, consumers' likelihood of purchasing SCs featuring a low-implausible face value was greater when a coupon price was lower (vs. higher) than WTPP-SC. Pain of prepayment (i.e., the disutility/imputed cost, painful feeling, generated from the thought of prepaying amount of money required for a SC) aversion was an underlying process. That is, consumers experienced greater pain of prepayment when a coupon price was higher (vs. lower) than WTPP-SC. Pain of prepayment, in turns, negatively influenced consumers' likelihood of purchasing SCs featuring a low-implausible face value. Moreover, consumers' likelihood of purchasing such SCs was greater when time pressure was present (vs. absent) and when semantic cues were abstract (vs. concrete). Finally, when being exposed to multiple SC deals for the same service, which vary in terms of face value plausibility (Option 1: low-implausible face value vs. Option 2: plausible face value), consumers were more likely to choose a SC deal featuring a low-implausible face value (Option 1) when a coupon price for a SC deal featuring a low-implausible face value was lower than WTPP-SC but a coupon price for a SC deal featuring a plausible face value (Option 2) was higher than WTPP-SC. In contrast, when coupon prices for both SC deal options were lower than WTPP-SC, consumers were more likely to choose a SC deal featuring a plausible face value (Option 2). Essay 2 explored why consumers spend a great additional amount of money beyond a SC face value? Findings across three experiments revealed that the amount of money spent beyond a SC face value was greater when consumers redeem SCs featuring a low-implausible (vs. plausible) face value. Neglected mental budget depletion (i.e., the instance in which consumers neglect the fact that the budget assigned to a particular SC mental account as a spending self-control is already depleted) was an underlying process. That is, consumers had a greater tendency to neglect mental budget depletion when redeeming SCs featuring a low-implausible (vs. plausible) face value. Neglected mental budget depletion, in turns, positively influenced the amount of money spent beyond a SC face value. Furthermore, concrete (vs. abstract) semantic cues and far (vs. near) distance between purchasing and redeeming a SC intensified neglected mental budget depletion effect, which in turns, increased the amount of money spent beyond a SC face value when redeeming SCs featuring a low-implausible face value. In conclusion, this dissertation provides theoretical insights on consumers' psychological responses, and their behavioral responses toward SCs during two SC stages, which results in sub-optimal SC decision-makings: (1) purchasing SCs featuring a low-implausible face value (Essay 1); and (2) spending additional money beyond a SC face value when redeeming SCs at a service retailer (Essay 2). The empirical findings across two essays add to the growing body of the literature in price promotions, specifically SCs. This dissertation also provides managerial insights regarding how managers can design and strategically implement SC campaigns that can maximize the number of SC being purchased and the great amount of money consumers spend beyond a SC face value when they redeem a SC at a service retailer.

The English used in Malaysia is one of the varieties of New Englishes and this variety has emerged due to the spread of English around the world (Platt, et al., 1983; Pillai, 2006). In the case of Malaysia, Malay is the national language and standard English exists to be the language of an elite (Bao, 2006), also as a language of interaction. Over years of playing its various roles as a language of interaction, there has emerged a variety of English that is distinctively Malaysian (Asmah, 1992). Baskaran (2002) points out that English is now adopted and adapted in the linguistic ecology of Malaysia, and all Malaysians should be proud of it with all its local ‘nuances and innuendos’. Malaysian English today is ‘a rich tapestry of a typical transplanted variety of English’. Malaysian English (ME) is one of the new varieties of English, with some distinct features include the localized vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar as well as pragmatic features (Pillai, 2006; Pillai and Fauziah, 2006, p.39). The present study has embarked on a specialised study of vocabulary. In particular, it examined the English collocations produced by non-native speaker English users in Malaysia. The study provided insight into the nature of the internal norms of English used in Malaysia to see how these English restricted collocations being used by this group of learners. The investigation focused on the learners’ productive knowledge of Verb-Noun collocations of their written English with the impact of exposure and frequency. Nesselhauf (2003) has the opinion that verb-noun combinations are the most frequently mistaken so they should perceive particular attention of learners. Investigating collocation in English language learning is paramount as such study may inform us on the use of restricted collocations in English language teaching and learning in Malaysian context. The findings in Chapter 4 and 5 suggest that the frequency of the cloze verb does have an effect as predicted by Kuiper, Columbus and Schmitt (2009). This is so because frequency is a measure of likely exposure. The more frequent an item is in corpora, the more likely a learner is to be exposed to it. What is needed is a much more nuanced notion of exposure. The findings in Chapter 6 proves that the malformed collocations make sense could be a way of making the World English perspective relevant after all. A new testing approach is proposed; semantic plausibility metric, which is used as a tool for this study, can be useful used as a measure of vocabulary acquisition as well as looking at learners’ test taking strategies. The findings of the present research on Malaysian English collocations contribute new knowledge to the existing understanding and literature on the acquisition of collocations.

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Several theories have been used to capture the trend of a general decline in religiosity in Western Europe. The main assumption in most of these theories is that religiosity amongst the public has shifted towards a more private and individual form of belief that refrains from the traditional church-based belief. Contemporary Sweden is often singled out as a country where the secularization process has gone particularly far. The earliest results indicating a decline in church-oriented religiosity in Sweden goes back to 1955. The aim of this study is to investigate the Swedish public's religiosity and attitude towards the Church of Sweden's attempts at religious profiling in the early post-war period. The empirical data consists of a public opinion poll concerning the state-church and Christianity that was carried out in 1948. The result of the study indicates that only a minority of the Swedish public at the time subscribed to a church-based religiosity. Religion was increasingly seen as a private matter, a trend that becomes even clearer if one considers how the Swedes who participated in the opinion poll related to the Church of Sweden’s attempts to clarify its core beliefs.

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Coherence describes the validity of the internal rules that drive the behaviors of a virtual environment (VE) in presenting a credible scenario. A VR system with a high level of coherence could lead to strong plausibility illusion, which is a key component of the sense of presence. There are few existing studies centered around coherence, and they tend to put the user in a passive role when experiencing the VE without emphasizing on their active participation in the interaction. This dissertation makes up this gap by connecting the concept of coherence with fundamental 3D user interface design that focuses on the algorithms that map the user's actions to the VE's behaviors. Specifically, we inspect the design of coherent interactions for two complicated tasks, namely travel and object manipulation. For travel, we propose a family of redirected walking techniques called "narrative driven cell-based redirection", which lets the user traverse a VE that's much larger than the physical space without breaking the coherence of the scenario. For object manipulation, we propose the novel concept of physics coherence to capture whether an interface conforms to the rules of physics and design several novel techniques that try to balance between physics coherence and usability. Together, we provide some useful tools for designing coherent interactions and discuss how coherence affects user experience in VR interaction. / Doctor of Philosophy / To create a virtual reality (VR) experience that feels plausible, it’s important to consider the validity of the internal rules that drive the behaviors of the virtual environment (VE), which we call “coherence” of a VR system. We discuss how to support coherence in two types of fundamental VR interaction. The first one is travel, which concerns moving the viewpoint around following the user’s intention. For this task, we propose a family of novel interaction techniques called “narrative driven cell-based redirection”, which lets the user traverse a VE that’s much larger than the physical space without breaking the coherence of the scenario. The second one is object manipulation, which is about controlling a virtual object using hand input. For this task, we propose the novel concept of physics coherence to capture whether the interaction conforms to the rules of physics and design several novel techniques that try to balance between physics coherence and controllability. Together, we provide some useful tools for designing coherent interactions and discuss how coherence affects user experience in VR interaction.

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