The purpose of this study was to examine the effect on college students of an Assertive Training program that combined Rational Emotive Therapy with behavioral techniques. Assertiveness was measured by ascendance-submission (A-S Reaction Study), dominance (Edwards Personal Preference Schedule), and fear (Fear Survey Schedule).Prior to the group training the 135 volunteers, through the technique of stratified random sampling, were placed in two experimental groups and one control group at Ball State University and two experimental groups and one control group at Butler University. At the time of the group training, at Ball State University eight subjects participated in the experimental groups of the study and at Butler University 22 subjects participated in the experimental groups of the study. The experimental group at Ball State University (5 males and 3 females) and the experimental group at Butler University (8 males, 14 females) participated in a primarily verbal Assertive Training workshop lasting for two hours one night a week for four weeks. The experimental groups participated in an Assertive Training model which included a theoretical and cognitive presentation of the theory of Assertive Training and of Rational Emotive Therapy. The techniques of modeling, rehearsal/role-playing, and feedback were utilized. The control group was placed on a waiting list and contacted a week before the fifth and final session to take the post-tests. The members of the control group were not notified that they were members of the control group.The A-S Reaction Study, the Dominance Scale from the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule, and Fear Survey Schedule, were administered to the experimental and control subjects at the conclusion of the training period.The Ball State University sample was eliminated from the study because the procedures used by the facilitators departed from the original research design and, thus, made them non-comparable.The instruments were scored and the three scales (A-SRS, Dominance Scale from EPPS, and FSS) were subjected to a multivariate analysis of variance. The F value whichwas obtained for treatment between groups (3.9992) was statistically significant at the .05 level. Since the HO (1) null hypothesis: There will be no difference between the vector of the means of the experimental groups and the control groups on the total score of the A-S Reaction Study, the Dominance Scale of the Edwards Personal. Preference Schedule, and the total score of the Fear Survey Schedule--was rejected, further analysis of the data was performed using univariate analysis of variance. An F value (8.7028 significant at the .05 level) was obtained for the variable, dominance. Therefore, a conclusion can be made that dominance contributes to the overall rejection of the H0 (1) (treatment). The F values which were obtained for sex (1.0336) and treatment x sex (2.3617) were not significant at the .05 level. Therefore, the H0 (2) null hypothesis--There will be no difference between the vector of means of the males and the means of the females--were not rejected.A correlation study was made in order to assess the degree of relationships between the instruments used in the study. The Dominance Scales score from the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule correlates with the A-S Reaction Study score (+.426938), and with the Fear Survey Schedule (-0220731). Also the A-S Reaction Study score correlates with the Fear Survey Schedule score (-.327414). While these correlations are not strong, they are sufficient to insure that the instrumentation assessed essentially the same construct, assertion.The findings from this study were:1. There was a significant difference found between the experimental group and the control group which was mainly due to theDominance Scale score on the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule.2. There was no significant difference found between males and females.3. In the intercorrelation study substantial relationships were found among the three instruments.A conclusion was drawn that college students can be taught to become more assertive in social interpersonal relationships by including rational-emotive procedures with behavioral techniques of Assertive Training.3

Providing a logical characterisation of rational agent reasoning has been a long standing challenge in artificial intelligence (AI) research. It is a challenge that is not only of interest for the construction of AI agents, but is of equal importance in the modelling of agent behaviour. The goal of this thesis is to contribute to the formalisation of agent reasoning by showing that the computational limitations of agents is a vital component of modelling rational behaviour. To achieve this aim, both motivational and formal aspects of resource-bounded agents are examined. It is a central argument of this thesis that accounting for computational limitations is critical to the success of agent reasoning, yet has received only limited attention from the broader research community. Consequently, an important contribution of this thesis is in its advancing of motivational arguments in support of the need to account for computational limitations in agent reasoning research. As a natural progression from the motivational arguments, the majority of this thesis is devoted to an examination of propositional approximate logics. These logics represent a step towards the development of resource-bounded agents, but are also applicable to other areas of automated reasoning. This thesis makes a number of contributions in mapping the space of approximate logics. In particular, it draws a connection between approximate logics and knowledge compilation, by developing an approximate knowledge compilation method based on Cadoli and Schaerf??s S-3 family of approximate logics. This method allows for the incremental compilation of a knowledge base, thus reducing the need for a costly recompilation process. Furthermore, each approximate compilation has well-defined logical properties due to its correspondence to a particular S-3 logic. Important contributions are also made in the examination of approximate logics for clausal reasoning. Clausal reasoning is of particular interest due to the efficiency of modern clausal satisfiability solvers and the related research into problem hardness. In particular, Finger's Logics of Limited Bivalence are shown to be applicable to clausal reasoning. This is subsequently shown to logically characterise the behaviour of the well-known DPLL algorithm for determining boolean satisfiability, when subjected to restricted branching.

Zugl.: Köln, Univ., Diss.

Zugl.: Trier, Fachhochsch., Diplomarbeit, 2006

Zugl.: Stuttgart, Univ., Diss., 2008

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität St. Gallen, 2002.

Thesis (master's)--Universität, Kassel, 1998.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Santa Cruz, 1995. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1991. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-216).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, 1987. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 116-123).