Natural language is characterised by enormous linguistic variation (e.g., Fetzer (2003)). Such variation is not random, but is determined by a number of contextual factors. These factors encapsulate the socio-cultural conventions of a speech community and dictate the socially acceptable, i.e. polite, use of language. Producing polite language may not always be a trivial task. The ability to assess a situation with respect to a hearer’s social, cultural or emotional needs constitutes a crucial facet of a speaker’s social and linguistic competence. It is surprising then that it is also a facet which, to date, has received very little attention from researchers in the natural language generation community. Linguistic variation occurs in all linguistic sub-domains including the language of education (Person et al., 1995). Thanks to being relatively more constrained (and hence more predictable with respect to its intentional aspects than normal conversations), teachers’ language is taken in this thesis as a starting point for building a formal, computational model of language generation based on the theory of linguistic politeness. To date, the most formalised theory of linguistic politeness is that by Brown and Levinson (1987), in which face constitutes the central notion. With its two dimensions of Autonomy and Approval, face can be used to characterise different linguistic choices available to speakers in a systematic way. In this thesis, the basic idea of face is applied in the analysis of teachers’ corrective responses produced in real one-to-one and classroom dialogues, and it is redefined to suit the educational context. A computational model of selecting corrective responses is developed which demonstrates how the two dimensions of face can be derived from a situation and how they can be used to classify the many linguistic choices available to teachers. The model is fully implemented using a combination of naive Bayesian Networks and Case-Based Reasoning techniques. The evaluation of the model confirms the validity of the model, by demonstrating that politeness-based natural language generation in the context of teachers’ corrective responses can be used to model linguistic variation and that the resulting language is not singnificantly different from that produced by a human in identical situations.

This study was designed to assess the effect of Situational context on the playful behaviors of young preschool children ages 18 to 24 months. Playfulness was defined as a psychological construct involving the disposition of play (Rogers, Meeks, Impara, & Frary, 1987). Playful behaviors were observed and coded from videotapes of toddlers interacting with a teacher/experimenter in both assisted play and direct instruction conditions. The research question addressed was as follows: What is the effect of situational context (teacher interaction style) on the playful behaviors of toddlers as measured by the Playful Behaviors Observation Inventory (PBOI)? Data were analyzed using a 2 x 2 x 2 (Condition x Order x Gender) analysis of variance with repeated measures. In the direct instruction condition, children accomplished goals in more varied ways, invented more uses of objects, and attended longer than in the assisted play condition. Those who received the direct instruction condition first also persisted longer at goals than those who received the assisted play condition first. Although pretend play rarely occurred, the number of times children engaged in pretend play was also higher in the direct instruction condition than in the assisted play condition. Results of PBOI scales correlated with age showed an interesting pattern which was not significant but indicated a relationship between age and playfulness. Findings suggest that toddlers are more playful in direct instruction than in assisted play. However, it is difficult to determine from this study if direct instruction is developmentally appropriate for very young preschool children since the children in the late sensorimotor period are in a transitional period of development. It is possible that direct instruction was beneficial because of the age of the children in this study. Toddlers learn through repetition and imitation and need more direction. Results indicate that context has an important role and that imitation, not play, is characteristic of toddlers during the late sensorimotor period. / Ph. D.

Recent studies have shown that different free will beliefs affect moral behavior. The purpose of the current study was to investigate whether different free will beliefs also influence moral judgment. College students (N = 56) were randomly assigned to one of three framing manipulations: free will, determinism, or neutral. They then read three morally questionable scenarios that differed by situational context. Following each scenario, participants completed a moral judgment questionnaire that measured four moral constructs: moral evaluation, moral responsibility, justification, and punishment. Finally, participants completed a Free Will & Determinism Questionnaire (FWD-Q) that measured their lay beliefs in free will and determinism. For analysis, we grouped participants according to their reported FWD-Q scores into one of three groups: free will, determinism, or compatibilism. We found that different free will beliefs influenced moral judgment to a small degree, but not in the ways that we predicted. Our results show that situational context affects moral judgment much more than lay philosophical beliefs regarding free will. Future studies should examine whether this still holds true for older adults with more developed worldviews.

Public Self Service Technology (SST) has become an important part of our daily life. Advancement in technology and reduced hardware costs have motivated service providers to deploy public a SST for various important and complex tasks. Examples of such tasks include editing and printing confidential documents, performing monetary transactions, etc. These tasks requires a user to reveal his/her personal information to a public SST. The major problem while performing these tasks using a public SST is that the user has to deal with many surrounding factors like social density, privacy and security, which might affect his/her trust towards the SST and in turn the user might refrain from using it. This study aims to find different factors that can enhance user’s trust towards a public SST, encourage to use it and complete the task even if it requires user’s personal information.The in-depth interview method was adopted for the study to learn twelve interviewees’ experience with varied public SSTs that specifically handles personal information, in an urge to understand interviewees’ behaviour, underlying motivations and desires to use those public SSTs. Analysing the data collected from interviews, ten trust factors were found that emerge at various stages of interaction with a public SST. They were categorized into pre-interaction, on-interaction and post-interaction factors based on their time of interaction. Beyond the trust factors, three additional important factors have emerged from interview data, which motivates users to adopt public SSTs. They are usefulness, convenience and personality-based trust. The results may be valuable for researchers who are focusing on different aspects of trust and any public artefact as well as for service providers and designers to design a trustworthy public SST. Based on the results, some practical implications for designing public SSTs are also presented. / Offentlig självbetjäningsteknik (eng. Public Self Service Technology) har blivit en viktig del av vårt dagliga liv. Förbättring i teknik och minskade hårdvarukostnader har motiverat tjänsteleverantörer att distribuera offentliga SST för olika viktiga och komplexa uppgifter. Exempel på sådana uppgifter är att redigera och skriva ut konfidentiella dokument, utföra monetära transaktioner etc. Dessa uppgifter kräver att en användare delar med sig av personlig information till en offentlig SST. Det stora problemet med att utföra dessa uppgifter med hjälp av SST är att användaren måste hantera många omgivande faktorer som social täthet, integritet och säkerhet, vilket kan påverka personens förtroende mot SST och i sin tur kananvändaren avstå från att använda den. Följaktligen syftar denna studie till atthitta olika faktorer som kan öka användarnas förtroende mot offentliga SST, uppmuntra att använda dem och slutföra uppgifter även om det kräver användarens personuppgifter.En djupintervjumetod användes i studien för att lära sig om tolv testdeltagares erfarenhet av olika offentliga SST, specifikt de som hanterar privat information, i en strävan att förstå deltagarnas beteende, underliggande motivation och önskemål att använda dessa offentliga SST. Analys av de uppgifter som samlats in från intervjuer, upptäckte tolv förtroendefaktorer som uppstår vid olika stadier av interaktion med en offentlig SST. De var därför uppdelade i pre-interaktion, interaktionsoch post-interaktionsfaktorer. Från intervjuerna har ytterligare tre viktiga faktorer upptäckts som motiverar användarna att använda offentliga SST. De är användbarhet, bekvämlighet och personlighetsbaserat förtroende. Resultaten är värde-fulla för forskare som fokuserar på olika aspekter av förtroende och offentligaartefakter samt för tjänsteleverantörer och designers för att utforma en pålitlig offentlig SST. Baserat på resultaten presenteras också några praktiska konsekvenser för utformningen av offentliga SST.

Cette thèse a pour objet la proposition relative dans les textes littéraires du Moyen Âge français. Partant de l’hypothèse que ses emplois, en particulier dans la chanson de geste où elle apparaît comme formule, sont subordonnés, dans une certaine mesure du moins, au contexte situationnel de l’énonciation in praesentia (ou la profération) des textes au cours de la période médiévale, nous observons ses autres emplois, dans d’autres genres également, pour éprouver l’utilité de l’approche pragmatico-énonciative appliquée à des problèmes d’ordre essentiellement syntaxique. Le résultat principal de cette étude est d’avoir montré que la combinaison de l’approche pragmatico-énonciative avec l’approche sémantico-syntaxique traditionnelle est susceptible d’apporter des éclaircissements importants sur les formes et le fonctionnement de constructions syntaxiques qui n’ont apparemment pas trait à des faits discursifs et qui se situent dans un état de langue ancien. / This thesis has as its subject the relative clause in the literary texts of the French Middle Ages. Setting forth from the hypothesis that the clause’s uses, in particular in the chanson de geste where it appears as formula, are subordinated, at least to a certain degree, to the situational context of enunciation in praesentia (or of vocalisation) of the texts during the medieval period, we examine its other uses, in other genres as well, in order to test the usefulness of the pragmatic-enunciative approach when applied to issues that are essentially syntactic. As main outcome of this investigation we proved that combining the pragmatic-enunciative approach with the semantic-syntactic one could lead to important clarifications regarding form and functioning of syntactic constructions which have no apparent relation to discursive factors and pertain to an older state of language.

<p>Research and development on vehicle safety has lately started to direct its focus towards how to actively support the driver and make it easier for her to drive safely through letting Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have effect on how the driver interacts with the vehicle and the surrounding traffic. This requires research on both how the driver and vehicle perform in different situations, in terms of psychology, cognition and individual differences. In addition, physical limitations and requirements of the driver and the vehicle must be taken into account. Therefore scenarios for evaluation of these systems are required. In the area of user-centered design a rather new method, Personas, is being adopted. This thesis tries to explore if the Persona method is a viable tool for creating scenarios for such evaluations. Experiences after completing this work imply that personas indeed is a viable way to include aspects and raise issues concerning individual variability and situational context in ADAS scenarios.</p>

Mineral projects in the global South have been subjected to increasing opposition, especially from adjacent communities, ultimately forcing some firms to abandon government-permitted and financially viable projects. Consequently, the mining literature has become saturated with prescriptions for firms seeking to engage with impacted communities. This literature is limited in that: it has primarily focused on conflict-ridden situations; the role of context has been largely ignored; and there has been little validation of what works and why. This thesis responds to these limitations through an assessment of the Canadian firm Kinross Gold at Paracatu, Brazil, where company-community relations have seemingly been healthy for years. Kinross has exerted considerable effort to engage with the community through several initiatives. While not all initiatives have been effective, community relations are strong, especially when compared to other foreign-owned mines in Latin America. However, Paracatu also boasts a diversified economy, and positive population and governance characteristics. This research shows that both context and company practice are important in determining company-community relations.

Research and development on vehicle safety has lately started to direct its focus towards how to actively support the driver and make it easier for her to drive safely through letting Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have effect on how the driver interacts with the vehicle and the surrounding traffic. This requires research on both how the driver and vehicle perform in different situations, in terms of psychology, cognition and individual differences. In addition, physical limitations and requirements of the driver and the vehicle must be taken into account. Therefore scenarios for evaluation of these systems are required. In the area of user-centered design a rather new method, Personas, is being adopted. This thesis tries to explore if the Persona method is a viable tool for creating scenarios for such evaluations. Experiences after completing this work imply that personas indeed is a viable way to include aspects and raise issues concerning individual variability and situational context in ADAS scenarios.

Although interpersonal violence is the leading cause of nonnatural death among adolescents in South Africa, research is limited. This thesis examined homicides among adolescents (15-19 years) in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, during the period 2001 to 2009. It aimed to describe the incidence and epidemiology; depict the situational contexts based on victim, offender and event characteristics, and to develop a situational typology of adolescent homicides; and to identify the structural factors associated with neighbourhood levels of adolescent homicide within the city. Four separate studies were conducted using data from the National Injury Mortality Surveillance System (NIMSS), police case records, and Census 2001. The results revealed an average annual homicide rate of 23.4/100 000, with firearm homicides decreasing considerably over the study period, while homicides due to sharp instruments and blunt force increased. The epidemiological results highlighted the vulnerability of male, and black and coloured adolescents. The typological analysis identified three categories of adolescent homicide, namely: 1) male victims killed by strangers during a crime-related event; 2) male victims killed by a friend/acquaintance during an argument; and 3) female victims killed by male offenders, and indicates the need for multiple and focused prevention strategies. Alcohol use was also prevalent, with 39% of the victims tested having positive blood alcohol concentrations (BAC). The characteristics found to be associated with alcohol-related homicides, specifically, male victims killed with sharp instruments in public places, over the weekends and during the evenings, and by a friend/acquaintance draw attention to both the harmful pattern of intoxication-oriented drinking and the risky situational contexts in which adolescents consume alcohol. Finally, the results also showed that the incidence of male and female adolescent homicides was greater in neighbourhoods characterised by poverty and deprivation, while female adolescent homicides were also higher in neighbourhoods marked by high concentrations of households where children were not living with their parents. Overall the results point to the urgent need for a comprehensive prevention strategy that targets adolescents, their families and communities, and also addresses weapon availability, alcohol use, and issues of masculinity and gender to reduce homicides among adolescents. / D. Litt et Phil. (Psychology)

Although interpersonal violence is the leading cause of nonnatural death among adolescents in South Africa, research is limited. This thesis examined homicides among adolescents (15-19 years) in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa, during the period 2001 to 2009. It aimed to describe the incidence and epidemiology; depict the situational contexts based on victim, offender and event characteristics, and to develop a situational typology of adolescent homicides; and to identify the structural factors associated with neighbourhood levels of adolescent homicide within the city. Four separate studies were conducted using data from the National Injury Mortality Surveillance System (NIMSS), police case records, and Census 2001. The results revealed an average annual homicide rate of 23.4/100 000, with firearm homicides decreasing considerably over the study period, while homicides due to sharp instruments and blunt force increased. The epidemiological results highlighted the vulnerability of male, and black and coloured adolescents. The typological analysis identified three categories of adolescent homicide, namely: 1) male victims killed by strangers during a crime-related event; 2) male victims killed by a friend/acquaintance during an argument; and 3) female victims killed by male offenders, and indicates the need for multiple and focused prevention strategies. Alcohol use was also prevalent, with 39% of the victims tested having positive blood alcohol concentrations (BAC). The characteristics found to be associated with alcohol-related homicides, specifically, male victims killed with sharp instruments in public places, over the weekends and during the evenings, and by a friend/acquaintance draw attention to both the harmful pattern of intoxication-oriented drinking and the risky situational contexts in which adolescents consume alcohol. Finally, the results also showed that the incidence of male and female adolescent homicides was greater in neighbourhoods characterised by poverty and deprivation, while female adolescent homicides were also higher in neighbourhoods marked by high concentrations of households where children were not living with their parents. Overall the results point to the urgent need for a comprehensive prevention strategy that targets adolescents, their families and communities, and also addresses weapon availability, alcohol use, and issues of masculinity and gender to reduce homicides among adolescents. / D. Litt et Phil. (Psychology)