Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Affective state'

La modellazione di agenti che tiene conto di emozioni e stati affettivi costituisce un argomento di discussione piuttosto importante nell’ambito della simulazione ad agenti, soprattutto per via di come introdurre parametri affettivi nella modellazione possa contribuire a rendere le simulazioni più realistiche. In questo ambito di ricerca, però, il modo di introdurre nei modelli parametri in grado di regolare lo stato affettivo degli agenti per da influenzarne azioni e comportamenti è spesso basato sui modelli emozionali che si trovano in letteratura, oppure sulle teorie e i modelli fisici che vengono solitamente utilizzati per la modellazione di pedoni e folle. L’approccio presentato in questo lavoro, quindi, mira ad approcciare il problema dal punto di vista dei dati, puntando ad arrivare alla modellazione di agenti affettivi partendo da dati provenienti da persone reali ed acquisiti tramite esperimenti creati ad hoc con il preciso obiettivo di studiare reazioni e comportamenti da poter poi tradurre in modellazione. In particolare, in questo lavoro il problema viene affrontato concentrandosi in particolare sull’ambito pedonale, osservando diversi tipi di interazione coinvolgenti pedoni tramite quattro diversi esperimenti atti a raccogliere dati in grado di descrivere le interazioni operate dai soggetti per poi inserirle in un contesto di modellazione. Gli esperimenti vengono effettuati in vivo, in vitro e online, osservando le interazioni di pedoni con veicoli, ostacoli in movimento ed altri pedoni, raccogliendo dati riguardo queste diverse interazioni tramite dati fisiologici e questionari atti a profilare i partecipanti e a fornire maggiori informazioni riguardo al comportamento e alle reazioni da loro dimostrate. I dati raccolti vengono quindi utilizzati per la modellazione, prima in ambito di automi cellulari e poi, successivamente, nell’ambito dei sistemi multi-agente, mostrando come le informazioni ricavate dai dati vengano integrate all’interno dei modelli al fine di includere parametri affettivi che, in base ai valori assegnati, influenzino in un certo modo il comportamento degli agenti. Vengono poi proposte alcune simulazioni derivanti dai modelli, ai fini di osservare come i parametri affettivi introdotti influenzino il comportamento degli agenti in azione in determinate situazioni.
The modeling of agents involving emotions and affective states constitutes a relevant discussion topic in the research concerning multi-agent simulations, especially because of how the introduction of affective parameters inside the modeling process could effectively make the produced simulations more realistic. In this research area, though, the modality in which parameters regulating the affective state of agents are introduced into models, so that the agents’ behaviour and actions are influenced by them, is always based on emotional models found in literature, or on physics theories and models usually involved for the modeling of pedestrians and crowds. The approach this work presents, then, aims at tackling this problem from the point of view of data, thus wanting to get to affective agent modeling starting from data coming from real people, acquired through ad-hoc experiments with the precise goal of observing reactions and behaviour to be later translated inside a model. In particular, the focus of this work falls on the research on pedestrians and walkability, observing different types of interactions involving pedestrians through four different experiment through which gather data able to describe the participants’ interactions to then implement them in the modeling step. The proposed experiments are executed in-vivo, in-vitro and online, observing pedestrian interactions with vehicles, moving obstacles and other pedestrians, gathering data regarding these interactions through physiological data and questionnaires made for profiling purposes and in order to have more information regarding the subjects’ behaviour and reactions. The gathered data is then used for modeling, firstly from the point of view of cellular automata and then passing on to the multi-agent systems perspective, showing how the information obtained from the data is introduced inside the models to be parametrized in affective parameters that, depending on the assigned values, could influence in a certain way the behaviour of the agents. After that, some simulation instances derived from the models are presented, as to observe how the affective parameters that were introduced in the models actively influence the behaviour of agents acting and moving in certain situations.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-94).
As means of improving the ability of the computer to respond in a way that facilitates a productive and enjoyable learning experience, this thesis proposes a system for the automated recognition and dynamical analysis of natural occurring postures when a child is working in a learning-computer situation. Specifically, an experiment was conducted with 10 children between 8 and 11 years old to elicit natural occurring behaviors during a learning-computer task. Two studies were carried out; the first study reveals that 9 natural occurring postures are frequently repeated during the children's experiment; the second one shows that three teachers could reliably recognize 5 affective states (high interest, interest, low interest, taking a break and boredom). Hence, a static posture recognition system that distinguishes the set of 9 postures was built. This system senses the postures using two matrices of pressure sensors mounted on the seat and back of a chair. The matrices capture the pressure body distribution of a person sitting on the chair. Using Gaussian Mixtures and feed-forward Neural Network algorithms, the system classifies the postures in real time. It achieves an overall accuracy of 87.6% when it is tested with children's postures that were not included in the training set. Also, the children's posture sequences were dynamically analyzed using a Hidden Markov Model for representing each of the 5 affective states found by the teachers. As a result, only the affective states of high interest, low interest, and taking a break were recognized with an overall accuracy of 87% when tested with new postures sequences coming from children included in the training set. In contrast, when the system was tested with posture sequences coming from two subjects that were not included in the training set, it had an overall accuracy of 76%.
by Selene Atenea Mota Toledo.
S.M.

Cognitive affective bias and affective state have been extensively researched in humans. However, the majority of tasks cannot be translated to animal paradigms and contribute to the failing of novel drugs and the poor understanding of the aetiology of affective disorders. These biases have recently been observed in rodents, when a somewhat depressive state induced a negative judgement bias. The development of translational tasks capable of quantifying these biases across species would be a valuable tool. The aim of this project was to develop such tasks. The tasks used were, firstly, the affective tone discrimination task, in which both rats and humans discriminated tones-one predicting reward, one the avoidance of punishment. Ambiguous probe tones were used to assess judgement bias during psychopharmacological manipulation in rats and anxiety in humans. The second task translated a rodent successive negative contrast task into a human paradigm, the influence of an anxiety-like state on responses during the loss and gain of reward was investigated. Participants in the affective tone discrimination task tended to avoid punishment in response to ambiguity, which was related to state anxiety. The induction of acute anxiety slowed the identification of reward; no relationship with mood was observed. Rodents similarly tended to avoid punishment, which was not attenuated by acute drug treatment, although chronic treatment tended to reduce this bias. Acute treatment with reboxetine reduced the anticipation and motivation for reward. In the successive contrast task a positive contrast effect was observed, whilst the induction of an anxiety-like state also induced a negative contrast effect, although the underlying affective state was not correlated. These tasks detected changes in performance via affective state manipulations in humans and psychopharmacological administrations in rodents. This highlights the potential of translational tasks. Future studies are required to further validate these tasks and fully elucidate the influence of affective state.

Affective states of animals are emotions with positive or negative valance. Positive and negative affective states affect animal welfare, and can bias interpretation of information positively or negatively, respectively. Judgement bias tests measure affective states based on responses to ambiguous cues, intermediate to cues with learnt positive and negative outcomes. Responses closer to those of positive cues indicate positive affective state. However, animals need extensive training to learn initial associations to reference cues. Therefore, I here aimed to validate an alternative affective state test based on instinctive avoidance of patterns resembling eyespots. Responses to ambiguous eyespot cues similar to responses to full eyespot cues could indicate negative affective state. To test this, behavioural responses of red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) chicks to ambiguous cues from a validated judgement bias test were compared to responses to cues resembling eyespots. In a second cohort of birds, I developed simplified tests with only one ambiguous cue in each tests. I predicted that responses in both tests would correlate positively. In the original tests, shorter distance and latency to approach ambiguous cues correlated positively with latency to approach one of the eyespot cues, a full eyespot cue. This pattern was only observed in females. In the simplified tests, at 4 weeks of age, shortest latency to approach cues correlated among tests. This pattern was not observed when chicks were tested at 2 weeks of age. Overall, the eyespot test is a promising alternative affective state test, but further studies exploring sex- and age-effects, are needed.

There is an increased interest in the need for a noninvasive and nonintrusive biometric identification and recognition system such as Automatic Gait Identification (AGI) due to the rise in crime rates in the US, physical assaults, and global terrorism in public places. AGI, a biometric system based on human gait, can recognize people from a distance and current literature shows that AGI has a 95.75% success rate in a closely controlled laboratory environment. Also, this success rate does not take into consideration the effect of covariate factors such as affective state (mood state); and literature shows that there is a lack of understanding of the effect of affective state on gait biometrics. The purpose of this study was to determine the percent success rate of AGI in an uncontrolled outdoor environment with affective state as the main variable. Affective state was measured using the Profile of Mood State (POMS) scales. Other covariate factors such as footwear or clothes were not considered in this study. The theoretical framework that grounded this study was Murray's theory of total walking cycle. This study included the gait signature of 24 participants from a population of 62 individuals, sampled based on simple random sampling. This quantitative research used empirical methods and a Fourier Series Analysis. Results showed that AGI has a 75% percent success rate in an uncontrolled outdoor environment with affective state. This study contributes to social change by enhancing an understanding of the effect of affective state on gait biometrics for positive identification during and after a crime such as bank robbery when the use of facial identification from a surveillance camera is either not clear or not possible. This may also be used in other countries to detect suicide bombers from a distance.

This study aimed to examine the association between specific maternal characteristics (i.e., parents&rsquo
personality, depression, anxiety, affective state, and coping strategies) and childhood ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and Conduct Disorder (CD) symptoms in children with and without the diagnosis of ADHD. Method: Data was obtained from 231 subjects including mothers of 77 children who were just diagnosed by Child Mental Health Departments of Hacettepe University or IMGE Child Mental Health Center and 154 children without any psychiatric diagnosis, who were receiving education from Nebahat Keskin Elementary School. Among 154 non-diagnosed subjects the ones who match best with the 77 ADHD group participants were chosen, considering ages of the children, income of the family, and education of the mother. Results and Discussion: (1) Psychometric Characteristics of the TBFI and CARSS were examined. The internal consistency coefficients of the TBFI varied from .51 (for Agreeableness) to .75 (for Neuroticism) and all subscales of CARSS had moderate to high degree of internal consistencies ranging from .65 (Conduct Disorder) to .92. (e.g., Attention Deficit). Additionally, concurrent validity of TBFI and criterion validity of CARSS were studied. Results revealed that TBFI had sufficient internal consistency and validity, and also revealed that CARSS was a highly reliable and valid measure, successfully differentiating the diagnosed group from the non-diagnosed group on each subscale. (2) Group differences on maternal characteristics were examined. Compared to non-diagnosed children, children with ADHD had mothers with higher Depression symptoms, higher Negative Affect, higher Neuroticism, lower Positive Affect. (3) Regression analyses, which were conducted separately for each group and the whole group, revealed that different maternal characteristics were associated with symptoms of diagnosed and non-diagnosed children. In general while symptom levels of children, who have ADHD diagnosis, was associated with higher maternal Negative and lower Positive Affect and higher Depression and Anxiety symptoms, and lower Extraversion scores
symptom level of Comparison children was associated more with Conscientiousness. These differences were explained by means of the fit between maternal characteristics and vulnerability, lower tolerance, lower adaptation, and compensation skills of children with ADHD (when compared to Comparison group). Results addressed the importance of maternal factors regarding its association with presence, and the severity of ADHD and comorbid symptoms of children.

In an attempt to find out whether decreased blood sugar level is associated with impaired cognitive function, adverse emotional changes, or somatic symptoms, 36 subjects who believed or suspected that they had hypoglycemia were given 5-hour glucose tolerance tests (GTTs). After each of the nine blood samples taken during the GTT, the subject's mood, performance on the Serial Sevens Test (SST), and somatic symptom reports were recorded. The subjects reported significantly more negative affect after glucose nadir (the lowest level of blood sugar reached) than before nadir, and endorsed more somatic symptoms after nadir than before nadir. SST performance deteriorated at glucose nadir. All of these effects were more pronounced for subjects with high hypoglycemic index scores than for subjects with low index scores. The index is calculated from the speed and magnitude of the decrease in blood sugar, and the absolute value of the nadir. The impairment in SST performance was greater for subjects who showed rapid decreases in blood sugar than for subjects who showed slow decreases. Dividing subjects by high and low nadirs, large and small magnitudes of decrease, and by large and small decreases below fasting level, did not reveal any differences in symptomatology. It is concluded that changes in mood, reports of somatic symptoms, and inferior performance on a mental arithmetic task are associated with lowered blood sugar levels, especially in subjects with high hypoglycemic index scores.
Arts, Faculty of
Psychology, Department of
Graduate

[ES] Recientemente, hay una fuerte y creciente influencia de aplicaciones en línea en nuestro día a día. Más concretamente las redes sociales se cuentan entre las plataformas en línea más usadas, que permiten a usuarios comunicarse e interactuar desde diferentes partes del mundo todos los días. Dado que estas interacciones conllevan diferentes riesgos, y además los adolescentes tienen características que los hacen más vulnerables a ciertos riesgos, es deseable que el sistema pueda guiar a los usuarios cuando se encuentren interactuando en línea, para intentar mitigar la probabilidad de que caigan en uno de estos riesgos. Esto conduce a una experiencia en línea más segura y satisfactoria para usuarios de este tipo de plataformas. El interés en aplicaciones de inteligencia artificial capaces de realizar análisis de sentimientos ha crecido recientemente. Los usos de la detección automática de sentimiento de usuarios en plataformas en línea son variados y útiles. Se pueden usar polaridades de sentimiento para realizar minería de opiniones en personas o productos, y así descubrir las inclinaciones y opiniones de usuarios acerca de ciertos productos (o ciertas características de ellos), para ayudar en campañas de marketing, y también opiniones acerca de personas como políticos, para descubrir la intención de voto en un periodo electoral, por ejemplo. En esta tesis, se presenta un Sistema Multi-Agente (SMA), el cual integra agentes que realizan diferentes análisis de sentimientos y de estrés usando texto y dinámicas de escritura (usando análisis unimodal y multimodal), y utiliza la respuesta de los analizadores para generar retroalimentación para los usuarios y potencialmente evitar que caigan en riesgos y difundan comentarios en plataformas sociales en línea que pudieran difundir polaridades de sentimiento negativas o niveles altos de estrés. El SMA implementa un análisis en paralelo de diferentes tipos de datos y generación de retroalimentación a través del uso de dos mecanismos diferentes. El primer mecanismo se trata de un agente que realiza generación de retroalimentación y guiado de usuarios basándose en un conjunto de reglas y la salida de los analizadores. El segundo mecanismo es un módulo de Razonamiento Basado en Casos (CBR) que usa no solo la salida de los analizadores en los mensajes del usuario interactuando para predecir si su interacción puede generar una futura repercusión negativa, sino también información de contexto de interacciones de usuarios como son los tópicos sobre los que hablan o información sobre predicciones previas en mensajes escritos por la gente que conforma la audiencia del usuario. Se han llevado a cabo experimentos con datos de una red social privada generada en laboratorio con gente real usando el sistema en tiempo real, y también con datos de Twitter.com para descubrir cuál es la eficacia de los diferentes analizadores implementados y del módulo CBR al detectar estados del usuario que se propagan más en la red social. Esto conlleva descubrir cuál de las técnicas puede prevenir mejor riesgos potenciales que los usuarios pueden sufrir cuando interactúan, y en qué casos. Se han encontrado diferencias estadísticamente significativas y la versión final del SMA incorpora los analizadores que mejores resultados obtuvieron, un agente asesor o guía basado en reglas y un módulo CBR. El trabajo de esta tesis pretende ayudar a futuros desarrolladores de sistemas inteligentes a crear sistemas que puedan detectar el estado de los usuarios interactuando en sitios en línea y prevenir riesgos que los usuarios pudiesen enfrentar. Esto propiciaría una experiencia de usuario más segura y satisfactoria.
[CA] Recentment, hi ha una forta i creixent influència d'aplicacions en línia en el nostre dia a dia, i concretament les xarxes socials es compten entre les plataformes en línia més utilitzades, que permeten a usuaris comunicar-se i interactuar des de diferents parts del món cada dia. Donat que aquestes interaccions comporten diferents riscos, i a més els adolescents tenen característiques que els fan més vulnerables a certs riscos, seria desitjable que el sistema poguera guiar als usuaris mentre es troben interactuant en línia, per així poder mitigar la probabilitat de caure en un d'aquests riscos. Açò comporta una experiència en línia més segura i satisfactòria per a usuaris d'aquest tipus de plataformes. L'interés en aplicacions d'intel·ligència artificial capaces de realitzar anàlisi de sentiments ha crescut recentment. Els usos de la detecció automàtica de sentiments en usuaris en plataformes en línia són variats i útils. Es poden utilitzar polaritats de sentiment per a realitzar mineria d'opinions en persones o productes, i així descobrir les inclinacions i opinions d'usuaris sobre certs productes (o certes característiques d'ells), per a ajudar en campanyes de màrqueting, i també opinions sobre persones com polítics, per a descobrir la intenció de vot en un període electoral, per exemple. En aquesta tesi, es presenta un Sistema Multi-Agent (SMA), que integra agents que implementen diferents anàlisis de sentiments i d'estrés utilitzant text i dinàmica d'escriptura (utilitzant anàlisi unimodal i multimodal), i utilitza la resposta dels analitzadors per a generar retroalimentació per als usuaris i potencialment evitar que caiguen en riscos i difonguen comentaris en plataformes socials en línia que pogueren difondre polaritats de sentiment negatives o nivells alts d'estrés. El SMA implementa una anàlisi en paral·lel de diferents tipus de dades i generació de retroalimentació a través de l'ús de dos mecanismes diferents. El primer mecanisme es tracta d'un agent que realitza generació de retroalimentació i guia d'usuaris basant-se en un conjunt de regles i l'eixida dels analitzadors. El segon mecanisme és un mòdul de Raonament Basat en Casos (CBR) que utilitza no solament l'eixida dels analitzadors en els missatges de l'usuari per a predir si la seua interacció pot generar una futura repercussió negativa, sinó també informació de context d'interaccions d'usuaris, com són els tòpics sobre els quals es parla o informació sobre prediccions prèvies en missatges escrits per la gent que forma part de l'audiència de l'usuari. S'han realitzat experiments amb dades d'una xarxa social privada generada al laboratori amb gent real utilitzant el sistema implementat en temps real, i també amb dades de Twitter.com per a descobrir quina és l'eficàcia dels diferents analitzadors implementats i del mòdul CBR en detectar estats de l'usuari que es propaguen més a la xarxa social. Açò comporta descobrir quina de les tècniques millor pot prevenir riscos potencials que els usuaris poden sofrir quan interactuen, i en quins casos. S'han trobat diferències estadísticament significatives i la versió final del SMA incorpora els analitzadors que millors resultats obtingueren, un agent assessor o guia basat en regles i un mòdul CBR. El treball d'aquesta tesi pretén ajudar a futurs dissenyadors de sistemes intel·ligents a crear sistemes que puguen detectar l'estat dels usuaris interactuant en llocs en línia i prevenir riscos que els usuaris poguessen enfrontar. Açò propiciaria una experiència d'usuari més segura i satisfactòria.
[EN] In the present days, there is a strong and growing influence of on-line applications in our daily lives, and concretely Social Network Sites (SNSs) are one of the most used on-line social platforms that allow users to communicate and interact from different parts of the world every day. Since this interaction poses several risks, and also teenagers have characteristics that make them more vulnerable to certain risks, it is desirable that the system could be able to guide users when interacting on-line, to try and mitigate the probability of incurring one of those risks. This would in the end lead to a more satisfactory and safe experience for the users of such on-line platforms. Recently, interest in artificial intelligence applications being able to perform sentiment analysis has risen. The uses of detecting the sentiment of users in on-line platforms or sites are variated and rewarding. Sentiment polarities can be used to perform opinion mining on people or products, and discover the inclinations and opinions of users on certain products (or certain features of them) to help marketing campaigns, and also on people such as politics, to discover the voting intention for example in electoral periods. In this thesis, a Multi-Agent System (MAS) is presented, which integrates agents that perform different sentiment and stress analyses using text and keystroke dynamics data (using both unimodal and multi-modal analysis). The MAS uses the output of the analyzers for generating feedback for users and potentially avoids them from incurring risks and spreading comments in on-line social platforms that could lead to the spread of negative sentiment or high-stress levels. Moreover, the MAS incorporates parallelized analyses of different data types and feedback generation via the use of two different mechanisms. On the one hand, a rule-based advisor agent has been implemented, that generates feedback or guiding for users based on the output of the analyzers and a set of rules. On the other hand, a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) module that uses not only the output of the different analyzers on the messages of the user interacting, but also context information from user interactions such as the topics being talked about or information about the previous states detected on messages written by people in the audience of the user. Experiments with data from a private SNS generated in a laboratory with real people using the system in real-time, and also with data from Twitter.com have been performed to ascertain the efficacy of the different analyzers implemented and the CBR module on detecting states of the user that propagate more in the network, which leads to discovering which of the techniques is able to better prevent potential risks that users could face when interacting, and in which cases. Significant differences were found and the final version of the MAS incorporates the best-performing analyzer agents, a rule-based advisor agent, and a CBR module. In the end, this thesis aims to help intelligent systems developers to build systems that are able to detect the state of users interacting in on-line sites and prevent risks that they could face, leading to a more satisfactory and safe user experience.
This thesis was funded by the following research projects: Privacy in Social Educational Environments during Child-hood and Adolescence (PESEDIA), Ministerio de Economia y Empresa (TIN2014-55206-R) and Intelligent Agents for Privacy Advice in Social Networks (AI4PRI), Ministerio de Economia y Empresa (TIN2017-89156-R)
Aguado Sarrió, G. (2021). MAS-based affective state analysis for user guiding in on-line social environments [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/164902
TESIS

Implementation of previous U.S. standards-based education initiatives has been challenging due to, among other issues, the lack of common and consistent meaning of ‘proficiency’ among states. Implementing new education standards for educators means undertaking actions to understand the skills to be taught, develop curriculum, make curriculum more accessible to students, and effectively assess the skills being taught. This single-site qualitative collective case study investigated how three secondary in-service teachers and one secondary student teacher navigated implementation of the Common Core State Standards in a Midwestern rural secondary school.

This study explored the implications a diversifying workforce may have on employee attitudes, perceptions, and intention to leave the organization. Employee responses to an annual company survey (N=2838) were analyzed to determine whether demographic groups differed in perceptions of organizational support and supervisory communication, organizational commitment, and intention to leave. Demographic groups of interest included gender, job classification, and race. Age and tenure differences were also studied. The study also examined the relationship between perceived organizational support, affective commitment, perceived supervisory communication, and intention to leave. The predictive relationship between perceived organizational support, affective commitment, perceived supervisory communication, and employee demographics with intention to leave was also explored. Results of this study suggest that gender differences are diminishing in the current workforce. Further, it suggests that meaningful group differences are not prevalent in the sample analyzed. Affective commitment, perceived organizational support, and supervisory communication were shown to be positively related. Employees who intended to leave could not be consistently identified by their attitudes, perceptions, and demographic information using discriminant function analysis.

Thesis advisor: Jean M. Bartunek
Thesis advisor: Myeong-Gu Seo
My dissertation builds theory about gratitude at work. Drawing from Affective Events Theory, I suggest two different forms of gratitude: state gratitude and job gratitude. State gratitude refers to grateful moods or emotions which tend to last short term, whereas job gratitude refers to employees’ grateful attitudes particularly toward their jobs that tend to last longer. Empirically, I conducted three related studies. In the first study, I developed and validated the 7-item measure of job gratitude using a series of surveys that confirmed a satisfactory content and construct validity of the measure. Using an experience sampling procedure, in the second study I suggested and tested a theoretical model of state gratitude at work. A series of longitudinal surveys with 135 employees showed that state gratitude that is captured by a 3 week long daily survey is positively associated with in-role behaviors through the desire to reciprocate benevolence. My analyses also showed that the availability of extrinsic job rewards negatively moderates the positive impact of state gratitude on helping behaviors through the desire to reciprocate benevolence. Employees’ job dependency also negatively moderates the positive impact of state gratitude on both helping and in-role behaviors through the desire to reciprocate benevolence. The third study proposed and tested a theoretical model of job gratitude. My analyses showed that through the mechanism of intended help, job gratitude is positively associated with extra-role behaviors including helping behaviors, organizational citizenship behaviors directed to an organization, and voice behaviors. Taken together, my dissertation enriches theories in emotion literature by exploring a particular type of discrete, social, and moral emotions. My dissertation also contributes to gratitude literature outside of organizational studies, as it broadens the scope of impacts of gratitude in work contexts. Lastly, this dissertation contributes to Organizational Positive Scholarship by shedding light on the experiences of the recipients’ of prosocial behaviors
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016
Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management
Discipline: Management and Organization

hostility has been found to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. One proposed pathway between hostility and cardiovascular disease is an increase in cardiovascular reactivity among hostile individuals when faced with challenging, competitive situations, in which interpersonal stressors are present. A potential situation that may elicit this exaggerated reactivity is found in cardiac rehabilitation exercise programs. Such factors may be competition and feedback regarding their performance. This study sought to find out how hostile individuals would respond physiologically, behaviorally, and affectively when presented with negative and positive performance feedback, while exercising in a challenging, competitive setting. It was found that the three groups (positive feedback, negative feedback, no feedback) did not differ on physiological reactivity, exercise behavior, or affect as a result of the type of feedback they received. Limitations of the study are discussed and improvements for future studies are suggested.

Few experiences in life are as potentially stressful as living with a chronic, physical illness. Research suggests that the way in which individuals cope with illness has a direct effect on their future physical and psychological health and wellbeing (Fitzgerald Miller, 2000). Health care settings have traditionally had a one-dimensional focus where illness is framed as something negative residing within an individual. The main focus of treatment is the eradication of that negative state, with little therapeutic emphasis on positive states present within the individual (Gable & Haidt, 2005; Harris & Thoresen, 2006; Seligman, Rashid, & Parks, 2006). The current research addressed this deficiency by examining the impact that accentuating the positive can have for individuals living with chronic physical illness. A two-wave longitudinal study was conducted (N = 327) utilising three different illness samples (COPD, diabetes, and arthritis). Based on Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotion (2001) and the Dynamic Model of Affect (Zautra, Smith, Affleck, & Tennen, 2001), it was predicted that positive predispositions (gratitude, benefit-finding, and forgiveness), through their influence on affective state and breadth of coping repertoire, would moderate the relationship between illness and quality of life (QoL). It was also predicted that affective state would mediate relationships between the positive predispositions and QoL.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Applied Psychology
Griffith Health
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Esta tese apresenta uma pesquisa para detectar os alunos que evidenciam sinais de frustração em atividades de ensino e de aprendizagem na área de Algoritmos, para então, auxiliá-los com ações proativas de apoio. A motivação para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho advém da dificuldade dos alunos na aprendizagem dos conceitos e técnicas de construção de Algoritmos, que se constitui num dos principais fatores que levam os cursos de formação em Computação a atingir altas taxas de evasão. Na busca por diminuir tal evasão, esta pesquisa destaca a importância de considerar os estados afetivos dos alunos, procurando motivá-los a estudar e resolver suas dificuldades de entendimento da resolução de problemas usando como suporte os sistemas computacionais. Para fins de validação da pesquisa foi construída uma ferramenta para: a) inferir o estado afetivo de frustração do aluno durante a resolução dos exercícios de Algoritmos, b) ao detectar sinais associados à frustração, apresentar recursos de apoio ao aprendizado do aluno. A inferência da frustração ocorre a partir da análise das variáveis comportamentais produzidas pelas interações dos alunos com a ferramenta. O apoio consiste na exibição de um tutorial com a resolução passo a passo do exercício no qual o aluno apresenta dificuldades e na recomendação de um novo exercício com níveis de complexidade mais lineares aos conceitos trabalhados até aquele ponto da disciplina. A partir destas ações, pretende-se auxiliar a fazer com que a frustração do aluno possa ser transformada em uma oportunidade de aprendizado. Estudos de Caso foram realizados com alunos de Algoritmos do curso de Tecnologia em Análise e Desenvolvimento de Sistemas da Faculdade de Tecnologia Senac Pelotas durante os anos de 2011 e 2012. Para identificar os padrões de comportamento dos alunos foram utilizadas técnicas de Mineração de Dados. Os resultados dos experimentos demonstraram que evidências como, o alto número de tentativas de compilação de um programa sem sucesso, o grande número de erros em um mesmo programa ou a quantidade de tempo gasto na tentativa de resolver um algoritmo, podem estar relacionadas ao estado de frustração do aluno. Além disso, em um dos experimentos foi realizado um comparativo de pré e pós-teste que demonstrou importantes avanços no aprendizado dos alunos participantes da pesquisa.
This thesis presents a research work on the detection of students who show signs of frustration in learning activities in the area of algorithms, to then assist them with proactive support actions. Our motivation for the development of this work comes from students' difficulty in learning the concepts and techniques for building algorithms, which constitutes one of the main factors for the high dropout rates of computing courses. With the intent of giving a contribution to the reduction of such evasion, this research highlights the importance of considering students' affective states, trying to motivate them to study and work out their difficulties, with the assistance of computer systems. For research validation purposes, a tool was built to: a) infer the student’s affective state of frustration while solving exercises of algorithms; b) detect signs associated with frustration, to provide resources to support student learning. The inference of frustration comes from the analysis of behavioral variables produced by the interactions of students with the tool. The support consists in displaying a tutorial with a step by step solution for the exercise in which the student shows difficulties, and the recommendation of a new exercise with more linear levels of complexity than the concepts worked until that point in the course. With these actions, our intention is to turn student's frustration into a learning opportunity. Case studies were conducted with students of Algorithms at the Faculty of Technology Senac Pelotas, in 2011 and 2012. Data mining techniques were used to identify patterns of student behavior. The experiment results showed that evidence such as the high number of attempts to compile a program without success, the large number of errors in a program or even the amount of time spent trying to solve an algorithm, might be related to the student’s frustration state. Additionally, a pre and post-test comparison showed significant progress in students' learning.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Mississippi, 2008.
Typescript. Vita. "March 2008." Major professor: John P. Bentley and Alicia S. Bouldin Includes bibliographical references (leaves 151-163). Also available online via ProQuest to authorized users.

Domestic horses maintain many of their innate behavioural traits as a group-living, free-ranging herbivore that usually avoids predation by flight. Confinement, isolation, restraint, riding, training and exposure to management practices present a vastly different experience to their natural environment but the psychological need to respond to environmental factors may remain, even when the biological motivation has been removed. This disparity can lead to the development of physiological and behavioural abnormalities indicative of a negative affective state and poor welfare. The concept of animal welfare should include the animals’ physical and psychological health and harmony with their environment. There is an increasing call for subjective feelings and the assessment of emotion to be taken into account so that welfare can be enhanced by increasing the incidence of positive experiences and minimising negative ones. Reliably establishing the affective state of an animal is a challenging task but measuring physiology and behaviour in response to pleasant or unpleasant stimuli can provide evidence for the existence of affective state. Equine research has endeavoured to identify ‘reactivity’, temperament and emotionality but has not yet investigated underlying affective state in response to different stimuli, the existence of, or factors that might influence positive affective states. As such, there is no strong scientific knowledge of what equine emotional experiences are. Many physiological measures involve invasive procedures that contribute to the stress load of the individual and non-invasive methods often only determine the presence or absence of ‘stress’ or are dogged by interpretive problems. Heart rate variability (HRV) is a major growth area in the study of emotion and is an established parameter to quantify the state of the autonomic nervous system. Empirical evidence from human and animal research associates high levels of HRV with positive emotions and vice versa. This research aimed to evaluate the use of HRV alongside behavioural measurements as a non-invasive method of assessing affective state in horses. Equine HRV and behaviour were measured during anticipation of positive rewards (companionship and feeding), during a negatively valenced management procedure (sham-clipping), in four housing systems allowing increasing levels of social contact and potential factors affecting HRV were assessed. By exposing horses to housing and management conditions differing in their emotional valence it was possible to identify factors that significantly affected HRV and highlight incidences where a significant relationship existed between behaviour and HRV (significant if p≤0.05). Rewarding and contrasting circumstances were found to be significantly associated with HRV. Social interaction, ‘play’ behaviour and the provision of a haylage diet were all associated with high HRV whereas disruption to the horses’ leisure time was associated with low HRV. HRV provided an objective physiological measurement for interpreting behaviour and assessing underlying affective state; compliant behaviour in response to an aversive stimulus was not associated with low HRV and specific pre-feeding behaviours (behavioural transitions, ear movement and head nodding) could prove a useful indicator of negative affective state in future studies. Specific social and spatial factors significantly affecting HRV were also identified; tactile contact with neighbouring horses was related to high HRV and hay net position appeared to affect the horses’ capacity for environmental monitoring. A natural variation in HRV between equine sexes and between individuals was confirmed and changes in HRV were found to be situation-specific. It was possible to use these initial data to make suggestions for the establishment of a preferable habitat and management regime for horses. The importance of social interaction was highlighted, particularly ‘play’ behaviour. Horses housed in confinement and isolation may derive greater benefit from the ‘reward’ or contrast of social interaction than horses kept in more social conditions. Where negative experiences are encountered, these might be mitigated by rewarding with a preferred forage type and extending visual horizons towards neighbouring horses and the external environment. Ensuring that negative experiences are not prolonged or offsetting them with positive experiences could enhance quality of life. This study makes a unique contribution to equine welfare research as the use of HRV measurements to assess emotion in horses is a relatively new area of investigation. HRV was found to add vital physiological support to existing findings and although research of this nature is in its infancy, HRV appears to be a promising tool for assessing affective state and interpreting behavioural responses to stimuli in horses. There is extensive scope for further investigation into the use of HRV as a measure of emotional responses to management factors, environmental and ridden/training conditions in order to identify enjoyable or rewarding practices, so that the experience of positive emotion can be incorporated into management and training.

In commercial settings, broiler chickens and rainbow trout are housed in barren environments under high stocking densities, due to an emphasis on production efficiency. These monotonous housing conditions do not provide broilers or trout with the ability to perform functional, highly-motivated behaviors and increase their susceptibility to excessive anxiety and fear, resulting in negative affective states and poor animal welfare. Affective state (or emotional state) is a cumulative product of short-term life experiences, ranging from positive to negative. Because affective states are largely influenced by environmental condition, determining animal affective state can provide useful information on how to improve housing conditions in order to ensure positive experiences and good animal welfare. Cognitive processes are closely associated with affective state; a "cognitive bias" occurs when affective state influences aspects of cognition, such as judgement and attention. Animals in positive affective states make optimistically-biased decisions during ambiguous situations, judging the situation as if it will produce a positive outcome, and show less bias towards a perceived threat, responding in a less anxious and calm manner. Animals in negative affective states make pessimistically-biased decisions during ambiguous situations, judging the situation as if it will result in a negative outcome. Additionally, animals in negative affective states will bias their attention towards a perceived threat rather than alternative stimuli, responding in an anxious manner. Therefore, judgement and attention bias tests can be used to determine animal affective states. In Chapter 3, a judgement bias test was used to determine affective state of broiler chickens housed in either complex (perches, dust bath, pecking stones, and rotating enrichment objects) or barren (no enrichment) environments under either high or low stocking densities. Broilers housed in complex environments responded more optimistically during the judgement bias test than broilers from barren environments, indicating the former were in a positive affective state. Stocking density did not impact their responses in the judgement bias test, indicating that affective states were not impacted by that treatment. In Chapter 4, an attention bias test was used to determine level of anxiety and a tonic immobility test was used to determine fear in order to investigate affective state of broilers housed in the same conditions as described for Chapter 3. Broilers housed in complex environments were less anxious during the attention bias test than broilers from barren environments, indicating environmental complexity reduced anxiety in broilers. Stocking density did not impact anxiety. Broilers from high stocking density environments had shorter tonic immobility durations than broilers from low stocking density environments, suggesting the former were less fearful. Environmental complexity did not impact fearfulness. In Chapter 5, a judgement bias test was used to determine affective state of rainbow trout housed in either complex (shelter structure and artificial plants) or barren (no enrichment) tanks under either low or high stocking densities. Trout housed in high stocking density tanks responded optimistically during the judgement bias test, indicating they were in a more positive affective state compared to trout housed in low stocking density tanks. Environmental complexity did not impact their responses in the judgement bias test, indicating no effect of enrichments on affective states was found. These results indicate a beneficial relationship of a complex environment on broiler chicken affective state, observed through an optimistic judgement bias and reduced attention bias (anxiety) towards a perceived threat. Thus, providing a complex housing environment for broilers can improve their welfare and result in a positive affective state. Rainbow trout reared at the tested high density resulted in a positive affective state, although complexity did not benefit their welfare. Our results contribute much needed information on stocking densities to ensure fish welfare. Overall, environmental complexity, not stocking density, had a positive impact on broiler chicken affective states. Rainbow trout affective states were positively impacted by stocking density, but not environmental complexity.
Master of Science
Conventional housing of broiler chickens and rainbow trout (both raised for meat) causes concern for their welfare and affective states. Environmental conditions can greatly impact animals' affective states–their long-term emotional state, ranging from positive to negative. In barren environments at high stocking densities, broiler chickens and rainbow trout are prevented from showing normal behaviors and these conditions can compromise their affective state and welfare. By 'asking' chickens and trout whether the glass is half full or half empty, we can determine level of optimism or pessimism, and level of anxiety or calmness, therefore gaining a better understanding of their affective states. This can be done using a judgement bias test and attention bias test, where animal responses (optimism and anxiety) are recorded during ambiguous situations (judgement) and threatening situations (attention). Animals in positive affective states judge ambiguous situations optimistically (glass half full) and pay little attention towards perceived threats, while animals in negative affective states judge the same ambiguous situations pessimistically (glass half empty) and pay more attention towards perceived threats. In Chapter 3, responses to ambiguous situations were used to determine the affective state of broiler chickens housed in either enriched (perches, dust bath, pecking stones, rotating toys) or barren environments at either high or low stocking densities. Broiler chickens housed in enriched environments had an optimistic judgement bias of ambiguous situations (glass half full), suggesting they were in a more positive affective state compared to broilers housed in barren environments. Stocking density did not impact their level of optimism. In Chapter 4, responses to a perceived threat were used to determine level of anxiety and a tonic immobility test was used to determine fear of broilers housed under the same conditions as in Chapter 3. Broilers housed in enriched environments paid less attention to a perceived threat than broilers housed in barren environments, indicating the former were less anxious (glass half full) and in a positive affective state. Fear was not impacted by the tested enrichments, but birds kept under higher stocking densities did show reduced fear compared to birds in low-density environments. In Chapter 5, rainbow trout were housed in either enriched (shelter structure and artificial plants) or barren tanks at either high or low stocking densities. Affective state was evaluated through their responses to ambiguous situations. Trout housed in high stocking density environments had an optimistic judgement bias of ambiguous situations (glass half full), suggesting they were in a more positive affective state than trout housed in low stocking density environments. The enrichments did not impact their responses during the test, suggesting they did not impact fish optimism. These results indicate that an enriched environment improves broiler affective state and welfare compared to conventional housing conditions, the tested densities did not impact their welfare. Although an enriched environment did not positively impact responses of trout during ambiguous situations, our results show that housing rainbow trout in large groups results in a positive affective state and improved welfare status compared to housing trout in small groups. Overall, environmental enrichment, not stocking density, had a positive impact on broiler chicken affective states. Rainbow trout affective states were positively impacted by stocking density, but not environmental enrichment.

Background: Considering recent advances in the field of early detection and intervention in young people with increased levels of psychotic symptoms seeking help, this thesis proposes that early attachment insecurity triggers an inability to regulate emotional distress, to engage in positive interpersonal interactions with others, to use adaptive coping mechanisms and to manage social support appropriately. These constructs appear to be linked to psychosis; however, considering continuity between subthreshold psychotic symptoms and the later development of psychosis, it is vital to understand if these underlying affective and interpersonal mechanisms increase the risk of psychosis in help-seeking young people. Objectives: This study was cross-sectional and investigated the following research questions: 1) Does attachment insecurity signpost the risk of developing psychosis? 2) Do coping strategies, interpersonal difficulties, social support and emotional distress have an indirect effect on the relationship between attachment insecurity and the risk of developing psychosis? Methods: A total of 76 help-seeking young people were recruited from Community Mental Health Services in Edinburgh. All participants completed a number of questionnaires exploring their coping strategies, interpersonal problems, perceived social support and emotional distress. A semi-structured interview was undertaken, to assess their socio-demographic background. The Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States was administered and coded to assess their risk of psychosis and associated psychopathology, while path analysis was used to analyse the data and to address the research questions. Results: The profile of help-seeking young people in this sample (n=76) was made up of individuals with a moderate degree of difficulties in relation to coping strategies employed to manage stress and interpersonal problems dealing with others, moderate levels of emotional distress and discrepancies between their ideal and received social support. From the total help-seeking sample, the attachment dimensions anxiety and avoidance were relatively high. These young people were found to have had mild, psychotic-like experiences, especially in the domains associated with unusual thought content and perceptual abnormalities. When considering the subgroup of help-seeking young people with an at-risk mental state (ARMS) (n=46), the results revealed that this group had high levels of difficulties in interpersonal relationships, relied on non-productive coping strategies, presented emotional distress levels of clinical importance and also had discrepancies in their ideal and received social support. From the subsample of help-seeking young people with an ARMS the attachment dimensions anxiety and avoidance were reasonably high. These young people were found to have had moderately severe psychotic experiences, especially in the domains associated with unusual thought content and perceptual abnormalities. Path analysis revealed that attachment insecurity directly predicted psychotic symptoms in the total sample but not in the subgroup of young people with an ARMS. Emotional distress played a partially moderating role between attachment insecurity and the severity and distress associated with disorganised speech and perceptual abnormalities in the total sample but not when considering only those with an ARMS, while interpersonal problems did not mediate the relationship between attachment insecurity and the risk of psychosis in either group. Discrepancies between ideal and received social support fully mediated the relationship between attachment insecurity and the distress associated with disorganised speech in the total sample but not when considering those with an ARMS. The tendency to use less adaptive coping strategies was found to mediate directly the relationship between attachment anxiety and the distress associated with perceptual abnormalities in young people with an ARMS, albeit not in the total sample. Discussion: The clinical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed within the clinical staging model for intervention in psychosis. The findings strongly indicate that clinicians should take into consideration the mechanisms of attachment, coping strategies and social support, as well as the deleterious effects of associated emotional distress, when working with young people with increased levels of psychotic symptoms.

The explicit teaching of reading comprehension strategies has been proposed as a means to better prepare secondary school-aged students for today's information-dense, fast-paced, fast-changing global society, and to improve the academic performance of struggling adolescent readers. This proposition of a direct and positive impact of reading comprehension strategies on reading achievement for all students has not been investigated with English language learners (ELLs) who, by definition, do not possess the same level of English language skills as their native-English speaking peers. This mixed-method study investigated linguistic, cognitive, as well as affective factors that impact adolescent ELLs' performance on a standardized state reading achievement test. The quantitative portion examined the relative contributions of second language proficiency and reading comprehension strategies to a prediction model of reading achievement in 110 ninth and tenth grade ELLs. The qualitative portion of the study involved individual interviews and was aimed at deepening the understanding of ELLs' use of strategies during the standardized reading test, while also investigating affective factors that may impact their performance on this measure of academic achievement. Quantitative findings include two statistically significant prediction models of reading achievement with reading comprehension strategies and English language proficiency as predictor variables. However, only language proficiency made a significant unique contribution to the prediction variable. Qualitative findings suggest that the participants had relatively little metacognitive awareness of their comprehension during the standardized test, had overestimated their use of reading strategies as reported on a 30-item strategy survey instrument, had concentrated on sentence-level comprehension due to unknown vocabulary, and may have been hindered by testing anxiety in being able to wholly concentrate on the task. Recommendations made for the instruction of comprehension strategies consist of the raising of metacognitive awareness through the explicit modeling of the thought processes involved in reading comprehension, including determining the meaning of unknown words.
Ph.D.
Department of Educational Research, Technology and Leadership
Education
Education PhD

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This work aimed to investigate the existing links between the Internal Social Responsibiliy (ISR) and the Organizational Commitment. The practices on the Internal Social Responsibility considered herein were the social indications from ETHOS Institute of Companies and Social Responsibility, focusing the following points: dialogues and participation; human respect and decent work (ETHOS, 2006). This study has taken use of a documental and exploratory research(CERVO; BERVIAN, 1983). The research bibliography approached the social responsibility according to Ashley (2003), Mcintosh et al. (2001), Oliveira (2002), Srour (2003), and the organizational commitment with the authors Bastos et al. (1997), Bonavides, Oliveira e Medeiros (2006), Medeiros et al. (2005), Meyer e Herscovitch (2001). The documental research was a base for the research samples and for the identification of the developed actions held by the companies. The present research was done in two big companies in the areas of services: the sewage and water company in Cearà State(CAGECE) and Guanabara Transportation Company(GUANABARA), both winners of Delmiro Gouveia Award in social responsibility and in the social performance category. The data collection was done through a methodology of survey application divided in: elaboration of data collection, a series of ordered questions with three sets of RSI indices, and three bases of organizational commitment, where it was used Liket scale of variation from one to five to the answers. The questionnaire was answered by hand and was applied with two hundred and twenty operational level employees, divided in an equable way in the two companies. The presentation methods and the analysis of data expanded in three blocks: the first deals with the profile of the interviewees out of an arithmetic average and relative attendances; the second presents the main analysis of components through the factorial analysis which present the principal actions in RSI which produced commitment; and the third block deals with a comparative analysis involving the two companies. As instruments of process it was used the SPSS and the Excel programs. The results obtained in this research show that the internal social responsibility has a great influence in the organization commitment of the workers. The actions of the internal social responsibility which most influence in the expected commitment have a lot to do with the social index dialogue and participation, model quoted by Valladares, Leal Filho and Roman(2005); (GuimarÃes and Borges, Marques and Adorno(2005), and the model of commitment generated by these actions is the affectivity.
Este trabalho buscou investigar os vÃnculos existentes entre as prÃticas de responsabilidade social interna - RSI e o comprometimento organizacional. As prÃticas de responsabilidade social internas consideradas foram os indicadores sociais do Instituto Ethos de Empresas e Responsabilidade Social, enfocando os seguintes pontos: diÃlogo e participaÃÃo, respeito ao indivÃduo e trabalho decente (ETHOS, 2006). Este estudo caracteriza-se como uma pesquisa exploratÃria, descritiva e comparativa, apoiando-se em pesquisa bibliogrÃfica e documental (CERVO; BERVIAN, 1983). A pesquisa bibliogrÃfica abordou a responsabilidade social baseada nos autores Ashley (2003), Mcintosh et al. (2001), Oliveira (2002), Srour (2003) e o comprometimento organizacional com os autores Bastos et al. (1997), Bonavides, Oliveira e Medeiros (2006), Medeiros et al. (2005), Meyer e Herscovitch (2001). A pesquisa documental foi base para a definiÃÃo das amostras da pesquisa e para a identificaÃÃo das aÃÃes desenvolvidas pelas empresas. A pesquisa foi realizada em duas empresas de grande porte no ramo de serviÃos, a Companhia de Ãgua e Esgoto do Cearà - CAGECE e a Expresso Guanabara, ganhadoras do PrÃmio Delmiro Gouveia de Responsabilidade Social, na Categoria Desempenho Social 2006. A coleta de dados deu-se por meio da aplicaÃÃo de um survey, dividido em: elaboraÃÃo do instrumento de coleta de dados, sÃrie ordenada de perguntas, com trÃs blocos dos indicadores de RSI e as trÃs Ãncoras de comprometimento organizacional, adotando-se uma escala Liket de variaÃÃo de 1 a 5 para as respostas. O questionÃrio foi respondido por escrito e aplicado a 220 funcionÃrios de nÃvel operacional, divididos de forma igualitÃria nas duas empresas. Os mÃtodos de apresentaÃÃo e a anÃlise dos dados desenvolveram-se em trÃs blocos, o primeiro trata do perfil dos entrevistados a partir de uma mÃdia aritmÃtica e freqÃÃncias relativas, o segundo apresenta a anÃlise dos componentes principais, atravÃs da anÃlise fatorial, que apresenta as principais aÃÃes de RSI que geraram comprometimento, e o terceiro faz uma anÃlise comparativa entre as duas empresas; como instrumentos de processamento, foram utilizados os programas SPSS 10.0 e Excel. Os resultados obtidos indicam que a responsabilidade social interna tem grande influÃncia no comprometimento organizacional do trabalhador. As aÃÃes de responsabilidade social interna que exercem maior influÃncia no comprometimento partem do indicador social diÃlogo e participaÃÃo, modelo citado por Valladares, Leal Filho e Roman (2005); (GuimarÃes e Borges, Marques e Adorno (2005) e o modelo de comprometimento gerado por estas aÃÃes à o afetivo.

This empirical work aims to investigate the impact of using multimodal communication metaphors on e-learning systems’ usability, overall user experience and affective state. The study proposed a triple evaluation approach to avoid the problem of conventional assessment relying only on usability measurements of efficiency, effectiveness and user satisfactions. Usability in that sense refers only to the functionality and pragmatic side of the product and neglects other aspects of the system. Learning is a cognitive and repetitive task, requiring learners’ attention as well as their interest. Therefore, when delivering content, in addition to the pragmatic functionality, an e-learning system should provide a constructive overall user experience and positive affective state. Doing so will ensure user engagement, facilitate the learning process and increase learners’ performance. The impact of using five different communication metaphors was evaluated in three dimensions using the proposed approach. Within the usability dimension, the evaluation criteria involved measuring system efficiency, effectiveness, user satisfaction and learning performance. Within the user experience dimension, the evaluation criteria involved measuring pragmatic aspects of the user experience, the hedonic aspects of user experience in terms of stimulation as well as identification and the overall system attractiveness. Within the affective state dimension a self-assessments manikin technique was used in conjunction with biofeedback measurements, and users’ valence, arousal and dominance were measured. The study found that system attractiveness and the hedonic user experience had a profound impact on users’ learning performance and attitude toward the tested system. Furthermore, they influenced users’ views and judgement of the system and its usability. The communication metaphors were not equal in their influence within the evaluation criteria. Empirically derived guidelines were produced for the use and integration of these metaphors in e-learning systems. The outcome of the study highlights the need to use the triple evaluation approach in the assessment of e-learning interfaces prior to their release for better adoption and acceptance by end users.

Augmented reality (AR) has emerged as a new interactive technology that enables marketers to craft an immersive experience for customers. The technology complaints the physical environment with virtual objects, and thus have the unique power to put the (virtual) product in the hands of the consumer. This provides marketers with a new option for reaching out and engaging with customers. Although the AR market is estimated to grow exponentially by the year 2023, little is known about how AR-applications on smart devices influence customer experience. This thesis addresses the research gap by exploring how IKEA Place, an AR-application, influences customer experience. By using a conceptual framework of online customer experience we explore how different antecedents influence the experience with AR. Furthermore, the study also highlight the differences between a website and an AR-application, and thus give a more nuanced understanding about AR. As the majority of the research on AR-technology has a quantitative approach, this study was done through a qualitative study using a quasi-experimental design. The empirical result indicates that aesthetics, ease-of-use, telepresence and assortment influence customer experience extensively. Moreover, the result also suggests that hedonic value influences the augmented experience more than the utilitarian, and thus customers do not perceive the application to fulfil their utility needs.

Anger is commonly referred to in the context of aggressive behaviors. However, little is known about more nuanced effects of this emotion on behavior, nor its neural correlates as a subjective feeling state. For instance, several studies suggest that angry people, in contrast to anxious individuals, perceive risks optimistically. It remains unknown whether these opposing effects of trait anxiety and trait anger on risk perceptions manifest in a direct behavioral measure of risk taking. Our first experiment showed, as predicted, that high trait anxiety was associated with pessimism, whereas anger exerted an optimistic bias on likelihood perceptions. However, these biases did not translate into differences in risk taking behavior. Instead of optimism, impulsivity was highlighted as a mediator of risk proneness in individuals who tend to express anger. A second project investigated the neural basis of anger as an affective state elicited by emotionally evocative social scenes. Participants' attention was directed towards transgressors or their victim, which elicited feelings of anger and sadness respectively. These distinct emotions were associated with differential activity patterns in regions related to affective processing; the amygdala, insula and subgenual anterior cingulate cortex. Individual differences in trait empathy emerged as strong modulators of these activity patterns. In contrast, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex response to transgressors versus victims correlated positively with an individual's tendency to express anger, suggesting a role of this region in the regulation of angry feelings.

We present a set of easy-to-use methods and tools to analyze human attention, behaviour, and physiological responses. A potential application of our work is evaluating user interfaces being used in a natural manner. Our approach is designed to be scalable and to work remotely on regular personal computers using expensive and noninvasive equipment. The data sources our tool processes are nonintrusive, and captured from video; i.e. eye tracking, and facial expressions. For video data retrieval, we use a basic webcam. We investigate combinations of observation modalities to detect and extract affective and mental states. Our tool provides a pipeline-based approach that 1) collects observational, data 2) incorporates and synchronizes the signal modality mentioned above, 3) detects users' affective and mental state, 4) records user interaction with applications and pinpoints the parts of the screen users are looking at, 5) analyzes and visualizes results. We describe the design, implementation, and validation of a novel multimodal signal fusion engine, Deep Temporal Credence Network (DTCN). The engine uses Deep Neural Networks to provide 1) a generative and probabilistic inference model, and 2) to handle multimodal data such that its performance does not degrade due to the absence of some modalities. We report on the recognition accuracy of basic emotions for each modality. Then, we evaluate our engine in terms of effectiveness of recognizing basic six emotions and six mental states, which are agreeing, concentrating, disagreeing, interested, thinking, and unsure. Our principal contributions include the implementation of a 1) multimodal signal fusion engine, 2) real time recognition of affective and primary mental states from nonintrusive and inexpensive modality, 3) novel mental state-based visualization techniques, 3D heatmaps, 3D scanpaths, and widget heatmaps that find parts of the user interface where users are perhaps unsure, annoyed, frustrated, or satisfied.

In this thesis, we aim at modeling some aspects of the functional role of emotions on an autonomous embodied agent. We begin by describing our robotic prototype, Cherry--a robot with the task of being a tour guide and an office assistant for the Computer Science Department at the University of Central Florida. Cherry did not have a formal emotion representation of internal states, but did have the ability to express emotions through her multimodal interface. The thesis presents the results of a survey we performed via our social informatics approach where we found that: (1) the idea of having emotions in a robot was warmly accepted by Cherry's users, and (2) the intended users were pleased with our initial interface design and functionalities. Guided by these results, we transferred our previous code to a human-height and more robust robot--Petra, the PeopleBot™--where we began to build a formal emotion mechanism and representation for internal states to correspond to the external expressions of Cherry's interface. We describe our overall three-layered architecture, and propose the design of the sensory motor level (the first layer of the three-layered architecture) inspired by the Multilevel Process Theory of Emotion on one hand, and hybrid robotic architecture on the other hand. The sensory-motor level receives and processes incoming stimuli with fuzzy logic and produces emotion-like states without any further willful planning or learning. We will discuss how Petra has been equipped with sonar and vision for obstacle avoidance as well as vision for face recognition, which are used when she roams around the hallway to engage in social interactions with humans. We hope that the sensory motor level in Petra could serve as a foundation for further works in modeling the three-layered architecture of the Emotion State Generator.
M.S.
School of Computer Science
Engineering and Computer Science
Computer Science

This study explores the relationship between an Affective Instructional Design (AID), children’s attitudes toward math, and math learning. Participants included 15 kindergarten children at a university K-12 laboratory school located in East Tennessee. This quasi-experimental study employed a pretest-intervention (AID)-posttest design. Data, including pretest/posttest attitude surveys, and baseline and intervention non-participant video observations of math learning and math attitudes, during 13 math lessons were coded and analyzed. As hypothesized, a significant positive correlation (r = 0.936, p = 0.000) was found between attitude and math learning. Additionally significant differences were found between the baseline (pre-intervention) mean score and the final intervention lesson for both math attitude, t(14) = -12.39, p = 0.008, and math learning, t(14) = -8.40, p = 0.002.These findings suggest AID could be one route to supporting educators in establishing quality learning environments that promote positive attitudes and meaningful learning in mathematics.

La question du bien-être de l'animal ne se pose que si on lui reconnaît le statut d'être sensible, capable de ressentir des émotions. Les émotions dépendent de processus cognitifs qu'entreprend l'animal pour évaluer son environnement. Pour comprendre le passage des émotions à un état de bien-être, nous avons étudié si ces processus cognitifs peuvent être biaisés par les émotions, lesquelles en retour seraient modulées durablement. Un modèle de stress chronique a été développé sur ovins : des agnelles sont exposées de manière répétée à des évènements aversifs, imprévisibles et incontrôlables. L'altération des systèmes neuroendocriniens et la potentialisation de la réactivité émotionnelle confirment que les agnelles ont développé un stress. Ensuite, l'effet de ce stress chronique sur les processus d'évaluation a été exploré : les agnelles stressées montrent une évaluation négative et des déficits d'apprentissage. Enfin, nous avons cherché à savoir si l'induction répétée d'émotions positives chez des agnelles stressées peut contrecarrer les biais d'évaluation négative induits par le stress. Elles évaluent de manière plus positive les événements ambigus que les agnelles uniquement stressées. L'accumulation d'émotions négatives peut conduire l'animal à développer une perception pessimiste de son environnement et une anhédonie, qui contribuent à auto-entretenir l'état de stress. La réduction d'anhédonie après induction répétée d'émotions positives montre que des stratégies cognitivo-comportementales sont envisageables pour corriger un stress. Bien qu'analytiques, ces travaux contribuent à la conception de pratiques d'élevage innovantes améliorant la qualité de vie des animaux.

Este estudo apresenta uma investigação de como o uso das técnicas de Visualização Computacional (VC) podem servir no apoio à identificação do interesse do aluno em ambientes de Educação a Distância (EaD). Esta pesquisa se fundamenta nas premissas de que grande parte da comunicação ocorre através da Comunicação Não-Verbal e o estado afetivo de interesse pode ser reconhecido através da visualização interpessoal. Na realização deste trabalho, foi necessária uma revisão da literatura relacionada aos temas Afetividade, especificamente, Estado Afetivo de Interesse, Comportamento Visualizável, Comunicação Não Verbal, Análise de Expressões Faciais, Análise de Gestos e Posturas, Cognição e Técnicas de Sensoriamento Visual. A teoria da Aprendizagem Significativa responde pela concepção epistemológica, metodológica e experimental. Sob sua ótica foram preparados os materiais didáticos que compuseram os experimentos e o objeto de aprendizagem SQLOA. Foram construídos artefatos de software que apoiam a captura dos vídeos dos alunos durante atividades de aprendizagem e que permitiram a realização dos experimentos. Os artefatos desenvolvidos são: um framework, uma ferramenta e um objeto de aprendizagem, assim denominados: WICFramework, QuizWebcamXML e SQLOA. Eles permitem dotar os ambientes de ensino de mecanismos de Visualização Computacional, razão pela qual foram importantes instrumentos para o alcance dos objetivos propostos. Trinta e um alunos, correspondendo a três turmas da disciplina de Administração para Banco de Dados do Curso de Sistema de Informação do Instituto Federal Fluminense, RJ, foram submetidos ao SQLOA e tiveram sua interação capturada em vídeos. A estratégia metodológica compôs-se do levantamento dos Movimentos Corporais Gestuais e Posturais (MCGPs) visualizáveis, e a associação desses aos Estados Afetivos de Interesse e Tédio, testando e definindo os indicadores teóricos que melhor se aplicam a técnicas de VC em ambientes de EaD. A partir da definição dos principais Indicadores de Interesse, construiu-se um Esquema para Identificação do Interesse e um Modelo para Inferência de Interesse, auxiliando profissionais da educação a aplicarem a técnica.
This study presents an investigation on how the use of Computational Visualization (CV) techniques can support the identification of learners’ interest in Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). The research was based on the premise that communication occurs mostly through non-verbal communication and that the affective state of interest can be identified by interpersonal visualization. For this study, it was necessary to undertake a review of the literature on topics such as Affect, in particular, Affective State of Interest, Visible Behavior, Non-Verbal Communication, Analysis of Facial Expressions, Analysis of Body Gestures and Postures, Cognition, and Visual Sensing Techniques. Principles of the Meaningful Learning Theory were used in the epistemological, methodological and experimental concept of the research theme. This theoretical framework supported the preparation of didactic materials used in the experiments, and the design of the learning object SQLOA. Software artifacts were built to conduct experiments, including video recording of students during learning activities. The following artifacts were developed: a framework (WICFramework), a tool (QuizWebcamXML), and a learning object (SQLOA). Since they can provide VLEs with computational visualization mechanisms, these artifacts were important in reaching the objectives proposed for this study. Thirty-one students, enrolled in the subject Data Bank Management in the Information Systems Course at the Instituto Federal Fluminense, RJ, used SQLOA, and their interaction was captured in videos. The methodological strategy included the observation of Body Gesture and Postural Movements (BGPM), and their association with the Affective States of Interest and Boredom, as well as testing and definition of the theoretical indicators that best support CV techniques in VLEs. Following the definition of the main Indicators of Interest, guidelines were created to assist distance education professionals in the application of such technique.

The common marmoset is the most frequently used New World primate in laboratory research and testing. In the UK, their use is strictly controlled by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, which is underpinned by the principles of humane science: Replacement, Reduction and Refinement. Despite their use, there are a number of problems associated with the breeding of marmosets, including low dam longevity and increasing litter sizes. Large litters have led to high infant mortality and the need for human intervention to improve infant survival, which involves removal from the family for substantial periods of time. Previous research in a range of primate species shows that early life family separation is associated with numerous adverse behavioural and physiological effects. This project therefore sought to systematically investigate the effects of breeding and infant rearing practices, integrating a number of measures to assess the welfare of laboratory- housed marmosets. Potential predictors of dam longevity and litter size were first identified in three captive UK colonies, over four decades. Dam longevity was found to be approximately 6 years, with heavier dams living longer, but overall there was no consistent improvement in longevity over the decades. As longevity varied widely between colonies and over time, environment may be one of the most important factors. Approximately half of all births at each colony were litters larger than two, and these larger litters had greater infant mortality. Only dam weight at conception was useful in predicting litter size, with heavier dams producing larger litters. The consequences of large litters and early separation from the family for supplementary feeding were then investigated. Although twins had lower body weight than 2stays (two infants remaining with the family after death of the other littermate/s) and supplementary fed triplets, they also had the fewest health problems. There was also some evidence that animals from larger litters were more at risk of suffering from extreme low weight. Some minor differences were found in behavioural development between litter sizes. Singleton infants received more rejective rearing, while 2stays received more protective rearing, perhaps following the loss of an infant. While twin infants gained independence earlier than singletons or 2stays, they did not appear to cope better with stress in adulthood, displaying more significant increases in stress-related behaviour following the routine stressor of capture and weighing, compared to 2stays and supplementary fed triplets. While overall cortisol unexpectedly decreased from baseline to post capture, there were only significant fluctuations in 2stay marmosets. Instead, there were some increases in positive behaviour in supplementary fed triplets following the stressor, suggesting enhanced coping ability. However, in another group of supplementary fed triplets, there were subtle increases in depressive-like symptoms, measured using cognitive bias and preference tests, suggesting a reduced expectation of and interest in rewards. There were however no differences between family-reared and supplementary fed marmosets in time to learn a visual discrimination task, or in responses to temperament tests. Therefore, while it was hypothesised that early family separation would have adverse developmental consequences, there were actually very little differences between marmosets of different litter sizes and rearing backgrounds, across the range of measures. Results suggest that the current supplementary feeding programme, along with a regular human socialisation programme, minimises any potential negative effects. However, we should always be finding ways to improve the lives of animals in our care. Possible Refinements include reducing dam weight to increase twin births and improve infant survival, and training to allow supplementary feeding on the carrier’s back, to prevent infant separation and reduce disruption to the family. These Refinements could reduce fear and allow monkeys to become more resilient to the laboratory environment.

A tecnologia, na sua evolução e transformação, influencia novos desdobramentos da técnica, dos processos e de aplicações, não somente na indústria, mas, também, em processos sociais e culturais. Salienta-se o uso de Tecnologia de Informação e Comunicação na Educação, Engenharia e de modelos da Computação Afetiva como recurso de ação mediadora para promoção do ser humano social. Neste contexto, a presente Tese desenvolveu, à luz da Teoria Sócio-Histórica, uma Plataforma Educacional Assistiva capaz de possibilitar a promoção do estado afetivo de interesse em crianças com Transtorno do Espectro Autista (TEA) dos anos iniciais do Ensino Fundamental. O TEA leva a uma condição de déficit no desenvolvimento, em escala de manifestação, nos domínios comportamental, comunicativo e ou cognitivo. O déficit de “atenção conjunta”, de reciprocidade emocional, de interesse, e prejuízo qualitativo na comunicação verbal e não verbal são características mencionadas largamente na literatura. Para “compensar” esse gap, o professor (assim como pais e terapeutas) precisa enfrentar o desafio de projetar estratégias de interação que possam promover cenas de atenção conjunta. Além disso, segundo dados do censo de educação básica de 2015, das quase 8 milhões de matrículas na Educação Infantil, cerca de 900 mil são para Educação Especial, sendo 700 mil no Ensino Fundamental e o preocupante afunilamento para 30 mil no 1º ano do Ensino Médio. Esses números reafirmam a importância da inclusão social e acredita-se que este decréscimo esteja relacionado à necessidade de um apoio tecnológico contextualizado nas atividades comunicativas e de atenção conjunta A metodologia de pesquisa é de natureza qualitativa, e utilizou o método de estudo de caso, de múltiplos casos. A atividade educativa foi desenvolvida por meio da contação de história infantil e uso de recurso tecnológico, dispositivo robótico, de ação mediadora, denominado de Fantoche Eletrônico, especialmente projetado para esta investigação. A práxis teve como base sociocognitiva as três etapas de intenção comunicativa da aquisição da linguagem proposta por Tomasello e de indicadores para a análise do estado afetivo de interesse. Os dados foram coletados por meio de instrumentos de entrevistas e observação sob a contação de quatro histórias infantil para quatro estudantes com autismo do 7º e 8º anos do ensino fundamental, totalizando 16 casos. Os resultados demonstraram que o uso do Fantoche Eletrônico promoveu mais de 80% de cenas de atenção conjunta, e um aumento, de três casos positivos com fantoche não eletrônico para quase 10 com o Fantoche Eletrônico, representado um ganho de mais de 200%. Além disso, 83% dos casos apresentaram indicativo positivo de estado afetivo de interesse. A Plataforma Educacional Assistiva foi denominada de Asistranto, assistência em Esperanto, e se mostrou adequada para o desenvolvimento de diferentes atividades acadêmicas com o objetivo de incluir estudantes com autismo em espaços escolares.
Technology, in its evolution and transformation, influences new developments in the techniques, processes and applications, not only in industry, but also in social and cultural processes. The use of Information Technology and Communication in Education, Engineering and Affective Computing models as a resource of mediating action to promote the social human being. In this context, the present developed, in the light of Socio-Historical Theory, an Assistive Educational Platform capable of to promote the affective state of interest in children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder(ASD) of the initial years of Elementary School. The ASD leads to a condition of development, demonstration scale, behavioral, communicative and or cognitive. The deficit of "joint attention", emotional reciprocity, of interest, and qualitative impairment in verbal and non-verbal communication verbal characteristics are widely mentioned in the literature. To "compensate" this gap, the teacher (as well as parents and therapists) must face the challenge of designing interaction strategies that can promote scenes of joint attention. Besides that, according to data from the 2015 basic education census, of the almost 8 million enrollments in the Education, about 900 thousand are for Special Education, of which 700 thousand are Elementary School and the worrying bottleneck for 30 thousand in the first year of high school. Those reaffirm the importance of social inclusion and it is believed that this related to the need for technological support contextualized in the activities communicative and joint attention. The research methodology is qualitative in nature, and used multiple cases study technique The educational activity was developed through the account of children's history and the use of technological resources, device robotic, of mediating action, denominated of Electronic Puppet, specially designed for this research. The praxis was based on sociocognitive three stages of communicative intention of language acquisition proposed by Tomasello and of indicators for the analysis of the affective state of interest. The data were collected by medium of instruments of interviews and observation under the account of four children's stories for four students with autism in the 7th and 8th years of elementary school, totaling 16 cases. The results showed that the use of the Electronic Puppet promoted more than 80% of scenes of joint attention, and an increase, of three positive cases with non-electronic puppet for almost 10 with the Electronic Puppet, represented a gain of over 200%. In addition, 83% of the cases presented positive indicative affective status of interest. The Assistive Educational Platform was denominated Asistranto, assistance in Esperanto, and proved adequate for the development of different activities with the aim of including students with autism in school settings.

The major purpose of this dissertation is to explore the determinants of interest cost for state bonds. Various kinds of variables pertaining to issue characteristics, market characteristics, economic conditions, and political variables were statistically tested to assess their impact on the interest cost of state bonds. This research examines the variables found to be significant for local bonds, as well as some factors unique to state bonds, e.g., the types state agencies issuing debt and the effect of different state income tax policies.

Previous research on workplace bullying primarily focuses on two main actors – the bully and the victim – while neglecting a third actor: the bystander of the bullying. The prevalence of workplace bullying is increasing across organizations, resulting in more employees becoming subjected to the effects of workplace bullying. Furthermore, witnessing coworker-on-coworker bullying is likely to influence the relationships that the bystander has with the two coworkers involved in the bullying episode. Two areas are proposed to investigate their effect on the coworker bystander: coworker interpersonal justice and personal identification with coworkers. Coworker interpersonal justice involves the perceived fairness between coworkers, while personal identification refers to how these bystanders identify with the specific actors of the bullying event. In addition to work-related outcomes, bystanders are affected at a personal level. That is, being exposed to bullying situations causes these bystanders to alter their anxiety levels and their core affect, with core affect being a precursor to moods and emotions. In addition to the aforementioned outcomes of witnessing a coworker bullying incident, there are also contextual aspects which may influence these relationships. Personal-level factors, such as a bystander's empathy and sense of coherence (i.e., coping mechanisms), may influence the effect of witnessing a coworker being bullied. Similarly, the gender of the victim in relation to the gender of the bystander may also play a role. Using affective events theory, I investigate how witnessing coworker bullying in the workplace effects bystanders. This research employs a 2 x 2 experimental design with multi-wave data collection and an in-person lab session to test the proposed hypotheses. AET is operationalized by creating a fictional coworker bullying situation in which observers are either exposed to the bullying situation or not. This research offers several contributions to the management literature as well as to practitioners. First, it extends current workplace bullying literature to incorporate the effect of peer-on-peer bullying, as well as investigating the influence of bystander and victim gender. The second contribution is the creation and testing of scales for coworker interpersonal justice, personal identification with coworkers, and observation of coworker bullying. The third contribution involves developing a more thorough understanding of the outcomes of coworker bullying on bystanders by employing an experimental approach. Fruitful areas of future research regarding coworker bullying, coworker interpersonal justice, and personal identification are discussed.

The purpose of the study was to investigate, through an experiment, if positive mood promotes creativity and flexible thinking. Participants were a total of 93 college students. The main hypothesis was that subjects induced with positive mood would perform better than subjects induced with negative mood, at a test reflecting creativity. To further explore the implications of priming (subliminal manipulated moods), a neutral control group was included. The cognitive test used in the study was Duncker´s The Candle Problem, a test which aims to get the subjects to apply flexible and creative thinking. The priming methods applied in the study was music and video clips. To measure the participant’s subjective mood a self-report scale, Mood Adjective Check List (MACL), was included as a successful manipulation control. The result showed a clear relationship between positive and negative priming, implying that subjects induced with positive mood performed significantly better than subjects induced with negative mood. There was no significant relationship between the groups induced with neutral and negative mood.
Syftet med studien var att genom ett experiment utforska om positiv sinnesstämning främjar kreativitet och flexibelt tänkande. Deltagarna i experimentet var totalt 93 studenter. Den huvudsakliga hypotesen var att deltagare inducerade till positivt känslotillstånd skulle prestera bättre än deltagare inducerade till negativt känslotillstånd, på ett kreativitetsreflekterande test. För att närmare undersöka påverkan av priming (subliminalt manipulerade känslotillstånd) inkluderades även en neutral kontrollgrupp. Testet som användes var Dunckers The Candle Problem. Syftet med testet var att få deltagarna att tillämpa flexibelt och kreativt tänkande. Priming-metoden som användes i experimentet bestod av musik och filmklipp. För att mäta deltagarnas subjektiva känslotillstånd tillämpades formuläret Mood Adjective Check List (MACL) som en framgångsrik manipulationskontroll. Ur resultatet utlästes en tydlig relation mellan positiv och negativ priming, att deltagare som fått positiv priming klarade testet signifikant bättre än deltagare med negativ priming. Mellan grupperna som inducerats med neutral och negativ sinnesstämning upptäcktes dock ingen signifikant relation.

La science du bien-être animal est une discipline bien établie qui permet de faire des mesures objectives. Les grands dauphins (Tursiops truncatus) sont une espèce de cétacés communément présente en captivité, et bien que des questions se posent sur la qualité de leur vie dans cet environnement, très peu d'études ont porté sur la mesure objective de leur bien-être. Cette thèse répond à ce manque de données en développant des indicateurs de bien-être basé sur l’animal, ici le grand dauphin. Une revue bibliographique initiale a identifié des mesures potentielles de bien-être, avant que des indicateurs comportementaux choisis aient été mesurés par rapport aux sessions d’entrainement. Un test de biais de jugement a alors été adapté aux dauphins, où des biais optimistes ont été significativement liés aux fréquences les plus hautes de nage synchronisée durant leur 'temps libre' et aux fréquences les plus basses de comportement anticipatoire avant les sessions d’entrainement. Une avant dernière étude a montré que le comportement anticipatoire prédisait la participation à l'événement à venir, et que des Interactions Humaines-Animales positives étaient anticipées plus que l’introduction de jouets. Une dernière expérience en cours a développé un protocole standardisé pour mesurer la motivation des dauphins pendant des sessions d’entrainement par rapport aux problèmes de bien-être sociaux et de santé. Bien que le bien-être global soit toujours difficile à mesurer, cette thèse propose des premières mesures d'émotions et d’états affectifs chez le dauphin. La nage synchronisée est un indicateur probable d'émotions positives, bien que plus de recherches doivent examiner la variabilité entre divers contextes. Le comportement anticipatoire semble témoigner de la motivation pour des événements à venir et nous suggérons qu'il reflète une sensibilité à la récompense comme chez d'autres animaux : des travaux ultérieurs portant sur des seuils de fréquence le transformerait en indicateur de bien-être pertinent. Un objectif majeur de la thèse est de stimuler plus de recherches sur des mesures de bien-être chez des grands dauphins et d'autres espèces de cétacés en captivité
Welfare science is now an established discipline which enables objective measurements of animal welfare to be made. Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are a common cetacean species kept in captivity, and although questions are arising over their quality of life in this environment, very few studies have focussed on objectively measuring their welfare. This thesis aimed to address this lack of data by developing animal-based indicators of bottlenose dolphin welfare. An initial review identified potential dolphin welfare measures, before selected behavioural indicators were measured in relation to training sessions. A judgement bias test was then adapted to dolphins, where optimistic biases were significantly linked to higher frequencies of synchronous swimming in their ‘free-time’ and lower frequencies of anticipatory behaviour before training sessions, (concurring with there ward-sensitivity theory). A penultimate study showed that anticipatory behaviour predicted participation in the upcoming event, and positive Human-Animal Interactions were anticipated more than access to toys. A final, on-going experiment has developed and applied a standardised protocol for measuring dolphins’motivation during training sessions in relation to social and health-related welfare problems. Although overall welfare is still difficult to measure, this thesis has proposed some first measures of dolphin emotions and affective states. Synchronous swimming is a likely indicator of positive emotions and social support, although more research should investigate variability between contexts. Anticipatory behaviour seemed to indicate motivation for events, and we suggest it reflects reward sensitivity as in other animals : further work into frequency thresholds would render it a valuable welfare indicator. A major objective of the thesis is to stimulate more research on welfare measures for bottlenose dolphins and other cetacean species in captivity

Cette thèse présente une analyse comparée des œuvres de deux écrivains contemporains, John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-), originaire d’Afrique du Sud, et Wu Ming-yi (1971-), de Taïwan, que l’on associe au genre de la « littérature écologique postcoloniale ». À partir de leurs travaux, cette thèse propose une étude interdisciplinaire couvrant trois dimensions de leurs travaux : la théorie, la politique et le littéraire. Les textes choisis pour l’analyse sont ceux qui cherchent à la fois à fournir une image dystopique de l’exploitation des environnements naturels et des êtres non-humains et à représenter l’oppression coloniale des peuples colonisés et de l’exploitation des ressources naturelles dans différentes parties du monde. En ce qui concerne la dimension théorique, la thèse aborde le questionnement suivant : comment la philosophie occidentale contemporaine prend en compte les animaux et les êtres écologiques (êtres non-humains et non-animaux), afin de reconsidérer la question plus générale de l’altérité. Quant à la dimension politique, la thèse adopte une posture philosophique afin de questionner les contextes historiques des pays postcoloniaux, notamment ceux de l’Afrique du Sud et de Taïwan. Enfin, la dimension littéraire examine les écrits de Coetzee et de Wu afin de montrer comment leurs textes décrivent l’« autre écologique » (ecological other) en tant que moyen pour lutter contre l’identité politique postcoloniale
This thesis presents the literary works of two contemporary writers—John Maxwell Coetzee (1940-), originally from South Africa, and Wu Ming-yi (1971-) from Taiwan—whom it analyses as key exponents of postcolonial eco-literature. The thesis offers an interdisciplinary study of their works in their theoretical, political and literary aspects. The texts selected for analysis are those that seek to present a dystopian image of the exploited natural environment or nonhuman entities, while, at the same time, associating and articulating these representations with the suppressions and exploitations carried out within colonial frameworks in different parts of the world. As regards the theoretical perspective of the thesis, it addresses the subject of how contemporary continental philosophy takes nonhuman animals and other kinds of ecological beings into account and rethinks the philosophical question of the other. With respect to politics, it contextualises this philosophical questioning by looking at the history of various postcolonial countries, notably South Africa and Taiwan. Lastly, as far as literature is concerned, it examines the writings of Coetzee and Wu in order to show how their texts depict the ecological other as a way of contesting postcolonial identity politics

Dans cette thèse, j’examine l’influence d’états aversifs (e.g., émotions désagréables, issues indésirables) sur les motivations et les comportements des consommateurs. Dans le premier essai, j’explore comment des sentiments de dégoût physique ou moral peuvent mettre en péril l’estime de soi des consommateurs et les motiver à se livrer à de la consommation compensatrice. Dans le deuxième essai, j’examine pourquoi et à quels moments les consommateurs font preuve de sentiments négatifs à l’égard des entreprises qui cessent de distribuer gratuitement des échantillons ou petits cadeaux aux consommateurs. Dans le troisième essai, j’explore comment la solitude affecte les préférences des consommateurs pour des produits et services qui peuvent ou non nécessiter des interactions interpersonnelles (ex : se faire masser vs. faire des achats en ligne). Considérés ensemble, ces trois essais contribuent à la littérature sur l’émotion, les menaces identitaires, et la consommation compensatrice, à la littérature sur les promotions commerciales et à la littérature sur la solitude. De plus, les résultats ont des implications pour les praticiens en marketing en ce qui concerne la publicité, le design des promotions commerciales, et l’haptique des consommateurs. Finalement, ces travaux de recherche offrent de nouvelles perspectives concernant le bien-être des consommateurs en soulignant les conséquences inattendues des actions des marketers qui cherchent à bénéficier aux consommateurs mais génèrent en réalité des comportements compensateurs pour faire face à leur aversion
In this dissertation, I examine the influence of aversive states (e.g., unpleasant emotions, undesired outcomes) on consumers’ motivations and behaviors. In essay 1, I explore how feelings of physical and moral disgust can be threatening to consumers’ sense of self and motivate them to engage in compensatory consumption. In essay 2, I investigate why and when consumers exhibit negative behavioral intentions against firms that terminate unconditional business-to-consumer gift-giving initiatives. In essay 3, I explore how loneliness affects consumers’ preferences for products and services that do or do not require interpersonal touch and interaction (e.g., getting a massage vs. shopping online). Together, the three essays contribute to the literature on emotion, identity threats, and compensatory consumption, to the literature on sales promotion, and to the literature on loneliness. Moreover, the research findings inform marketing practice in the fields of advertising, sales promotions design, and consumer haptics. Finally, this research provides insights into consumer welfare by bringing attention to the unforeseen consequences of marketers’ actions that seek to benefit the consumers but instead generate compensatory behaviors to cope with their aversiveness

La reconnaissance automatique de l'état affectif reste un sujet difficile en raison de la complexité des émotions / stress, qui impliquent des éléments expérientiels, comportementaux et physiologiques. Comme il est difficile de décrire l'état affectif de la personne de manière exhaustive en termes de modalités uniques, des études récentes se sont concentrées sur des stratégies de fusion afin d'exploiter la complémentarité des signaux multimodaux. L'objectif principal de cette thèse consiste à étudier la faisabilité d'une fusion physio-visuelle pour la reconnaissance automatique de l'état affectif de la personne (émotions / stress) à partir des vidéos du visage. La fusion des expressions faciales et des signaux physiologiques permet de tirer les avantages de chaque modalité. Les expressions faciales sont simple à acquérir et permettent d'avoir une vision externe de l'état affectif, tandis que les signaux physiologiques permettent d'améliorer la fiabilité et relever le problème des expressions faciales contrefaites. Les recherches développées dans cette thèse se situent à l'intersection de l'intelligence artificielle, l'informatique affective ainsi que l'ingénierie biomédicale. Notre contribution s'axe sur deux aspects. Nous proposons en premier lieu une nouvelle approche bout-en-bout permettant d'estimer la fréquence cardiaque à partir d'enregistrements vidéo du visage à l'aide du principe de photopléthysmographie par imagerie (iPPG). La méthode repose sur un réseau spatio-temporel profond (X-iPPGNet) qui apprend le concept d'iPPG à partir de zéro, sans incorporer de connaissances préalables ni passer par l'extraction manuelle des signaux iPPG. Le seconde aspect porte sur une chaine de traitement physio-visuelle pour la reconnaissance automatique des émotions spontanées et du stress à partir des vidéos du visage. Le modèle proposé comprend deux étages permettant d'extraire les caractéristiques de chaque modalité. Le pipeline physiologique est commun au système de reconnaissance d'émotion et celui du stress. Il est basé sur MTTS-CAN, une méthode récente d'estimation du signal iPPG. Deux modèles neuronaux distincts ont été utilisés pour prédire les émotions et le stress de la personne à partir des informations visuelles contenues dans la vidéo (e.g. expressions faciales) : un réseau spatio-temporel combinant le module Squeeze-Excitation et l'architecture Xception pour estimer l'état émotionnel et une approche d'apprentissage par transfert pour l'estimation du niveau de stress. Cette approche a été privilégiée afin de réduire les efforts de développement et surmonter le problème du manque de données. Une fusion des caractéristiques physiologiques et des expressions faciales est ensuite effectuée pour prédire les états émotionnels ou de stress
Human affective state recognition remains a challenging topic due to the complexity of emotions, which involves experiential, behavioral, and physiological elements. Since it is difficult to comprehensively describe emotion in terms of single modalities, recent studies have focused on artificial intelligence approaches and fusion strategy to exploit the complementarity of multimodal signals using artificial intelligence approaches. The main objective is to study the feasibility of a physio-visual fusion for the recognition of the affective state of the person (emotions/stress) from facial videos. The fusion of facial expressions and physiological signals allows to take advantage of each modality. Facial expressions are easy to acquire and provide an external view of the affective state, while physiological signals improve reliability and address the problem of falsified facial expressions. The research developed in this thesis lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, affective computing, and biomedical engineering. Our contribution focuses on two points. First, we propose a new end-to-end approach for instantaneous pulse rate estimation directly from facial video recordings using the principle of imaging photoplethysmography (iPPG). This method is based on a deep spatio-temporal network (X-iPPGNet) that learns the iPPG concept from scratch, without incorporating prior knowledge or going through manual iPPG signal extraction. The second contribution focuses on a physio-visual fusion for spontaneous emotions and stress recognition from facial videos. The proposed model includes two pipelines to extract the features of each modality. The physiological pipeline is common to both the emotion and stress recognition systems. It is based on MTTS-CAN, a recent method for estimating the iPPG signal, while two distinct neural models were used to predict the person's emotions and stress from the visual information contained in the video (e.g. facial expressions): a spatio-temporal network combining the Squeeze-Excitation module and the Xception architecture for estimating the emotional state and a transfer learning approach for estimating the stress level. This approach reduces development effort and overcomes the lack of data. A fusion of physiological and facial features is then performed to predict the emotional or stress states

Linking brain regions or neural circuits to specific affective symptoms could help elucidate the neural mechanisms of affective states as well as antidepressant treatment effects. Much research has implicated the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), mid-dorsolateral frontal cortex (MDLFC), and a "frontocingulate" (i.e., MDLFC-ACC) circuit in sad affect and depression as well as the mood response to antidepressant treatment, including 10-Hz repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) applied over the MDLFC. While the empirical support for a direct role of the MDLFC in affect is unclear, a wealth of research supports the ACC as an interface between action and emotion (Paus, 2001). In a series of experiments using behavioural, brain imaging and brain stimulation techniques we investigated the involvement of the ACC and an MDLFC-ACC (i.e., frontocingulate) circuit in an "action and emotion" relevant behaviour, namely, paralinguistic aspects of speech production. (e.g., speech pitch and loudness). In Experiment 1, we examined the relationship between affect and paralinguistic aspects of speech and in Experiment 2 we investigated the role of the ACC in mediating this phenomenon. Next, applying our knowledge of the role of the ACC in affect-relevant behaviour, we combined rTMS with a speech task (Experiment 3) and with PET (Experiment 4) in order investigate further the possibility that influencing brain activity in a frontocingulate circuit may contribute to the known mood effects of rTMS applied over the MDLFC. Taken together, our results demonstrated a role for the ACC in pitch variation during affective states and suggested that changes in affect and pitch variation following 10-Hz rTMS applied over the left MDLFC may involve changes in neural activity in a network of brain regions widely implicated in affect, including a frontocingulate circuit. The findings of this collection of studies take us a step further toward understanding the r

The purpose of this study was to develop and empirically test a hypothetical model of factors impacting strategy implementation in state Corporations in Kenya in order to establish their statistical significance. To achieve effectiveness and efficiency in strategy implementation in state corporations, change is needed. Due to the rapid changing global environment and increasing demand for service delivery, continuous change is needed. Changes have been taking place in the Kenyan state corporations since 2003 and this has been as a result of corporate strategy implementation. However it is not enough to develop a good strategy, good strategies can fail during implementation. The state corporations in Kenya, like in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, have been characterised by slow and bureaucratic processes that retard corporation‟s performance. Employees and managers in these corporations have been perceived as not performing as they should. Kenyan state corporations are important to the economy of the country. They provide social and essential services to the Kenyan population. There is therefore a need to investigate ways to improve strategy implementation in state corporations, collectively viewed in this study as factors affecting strategy implementation. The study investigated and analysed how the independent variables (internal-, market- and external) impact strategy implementation (dependent variable). The study reviewed literature in the areas of internal-, market- and external factors supported by Louw and Venter‟s (2006), the planning context environmental scan (2010), Zaribaf and Hamid‟s drivers for implementation outcomes (2010), and the Nortel network external environment (2010) models as presented in section 1.5 of chapter one. The hypothetical model developed was based on the models mentioned. The study sought to establish the perceptions of Kenyan state corporation‟s managers and utilised the quantitative research paradigm. A survey was conducted using a self-administered questionnaire distributed to managers in state corporations in Kenya. The final sample comprised 485 respondents. Data was collected between October, 2012 and February 2013, that is, a period of five months. The returned questionnaires were subjected to several statistical analyses. The validity of the measuring instrument was ascertained using exploratory factor analysis. The Cronbach‟s alpha values for reliability were calculated for each of the factors identified during the exploratory factor analysis. In this study, correlation and exploratory factor analysis, the KMO measure of sample adequacy, Bartlett‟s test of sphericity, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for normality, multi-colinearity diagnostic and regressions were the main statistical procedures used to test the appropriateness of data, correlation and significance of the relationships hypothesised between the various independent and dependent variables. The study identified twelve independent variables as significantly impacting the strategy implementation (dependent variable) of state corporations in Kenya. Five statistical significant relationships were found between the internal factors: organisational structure, human resources, financial resources, leadership, communication and strategy implementation in state corporations in Kenya. Three statistical significant relationships were found between the market factors: customers, suppliers, labour market and strategy implementation in state corporations in Kenya. Four statistical significant relationships were found between the external factors: social-cultural, technology, ecological, global forces and strategy implementation in state corporations in Kenya. The study also found three statistically insignificant variables. It was found that managers in state corporations in Kenya should be encouraged to study and clearly understand the culture of their state corporations in order for them to believe that organisational culture could have a significant impact on strategy implementation and that the culture of their corporation needs to be compatible with the strategy being implemented, because where there is incompatibility between strategy and culture, it can lead to high organisational resistance to change. The managers should also be made to understand that organisational culture shapes employees behaviour, guides strategic decisions and accommodates proposed changes and that When culture influences the actions of employees to support current strategy, implementation is strengthened. Managers should strive to achieve competitive advantage by offering distinctive or unique products or services that clearly add value to the customers. They should be made aware that the strategies of competitors who offer unique service to the customers could derail their strategy implementation. State corporation managers should acknowledge that severe competition results in pressure on prices, margins and profitability for all state corporations. There is a need for managers to ensure that the state corporation strategies are supported and aligned with government policies, directives and programmes. They should actively lobby with government to enact good policies and directives that support strategy implementation. The study has provided general guidelines at internal environmental level on how to implement strategies effectively and efficiently in state corporations in Kenya. Furthermore, general operational guidelines at market level for improving strategy implementation have been given for such corporations to become and remain competitive in the global market place. The study has also highlighted general guidelines regarding managing external environmental factors to assist in improving strategy implementation in state corporations in Kenya.

The impact of nutritional intervention on affective states has largely been ignored in the exercise-affect literature. For decades the impact of such interventions on perceptions of exertion has been well documented. However, Hardy and Rejeski (1989) assert that `what' a person feels, as measured by the rating of perceived exertion (RPE) scale, may be very different from `how' they feel, and that on its own the RPE provides limited information about the subjective experiences of individuals during exercise. This thesis describes a series of studies that assess the influence of various fluid ingestion regimes on both `how' and `what' a person feels. Seven studies were undertaken, incorporating a variety of exercise modes, including prolonged running (Study 1,3 & 7), prolonged cycling (Study 2& 4) and prolonged intermittent, high intensity exercise (Study 5,6 & 7). The relationship between fluid ingestion during exercise and affective states during and following exercise proved to be a complex one. The initial investigation (Study 1) showed that the ingestion of water during prolonged running resulted in an overall improvement in valence during the recovery period. A significant increase in activation was also noted in the water trial only, from pre to post exercise. Furthermore, subjective ratings of energy post-exercise were higher in the water trial, compared to the no water trial. In study 2 the beneficial effects observed in study 1 were not so apparent. In this instance the only significant change of interest was in energetic arousal, which was found to be higher 5 min post exercise in the water trial compared to the no water trial. When the ingestion of a CHO solution during exercise was compared to a placebo or flavoured water solution (Studies 3-7) the findings also varied. However, the observation of an enhanced affective profile following CHO ingestion in Study 4 and Study 5 highlights the importance of considering nutritional status and intervention when investigating the exercise-affect relationship. These studies have highlighted some important aspects in our understanding of the exercise-affect relationship alone. Firstly, a robust finding across all the studies was the observation of an almost uniformly positive shift in valence from the final within-exercise assessment to the post exercise assessments. Thus emphasising the dynamic nature of affect and the importance of repeated within exercise assessments. Secondly, moderate intensity exercise of a fixed duration was marked by highly variable inter-individual differences in the response of participants to the valence and activation dimensions. However, exercise to fatigue elicited a homogenous valence response as participants came closer to reaching their exercise capacity.

The overall aim of this research is the exploration mechanisms which allow an understanding of the emotional state of students and the selection of an appropriate cognitive and affective feedback for students on the basis of students' emotional state and cognitive state in an affective learning environment. The learning environment in which this research is based is one in which students learn by watching an instructional video.

Learners' affective states correlate with learning outcomes. A key aspect of instructional design is the choice of modalities by which learners interact with instructional content. The existing literature focuses on quantifying learning outcomes without quantifying learners' affective states during instructional activities. An investigation of how learners feel during instructional activities will inform the instructional systems design methodology of a method for quantifying the effects of individually available modalities on learners' affect. The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the relationship between affective states and learning modalities of instructional computing. During an instructional activity, learners' enjoyment, excitement, and motivation are measured before and after a computing activity offered in three distinct modalities. The modalities concentrate on visual and musical computing for the practice of computational thinking. An affective model for the practice of computational thinking through musical expression was developed and validated. This dissertation begins with a literature review of relevant theories on embodied cognition, learning, and affective states. It continues with designing and fabricating a prototype instructional apparatus and its virtual simulation as a web service, both for the practice of computational thinking through musical expression, and concludes with a study investigating participants' affective states before and after four distinct online computing activities. This dissertation builds on and contributes to extant literature by validating an affective model for computational thinking practice through self-expression. It also proposes a nomological network for the construct of computational thinking for future exploration of the construct, and develops a method for the assessment of instructional activities based on predefined levels of skill and knowledge.
Doctor of Philosophy
This dissertation investigates the role of learners' affect during instructional activities of visual and musical computing. More specifically, learners' enjoyment, excitement, and motivation are measured before and after a computing activity offered in four distinct ways. The computing activities are based on a prototype instructional apparatus, which was designed and fabricated for the practice of computational thinking. A study was performed using a virtual simulation accessible via internet browser. The study suggests that maintaining enjoyment during instructional activities is a more direct path to academic motivation than excitement.