Academic literature on the topic 'Counterintuitive'

AbstractThe present study sought to (1) determine whether Barrett's counterintuitiveness coding and quantifying scheme (CI-Scheme) could be applied to cultural materials with sufficient intercoder reliability, (2) provide evidence concerning just how counterintuitive is too counterintuitive for a concept to be a recurrent cultural idea, and (3) test whether counterintuitive intentional agent concepts are more common in folktales than other classes of counterintuitive concepts. Seventy-three folktales from around the world were sampled from larger collections. Using Barrett's CI-Scheme, two independent coders identified 116 counterintuitive objects and scored them for degree of counterintuitiveness with very high inter-rater concordance. Of folktales, 79% had one or two counterintuitive objects. Of the counterintuitive objects 93% had a counterintuitiveness score of only one. Of counterintuitive objects, 98% were agents. Results suggest the CI-Scheme may have utility for analyzing cultural materials, that the cognitive optimum for cultural transmission falls around one counterintuitive feature, and that counterintuitive agents are more common than other types of counterintuitive objects in folktales.

This paper analyzes the counterintuitive behaviors of adopted twelve distance-based similarity measures between intuitionistic fuzzy sets. Among these distance-based similarity measures, the largest number of components of the distance in the similarity measure is four. We propose six general counterintuitive test problems to analyze their counterintuitive behaviors. The results indicate that all the distance-based similarity measures have some counterintuitive test problems. Furthermore, for the largest number of components of the distance-based similarity measure, four types of counterintuitive examples exist. Therefore, the counterintuitive behaviors are inevitable for the distance-based similarity measures between intuitionistic fuzzy sets.

AbstractMuch experimental evidence shows that minimally counterintuitive concepts, which violate one intuitive ontological expectation of domain-specific natural kinds, are remembered as well as or better than intuitive concepts with no violations of ontological expectations, and much better than maximally counterintuitive concepts with more than one violation of ontological violations (Barrett and Nyhoff, 2001; Boyer and Ramble, 2001; Atran and Norenzayan, 2004; Gonce et al., 2006). It is also well established that concepts rated as high in imagery, (e.g., apple) are recalled better than concepts that are low in imagery (e.g., justice; see Paivio, 1990). We conducted three studies to test whether imagery levels affected recall rates of intuitive, minimally counterintuitive, and maximally counterintuitive concepts. In study 1, we obtained imagery level ratings for 48 three-word items. In study 2, we used the ratings obtained in study 1 in a 2 × 3 recall task in which imagery (high vs. low) was manipulated along with counterintutiveness (intuitive vs. minimally counterintuitive vs. maximally counterintuitive). High imagery items were recalled significantly better than low imagery items for intuitive and maximally counterintuitive items but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Study 3, replicated the findings from study 2 in a 2 × 2 study using a larger number of intuitive and minimally counterintuitive items. In both studies, High imagery items were recalled significantly better than low imagery items for intuitive but not for minimally counterintuitive items. Thus, minimally counterintuitive concepts appear insulated from imagery effects on recall.

This dissertation examines young children’s acceptance of, memory for, and doubts about counterintuitive claims. In Study 1, children aged 3- to 5-years in the United States and China were asked to categorize hybrids whose perceptual features originated from two different animals or two different objects (75% from one and 25% from the other). At first, most children categorized the hybrids in terms of their predominant perceptual features. However, after hearing counter-perceptual categorizations by an adult, children categorized fewer hybrids in terms of their predominant features. When retested 1-to 2-weeks later, the adult’s earlier counter-intuitive categorizations still impacted children’s categorizations but less strongly. In Study 2, American children aged 3- to 6-years were presented with three different-sized Russian dolls and asked to say which doll was the heaviest. Most children pointed to the biggest doll. They were then told that the smallest doll was the heaviest and that the biggest was the lightest, a claim that was false. Most children subsequently endorsed this claim. Nevertheless, when the experimenter left the room, older children were likely to check it by lifting the biggest and smallest dolls. Younger children rarely conducted such checks. In Study 3, Chinese preschool and elementary school children were presented with five different-sized Russian dolls and asked to indicate the heaviest doll. Half of the children then heard a false, counter-intuitive claim (i.e., smallest = heaviest). The remaining children heard a claim confirming their intuitions (i.e., biggest = heaviest). Again, most children endorsed the experimenter’s claim even when it was counter-intuitive. During the experimenter’s subsequent absence, elementary school children explored the dolls more if they had received counter-intuitive rather than confirming testimony. Preschool children rarely explored no matter what testimony they had received. On the experimenter’s return, children who had explored the dolls were likely to reject her counter-intuitive claim. Thus, counterintuitive claims can overturn children’s beliefs but their influence fades over time and is moderated by children’s opportunities to search for empirical evidence. Across two cultures, older children were more inclined than younger children to use opportunities to seek empirical evidence to check counterintuitive claims.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, September, 2020
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references.
In essays one and two, I examine how unstable schedules affect financial performance. In essay one, using 52 weeks of data from over 1,000 stores and more than 15,000 employees of a specialty retailer, I estimate the effect of unstable schedules on store productivity. I use an instrumental variable approach and a natural experiment to partially address the possible endogeneity of scheduling decisions. I find evidence that increasing the adequacy and consistency of employees' hours improves employee and store productivity and find partial support for the positive effect of predictability. To study the policy impact of these findings, I build a behavioral agent-based model of scheduling in essay two. My model provides a platform to conduct counterfactual analyses and thus increases the external validity of my findings.
Results suggest that standard scheduling practices, under certain conditions, may have negative, direct labor cost consequences despite their intended rationale for aligning service capacity and demand. Findings highlight the unintended consequences of a narrow focus on matching labor supply to customer demand; designing more employee-friendly schedules could not only create better jobs but also improve firm performance. In essay three, I build a simulation model to explain why Startups play a major role in establishing many new markets when existing firms have more resources and the relevant core and peripheral capabilities. I explore how the strong link between startups' past performance and the resources available for their future capability building conditions their growth prospects. I show that this reinforcing loop leads to entrepreneurial financial markets rapidly focusing on more promising startups.
The strength of this mechanism can allow startups to over-take projects within incumbent firms that are initially better endowed. Using an online experiment, I test the key requirement for our mechanism, showing that the strength of the reinforcing loop is larger for start-ups than in-house projects.
by MohammadMahdi Hashemian.
Ph. D.
Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management

The demands of exascale computing systems and applications have pushed for a rapid, continual design paradigm coupled with increasing design complexities from the interaction between the application, the middleware, and the underlying system hardware, which forms a breeding ground for inefficiency. This work seeks to improve system efficiency by exposing the root causes of unexpected performance slowdowns (e.g., lower performance at higher processor speeds) that occur more frequently in power-scalable systems where raw processor speed varies. More precisely, we perform an exhaustive empirical study that conclusively shows that increasing processor speed often reduces performance and wastes energy. Our experimental work shows that the frequency of occurrence and magnitude of slowdowns grow with clock frequency and parallelism, indicating that such slowdowns will increasingly be observed with trends in processor and system design. Performance speedups at lower frequencies (or slowdowns at higher frequencies) have been anecdotally observed in the prevailing literature since 2004, but no research has explained nor exploited this phenomenon. This work conclusively demonstrates that performance slowdowns during processor speedup phases can exceed 47% in common I/O workloads. Our hypothesis challenges (and ultimately debunks) a fundamental assumption in computer systems: faster processor speeds result in the same or better performance. In this work, with the use of code and kernel instrumentation, exhaustive experiments, and deep insight into the inner workings of the Linux I/O subsystem, I overcome the aforementioned challenges of variance, complexity, and nondeterminism and identify the I/O resource contention as the root cause of the slowdowns during processor speedup. Specifically, such contention comes from the Linux kernel when the journaling block device (JBD) interacts with the ext3/4 file system that introduces file write delays and file synchronization delays. To fully explain how such I/O contention causes performance anomaly, I propose analytical models of resource contention among I/O threads to describe the root cause of the observed I/O slowdowns when processors speed up. To this end, I introduce LUC, a runtime system to limit the unintended consequences of power scaling and demonstrate the effectiveness of the LUC system for two critical parallel transaction-oriented workloads, including a mail server (varMail) and online transaction processing (oltp).
Ph. D.

The Boosted Fast Flux Loop (BFFL) will expand the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) at Idaho National Laboratory. Part of the BFFL is a new corrosion test cap section for testing in the ATR. The corrosion test cap section was designed with parallel channels to reduce the pressure drop and allow coolant contact with specimens. The fluid experiment conducted by Idaho State University found the pressure drop not characteristic of parallel channel flow but greater than without parallel channels. A Computation Fluid Dynamics simulation using STAR-CCM+ was conducted with the objectives of showing sufficient flow through the test cap section for a corrosion test, verifying the fluid experiment's validity, and explaining the abnormal pressure drop. The simulation used a polyhedral volume mesh and the k-e turbulent model with segregated equations. Convergence depended on a low continuity residual and an unchanging pressure drop result. The simulation showed the same pattern as the fluid experiment. The simulation provided evidence of flow through the test cap section needed for a corrosion test. The specimen holding assembly was found to be a small contributor to the pressure drop. The counterintuitive pressure drop was found to be the sum of many factors produced from the geometry of the test cap section. The inlet of the test cap section behaved as a diverging nozzle before a sudden expansion into the test cap section chamber with both creating a pressure drop. The chaotic flow inside the chamber gave rise to pressure loss from mixing. The fluid exited the chamber through a sudden contraction to a converging nozzle behaving exit, again, producing a pressure drop. By varying the flow rate in the simulation, a disturbance in the flow where the gap fluid separated into the parallel channels was found at high flow rates. At low flow rates the pressure drop anomaly was not found. The corrosion test cap section could be used in the ATR but with a higher pressure drop than desirable. The design of the corrosion test cap section created the abnormal pressure drop.

O efeito de sentido contraintuitivo do discurso publicitário pretende estimular um processo de deslocamento cognitivo dos conteúdos que moldam os estereótipos tradicionais, na memória do indivíduo, ao apresentar em suas narrativas \"outras/novas\" conexões simbólicas de realidades socioculturais vivenciadas por integrantes de grupos minoritários. Assim, durante o processamento da mensagem publicitária, campos de associação podem ser ativados na memória e, dependendo do contexto no qual esta comunicação é recebida, pode ser codificada/percebida, entre outras possibilidades, de forma negativa ou positiva. Diversos estudos e experimentos estão sendo realizados mundialmente, inclusive com peças comunicacionais, para tentar mensurar a eficiência de ações que abordem em suas estratégias questões que auxiliem na desconstrução (eliminação ou supressão) dos estereótipos sociais negativos, mediante estímulos que ativem o controle mental das respostas estereotípicas do indivíduo. Porém, neste processo alguns resultados identificados pelos pesquisadores apontam efeitos irônicos, indesejados; dentre esses se destaca o efeito irônico de ricochete. Sob essa dinâmica, indica-se que os objetivos gerais deste trabalho buscam conceituar e inserir os estudos sobre propaganda contraintuitiva nos debates teóricos da comunicação publicitária; e alimentar teoricamente a área de comunicação sobre os estudos contemporâneos dos estereótipos e, dentro do desenvolvimento desse campo, colaborar para o entendimento do papel responsável do uso dos estereótipos na propaganda. O proceder metodológico atendeu um levantamento bibliográfico que suporta a coordenação de reflexão e fundamentos sobre a temática dos efeitos de comunicação, estereótipos e publicidade. Um experimento laboratorial foi aplicado num esforço de apresentar, observar e verificar alguns indicativos dos efeitos da publicidade contraintuitiva em crenças e estereótipos.
The effect of the counterintuitive sense of advertising discourse aims to prompt a process of cognitive shift of the contents that form the traditional stereotypes, in an individual\'s memory, when it introduces \"other/new\" symbolic connections for sociocultural realities experienced by members of minority groups. Therefore, during the process of the advertising message, association fields may be activated in the memory and, depending on the context in which this communication is viewed, it can be negatively or positively decoded/perceived, among other possibilities. A number of studies and experiments are being carried out globally, using different forms of communication, to observe and measure the efficiency of strategic actions that aid in the deconstruction (elimination or suppression) of the negative social stereotypes, through stimuli that activate the mental control of individual\'s stereotyped answers. However, in this process, some results have been identified by the researchers as ironic and undesired effects, among these, a rebound ironic effect is evident. Therefore, the general objectives of this work are to conceptualize and insert the studies on counterintuitive advertising in the theoretical debates of advertising effects; and theoretically includes the communication area on the contemporary studies of the stereotypes and, within the advancement of this field, collaborate to understand the responsible role of using stereotypes in advertising. The methodological procedure includes a bibliographical appraise that supports the discussion about the reflection and fundamentals on the effects of communication, stereotypes and advertising. A laboratory experiment was carried out in the attempt to present, observe and verify some indicatives of the counterintuitive effects on beliefs and stereotypes.

Researchers all around the globe have not yet come to an end as regards the supposed positive impact of traditional performance management systems in healthcare, and some research has shown that, paradoxically, performance management policies do not always lead to improved hospital performance. Despite the extensive research identifying the “pitfalls” of the NPM reforms around Europe and the unintended consequences for hospital staff and patients, little is known about the mechanisms that caused those negative effects, which essentially creates a research gap worth investigating. This PhD study tries to address this gap and show why do traditional PM Systems in healthcare not always lead to improved performance, by outlining the unintended consequences of the Greek healthcare reform in a public hospital. By conducting empirical research using a case-study, and by adopting a systemic perspective, this research addresses this gap and sheds light on how hospital performance is perceived by stakeholders of a Greek public hospital and what mechanisms drive its dynamic behaviour. Following a systemic approach, the selected case study - which is a real hospital in the Greek Healthcare system - allowed us to investigate the causing mechanisms of the negative consequences of the Greek healthcare reform on the performance of the case hospital. In doing so, we framed our analysis using the Dynamic Performance Management methodology. Recently, researchers have started to see those negative outcomes as “system pitfalls”, occurring from the non-linear interconnection and the dynamic interaction of the different elements and factors that comprise the health system and the healthcare institutions, i.e., their structure, the policies implemented, the behaviour and the decisions of healthcare workers and patients inside this system. The implementation of a systemic performance assessment methodology in Healthcare is sponsored by many recent scholarly contributions in the field (Arnaboldi et al., 2015; Costanza et al., 2014; Bivona, 2010, 2015; Bivona & Cosenz, 2017a, 2017b; Bivona & Noto, 2020; Davahli et al., 2020; Franco-Santos & Otley, 2018; Fryer et al., 2009; Helal, 2016; Renmans et al., 2017; Mwita, 2000; Noto et al., 2020; Vainieri, Ferrè, et al., 2019; Vainieri, Noto, et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). Adopting a systemic perspective means taking as a unit of analysis the organisation as a whole, and not one unit or department; acknowledging its internal and external environment and culture in which health care is performed; and considering the concurrent existence of the pitfalls documented as inherent to the structure of the system and the policies implemented. Studies using such a methodology would be necessary in order to address the gap in existing knowledge, as well as to support policy-makers in designing better, more quality-oriented healthcare policies, interventions and reforms in the future. The purpose of this study was to empirically conceptualise a qualitative model of hospital performance as perceived by stakeholders of a Greek public hospital and use the DPM analysis in order to help policymakers in Greece re-design performance management policies and foster hospital performance. We adopted a systemic, participatory, inductive and dynamic approach by combining the Group Model Building and System Dynamics methodologies into the Dynamic Performance Management approach (Bianchi, 2016). Other research traditions identified in our study are the Stakeholders Theory and Participation. All those approaches stand in the constructivist side of the continuum as research approaches, because they all consider realities as subjective, complex and multi-layered, actively shaped by perceptions and opinions of stakeholders (De Gooyert, 2019; Lane & Schwaninger, 2008). Mixed methods were used to facilitate our approach, combining primary qualitative data from two Group Model Building sessions; four open, unstructured preliminary interviews; and seven semi-structured, disconfirmatory interviews; with secondary, qualitative and quantitative data from a scoping literature review and from a critical literature review; as well as from official, open-access, online text-documents and closed-access, internal text-documents of the hospital’s interdepartmental communication. An open call for participation in the research was sent by email to around 70 different hospitals in the cities of Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece, and the gatekeeper was identified. Starting from the gatekeeper, snowball sampling was used to select 10 participants in the case hospital for the Group Model Building (GMB) sessions, including at least one person from each main key-stakeholder category that our extensive stakeholder analysis identified (i.e., managers, doctors, nurses, paramedics and patients), with the purpose of “eliciting” their mental models and “capturing” them in a qualitative system dynamics model (causal loop diagram). Four of the participants were also interviewed before the GMB sessions (face-to-face, one-to-one preliminary interviews). Convenient sampling was used in order to identify seven more public hospital stakeholders from other public hospitals in Greece for the disconfirmatory interviews. The data analysis included a Scoping Review of the International Literature of Performance Management in the Health Sector; a Critical Review of the Literature on the Greek Healthcare Reform; a Stakeholder Analysis; a Narrative Analysis of Preliminary Interviews and Documents; a Qualitative System Dynamics Analysis (Causal Loop Diagram) of the Simplified version of the Conceptual Model of Hospital Performance created during the GMB sessions; and, finally, the Dynamic Performance Management (DPM) analysis. The GMB sessions helped hospital stakeholders gain a better understanding of what hospital performance is in a more systematic way; define it; show its trend (dynamic behaviour) in the hospital during the last decade in a diagram; and conceptualise it as a system, depicted as a qualitative system dynamics model of hospital performance (CLD - Causal Loop Diagram). The two final versions of this CLD Model (i.e., the Conceptual and the Policy Models of Hospital Performance, available in Appendixes 21 and 22 respectively and thoroughly described in terms of the variables and links they contain in Appendix 24) are the main outputs of the GMB sessions, and formed the basis of our analysis and research findings. The Conceptual Model of Hospital Performance is a CLD model that depicts the actual structure of hospital performance and can be used to explain its currently low levels, whereas the Policy Model of Hospital Performance is extended to incorporate the policy structure, i.e., the changes in the system structure which are necessary, according to our participant stakeholders, in order to improve hospital performance. Hospital performance was defined by the participant stakeholders as the provision of patient-centred care to the patient, with safety (for the patients and the staff); responsibility (adherence to protocols, proportions and procedures) and dignity (nice and clean facilities, reduced waiting times and no informal payments). The historical trend of the Hospital performance in the case hospital was also depicted in a diagram over time called Reference Mode (available in Appendix 19). The Reference Mode created and agreed upon by the participants showed that, despite the counterintuitive negative outcomes documented, the level of the overall performance in the case hospital has been slightly increasing after the healthcare reform and is now stabilizing. Our research showed that the Performance Management policies introduced during the Greek healthcare reform had a negative impact on many aspects of hospital performance in general, and in our case hospital in particular. The new policies undeniably contributed to the reduction of hospital spending, but they simultaneously contributed to the deterioration of hospital service quality. Goal-setting, the main PM strategy followed by Greek public hospitals according to Law N4369/16, is until today not properly implemented in the case hospital and managers seem to treat performance objectives as completely separated from performance and quality, and to consider them totally outside of their everyday tasks. Those findings of the preliminary interviews and documents analysis were validated from the findings of the pretests, conducted before the GMB sessions. Four of the goals that were set by the division managers of the case hospital came up during the GMB sessions and were integrated in the CLD model that the participants built: Standardization of the nursing forms of the nursing departments and units; Standardization of clinical procedures; Use of an Information System in the Interdepartmental Communication; and Application of digital signature and electronic document management. We combined our findings from the documents’ analysis with the descriptions of those goals, as set by the division managers, and we informed them with the findings from our DPM instrumental and objective analysis, which allowed us identify the activities and the resources that are needed for the achievement of each of those four goals. In that respect, we found that apart from the “tangible” strategic resources identified by the managers of the case hospital (e.g., financial and human resources) as essential in the achievement of each of those four goals, Management Capacity - which is an intermediate, administrative product of the hospital, built by the public workers - was equally necessary. Out of all the unintended negative outcomes of the Greek healthcare reform documented in the literature, we found the following seven negative outcomes to be present at the case hospital: (1) Low Quality and Safety of Services perceived by health workers and patients; (2) Low Patient Satisfaction; (3) Informal Payments; (4) High Mortality Rates; (5) Numerous Medical Errors; (6) High Nosocomial & Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria Infections Rates; (7) Low adherence to Clinical Guidelines and Treatment Protocols. Regarding those seven negative outcomes, the analysis of the simplified version of the Conceptual Model of Hospital Quality which the participant stakeholders created during the GMB sessions at the case hospital, showed that: (1) Low Quality and Safety are mostly associated with the variables Survival Rate / Patients' Health Status & Quality of Life and Complications of our model, and can be explained by the dominance of the balancing loops B3 - Actual Time Available & Errors, and B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, both of which cause those two variables to decrease as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at less Proper Communication & Attendance to Patients’ Needs, more Errors and Complications, longer Length of Stay, higher Nosocomial Infections Rate, and, finally, to lower Survival Rate and Patients’ Health Status & Quality of Life after treatment (Dynamic Hypothesis 1). (2) Low Patient Satisfaction can be explained by the dominance of the loops B1 – Word of Mouth & Waiting Times, B2 – Patient Satisfaction & Attendance to Patients’ Needs, B3 - Actual Time Available & Errors, and B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, all of which lead to a gradual decrease and stabilisation of Patient Satisfaction and of Hospital Reputation in the long run as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at less Proper Communication & Attendance to Patients’ Needs, more Informal Payments for early Surgery/Admission longer Waiting List for Surgery or Admission, longer Waiting Time in ER & Outpatient Services and, finally, to lower Survival Rate and Patients’ Health Status & Quality of Life after treatment. (Dynamic Hypothesis 2). (3) The existence of Informal Payments can be explained by the Loop R2 – Informal Payments & Corruption, which leads to a perpetual increase of private spending and to the outspread of corruption between the case hospital doctors, given the good reputation of the case hospital and the long waiting lists that are already in place. This phenomenon is sustained by the current policies in place, which favour the creation of long waiting lists. However, this phenomenon is also sustained by factors external to the case hospital and to our model, such the relative tolerance of the Ministry of Health and of the authorities, and the widespread idea between patients in Greece that informal payments are necessary for a timely and proper treatment. (Dynamic Hypothesis 3). (4) High Mortality Rates can be explained by the Loops B3 - Actual Time Available & Errors, and B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, both of which lead to a gradual decrease and stabilisation at a low level of the Actual Time Available per Patient and of the Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols in the long run as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at less Proper Communication & Attendance to Patients’ Needs, more Errors and Complications, longer Length of Stay, higher Nosocomial Infections Rate, and, finally, to higher Failure & Mortality Rates. (Dynamic Hypothesis 4). (5) Numerous Medical Errors can be explained by the Loop B3 - Actual Time Available & Errors, which leads to a gradual decrease and stabilisation at a low level of the Actual Time Available per Patient and of the Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols in the long run as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at higher Difficulty of Shift Schedule for nurses and doctors, less Proper Communication & Attendance to Patients’ Needs and, finally, to more medical, nursing and patients’ Errors (Dynamic Hypothesis 5). (6) High Nosocomial & Multidrug-resistant bacteria Infections Rates can be explained by the loops R5 – Multidrug Resistance in the General Population and B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, both of which cause Nosocomial Infections to increase in the long run, resulting at more Complications and higher Multidrug Resistance in the General Population (Dynamic Hypothesis 6). (7) Low Adheremce to Clinical Guidelines and Treatment Protocols can be explained by the loop B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, which leads to a gradual decrease and stabilisation at a low level of the Actual Time Available per Patient in the long run, as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at increased Difficulty of Shift Schedule for nurses and doctors, low Availability of Equipment, ICT, Standard Procedures & Digital Forms and, finally, to low Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols. In order to test those seven hypotheses, a quantified SD model (a stock-flow diagram) would be needed, as that would enable us to run simulations and test our hypothesis in different scenarios to analyse the loop dominance. Such a model is out of the scope and purposes of the present, qualitative study and is not included, but is recommended for future research. However, we used the Dynamic Performance Management analysis as an alternative method, in order to: (1) identify Strategic Resources, Performance Drivers and End Results of hospital performance and show their role in the hospital performance management and measurement; (2) show how the time factor influences the overall hospital performance; (3) understand the contribution of each one of the four hospital divisions (the Medical, the Nursing, the Administrative & Financial and the Technical division) on the End Results (i.e., the final hospital services produced); (4) allow the division managers to start concentrating on the core intermediate, administrative products that divisions are required to deliver on the process that leads to the final end-results; (5) map the ultimate and intermediate services value chain provided to both external and internal users of the case hospital; (6) make performance measures (i.e., the drivers and end-results associated with the delivery of products) explicit and then link them to the goals and objectives of the division managers of the case hospital; (7) discuss the insights that the DPM analysis offers us for a sustainable Performance Management in Greek public hospitals in general, and in the case hospital in particular. The identification of Strategic Resources, Performance Drivers and intermediate End Results, as well as the different views that our DPM analysis offered (i.e., instrumental, dynamic, subjective, objective) provided the hospital decision-makers with signs of potential future shift in End Results, and can help public hospital managers in Greece interpret and calculate the consequences of an incident or the implications of a policy; show possible discrepancies on performance; and try to mitigate it. The performance measures we identified could be helpful to foresee possible changes in the financial and clinical results of public hospitals in Greece. When framed in a wider sense than budgetary control, transaction cost drivers can provide hospital managers and policy makers in Greece with valuable information for strategic planning, such as the opportunity to identify trade-offs in space and in time (e.g., higher costs for investments and for managerial capacity building in the short-run, versus investments in equipment, ICT, and facilities that would increase performance in the long run). Thus, the performance management policies adopted at the case hospital during the healthcare reform ( i.e., structure and process reforms undertaken) and their overall impact for Greek public hospitals’ outputs and outcomes, can now be examined through a different “lenses” by the hospital managers; lenses that will allow them overcome the seven counterintuitive, negative outcomes documented, and align the hospital’s and the different division’s and departments’ goals and actions to achieve improved efficiency and effectiveness, along with better hospital service quality for patients.
Researchers all around the globe have not yet come to an end as regards the supposed positive impact of traditional performance management systems in healthcare, and some research has shown that, paradoxically, performance management policies do not always lead to improved hospital performance. Despite the extensive research identifying the “pitfalls” of the NPM reforms around Europe and the unintended consequences for hospital staff and patients, little is known about the mechanisms that caused those negative effects, which essentially creates a research gap worth investigating. This PhD study tries to address this gap and show why do traditional PM Systems in healthcare not always lead to improved performance, by outlining the unintended consequences of the Greek healthcare reform in a public hospital. By conducting empirical research using a case-study, and by adopting a systemic perspective, this research addresses this gap and sheds light on how hospital performance is perceived by stakeholders of a Greek public hospital and what mechanisms drive its dynamic behaviour. Following a systemic approach, the selected case study - which is a real hospital in the Greek Healthcare system - allowed us to investigate the causing mechanisms of the negative consequences of the Greek healthcare reform on the performance of the case hospital. In doing so, we framed our analysis using the Dynamic Performance Management methodology. Recently, researchers have started to see those negative outcomes as “system pitfalls”, occurring from the non-linear interconnection and the dynamic interaction of the different elements and factors that comprise the health system and the healthcare institutions, i.e., their structure, the policies implemented, the behaviour and the decisions of healthcare workers and patients inside this system. The implementation of a systemic performance assessment methodology in Healthcare is sponsored by many recent scholarly contributions in the field (Arnaboldi et al., 2015; Costanza et al., 2014; Bivona, 2010, 2015; Bivona & Cosenz, 2017a, 2017b; Bivona & Noto, 2020; Davahli et al., 2020; Franco-Santos & Otley, 2018; Fryer et al., 2009; Helal, 2016; Renmans et al., 2017; Mwita, 2000; Noto et al., 2020; Vainieri, Ferrè, et al., 2019; Vainieri, Noto, et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020). Adopting a systemic perspective means taking as a unit of analysis the organisation as a whole, and not one unit or department; acknowledging its internal and external environment and culture in which health care is performed; and considering the concurrent existence of the pitfalls documented as inherent to the structure of the system and the policies implemented. Studies using such a methodology would be necessary in order to address the gap in existing knowledge, as well as to support policy-makers in designing better, more quality-oriented healthcare policies, interventions and reforms in the future. The purpose of this study was to empirically conceptualise a qualitative model of hospital performance as perceived by stakeholders of a Greek public hospital and use the DPM analysis in order to help policymakers in Greece re-design performance management policies and foster hospital performance. We adopted a systemic, participatory, inductive and dynamic approach by combining the Group Model Building and System Dynamics methodologies into the Dynamic Performance Management approach (Bianchi, 2016). Other research traditions identified in our study are the Stakeholders Theory and Participation. All those approaches stand in the constructivist side of the continuum as research approaches, because they all consider realities as subjective, complex and multi-layered, actively shaped by perceptions and opinions of stakeholders (De Gooyert, 2019; Lane & Schwaninger, 2008). Mixed methods were used to facilitate our approach, combining primary qualitative data from two Group Model Building sessions; four open, unstructured preliminary interviews; and seven semi-structured, disconfirmatory interviews; with secondary, qualitative and quantitative data from a scoping literature review and from a critical literature review; as well as from official, open-access, online text-documents and closed-access, internal text-documents of the hospital’s interdepartmental communication. An open call for participation in the research was sent by email to around 70 different hospitals in the cities of Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece, and the gatekeeper was identified. Starting from the gatekeeper, snowball sampling was used to select 10 participants in the case hospital for the Group Model Building (GMB) sessions, including at least one person from each main key-stakeholder category that our extensive stakeholder analysis identified (i.e., managers, doctors, nurses, paramedics and patients), with the purpose of “eliciting” their mental models and “capturing” them in a qualitative system dynamics model (causal loop diagram). Four of the participants were also interviewed before the GMB sessions (face-to-face, one-to-one preliminary interviews). Convenient sampling was used in order to identify seven more public hospital stakeholders from other public hospitals in Greece for the disconfirmatory interviews. The data analysis included a Scoping Review of the International Literature of Performance Management in the Health Sector; a Critical Review of the Literature on the Greek Healthcare Reform; a Stakeholder Analysis; a Narrative Analysis of Preliminary Interviews and Documents; a Qualitative System Dynamics Analysis (Causal Loop Diagram) of the Simplified version of the Conceptual Model of Hospital Performance created during the GMB sessions; and, finally, the Dynamic Performance Management (DPM) analysis. The GMB sessions helped hospital stakeholders gain a better understanding of what hospital performance is in a more systematic way; define it; show its trend (dynamic behaviour) in the hospital during the last decade in a diagram; and conceptualise it as a system, depicted as a qualitative system dynamics model of hospital performance (CLD - Causal Loop Diagram). The two final versions of this CLD Model (i.e., the Conceptual and the Policy Models of Hospital Performance, available in Appendixes 21 and 22 respectively and thoroughly described in terms of the variables and links they contain in Appendix 24) are the main outputs of the GMB sessions, and formed the basis of our analysis and research findings. The Conceptual Model of Hospital Performance is a CLD model that depicts the actual structure of hospital performance and can be used to explain its currently low levels, whereas the Policy Model of Hospital Performance is extended to incorporate the policy structure, i.e., the changes in the system structure which are necessary, according to our participant stakeholders, in order to improve hospital performance. Hospital performance was defined by the participant stakeholders as the provision of patient-centred care to the patient, with safety (for the patients and the staff); responsibility (adherence to protocols, proportions and procedures) and dignity (nice and clean facilities, reduced waiting times and no informal payments). The historical trend of the Hospital performance in the case hospital was also depicted in a diagram over time called Reference Mode (available in Appendix 19). The Reference Mode created and agreed upon by the participants showed that, despite the counterintuitive negative outcomes documented, the level of the overall performance in the case hospital has been slightly increasing after the healthcare reform and is now stabilizing. Our research showed that the Performance Management policies introduced during the Greek healthcare reform had a negative impact on many aspects of hospital performance in general, and in our case hospital in particular. The new policies undeniably contributed to the reduction of hospital spending, but they simultaneously contributed to the deterioration of hospital service quality. Goal-setting, the main PM strategy followed by Greek public hospitals according to Law N4369/16, is until today not properly implemented in the case hospital and managers seem to treat performance objectives as completely separated from performance and quality, and to consider them totally outside of their everyday tasks. Those findings of the preliminary interviews and documents analysis were validated from the findings of the pretests, conducted before the GMB sessions. Four of the goals that were set by the division managers of the case hospital came up during the GMB sessions and were integrated in the CLD model that the participants built: Standardization of the nursing forms of the nursing departments and units; Standardization of clinical procedures; Use of an Information System in the Interdepartmental Communication; and Application of digital signature and electronic document management. We combined our findings from the documents’ analysis with the descriptions of those goals, as set by the division managers, and we informed them with the findings from our DPM instrumental and objective analysis, which allowed us identify the activities and the resources that are needed for the achievement of each of those four goals. In that respect, we found that apart from the “tangible” strategic resources identified by the managers of the case hospital (e.g., financial and human resources) as essential in the achievement of each of those four goals, Management Capacity - which is an intermediate, administrative product of the hospital, built by the public workers - was equally necessary. Out of all the unintended negative outcomes of the Greek healthcare reform documented in the literature, we found the following seven negative outcomes to be present at the case hospital: (1) Low Quality and Safety of Services perceived by health workers and patients; (2) Low Patient Satisfaction; (3) Informal Payments; (4) High Mortality Rates; (5) Numerous Medical Errors; (6) High Nosocomial & Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria Infections Rates; (7) Low adherence to Clinical Guidelines and Treatment Protocols. Regarding those seven negative outcomes, the analysis of the simplified version of the Conceptual Model of Hospital Quality which the participant stakeholders created during the GMB sessions at the case hospital, showed that: (1) Low Quality and Safety are mostly associated with the variables Survival Rate / Patients' Health Status & Quality of Life and Complications of our model, and can be explained by the dominance of the balancing loops B3 - Actual Time Available & Errors, and B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, both of which cause those two variables to decrease as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at less Proper Communication & Attendance to Patients’ Needs, more Errors and Complications, longer Length of Stay, higher Nosocomial Infections Rate, and, finally, to lower Survival Rate and Patients’ Health Status & Quality of Life after treatment (Dynamic Hypothesis 1). (2) Low Patient Satisfaction can be explained by the dominance of the loops B1 – Word of Mouth & Waiting Times, B2 – Patient Satisfaction & Attendance to Patients’ Needs, B3 - Actual Time Available & Errors, and B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, all of which lead to a gradual decrease and stabilisation of Patient Satisfaction and of Hospital Reputation in the long run as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at less Proper Communication & Attendance to Patients’ Needs, more Informal Payments for early Surgery/Admission longer Waiting List for Surgery or Admission, longer Waiting Time in ER & Outpatient Services and, finally, to lower Survival Rate and Patients’ Health Status & Quality of Life after treatment. (Dynamic Hypothesis 2). (3) The existence of Informal Payments can be explained by the Loop R2 – Informal Payments & Corruption, which leads to a perpetual increase of private spending and to the outspread of corruption between the case hospital doctors, given the good reputation of the case hospital and the long waiting lists that are already in place. This phenomenon is sustained by the current policies in place, which favour the creation of long waiting lists. However, this phenomenon is also sustained by factors external to the case hospital and to our model, such the relative tolerance of the Ministry of Health and of the authorities, and the widespread idea between patients in Greece that informal payments are necessary for a timely and proper treatment. (Dynamic Hypothesis 3). (4) High Mortality Rates can be explained by the Loops B3 - Actual Time Available & Errors, and B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, both of which lead to a gradual decrease and stabilisation at a low level of the Actual Time Available per Patient and of the Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols in the long run as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at less Proper Communication & Attendance to Patients’ Needs, more Errors and Complications, longer Length of Stay, higher Nosocomial Infections Rate, and, finally, to higher Failure & Mortality Rates. (Dynamic Hypothesis 4). (5) Numerous Medical Errors can be explained by the Loop B3 - Actual Time Available & Errors, which leads to a gradual decrease and stabilisation at a low level of the Actual Time Available per Patient and of the Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols in the long run as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at higher Difficulty of Shift Schedule for nurses and doctors, less Proper Communication & Attendance to Patients’ Needs and, finally, to more medical, nursing and patients’ Errors (Dynamic Hypothesis 5). (6) High Nosocomial & Multidrug-resistant bacteria Infections Rates can be explained by the loops R5 – Multidrug Resistance in the General Population and B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, both of which cause Nosocomial Infections to increase in the long run, resulting at more Complications and higher Multidrug Resistance in the General Population (Dynamic Hypothesis 6). (7) Low Adheremce to Clinical Guidelines and Treatment Protocols can be explained by the loop B4 - Actual Time Available and Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols, which leads to a gradual decrease and stabilisation at a low level of the Actual Time Available per Patient in the long run, as in the Limits to Success archetype, resulting at increased Difficulty of Shift Schedule for nurses and doctors, low Availability of Equipment, ICT, Standard Procedures & Digital Forms and, finally, to low Adherence to Guidelines & Protocols. In order to test those seven hypotheses, a quantified SD model (a stock-flow diagram) would be needed, as that would enable us to run simulations and test our hypothesis in different scenarios to analyse the loop dominance. Such a model is out of the scope and purposes of the present, qualitative study and is not included, but is recommended for future research. However, we used the Dynamic Performance Management analysis as an alternative method, in order to: (1) identify Strategic Resources, Performance Drivers and End Results of hospital performance and show their role in the hospital performance management and measurement; (2) show how the time factor influences the overall hospital performance; (3) understand the contribution of each one of the four hospital divisions (the Medical, the Nursing, the Administrative & Financial and the Technical division) on the End Results (i.e., the final hospital services produced); (4) allow the division managers to start concentrating on the core intermediate, administrative products that divisions are required to deliver on the process that leads to the final end-results; (5) map the ultimate and intermediate services value chain provided to both external and internal users of the case hospital; (6) make performance measures (i.e., the drivers and end-results associated with the delivery of products) explicit and then link them to the goals and objectives of the division managers of the case hospital; (7) discuss the insights that the DPM analysis offers us for a sustainable Performance Management in Greek public hospitals in general, and in the case hospital in particular. The identification of Strategic Resources, Performance Drivers and intermediate End Results, as well as the different views that our DPM analysis offered (i.e., instrumental, dynamic, subjective, objective) provided the hospital decision-makers with signs of potential future shift in End Results, and can help public hospital managers in Greece interpret and calculate the consequences of an incident or the implications of a policy; show possible discrepancies on performance; and try to mitigate it. The performance measures we identified could be helpful to foresee possible changes in the financial and clinical results of public hospitals in Greece. When framed in a wider sense than budgetary control, transaction cost drivers can provide hospital managers and policy makers in Greece with valuable information for strategic planning, such as the opportunity to identify trade-offs in space and in time (e.g., higher costs for investments and for managerial capacity building in the short-run, versus investments in equipment, ICT, and facilities that would increase performance in the long run). Thus, the performance management policies adopted at the case hospital during the healthcare reform ( i.e., structure and process reforms undertaken) and their overall impact for Greek public hospitals’ outputs and outcomes, can now be examined through a different “lenses” by the hospital managers; lenses that will allow them overcome the seven counterintuitive, negative outcomes documented, and align the hospital’s and the different division’s and departments’ goals and actions to achieve improved efficiency and effectiveness, along with better hospital service quality for patients.

This thesis is on Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) and its relevance for the rationality of religious beliefs. An epistemical model for rationality is developed according to which: a person (or group of persons) is rational to hold a certain belief a) if this belief can be assumed to have been generated by one or more reliable cognitive mechanisms, b) applies whether or not she is aware of what these mechanisms are, but c) only as long as it does not exist or arise some reasons (defeaters) to question the belief; if they occur, she must d) reflect on it and find other reasons or grounds to hold the belief in question.      Two different positions are examined, namely: 1) negative relevance: the findings and theories in CSR undermines the rationality of religious beliefs; 2) positive relevance: religious beliefs need not be irrational in the light of CSR, in fact CSR may actually support the rationality of religious beliefs.      Two lines of argument can be distinguished among those who argue for a negative relevance: a) the natural explanations that are provided by CSR are preferable; and b) religious beliefs are irrational because they are caused by unreliable cognitive mechanisms.      Among those who argue for positive relevance two arguments can be distinguised: a) religious beliefs seem to come naturally to humans and therefore are probably true; and b) CSR confirms empirically that we are equipped with a "divine mechanism" that there are reasons to believe is reliable.      The conclusions are: CSR has negative relevance to beliefs in "finite supernatural agency", but not for the faith of "infinite supernatural agency". First, the first type of beliefs is easier to explain by being generated by unreliable cognitive mechanisms; secondly they are difficult to integrate with what we otherwise know about the world. A category that falls outside the scope of CSR and thus not even potentially can be affected, is beliefs in "supernatural non-agency".
The Impact of Religion – Challenges for Society, Law and Democracy

This dissertation examines some counterintuitive effects associated with having high status. Whereas much literature focuses on benefits associated with holding high status, in this dissertation, I highlight some negative outcomes that can come from having status. Study 1 examines marital costs that can emerge when women hold high job status relative to their spouses. I propose a conditional process model such that when women experience job status leakage, a construct referring to contempt that women feel towards their husbands’ lower job status, this will positively predict marital instability, mediated through decreased relationship satisfaction. The model is tested in a cross-sectional field study on women in high job status positions, and the model is supported. The second study of this dissertation examines potential costs when in high status positions to CEOs longevity. I argue that despite the benefits accrued at the highest level of organizational status; CEOs will compare their status to other CEOs, which influences their longevity. Using a retrospective cohort analysis on award winners from Financial Word Magazine’s “CEO of the Year” contest, I test four competing models, which suggest that the ways CEOs interpret their status can predict longevity. The results of this study are largely unsupported, though post-hoc analyses and theorizing suggest that status maintenance comes at a cost to longevity for this group of CEOs. In the third study of this dissertation, I examine the relational costs associated with holding high status. Given the relational nature of status, for some individuals to have high status, there must be lower status referents. The emotions and behaviors of those lower status others are the focus of the third study. I propose that in the presence of status differences, lower status individuals will feel envious of others’ higher status positions, and I quantify how much status dispersion must be present in order for envy to be triggered. I also suggest that when individuals are envious of others’ status positions, they are more likely to ostracize high status targets and perceive themselves as ostracized in social interactions. The results suggest that there is a curvilinear relationship between status dispersion and envy, where only minimal status differences need be present in order for envy to emerge, and envy then predicts feeling ostracized in social situations. The dissertation closes with a general discussion of the studies, and suggests areas for future research.
Thesis (Ph.D, Management) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-13 14:12:57.107

Self-rated religiosity has been studied alongside intelligence for nearly 100 years. The predominant finding is a negative relationship between measures of self-rated religiosity and individual measures of intelligence. That is, as intelligence increases, the degree of self-rated religiosity decreases; as intelligence scores decrease, self-rated religiosity tends to increase. Spirituality has been studied intermittently as a separate theoretical construct since the 1970’s and there has been a recent empirical drive to consider and refer to these concepts separately. Valid and reliable measures of intelligence have not yet been examined alongside empirically validated, individual, self-rated measures of spirituality. In this study, 44 undergraduate students from the University of Saskatchewan completed the Shipley-2 abbreviated test of intelligence and the Spiritual Well Being Questionnaire (SWBQ). Due to the nature of religiosity relative to spirituality, as well as individual differences in characteristic propensities to engage in logical reasoning, it was hypothesized that when compared to past research examining measured intelligence relative to self-endorsed measures of religiosity, a relatively weak relationship would be observed. The nature and strength of the relationship between self-rated measures of spirituality and measured intelligence was nearly identical to a recent meta-analysis study examining the relationship between self-rated religiosity and measured intelligence. However, a relatively strong negative relationship was observed between the transcendent factor of the SWBQ – the factor most closely associated with notions of a God, religion, or religiosity – and intelligence. This finding supports the hypothesis and suggests that perhaps it is the notion of a God or other sentient being that is driving or inflating the widely observed negative relationship between self-rated religiosity and intelligence.

We provide an analytical description of the counterintuitive phenomenon of non-Hermitian jumps in optical lattices with strong uncorrelated disorder. Our approach is general and is also applied to extensions of the Hatano-Nelson model.

Abstract In the late 1980’s Enterprise Engine Company performed a single cylinder test of micro-pilot high pressure direct injection as a retrofit technology for conventional dual fuel engines. While that testing demonstrated a number of benefits for this technology, non-technical considerations led to the use of low pressure Pre-Combustion Chamber (PCC) micro-pilot technology as the retrofit technology instead. Thirty years later, when the automotive components of the PCC micro-pilot system were no longer available, the opportunity again arose to test the capabilities of an off the shelf high pressure direct injection micro-pilot system as a retrofit technology for a conventional dual fuel engine. Single cylinder and full engine testing of the high pressure direct injection micro-pilot injection confirmed the results of the 1980’s testing. The test results also corroborated modern analytical and experimental testing of high pressure pilot technology. In particular, the interaction between the diesel pilot and primary fuel gas charge is very complex and sometimes counterintuitive. Likewise performance optimization requires careful balance of injection timing, injection quantity and fuel gas air/fuel ratio. Even then, exhaust gas methane emissions remain counterintuitive. This paper reviews modern single cylinder and full engine test results focusing on optimization parameters for high pressure direct injection micro-pilot for retrofit and new engine applications.

The current safety management program in Indiana uses a method based on aggregate crash data for conditions averaged over several-year periods with consideration of only major roadway features. This approach does not analyze the risk of crashes potentially affected by time-dependent conditions such as traffic control, operations, weather and their interaction with road geometry. With the rapid development of data collection techniques, time-dependent data have emerged, some of which have become available for safety management. This project investigated the feasibility of using emerging and existing data sources to supplement the current safety management practices in Indiana and performed a comprehensive evaluation of the quality of the new data sources and their relevance to traffic safety analysis. In two case studies, time-dependent data were acquired and integrated to estimate their effects on the hourly probability of crash and its severity on two selected types of roads: (1) rural freeways and (2) signalized intersections. The results indicate a considerable connection between hourly traffic volume, average speeds, and weather conditions on the hourly probability of crash and its severity. Although some roadway geometric features were found to affect safety, the lack of turning volume data at intersections led to some counterintuitive results. Improvements have been identified to be implemented in the next phase of the project to eliminate these undesirable results.

In summer 2021, drought and low humidity combined with record-breaking heat of up to 48.8°C (119.8°F) led to fire outbreaks across the Mediterranean countries, killing more than 100 people and burning more than 620,000 ha of land in July and August. As forests are often fiercely protected areas, the common approach to wildfire management in the Mediterranean is to extinguish every fire as it appears, but counterintuitively this supports the formation of “mega-fires” that burn beyond our capacity to control. Fires are not yet seen as integral to ecosystem functioning, and the management of fires and fires are often disconnected. This technical background report for the 2021/2022 edition of the Interconnected Disaster Risks report analyses the root causes, drivers, impacts and potential solutions for the Mediterranean wildfires through a forensic analysis of academic literature, media articles and expert interviews.

Raising captive animals past critical mortality stages for eventual release (head-starting) is a common conservation tactic. Counterintuitively, post-release survival can be low. Post-release behavior affecting survival could be influenced by captive-rearing duration and housing conditions. Practitioners have adopted environmental enrichment to promote natural behaviors during head-starting such as raising animals in naturalistic enclosures. Using 32 captive-born turtles (Terrapene carolina), half of which were raised in enriched enclosures, we employed a factorial design to explore how enrichment and rearing duration affected post-release growth, behavior, and survival. Six turtles in each treatment (enriched or unenriched) were head-started for nine months (cohort one). Ten turtles in each treatment were head-started for 21 months (cohort two). At the conclusion of captive-rearing, turtles in cohort two were overall larger than cohort one, but unenriched turtles were generally larger than enriched turtles within each cohort. Once released, enriched turtles grew faster than unenriched turtles in cohort two, but we otherwise found minimal evidence suggesting enrichment affected post-release survival or behavior. Our findings suggest attaining larger body sizes from longer captive-rearing periods to enable greater movement and alleviate susceptibility to predation (the primary cause of death) could be more effective than environmental enrichment alone in chelonian head-starting programs where substantial predation could hinder success.