Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Implicit rules'

In the past few decades, cognitive psychologists and linguists have shown increasing research interest in the phenomenon of implicit learning, a term generally defined as learning of regularities in the environment without intention and awareness. Some psychologists regard implicit learning as the primary mechanism for knowledge attainment and language acquisition (Reber, 1993), whereas others deny the possibility of learning even simple contingencies in an implicit manner (Lovibond and Shanks, 2002). In the context of language acquisition, while first language acquisition is essentially implicit, the extent to which implicit learning is relevant to second language acquisition remains unclear. Empirical evidence has been found on the implicit learning of grammar/syntactic rules (e.g., Rebuschat & Williams, 2012) and form-meaning connections (e.g., Leung & Williams, 2011) but little investigation of implicit learning has been conducted in the realm of phonology, particularly supra-segmental phonology. Besides, there is still no consensus on the extent to which implicit learning exhibits population variation. This dissertation reports three experiments which aim to 1) address the possibility of learning second language (L2) word stress patterns implicitly; 2) identify relevant individual differences in the implicit learning of L2 word stress rules; and 3) improve measurement of conscious knowledge by integrating both subjective and objective measures of awareness. Using an incidental learning task and a two-alternative forced-choice post-test, Experiment 1 found evidence of learning one-to-one stress-to-phoneme connections in an implicit fashion, and successfully applied the process dissociation procedure as a sensitive awareness measure. Experiment 2 found implicit learning effect for more complicated word stress rules which involved mappings between stress assignment and syllable types/types of phoneme, and integrated verbal reports, confidence ratings and inclusion-exclusion tasks as awareness measures. Experiment 3 explored potentially individual differences in the learning of L2 word stress rules. No correlation was found between learning of L2 word stress and working memory, processing speed and phonological short-term memory, supporting the belief that involvement of working memory in implicit learning is minimal, and the view that different stimuli/task-specific subsystems govern different implicit learning tasks. It is concluded that L2 word stress rules may be learnt implicitly with minimal individual variations.<br>published_or_final_version<br>English<br>Master<br>Master of Philosophy

Research has linked emotional regulation to the adaptive functioning of adolescents. Further research suggests that family processes, which include implicit rules, impact children's emotional regulation. The current study examined the impact of implicit rules that are facilitative of family connectedness on development of adolescents' emotional regulation. Data came from the Flourishing Families Project (FFP), a seven-year longitudinal study measuring family processes that impact adolescent development. The sample was collected in the northwestern United States and consisted of 500 families with a target child between the ages of 10 and 14 years. Participants filled out self-report measures on implicit family rules and emotional regulation. Data was organized in a cohort sequential design and analyzed using latent variable growth curve modeling. Results indicated that there was no statistically significant growth in emotional regulation across the adolescent years. Results further indicated that initial status of facilitative rules did not have a statistically significant effect on growth in emotional regulation. Finally, growth in facilitative rules was found to have a statistically significant impact on growth in emotional regulation. Clinical implications for work with adolescents and families are discussed.

Family environment is a significant factor in the development of eating disorders in young-adult females. Clinical experience, research and theories about eating disorders indicate that constrictive implicit process rules within a family are correlated with eating-disordered families. This study identified implicit family process rules that are unique to eating-disordered families and how well these rules predict membership in eating-disordered and non-eating-disordered families. One hundred and two families (51 eating-disordered and 51 comparison families) participated in the study. Mothers, fathers, young-adult female children, and siblings in each family completed the Family Implicit Rules Profile (FIRP). The design included cluster analysis of all 85 rules to determine which implicit rules clustered in eating-disordered families, and discriminant analysis to determine how well the rules from the cluster analysis predicted membership in the groups of eating-disordered vs. control families. Results indicated that two clusters emerged related to eating-disordered families. The first included rules regarding inappropriate protection of parents (ex. "Protect your parent even if they do not deserve it"), not upsetting or inconveniencing parents, the triangulation of a child (eg.. "Listen to a parent when they complain about the other parent"), avoiding pain at any cost, and blaming self for others' anger. Cluster 2 included rules about appearances (eg,. "Do whatever you have to do to look good to others") and rules about keeping family matters private. Discriminant analysis showed that these 15 implicit family rules predicted membership in either the eating-disordered or the non-eating-disordered family groups with 93% accuracy. Implications for family therapy are discussed.

This exploratory cross-sectional study examined the relationship between implicit family process rules and adolescent prosocial and antisocial communication behaviors. Data came from two-parent families in wave 5 of the Flourishing Families project which consisted of 322 families (fathers, mothers and children ages 13-17). Both observational and questionnaire data were used in data collection. Prosocial and antisocial behaviors were assessed using observational codes from the Iowa Family Interaction Rating Scales (Melby, et al., 1998). Each of the family members' perceptions were used to assess constraining family rules and facilitative family rules. Findings showed a direct positive relationship between facilitative family process rules and pro-social communication and a negative relationship with antisocial communication. Constraining family process rules were also positively related to antisocial communication behaviors in adolescents. Shame was a significant mediator of the relationship between facilitative family rules and prosocial behavior as well as between constraining family rules and antisocial behavior. Implications for family therapy practice are discussed.

Implicit learning is the learning of underlying regularities hidden in the environment without the learner being conscious of what is being learnt. First language acquisition in young children is essentially implicit (Krashen, 1982), but the role of implicit learning in second language acquisition is debatable. Previous research on learning of tonal languages focused on perception and identification of language tones in relatively explicit settings, and showed that tonal language experience may not help with learning a new tonal language in an explicit setting (So & Best, 2010; Wang, 2006). Yet, little research was done on the implicit learning of language tones, and on whether prior tonal language experience plays a role in such implicit learning. In this study, simplified Thai tonal rules were used as a learning target to investigate if implicit learning of such rules is possible. Implicit learning performance among native tonal language speakers with no knowledge of Thai, non?tonal language native speakers who have learnt/have been learning tonal languages other than Thai, and non?tonal language speakers with little knowledge of tonal languages were compared. Results showed that the native tonal language group implicitly learnt the target, and some trends of learning were found in the tonal language learner group, but not in the tonal language na?ve group. This advantage of tonal language experience over the learning of tonal patterns suggested that tonal language experience can be transferable to the learning of a new tonal language in implicit settings. This suggested that, rather than being hindered by their prior linguistic experience, learners with some tonal language background may benefit from implicit settings when learning a new tonal language.<br>published_or_final_version<br>English<br>Master<br>Master of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Marriage and Family Therapy, 2006.<br>Title of electronic copy: Relationship of implicit family process rules to adolescent presentation of psychological systems. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-76).

The purpose of this study was to examine how implicit family process rules are related to observed child emotional responsiveness with child self regulation as a possible mediating variable. Data from Wave 1 of the Flourishing Families project was used and included 337 two parent families and a target child between the ages of 10 and 13. Mother and father perception of family implicit rules were used to measure family implicit rules; child and mother report of the child's self regulation were used to measure self regulation, and child's emotional responsiveness to mother and father were taken from coding data. The Iowa Family Interaction Rating Scales (Melby, et. al., 1998) were used to code the behavior of the child with mother and with father. Multiple Group Comparison using AMOS 16 was used to compare differences based on child gender. Results showed that family implicit rules were positively related to emotional responsiveness to mother for both sons and daughters and to emotional responsiveness to father for sons but not for daughters. Family implicit rules were positively related to child self regulation for both sons and daughters, and self regulation was related to both emotional responsiveness to mother and to father. Results indicated child self regulation significantly mediated the relationship between family implicit rules and emotional responsiveness to mother as well as the relationship between implicit rules and emotional responsiveness to father. Implications for family therapy are discussed.

Family life is organized by rules, and most of them are unspokenly agreed-upon by family members and may be even out of awareness. Implicit family process and couple rules may facilitate or constrain family relationship and intimate couple relationship growth. Prevalence of family rules may be different across cultures. Family members may perceive their rules and family functioning differently according to their family position and gender. Married couples may view their relationship rules differently than couples who cohabit. This study utilized the Family Implicit Rules Profile (FIRP) and the Couples Implicit Rules Profile (CIRP) Questionnaires to answer these research questions. The questionnaires were translated into Hungarian, and the content validity of the Hungarian translation was established. Hungarian non-clinical families and couples were compared to American (U.S.) non-clinical families and couples to examine how prevalent implicit rules were in the two cultures. According to the findings, Hungarian families and couples scored lower on the total FIRP and CIRP scores. Hungarian families perceived implicit family rules regarding kindness and monitoring less prevalent, and rules regarding constraining their thoughts, feelings and self more prevalent than American families. No differences were found in expressiveness and connection and inappropriate caretaking of parents between the two cultures. Hungarian couples perceived their implicit relationship rules regarding kindness, expressiveness and connection and monitoring less prevalent than American couples. No differences in implicit rules about constraining thoughts, feelings and self and inappropriate caretaking of partner were found between the two cultures. Mothers in both cultures viewed their families in a more positive light than other family members, and female family members (mothers and daughters) were more positive than their male counterparts (fathers and sons) about rules in their families in both cultures. Sons in both cultures perceived more responsibility to protect their parents emotionally than did daughters. Married couples in both cultures perceived their relationship rules more favorably in terms of kindness and monitoring than cohabiting couples. Results were interpreted in the context of cultural differences between the American and the Hungarian cultures. Limitations and the possibility of future research are discussed.

This study examines the association between couple implicit rules related to facilitating disclosure and marital quality with husband and wife romantic relational aggression as potential mediators. Couples (N-353 couples) who participated in the Flourishing Families Project, reported on their use of couple implicit rules related to disclosure. Results indicated that implicit rules for couple disclosure were positively related to marital quality for both husbands and wives. Those couples who reported more use of implicit rules related to disclosure were also likely to use less romantic relational aggression. In turn, both husband and wife romantic relational aggression was negatively related to their own as well as their partner's marital quality. Romantic relational aggression was a significant mediator between couple implicit rules for disclosure and marital quality for both husbands and wives. Implications for marital therapy are discussed.

Uno dei problemi fondamentali nello studio dei disturbi del neurosviluppo è quello di individuare abilità cognitive di tipo generale che potrebbero sottostare a complessi fenotipi clinici. Uno dei possibili candidati che potrebbe contribuire a spiegare la sovrapposizione e la variabilità di sintomi che caratterizzano il disturbo specifico del linguaggio (DSL), dislessia evolutiva (DE), e il disturbo dello spettro autistico (ASD) è l’abilità di apprendimento implicito (Ullman, 2004). L’apprendimento implicito è una complessa ed eterogena abilità, composta da diversi tipi di meccanismi di apprendimento, e nel presente elaborato di tesi saranno indagati il meccanismo di statistical e rule learning in relazione ai disturbi del linguaggio e della comunicazione. Il meccanismo di SL permette di estrarre contingenze di tipo statistico tra elementi di una sequenza (Saffran et al., 1996), mentre, il RL permette di estrarre regole, high-order, da sequenze di stimoli e di generalizzarle tali regole a nuovi elementi (Marcus et al., 1999). Questi meccanismi sembrano coinvolti in diversi aspetti dello sviluppo linguistico, i.e. abilità fonologiche e di tipo grammaticale, ed è stato recentemente proposto che questi meccanismi potrebbero svolgere un ruolo fondamentale nello sviluppo della teoria della mente e di abilità di tipo comunicativo. Diversi studi hanno indagato se l’abilità di SL fosse importante per lo sviluppo di abilità di tipo comunicativi e linguistico in SLI, DE e ASD, mentre, a nostra conoscenza, non ci sono studi che hanno indagato il ruolo del meccanismo di RL nello sviluppo di abilità di linguaggio. Tenendo in considerazione queste evidenze, riteniamo sia importante indagare se e come differenti tipi di meccanismi di apprendimento siano legati allo sviluppo tipico e atipico di abilità di linguaggio e della comunicazione. Pertanto, lo scopo del presente lavoro di tesi era quello di indagare il funzionamento del meccanismo di SL e, in particolare, di RL in relazione allo sviluppo delle abilità del linguaggio e della comunicazione e nei disturbi di DSL, DE e DSA. Con questo fine, abbiamo usato quattro diversi approcci: 1) studiando infanti a sviluppo tipico utilizzando un disegno di tipo longitudinale; 2) studiando bambini con diagnosi certificata; 3) studiando infanti a basso rischio, con un genitore che presenta tratti comportamentali che sono sotto-soglia per avere una diagnosi clinica; 4) studiando infanti a rischio familiare, con un parente di primo grado con una diagnosi certificata. Il meccanismo di SL e RL sono stati indagati con compiti che utilizzavano stimoli di tipo visivo, figure geometriche, per rimuovere qualsiasi effetto dovuto alla familiarità/esperienza dello stimolo linguistico. Gli studi riportati in questa tesi hanno l’obiettivo di indagare il legame tra il meccanismo di RL visivo e le abilità di linguaggio in infanti a sviluppo tipico, e il meccanismo di SL e RL in bambini con diagnosi di DD, ed infine in infanti a rischio per ASD e DSL/DD. In generale, i risultati mostrano che il meccanismo di apprendimento implicito è implicato nei disturbi di DSL, DD, e ASD, e suggeriscono che l’abilità di SL e RL potrebbero essere compromessi a differenti livelli nei disturbi del neurosviluppo. Nello specifico, i risultati mostrano che il meccanismo di SL visivo sembra essere implicato a una difficoltà di tipo comunicativo (ASD), mentre il meccanismo di RL visivo sembrerebbe essere più coinvolto in difficoltà di tipo linguistico (DSLI, DE). Queste evidenze suggeriscono che, invece di considerare l’apprendimento implicito come un unico costrutto, ricerche future dovrebbero indagare in che modo differenti meccanismi di apprendimento operano nei disturbi del neurosviluppo, con il fine di individuare le comunanze e le differenze tra i disturbi, e quindi esplorare in che modo piccole variazioni nel funzionamento di uno stesso meccanismo possano condurre a differenti fenotipici clinici.<br>One of the central issues in the study of neurodevelopmental disorders is the investigation of domain-general cognitive abilities that could underlying complex clinical phenotypes. On this vein, it has been recently proposed that impairments in domain-general implicit learning mechanisms might underlie language and communication disorders, such as specific language impairment (SLI), developmental dyslexia (DD) and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The present thesis had the general aim to investigate the functioning of visual implicit learning in the development of SLI, DD and ASD. Specifically, we decided to focus on visual statistical (SL) and rule learning (RL) abilities. SL allows to extract the statistical relationships embedded in a sequence of elements (Saffran et al., 1996), while RL allows to extract high-order rules from a sequence of elements and to generalize these rules to novel stimuli (Marcus et al., 1999). As these mechanisms are thought to be a prerequisite for language acquisition and the development of social understanding, they could serve as possible precursors or mediators of deficits in language and social skills that defined SLI, DD and ASD. Here, I suggest the importance of investigating whether and how different types of learning mechanisms are related to different typical and atypical outcomes in language and communication development. To this end, we used four different approaches: 1) the study of typically developing infants; 2) the study of diagnosed children; 3) the study of infants at low risk to develop language and communication disorders by virtue of having a parent with sub-threshold high traits; 4) the study of infants with a family risk to develop these disorders by virtue of having a first degree relative with a certified diagnosis. The thesis includes four empirical studies in which we used these four different approaches. The first study provides evidence that visual RL at 7 months of age predicts grammatical outcome at 2 years in typically developing (TD) infants, showing that infants’ ability to extract and generalize abstract rules from a sequence of element is related to the ability to parse the structure of language. The second study demonstrates an impairment in visual RL abilities in DD children when compared with TD children, and that visual RL is overall correlated with children’s grammatical skills and in their ability to read a text. In the third study, we show that visual SL abilities are impaired in infants whose parents manifest subthreshold autistic social difficulties. Finally, the last study provides evidence for a deficit in visual RL abilities in infants with a family risk to develop SLI and DD, despite intact SL abilities. Overall, these findings suggest that an impairment in visual implicit learning abilities can underlie the development of SLI, DD and ASD, further confirming the importance of studying implicit learning mechanisms as early markers for language and communicative disorders, which in turns has strong implications for early intervention programs.

Le droit est de manière traditionnelle appréhendé comme un phénomène inhérent au langage. Est-il possible, dès lors, pour ce droit qui est enserré dans les rets du langage de« dire le silence»? Dénoncer en lui-même cette part d'indicible ou de mystique qu'il comporte? Dans le cadre de cette étude nous avons rapidement pris conscience du caractère métaphorique de cette interrogation. Le silence dans une approche triviale ne peut être, en effet, que celui d'une personne dotée de la parole et non du droit lui-même. La métaphore peut être appréhendée de la manière suivante: il s'agit de rendre compte d'un glissement à l'occasion duquel un terme impropre est substitué à un terme propre manquant. En ce sens, la métaphore engendre une relation d'absence d'un terme à l'égard d'un autre. La métaphore devient ainsi « la forme même de la consolation » : elle permet comme méthode de nous consoler des risques inhérents à l'inscription du droit dans l'ordre du langage (la perte d'une signification qui serait« déjà là» ou d'un sens qui serait toujours présent avant l'usage du langage). Sur la base de cette problématique nous avons opté pour le plan suivant : Dans une première partie, nous verrons ainsi que l'expressivité du droit est régulièrement déplacée et confisquée conformément à la logique de la rhétorique et de la prosopopée. Ce qui se manifeste, dès lors, c'est un déplacement de la parole et la création corrélative d'un écart - qui nous semble signifiant - entre présence et représentation. Dans cette première perspective, l'expressivité de la loi masque, par exemple, la réalité du droit. Dans la seconde partie c'est la ressource iconique de la métaphore qui sera convoquée. Dans cette ultime partie, nous tirerons donc pleinement profit de la métaphore comme outil de connaissance en usant avec bénéfice de l'idée selon laquelle le silence du droit permet de manifester l'ordinaire même du droit. Débarrassé du mythe envahissant d'une source politique du droit, le droit apparaît ainsi comme il est: le roi est dorénavant nu. Le droit n'est que ce qu'il est et s'incarne dans l'action d'une série d'acteurs qui font l'ordinaire même du droit. Le silence de la loi permet ainsi d'entendre la vie même du droit<br>Law is traditionally apprehended/seen as a phenomenon inherent to language. Is it possible, consequently, for this Law which is contained in the snare oflanguage to "say the silence"? To express itselfthis part ofunspeakable or mystical which he has? In this study we quickly realized the metaphorical nature ofthis question. The silence in a trivial approach can be, indeed, that of a person with speech, not the law itself. The metaphor can be understood as follows: this is to account for a slip on which occasion a misnomer is substituted for a proper missing term. In this sense, the metaphor generates a lack of a term relationship with respect to another. The metaphor becomes "the same form of consolation": it allows us as a method of consoling the risks inherent in the entry of the Law in the order of language (the loss of a meaning that is "already there" or a direction which would always present before the use oflanguage). Based on these issues we opted for the following plan / In the first part, we will see as the expressiveness of law is regularly moved and confiscated in accordance with the logic of rhetoric and prosopopoeia. Which is manifested, therefore, it is a moving speech and the consequential creation of a gap - which seems to mean - between presence and representation. In this first perspective, the expressiveness of the law mask, for example, the reality of the Law. In the second part, it is the iconic metaphor of resource to be convened. In this ultimate part, we will make full use ofmetaphor as a tool ofknowledge by using a profit from the idea that the silence of the Law allows to express even the ordinary law. Rided of invasive myth of a political source of Law, the Law appears as it is: the king is now naked. The Law is what it is and is embodied in the action of a series of actors who are even ordinary law. The silence of the law allows to hear the life of Law

Thesis (M.S.) -- University of Maryland, College Park, 2009.<br>Thesis research directed by: Dept. of Psychology. Title from t.p. of PDF. Includes bibliographical references. Published by UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, Mich. Also available in paper.

There is an overemphasis on procedures and manipulation of symbols in calculus and not enough emphasis on conceptual understanding of the subject. Specifically, students struggle to understand and correctly apply concepts in calculus such as the chain rule, implicit differentiation, and related rates. Students can learn mathematics more deeply when they make connections between different mathematical ideas. I have hypothesized that students can make powerful connections between the chain rule, implicit differentiation, and related rates through the mathematical concept of nested multivariation. Based on this hypothesis, I created a hypothetical learning trajectory (HLT) rooted in nested multivariation for students to develop an understanding of these three concepts. In this study, I explore my HLT through a small-scale teaching experiment with individual first-semester calculus students using tasks based on the HLT.Based on the teaching experiment, nested multivariational reasoning proved to be critical in understanding how the variables within a function composition change together and in developing intuition and understanding for the multiplicative nature of the chain rule. Later, nested multivariational reasoning was mostly important in recognizing the existence of a nested relationship and the need to use the chain rule in differentiation. Overall, through the HLT, students gained a connected and conceptual understanding for the chain rule, implicit differentiation, and related rates. I also discuss how the HLT might be adjusted and improved for future use.

Micromagnetics is a continuum mechanics theory of magnetic materials widely used in industry and academia. In this thesis we describe a complete numerical method, with a number of novel components, for the computational solution of dynamic micromagnetic problems by solving the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation. In particular we focus on the use of the implicit midpoint rule (IMR), a time integration scheme which conserves several important properties of the LLG equation. We use the finite element method for spatial discretisation, and use nodal quadrature schemes to retain the conservation properties of IMR despite the weak-form approach. We introduce a novel, generally-applicable adaptive time step selection algorithm for the IMR. The resulting scheme selects error-appropriate time steps for a variety of problems, including the semi-discretised LLG equation. We also show that it retains the conservation properties of the fixed step IMR for the LLG equation. We demonstrate how hybrid FEM/BEM magnetostatic calculations can be coupled to the LLG equation in a monolithic manner. This allows the coupled solver to maintain all properties of the standard time integration scheme, in particular stability properties and the energy conservation property of IMR. We also develop a preconditioned Krylov solver for the coupled system which can efficiently solve the monolithic system provided that an effective preconditioner for the LLG sub-problem is available. Finally we investigate the effect of the spatial discretisation on the comparative effectiveness of implicit and explicit time integration schemes (i.e. the stiffness). We find that explicit methods are more efficient for simple problems, but for the fine spatial discretisations required in a number of more complex cases implicit schemes become orders of magnitude more efficient.

In everyday life, there is considerable need for rule learning. Behavioral and human brain imaging studies have explored the psychological processes implicit and explicit learning and transfer in a biconditional grammar using three types of training conditions: memorization versus two versions of hypothesis-testing. After training, all participants performed the same three classification tasks: Task 1: categorizing strings made of the same set of letters and rules as in training; Task 2: different set of letters and same rules and Task 3: different set of letters and rules. Results comparing performance on the three tasks showed that participants trained in the new version of the hypothesis-testing condition performed better on all three tasks. On Tasks 1 and 2, participants made use of patterns within the strings that were related to the general rule, called secondary rules. Use of secondary rules explained a large proportion of the variance in all three groups of participants. Only the new Hypothesis-testing group showed the same pattern of endorsement in both Tasks 1 and 2, indicating transfer of learning. Participants were making use of secondary rules in an earlier stage, until they learn the most general rule. If this process is continuum, in the first step, participants recognize and endorse all types of secondary rules; in the second step, they only endorse those that do not violate another type of secondary rule; on the final step, they are able to state the most general rule of the grammar.

<p>Two studies examined whether stereotypes can be created using different learning paradigms and whether the resulting stereotypes will have different properties that affect their activation, suppression, and explicit knowledge. In the Pilot Study, participants were able to learn to use clothing cues to predict membership using both an explicit paradigm that made declarative statements of group membership and an implicit paradigm based on feedback learning. In Study 1, implicit learners performed worse after a depletion task and better following a control task. Explicit learners did not change based on the depletion task. High trait self-control as measured by the Brief Self-Control Scale was shown to predict better performance in depleted implicit learners and worse performance in depleted explicit learners. In Study 2, participants in both the implicit and explicit learning conditions saw decreases in performance when trying to inhibit a previously learned cue. Trait self-control did not predict the ability to suppress the use of a specific cue. In both studies implicit learners made more accurate estimations of the cue probabilities, suggesting a stronger explicit knowledge of the relationship between the cues and group membership. These results provide initial evidence that the method of stereotype learning can have an impact on later stereotype usage although the mechanisms that lead to these differences require additional research.</p><br>Dissertation

碩士<br>中原大學<br>資訊管理研究所<br>96<br>Neural networks have been successfully applied to solve classification and clustering problems. There are so many neural network models proposed in the field of data mining. Since 1986, the neural network has been considered a black box. However, it is short for the explanation of the training results. Thus, it is useful to provide a reasonable and efficient explanation method for the neural network. The neural network is suitable for dealing with a great number of data. It can extract the useful information and knowledge from the trained neural network. Rule extraction technologies mainly provide the explanation ability for the neural network and make the decision of the neural network transparent and understandable. In this thesis, we proposed a novel neural network rule extraction method. We use the auto clustering method to extract the clustering rules from the self-organizing feature map neural network and generalize the knowledge from its output map. We use three data sets to examine the feasibility of our proposed method. The experiment results also show that the rules extracted by our method are reasonable and the generated knowledge related to the data sets is also reasonable. Our proposed method can make the decision of the neural network transparent and understandable.

博士<br>東海大學<br>工業工程與經營資訊學系<br>96<br>Functionalism is rooted in Western culture. It is a product of Western philosophy that configures a way of seeing, an ideology or worldview, that often is imposed out of cultural context to the study of Chinese culture and management. But this cultural myopia is the hegemony of American logical empiricism, which not only limits itself to “knowledge production”; but also distorts its view in cross cultural business management. As a result, conceptualization in management theory, including cultural conceptualization itself, appears to be culture-bound within the Western subculture of rigorous scientific positivism. The Chinese have a substantively different indigenous philosophical inheritance. Chinese philosophy is characteristically secular and places less emphasis, in comparison to Western philosophy, upon foundational, metaphysical reality. The purpose of this research is to study the context of Chinese culture on the basis of its value structure and seek for its unique socio-cultural product, guanxi and its adaptive mechanism to outer environmental changes. Surveys are conducted with questionnaires designed in accordance with the deep interviews of senior managers, and responded by the first line employees. Results of the analysis from the data collected, it is found that “guanxi” in Chinese society is not just an interpersonal link; it is also the ‘switch’ to social networks of guanxi chuens. With which, the Chinese is able to not just survive through difficulties; moreover their groups grow stronger for the national solidarity constructed with guanxi. Just as the adaptive system described in the Complexity theorem, under the frequent interaction of these social assemblies, individuals unite together through guanxi link and guanxi chuens in facing changes and dealing with problems with integral strength, which in turn develops its flexibility as an adaptive system. Reinforcing the organizational competence, ISOLINK, this particular Chinese cultural characterized adaptive mechanism should be taken into account in business decision making and management to make a firm internationally competitive, though it has to be handled with caution since it is a sword with double edges.