Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Social intelligence'

Two schools of thought diverge into an ongoing debate as regards to the social intelligence of gifted youth. One view holds that the gifted are often maladjusted (Chronbach, 1960; Hollingworth, 1942). The contrary view is that they are more likely to be well adjusted, with overall above average social and emotional intelligence (Allen, 2000; Chesser, 2001; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 2000; Neihart, 1999). The current research is consistent with views supporting enhanced overall social and emotional intelligence of gifted youth. Some researchers have argued that emotional intelligence and social skills competence are subsets of social intelligence (Chesser, 2000; Greenspan, 1979; Kihlstrom & Cantor, 2000; Morgan, 1996; Salovey & Mayer, 1990,1993). In order to sample the domains of social intelligence in gifted adolescents, a measure of emotional intelligence (Bar-On Emotional Quotient - Inventory: Youth Version) was combined with a measure of social skills competence (Social Skills Rating Scale- Secondary Student and Parent Forms). Participants were students (n = 100) in a very selective summer program for gifted adolescents, and parent respondents (n = 76). This research addresses the following four hypotheses as regards to the relationship between social skills competence and emotional intelligence in gifted adolescents. It was hypothesized that gifted adolescents were expected to score in the above average range on emotional intelligence. Gifted adolescents scored significantly higher than norm samples on the scales of Adaptability, Stress Management and the Total EQ composite. It was also hypothesized that gifted students have above average social skills ratings. Gifted students scored significantly higher than average on all scales of the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) Secondary Student form. Third, it was hypothesized that the constructs of emotional intelligence and social skills competence are related as regards to the self ratings of gifted adolescents. The SSRS Total Scale and all scales of Bar-On EQ-i: YV were significantly correlated. Fourth, parental ratings were consistent with the hypothesis that they would rate their adolescents as having overall average social skills. The means for overall social skills on the Total Scale and Cooperation subscale were in the average range. The Assertion subscale was found to be below average. Parent ratings were significantly above average in the areas of Responsibility and Self-Control, which may be strengths for gifted youth. A significant positive relationship was found between the composites for social skills competence and emotional intelligence. Some differences were noted between the sub-scales of these constructs, suggesting that gifted individuals may tend to have a specific profile of strengths and weaknesses in these domains. This relationship is also consistent with hierarchical theories of social intelligence maintaining that social skills and emotional skills are separate areas of related abilities. These findings suggest that social intelligence domains are important in drawing a complete profile of differential abilities in gifted students. In talent identification, it may be useful to combine measures of social skills competence and emotional intelligence with cognitive evaluations to provide a wider range of information as regards to the abilities of the gifted.

This dissertation introduces the concept of an artificial society based on the use of an action based social language combined with the behavior-based approach to the construction of multi-agent systems to address the problem of developing decentralized, self-organizing networks that dynamically fit into their environment. In the course of accomplishing this, social language is defined as an efficient method for communicating coordination information among cognitive radios inspired by natural societies. This communication method connects the radios within a network in a way that allows the network to learn in a distributed holistic manner. The behavior-based approach to developing multi-agent systems from the field of robotics provides the framework for developing these learning networks. In this approach several behaviors are used to address the multiple objectives of a cognitive radio society and then combined to achieve emergent properties and behaviors. This work presents a prototype cognitive radio society. This society is implemented, using low complexity hardware, and evaluated. The work does not focus on the development of optimized techniques, but rather the complementary design of techniques and agents to create dynamic, decentralized self-organizing networks
Ph. D.

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, September, 2020
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 49-53).
This thesis introduces a Watch-And-Help (WAH) challenge and a multi-agent environment for testing social intelligence in multiple agents. In the challenge, an AI agent needs to help a human-like agent perform a complex household task efficiently. To succeed, the AI agent needs to i) understand the underlying goal of the task by watching a single demonstration of the human-like agent performing the same task (social perception), and ii) coordinate with the human-like agent to solve the task in an unseen environment as fast as possible (human-AI collaboration). For this challenge, we build VirtualHome-Social, a multi-agent household environment, and provide a benchmark including both planning and learning based baselines. Experimental results demonstrate that in order to achieve success in the challenge, an AI agent has to accurately understand and predict the human-like agent's behaviors, and adapt its collaborative plan accordingly in novel environments.
by Shuang Li.
S.M.
S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a relatively new concept in the field of psychology, introduced by Salovey and Mayer in 1990. Research on EI has found associations among EI and social network size, health and well-being, and job performance.(Austin, Saklofske, & Egan, 2003; Brackett, Mayer, & Warner, 2003; Petrides & Furnham, 2003; Saklofske, Austin, & Minski, 2001). Two different types of EI, trait EI and ability EI, have been identified in the literature. Trait EI was identified by Petrides and Furnham, and is a non-cognitive ability which allows an individual to regulate his/her mood, recognize and make the most of emotions, and utilize social skills, and is measured by self report. Ability EI is the ability of an individual to understand, generate, and manage emotions. Ability EI is measured using a performance measure which assesses the capacity of an individual to perceive emotions in him/herself, others, and the environment. Emotional intelligence has been linked to aspects of well-being, such as social network quality. In order to examine how EI related to social networks, both trait and ability EI were measured along with the Big Five factors of personality and social network quality and size. A study of 268 participants investigated the relationships amongst trait EI, personality, and social network quality and size. The Big Five factors of personality were all significantly positively correlated with EI (p< .01), and were also significantly correlated with social network quality and size. EI was significantly related to social network quality and size. When controlling for personality, EI was no longer significantly correlated with any of the social network quality or size variables. A subset of participants (n=78) completed an ability measure of EI, the Mayer Salovey Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT). There were no significant correlations between MSCEIT scores and any of the other variables. A follow-up study was then carried out looking at the relationship of the original study variables with ability EI (MSCEIT), life stress, measured using the Uplifts and Hassles scale, and depression, measured using the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), in the original participants. The results from this study indicated that emotional stability was significantly correlated with the Uplifts portion of the life stress scale, but not with Hassles. Conscientiousness was significantly negatively correlated with both the Hassle subscale of life stress and the BDI score. Emotional stability was also significantly negatively correlated with the BDI score. The total ability EI score measured by the MSCEIT did not show significant relationships with any other variables. Given that EI has been linked to social network quality and size, and one of the facets of EI is the capacity of an individual to recognize emotions in others, it would seem that individuals who are high in EI should have larger and better quality social networks as they are theoretically able to recognize and appropriately respond to the emotions of others. In order to test this, a social perception inspection time task was carried out in which participants were required to identify if a face was happy, sad, or angry. The faces used were both Caucasian and Far-East Asian, the hypothesis being that a person high in EI would recognize the facially expressed emotions regardless of whether the face shown was of their own race or not. Results from this study indicated that EI was not related to correctly identifying facial expressions. The results of these studies are discussed along with suggestions for future research in this area.

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, 2018.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 199-211).
This thesis develops formal computational cognitive models of the social intelligence underlying human cooperation and morality. Human social intelligence is uniquely powerful. We collaborate with others to accomplish together what none of us could do on our own; we share the benefits of collaboration fairly and trust others to do the same. Even young children work and play collaboratively, guided by normative principles, and with a sophistication unparalleled in other animal species. Here, I seek to understand these everyday feats of social intelligence in computational terms. What are the cognitive representations and processes that underlie these abilities and what are their origins? How can we apply these cognitive principles to build machines that have the capacity to understand, learn from, and cooperate with people? The overarching formal framework of this thesis is the integration of individually rational, hierarchical Bayesian models of learning, together with socially rational multi-agent and game-theoretic models of cooperation. I use this framework to probe cognitive questions across three time-scales: evolutionary, developmental, and in the moment. First, I investigate the evolutionary origins of the cognitive structures that enable cooperation and support social learning. I then describe how these structures are used to learn social and moral knowledge rapidly during development, leading to the accumulation of knowledge over generations. Finally I show how this knowledge is used and generalized in the moment, across an infinitude of possible situations. This framework is applied to a variety of cognitively challenging social inferences: determining the intentions of others, distinguishing who is friend or foe, and inferring the reputation of others all from just a single observation of behavior. It also answers how these inferences enable fair and reciprocal cooperation, the computation of moral permissibility, and moral learning. This framework predicts and explains human judgment and behavior measured in large-scale multi-person experiments. Together, these results shine light on how the scale and scope of human social behavior is ultimately grounded in the sophistication of our social intelligence.
by Max Kleiman-Weiner.
Ph. D.

For 18 years. I have been publishing books and papers on the subject of the social implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI). This is an area which is has been, and remains, in need of more academic attention of a serious nature than it currently receives. It will be useful to attempt a working definition of the field of AI at this stage. There is a considerable amount of disagreement as to what does and does not constitute AI and this often has important consequences for discussions of the social implications of the field. In brief, I define AI as the study of intelligent behaviour (in humans, animals, and machines) and the attempt to find ways in which such behaviour could be engineered in any type of artefact. My position on the definition of AI as a field of activity is set out in full in various places in the works submitted for this application. Most important are Chapter 2 of Whitby, 1988b, Chapter 3 of Whitby, 1996, and Whitby, 2000. This definition is distinctive (though not unique). For the purposes of discussion of social implications, its most distinctive feature is that it does not require the imitation or replication of human intellectual attributes. Because, under this definition, AI is not limited to the study of and attempt to build human-like intelligence the discussion of its social implications is rendered much broader. Also, because AÏ encompasses the attempt to engineer intelligent behaviour in any type of artefact, discussion of its social implications will need to consider the way in which AI technology, methods, and attitudes can permeate other different areas. This will include a wide range of technologies which include an AI element and a wide range of disciplines which are influenced by AI ideas. Thus the social implications of AI are turned into an immensely important field of study, since AI technology will steadily continue to permeate other technologies and thereby society as a whole. Many of the social implications of this technological process are nonobvious and surprising. If we are to make sensible, timely, and practical policy decisions and legislation then it is important to be as clear as possible about likely technological developments and their social implications. We may initially attempt to characterise various approaches by other authorities on the social implications of AI. Thèse range from the wildly spéculative such as Warwick (1988) and Moravec (1988) to the mainly technical, for example Michie (1986). At the wildly spéculative end of this continuum represented by Professor Warwick there are scare stories involving robots taking over the earth. (See for example Warwick, 1998 pp. 21-38) At the other end of the continuum, there are writers who often see AI as entirely positive, or as having no social implications at all. Most authorities will, or at least should, occupy a position somewhere between these extremes. However, in giving serious académie considération to this area, one needs to respond to this entire range of approaches. That is to say that one must (as a minimum) both be conversant with probable technical developments and also carefully and critically respond to speculations about the nature of future society. In my research I have consistently attempted to do just this. This is obviously a cross-disciplinary exercise and the differing methodologies of different disciplines présent further problems in determining the best (or an approximation to the best) approach. For a number of reasons, which will be fully explored in this statement, my approach has concentrated (mainly, though not exclusively) on the attempt to provide guidance to those actually concerned with the technical and scientific development of AI. The published books and papers submitted as part of this application span a period of 16 years. Thèse works form a cohérent body of research around the area of the social implications of AI. This body both develops the theme of the need for professionalism in AI and answers the criticisms of other writers in the area. They involve a full response to other writers in this area, over the entire continuum described above. This is a large, coherent, important, and generally well-regarded body of work which is in every relevant sense equivalent to that required for a PhD. by research.

Crowdsourcing is an approach to replace the work traditionally done by a single person with the collective action of a group of people via the Internet. It has established itself in the mainstream of research methodology in recent years using a variety of approaches to engage humans in solving problems that computers, as yet, cannot solve. Several common approaches to crowdsourcing have been successful, including peer production (in which the participants are inherently interested in contributing), microworking (in which participants are paid small amounts of money per task) and games or gamification (in which the participants are entertained as they complete the tasks). An alternative approach to crowdsourcing using social networks is proposed here. Social networks offer access to large user communities through integrated software applications and, as they mature, are utilised in different ways, with decentralised and unevenly-distributed organisation of content. This research investigates whether collective intelligence systems are facilitated better on social networks and how the contributed human effort can be optimised. These questions are investigated using two case studies of problem solving: anaphoric coreference in text documents and classifying images in the marine biology domain. Social networks themselves can be considered inherent, self-organised problem solving systems, an approach defined here as ‘groupsourcing’, sharing common features with other crowdsourcing approaches; however, the benefits are tempered with the many challenges this approach presents. In comparison to other methods of crowdsourcing, harnessing collective intelligence on social networks offers a high-accuracy, data-driven and low-cost approach.

This thesis focuses on the area of competitive intelligence with the emphasis on new possibilities and opportunities in relation to modern social networks. First it gives general analysis of the current state of competitive intelligence market as a whole and then deals with individual major leaders and their products, thus providing detailed overview of this business segment. It also discusses the possibilities of using social networks and other social or soft sources for competitive intelligence. Practical part of the thesis then demonstrates the theoretical knowledge on a real life CI project, which took place in early 2012 in cooperation with experts from IBM, including some interesting results and findings in appendix. The whole chapter can be used as a reference model for future projects with similar goals.

The situated approach in cognitive science and artificial intelligence (AI) has argued since the mid-1980s that intelligent behaviour emerges as a result of a close coupling between agent and environment. Lately, many researchers have emphasized that in addition to the physical environment, the social environment must not be neglected. In this thesis we will focus on the nature of social situatedness, and the aim of this dissertation is to investigate its role and relevance for natural and artificial intelligence.

This thesis brings together work from separate areas, presenting different perspectives on the role and mechanisms social situatedness. More specifically, we will analyse Vygotsky's cognitive development theory, studies of primate (and avian) intelligence, and last, but not least, work in contemporary socially situated AI. These, at a first glance, quite different fields have a lot in common since they particularly stress the importance of social embeddedness for the development of individual intelligence.

Combining these separate perspectives, we analyse the remaining differences between natural and artificial social situatedness. Our conclusion is that contemporary socially artificial intelligence research, although heavily inspired by empirical findings in human infants, tends to lack the developmental dimension of situatedness. Further we discuss some implications for research in cognitive science and AI.

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-93).
Social media is becoming increasingly important in society and culture, empowering consumers to group together on common interests and share opinions through the Internet. The social web shifts the originators of content from companies to users. Differences caused by this dynamic result in existing web analytic techniques being inadequate. Because people reveal their thoughts and preferences in social media, there are significant opportunities in business intelligence by analyzing social media. These opportunities include brand monitoring; trend recognition, and targeted advertising. The market for social media analytics in business intelligence is further validated by its direct application in the consumer research market. Challenges lie ahead for development and adoption of social media analytics. Technology used in these analytics, such as natural language processing and social network analysis, need to mature to improve accuracy, performance, and scalability. Nevertheless, social media continues to grow at a rapid pace, and organizations should form strategies to incorporate social media analytics into their business intelligence frameworks.
by Bobby Lo.
M.Eng.

[EN] Under the view of artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent is an autonomous entity which interacts in an environment through observations and actions, trying to achieve one or more goals with the aid of several signals called rewards. The creation of intelligent agents is proliferating during the last decades, and the evaluation of their intelligence is a fundamental issue for their understanding, construction and improvement. Social intelligence is recently obtaining special attention in the creation of intelligent agents due to the current view of human intelligence as highly social. Social intelligence in natural and artificial systems is usually measured by the evaluation of associated traits or tasks that are deemed to represent some facets of social behaviour. The amalgamation of these traits or tasks is then used to configure an operative notion of social intelligence. However, this operative notion does not truly represent what social intelligence is and a definition following this principle will not be precise. Instead, in this thesis we investigate the evaluation of social intelligence in a more formal and general way, by actually considering the evaluee's interaction with other agents. In this thesis we analyse the implications of evaluating social intelligence using a test that evaluates general intelligence. For this purpose, we include other agents into an initially single-agent environment to figure out the issues that appear when evaluating an agent in the context of other agents. From this analysis we obtain useful information for the evaluation of social intelligence. From the lessons learned, we identify the components that should be considered in order to measure social intelligence, and we provide a formal and parametrised definition of social intelligence. This definition calculates an agent's social intelligence as its expected performance in a set of environments with a set of other agents arranged in teams and participating in line-ups, with rewards being re-understood appropriately. This is conceived as a tool to define social intelligence testbeds where we can generate several degrees of competitive and cooperative behaviours. We test this definition by experimentally analysing the influence of teams and agent line-ups for several multi-agent systems with variants of Q-learning agents. However, not all testbeds are appropriate for the evaluation of social intelligence. To facilitate the analysis of a social intelligence testbed, we provide some formal property models about social intelligence in order to characterise the testbed and thus assess its suitability. Finally, we use the presented properties to characterise some social games and multi-agent environments, we make a comparison between them and discuss their strengths and weaknesses in order to evaluate social intelligence.
[ES] Bajo la visión de la inteligencia artificial, un agente inteligente es una entidad autónoma la cual interactúa en un entorno a través de observaciones y acciones, tratando de lograr uno o más objetivos con la ayuda de varias señales llamadas recompensas. La creación de agentes inteligentes está proliferando durante las últimas décadas, y la evaluación de su inteligencia es un asunto fundamental para su entendimiento, construcción y mejora. Recientemente la inteligencia social está obteniendo especial atención en la creación de agentes inteligentes debido a la visión actual de la inteligencia humana como altamente social. Normalmente la inteligencia social en sistemas naturales y artificiales se mide mediante la evaluación de rasgos asociados o tareas que se consideran que representan algunas facetas del comportamiento social. La agrupación de estos rasgos o tareas se utiliza entonces para configurar una noción operacional de inteligencia social. Sin embargo, esta noción operacional no representa fielmente a la inteligencia social y no sería posible una definición siguiendo este principio. En su lugar, en esta tesis investigamos la evaluación de la inteligencia social de un modo más formal y general, considerando la interacción del agente a evaluar con otros agentes. En esta tesis analizamos las implicaciones de evaluar la inteligencia social utilizando un test que evalúe la inteligencia general. Con este objetivo incluimos otros agentes en un entorno inicialmente diseñado para un único agente con el fin de averiguar qué cuestiones aparecen cuando evaluamos a un agente en un contexto con otros agentes. A partir de este análisis obtenemos información útil para la evaluación de la inteligencia social. A partir de las lecciones aprendidas identificamos los componentes que deberían considerarse al medir la inteligencia social y proporcionamos una definición formal y parametrizada de esta inteligencia social. Esta definición calcula la inteligencia social de un agente como su rendimiento esperado en un conjunto de entornos y con un conjunto de otros agentes organizados en equipos y distribuidos en alineaciones, reinterpretando apropiadamente las recompensas. Esto se concibe como una herramienta para definir bancos de prueba de inteligencia social donde podamos generar varios grados de comportamientos competitivos y cooperativos. Probamos esta definición analizando experimentalmente la influencia de los equipos y las alineaciones de agentes en varios sistemas multiagente con variantes de agentes Q-learning. Sin embargo, no todos los bancos de prueba son apropiados para la evaluación de la inteligencia social. Para facilitar el análisis de un banco de pruebas de inteligencia social, proporcionamos algunos modelos de propiedades formales sobre la inteligencia social con el objetivo de caracterizar el banco de pruebas y así valorar su idoneidad. Finalmente, usamos las propiedades presentadas para caracterizar algunos juegos sociales y entornos multiagente, hacemos una comparación entre ellos y discutimos sus puntos fuertes y débiles para ser usados en la evaluación de la inteligencia social.
[CAT] Davall la visió de la intel·ligència artificial, un agent intel·ligent és una entitat autònoma la qual interactua en un entorn a través d'observacions i accions, tractant d'aconseguir un o més objectius amb l'ajuda de diverses senyals anomenades recompenses. La creació d'agents intel·ligents està proliferant durant les últimes dècades, i l'avaluació de la seua intel·ligència és un assumpte fonamental per al seu enteniment, construcció i millora. Recentment la intel·ligència social està obtenint especial atenció en la creació d'agents intel·ligents a causa de la visió actual de la intel·ligència humana com altament social. Normalment la intel·ligència social en sistemes naturals i artificials es mesura per mitjà de l'avaluació de trets associats o tasques que es consideren que representen algunes facetes del comportament social. L'agrupació d'aquests trets o tasques s'utilitza llavors per a configurar una noció operacional d'intel·ligència social. No obstant això, aquesta noció operacional no representa fidelment a la intel·ligència social i no seria possible una definició seguint aquest principi. En el seu lloc, en aquesta tesi investiguem l'avaluació de la intel·ligència social d'una manera més formal i general, considerant la interacció de l'agent a avaluar amb altres agents. En aquesta tesi analitzem les implicacions d'avaluar la intel·ligència social utilitzant un test que avalue la intel·ligència general. Amb aquest objectiu incloem altres agents en un entorn inicialment dissenyat per a un únic agent amb la finalitat d'esbrinar quines qüestions apareixen quan avaluem un agent en un context amb altres agents. A partir d'aquesta anàlisi obtenim informació útil per a l'avaluació de la intel·ligència social. A partir de les lliçons apreses identifiquem els components que haurien de considerar-se al mesurar la intel·ligència social i proporcionem una definició formal i parametrizada d'aquesta intel·ligència social. Aquesta definició calcula la intel·ligència social d'un agent com el seu rendiment esperat en un conjunt d'entorns i amb un conjunt d'altres agents organitzats en equips i distribuïts en alineacions, reinterpretant apropiadament les recompenses. Açò es concep com una ferramenta per a definir bancs de prova d'intel·ligència social on podem generar diversos graus de comportaments competitius i cooperatius. Provem aquesta definició analitzant experimentalment la influència dels equips i les alineacions d'agents en diversos sistemes multiagent amb variants d'agents Q-learning. No obstant això, no tots els bancs de prova són apropiats per a l'avaluació de la intel·ligència social. Per a facilitar l'anàlisi d'un banc de proves d'intel·ligència social, proporcionem alguns models de propietats formals sobre la intel·ligència social amb l'objectiu de caracteritzar el banc de proves i així valorar la seua idoneïtat. Finalment, usem les propietats presentades per a caracteritzar alguns jocs socials i entorns multiagent, fem una comparació entre ells i discutim els seus punts forts i dèbils per a ser usats en l'avaluació de la intel·ligència social.
Insa Cabrera, J. (2016). Towards a Universal Test of Social Intelligence [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/66080
TESIS

A swarm intelligence system is a type of multiagent system with the following distinctive characteristics: (i) it is composed of a large number of agents, (ii) the agents that comprise the system are simple with respect to the complexity of the task the system is required to perform, (iii) its control relies on principles of decentralization and self-organization, and (iv) its constituent agents interact locally with one another and with their environment.

Interactions among agents, either direct or indirect through the environment in which they act, are fundamental for swarm intelligence to exist; however, there is a class of interactions, referred to as "interference", that actually blocks or hinders the agents' goal-seeking behavior. For example, competition for space may reduce the mobility of robots in a swarm robotics system, or misleading information may spread through the system in a particle swarm optimization algorithm. One of the most visible effects of interference in a swarm intelligence system is the reduction of its efficiency. In other words, interference increases the time required by the system to reach a desired state. Thus, interference is a fundamental problem which negatively affects the viability of the swarm intelligence approach for solving important, practical problems.

We propose a framework called "incremental social learning" (ISL) as a solution to the aforementioned problem. It consists of two elements: (i) a growing population of agents, and (ii) a social learning mechanism. Initially, a system under the control of ISL consists of a small population of agents. These agents interact with one another and with their environment for some time before new agents are added to the system according to a predefined schedule. When a new agent is about to be added, it learns socially from a subset of the agents that have been part of the system for some time, and that, as a consequence, may have gathered useful information. The implementation of the social learning mechanism is application-dependent, but the goal is to transfer knowledge from a set of experienced agents that are already in the environment to the newly added agent. The process continues until one of the following criteria is met: (i) the maximum number of agents is reached, (ii) the assigned task is finished, or (iii) the system performs as desired. Starting with a small number of agents reduces interference because it reduces the number of interactions within the system, and thus, fast progress toward the desired state may be achieved. By learning socially, newly added agents acquire knowledge about their environment without incurring the costs of acquiring that knowledge individually. As a result, ISL can make a swarm intelligence system reach a desired state more rapidly.

We have successfully applied ISL to two very different swarm intelligence systems. We applied ISL to particle swarm optimization algorithms. The results of this study demonstrate that ISL substantially improves the performance of these kinds of algorithms. In fact, two of the resulting algorithms are competitive with state-of-the-art algorithms in the field. The second system to which we applied ISL exploits a collective decision-making mechanism based on an opinion formation model. This mechanism is also one of the original contributions presented in this dissertation. A swarm robotics system under the control of the proposed mechanism allows robots to choose from a set of two actions the action that is fastest to execute. In this case, when only a small proportion of the swarm is able to concurrently execute the alternative actions, ISL substantially improves the system's performance.
Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This work focuses on the socio-technical aspects of artificial intelligence, namely how (specific types of) intelligent systems function in human workplace environments. The goal is first to get a better understanding of human needs and expectations when it comes to interaction with intelligent systems, and then to make use of the understanding gained in the process of designing and implementing such systems.

The work presented focusses on a specific problem in developing intelligent systems, namely how the artefacts to be developed can fit smoothly into existing socio-cultural settings. To achieve this, we make use of theories from the fields of organisational psychology, sociology, and linguistics. This is in line with approaches commonly found in AI. However, most of the existing work deals with individual aspects, like how to mimic the behaviour or emulate methods of reasoning found in humans, whereas our work centers around the social aspect. Therefore, we base our work on theories that have not yet gained much attention in intelligent systems design. To be able to make them fruitful for intelligent systems research and development, we have to adapt them to the specific settings, and we have to transform them to suit the practical problems at hand.

The specific theoretical frameworks we draw on are first and foremost activity theory and to a lesser degree semiotics. Activity theory builds on the works of Leont'ev. It is a descriptive tool to help understand the unity of consciousness and activity. Its focus lies on individual and collective work practise. One of its strengths, and the primary reason for its value in AI development, is the ability to identify the role of material artefacts in the work process. Halliday's systemic functional theory of language (SFL) is a social semiotic theory that sets out from the assumption that humans are social beings that are inclined to interact and that this interaction is inherently multimodal. We interact not just with each other, but with our own constructions and with our natural world. These are all different forms of interaction, but they are all sign processes.

Due to the obvious time and spatial constraints, we cannot address all of the challenges that we face when building intelligent artefacts. In reducing the scope of the thesis, we have focused on the problem of explanation, and here in particular the problem of explanation from a user perspective. By putting social theories to work in the field of artificial intelligence, we show that results from other fields can be beneficial in understanding what explanatory capabilities are needed for a given intelligent system, and to ascertain in which situations an explanation should be delivered. Besides lessons learned in knowledge based system development, the most important input comes from activity theory.

The second focus is the challenge of contextualisation. Here we show that work in other scientific fields can be put to use in the development of context aware or ambient intelligent systems. Again, we draw on results from activity theory and combine this with insights from semiotics.

Explanations are themselves contextual, so the third challenge is to explore the space spanned by the two dimensions ability to explain and contextualisation. Again, activity theory is beneficial in resolving this issue.

The different theoretical considerations have also led to some practical approaches. Working with activity theory helps to better understand what the relevant contextual aspects of a given application are and helps to develop models of context which are both grounded in the tradition of context aware systems design and are plausible from a cognitive point of view.

Insights from an analysis of research in the knowledge based system area and activity theory have further lead to the amendment of a toolbox for requirements engineering, so called problem frames. New problem frames that target explanation aware ambient intelligent systems are presented. This is supplemented with work looking at the design of an actual system after the requirements have been elicited and specified. Thus, the socio-technical perspective on explanations is coupled with work that addresses knowledge representation issues, namely how to model sufficient knowledge to be able to deliver explanations.

Myriad reports of UFO sightings exist and are well documented in the literature of the study of UFOs. This field is widely known as ufology. The history of UFO sightings and their socio-political context and consequences constitutes the broad subject of this study and provides a site for analysis of how scientists address, both publicly and privately, anomalies that appear to pertain to science. The Condon Report, the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, commissioned by the Air Force in 1968, provides a complex case for the exploration of how the outcome and conclusions of the study were influenced by all that had gone on before in ufology.AB
Master of Science

This study was an exploration of adults with long-term hearing loss (LTHL) and how it may relate to social intelligence (SI) proficiency. The outcome of this study was intended to illuminate a gap in the literature, namely, the manner in which those with long-term LTHL were able to understand social situations and communicate with others when auditory comprehension was limited. A quantitative nonexperimental method was used that provided the Tromso Social Intelligence Scale (TSIS) to a group of 66 adults with LTHL who were diagnosed with hearing loss as children, as well as a group of 70 adults with no discernable hearing loss (NDHL). The TSIS was used to determine if those with LTHL would have scored higher on the total scale score and the subscales of social information processing and social awareness, than would those with NDHL. The results of the study were determined by an independent t test. There was no significant difference in the total scale and subscale scores between LTHL and NDHL for this relatively small samples study. These findings could aid the hearing loss community at large through a focus on SI skills to improve confidence and communication for those with LTHL. One social change benefit of this study demonstrates that SI for people with LTHL is comparable to people with NDHL. Such a finding suggests that while people with LTHL did not rate higher in SI, they also are not impaired in social situations because of their hearing loss.

Main thesis objective is in social network analysis. Theoretic will describe their origin, development and circumstances under which certain social networks were built. Part with analysis will concern in how to compete with business rivals using CI and will search techniques for proper facebook usage as a company's CI tool by rating of chosen fan facebook pages.

Mobile robots that encounter people on a regular basis must react to them in some way. While traditional robot control algorithms treat all unexpected sensor readings as objects to be avoided, we argue that robots that operate around people should react socially to those people, following the same social conventions that people use around each other. This thesis presents our COMPANION framework: a Constraint-Optimizing Method for Person–Acceptable NavigatION. COMPANION is a generalized framework for representing social conventions as components of a constraint optimization problem, which is used for path planning and navigation. Social conventions, such as personal space and tending to the right, are described as mathematical cost functions that can be used by an optimal path planner. These social conventions are combined with more traditional constraints, such as minimizing distance, in a flexible way, so that additional constraints can be added easily. We present a set of constraints that specify the social task of traveling around people. We explore the implementation of this task first in simulation, where we demonstrate a robot’s behavior in a wide variety of scenarios. We also detail how a robot’s behavior can be changed by using different relative weights between the constraints or by using constraints representing different sociocultural conventions. We then explore the specific case of passing a person in a hallway, using the robot Grace. Through a user study, we show that people interpret the robot’s behavior according to human social norms, and also that people ascribe different personalities to the robot depending on its level of social behavior. In addition, we present an extension of the COMPANION framework that is able to represent joint tasks between the robot and a person. We identify the constraints necessary to represent the task of having a robot escort a person while traveling side-by-side. In simulation, we show the capability of this representation to produce behaviors such as speeding up or slowing down to travel together around corners, as well as complex maneuvers to travel through narrow chokepoints and return to a side-by-side formation. Finally, we present a newly designed robot, Companion, that is intended as a platform for general social human–robot research. Companion is a holonomic robot, able to move sideways without turning first, which we believe is an important social capability. We detail the design and capabilities of this new platform. As a whole, this thesis demonstrates both a need for, and an implementation and evaluation of, robots that navigate around people according to social norms.

The relationship between social and emotional intelligence was investigated. The study sample consisted of 31 females and 28 males who were between the ages of 9 and 12. The student participants completed the Social Skills Rating System-Student Form (SSRS), which assesses social competence, and the Emotional Quotient Inventory: Youth Version (EQ-i:YV), which measures emotional intelligence. Parents of the children also completed the Social Skills Rating System-Parent Form for comparison purposes. Both forms of the SSRS yielded statistically significant correlations with the EQ-i:YV. The results indicate that the instruments designed to assess emotional intelligence and social intelligence were highly related. The importance of the present findings is that they are a preliminary step in the discussion of social and emotional intelligence and their cultural importance.

The domains of Business Intelligence (BI) and social media have meanwhile become significant research fields. While BI aims at supporting an organization’s decisions by providing relevant analytical data, social media is an emerging source of personal and individual knowledge, opinion, and attitudes of stakeholders. For a while, a convergence of the two domains can be observed in real-world implementations and research, resulting in concepts like social BI. Many research questions still remain open – or even worse – are not yet formulated. Therefore, the paper aims at articulating a research agenda for social BI. By means of a literature review we systematically explored previous work and developed a framework. It contrasts social media characteristics with BI design areas and is used to derive the social BI research agenda. Our results show that the integration of social media (data) into a BI system has impact on almost all BI design objects.

This thesis begins by reviewing the current literature regarding social cognition and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) and proceeds to investigate Emotional Intelligence (El) in people with People with TLE before and after surgical resection of the temporal lobe. Psychosocial maladjustment is noted as a significant problem in people with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Whether these difficulties are a consequence of living with a chronic seizure condition or whether the neuropathology associated with TLE may have a causal influence remains unclear. Recent literature in the field of social cognitive neuroscience regarding social cognition in TLE is reviewed. It is concluded that people with T1.E tend to have specific deficits in some aspects of social cognition, linked to the underlying neuropathology of the condition, and that this is likely to be a factor in the psychosocial difficulties often presented in this population. A research study is then reported in which emotional intelligence (El), a concept related to social cognition, is investigated in a TLE population. El in people with medically managed TLE was compared with people with TLE who had undergone resective surgery to control their seizures to further investigate whether impaired El in TLE is due to living with chronic seizures or a consequence of the underlying neuropathology. Results suggest that impaired ET of this population is likely a complex interaction of both these factors.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-167).
Today's cellphones are passive communication portals. They are neither aware of our conversational settings, nor of the relationship between caller and callee, and often interrupt us at inappropriate times. This thesis is about adding elements of human style social intelligence to our mobile communication devices in order to make them more socially acceptable to both user and local others. I suggest the concept of an Autonomous Interactive Intermediary that assumes the role of an actively mediating party between caller, callee, and co-located people. In order to behave in a socially appropriate way, the Intermediary interrupts with non-verbal cues and attempts to harvest 'residual social intelligence' from the calling party, the called person, the people close by, and its current location. For example, the Intermediary obtains the user's conversational status from a decentralized network of autonomous body-worn sensor nodes. These nodes detect conversational groupings in real time, and provide the Intermediary with the user's conversation size and talk-to-listen ratio. The Intermediary can 'poll' all participants of a face-to-face conversation about the appropriateness of a possible interruption by slightly vibrating their wirelessly actuated finger rings.
(cont.) Although the alerted people do not know if it is their own cellphone that is about to interrupt, each of them can veto the interruption anonymously by touching his/her ring. If no one vetoes, the Intermediary may interrupt. A user study showed significantly more vetoes during a collaborative group-focused setting than during a less group oriented setting. The Intermediary is implemented as a both a conversational agent and an animatronic device. The animatronics is a small wireless robotic stuffed animal in the form of a squirrel, bunny, or parrot. The purpose of the embodiment is to employ intuitive non-verbal cues such as gaze and gestures to attract attention, instead of ringing or vibration. Evidence suggests that such subtle yet public alerting by animatronics evokes significantly different reactions than ordinary telephones and are seen as less invasive by others present when we receive phone calls. The Intermediary is also a dual conversational agent that can whisper and listen to the user, and converse with a caller, mediating between them in real time.
(cont.) The Intermediary modifies its conversational script depending on caller identity, caller and user choices, and the conversational status of the user. It interrupts and communicates with the user when it is socially appropriate, and may break down a synchronous phone call into chunks of voice instant messages.
by Stefan Johannes Walter Marti.
Ph.D.

The domains of Business Intelligence (BI) and social media have meanwhile become significant research fields. While BI aims at supporting an organization’s decisions by providing relevant analytical data, social media is an emerging source of personal and individual knowledge, opinion, and attitudes of stakeholders. For a while, a convergence of the two domains can be observed in real-world implementations and research, resulting in concepts like social BI. Many research questions still remain open – or even worse – are not yet formulated. Therefore, the paper aims at articulating a research agenda for social BI. By means of a literature review we systematically explored previous work and developed a framework. It contrasts social media characteristics with BI design areas and is used to derive the social BI research agenda. Our results show that the integration of social media (data) into a BI system has impact on almost all BI design objects.

The rapid evolution of technology and social media has brought significant changes to human communication. Since the efficiency of social networks depends mainly on the processing of their huge amount of collected data, they are all in search not only of the latest artificial intelligence but also of the creation of more evolved one. Advertising, digital marketing and customer service of social media is in the first line for this demand, yet the rapid progress in the AI field constantly change the ways of communication and the ramifications of this change are more than modern society can absorb and reflect on. This paper focuses on the latest innovations of AI in the social networks and the impact of AI on society and personhood.

Artificial Intelligence is currently one of the most talked about topics with regard to technical development. The possibilities are enormous and it might revolutionize how we live our lives. There are talk of robots and AI removing the need for human workers. At the same time there are also those who view this as deeply troublesome. Either from an individual perspective, asking the question what we should do once we do not need to work more? Or from an existential perspective, raising issues of what responsibilities we have as humans and what it means to be human? This study does not aim to answer these grand questions, but rather shift the focus to the near future of three to five years. Yet, there is still a focus on the social aspects of the development of AI. What are the perceived greatest social issues and obstacles for a continued implementation of AI solutions in society? To answer these question interviews have been conducted with representatives for the Swedish society, ranging from politicians, union and employers’ organizations to philosophers and AI researchers. Further a literature study has been made of similar studies, comparing and reflecting their findings with the views of the interviewees. In short, the interviewees have a very positive view of AI in the near future, believing that a continued implementation would go relatively smoothly. Yet, they pointed to a few key obstacles that might need to be addressed. Mainly there is a risk of increased polarization of wages and power due to AI, although stressed that it depends on how we use the technology rather than the technology itself. Another obstacle was connected to individual uncertainty of the development of AI, causing a fear of what might happen. Further, several different ethical issues were raised. There was an agreement that we need to address these as soon as possible, but they did not view this as an obstacle.

Syftet med denna studie var att med en kvalitativ ansats undersöka hur rekryterare ställde sig till implementeringen av AI-baserad speech recognition i anställningsintervjuer, hur de trodde att denna teknik kommer att påverka HRM, vilka fördelar de anser hade kunnat uppnås samt vilka etiska principer som borde beaktas vid införandet av denna teknik. Undersökningen gjordes genom att tematiskt analysera de intervjuer som hölls. Resultatet visar på att rekryterarna var ambivalenta till denna teknik. Rekryterarna uttryckte både farhågor och förhoppningar med ett eventuellt införande i deras organisation och i rekryteringsbranschen. En slutsats som kunde dras utifrån denna studie var att det fanns en föreställning hos rekryterare om att målet med denna teknik var att ge Speech recognition agenter beslutsmandat och ersätta mänskliga rekryterare.

This thesis studies the intellectual development of the painter and writer Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957). His career is seen as an unique expression of the creative and critical intelligence within modern society. The liberal, secular, and individualistic aspects of Lewis's thought are stressed.
The thesis concentrates on four aspects of Lewis's life and work. First, Lewis's relationship with T. E. Hulme, usually described as one of direct influence, is shown to be adversarial and complicated by basic differences of their worldview. Second, the nature of Lewis's fascism is discussed using a new reading of Hitler (1931). Third, Lewis's view of the position and the role of the artist in society is explained by studying three of his models of culture and society, each drawn from a different period of his career. Finally, the relationship of Lewis and Marshall McLuhan is examined to determine the nature and extent of the ideas passed on.

The relationship between emotional intelligence, social competence, and success was investigated. Success was operationally defined as elected leadership within a school group, club, or organization. The study sample consisted of 31 males and 89 females ages fourteen to seventeen years (grades 9 through 11) from three counties in south-central Kentucky. Student participants were characterized as Leaders, Joiners, or Non-Joiners of school groups and were asked to complete the BarOn Emotional Quotient Inventory: Youth Version (BarOn EQi:YV) (BarOn & Parker, 2000), which assessed emotional intelligence, and the Social Skills Rating System - Secondary Student Form (SSRS) (Gresham & Elliott, 1990), which provided an evaluation of social competence. Teachers of the students in the study were also asked to complete a Social Skills Rating System-Teacher Form. Results lent support to three of the four hypotheses. Female leaders exhibited higher than chance Total EQ scores, as well as higher scores on Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Adaptability factors than the standardization sample. Male leaders appeared to possess more ability within the domain of Adaptability than the standardization sample. Significant mean score-differences existed between the emotional intelligence scores of those identified as Leaders, Joiners, and Non-Joiners of groups. Emotional intelligence was not shown to increase with age, as no significant correlations emerged between emotional intelligence scores and age levels. Finally, teacher ratings of social skills were significantly higher for leaders than for Joiners and Non-Joiners of groups. Implications and suggestions for further research were discussed.

Jennifer Howard. Adkins April 12, 2004 51 pages Directed by: Dr. William Pfohl, Dr. Antony Norman, and Dr. Reagan Brown Department of Psychology Western Kentucky University In the United States today there are approximately 1.5 million students being home schooled. With this ever growing number, it is important to examine this unique population in order to determine the effects this alternative form of education will have on these students, not just academically, but in other areas as well. The purpose of this study is to examine the concepts of emotional intelligence and social skills in home schooled students. One hundred home schooled students and their parents participated in this study by completing emotional intelligence and social skills questionnaires. Results of the study support the hypotheses that the home schooled students would have higher levels of social skills and lower scores on the problem behaviors scale than the standardization population. In regards to emotional intelligence, differences were found among the elementary and secondary grade levels of the home schooled children. Home schooled elementary students achieved higher scores than the standardization population on two of the seven areas measured. No significant differences were found in the other areas. Home schooled secondary students achieved higher scores than did the standardization population on four of the seven areas measured. No significant differences were found in the other areas.

Subjects' views and conceptions of social intelligence were investigated by having 40 adults, male inmates in an Alberta correctional centre rate the importance of 20 behavioral characteristics representing the domain of social intelligence. Social intelligence was defined as a person's ability to understand others and to act wisely in social situations. The 20 characteristics, derived from an earlier study by Ford and Miura (1983), were rated for each of three common social contexts by having subjects think of the kind of person who would be a close personal friend, a teacher, or a person in a conflict. The following research questions were addressed in the study: a) How do adult, male inmates in an Alberta correctional centre view the construct of social intelligence? b) Do subjects' ratings of the 20 characteristics that describe social intelligence form factors that resemble the clusters identified by subjects rating the same 20 characteristics in a study by Ford and Miura (1983)? c) How do subjects' ratings of social intelligence differ among the three social contexts investigated? d) Is there a common core of social intelligence characteristics that subjects rate as important across all three social contexts? Descriptive statistics revealed that subjects generally rated the 20 characteristics as quite high in importance in all three social contexts. However, the characteristics were rated highest in importance in the context "A teacher", followed by "A close personal friend" and "A person in conflict". Factor analyses revealed that subjects' ratings in the present study shared some similarities in structure with the clusters or categories of characteristics identified by subjects in the earlier study by Ford and Miura (1983). Analyses of variance revealed several significant differences when sujects' ratings of importance of the 20 characteristics and four categories of social intelligence were compared across contexts. In the present study, a common core of four characteristics of social intelligence were ranked highly in importance across all three social contexts. Findings from the present study provide support for the existence of the categories "Prosocial skills" and "Social-instrumental skills" as identified in the study by Ford and Miura (1983). The importance of studying the construct of social intelligence in particular social contexts and particular populations was also demonstrated. Finally, the implications of the findings of the present study are discussed in relation to the planning and delivery of inmate education programs as well as the continuing study of the construct of social intelligence.
xii, 82 leaves : ill. ; 28 cm.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a life-long developmental disorder, which affects communication, social interaction, and flexible behaviour. Kanner’s and Asperger’s original descriptions suggested a hidden intelligence in Autism, reflected in islets of ability. However, for more than three decades it has been documented that ASD has a strong association with Intellectual Disability (ID) and low measured IQ: a high percentage of cases of ASD have intellectual disability, and risk of ASD increases with reduced IQ. The current study aimed to investigate the underlying cognitive potential in ASD, using a simple measure of processing efficiency. The thesis reports studies testing the notion that learning and acquisition of skills is hampered by poor social insight in ASD, which curtails ordinary social learning mechanisms. This general framework further predicts that the basic processing mechanism is not impaired in ASD, and that learning will proceed more efficiently through non-social than through social routes. The Inspection Time (IT) task was used to assess processing efficiency and speed of processing, free of social demands. ITs were predicted to be significantly better than expected from standard IQ in children with ASD and ID, but not in those with ID alone. A novel photograph version of a well-known receptive vocabulary test was developed, predicting that this less socio-communicative version would specifically aid children with ASD, compared to the traditional line drawing format (which may be more determined by the author’s own interpretation and/or drawing ability). Finally, learning in novel social and non-social odd-one-out tasks was tested in children with ID with and without ASD. Learning performance was examined in relation to performance on standard IQ tests, IT, Theory of Mind, and report of everyday life skills and deficits. Results showed that ASD individuals outperformed ID individuals in the IT task despite matched IQ. However, IT did not predict better non-social learning than IQ did. Implications of these results and future directions are further discussed.

With an increase in alternative forms of work, people are no longer limited to traditional office spaces. The aim for a healthier integration of private and work comes with the advantages of experimenting with new technologies. As a result, coworking spaces are spreading through the urban centers. But our way of dealing with work is still marked by our corporate-focused past. This project aims to explore how can co-working spaces occupy a more meaningful role by connecting people with their interests. My interest is to unveil the social rules of the space and turn interactions between coworkers more pleasant and easy. The result is a reflection about the future of collaborative workplaces. The success of the experiments reflect the openness of most co-workers and hosts. On a higher level the project gave me a better understanding of how AI could help to improve the social aspect of our workplaces.

L’ultimo decennio ha visto un radicale cambiamento del mercato informatico, con la nascita di un numero sempre maggiore di applicazioni rivolte all’interazione tra utenti. In particolar modo, l’avvento dei social network ha incrementato notevolmente le possibilità di creare e condividere contenuti sul web, generando volumi di dati sempre maggiori, nell’ordine di petabyte e superiori. La gestione di tali quantità di dati ha portato alla nascita di soluzioni non relazionali appositamente progettate, dette NoSQL. Lo scopo di questo documento è quello di illustrare come i sistemi NoSQL, nello specifico caso di MongoDB, cerchino di sopperire alle difficoltà d’utilizzo dei database relazionali in un contesto largamente distribuito. Effettuata l'analisi delle principali funzionalità messe a disposizione da MongoDB, si illustreranno le caratteristiche di un prototipo di applicazione appositamente progettato che sfrutti una capacità peculiare di MongoDB quale la ricerca full-text. In ultima analisi si fornirà uno studio delle prestazioni di tale soluzione in un ambiente basato su cluster, evidenziandone il guadagno prestazionale.

The Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Directorate (MUST) is a producer of knowledge, a knowledge that is fundamental for decisionmaking in foreign and security policy. The intelligence knowledge production is often held as objective, value neutral, and with the intention of ‘speaking truth onto power’. However, this study holds that such a perspective on intelligence knowledge production calls for a revision. Hence, the overall purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of knowledge in intelligence analysis and also to investigate how that knowledge is affected by the social context of its production, the military intelligence service. The source material is of three kinds; first texts and documents, second interviews with intelligence analysts and managers, and third observations of seminars and meetings during the production process of estimates. The results are that there is a strong presence of an implicit interpretive framework that continuously influences and guides the knowledge production and thereby makes the knowledge dependent on one specific perspective contrary to the intentional objectivity within the intelligence service. Further, the study reveals that the social and discursive practices for intelligence knowledge production include a ‘logic of appropriateness’ suggesting the presence of a structured Denkkollektiv with a structured Denkstil. The actions and choices of the individuals are transformed to create conformity to the norms within the social discursive practices. Thus, the inherited frame of interpretation, as well as the socialised norm of staying within the existing accepted frames ofthinking and acting ends up to the stability and duration of the not always accurate and fruitful Denkstil. At the core of political science resides the question of how policy is shaped. Even though this study has focused merely on one organisation in a specific policy field in one country it brings insights to the knowledge and policy nexus.

Globaliseringen av ekonomin har genererat globaliseringen av information som varje chef har att hantera snabbt och effektivt i beslutsprocessen. Små företag är mer sårbara för att ändra affärsvillkor än större konkurrenter. För att överleva i den instabila ekonomiska miljön där de är verksamma måste småföretag kunna monitorera sina affärer och använda alla sina resurser effektivt, särskilt informationsresurser. Under det senaste decenniet har användningen av business intelligence vuxit fram som ett måste för att inte tappa marknadsfördelar. Huvudsyftet med denna uppsats är att utvärdera hur business intelligence kan tas fram och implementeras i små företag. För att göra detta genomfördes ett design science research projekt där en IT- artefakt utvecklades med CRISP-DM som metod. Både IT-artefakten och metoden CRISP-DM utvärderas i uppsatsens analys. Arbetat mynnar ut i slutsatsen att CRISP-DM inte är lämpad som metod för denna typ av projekt. Slutligen kommer vi fram till de faktorer som härstammar från ett företags storlek som påverkar framtagningen av BI-system.

With the advancement of the Internet and related technologies, many traditional crimes have made the leap to digital environments. The successes of data mining in a wide variety of disciplines have given birth to crime analysis. Traditional crime analysis is mainly focused on understanding crime patterns, however, it is unsuitable for identifying and monitoring emerging crimes. The true nature of crime remains buried in unstructured content that represents the hidden story behind the data. User feedback leaves valuable traces that can be utilised to measure the quality of various aspects of products or services and can also be used to detect, infer, or predict crimes. Like any application of data mining, the data must be of a high quality standard in order to avoid erroneous conclusions. This thesis presents a methodology and practical experiments towards discovering whether (i) user feedback can be harnessed and processed for crime intelligence, (ii) criminal associations, structures, and roles can be inferred among entities involved in a crime, and (iii) methods and standards can be developed for measuring, predicting, and comparing the quality level of social data instances and samples. It contributes to the theory, design and development of a novel framework for crime intelligence and algorithm for the estimation of social data quality by innovatively adapting the methods of monitoring water contaminants. Several experiments were conducted and the results obtained revealed the significance of this study in mining social data for crime intelligence and in developing social data quality filters and decision support systems.

Mentoring is an important means of developing talent. Typically, mentoring involves two individuals – a mentor, who provides career development and psychosocial support to a less experienced counterpart (the protege). Because mentoring is related to several desired outcomes such as career advancement, and job satisfaction, it is important to understand which individual characteristics are important to obtaining or providing effective mentoring. It is also necessary to examine potential but unconfirmed outcomes of mentoring such as social network status. This study examined the relationships between several individual characteristics, namely social intelligence and emotional intelligence, and mentoring relationships. In addition, this study examined the relationships between mentoring and social network status. In this non-experimental study, there were several unique relationships among these constructs. The results indicate a person's social intelligence is indicative of their status as a mentor (or not a mentor) but is not related to status as a protege (or not a protege). In addition, a mentor's perception of the costs and benefits of mentoring were explained by the protege's social intelligence and emotional intelligence. A mentor's social intelligence also explained the quality of the mentoring given. Finally, a mentor's social network status was related to the protege's social network status but this relationship was not due to the mentoring received. This study provides one of the first examinations of the relationship between mentoring and social network status and provides areas for future research and practical considerations.
ID: 031001464; System requirements: World Wide Web browser and PDF reader.; Mode of access: World Wide Web.; Adviser: Kimberly A. Smith Jentsch.; Title from PDF title page (viewed July 8, 2013).; Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Central Florida, 2012.; Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-129).
Ph.D.
Doctorate
Psychology
Sciences
Psychology; Industrial and Organizational

Mayer and Salovey first defined emotional intelligence in 1990 (Mayer, 1999) and later revised that definition (Mayer & Salovey, 1997). In 1995, Goleman introduced a different concept of emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1995). Bar-On presented a third conceptualization, as well as the first measure of the concept (Bar-On & Parker, 2000). Few studies have addressed emotional intelligence in children and adolescents, and nostudies have examined the concept in the deaf population. The purpose of the present study is to examine emotional intelligence, as well as social skills, in a residential deaf population. Fourteen students at the Kentucky School for the Deaf completed emotional intelligence and social skills questionnaires. Teachers also rated each participant's social skills. Results indicated that the participants rated themselves similar to the standardization sample in overall emotional intelligence. In general, participants rated their emotional intelligence similar to their social skills. The hypothesis that there would be less than one standard deviation of difference between the overall emotional intelligence scores of the research sample and the standardization sample was supported. Suggestions for further research are presented.

The widespread use of social media, along with the possibilities to conceal one’s identity in the fibrillation of ubiquitous technology, combined with crime and terrorism becoming digitized, has increased the need of possibilities to find out who hides behind an anonymous alias. This report deals with authorship verification of posts written on Twitter, with the purpose of investigating whether it is possible to develop an auxiliary tool that can be used in crime investigation activities. The main research question in this report is whether a set of tweets written by an anonymous user can be matched to another set of tweets written by a known user, and, based on their linguistic styles, if it is possible to calculate a probability of whether the authors are the same. The report also examines the question of how linguistic styles can be extracted for use in an artificially intelligent classification, and how much data is needed to get adequate results. The subject matter is interesting as the work described in this report concerns a potential future scenario where digital crimes are difficult to investigate with traditional network-based tracking techniques. The approach to the problem is to evaluate traditional methods of feature extraction in natural language processing, and by classifying the features using a type of recurrent neural network called Long Short-Term Memory. While the best result in an experiment that was carried out achieved an accuracy of 93.32%, the overall results showed that the choice of representation, and amount of data used, is crucial. This thesis complements the existing knowledge as very short texts, in the form of social media posts, are in focus.

This study examined the relationship between social-emotional intelligence and risky sexual behaviors in adolescence. Despite the introduction of sex education in public schools, there continue to be high rates of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases in the teenage population. Researchers have demonstrated numerous positive life outcomes for individuals with greater levels of social and emotional abilities. However, studies have failed to examine the precise relationship between such abilities and sexual behavior. In the current study, data was collected from 49 high school students in New York State. Using the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory Youth Version and a researcher-designed questionnaire on risky sexual behavior, teenagers with higher Interpersonal Emotional Intelligence reported less sexual risk taking. A significant relationship was also demonstrated between Risky Sexual Behaviors and a control variable, Delinquency. Due to limited participation and a homogeneous sample, the results of this study cannot be meaningfully generalized to the greater population. Therefore, these findings support the need for further research to clarify the relationships among these variables and validate the importance of teaching explicit social-emotional training in sex education curricula.

There is a growing interest in exploring the emotional intelligence (EI) of pharmacy leaders. The purpose of this research was to explore the differences between leadership-certified and non-leadership-certified pharmacy leaders and their Total emotional quotient (EQ) score, as measured by the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i 2.0®). A secondary purpose was to identify if there was a difference between leadership-certified and non-leadership-certified pharmacy leaders and their EI scores with regard to the EQ-i 2.0® composite scales (Self-Perception, Self-Expression, Interpersonal, Decision Making, and Stress Management). In addition, the relationship between demographic features of pharmacy leaders and Total EQ scores was evaluated. A quantitative, non-experimental design using secondary data was used to measure EI in a stratified random sample of pharmacy leaders, including 2008-2012 graduates and 2013 participants of the American Society for Health System Pharmacy (ASHP) Foundation Pharmacy Leadership Academy (PLA). The results revealed a mean Total EQ score of 101.11, indicating an average level of EI function among pharmacy leaders. Leadership-certified pharmacy leaders had statistically significantly higher Total EQ scores than non-leadership-certified pharmacy leaders. Furthermore, leadership-certified pharmacy leaders scored significantly higher than non-leadership-certified pharmacy leaders on all five composite scales of EI. No demographic factors were significant predictors of Total EI score of pharmacy leaders. The results indicate graduates of the ASHP PLA had higher EI than current participants of the PLA, but there is a need for continued leadership and EI training for all pharmacy leaders across all areas of EI function.