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MUKAI, Naoto, Masakazu IKEZAKI, and Toyohide WATANABE. "Simulation Analysis for Social Systems." INTELLIGENT MEDIA INTEGRATION NAGOYA UNIVERSITY / COE, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/2237/10432.
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Meleady, Rose. "Simulating social dilemmas : promoting cooperative behaviour through strategies of mental simulation." Thesis, University of Kent, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.633829.
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One of the most consistent findings in experimental social dilemmas research is the positive effect group discussion has on cooperative behaviour. At a time when cooperation is critical to tackle societal problems, ranging from debt to deforestation, understanding the dynamics of group discussion is a pressing need. Unfortunately, research investigating the processes underlying the effect has stalled in a state of disagreement, whilst applications have been discouraged by the realisation that discussion amongst all decision-makers is often difficult to establish. The first part of this thesis uniquely integrates previously competing 'single-cause' explanations of the group discussion effect into a single process model of group discussion, providing a more complete theoretical picture of how intenelated factors combine to facilitate discussion induced cooperation. On the basis of this theoretical analysis, complimentary approaches to the indirect and feasible implementation of group discussion are proposed, including the entirely new concept of imagined group discussion. Results within the second part of the thesis support the conclusion that when individuals imagine discussing a social dilemma with nominal group members they engage in cognitive processes consonant with those underlying the direct group discussion effect, thereby resulting in higher levels of cooperative behaviour. The third part of the thesis demonstrates that when the size of the group facing the dilemma is so large that even imagining a discussion amongst all decision-makers becomes impracticable (i.e. within global-level dilemmas), an imagined discussion with a single outgroup member successfully encourages collectively beneficial decision-making. The use of imagined communication techniques is therefore advocated as a simple, versatile and inexpensive means of encouraging cooperative behaviour without the limiting requirement of proximity between discussants.
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Corley, Courtney David. "Social Network Simulation and Mining Social Media to Advance Epidemiology." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2009. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc11053/.
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Traditional Public Health decision-support can benefit from the Web and social media revolution. This dissertation presents approaches to mining social media benefiting public health epidemiology. Through discovery and analysis of trends in Influenza related blogs, a correlation to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) influenza-like-illness patient reporting at sentinel health-care providers is verified. A second approach considers personal beliefs of vaccination in social media. A vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV) was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in May 2006. The virus is present in nearly all cervical cancers and implicated in many throat and oral cancers. Results from automatic sentiment classification of HPV vaccination beliefs are presented which will enable more accurate prediction of the vaccine's population-level impact. Two epidemic models are introduced that embody the intimate social networks related to HPV transmission. Ultimately, aggregating these methodologies with epidemic and social network modeling facilitate effective development of strategies for targeted interventions.
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Corley, Courtney D. Mikler Armin. "Social network simulation and mining social media to advance epidemiology." [Denton, Tex.] : University of North Texas, 2009. http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-11053.
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Ricks, Brian C. "Improving Crowd Simulation with Optimal Acceleration Angles, Movement on 3D Surfaces, and Social Dynamics." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2013. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3566.
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Crowd simulation plays a critical role in modern films, games, and architectural design. However, despite decades of algorithmic improvements, crowds use sub-optimal heuristics, are primarily constrained to 2D surfaces, and show few if any social dynamics. This dissertation proposes that a solution to these problems lies in altering how each agent perceives its environment as opposed to new obstacle avoidance algorithms. First, this dissertation presents a theoretical look at optimal agent movement. Next, in order to place crowds on arbitrary 3D manifolds, algorithms are proposed that change how each agent perceives its environment. The resulting crowds move naturally across a large range of surfaces with up to 100,000 triangles in real-time. Additionally, these algorithms are shown to work in real-time strategy game settings by using the GPU to determine which parts of the surface are visible to each agent. Results show that these algorithms can do visibility testing for up to 200 agents in real-time. Lastly, these same principles are used to create believable social dynamics with crowds based on the transactional analysis area of psychology. These social dynamics allow agents to stop and talk, pair walk, and have repeated social interactions. All this is done by changing how agents perceive the world based on their social reward.
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Dilday, Chester Daniel. "Developing reflective social policy decision-making through computer-simulation /." The Ohio State University, 1989. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487598303840861.
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Zhao, Jijun. "Analysis of complex social systems by agent-based simulation." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280763.
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This dissertation studied complex social systems that have large number of individuals and complicated functional relations among individuals. Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) including Social Dilemmas (SDs) is a type of problem arising from collective actions in social systems. Previous PD studies have limitations and are not suitable for the study of collective actions in complex social systems. The large number of individuals and the complexity of the models made the development of theoretical, analytical studies impossible. An agent-based computer simulation is used in this dissertation for investigating N-person Prisoner's Dilemma (NPD), and its new extensions. My research can be divided into three chapters (three appendixes in this dissertation). In the first problem, the classical NPD model is considered, a much faster algorithm was developed, and the long term behavior of Pavlovian agents is examined. In this study, the main feature of the classical PD model was kept by restricting the state space into two possibilities: cooperation and defection. In most social situations the state space is much more complicated. In the second study, NPD was introduced with continuous state space. A continuous variable described the cooperation level of the participating individuals. A stochastic differential equation models state change of individuals. Public media and personal influence were first introduced in the study of NPD. In the third model, we analyzed the dynamic process of fund raising for a public radio station. This model is a combination of the other two models; discrete in the sense that donating or not in a time period is discrete variable; however the amount the individuals can pledge to the station is a continuous variable. In all three models, individual personalities are considered and quantified. Major personality types that might affect the possible cooperation or defection of the agents were captured in the continuous NPD simulation; major motivations that might affect the probability of pledging at a certain time period and the pledged amount were captured in the fund raising case. During the computer simulation, the behavior of each agent and the behavior of the entire society can be monitored.
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Abbasian, Hosseini Seyed Alireza. "Social and Engineering Aspects of Construction Site Management using Simulation and Social Network Analysis." Thesis, North Carolina State University, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10110533.
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<p> The crews/actors/subs during a construction project make relationship and communicate with each other on the jobsite primarily when they work in a task sequence or when they work in the same working area at the same time. These interdependencies can have various impacts on their performance, the decisions their supervisor make and their action from both engineering and social aspects. The main focus of the past research is on the project parties’ relationship based on the information exchange and formal communication, while the research pertaining to the interpretation and investigation of the construction crews/trades’ interdependencies during the construction project is very limited. How are the construction jobsite actors connected in a construction jobsite? How do the existing interdependencies among them affect their performance? And how can understanding these interdependencies be beneficial for construction site managers? The primary goal of this research is to better understand the existing interdependencies among the construction crews/trades/subs and its impact. Particularly, the objectives of this research are to: 1) develop the jobsite social network of construction crews/trades and quantify its impact, 2) investigate the impact of social conformity on the performance of construction crews/trades, 3) identify the improvement direction (benchmarks) for inefficient construction crews/trades, and 4) investigate the cost/benefit of low or high reliable construction crews/trades and to develop a new educational version of Parade Game. </p><p> First, social network analysis (SNA) is implemented to develop a technique to construct the dynamic jobsite social network of crews/trades in a project and quantify its impact through the network centrality analysis. The results of a case study are presented. Then, SNA and social norm analysis are combined as a method to measure conformity, one of the main social network influences types that results in a change of performance/behavior in order to fit in a group, at construction crew/trade level and demonstrate how it can play role in the performance of crews/trades/subs particularly in their work plan reliability through two case studies. Then, inspired by social learning phenomenon, data envelopment analysis and SNA is combined to develop a procedure that can identify the improvement direction for the inefficient crews/trades/subs in a construction project. At the end, the research concentrates on the engineering aspects of the jobsite interdependencies by developing a simulation model, as a new educational version of Parade Game, that uses different variability levels and the corresponding costs at different work stations to investigate the relationship between the interdependencies and crews/trades’ variability/reliability. </p><p> Results demonstrate that the performance of construction crews/trades is under the influence of the social aspect of the interdependencies as well as the engineering aspect. They show that there is an association between influences a crew/trade/sub receives from the network and his/her performance. Results of case studies show that the subcontractors follow the performance norm in the project and their tendency to follow the norms of their neighborhood is higher than their willingness to follow the project norm. Parade Game simulation results also show that the production will enhance if the reliability increases and the investment made to improve reliability will return in most of the scenarios. </p><p> This research is significant and valuable as it looks at construction jobsite interdependencies from an exclusively analytical perspective, which has not been done previously. Previous research also did not investigate the social aspects of the construction crews/trades/subs interdependencies. Construction personnel at every level of management are constantly planning and trying to figure out how best to manage and coordinate the construction crews/trades/subs. A better understanding of the existing jobsite interdependencies will help project managers to control it through better planning and leadership, consequently increasing jobsite productivity.</p>
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Bourgais, Mathieu. "Vers des agents cognitifs, affectifs et sociaux dans la simulation." Thesis, Normandie, 2018. http://www.theses.fr/2018NORMIR20/document.
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Au cours des dernières années, l'utilisation de simulations à base d'agents pour étudier les systèmes sociaux s'est étendue à de nombreux domaines (géographie, écologie, sociologie, économie, etc.). Ces simulations visent à reproduire des situations réelles impliquant des acteurs humains ; il est donc nécessaire d'y intégrer des agents complexes reproduisant le comportement des personnes simulées. Par conséquent, des notions telles que la cognition, les émotions, la personnalité, les relations sociales ou les normes doivent être prises en compte. Pour autant, il n'existe actuellement aucune architecture d'agent intégrant toutes ces caractéristiques et pouvant être utilisée par la majorité des modélisateurs, y compris ceux n'étant pas expert en programmation informatique. Dans cette thèse, l'architecture BEN (Behavior with Emotions and Norms) est présentée pour répondre à cette question. Il s'agit d'une architecture modulaire basée sur le modèle BDI de la cognition avec des modules pour ajouter des émotions, de la contagion émotionnelle, une personnalité, des relations sociales et des normes au comportement des agents. Ces dimensions comportementales sont formalisées de manière à ce qu'elles puissent fonctionner ensemble pour produire un comportement crédible dans le contexte des simulations sociales. L'architecture est implémentée dans la plate-forme de simulation GAMA afin de la rendre utilisable par la communauté des simulations sociales. Enfin, BEN est utilisé pour étudier deux cas d'évacuation d'une boîte de nuit en feu, montrant que l'architecture est actuellement utilisable à travers son implémentation dans GAMA et qu'elle permet aux modélisateurs de reproduire des situations réelles impliquant des acteurs humains<br>Over the last few years, the use of agent-based simulations to study social systems has spread to many domains (e.g. geography, ecology, sociology, economy). These simulations aim to reproduce real life situations involving human beings and thus need to integrate complex agents to match the behavior of the people simulated. Therefore, notions such as cognition, emotions, personality, social relations or norms have to be taken into account, but currently there is no agent architecture that could incorporate all these features and be used by the majority of modelers, including those with low levels of skills in programming. In this thesis, the BEN (Behavior with Emotions and Norms) architecture is introduced to tackle this issue. It is a modular architecture based on the BDI model of cognition featuring modules for adding emotions, emotional contagion, personality, social relations and norms to agent behavior. These behavioral dimensions are formalised in a way so they may operate together to produce a believable behavior in the context of social simulations. The architecture is implemented into the GAMA simulation platform in order to make it usable by the social simulation community. Finally, BEN is used to study two cases of evacuation of a nightclub on fire, showing it is currently usable throught its implementation into GAMA and it enables modelers to reproduce real life situations involving human actors
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Helmhout, Jan Martin. "The social cognitive actor a multi-actor simulation of organisations /." [S.l. : [Groningen : s.n.] ; University Library Groningen] [Host], 2006. http://irs.ub.rug.nl/ppn/297984268.
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Johnson, Matthew Richard. "Operationalising the simulation theory of understanding others for social robots." Thesis, Imperial College London, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.498446.
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Mei, Xiao. "On Chongqing's Red culture campaign : simulation and its social implications." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708887.
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Pehrs, Corinna, Jamil Zaki, Liila Taruffi, Lars Kuchinke, and Stefan Koelsch. "Hippocampal-Temporopolar Connectivity Contributes to Episodic Simulation During Social Cognition." Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature, 2018. https://tud.qucosa.de/id/qucosa%3A31830.
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People are better able to empathize with others when they are given information concerning the context driving that person’s experiences. This suggests that people draw on prior memories when empathizing, but the mechanisms underlying this connection remain largely unexplored. The present study investigates how variations in episodic information shape the emotional response towards a movie character. Episodic information is either absent or provided by a written context preceding empathic film clips. It was shown that sad context information increases empathic concern for a movie character. This was tracked by neural activity in the temporal pole (TP) and anterior hippocampus (aHP). Dynamic causal modeling with Bayesian Model Selection has shown that context changes the effective connectivity from left aHP to the right TP. The same crossed-hemispheric coupling was found during rest, when people are left to their own thoughts. We conclude that (i) that the integration of episodic memory also supports the specific case of integrating context into empathic judgments, (ii) the right TP supports emotion processing by integrating episodic memory into empathic inferences, and (iii) lateral integration is a key process for episodic simulation during rest and during task. We propose that a disruption of the mechanism may underlie empathy deficits in clinical conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder.
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Cecil, Malcolm Kirk. "Simulation and the digital refiguring of culture." Thesis, McGill University, 1996. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=26726.
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This thesis elaborates on existing definitions and descriptions of simulation to develop an extended, inter-disciplinary concept of simulation that serves as an orienting model for the interpretation of culture. As cultural theory, simulation offers insights into the stabilization and propagation of cultural forms. Used descriptively, the metaphor of simulation throws into definition a cultural pattern of progressive formalization through increasingly sophisticated methods of abstraction. I find evidence of the pattern at many levels of analysis; metaphysical, social and micro-social, particularly at the level of the body. I use the speculative notion of the digital refiguring of culture to articulate this tendency towards abstraction through a parallel with the enhanced analytic and representational capacities of digital technology. I consider several actual and hypothetical ways that the computer figures in this process. I argue that the basis for cultural form is shifting away from the referential function of the body, as the abstract realm of mediated relations takes on greater importance in modern culture.
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Park, Seung In. "Modeling Social Group Interactions for Realistic Crowd Behaviors." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/19297.
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In the simulation of human crowd behavior including evacuation planning, transportation management, and safety engineering in architecture design, the development of pedestrian model for higher behavior fidelity is an important task. To construct plausible facsimiles of real crowd movements, simulations should exhibit human behaviors for navigation, pedestrian decision-making, and social behaviors such as grouping and crowding. The research field is quite mature in some sense, with a large number of approaches that have been proposed to path finding, collision avoidance, and visually pleasing steering behaviors of virtual humans. However, there is still a clear disparity between the variety of approaches and the quality of crowd behaviors in simulations.<br /><br />Many social science field studies inform us that crowds are typically composed of multiple social groups (James, 1953; Coleman and James, 1961; Aveni, 1977). These observations indicate that one component of the complexity of crowd dynamics emerges from the presence of various patterns of social interactions within small groups that make up the crowd. Hence, realism in a crowd simulation may be enhanced when virtual characters are organized in multiple social groups, and exhibit human-like coordination behaviors.<br /><br />Motivated by the need for modeling groups in a crowd, we present a multi-agent model for large crowd simulations that incorporates socially plausible group behaviors. A computational model for multi-agent coordination and interaction informed by well- established Common Ground theory (Clark, 1996; Clark and Brennan, 1991) is proposed. In our approach, the task of navigation in a group is viewed as performing a joint activity which requires maintaining a state of common ground among group members regarding walking strategies and route choices. That is, group members communicate with, and adapt their behaviors to each other in order to maintain group cohesiveness while walking. In the course of interaction, an agent may present gestures or other behavioral cues according to its communicative purpose. It also considers the spatiotemporal conditions of the agent-group\'s environment in which the agent interacts when selecting a kind of motions.<br /><br />With the incorporation of our agent model, we provide a unified framework for crowd simulation and animation which accommodates high-level socially-aware behavioral realism of animated characters. The communicative purpose and motion selection of agents are consistently carried through from simulation to animation, and a resulted sequence of animated character behaviors forms not merely a chain of reactive or random gestures but a socially meaningful interactions.<br /><br />We conducted several experiments in order to investigate the impact of our social group<br />interaction model in crowd simulation and animation. By showing that group communicative behaviors have a substantial influence on the overall distribution of a crowd, we demonstrate the importance of incorporating a model of social group interaction into multi-agent simulations of large crowd behaviors. With a series of perceptual user studies, we show that our model produces more believable behaviors of animated characters from the viewpoint of human observers.<br /><br>Ph. D.
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Conroy, Patrick Francis. "Social agent modeling and simulation : an aid to pre-adapting populations to serious societal disruptions." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/57595.
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Serious societal disruptions can be expected in our future, and policy makers need better tools to help populations pre-adapt to them, in particular tools that incorporate internal-subjective behavior drivers and the means by which to model the behaviors they create. The Intelligent Agent paradigm developed in the Computer Science discipline is a powerful technology that enables population modeling at the level of the individual, and could have by now been demonstrably useful in creating tools to support policy makers’ work on this challenge. However, the Rational Agent instantiation of this paradigm, the focus of most Intelligent Agent work to date, is unsuitable for modeling the behavior of real human populations in a major societal disruption, due to avoidance of the internal-subjective bases of human sociality and so-called ‘irrational’ behaviors, exactly those that will dominate decision-making in such disruptions. There is growing understanding of such behavior drivers at the level of detail needed to support the modeling of significant-size populations. We propose a Social Agent instantiation of the Intelligent Agent paradigm for bottom-up modeling that explicitly incorporates these drivers, and we analyze the results of an implementation of this model in ‘EnergyWorld’, an abstract simulation of population behavior when resources needed for well-being are abruptly, significantly and persistently made scarce. Formal validation and verification in this research are limited due to the lack quantitative data on the internal-subjective nature of human decision-making; instead, we argue that the credibility of comparative policy analysis based on differential model parameter sets makes this approach useful for scenario-based policy analysis as a complement to other tools. We believe this to be true even if the disruptions we expect do not arrive in the intensity or form that seem likely today.<br>Applied Science, Faculty of<br>Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of<br>Graduate
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Trieu, Thanh Ngoan. "Open data and environment simulation : environmental and social simulation on distributed process systems based on irregular cell space." Electronic Thesis or Diss., Brest, 2024. http://www.theses.fr/2024BRES0047.
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La combinaison d’automates cellulaires (CA) et de systèmes distribués offre un moyen simple de modéliser les problèmes environnementaux et sociaux en divisant les zones d’intérêt en segments spatiales discrètes pour le calcul parallèle. L’évolution de l’état de chaque segment est divisée en étapes temporelles discrètes. Les divisions géographiques en tant qu’espace cellulaire irrégulier permettent de tirer parti des données ouvertes pour alimenter les systèmes de simulation. Les données sont analysées pour en déduire les règles de transition apportant des influences distribuées dans un quartier. Une étude de cas de modélisation de la propagation épidémique basée sur les divisions administratives est présentée. Étant donné l’hypothèse que l’épidémie se propage aux personnes vivant dans le quartier, un système de simulation est généré en fonction des voisins adjacents avec des conditions initiales de collecte à partir du portail de données ouvertes du gouvernement. Une approche hybride est introduite avec la coopération entre les tuiles régulières et les espaces cellulaires irréguliers dans la modélisation des activités côtières. Une simulation environnementale est nécessaire pour représenter les caractéristiques du sol et de la mer qui se propagent dans les deux espaces. Ces caractéristiques sont très différentes en raison de la capacité et de la réaction du sol, et du comportement de la mer, en particulier les courants et les marées. Le problème des marées vertes est modélisé lorsque les nutriments sont présents en concentrations élevées et piégés par les courants de marée<br>The combination of Cellular automata (CA) and distributed systems provide a simple way to model environmental and social issues by dividing the relevant areas into discrete spatial segments for parallel computation. The state evolution of each segment is divided into discrete time steps. Geographic divisions as irregular cell space give a chance to take advantage of Open Data in feeding the simulation systems. Data are analyzed to deduce the transition rules bringing distributed influences in a neighborhood. A case study of epidemic propagation modeling based on geographic divisions is presented. Given an assumption that the epidemic is spreading to people living in the neighborhood, a simulation system is generated based on adjacent neighbors with initial conditions collected from the government open data portal. A hybrid approach is introduced with the cooperation between regular tiles and irregular cellspaces in modeling shore activities. Environmental simulation is needed to represent ground and sea characteristics modeling spreading occurring on both spaces. These characteristics are very different due to soil capability and reaction, and sea behavior, in particular currents and tides. The problem of green tides is modeled when nutrients arepresented in high concentrations and entrapped by tidal currents
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Brousmiche, Kei-Léo. "Modélisation et simulation multi-agent de la formation et de la dynamique d’attitudes basées sur les croyances." Thesis, Paris 6, 2015. http://www.theses.fr/2015PA066623/document.
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Nous étudions dans cette thèse la formation et la dynamique des attitudes sociales à l'aide de la simulation multi agent. L'attitude peut se définir comme une évaluation globale d'un objet social sur la base d'informations cognitives ou affectives. Nos travaux s'inscrivent dans le cadre de la simulation sociale qui tente de reproduire informatiquement des phénomènes sociaux complexes à une échelle macroscopique, sur la base de la représentation des individus et de leurs interactions au niveau microscopique. Tandis que les approches existantes dans cette discipline font généralement abstraction des travaux en sciences humaines sur le sujet de l'attitude, nous proposons de suivre une approche psychomimétique en micro-fondant le modèle cognitif de nos agents sur des théories issues de psychologie sociale et des sciences cognitives. Ainsi, nous proposons un modèle de dynamique d'attitude combinant des théories issues de travaux en sciences humaines et sociales de la perception des individus, la communication inter-personnelle et médiatique, la révision de croyances, la réponse émotionnelle ainsi que le sentiment de surprise. Ce modèle a pour objectif de reproduire au niveau microscopique la dynamique des attitudes vis-à-vis d'acteurs qui effectuent des actions observées par la population. Nous avons procédé à une analyse fonctionnelle des différents composants du modèle sur des scénarii abstraits afin d'étudier les capacités de notre modèle, en particulier les phénomènes descriptibles tels que la diffusion de l'information, la résistance à la désinformation ou le processus de conformité. Le modèle a été appliqué dans le contexte des opérations militaires françaises de stabilisation en Afghanistan. L'objectif de cette expérience consiste à reproduire les sondages d'opinions vis-à-vis des Forces en présence, récoltés durant l'intervention, à partir d'un scénario militaire qui a été reconstitué en partenariat avec les officiers en charge des opérations de 2011 à 2012. Les résultats de simulations qui suivent un processus de calibration du modèle affichent une erreur inférieure à 3 points d'écart par rapport aux données réelles. Enfin, nous proposons une analyse microscopique des résultats en appliquant des techniques de classifications automatiques sur les individus afin d'expliquer les différentes tendances d'attitudes au sein de la population<br>We study in this thesis the problem of social attitude formation and dynamics using multi agent simulation. The concept of attitude could be defined as a global evaluation of a social object, based on cognitive or affective information. Our works belongs to the field of social simulation which aims to reproduce in a virtual environment complex social phenomenon at a macroscopic level based on microscopic representations of individuals and their interactions. While existing approaches in this field rarely consider the results of studies in human sciences on the topic of attitude, we propose to follow a psychomimtic approach by micro-founding the cognitive model of our agents on human and social sciences' theories on individual's perception, inter-personal and media communication, belief revision, affective responses and the sentiment of unexpectedness. This model aims to reproduce at a microscopic level attitude dynamics toward actors who perpetuate actions witnessed by the individuals. We have proceeded to a functional analysis of the model's various components based on abstracts scenarios in order to study the capabilities of our model, and more precisely the describable phenomenon such as information diffusion, resistance to disinformation or the conformity process. The model has been applied in the context of French military operations of stabilisation in Afghanistan. The goal of this experience consists in reproducing opinion polls results of the locals toward the present Forces, collected during the intervention, based on a military scenario which has been recreated in partnership with officers who were in charge of operations between 2011 and 2012. Simulation results that follow a model calibration process show an error below 3 points of disparity compared to the real data. Finally, we propose a microscopic analysis of the results by applying automatic classification techniques on the simulated individuals in order to explain the multiple attitudes tendencies in the population
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Abdou, Mohamed A. "Determinants and dynamics of social and workplace segregation : a simulation study." Thesis, University of Surrey, 2009. http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/843429/.
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Segregation in workplaces and individuals' social networks based on ethnicity, race, and/or religion may have serious social and economic consequences. The relationship between social segregation and workplace segregation has been traditionally studied as a one-way causal relationship mediated by referral hiring. In this thesis, an alternative framework is introduced which describes the dynamic reciprocal relationships between social segregation, workplace segregation, individuals' homophily levels, and referral hiring. An agent-based simulation model was developed based on this framework. The model describes the process of continuous change in composition of workplaces and social networks of agents (individuals), and how this process affects levels of workplace segregation and the segregation of social networks of the agents. The simulation results indicated that a labour market may experience significant levels of workplace segregation and social segregation even when the hiring of workers occurs mainly through formal channels. The results also show that majority groups tend to be more homophilous than minority groups, that referral hiring may be beneficial for minority groups especially when the population is highly segregated, and that the relationship between referral hiring and minority unemployment is curvilinear. Levels of workplace and social segregation were found to be negatively correlated with minority proportion, average size of individuals' social network, and firm size, while they were positively correlated with overall unemployment level and hiring discrimination. The research is based on primary data involving structured interviews with a sample of 39 employers and 122 workers (81 Muslim and 41 Coptic workers) in industrial firms in Egypt. Two secondary data sets were also used: the Social Contract Survey (SCS) and Workers' Status in Industrial Enterprises Survey (WSIES). The data were used to assess the levels of social and workplace segregation in Egypt (which found to be high), and to validate the simulation model.
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Fetta, Angelico Giovanni. "Investigating social networks with Agent Based Simulation and Link Prediction methods." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2014. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/60113/.
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Social networks are increasingly being investigated in the context of individual behaviours. Research suggests that friendship connections have the ability to influence individual actions, change personal opinions and subsequently impact upon personal wellbeing. This thesis aims to investigate the effects of social networks, through the use of Agent Based Simulation (ABS) and Link Prediction (LP) methods. Three main investigations form this thesis, culminating in the development of a new simulation-based approach to Link Prediction (PageRank-Max) and a model of behavioural spread through a connected population (Behavioural PageRank-Max). The first project investigates the suitability of ABS to explore a connected social system. The Peter Principle is a theory of managerial incompetence, having the potential to cause detrimental effects to system efficiency. Through the investigation of a theoretical hierarchy of workplace social contacts, it is observed that the structure of a social network has the ability to impact system efficiency, demonstrating the importance of social network structure in conjunction with individual behaviours. The second project aims to further understand the structure of social networks, through the exploration of adolescent offline friendship data, taken from 'A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial' (ASSIST). An initial analysis of the data suggests certain factors may be pertinent in the formation of school social networks, identifying the importance of centrality measures. An ABS aiming to predict the evolution of the ASSIST social networks is created, developing an algorithm based upon the optimisation of an individual's eigen-centrality - termed PageRank-Max. This new approach to Link Prediction is found to predict ASSIST social network evolution more accurately than four existing prominent LP algorithms. The final part of this thesis attempts to improve the PageRank-Max method, by placing particular emphasis upon specific individual attributes. Two new methods are developed, the first restricting the search space of the algorithm (Behavioural Search), while the second alters its calculation process by applying specific attribute weights (Behavioural PageRank-Max). The results demonstrate the importance of individual attributes in adolescent friendship selection. Furthermore, the Behavioural PageRank-Max offers an approach to model the spread of behaviours in conjunction with social network structure, with the value of this being evaluated against alternative models.
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Ó, Duibhir Conall. "Simulating Systems : Interactive computer simulations as an educational tool for teaching about social-ecological systems." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-105265.
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This study adopts an experimental design to examine the use, in practice, of interactive computer simulations as educational tools. With the accelerated use of digital learning and the urgency of implementing sustainable development, the important role of interactive computer simulations is examined. While rooted in the digital humanities, the study focuses on ecopedagogy as a theoretical lens by which to assess critical learning. Drawing on previous research, ‘Shiny’ was used to develop a simple, interactive application consisting of a tool where users can calculate the cost and carbon emissions of energy production within a specific system. This application was used as part of a participatory experiment with 47 participants, and the data returned was analysed to examine its educational merit. The findings of the study indicate positive engagement with the simulation tool used, along with important lessons for further study.
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Valentin, Jérémie. "De la réalité de la simulation à la simulation de la réalité, une réhabilitation de l'approche poétique du social." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp05/mq25750.pdf.
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Teran, Villegas Oswaldo Ramon. "Emergent tendencies in multi-agent-based simulations using constraint-based methods to effect practical proofs over finite subsets of simulation outcomes." Thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.343494.
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Lelonkiewicz, Jarosław Roman. "Cognitive mechanisms and social consequences of imitation." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/23490.
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When interacting, people imitate each other. This tendency is truly ubiquitous and occurs in many different situations and behaviours. But what causes it? Several mechanisms have been proposed to contribute to imitation. In this thesis, I focus on three candidate mechanisms: simulation, temporal adaptation, and the goal to affiliate with others. I start by discussing different imitative behaviours, and reviewing the evidence that imitation might at times emerge spontaneously. I also review the evidence suggesting that the three candidate mechanisms might be involved in such emergent imitation. Then, I present three sets of experiments. In the first set, I investigate the role of simulation in language processing. In three experiments, I test the hypothesis that comprehenders use their language production system to simulate their interlocutor, which in turn facilitates their ability to predict the next word they will see or hear. I manipulate whether participants read the sentences silently or aloud and measure their ability to predict the final word of a sentence. My results demonstrate that prediction is enhanced when people use their production system during reading aloud. This gives some credence to the idea that simulation is routinely engaged in language processing, which in turn opens up a possibility that it may contribute to linguistic imitation. In the second set of experiments, I investigate whether temporal adaptation leads agents to imitate features of their partner’s actions. In three experiments, I test this by manipulating the partner’s response speed and the information about the partner’s actions. I show that agents imitate response speed when they are able to observe the partner. Moreover, they adapt to the specific temporal pattern of their partner’s actions. These findings provide evidence for the engagement of the temporal adaptation mechanism during motor interactions, and for its involvement in imitation. In the third set of experiments, I turn to the hypothesis that people engage in linguistic imitation because they want to harness the social benefits it brings. I investigate a key assumption of this hypothesis: that imitation has positive consequences for the social interaction. In three experiments, I manipulate whether participants’ word choice is imitated or counter-imitated by their conversational partner and measure how it affects the participants’ evaluation of the interaction and the partner, and their willingness to cooperate with the partner. I find evidence that linguistic imitation has positive social consequences. These results are consonant with the claim that imitation is motivated by the goal to affiliate and foster social relations. Taken together, these findings suggest that imitation might occur both in motor actions and language, and that it might have diverse causes. My work on language suggests that the tendency to linguistically imitate others could both result from the simulation mechanism, and be motivated by the goal to affiliate. My work on motor actions shows that automatic temporal adaptation contributes to emergent imitation during interactions. This research is conducive to the greater aim of cross-examining the currently known mechanisms of imitation.
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McKaughan, Daniel C. "Comparison of data development tools for populating cognitive models in social simulation." Thesis, Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10945/5566.
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Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.<br>The United States is engaged in a new type of warfare. Defeating the enemy is now predicated on winning over local populations. To win these groups, commanders need to know what responses to expect for various operations in particular locations. Social simulations are a promising means of modeling these reactions, and there are several current methods used to populate these simulations with agents representative of a specific society. These methods, however, often require the input of subject matter experts and are costly in price and time. This thesis examines the simplification and automation of the agent instantiation process by conducting a usability study of two data development tools currently under consideration by the U.S. Army and TRAC-MTRY. The tools, a survey data case file generator developed at TRAC-MTRY and a text analysis tool (STANLEY) developed by Sandia National Laboratory, were examined in separate manners, and the results were encouraging. The survey tool was tested to validate in a practical manner its generated case files with respect to simulation output and real-world surveys. STANLEY was evaluated by scoring sentiment in a document corpus and attempting to correlate those scores to a real world issue. Results of the study indicate that the survey data tool generated case files of adequate quality to instantiate social simulations, potentially minimizing SME requirements and costs. Technical limitations precluded STANLEY from returning enough data for sufficient correlation comparison, although the results indicate the tool has potential.
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Pink, Sebastian [Verfasser], and Frank [Akademischer Betreuer] Kalter. "Fertility and social interaction - a simulation approach / Sebastian Pink ; Betreuer: Frank Kalter." Mannheim : Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim, 2017. http://d-nb.info/1151446750/34.
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Miramontes, Hercog Luis. "Evolutionary and conventional reinforcement learning in multi agent systems for social simulation." Thesis, London South Bank University, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.288112.
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Abbasian, Hosseini Seyed Alireza [Verfasser]. "Social and Engineering Aspects of Construction Site Management using Simulation and Social Network Analysis / Seyed Alireza Abbasian Hosseini." Munich : GRIN Verlag, 2015. http://d-nb.info/1097576604/34.
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Quijada, Sergio. "A HYBRID SIMULATION METHODOLOGY TO EVALUATE NETWORK CENTRICDECISION MAKING UNDER EXTREME EVENTS." Doctoral diss., University of Central Florida, 2006. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/2348.
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Currently the network centric operation and network centric warfare have generated a new area of research focused on determining how hierarchical organizations composed by human beings and machines make decisions over collaborative environments. One of the most stressful scenarios for these kinds of organizations is the so-called extreme events. This dissertation provides a hybrid simulation methodology based on classical simulation paradigms combined with social network analysis for evaluating and improving the organizational structures and procedures, mainly the incident command systems and plans for facing those extreme events. According to this, we provide a methodology for generating hypotheses and afterwards testing organizational procedures either in real training systems or simulation models with validated data. As long as the organization changes their dyadic relationships dynamically over time, we propose to capture the longitudinal digraph in time and analyze it by means of its adjacency matrix. Thus, by using an object oriented approach, three domains are proposed for better understanding the performance and the surrounding environment of an emergency management organization. System dynamics is used for modeling the critical infrastructure linked to the warning alerts of a given organization at federal, state and local levels. Discrete simulations based on the defined concept of "community of state" enables us to control the complete model. Discrete event simulation allows us to create entities that represent the data and resource flows within the organization. We propose that cognitive models might well be suited in our methodology. For instance, we show how the team performance decays in time, according to the Yerkes-Dodson curve, affecting the measures of performance of the whole organizational system. Accordingly we suggest that the hybrid model could be applied to other types of organizations, such as military peacekeeping operations and joint task forces. Along with providing insight about organizations, the methodology supports the analysis of the "after action review" (AAR), based on collection of data obtained from the command and control systems or the so-called training scenarios. Furthermore, a rich set of mathematical measures arises from the hybrid models such as triad census, dyad census, eigenvalues, utilization, feedback loops, etc., which provides a strong foundation for studying an emergency management organization. Future research will be necessary for analyzing real data and validating the proposed methodology.<br>Ph.D.<br>Other<br>Engineering and Computer Science<br>Modeling and Simulation
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Ahmadi, Olounabadi Atefeh. "TARLAN: A Simulation Game to Improve Social Problem-Solving Skill of ADHD Children." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Computer Science and Software Engineering, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/10693.
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Traditional classrooms in which children are expected to sit down quietly and listen to the teacher are not attractive to students in the era of technology. Therefore, researchers have started to study the possibilities of applying modern approaches to educational contexts. The interactive nature and the attractive virtual environment of computer games have made them a high-potential context for learning purposes. Sitting in a classroom is challenging for students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)because of their inattentiveness, impulsivity, and hyperactivity, so that they distract easily.However, researchers have discovered that children with ADHD are not distracted when playing computer games. Therefore, computer games can be beneficial learning contexts that can attract ADHD children’s attention in order to teach them.
So far, a large number of studies have been conducted to help ADHD children. Some researchers have worked on cognitive-training approaches to improve skills such as eye gaze, emotion recognition, and working memory enhancement of ADHD children. In addition to the core deficits associated with ADHD, children with ADHDalso face difficulties in social situations, because they are not equipped with the required social skills. Therefore, they face many problems in society that they cannot solve. Consequently, they face peer rejection or social isolation and other mental health problems.
Social problem solving is a step-by-step process. For ADHD children, learning the different steps of social problem solving is difficult because they are inattentive. Moreover, acting upon the steps is also hard for ADHD children because they are impulsive.
We developed a simulation game, named TARLAN, wherein different steps of solving a social problemare taught to ADHD children. We designed and developed real life scenarios in which children can practise, in order to enable them to apply what they have learnt from the game to real-life situations.TARLAN was designed in three phases, from the elementary level to more advanced levels in order to help the ADHD child gradually become an independent problem solver in society. That happens by building strong scaffolding around the child’s learning on the elementary level and remove it in the more advanced levels. This scaffolding/levelling within games has positive learning outcomes. Forty children with ADHD aged 8-12 were randomly allocated to two interventions, a computer-based intervention in which children worked with TARLAN and another intervention which was a standard psychological intervention. We also had a control group in which 20 children without ADHD also worked with TARLAN.
The effectiveness of our game in improving social skills as well as problem behaviour of ADHD children was evaluated using the Social Skills Improvement System (SSIS), which is a standard psychologicalmeasure. The results of the SSIS showed that TARLANimproves children’s social acquisition and problem behaviour significantly more than a more expensive standard intervention led by a psychologist (role playing).Moreover, after analysingdata collected during the study,we found out that TARLANimproved children’s performance: the ADHD children reached the same performance level as children without ADHD after working with the game.
These results open up the possibility of using games as helpful tools in teaching important life-changing subjects that are hard for ADHD children to learn from traditional approaches. Therefore, the educational life of ADHD children can be changedfrom a challenging experience into a rewarding and attractive experience and time and money can be saved.
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Brousmiche, Kei-Léo. "Modélisation et simulation multi-agent de la formation et de la dynamique d’attitudes basées sur les croyances." Electronic Thesis or Diss., Paris 6, 2015. https://accesdistant.sorbonne-universite.fr/login?url=https://theses-intra.sorbonne-universite.fr/2015PA066623.pdf.
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Nous étudions dans cette thèse la formation et la dynamique des attitudes sociales à l'aide de la simulation multi agent. L'attitude peut se définir comme une évaluation globale d'un objet social sur la base d'informations cognitives ou affectives. Nos travaux s'inscrivent dans le cadre de la simulation sociale qui tente de reproduire informatiquement des phénomènes sociaux complexes à une échelle macroscopique, sur la base de la représentation des individus et de leurs interactions au niveau microscopique. Tandis que les approches existantes dans cette discipline font généralement abstraction des travaux en sciences humaines sur le sujet de l'attitude, nous proposons de suivre une approche psychomimétique en micro-fondant le modèle cognitif de nos agents sur des théories issues de psychologie sociale et des sciences cognitives. Ainsi, nous proposons un modèle de dynamique d'attitude combinant des théories issues de travaux en sciences humaines et sociales de la perception des individus, la communication inter-personnelle et médiatique, la révision de croyances, la réponse émotionnelle ainsi que le sentiment de surprise. Ce modèle a pour objectif de reproduire au niveau microscopique la dynamique des attitudes vis-à-vis d'acteurs qui effectuent des actions observées par la population. Nous avons procédé à une analyse fonctionnelle des différents composants du modèle sur des scénarii abstraits afin d'étudier les capacités de notre modèle, en particulier les phénomènes descriptibles tels que la diffusion de l'information, la résistance à la désinformation ou le processus de conformité. Le modèle a été appliqué dans le contexte des opérations militaires françaises de stabilisation en Afghanistan. L'objectif de cette expérience consiste à reproduire les sondages d'opinions vis-à-vis des Forces en présence, récoltés durant l'intervention, à partir d'un scénario militaire qui a été reconstitué en partenariat avec les officiers en charge des opérations de 2011 à 2012. Les résultats de simulations qui suivent un processus de calibration du modèle affichent une erreur inférieure à 3 points d'écart par rapport aux données réelles. Enfin, nous proposons une analyse microscopique des résultats en appliquant des techniques de classifications automatiques sur les individus afin d'expliquer les différentes tendances d'attitudes au sein de la population<br>We study in this thesis the problem of social attitude formation and dynamics using multi agent simulation. The concept of attitude could be defined as a global evaluation of a social object, based on cognitive or affective information. Our works belongs to the field of social simulation which aims to reproduce in a virtual environment complex social phenomenon at a macroscopic level based on microscopic representations of individuals and their interactions. While existing approaches in this field rarely consider the results of studies in human sciences on the topic of attitude, we propose to follow a psychomimtic approach by micro-founding the cognitive model of our agents on human and social sciences' theories on individual's perception, inter-personal and media communication, belief revision, affective responses and the sentiment of unexpectedness. This model aims to reproduce at a microscopic level attitude dynamics toward actors who perpetuate actions witnessed by the individuals. We have proceeded to a functional analysis of the model's various components based on abstracts scenarios in order to study the capabilities of our model, and more precisely the describable phenomenon such as information diffusion, resistance to disinformation or the conformity process. The model has been applied in the context of French military operations of stabilisation in Afghanistan. The goal of this experience consists in reproducing opinion polls results of the locals toward the present Forces, collected during the intervention, based on a military scenario which has been recreated in partnership with officers who were in charge of operations between 2011 and 2012. Simulation results that follow a model calibration process show an error below 3 points of disparity compared to the real data. Finally, we propose a microscopic analysis of the results by applying automatic classification techniques on the simulated individuals in order to explain the multiple attitudes tendencies in the population
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Grove, Wouter Johannes. "Competencies for successful use of social online simulation games within organisational leadership development." University of the Western Cape, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11394/8217.
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Magister Commercii - MCom<br>The humble Pong arcade game at the corner store ignited a fundamental culture shift in the 1970s and it is increasingly gaining momentum. A generation of gamers is already permeating organisations. The socio-cultural phenomenon of digital gaming has become pervasive. The intersection point of the three trends, Ubiquitous Computing, Ubiquitous Gaming and Social Networking, is the focus point of this study. It is at this intersection point that both social online gaming and cutting-edge leadership competencies co-exist and have the potential to
flourish when implemented with caution and circumspection. Leadership is frequently touted as an almost mystical holy grail in modern
business. Leadership :pevelopment is therefore often recognised as a critical pivot for business success. If business leaders can successfully utilise game-based learning to maximise their return on investment in Leadership Development initiatives, this may not only increase business metrics, but also enable business leaders to leave a lasting legacy by sculpting new generations of leaders who are ready and able to face the future. Social Online Simulation Gaming (SOSG) as a learning design and learning technology can prove particularly valuable as a leadership and skills development tool within the "digimodem" world. Current literature, however, does not provide a clearly focused framework for the implementation of ICT supported game-based Leadership Development technologies within the information economy. Current literature fails to integrate and take into account aspects critical to the successful utilisation of SOSG, such as the principles of "Flow Design", the often "Puppet Master" role and the interrelatedness, even interdependence, of the required utilisation competencies There is currently not a clear and specific framework for evaluating the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) competencies, knowledge,
skills and attitudes required to successfully use Socia1 ·bnline Simulation Games software within the context of Organisational Leaden;hip Development. This study aimed to create and refine a framework for evaluating the ICT competencies required to successfully implement SOSG as Leadership Development tool.
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Surapaneni, Lahari. "Design and Development of an Immersive Simulation for Social Determinants of Health Training." Wright State University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=wright1578848970708681.
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Telander, Andreas, and Jessica Fahlgren. "Building a new production line : Problems, pitfalls and how to gain social sustainability." Thesis, Högskolan i Skövde, Institutionen för ingenjörsvetenskap, 2015. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:his:diva-11370.
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This thesis has been performed in collaboration with Volvo Cars Engine in Skövde, Sweden and Zhangjia-kou, China in order to receive a bachelor degree in automation engineering from the University of Skövde. The project focuses on analyzing the capacity of a future production line by using discrete event simulation. The production line is built in two different discrete event simulation software, FACTS analyzer and Plant Simulation. The focus of the study will be to compare the output results from the two software in order to give recommendations for which software to use in similar cases. This is done in order for Volvo Cars Corporation to have as a basis for further work in similar cases. The aim of the work is to verify the planned capacity of the new production line and to perform a leadership study with Chinese engineers in order to find out how they view the Swedish leadership and how this can be adapted to China and the Chinese culture and give recommendations for future work. The results of the capacity analysis show that the goals of parts produced can be reached for both planned capacities but also that there are potential constraints that have been identified in the system. The results of the leadership study also show that the overall approach should be slightly adapted to be better suited for the Chinese culture. The comparison of the two simulation software suggests that FACTS Analyzer is suit-able to use when less complex logic or systems are represented, however when building more complex models consisting of more complex logic Plant Simulation is more suitable.
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Pan, Zhengzheng. "Learning, Game Play, and Convergence of Behavior in Evolving Social Networks." Diss., Virginia Tech, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/27460.
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I study information dissemination and opinion formation in a framework of evolving social networks. Individuals take weighted averages repeatedly to update their opinions. They also update their assessments on others' opinions, represented by an influence weight matrix. It is proven that both opinions and the influence weights are convergent. In the steady state, consensus is reached where all individuals hold the same opinion. Convergence occurs with an extended model as well, which indicates the tremendous influential power possessed by a minority group. Then I impose a dual network structure, where individuals not only collect information, but also use the information to play a coordination game with a selected group of opponents that one is connected with. All individuals update their strategies based on a naive learning process within a separate influence network in which information is disseminated. The selection of opponents also gets updated over time. I calculate the critical values of costs associated with connections for different network structures and strategies to occur in the steady state. Finally, I investigate the outcomes of social learning under various exogenous network structures. Individuals use an algorithm that takes into account both proximity of opinions and impact of neighbors. Results also show consensus, with convergence speed correlated with the network structure. In addition, an endogenous network formation in two stages that utilizes network and distance between agents' opinions is proposed. The resulting networks show power-law patterns in degree distribution.<br>Ph. D.
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au, hartlv@perth training wa gov, and Andree Vanda Barbara Hartley. "Expédition aux Terres Australes A Web-based Online Role-play Simulation: the enhancement of language acquisition through social interaction." Murdoch University, 2004. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20050603.151117.
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This research project investigates to what extent a social constructivist approach to
teaching and learning online can enhance the use of language acquisition for learners
of foreign languages. I designed an online role-play simulation in which the students
sailed on the expedition of Nicolas Baudin to Australia and took different authentic
roles on a simulated voyage. All communication was conducted in the French
language, thus enabling the students to interact in realistic conversations, relevant to
this historic event. Being in a third year TAFE French class, the students had already
been exposed to sound grounding in grammar, relevant vocabulary, and use of
colloquial and idiomatic expressions, and thus they had acquired a reasonably high
level of proficiency in the language.
The study was conducted over a four-week period in which I examined the intense
interaction between the participants, while fulfilling the role of facilitator/moderator.
In this role, I gave clear guidelines as to what was expected from the participants;
provided the students with their identity which was unknown to the other participants
during the simulation; created incidents through a weekly Course of Events
announcement; answered all questions within 12 24 hours; encouraged engagement
within the learning community; made occasional suggestions if the characters seemed
uncertain of what to do next; and, above all, endeavoured to create a non-threatening,
friendly online environment for the students.
After the four-week online role-play simulation, the participants met for a debriefing
session in which they revealed their identities and discussed any issues, in particular
technical issues, that had emerged. This provided an opportunity for the participants
to disengage from the virtual world in which they have been immersed for four weeks
as well as an opportunity to reflect upon their personal learning.
A qualitative methodology, drawing on interpretive research, was employed to
analyse the data. Student pre- and post-questionnaires, online contributions by the
students and the debriefing discussion were used as the major sources of data
collection.
Most of the students took up the challenge of interacting online through asynchronous
and synchronous communication. The study focused on how the use of a social
constructivist epistemology could enhance language acquisition for learners of foreign
languages and also analysed to what extent did the students participation in a webbased
online role-play simulation affect their communication skills and fluency in the
second language.
The findings provided me with guidance for future implementation of online role-play
simulations in which I would ensure that all students have the basic computer skills
and necessary access to internet in order to participate fully in the simulation.
Nevertheless, this study demonstrated many benefits to the language enhancement of
the participants and will become a regular activity as it permits students to use their
conversational skills in a real-life virtual learning community.
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Eckert, Zachary Robert. "The Effects of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations on Social-Behavioral-Functioning and Mental Status: Perceptions among Mental Health Social Workers." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 2018. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd/671.
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Auditory Verbal Hallucinations (AVH) are a generally distressing phenomena that can have a negative impact on the quality of life of the experiencer. Furthermore, individuals diagnosed with psychotic disorders often display deficits in social/cognitive domains. Despite this, little is known about how AVHs directly affect social functioning and mental status. Because of this dearth of information, exploratory research is needed to generate potential avenues for future experimental research. Qualitative themes about how AVHs influence behavior were derived from interviews with mental health social workers. Eight primary domains were identified: Behavior, social ability, observable traits, voice plasticity, life difficulty, beneficial auditory hallucinations, coping strategies, and stigmas. Implications of this research could guide future direction for experimental research as well as contribute to assessment and treatment procedures of psychotic individuals.
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Vegvari, Carolin. "Agent-based simulation modelling of the evolution and diversification of human cultures in their environmental context." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708433.
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Harper, Michael. "Transforming the student's experience in operating department practice : learning through simulation." Thesis, University of Portsmouth, 2014. https://researchportal.port.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/transforming-the-students-experience-in-operating-department-practice(b9c48aad-3f5d-4f62-98a5-7215631e1d5c).html.
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Background: The provision of high quality medical and surgical care is predicated by high quality education and training. This enables staff to respond more effectively and flexibly and is crucial when considering the various factors impacting upon the delivery of patient care. The development and training of all healthcare students and staff is an important factor in ensuring patient safety and self satisfaction, and relies on understanding the needs of learners as well as the way in which they learn. This fundamental training and education is no less pertinent in the perioperative environment, where high impact interventions are performed by Operating Department Practitioners (ODPs), and where patient safety and the quality of care must be paramount. This is due to the often difficult and potentially dangerous surgical and anaesthetic interventions on elective, unscheduled or critically ill patients. Aim: The aim of this programme of research was to investigate the effectiveness of ‘traditional’ lecture/placement provision in ODP education, resulting in the implementation and evaluation of a revised curriculum that integrates simulation based teaching and learning for this group of allied health professionals at the University of Portsmouth. Methods: This programme of research used a mixed methods QUAL + quant approach on multiple purposive and convenient samples of ODP students and placement education managers. Drawing on phenomenographic methodology, the interpretivist studies used semi-structured interviews and focus groups to investigate the understanding and perceptions of learning from those with relevant lived experiences. Furthermore, a positivist study was conducted to analyse and further understand the effectiveness of different teaching methods. The results from these studies informed a revision of the traditional ODP curriculum, based upon a nursing conceptual framework that included the integration of simulation-based learning. Results: A total of five studies were conducted, beginning with individual semi-structured interviews with 12, second year ODP students investigating perceived enablers and barriers to traditional learning using lectures in University and placement learning in the hospital environment. Study Two continued with a positivist study on a cohort of first year ODP students, which investigated the effectiveness of three types of teaching. The results of these first two studies informed a revision of the traditional ODP curriculum to integrate simulation-based learning. The revised curriculum was subsequently evaluated using focus group interviews and follow up interviews, with 30 first year ODP students. Finally, a focus group interview with 12 clinical educators that are responsible for the clinical placement learning for ODPs was conducted to gather their perceptions of the revised curriculum, and the clinical performance of the students. This led to the development of a conceptual framework to inform the integration of simulation-based learning into future ODP courses. Conclusions: The results of this research demonstrate that simulation-based learning for this professional group of ODP learners showed an encouraging trend in its effectiveness compared to other teaching methods. The revised curriculum encouraged higher order learning and mitigated to some extent the challenges faced by the NHS and placement educators. In addition, revising the ODP curriculum was evaluated positively by participants and clinical educators and tackled challenges such as inequity of learning opportunity and exposure to a diverse range of patient groups, that learners often face when undertaking learning on clinical placement. The conceptual framework designed to inform the curriculum identified specific areas for consideration when integrating simulation-based education into the ODP curriculum. However, further development and comparison of the conceptual framework reported here and a larger cross-university sample is needed to confirm its reliability and validity.
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Amartey, Philomina. "A COMPARISON OF SOME ESTIMATION METHODS FOR HANDLING OMITTED VARIABLES : A SIMULATION STUDY." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Statistiska institutionen, 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-412896.
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Omitted variable problem is a primary statistical challenge in various observational studies. Failure to control for the omitted variable bias in any regression analysis can alter the efficiency of results obtained. The purpose of this study is to compare the performance of four estimation methods (Proxy variable, Instrumental Variable, Fixed Effect, First Difference) in controlling the omitted variable problem when they are varying with time, constant over time and slightly varying with time. Results from the Monte Carlo study showed that, the prefect proxy variable estimator performed better than the other models under all three cases. The instrument Variable estimator performed better than the Fixed Effect and First Difference estimator except in the case when the omitted variable is constant over time. Also, the Fixed Effect performed better than First Difference estimator when the omitted variable is time-invariant and vice versa when the omitted is slightly varying with time.
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Siu, Christopher E. "Simulating Epidemics and Interventions on High Resolution Social Networks." DigitalCommons@CalPoly, 2019. https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/2051.
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Mathematical models of disease spreading are a key factor of ensuring that we are prepared to deal with the next epidemic. They allow us to predict how an infection will spread throughout a population, thereby allowing us to make intelligent choices when attempting to contain the disease. Whether due to a lack of empirical data, a lack of computational power, a lack of biological understanding, or some combination thereof, traditional models must make sweeping assumptions about the behavior of a population during an epidemic.
In this thesis, we implement granular epidemic simulations using a rich social network constructed from real-world interactions. We develop computational models for three diseases, and we use these simulations to demonstrate the effects of twelve potential intervention strategies, both before and during a hypothetical epidemic. We show how representing a population as a temporal graph and applying existing graph metrics can lead to more effective interventions.
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Durand, Sylvain. "Sur quelques paradoxes en théorie du choix social et en décision multicritère." Phd thesis, Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble), 2000. http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00006743.
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Les théories du choix social et de la décision multicritère sont fertiles en résultats paradoxaux. C'est à l'étude de quelques-uns d'entre eux qu'est consacrée cette thèse. Nous montrons tout d'abord les liens étroits entre ces deux domaines de recherche. Nous passons alors en revue les principaux paradoxes rencontrés dans ces deux domaines et tentons de classifier les méthodes utilisées pour les expliquer. Nous nous attaquons à notre tour à quatre types de paradoxes. L'étude des restrictions imposées par certaines conditions de transitivité de la méthode majoritaire donne des résultats surprenants. Nous les analysons en introduisant la notion de polydiversité. La règle de prudence (minimax) ne respecte pas l'axiome de cohérence. De plus, les vainqueurs prudents peuvent aussi être des vaincus prudents. Ces paradoxes liés à la prudence sont étudiés théoriquement, en particulier en utilisant la représentation géométrique des profils, et expérimentalement à l'aide de simulations. Pour certaines méthodes, l'amélioration de la position d'un candidat dans la préférence d'un votant peut conduire à une dégradation de sa situation du point de vue de la société. Nous analysons ce paradoxe en détail, en particulier pour les méthodes de rangement construites en itérant une fonction de choix. Nous terminons en étudiant la sensibilité de la méthode prudente et de la méthode de Borda à une variation du poids des critères. La comparaison des valeurs des indicateurs proposés donne des résultats inattendus.
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Belik, Ivan. "MODELING THE EFFECTS OF NETWORK GAMES ON SOCIAL REASONING." OpenSIUC, 2011. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/558.
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The analysis of social reasoning is at the core of understanding how to manage social networks. Since interpersonal relations are composed of multiple factors with different nature (i.e., structural and social factors), we explore their influence on the strategizing processes in social networks. The research is based on the consideration of social networks in terms of network games. Therefore, we formalize interpersonal relations using the methods of structural and social analysis combined with game theoretic approach. Specifically, we formalize social power of an agent and use it to quantify payoffs. Based on reasoning over values of power we show how individuals reach stability and Nash equilibrium with their peers in network games.
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Yuan, Bo. "A novel service discovery model for decentralised online social networks." Thesis, University of Derby, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10545/622590.
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Online social networks (OSNs) have become the most popular Internet application that attracts billions of users to share information, disseminate opinions and interact with others in the online society. The unprecedented growing popularity of OSNs naturally makes using social network services as a pervasive phenomenon in our daily life. The majority of OSNs service providers adopts a centralised architecture because of its management simplicity and content controllability. However, the centralised architecture for large-scale OSNs applications incurs costly deployment of computing infrastructures and suffers performance bottleneck. Moreover, the centralised architecture has two major shortcomings: the single point failure problem and the lack of privacy, which challenges the uninterrupted service provision and raises serious privacy concerns. This thesis proposes a decentralised approach based on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks as an alternative to the traditional centralised architecture. Firstly, a self-organised architecture with self-sustaining social network adaptation has been designed to support decentralised topology maintenance. This self-organised architecture exhibits small-world characteristics with short average path length and large average clustering coefficient to support efficient information exchange. Based on this self-organised architecture, a novel decentralised service discovery model has been developed to achieve a semantic-aware and interest-aware query routing in the P2P social network. The proposed model encompasses a service matchmaking module to capture the hidden semantic information for query-service matching and a homophily-based query processing module to characterise user’s common social status and interests for personalised query routing. Furthermore, in order to optimise the efficiency of service discovery, a swarm intelligence inspired algorithm has been designed to reduce the query routing overhead. This algorithm employs an adaptive forwarding strategy that can adapt to various social network structures and achieves promising search performance with low redundant query overhead in dynamic environments. Finally, a configurable software simulator is implemented to simulate complex networks and to evaluate the proposed service discovery model. Extensive experiments have been conducted through simulations, and the obtained results have demonstrated the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed model.
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Hydén, Emrik. "The Impact of Social Distancing on Evacuations using Crowd Simulations." Thesis, KTH, Skolan för elektroteknik och datavetenskap (EECS), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-302506.
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During pandemics such as the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID19), some government agencies might recommend that citizens keep distance to other people when moving in public environments; this distance is often referred to as social distancing. Since social distancing limits how people are allowed to move in an environment, it could prove to become an obstacle during situations such as evacuations. This raises the question if social distancing has a noticeable impact on evacuation times. Evacuation scenarios have previously been researched by utilizing crowd simulations. Therefore, this study uses an agent based crowd simulator developed in Unity3D to investigate the effects of social distancing on the time taken to conduct orderly evacuations of classroom environments. The virtual environments used were modeled after two differently sized classrooms at The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). The environments were modified with varying amounts of available exits and social distances between virtual agents in order to perform experiments. The results of the study indicate that increasing the degree of social distancing increases the evacuation time, whilst adding more exits reduces it. The significance of these changes in evacuation time are dependent on classroom size. The study concludes that although social distancing does increase evacuation time, the magnitude of the effect depends the previously mentioned environmental factors.<br>Under pandemier som COVID19 skulle vissa myndigheter kunna rekommendera medborgare att hålla avstånd från andra i allmänna miljöer; detta avstånd benämns ofta som social distansiering. Eftersom social distansiering begränsar antalet personer som får befinna sig i en miljö, skulle det kunna vara ett hinder under situationer som evaukeringar. Detta väcker frågan ifall social distansiering har en märkbar påverkan på evakueringstider. Evakueringsscenarier har tidigare studerats genom att utnyttja simuleringar av folkmassor. På grund av detta använder den här studien en agentbaserad simulator utvecklad i Unity3D, i syfte att undersöka effekten av social distansiering på tiden det tar att genomföra ordnade evakueringar av klassrum. De virtuella miljöer som användes modellerades efter två klassrum av olika storlek på KTH. Miljöerna modifierades med varierande antal tillgängliga utgångar och sociala avstånd mellan virtuella agenter för att utföra experiment. Resultaten av studien indikerar att en ökning av det sociala avståndet ökar evakueringstiden, medan en ökning av antal tillgängliga utgångar minskar den. Signifikansen av dessa förändringar i evakueringstid är beroende av klassrummens storlek. Studien fastslår att trots att social distansiering ökar evakueringstiden så beror magnituden av ökningen på de tidigare nämnda miljömässiga faktorerna.
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Caro, Saiz Jorge. "Normas de reparto de recursos y generación de desigualdad en sociedades de pequeña escala: Un estudio mediante simulación computacional basado en evidencias etnográficas cualitativas." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/458617.
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El presente trabajo de tesis pretende desarrollar toda una serie de instrumentos metodológicos para explorar los procesos de reparto de recursos y generación y mantenimiento de la desigualdad entre los seres humanos, a través de la construcción de una clasificación sistemática de prácticas de reparto en sociedades de pequeña escala (SPE). El reparto de alimentos es considerado como un rasgo característico de las sociedades humanas y no humanas, así como una de las formas más importante de cooperación por parte de la comunidad científica. Asimismo, el estudio de las causas que producen la desigualdad en el reparto de recursos en las sociedades humanas, así como los mecanismo que la acentúan o la atenúan, ha sido clave en el desarrollo de la Sociología.
Los estudios tradicionales se han enfocado en las características individuales de sociedades específicas, a través del análisis de la práctica de reparto dominante identificada en cada sociedad. Posteriormente, en el contexto de la Ecología y la Biología Evolutivas se definieron diferentes modelos evolutivos con el fin de describir y explicar las prácticas de reparto en base a los beneficios hipotéticos que dichos modelos aportan a la supervivencia grupal y social del grupo. Sin embargo, la documentación etnográfica muestra que estos procesos socioeconómicos son el resultado de complejas formas de interacción social, resultantes en diferentes comportamientos y prácticas de reparto. Estas prácticas son características de cada grupo y se desarrollan en secuencias de varias etapas con específicas prácticas que se combinan de manera no excluyente. La combinación de prácticas en secuencias de reparto es diferente en cada sociedad. Este trabajo propone la adopción de un enfoque basado en el examen de la información etnográfica con una perspectiva cross-cultural, recopilando ejemplos concretos de prácticas de reparto que se desarrollan en diversas SPE de manera diaria. Para superar los estudios tradicionales y los modelos evolutivos, se hace necesario variar la escala de análisis, en este caso a través de un acercamiento desde la Sociología Analítica. Este tipo de análisis se basa en descender del nivel macro, donde solo observamos la existencia de un proceso de acción colectiva, al nivel micro, para identificar y estudiar a través de un análisis textual y crítico los mecanismos estructurales y sociales que generan las diferentes prácticas de reparto de recursos. Después, las prácticas identificadas son codificadas de acuerdo a los mecanismos que las generan. La clasificación sistemática resultante permite:
● Identificar y clasificar de manera sistemática y comparar las diferentes secuencias de reparto entre SPE.
● Desarrollar la traslación sistemática de información cualitativa en lenguajes cuantitativos y formales con el fin de avanzar en el desarrollo de distintos tipos de modelos y análisis sobre procesos sociales.
● Su aplicación a diversos casos de estudio actuales, ya que las prácticas de reparto identificadas no están adscritas a un sistema socioeconómico concreto.
Finalmente, la clasificación sistemática sirve de base para la construcción de un modelo de simulación computacional basado en agentes (ABM) denominado MSP (Modelling Sharing Practices), en el que se implementa una sociedad virtual de acuerdo a información etnográfica empírica. A través de la implementación de protocolos de actuación basados en las secuencias de reparto sistematizadas, se realizan experimentos relativos a la Desigualdad (en condiciones de crecimiento natural 0, determinadas prácticas de reparto provocan mayor desigualdad en relación a los niveles de población), Supervivencia (en dichas condiciones, determinadas prácticas de reparto son más efectivas a largo plazo) y Resiliencia (en dichas condiciones, determinadas prácticas de reparto son más efectivas ante una crisis de recursos).<br>The present PhD thesis aims at developing a series of theoretical and methodological tools to explore the processes underlying resource sharing as well as the generation and persistence of inequality in human societies, by relying on a novel, systematic classification of sharing practices in small-scale societies (SSS).
Food sharing is considered a distinguishing feature of both human and non-human societies, and the scientific community identifies it as one of the most important forms of cooperation. Likewise, the study of the causes that produce inequality in resource sharing within human societies, and the mechanisms that reinforce or attenuate it, have been a key aspect in the development of Sociology.
Traditional studies have been focused on the individual characteristics of specific societies, through the analysis of the main sharing practice identified in every society. Later, different evolutionary models were defined within Evolutionary Ecology and Biology in order to describe and explain sharing practices, based on the hypothetic benefits these models add to the group physical and social survival. However, ethnographic sources show us that these socio-economic processes are the result of complex forms of social interaction, resulting in different behaviors and sharing practices. These practices are specific features of every society and are developed in sequences of various stages of sharing practices that combine in a not exclusive. The combination of practices in sharing sequences is different within each society.
This thesis proposes the adoption of an approach based on the examination of the ethnographic information with a cross-cultural perspective, recording observable examples of daily sharing practices in different SSS. To overcome the limits of traditional studies and past evolutionary models, it is necessary to change the scale of analysis, in this case through an approach based on Analytical Sociology. This perspective is based on a shift from a macro level, in which we can only observe the presence of a collective action process, to a micro level, where it is possible to identify and investigate the social and structural mechanisms that generate the different sharing practices. Later, the practices identified are codified according to the mechanisms that generate them. The resulting systematic classification allows us to:
• Identify, describe, classify, and compare the different sharing sequences of stages of SSS.
• Develop the systematic translation of qualitative information into quantitative and formal language, with the aim of improve the development of different types of models and analysis about social processes.
• apply the proposed approach to contemporary case studies, since sharing practices are not bound to a specific socio-economic system.
Finally, the systematic classification serves as a basis for building an agent based model (ABM) called MSP (Modelling Sharing Practices), in which a virtual society based on ethnographic empirical information is implemented. Through the implementation of protocols of action based on the systematized sharing sequences, different experiments are performed in order to explore differential distribution of a series of parameters such as Inequality (in natural growth conditions 0, certain sharing practices cause more inequality in relation of population levels ), Survival (in these conditions, certain sharing practices are more effective in long-term) and Resilience (in these conditions, certain sharing practices are more effective when facing a resource crisis).
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Zhao, Jiayun. "A Simulation-based Decision Support System for Electric Power Demand Management Considering Social Network Interactions." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/311558.
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A two-level agent-based modeling framework is proposed for the electric power system to solve the problems of renewable energy utilization and demand-side management. While in the detailed level of the framework the customers and utility companies are modeled as agents to represent electricity demand and supply performances, respectively, the high level reflects the aggregated performance of the considered electricity market via state space models. To connect the two levels, a social network is introduced as a dynamic medium for the interactions among customer agents. While the customers' consumption behaviors are modeled at lower level and affected by each other, their individual performances contribute to the system performance in the high level. This dissertation concerns three problems. First, the problem of renewable energy adoption concerns penetration process of distributed solar systems with various incentive policies (i.e., Income Tax Credits and Feed-in Tariff) for renewable energy. The proposed hybrid model incorporates agent-based modeling and system dynamics to simulate the solar system diffusion process among the residential customers. Second, the demand-side management problem focuses on scheduling the Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) charging under different scenarios of demand response programs (i.e., Time-of Use and Real-time Pricing). For the Time-of Use (TOU) program, the decision-support analysis results from simulation-based optimization for both customers and the utility company. For the Real-time Pricing (RTP) program, the discussion is to find proper pricing functions according to different customers. Third, the problem concerns the agent interaction based on different architectures of social network (i.e., small-world and scale-free) and the network evolution based on triadic closure. Such interaction is applied to the first two problems with the effect of changing the customers' social connections, preferences in consumption behaviors and acceptable grid prices. Furthermore, to extend the demand-side management problem, this research also discusses the energy management at individual households integrating PV generation system, battery storage and electric vehicle under demand response programs. The conceptual model is based on the threshold method to suggest residential customers when to use the electricity from which sources (PV generation, storage, or local grid).
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Jackson, Jeremy. "Agent-based simulation of urban residential dynamics: a case study of gentrifying areas in Boston." Thesis, McGill University, 2009. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=32501.
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This study uses an agent-based modeling (ABM) approach to simulate residential dynamics in an area of Boston, a city that has increasingly experienced gentrification in the past decades. The model is instantiated using housing data from the City of Boston Assessing Department and uses simple decision-making rules for four classes of agents to simulate the area's residential dynamics. The model employs the consumption explanation of the cause of gentrification, which emphasizes the choices of individuals drawn to urban amenities, while testing the production explanation, which suggests that major investments from the public and private sphere attract and explain gentrification. Verification shows that the processes in the model work according to its construction, capture the system's emergent phenomena and that this ABM may be a valuable explanatory tool for understanding and learning about some processes underlying gentrification.<br>Cette étude recourt à une approche de modélisation à base d'agents dans le but de simuler la dynamique résidentielle d'un quartier de Boston, une ville où l'on observe une forte hausse de l'embourgeoisement depuis quelques décennies. Le modèle est instancié au moyen des données relatives à l'habitation du Assessing Department de la ville de Boston et applique des règles simples de prise de décision à quatre catégories d'agents afin de simuler la dynamique résidentielle du quartier à l'étude. Le modèle se sert de l'explication des habitudes de consommation, qui cause l'embourgeoisement en attirant les individus vers la ville, et examine l'explication de la production qui suggère que l'embourgeoisement est le résultat des investissements massifs en provenance des domaines publics et privés. La vérification montre que les processus du modèle fonctionnent suivant la construction de ce dernier, qu'ils mettent en lumière le phénomène émergent du système et que la modélisation à base d'agents peut permettre de comprendre et d'apprendre certains processus qui sous-tendent l'embourgeoisement.
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Leseeto, Saidimu. "The role of risk management in pastoral policy development and poverty measurement : system dynamics simulation approach." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2012. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/344349/.
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Livestock-based agriculture plays an important role in the development of sub-saharan Africa, especially those countries whose livestock industry contributes significantly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In Kenya, agriculture alone accounts for 21% of the GDP and provides employment directly or indirectly to over 75% of the total labour force. The livestock industry, mainly arid rangelands, contributes 50% of the agricultural productivity. However, these Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) are exposed to a myriad of risks affecting the environment which is the pastoral core asset. These risks arise from climatic change and variability, growth in human population and expanding settlements, changes in the land use systems, poor infrastructure, diseases, wildlife predation, and inter-ethnic conflicts. The consequences of these pastoral risks include: (1) declining per capita asset value, (2) increased health problems, (3) increased poverty, and (4) declining GDP generated from pastoralism. While a lot of resources have been invested in responding to the pastoral crisis associated with droughts, there is still inadequate understanding of the policy measures to put in place as mitigation strategies. The aims of this research are (1) identify the main pastoral risks and community response strategies, (2) assess the impact the identified risks on the wellbeing of pastoralists based on financial, human, physical, natural and social capital measurements (5 C‘s), and (3) develop a System Dynamics (SD) model to assess the holistic impact of community and government response strategies on pastoral wellbeing. Samburu district, in northern Kenya, was chosen as a study area because it is classified as 100% ASAL and experiences frequent droughts and changing land use systems. The research process involved literature synthesis, analysis of both cross-sectional and a 5-year panel data, and the development of a System Dynamics model. Cross-section data was primarily collected for the purposes of identifying the extent to which risks affect households, while the 5-year panel data was sourced from the Arid Lands Resource Management Project (ALRMP). Descriptive and empirical analysis showed that droughts, land use system and human population were considered as the main cause of shrinking rangeland productivity and as a result declining per capita livestock. This was further confirmed from the panel data analysis indicating climate variability as the main driver of pastoral wellbeing. Droughts affect rangeland pasture productivity, market prices, livestock assets, and households‘ nutritional status and poverty levels. These results imply a multifaceted nature of pastoral system with compound affects. The SD simulation result, which was run over the period January 2006 to December 2030, provided insights on policy evaluation and the state of pastoral wellbeing. Baseline scenario indicated reducing livestock ownership, causing high malnutrition and poverty rates. Strategies which incorporated rangeland rehabilitation, planned settlements, livestock disease control, insurance against droughts, reducing inter-ethnic conflicts, and timely destocking offered better policy options. These strategies resulted in reduced malnutrition, increased pasture productivity, reduced livestock losses and ultimately reducing poverty rates among the pastoral communities.
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DeChant, Ryan C. "Mindreading, Language and Simulation." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2010. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/philosophy_theses/74.
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Mindreading is the capacity to attribute psychological states to others and to use those attributions to explain, predict, and understand others’ behaviors. In the past thirty years, mindreading has become the topic of substantial interdisciplinary research and theorizing, with philosophers, psychologists and, more recently, neuroscientists, all contributing to the debate about the nature of the neuropsychological mechanisms that constitute the capacity for mindreading. In this thesis I push this debate forward by using recent results from developmental psychology as the basis for critiques of two prominent views of mindreading. First, I argue that the developmental studies provide evidence of infant mindreading and therefore expose a flaw in José Bermúdez’s view that certain forms of mindreading require language possession. Second, I argue that the evidence of infant mindreading can also be used to undermine Alvin Goldman’s version of Simulation Theory.