The development of selective copying: children’s learning from an expert versus their mother

This study tested the prediction that, with age, children should rely less on familiarity and more on expertise in their selective social learning. Experiment 1 (N=50) found that 5- to 6-year-olds copied the technique their mother used to extract a prize from a novel puzzle box, in preference to both a stranger and an established expert. This bias occurred despite children acknowledging the expert model’s superior capability. Experiment 2 (N=50) demonstrated a shift in 7-to 8-year-olds towards copying the expert. Children aged 9- to 10-years did not copy according to a model bias. The findings of a follow-up study (N=30) confirmed that, instead, they prioritized their own – partially flawed – causal understanding of the puzzle box.

Do children copy an expert or a majority? Examining selective learning in instrumental and normative contexts

This study examined whether instrumental and normative learning contexts differentially influence 4- to 7-year-old children’s social learning strategies; specifically, their dispositions to copy an expert versus a majority consensus. Experiment 1 (N = 44) established that children copied a relatively competent “expert” individual over an incompetent individual in both kinds of learning context. In experiment 2 (N = 80) we then tested whether children would copy a competent individual versus a majority, in each of the two different learning contexts. Results showed that individual children differed in strategy, preferring with significant consistency across two different test trials to copy either the competent individual or the majority. This study is the first to show that children prefer to copy more competent individuals when shown competing methods of achieving an instrumental goal (Experiment 1) and provides new evidence that children, at least in our “individualist” culture, may consistently express either a competency or majority bias in learning both instrumental and normative information (Experiment 2). This effect was similar in the instrumental and normative learning contexts we applied.

Yoga and loss: an autoethnographical exploration of grief, mind, and body

The author explores her experience of yoga as a therapeutic tool in recovering from the impact of losing a close friend to suicide. The benefits of yoga include improved emotional self-regulation, a more positive relationship with self, and the emergence of a new personal physical reality. An autoethnographical approach permits a necessarily ambiguous and messy in-depth exploration of yoga as a resource for well-being. Nevertheless, it is hoped that it will serve as a means of promoting further study into the role of cultural resources, particularly body-based practices, as means of coming to terms with traumatic loss.

Missing women: policing absence

This paper considers the neglected mobilities associated with a sample of UK women reported as missing.Refracted through literatures on gendered mobility and abandonment, the paper argues that the journeys of thesewomen in crisis are not well understood by police services, and that normative gender relations may infuse theirmanagement. By selectively exploring one illustrative police case file on Kim, we highlight how reported andobserved socio-spatial relationships within private and public spaces relate to search actions. We argue that Kim’smobility and spatial experiences are barely understood, except for when they appear to symbolise disorder anddanger. We address the silences in this singular case by using the voices of other women reported as missing, ascollected in a research project to explore the agency, experience and meaning of female mobility during absence.We argue that women reported as missing are not abandoned by UK policing services, but that a policy ofcontinued search for them may be at risk if they repeatedly contravene normative socio-spatial relationshipsthrough regular absence mobilities. By way of conclusion, we address recent calls for research that explores therelationships between gender and mobility.

Anabolic resistance does not explain sarcopenia in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus, compared with healthy controls, despite reduced mTOR pathway activity

Background Ageing and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are risk factors for skeletal muscle loss. We investigated whether anabolic resistance to feeding might underlie accelerated muscle loss in older people with T2DM and whether dysregulated mTOR signalling was implicated. Subjects 8 obese men with T2DM, and 12 age-matched controls were studied (age 68±3 vs. 68±6y; BMI: 30±2 vs. 27±5 kg·m-2). Methods Body composition was measured by dual-X-ray absorptiometry. Insulin and glucose were clamped at post-absorptive concentrations (13±2 vs. 9±3 mU·l-1; 7.4±1.9 vs. 4.6±0.4 mmol·l-1; T2DM vs. controls). Fractional synthetic rates (FSR) of myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic proteins were measured as the rate of incorporation of [13C] leucine during a primed, constant infusion of [1-13C] α-ketoisocaproic acid, 3 h after 10 or 20g of essential amino acids (EAA) were orally administered. Protein expression of total and phosphorylated mTOR signalling proteins was determined by Western blot analysis. Results Despite a significantly lower appendicular lean mass index and a greater fat mass index in T2DM vs. controls, basal myofibrillar and sarcoplasmic and post-prandial myofibrillar FSR were similar. After 20g EAA, stimulation of sarcoplasmic FSR was slightly blunted in T2DM patients. Furthermore, feeding 20g EAA increased phosphorylation of mTOR, p70S6k and 4E-BP1 by 60-100% in controls with no response observed in T2DM. Conclusions There was clear dissociation between changes in mTOR signalling versus changes in protein synthesis rates. However, the intact anabolic response of myofibrillar FSR to feeding in both groups suggests anabolic resistance may not explain accelerated muscle loss in T2DM.

Playing with tension; national charisma at Euro 2012

European National football came together in the summer of 2012 for the 14th occasion. This book sets out to examine the enduring social tensions between supporters and authorities, as well as those between local, national and European identities, which formed the backdrop to the 14th staging of the European National football tournament, Euro2012. The context of the tournament was somewhat unique from those staged in previous years, being jointly hosted for the first time by two post-Communist nations still in the process of social and economic transition. In this respect, the decision to stage Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine bore its own material and symbolic legacies shaping the tournament: the unsettling of neo-liberal imaginings and emergent ‘East-West’ fears about poor infrastructure, inefficiencies and corruption jostled with moral panics about racism and fears surrounding the potentially unfulfilled consumerist expectations of west European supporters. The book seeks to explore the ideologies and practices invoked by competing national sentiments and examine the social tensions, ambiguities and social capital generating potentials surrounding national, ethnic, European identity, with respect to national football teams, supporters and supporter movements.

Edge enhancement improves disruptive camouflage by emphasising false edges and creating pictorial relief

Disruptive colouration is a visual camouflage composed of false edges and boundaries. Many disruptively camouflaged animals feature enhanced edges; light patches are surrounded by a lighter outline and/or a dark patches are surrounded by a darker outline. This camouflage is particularly common in amphibians, reptiles and lepidopterans. We explored the role that this pattern has in creating effective camouflage. In a visual search task utilising an ultra-large display area mimicking search tasks that might be found in nature, edge enhanced disruptive camouflage increases crypsis, even on substrates that do not provide an obvious visual match. Specifically, edge enhanced camouflage is effective on backgrounds both with and without shadows; i.e. this is not solely due to background matching of the dark edge enhancement element with the shadows. Furthermore, when the dark component of the edge enhancement is omitted the camouflage still provided better crypsis than control patterns without edge enhancement. This kind of edge enhancement improved camouflage on all background types. Lastly, we show that edge enhancement can create a perception of multiple surfaces. We conclude that edge enhancement increases the effectiveness of disruptive camouflage through mechanisms that may include the improved disruption of the object outline by implying pictorial relief.

A reflective characterization of occasional user

This work revisits established user classifications and aims to characterise a historically unspecified user category, the Occasional User (OU). Three user categories, novice, intermediate and expert, have dominated the work of user interface (UI) designers, researchers and educators for decades. These categories were created to conceptualise user's needs, strategies and goals around the 80s. Since then, UI paradigm shifts, such as direct manipulation and touch, along with other advances in technology, gave new access to people with little computer knowledge. This fact produced a diversification of the existing user categories not observed in the literature review of traditional classification of users. The findings of this work include a new characterisation of the occasional user, distinguished by user's uncertainty of repetitive use of an interface and little knowledge about its functioning. In addition, the specification of the OU, together with principles and recommendations will help UI community to informatively design for users without requiring a prospective use and previous knowledge of the UI. The OU is an essential type of user to apply user-centred design approach to understand the interaction with technology as universal, accessible and transparent for the user, independently of accumulated experience and technological era that users live in.

Structured professional judgement approach to risk assessment: generalisability across patient groups for the prediction of adverse outcomes in secure mental health care

This is a redacted version of the the final thesis. Copyright material has been removed to comply with UK Copyright Law.

When do dialects become languages? A cognitive perspective

Several definitions exist that offer to identify the boundaries between languages and dialects, yet these distinctions are inconsistent and are often as political as they are linguistic (Chambers & Trudgill, 1998). A different perspective is offered in this thesis, by investigating how closely related linguistic varieties are represented in the brain and whether they engender similar cognitive effects as is often reported for bilingual speakers of recognised independent languages, based on the principles of Green’s (1998) model of bilingual language control. Study 1 investigated whether bidialectal speakers exhibit similar benefits in non-linguistic inhibitory control as a result of the maintenance and use of two dialects, as has been proposed for bilinguals who regularly employ inhibitory control mechanisms, in order to suppress one language while speaking the other. The results revealed virtually identical performance across all monolingual, bidialectal and bilingual participant groups, thereby not just failing to find a cognitive control advantage in bidialectal speakers over monodialectals/monolinguals, but also in bilinguals; adding to a growing body of evidence which challenges this bilingual advantage in non-linguistic inhibitory control. Study 2 investigated the cognitive representation of dialects using an adaptation of a Language Switching Paradigm to determine if the effort required to switch between dialects is similar to the effort required to switch between languages. The results closely replicated what is typically shown for bilinguals: Bidialectal speakers exhibited a symmetrical switch cost like balanced bilinguals while monodialectal speakers, who were taught to use the dialect words before the experiment, showed the asymmetrical switch cost typically displayed by second language learners. These findings augment Green’s (1998) model by suggesting that words from different dialects are also tagged in the mental lexicon, just like words from different languages, and as a consequence, it takes cognitive effort to switch between these mental settings. Study 3 explored an additional explanation for language switching costs by investigating whether changes in articulatory settings when switching between different linguistic varieties could - at least in part – be responsible for these previously reported switching costs. Using a paradigm which required participants to switch between using different articulatory settings, e.g. glottal stops/aspirated /t/ and whispers/normal phonation, the results also demonstrated the presence of switch costs, suggesting that switching between linguistic varieties has a motor task-switching component which is independent of representations in the mental lexicon. Finally, Study 4 investigated how much exposure is needed to be able to distinguish between different varieties using two novel language categorisation tasks which compared German vs Russian cognates, and Standard Scottish English vs Dundonian Scots cognates. The results showed that even a small amount of exposure (i.e. a couple of days’ worth) is required to enable listeners to distinguish between different languages, dialects or accents based on general phonetic and phonological characteristics, suggesting that the general sound template of a language variety can be represented before exact lexical representations have been formed. Overall, these results show that bidialectal use of typologically closely related linguistic varieties employs similar cognitive mechanisms as bilingual language use. This thesis is the first to explore the cognitive representations and mechanisms that underpin the use of typologically closely related varieties. It offers a few novel insights and serves as the starting point for a research agenda that can yield a more fine-grained understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that may operate when speakers use closely related varieties. In doing so, it urges caution when making assumptions about differences in the mechanisms used by individuals commonly categorised as monolinguals, to avoid potentially confounding any comparisons made with bilinguals.