Don't rain on my parade : barriers to ecological tourism

This research investigates the perceived risks and perceptions of visitor experiences associated with visitation to an ecological tourist destination. The research identified a significant consumption barrier which appeared to impact significantly and reflect juxtapositions with regard to tourists’ perceived (reflective) and lived (responsive) experiences with the tourist attraction. The conflicting reports of the “over-commercialisation” of the attraction and the enjoyment of the natural experience recorded at varying recollection periods, provided valuable insight into tourist consumption barriers to the establishment of relational bonds between tourists and ecological tourist attractions.

Telephone-mediated academic discourse

This study investigates the role of spoken language in tertiary teaching and learning as mediated by the telephone. There is recognition also of the mediating role of the tape-recorder and computer in this research. The discourse analysis has avoided the inherent difficulties of restructuring spoken language as written text as, by the use of CD-ROM, the spoken voice has been retained and it has been possible to connect the utterance and the reader. For a thesis that is concerned with the privileging of the written over the spoken in the academy, and the role of communication technologies, the use of CD-ROM is apposite and timely. The study has been conceptualised as the bringing together of three potentially discrete elements (audioteleconferencing, academic discourse and technological mediation) which are framed by distance education/open learning. Set within an interpretive (hermeneutic) paradigm, the research examines tape-recorded ‘teletutorial’ sessions to move towards an understanding of teacher-learner and learner-learner interaction, and to what extent the mediation of the communication technology has impacted on the pedagogy. It draws on data from two minor and two major case studies, using a range of methods. Conceptually, the discussion develops and elaborates the concept of ‘tele’ (as restricted to the telephone) as it engages with the notion of 'telepedagogy’. It articulates the areas of congruence and distinctiveness between teaching and learning by audioteleconference and teaching and learning by correspondence and face-to-face. It examines the relationship between language and technology, with specific reference to distance education/open learning. Empirically, the data support an in-depth discussion of selected excerpts to inform analysis of perceived advantages and restrictions of audioteleconferencing. The study reveals that there are demonstrable occasions when the perceptions of the participants are seen to be at variance from those of the researcher and from other data. This conclusion has relevance to theorists concerned with the validation of qualitative data and to researchers who accept student and tutor feedback as representing an accurate recollection of what eventuated.

Examination of the validity and usefulness of the video suggestibility scale for children

The Video Suggestibility Scale for Children (VSSC) was developed by Scullin and colleagues (Scullin & Ceci, 2000; Scullin & Hembrooke, 1998) as a tool for discriminating between children who have different levels of suggestibility. The scale requires children to view a 5-minute video about a birthday party, and to subsequently participate in an interview consisting of 18 yes/no questions. The VSSC consists of two main subscales; Yield (a measure of children's willingness to respond affirmatively to misleading questions about the video) and Shift (a measure of the children's tendency to change their responses after negative feedback from the interviewer). Preliminary research by Scullin and colleagues suggested that the scale possesses satisfactory internal consistency and that children's scores on the VSSC can predict their performance in another suggestibility paradigm. This thesis presents two studies, which further examine the validity and usefulness of the VSSC in an Australian sample of 3- to-5-year-old children. In Study One, children's performance on the VSSC (N = 77) was compared to their performance using other measures of suggestibility. These measures included children's willingness to assent to a false event as well as the number of false interviewer suggestions and new false details that the children provided in their accounts about an independent true-biased and an independent false (non-experienced) event. An independent samples t-test revealed that those children who assented to the false activity generated higher scores on the Yield measure. This pattern was also observed for the Shift subscale although it was not significant. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that Yield was a significant predictor of the number of false details reported about the false activity, but not the true-biased activity. There was no significant relationship between the Shift Vlll subscale and any of the dependent variables. Overall this study provided partial support for the construct validity of the VSSC. However, it indicated that children's performance on this scale may not be generalisable across different contexts and interview paradigms, and that the Yield subscale is more generalisable than the Shift subscale. Study Two examined whether various group and individual factors that have previously been shown to relate suggestibility (i.e., age, IQ, memory, socio-economic status, gender, temperament) could predict suggestibility as measured by the VSSC. Two hundred and twenty children were recruited from kindergartens, and were divided into two broad socio-economic categories (based predominantly on income). Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that age, intelligence and memory inversely predicted children's Yield suggestibility. Further, children of low socio-economic backgrounds were more suggestible than children of high socio-economic background, and boys were more suggestible than girls on the Yield measure. Although shyness and other internalised and externalised characteristics were explored, no reliable significant relationships were found with Yield. With regard to the Shift subscale, no reliable relationships were found for any of the independent variables except for SES. Overall, results of Study 2 indicated that the VSSC is a potentially useful measure for discriminating between children's suggestibility on the basis on their individual characteristics, although benefits were observed mainly in relation to the Yield subscale. With reference to the findings of these two studies, the potential contribution of the VSSC for research and applied forensic contexts was discussed.

Investigative interviewing of children with intellectual disabilities

This research was designed to examine two broad issues in relation to the investigative interviewing of children (aged 9 to 13 years) with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities. First, how do children with intellectual disabilities perform (relative to children matched for chronological and mental age) when recalling an event in response to various questions? Second, what question types and interview strategies do police officers and caregivers use to elicit accurate and detailed accounts about an event from children with intellectual disabilities? The rationale for exploring each of these issues was to determine possible ways of improving the elicitation of evidence from children with intellectual disabilities. While children with intellectual disabilities constitute a high proportion of all child victims of abuse (Conway, 1994; Goldman, 1994; Morse, et ah, 1970), they rarely provide formal reports of abuse and of those incidents that are reported, few cases progress to court (Henry & Gudjonsson, 1999). Study 1 used a standard interview protocol containing a variety of questions and an interview structure commonly used in investigative interviews. Specifically, the memory and suggestibility of eighty children with either a mild and moderate intellectual disability (M age = 10.85 years) was examined when recalling an innocuous event that was staged at their school. The children's performance was compared with that of two control groups; a group of mainstream children matched for mental age and a group of mainstream children matched for chronological age. Overall, this study showed that children with both mild and moderate intellectual disabilities can provide accurate and highly specific event-related information hi response to questions recommended in best-practice guidelines. However, their recall was less complete and less clear in response to free-narrative prompts and less accurate in response to specific questions when compared to both mainstream age-matched groups. Study 2 provided an in-depth analysis of the types of questions and strategies used by twenty-eight police officers and caregivers when interviewing children with either mild or moderate intellectual disabilities (M age = 11.13 years) about a repeated event that was staged at their school. The results revealed that while the approach used by the police officers was generally consistent with best-practice recommendations (i.e., their interviews contained few leading, coercive or negative strategies), there were many ways in which their approach could be improved. This study also showed that the caregivers used a high proportion of direct and negative strategies to elicit information from their children. Even when caregivers used open-ended questions, their children provided less event-related information than they did to police interviewers. The results of both studies were discussed in relation to current 'best-practice' guidelines for interviewing children and recommendations were offered for improving the quality of field interviews with children who have intellectual disabilities.

Children's eyewitness memory : participation, presentation media and the disruption effect

This research found that both younger and older children remembered eyewitness events better when presented live rather than on video. Active participation in live events enhanced recall memory. Disruptive incidents were remembered better than irrelevant incidents, but this finding depended on children's age and level of involvement in the event.

Analysis of children's merging errors

Array

Enhancing juror decision-making through provision of transcripts

This thesis explored how much evidence jurors remember when instructed to reach a verdict. Results indicated that jurors required to rely on memory recalled significantly less evidence than jurors provided with access to the court transcript and were less confident than aided jurors that they had returned the 'right' verdict. The portfolio explored a possible association between chronic childhood challenging behaviours and later offending behaviour in individuals with intellectual disability. Includes four clinical case studies. The importance of early intervention is illustrated.

An investigation of the boundaries of young children's reporting of non-experienced events

This thesis explored young children's reporting of non-experienced (false) events. It demonstrated that children can be led to provide convincing reports of plausible and implausible false events within both narrow and broad contextual frameworks. Further, it showed that investigative interviewers utilise questioning techniques that could elicit false-event reports from children.

The usefulness of suggestibility scales in predicting children's false reports of events

This thesis examined the nature and strength of the relationship between children's performance on suggestibility scales and their recall of independent events. It demonstrated that whilst standardised scales of suggestibility may be useful in predicting children's reporting of false information, there are clear boundaries to their usefulness. The clinical portfolio examines and discusses the impact that exposure to family violence has on children's functioning across development.

Effects of repeated interviews on children's recall of an event

The results of three studies suggest that repeated interviews assist in retaining information over a 6 week interval without increasing suggestibility. In addition prompting was also efficient in retaining information over 6 weeks. The implications of this study were that repeated interviews at intervals less than 4 weeks, could assist children to improve recall at a court appearance.

Familiarity-based word-frequency effects in recognition memory and implicit priming

Provides evidence that familiarity as well as recollection contributes to the recognition advantage for low-frequency words. The importance for explanations of the low-frequency word advantage to account for the influence of both explicit and implicit memory processes is discussed with emphasis given to developing the dual-process model.

Mental reinstatement and children's memory of a repeated event

The efficacy of mental reinstatement of context in facilitating six-year-old children's recall of one occurence of a repeated event was explored. Results demonstrated a beneficial effect of mental reinstatement of a unique contextual feature of one occurence of a repeated event on children's recall of details specific to that occurence.

Glucose enhancement of recognition memory: differential effects on effortful processing but not aspects of 'remember-know' responses

The administration of a glucose drink has been shown to enhance cognitive performance with effect sizes comparable with those from pharmaceutical interventions in human trials. In the memory domain, it is currently debated whether glucose facilitation of performance is due to differential targeting of hippocampal memory or whether task effort is a more important determinant. Using a placebo-controlled, double-blind, crossover 2(Drink: glucose/placebo) × 2(Effort: ± secondary task) design, 20 healthy young adults' recognition memory performance was measured using the 'remember-know' procedure. Two high effort conditions (one for each drink) included secondary hand movements during word presentation. A 25 g glucose or 30 mg saccharine (placebo) drink was consumed 10 min prior to the task. The presence of a secondary task resulted in a global impairment of memory function. There were significant Drink × Effort interactions for overall memory accuracy but no differential effects for 'remember' or 'know' responses. These data suggest that, in some circumstances, task effort may be a more important determinant of the glucose facilitation of memory effect than hippocampal mediation. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled 'Cognitive Enhancers'.

Trace memory: after decay

In this exhibition, interdisciplinary artist Tonya A. Meyrick presents a body of new work that explores the relationship between memory and place.Tonya A. Meyrick explores the recollection and perception of memory and considers how our memories are not stable; rather, they are fickle and tied to the places which we inhabit, past events and the ebb and flow of our daily patterns. The act of remembering, putting our memories back together is the thread that runs through this exhibition of large format digital still and moving artworks coupled with an experience of augmented reality

Tenerbrosity scene 1

Tenerbrosity Scene 1, is a large format photographic artwork. The work visually explores memory through the recollection of incidents and the fragility of truth. This is situated within the practice of landscape photography in a post-colonial framework. In Scene 1 of 2, a woodland closed shot is presented for the audience. The scene was shot at night in a forest, and provides a focus on the details of trees and leaves, branches and an emerging blackness that surrounds the scene. The journey has taken a strange turn in Tenerbrosity, with suggestions of the strange and unfamiliar, like a fragment or a moment, attempting to pull everything back together, somehow..somewhere… The size of the work as a large unframed print on canvas, actively seeks a physical engagement with the audience via a centrality of vision. The artwork hangs a metre out from the wall and the work sways in the breeze, to ensure the audience is located at a site for the production of meaning and this captures a mixed reality, between artwork, vision, audience and experience. This is achieved to engage with the multi-sequential narratives surrounding traces of memories and decay visually and theoretically traversed throughout the series. This is part of the ongoing exploration of states of the in-between and forms the 1st in a series of 2 artworks. The work is exhibited in the Yarra Ranges, because the work explores the narratives of the decay of memory experienced in this location. Exhibiting here allows a cyclic dialogue with notions of place, home, longing and loss.