Imagine the Possibilities: Information without Overload

Information is often modelled as a set of relevant possibilities, treated as logically possible worlds. However, this has the unintuitive consequence that the logical consequences of an agent's information cannot be informative for that agent. There are many scenarios in which such consequences are clearly informative for the agent in question. Attempts to weaken the logic underlying each possible world are misguided. Instead, I provide a genuinely psychological notion of epistemic possibility and show how it can be captured in a formal model, which I call a fan. I then show how to use fans to build formal models of being informed, as well as knowledge, belief and information update.

Prática de ensino supervisionada em educação pré-escolar e 1º ciclo do ensino básico: (Re)construindo saberes em ciências com as crianças

O presente relatório transparece o progresso de aprendizagem e reflexão realizado no âmbito da Prática de Ensino Supervisionada em Educação Pré-Escolar e no 1º Ciclo do Ensino Básico. Neste, evidenciou-se uma reflexão da prática educativa que teve como finalidade compreender de que maneira se poderão potenciar as aprendizagens das Ciências Naturais nas crianças. Para tal, destacam-se alguns objetivos que estiveram bastante presentes na dimensão investigativa, tais como a promoção de ambientes de aprendizagem na área das ciências físico-naturais tornando as crianças observadores ativos com competências para investigar, experimentar e aprender; a promoção de contextos de aprendizagem participativa e ativa, desafiadoras e motivantes; o conhecimento e compreensão dos conhecimentos prévios destas, refutando assim a sua expressão e dúvida através do questionamento; e por fim, a promoção de atitudes, competências de ação, competências metodológicas e competências de comunicação nas crianças em relação à aprendizagem de acontecimentos naturais. Assim sendo, a principal finalidade desta investigação-ação nos contextos onde se realizou foi compreender processos associados à (re)construção de conhecimentos com base nos saberes que as crianças já tinham, construindo eu própria saberes profissionais, através da minha própria ação, registada, analisada e fundamentada; ABSTRACT: The following report transpires the progress of learning and reflection that was accomplished within the Supervised Teaching Practice in Preschool Education and in Primary Education. In this, it showed a reflection of educational practice that aimed to understand how it may enhance the learning of Natural Sciences in children. For such, we highlighted a few goals that were very present in the research dimension, such as, promoting learning environments in the area of physical and natural sciences, making children active observers with powers to investigate, experiment and learn; promoting ways of participation and active learning, challenging and motivating; knowledge and understanding of prior knowledge of these, thus disproving your expression and doubt through questioning; and finally, the promotion of attitudes, action skills, methodological skills and communication skills in children with regard to the learning of natural events. Therefore, the main purpose of this research-action, in ways where it was accomplished, was the reconstruction of knowledge based on the awareness that children already contained, building my own professional knowledge, through my own action that were recorded, analyzed and justified.

On the adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies

We propose a model, based on the work of Brock and Durlauf, which looks at how agents make choices between competing technologies, as a framework for exploring aspects of the economics of the adoption of privacy-enhancing technologies. In order to formulate a model of decision-making among choices of technologies by these agents, we consider the following: context, the setting in which and the purpose for which a given technology is used; requirement, the level of privacy that the technology must provide for an agent to be willing to use the technology in a given context; belief, an agent’s perception of the level of privacy provided by a given technology in a given context; and the relative value of privacy, how much an agent cares about privacy in this context and how willing an agent is to trade off privacy for other attributes. We introduce these concepts into the model, admitting heterogeneity among agents in order to capture variations in requirement, belief, and relative value in the population. We illustrate the model with two examples: the possible effects on the adoption of iOS devices being caused by the recent Apple–FBI case; and the recent revelations about the non-deletion of images on the adoption of Snapchat.

Religion och ateism i förhållande till livstillfredsställelse och coping : Skiljer sig copingmekanismer och livstillfredsställelse åt mellan religiösa och icke-religiösa? En kvantitativ studie

Syftet med studien var att jämföra grad av coping samt grad av livstillfredsställelse mellan religiösa personer och de som anser sig vara icke troende. För att testa skillnaderna mellan religiösa och ateister gjordes stickprov med data från 30 religiösa och 103 ateister. Mätinstrumentet REI skapades för att mäta graden av tro eller icke tro i avseende att jämföra resultatet mot den trosuppfattning som deltagarna själva hade angivit. Ett Mann–Whitney U test visade att det inte fanns en signifikant skillnad mellan deltagarnas självskattning av tro och resultatet från REI. Resultat från oberoende t-test avseende livstillfredsställelse visar att religiösa och ateister inte signifikant skilde sig åt. Signfikanta skillnader återfanns i oberoende t-test avseende emotionsbaserad, problemfokuserad och dysfunktionell coping. De religiösa och ateistiska grupperna skiljde sig mest i emotionsbaserad coping som hade högst effektstyrka enligt Cohens d (d = 1,39) i jämförelse med effektstyrkan för problemfokuserad och dysfunktionell coping.

VALIDATION STUDY OF HEALTH BELIEFS SCALE

Introduction: The Health Belief Scale is a questionnaire used to assess a wide range of beliefs related to health. The objective of this study was to undertake construction and culturally adapt the Health Belief Scale (HBS) to the Portuguese language and to test its reliability and validity. Methods: This new version was obtained with forward/backward translations, consensus panels and a pre-test, having been inspired by some of the items from “Canada’s Health Promotion Survey” and the “European Health and Behaviour Survey”, with the inclusion of new items about food-related beliefs. The Portuguese version of Health Belief Scale and a form for the characteristics of the participants were applied to 849 Portuguese adolescents. Results: Reliability was good with a Cronbach’s alpha coeficient of 0.867, and an intraclass correlation coeficient (ICC) of 0.95. Corrected item-total coeficients ranged from 0.301 to 0.620 and weighted kappa coeficients ranged from 0.72 to 0.93 for the total scale items. We obtained a scale composed of 13 items divided into ive factors (smoking and alcohol belief, food belief, sexual belief, physical and sporting belief, and social belief), which explain 57.97% of the total variance. Conclusions: The scale exhibited suitable psychometric properties, in terms of internal consistency, reproducibility and construct validity. It can be used in various areas of research.

The role of self-efficacy in dental patients’ brushing and flossing: Testing an extended Health Belief Model

Objective: In an effort to examine the decreasing oral health trend of Australian dental patients, the Health Belief Model (HBM) was utilised to understand the beliefs underlying brushing and flossing self-care. The HBM states that perception of severity and susceptibility to inaction and an estimate of the barriers and benefits of behavioural performance influences people’s health behaviours. Self-efficacy, confidence in one’s ability to perform oral self-care, was also examined. Methods: In dental waiting rooms, a community sample (N = 92) of dental patients completed a questionnaire assessing HBM variables and self-efficacy, as well as their performance of the oral hygiene behaviours of brushing and flossing. Results: Partial support only was found for the HBM with barriers emerging as the sole HBM factor influencing brushing and flossing behaviours. Self-efficacy significantly predicted both oral hygiene behaviours also. Conclusion: Support was found for the control factors, specifically a consideration of barriers and self-efficacy, in the context of understanding dental patients’ oral hygiene decisions. Practice implications: Dental professionals should encourage patients’ self-confidence to brush and floss at recommended levels and discuss strategies that combat barriers to performance, rather than emphasising the risks of inaction or the benefits of oral self-care.

Identifying key belief-based targets for promoting regular physical activity among mothers and fathers with young children

We investigated the key beliefs to target in interventions aimed at increasing physical activity (PA) among mothers and fathers of young children. Parents (288 mothers and 292 fathers) completed a Theory of Planned Behaviour belief-based questionnaire and a 1-week follow-up of PA behaviour. We found that a range of behavioural, normative, and control beliefs were significantly correlated with parents’ PA intentions and behaviour, with only a few differences observed in correlations between PA beliefs and intention and behaviour by gender. A range of key beliefs was identified as making independent contributions to parents’ PA intentions; however, the behavioural beliefs about improving parenting practices (β = 0.13), interfering with other commitments (β = −0.29); normative beliefs about people I exercise with (β = 0.20); and control beliefs about lack of time (β = −0.24), inconvenience (β = −0.14), lack of motivation (β = −0.34), were revealed as significant independent predictors of actual PA behaviour. Furthermore, we found that a limited amount of parents already hold these beliefs, suggesting that these key beliefs warrant changing and, therefore, are appropriate targets for subsequent intervention. The current study fills an empirical gap in the PA literature by investigating an at-risk group and using a well established theoretical framework to identify key beliefs that guide parents’ PA decision-making. Overall, we found support for parents being a unique group who hold distinctive behavioural, normative, and control beliefs toward PA. Attention to these key underlying beliefs will assist intervention work aimed at combating inactivity among this at-risk population.

The iatrogenic reflex and belief that repression can coercively suppress asymmetric coercive violence : does very robust action by the government decrease functional support for insurgents?

Non-state insurgent actors are too weak to compel powerful adversaries to their will, so they use violence to coerce. A principal objective is to grow and sustain violent resistance to the point that it either militarily challenges the state, or more commonly, generates unacceptable political costs. To survive, insurgents must shift popular support away from the state and to grow they must secure it. State actor policies and actions perceived as illegitimate and oppressive by the insurgent constituency can generate these shifts. A promising insurgent strategy is to attack states in ways that lead angry publics and leaders to discount the historically established risks and take flawed but popular decisions to use repressive measures. Such decisions may be enabled by a visceral belief in the power of coercion and selective use of examples of where robust measures have indeed suppressed resistance. To avoid such counterproductive behaviours the cases of apparent 'successful repression' must be understood. This thesis tests whether robust state action is correlated with reduced support for insurgents, analyses the causal mechanisms of such shifts and examines whether such reduction is because of compulsion or coercion? The approach is founded on prior research by the RAND Corporation which analysed the 30 insurgencies most recently resolved worldwide to determine factors of counterinsurgent success. This new study first re-analyses their data at a finer resolution with new queries that investigate the relationship between repression and insurgent active support. Having determined that, in general, repression does not correlate with decreased insurgent support, this study then analyses two cases in which the data suggests repression seems likely to be reducing insurgent support: the PKK in Turkey and the insurgency against the Vietnamese-sponsored regime after their ousting of the Khmer Rouge. It applies 'structured-focused' case analysis with questions partly built from the insurgency model of Leites and Wolf, who are associated with the advocacy of US robust means in Vietnam. This is thus a test of 'most difficult' cases using a 'least likely' test model. Nevertheless, the findings refute the deterrence argument of 'iron fist' advocates. Robust approaches may physically prevent effective support of insurgents but they do not coercively deter people from being willing to actively support the insurgency.

Non-monotonic Reasoning and the Reversibility of Belief Change

Traditional approaches to nonmonotonic reasoning fail to satisfy a number of plausible axioms for belief revision and suffer from conceptual difficulties as well. Recent work on ranked preferential models (RPMs) promises to overcome some of these difficulties. Here we show that RPMs are not adequate to handle iterated belief change. Specifically, we show that RPMs do not always allow for the reversibility of belief change. This result indicates the need for numerical strengths of belief.

Recruiting and retaining plasmapheresis donors: A critical belief analysis

This paper identifies critical beliefs underpinning intentions to commence and continue plasmapheresis donation. Whole blood (n = 624) and first-time plasmapheresis (n = 460) donors completed a cross-sectional survey assessing the belief-base of the theory of planned behaviour and rated their plasmapheresis donation intentions. While the idea of red blood cells being returned was a key deterrent for all donors, critical beliefs underlying commencement and continuation in the plasmapheresis donor panel differed and varied as a function of blood donation history. Findings will assist the development of targeted persuasion messages to optimise recruitment and retention of plasmapheresis donors in a non-remunerated context.