Eliciting Behavior From Interactive Narratives: Isolating the Role of Agency in Connecting With and Modeling Characters

A key component differentiating interactive storytelling from non-interactive media is agency, or control over character choices. A series of experiments show that providing agency over a character increased the user-character connection, which then increased engagement in a character-consistent charitable act. Findings were observed in technologically simple online narratives that controlled for navigation/controller differences, graphics, sounds, lengthy play, and avatar customization. Effects emerged even though users did not practice these acts by making their character behave charitably. Findings were robust across happy and unfortunate endings and across first-, second-, and third-person narrative perspectives. Findings suggest promise for developing inexpensive ‘‘storygames’’ to encourage supportive behaviors

Thai Secondary School Students' Probability Misconceptions: The Impact of Formal Instruction

Probability is an important mathematics topic and is required for all Thai secondary school students. However, previous research found that both students and teachers often held several probability misconceptions, students had difficulties learning the topic, and teachers did not have sufficient knowledge to teach the topics. The purpose of this study was to investigate the types of probability misconceptions held by Thai secondary school students and their mathematics teachers, how the teachers implemented a nationwide inquiry-based curriculum, and how instruction impacted the students' understanding of the concepts. The participants were two grade 9 mathematics teachers and their students in four classes, 204 students in total. The data collection included lesson observations, a probability misconception pretest and posttest, and teacher interviews. The results showed that both the teachers and the students held several types of probability misconceptions. Even though the students' performance on the posttest was significantly improved after instruction, they still did not do well. The students learned knowledge on probability as evidenced in their responses on the posttest, but they were still having trouble appropriately applying the knowledge. Teachers' probability misconceptions and their understanding of probability topics affected how their students learned and understood probability

Effects of interior aircraft noise on speech intelligibility and annoyance

Recordings of the aircraft ambiance from ten different types of aircraft were used in conjunction with four distinct speech interference tests as stimuli to determine the effects of interior aircraft background levels and speech intelligibility on perceived annoyance in 36 subjects. Both speech intelligibility and background level significantly affected judged annoyance. However, the interaction between the two variables showed that above an 85 db background level the speech intelligibility results had a minimal effect on annoyance ratings. Below this level, people rated the background as less annoying if there was adequate speech intelligibility

Uncertainties in Counterfactuals: The Determinants and Emotional Consequences of Counterfactual Probability Judgments

Counterfactual representations refer to people’s imaginations about the alternative possibilities to the actual world (i.e., what might have been). The present thesis embraces the notion that the psychological impacts of those representations are dictated by the degree of certainty or uncertainty people assign to them, namely, their counterfactual probability judgments (i.e., “How likely could things have been different?”). The thesis reports six experiments investigating the determinants as well as the emotional consequences of counterfactual probability judgments. Experiments 1, 2 and 3 found that both people’s conditional and unconditional counterfactual probability judgments were heightened when a past outcome was physically or numerically proximate to its alternative. Experiments 4 and 5 found that people’s counterfactual probability judgments were not only affected by the static proximity cue but also by its dynamic variations. When outcome proximity was equal, the shrinking physical distance towards a counterfactual outcome heightened one’s subjective likelihood of that outcome, compared to if the distance stayed constant. Experiment 6 found that the effect of “shrinking distance” could manifest itself as an antecedent temporal order effect on people’s counterfactual probability judgments. That is, a counterfactual outcome was deemed more likely if the factual outcome was preceded by a decisive event that occurred latter in the causal sequence rather than earlier. These results are broadly consistent with the theory of the simulation heuristic which posits that subjective probabilities are estimated by assessing the ease with which a relevant scenario can be mentally constructed. The emotional consequences of counterfactual probability judgments were investigated within the theoretical framework of the Reflective and Evaluative Model of Comparative Thinking (REM). The evidence from Experiments 2, 3, 4 and 5 suggests that the effect of counterfactual probability judgments on emotions are contingent on people’s temporal perspective – affective assimilation will be enhanced when future possibility is present (i.e., the outcome is indecisive or changeable) which encourages a reflective simulation while affective contrast will be enhanced when future possibility is absent (i.e., the outcome is decisive or unchangeable) which encourages an evaluative simulation. These findings suggest that the psychological impact of counterfactual thinking should be discussed in terms of a three-way interaction between its direction (upward or downward), probability (low or high), and simulation mode (reflection or evaluation)