An investigation into the effects of social influence on moral behaviour using immersive virtual reality

Much of the research surrounding social influence investigates its effects in specifically non-moral situations while almost no research has looked at its effects during moral emergencies. At the same time, studies of moral psychology tend to focus on the intricacies of moral decision-making during the responses of individual participants. This thesis aims to bridge this gap between social influence and moral psychology by having participants respond to moral dilemmas while under the duress of social influence. In order to investigate the effects of social influence on moral behaviours, immersive virtual reality (IVR) was used, allowing participants to be placed in a life-like virtual simulation of events that they would normally only read about in a text-based vignette, probing their observed moral behaviours instead of just their abstract moral judgments. The benefits of using IVR include the ethical and controllable nature of questionnaires along with the verisimilitude of real-life. Another focus of this thesis is to compare moral judgments to moral behaviours. In two out of the three studies presented in this thesis, the virtual moral dilemma was replicated in a text-based questionnaire in order to compare the results from the two media. Moral judgments in response to text-based moral dilemma can miss out key contextual information such the motoric feedback of having to physically act out a movement. These factors can lead to a divergence between moral judgments and behaviours. The thesis starts with a literature review on IVR technology and moral decision-making and social influence research. After this, the three studies conducted as part of this thesis are described. The major findings from these studies include the demonstration of a preference to take action regardless of outcome only when in IVR and the inability for compliance attempts to influence specifically moral behaviour

Interactive Narrative for Adaptive Educational Games: Architecture and an Application to Character Education

This thesis presents AEINS, Adaptive Educational Interactive Narrative System, that supports teaching ethics for 8-12 year old children. AEINS is designed based on Keller's and Gagné's learning theories. The idea is centered around involving students in moral dilemmas (called teaching moments) within which the Socratic Method is used as the teaching pedagogy. The important unique aspect of AEINS is that it exhibits the presence of four features shown to individually increase effectiveness of edugames environments, yet not integrated together in past research: a student model, a dynamic generated narrative, scripted branched narrative and evolving non-player characters. The student model aims to provide adaptation. The dynamic generated narrative forms a continuous story that glues the scripted teaching moments together. The evolving agents increase the realism and believability of the environment and perform a recognized pedagogical role by helping in supplying the educational process. AEINS has been evaluated intrinsically and empirically according to the following themes: architecture and implementation, social aspects, and educational achievements. The intrinsic evaluation checked the implicit goals embodied by the design aspects and made a value judgment about these goals. In the empirical evaluation, twenty participants were assigned to use AEINS over a number of games. The evaluation showed positive results as the participants appreciated the social characteristics of the system as they were able to recognize the genuine social aspects and the realism represented in the game. Finally, the evaluation showed indications for developing new lines of thinking for some participants to the extent that some of them were ready to carry the experience forward to the real world. However, the evaluation also suggested possible improvements, such as the use of 3D interface and free text natural language

Respect in cross-cultural conflict resolution training

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN017296 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Teachers' and parents' understanding of the concept of play in child development and education

This study is set in the context of an increasing awareness of the need for and importance of quality play learning experience for pre-school children owing to its crucial role and great contributions to various aspects of child development. The main aim of this study is to examine teachers' and parents' perspectives on play and their understanding of the role of play in relation to children's learning particularly in pre­school practice. Teachers' perceptions of play were described and analysed with respect to their definition of play, roles and values of play in relation to children's learning, and the use of play in teaching. Parents' understandings of the concept of play were examined through their perception on play as pedagogical tools and their preference for pre-school learning activities. The findings of the study imply that: (i) There was a mismatch between teachers' understanding of the word play in child development and play in relation to educational program of the children. (ii) Only few parents considered play to be the appropriate way of children's learning. Most of them preferred a formal learning environment for their children's pre-school activities. (iii) Play activities tended not to provide learning experiences of acceptable quality in most of the settings and many pre-school teachers taught children in a very formal way. (iv) There was no evidence of systematic differences between the philosophy and type of settings in respect to play understanding. The differences are the level of the teachers' knowledge, professional training and academic qualifications. (v) Mainly there were four main factors concluded as impeding the progress of deploying play in Malaysian pre-school practice: conceptual barriers, attitudinal barriers, structural barriers and functional barriers. As a result of the findings, some implications have been advocated concerning the need for rethinking the practice in Malaysian pre-schools for improving the approach to educating young children by giving play its central role in children's learning and free from academic stress