Revealing Choice Bracketing

In a decision problem comprised of multiple choices, a person may fail to take into account the interdependencies between her choices. To understand how people make decisions in such problems we design a novel experiment and revealed preference tests that determine how each subject brackets her choices. In separate portfolio allocation under risk, social allocation, and induced-utility shopping experiments, we find that 40-43\% of our subjects are consistent with narrow bracketing while only 0-15\% are consistent with broad bracketing. Classifying subjects while adjusting for models' predictive precision, 73\% of subjects are best described by narrow bracketing, 14\% by broad bracketing, and 5\% by intermediate cases

Acting is the key: new directions for the stimulation of prospective memory in mild cognitive impairment

Background: The fulfillment of delayed intended actions (e.g. taking medication or attending an appointment) is described in the literature as prospective memory (PM), and is often pointed out as a fairly common concern for healthy adults in everyday life constituting a fundamental requirement for independent living across the lifespan. PM may be compromised in the course of healthy aging and may be particularly disrupted very early in the neurodegenerative process, namely at the stage of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), which usually represents an initial phase of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), severely affecting a self-sufficient life-style and causing immense apprehension to caregivers. Methods: We have addressed this issue by investigating whether enactment at encoding could improve PM performance and whether these potential benefits were dependent of the relationship between the retrieval cue and its associated action. We report findings that explored this hypothesis in 64 young adults aged 18-39 years (M ¼ 20.41, SD ¼ 3.553) and 64 educationally matched older adults aged 58-90 years (M ¼ 71.17, SD ¼ 7.204) using a behavioral PM testing paradigm with a 2 X 2 X 2 between-subject factorial design. Results: Older adults’ PM performance (like that of their younger counterparts) benefited from enactment at encoding and from a strong semantic cue-action relation. Furthermore, there were no reliable effects of encoding modality or cue-action relatedness on performance accuracy or speed, despite a generalized slowness associated with age. Importantly, these beneficial effects were maintained across the lifespan, and even under high attentional demands. Figure 1. Mean proportion of PM cues eliciting a correct response at the appropriate moment in each Method of Encoding X Cue-Action Relatedness X Ag

Referencing as evidence of student scholarliness and academic readiness

This exploratory study investigates the student experience of referencing a law essay in a first-year undergraduate business degree. Over two hundred students took part in the study which identifies qualitatively different ways of thinking about, and approaching, referencing in essay. Variations in the student experience of referencing are logically and positively related to academic achievement. The study provides a rich description of the variations which have implications for teachers who seek to improve how teachers teach, and how students understand, the importance of referencing as evidence of the scholarly nature of student learning

Creating Experiences for Study-Abroad Tourists

Effects of tourist activity type and locus of activity structure on subjective experiences of study-abroad tourists were examined. Subjective experiences measured included perceived value, delight, and prevalence of deep structured experience. These subjective experiences (n = 208) were measured immediately following participation in tourist activities at 13 attractions and settings. Each tourist activity was coded according to (a) experience type, and (b) locus of activity structure. Experience type categories included activities emphasizing narratives (engagement), activities emphasizing sensory stimulation (absorption), activities requiring skill performance (immersion), and familiar activities. Locus of activity structure referred to the source of the primary determinants of the essential features of the activity and the activity environment. Locus of activity structure categories were provider-centric, activity-centric, and tourist-centric. Both tourist activity type and locus of structuring were found to elevate subjective experiences

Testing the Presumed Effects of Service Performance, Theme, Personalization, and Multisensory Appeal on Quality of Structured Experiences

Testing the Presumed Effects of Service Performance, Theme, Personalization, and Multisensory Appeal on Quality of Structured Experiences Abstract We evaluated service quality and experience structuring performance on subjective quality of experience in Hawaii. Two trained teams of education tourists visited major attractions on three Hawaiian Islands. One team (four members) evaluated service quality and experience structuring performance at each of 23 attractions while the other team (14 members) independently completed measures of the quality of their experiences at each attraction. Two hundred forty-seven experience equality observations were collected. Service quality was evaluated using the SERVQUAL dimensions identified by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry and “experience industry” strategies identified by Pine and Gilmore. Quality of experience indicators included measures of prevalence of deep structured experience during the visit, perceived value of time invested, and delight with the experience. Results revealed a significant relation between service quality and the experience quality measures. The hypothesis that service quality performance interacts with experience structuring performance to affect experience quality was supported

Enhancing prospective memory in mild cognitive impairment: The role of enactment

Introduction: Prospective memory (PM) is a fundamental requirement for independent living which might be prematurely compromised in the neurodegenerative process, namely in mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a typical prodromal Alzheimer’s disease (AD) phase. Most encoding manipulations that typically enhance learning in healthy adults are of minimal benefit to AD patients. However, there is some indication that these can display a recall advantage when encoding is accompanied by the physical enactment of the material. The aim of this study was to explore the potential benefits of enactment at encoding and cue-action relatedness on memory for intentions in MCI patients and healthy controls using a behavioral PMexperimental paradigm. Method: We report findings examining the influence of enactment at encoding for PM performance in MCI patients and age- and education-matched controls using a laboratory-based PM task with a factorial independent design. Results: PM performance was consistently superior when physical enactment was used at encoding and when target–action pairs were strongly associated. Importantly, these beneficial effects were cumulative and observable across both a healthy and a cognitively impaired lifespan as well as evident in the perceived subjective difficulty in performing the task. Conclusions: The identified beneficial effects of enacted encoding and semantic relatedness have unveiled the potential contribution of this encoding technique to optimize attentional demands through an adaptive allocation of strategic resources. We discuss our findings with respect to their potential impact on developing strategies to improve PM in AD sufferers

Second Language Acquisition, WE, and language as a complex adaptive system (CAS)

The field of Second Language Acquisition/Development (SLA/D) has evolved to a point where the paradigm gap between SLA/D and world Englishes (WE), identified by Sridhar and Sridhar (1986), has narrowed. The closing of the gap is due in part to SLA/D and WE leaving behind their ontological inheritance of a static competence from linguistics and finding common ground in a view of language as a complex adaptive system. While differences between the two fields are real and will rightly prevail, there may now exist an opening for a dialogue that can lead to a closing of the gap.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143707/1/weng12304.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/143707/2/weng12304_am.pd

Heterotic - type I superstring duality and low-energy effective actions

We compare order $R^4$ terms in the 10-dimensional effective actions of SO(32) heterotic and type I superstrings from the point of view of duality between the two theories. Some of these terms do not receive higher-loop corrections being related by supersymmetry to `anomaly-cancelling' terms which depend on the antisymmetric 2-tensor. At the same time, the consistency of duality relation implies that the `tree-level' $R^4$ super-invariant (the one which has $\zeta(3)$-coefficient in the sphere part of the action) should appear also at higher orders of loop expansion, i.e. should be multiplied by a non-trivial function of the dilaton.Comment: 16 pages, harvma