Furman Landscapes Archaeological Project: Spring 2022

This project included an archaeological survey by Prof. Andrew Womack and students in ANT-304 Archaeological Methods and Theory in Spring of 2022 on the campus of Furman University. The archaeological survey, located on campus property, exists as part of ongoing research conducted by the “Furman Landscapes Archaeological Project” in order to garner a better understanding of the land-use and occupation history of the current Furman campus. Our focus this season was on the remains of a historic structure visible in aerial photos from the 1940s, but with only a foundation are surrounding debris visible today. Our survey and test excavations of this area allowed us to garner a better understanding of the dating and use of this building, which most likely was occupied from the late 1800s or early 1900s until around 1950. Our research also laid the groundwork for further archaeological investigations in this and other areas of campus

Evidence-based Kernels: Fundamental Units of Behavioral Influence

This paper describes evidence-based kernels, fundamental units of behavioral influence that appear to underlie effective prevention and treatment for children, adults, and families. A kernel is a behavior–influence procedure shown through experimental analysis to affect a specific behavior and that is indivisible in the sense that removing any of its components would render it inert. Existing evidence shows that a variety of kernels can influence behavior in context, and some evidence suggests that frequent use or sufficient use of some kernels may produce longer lasting behavioral shifts. The analysis of kernels could contribute to an empirically based theory of behavioral influence, augment existing prevention or treatment efforts, facilitate the dissemination of effective prevention and treatment practices, clarify the active ingredients in existing interventions, and contribute to efficiently developing interventions that are more effective. Kernels involve one or more of the following mechanisms of behavior influence: reinforcement, altering antecedents, changing verbal relational responding, or changing physiological states directly. The paper describes 52 of these kernels, and details practical, theoretical, and research implications, including calling for a national database of kernels that influence human behavior

The effects of speech–gesture cooperation in animated agents’ behavior in multimedia presentations

Until now, research on arrangement of verbal and non-verbal information in multimedia presentations has not considered multimodal behavior of animated agents. In this paper, we will present an experiment exploring the effects of different types of speech–gesture cooperation in agents’ behavior: redundancy (gestures duplicate pieces of information conveyed by speech), complementarity (distribution of information across speech and gestures) and a control condition in which gesture does not convey semantic information. Using a Latin-square design, these strategies were attributed to agents of different appearances to present different objects. Fifty-four male and 54 female users attended three short presentations performed by the agents, recalled the content of presentations and evaluated both the presentations and the agents. Although speech–gesture cooperation was not consciously perceived, it proved to influence users’ recall performance and subjective evaluations: redundancy increased verbal information recall, ratings of the quality of explanation, and expressiveness of agents. Redundancy also resulted in higher likeability scores for the agents and a more positive perception of their personality. Users’ gender had no influence on this set of results