Understanding human decision-making with models of animal foraging

Classic research in human decision-making has typically required participants to make choices between two options associated with different reward values. However, models of animal foraging suggest that there is another important class of problems that animals have to solve frequently – patch-leaving decisions. In patch-leaving decisions, the important variable is not which option an agent picks at a standardised timepoint, but rather, when an agent leaves a current location to travel and find rewards elsewhere. In this thesis, I’ll be discussing how we can use models of animal foraging to better explain human decision-making. Across two studies I will examine whether humans conform to the principles identified in studies of animal foraging, when making patch-leaving decisions. The first experiment I’ll be discussing explores a range of factors that can affect economic decision-making under a patch-foraging paradigm, including the value of the environment in which an individual patch is situated, the time and effort costs of leaving a particular patch, and the value of the patch itself. The second set of experiments I’ll be discussing explores how we can use this same patch-leaving paradigm to better understand human social decision-making. These studies both support the notion that humans make decisions about when to leave locations in a manner that conforms to the principles of theories of how animals solve patch-leaving problems. Across the thesis, I will review animal foraging research, as well as relevant human research, and discuss the strengths of this approach and highlight the work’s limitations. Overall, I conclude that behavioural ecology approaches to animal behaviour may be fruitful for understanding human decision-making

Vestigios que anuncian: Huellas cristianas en la poesía de Gabriela Mistral.

Tras una contextualización acerca del lugar del poeta y la poesía en la época moderna y en América Latina, el presente artículo recopila signos explícitos del cristianismo en los cuatro libros de poemas que Gabriela Mistral publicó en vida: Desolación, Ternura, Tala y Lagar. Con ellos, estima el modo como la fe cristiana se hace presente en los poemas: un cristianismo que denominamos “de Viernes Santo”, en la medida en que las voces de los poemas empatizan intensamente con Jesús Crucificado, perciben una desoladora distancia de Dios Padre y, al mismo tiempo, anhelan Su acogida y consuelo. Este trabajo ofrece, así, un punto de partida para estudios de mayor envergadura

Identity and Oppression: Differential Responses to an In-Between Status

Oppression operates at various levels, with varying degrees of negativity, and groups respond in markedly different ways. In this paper, the in-between status of the colored South African group is used to illustrate issues of identity and oppression under the Apartheid system—and differing ways in which oppression was experienced and used. The colored group had many social advantages over Blacks, but were also used to oppress that group. Habituation, accommodation, and relative advantage were identified as dynamics within the broader context of power and privilege that contributed to cultural and psychological marginality and status ambivalence of the coloreds. These processes must be understood within the historical, social, and political context of the community. What is evident from the data is that groups and individuals can take up various positions along a continuum of oppressor—oppressed, depending upon the contexts, time, and social and legal relationships involved in their interactions

Depressive Symptoms, Gender, and Growth in Cigarette Smoking among Indigenous Adolescents

This study reports findings from two-level growth curve modeling of cigarette smoking and depressive symptoms based on the first three waves of data from a longitudinal study of Indigenous adolescents and their parents/caretakers in the northern Midwest and Canada. The 743 adolescents were aged 10–13 years at Wave 1 and 12–15 years at Wave 3. Over the three years of the study the overall retention rate was 93%. By Wave 3, 39% of the adolescent girls and 25% of the boys had smoked cigarettes in the past 12 months. The growth curve results indicated that smoking increased for both adolescent boys and girls across time. Depressive symptoms were associated with an increase in cigarette smoking for girls but not boys

Postcolonial healing landscapes and mental health in a remote Indigenous community in subarctic Ontario, Canada

The concept of therapeutic landscape is concerned with a holistic, socio-ecological model of health, but most studies have attempted to explore land-health links from a Western perspective. On an Indigenous reserve in Northern Ontario, part of the Canadian subarctic, we explore the importance of spaces and places in creating postcolonial therapeutic landscapes to treat the wounds inflicted by colonialism. The aim of this research is to gain insight from views and experiences of First Nations residents living on reservations that are undergoing a process of regaining traditional spiritual beliefs and teachings to construct therapeutic spaces to face mental health problems caused by legal opioid analgesic abuse. This qualitative study used semi-structured interviews with Cree and Ojibwe participants to understand how they are reconnecting with earth, spirituality and traditional animist beliefs on their way to recovery. We find that practices such as taking part in ceremonies and ritual spaces, and seeking knowledge and advice from Elders assist with personal healing and enable Indigenous people to be physically and mentally healthy. Our research findings provide important insights into the relationship between space, healing and culture as determinants of health and well-being and document some key factors that contribute to substance abuse recovery.This work was supported by the Ministry of Education and Science (Spain) [I + D+i SEJ2005-09344/SOCI]; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) [I + D+i CURA/NORTHERN]

Vestigios que anuncian: Huellas cristianas en la poesía de Gabriela Mistral

Tras una contextualización acerca del lugar del poeta y la poesía en la época moderna y en América Latina, el presente artículo recopila signos explícitos del cristianismo en los cuatro libros de poemas que Gabriela Mistral publicó en vida: Desolación, Ternura, Tala y Lagar. Con ellos, estima el modo como la fe cristiana se hace presente en los poemas: un cristianismo que denominamos “de Viernes Santo”, en la medida en que las voces de los poemas empatizan intensamente con Jesús Crucificado, perciben una desoladora distancia de Dios Padre y, al mismo tiempo, anhelan Su acogida y consuelo. Este trabajo ofrece, así, un punto de partida para estudios de mayor envergadura.This paper draws the context of modern and Latin American poetry and, focusing in Gabriela Mistral’s literary work, collects the most evident Christian signals in Mistral’s four books of poems published during her life: Desolación, Ternura, Tala, and Lagar. These signals help us evaluate the way Christian faith is present in Mistral’s poetry: Christianity we name as “a Good Friday Christianity” because as the voices of poems empathize with Crucifed Jesus, they perceive the desolating distance from Father God and, at the same time, long for His welcome and consolation. This paper also offers a starting point for larger studies.

Pink noise in speakers' semantic synchrony dynamics as a metric of conversation quality

Dyadic social interaction is a complex coordination task involving a large number of interconnected variables. Previous research has shown that metastability -- persistence for an extended, but impermanent, period of time in a non-stable state of a system -- can be a useful lens for understanding what makes an interaction successful. However, this framework has thus far only been applied to para-conversational signals like heart rate and prosody -- not to the semantic content of a conversation. Here, we present pink noise analysis of semantic trajectories as a metric for conversational success and apply this technique to a large open conversation dataset. Our results demonstrate that pink noise in a conversation predicts a host of variables representing participants' perception of conversation quality. These results have implications for optimizing a whole host of difficult dyadic conversations -- like those between political partisans -- and human-computer interactions, with applications for improving large language models' adaptability