Visibility and tholos tombs in the Messenian landscape : a comparative case study of the Pylian hinterlands and the Soulima Valley

This master thesis aims to investigate the visual characteristics of Late Bronze Age tholos tombs in the region of Messenia, Greece by comparing tholos tombs from two study areas: the Pylian hinterlands and the Soulima Valley. The study utilises cost surfaces and viewsheds created in a GIS-environment as heuristic devices to do so. With the common assumption that the tholos tombs were erected as visual socio-economic statements, which therefore were placed in visually prominent places, as a starting point the study attempts to analyse the visual attributes of the tholos tombs’ spatial locations as they may have been perceived in relation to contemporary settlements and the wider surrounding landscape. Were they all placed in visually prominent places? Is it possible to discern any spatial or temporal patterns? What does the tholos tombs’ visual characteristics tell us about how they were perceived by the Messenians? The results from the study show that the tholos tombs cannot be considered to be a homogenous group of constructions. While there are few real temporal or spatial patterns within the two study areas, it is clear that the tholos tombs in the Pylian hinterlands were located in places that could be described as ‘hidden’ compared to the rest of the landscape, while tholos tombs in the Soulima Valley vary from being hidden to extremely prominent. It is argued that it is necessary to develop more advanced and theoretically aware methodological frameworks in order to properly place the tholos tombs in relation to other monuments, settlements and human movement/action in the landscape if we want to further our understanding of the tholos tombs

Psychological processes in decision making: probabilities, risk and chance

2 pagesIn modern societies, many of the decisions ordinary people are expected to make are based on numerical information. As a reflection of this fact, the contributions in this issue treat decisions and judgments based on numerical information in different formats and in different contexts. Even though, we all want to use the information that is available to us in an optimal way when we make decisions, we are not always able to do so. This is particularly true for intuitive unaided decisions and therefore the set of six papers in this special issue section investigate some of these shortcomings and gives us some hints as how to overcome them. Decisions concern the future, and this means that outcomes and consequences of decisions will appear in the future. However, in most contexts what will happen in the future is not certain and different outcomes could follow a decision. Hence, many decisions have to be taken under risk and uncertainty, which is the main theme of the EGPROC1 papers of this issue. Because, the uncertainty of the future is often described by probabilities of different outcomes and consequences of a decision, much decision research including the papers in this issue have studied different aspects of probability. A methodological process perspective is another theme that also characterizes most of the contributions

The time-saving bias: Judgements, cognition and perception

Biases in people’s judgments of time saved by increasing the speed of an activity have been studied mainly with hypothetical scenarios (Svenson, 2008). The present study asked whether the classic time-saving bias persists as a perceptual bias when we control the speed of an activity and assess the perceived time elapsed at different speeds. Specifically, we investigated the time-saving bias in a driving simulator. Each participant was asked to first drive a distance at a given speed and then drive the same distance again at the speed she or he judged necessary to gain exactly three minutes in travel time compared to the first trip. We found that that the time-saving bias applies to active driving and that it affects the choice of driving speed. The drivers’ time-saving judgements show that the perception of the time elapsed while driving does not eliminate the time-saving bias

Modeling and debiasing resource saving judgments

Svenson (2011) showed that choices of one of two alternative productivity increases to save production resources (e.g., man-months) were biased. Judgments of resource savings following a speed increase from a low production speed line were underestimated and following an increase of a high production speed line overestimated. The objective formula for computing savings includes differences between inverse speeds and this is intuitively very problematic for most people. The purpose of the present studies was to explore ways of ameliorating or eliminating the bias. Study 1 was a control study asking participants to increase the production speed of one production line to save the same amount of production resources (man-months) as was saved by a speed increase in a reference line. The increases judged to match the reference alternatives showed the same bias as in the earlier research on choices. In Study 2 the same task and problems were used as in Study 1, but the participants were asked first to judge the resource saving of the reference alternative in a pair of alternatives before they proceeded to the matching task. This weakened the average bias only slightly. In Study 3, the participants were asked to judge the resources saved from each of two successive increases of the same single production line (other than those of the matching task) before they continued to the matching problems. In this way a participant could realize that a second production speed increase from a higher speed (e.g., from 40 to 60 items /man-month) gives less resource savings than the same speed increase from a first lower speed (e.g., from 20 to 40 items/man-month. Following this, the judgments of the same problems as in the other studies improved and the bias decreased significantly but it did not disappear. To be able to make optimal decisions about productivity increases, people need information about the bias and/or reformulations of the problems

Aiding Lay Decision Making Using a Cognitive Competencies Approach

Two prescriptive approaches have evolved to aid human decision making: just in time interventions that provide support as a decision is being made; and just in case interventions that educate people about future events that they may encounter so that they are better prepared to make an informed decision when these events occur. We review research on these two approaches developed in the context of supporting everyday decisions such as choosing an apartment, a financial product or a medical procedure. We argue that the lack of an underlying prescriptive theory has limited the development and evaluation of these interventions. We draw on recent descriptive research on the cognitive competencies that underpin human decision making to suggest new ways of interpreting how and why existing decision aids may be effective and suggest a different way of evaluating their effectiveness. We also briefly outline how our approach has the potential to develop new interventions to support everyday decision making and highlight the benefits of drawing on descriptive research when developing and evaluating interventions

PENGARUH METODE ECOLA (EXTENDING CONCEPTH TRHOUGH LANGUAGE ACTIVITIES) DALAM PEMBELAJARAN MEMBACA KRITIS TAJUK RENCANA

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk memperoleh gambaran secara objektif tentang ada tidaknya perbedaan yang signifikan antara kemampuan siswa dalam membaca kritis tajuk rencana atau teks editorial kelas eksperimen dengan menggunakan metode ECOLAdan kelas kontrol dengan metode ceramah. Populasi dalam penelitian ini adalah seluruh siswa kelas VIII SMP Negeri 16 Bandung ajaran tahun 2015/2016. Sampel dalam penelitian ini adalah dua kelas yang dipilih secara purposive sampling, yakni pertimbangan dalam mengambil sampel tersebut, disebabkan kelas VIII G dan VIII H memiliki rata-rata nilai yang hampir sama dalam pembelajaran bahasa Indonesia dilihat dari Ujian Tengah Semester. Kelas yang digunakan adalah kelas VIII H sebagai kelas eksperimen dan kelas VIII G sebagai kelas kontrol. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode eksperimen kuasi dengan desain penelitian Nonequivalent Control Group Design. Pada desain ini dilakukan tes awal dan tes akhir di kelas eksperimen dan kelas kontrol. Pengolahan data dilakukan uji realibilitas antar penimbang, uji normalitas, homogenitas, dan hipotesis. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian, didapatkan bahwa nilai rata-rata kelas eksperimen lebih tinggi daripada nilai rata-rata kelas kontrol. Rata-rata nilai tes awal kelas eksperimen yaitu 63 dan nilai rata-rata tes akhir 82. Sedangkan rata-rata nilai tes awal kontrol yaitu 54 dan rata-rata nilai tes akhir 66. Berdasarkan perolehan nilai tersebut didapatkan perbedaan nilai rata-rata kelas eksperimen 19 dan perbedaan nilai rata-rata kelas kontrol yaitu 13. Berdasarkan hasil pengujian hipotesis diperoleh nilaithitung= 5,01>ttabel = 1,99866, maka Ho ditolak dan Ha diterima. Hal ini menunjukkan bahwa metode ECOLA berpengaruh dan dapat digunakan dalam pembelajaran membaca kritis tajuk rencana. ;--- This research aims toget the objective informationwhether there is a significance differences or not between students’ abilityin editorial critical reading text in an experimental class using ECOLA methodwith a control class using lecture method. The population of the research are all students of VIII grade class of16 Junior High School of Bandung in 2015/2016 school year.The sample are two classes of students which are selected through purposive sampling, consideringG and H class have a same average scoresin Indonesia Language subject,taken from Mid-Semester Test score. The H class was the experimental classand the G class control. The research utilizes a quasi-experimental methodwithNonequivalent Control Group Designwith a pre and a post-test. Reliability test was employed between counselor, normalcy test, homogenates, andhypothesis. The result shows that the average score of experimental classis higher than the control class. The experimental class’ average pre-test score was 63 the post-test was 82 whilethe control class’ average pre-test score was 54 andpost-test score was 66. The difference between pre and post-test of experimental class was 19 and control class was 13. Hypothesis test result shows thatthitung = 5,01>ttabel= 1,99866, then Hois rejectedand Hais accepted. It concludes thatECOLAis influential and implementable in editorial critical reading