Aid partnerships and learning: UK and Japanese projects in Ghana

International technical assistance today supports pro-poor intervention managed and implemented by a number of organisations working in partnership together located in several countries. They may include funding organisations, governments, non-governmental organisations and community groups. This thesis explores the meaning of aid sector partnership and some of the ways in which they work to support community development in Africa. The study is of the ways in which partners interact and learn from each other, the contextual issues that influence the process and the implication of this for what is achieved. Believed to be the first of its kind, the study compares two bilaterally funded projects implemented by Ghanaian NGO counterparts. The British Department for International Development (DFID) financed an adult literacy project in the North, while Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) supported a maternal and child health care project in the East of Ghana. The study examines the quality of relations between partners in the two projects and then the ways in which these are informed by incidental learning experiences. A fieldwork was conducted in Ghana, UK and Japan. Data are largely narrative derived from in-depth interviews with more than 100 informants. Critical incident analysis is employed as the main interpretative strategy. The thesis conceptualises instances of inter-organisational learning (TOL) in terms of theories of principals and agents, prisoners' dilemmas and women's place in community development. It shows (i) that IOL can be used to maintain and modify relations of control and dominance in partnership hierarchies, and (ii) that IOL serves as a by-product of horizontal relationships and be increased or reduced in the competition between partners for resources and identity. The influential role of individuals, beyond the boundaries of organisations is stressed through social networks and trust-based relations, as are instances of resistance to learning as a consequences of personal conflict. However, structural constraints in the aid system, as demonstrated by asymmetric access to resources, expertise, knowledge, status and networks, ultimately determine the quality of funding management schemes and an environment that stimulates mutual individual learning, which is advantageous circumstances may lead to organisational learning and inter-organisational learning

Optimal visual-haptic integration with articulated tools

When we feel and see an object, the nervous system integrates visual and haptic information optimally, exploiting the redundancy in multiple signals to estimate properties more precisely than is possible from either signal alone. We examined whether optimal integration is similarly achieved when using articulated tools. Such tools (tongs, pliers, etc) are a defining characteristic of human hand function, but complicate the classical sensory ‘correspondence problem’ underlying multisensory integration. Optimal integration requires establishing the relationship between signals acquired by different sensors (hand and eye) and, therefore, in fundamentally unrelated units. The system must also determine when signals refer to the same property of the world—seeing and feeling the same thing—and only integrate those that do. This could be achieved by comparing the pattern of current visual and haptic input to known statistics of their normal relationship. Articulated tools disrupt this relationship, however, by altering the geometrical relationship between object properties and hand posture (the haptic signal). We examined whether different tool configurations are taken into account in visual–haptic integration. We indexed integration by measuring the precision of size estimates, and compared our results to optimal predictions from a maximum-likelihood integrator. Integration was near optimal, independent of tool configuration/hand posture, provided that visual and haptic signals referred to the same object in the world. Thus, sensory correspondence was determined correctly (trial-by-trial), taking tool configuration into account. This reveals highly flexible multisensory integration underlying tool use, consistent with the brain constructing internal models of tools’ properties. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00221-017-4896-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Separation in the visual field has divergent effects on discriminating the speed and the direction of motion.

Local motion in a visual scene allows the detection of prey or predator and predicts their future positions. Relative motion segregates objects and reveals their 3D relationships. 'Optic flow' - the motion of texture across the field - guides locomotion and balance. Given these several uses of visually perceived motion, it is unsurprising that many species have evolved hard-wired neural mechanisms to extract motion as a primitive feature of the visual world [1]. In the cortex (e.g. [2-4]), and even the retina [5], of primates, cells are found that respond selectively according to direction of motion. In visual areas V1 and MT, some directionally selective cells are also tuned for the second attribute of motion, speed [3]. It might be thought that the brain derives a single velocity signal from the activity in this population of neurons - since speed and direction must often be combined to predict an object's future position or to derive a 3D structure. However, we report here a striking difference in discrimination of the two attributes: Thresholds for direction, but not those for speed, increase with the spatial separation of the stimuli

Evidence for Distinct Clusters of Diverse Anomalous Experiences and Their Selective Association with Signs of Elevated Cortical Hyperexcitability

Visual cortical hyperexcitability (VCH) is an underlying factor for aberrant visual experience. Utilizing an exploratory factor analysis (n=300), study 1 developed a revised proxy screening measure for VCH - the Cortical Hyperexcitability index – II(CHi-II). The result revealed a stable 3-factor solution. Study 2 tested both a migraine group and a control group on the CHi-II with a behavioural task that is known to reflect VCH. The migraine group produced significantly elevated scores two factors of CHi-II. Among the non-migraine group, subjects with high VCH also produced significantly elevated scores on CHi-II compared to those with low VCH. These findings support the utility of CHi-II as an indirect proxy measure for signs of VCH and reveal new categorical distinctions for the nature of the anomalous perceptions. These perceptions may well reflect diverse neurocognitive underpinnings leading to advancements in our understanding of aberrations in conscious experience

Visual-haptic integration with pliers and tongs: signal “weights” take account of changes in haptic sensitivity caused by different tools.

When we hold an object while looking at it, estimates from visual and haptic cues to size are combined in a statistically optimal fashion, whereby the “weight” given to each signal reflects their relative reliabilities. This allows object properties to be estimated more precisely than would otherwise be possible. Tools such as pliers and tongs systematically perturb the mapping between object size and the hand opening. This could complicate visual-haptic integration because it may alter the reliability of the haptic signal, thereby disrupting the determination of appropriate signal weights. To investigate this we first measured the reliability of haptic size estimates made with virtual pliers-like tools (created using a stereoscopic display and force-feedback robots) with different “gains” between hand opening and object size. Haptic reliability in tool use was straightforwardly determined by a combination of sensitivity to changes in hand opening and the effects of tool geometry. The precise pattern of sensitivity to hand opening, which violated Weber's law, meant that haptic reliability changed with tool gain. We then examined whether the visuo-motor system accounts for these reliability changes. We measured the weight given to visual and haptic stimuli when both were available, again with different tool gains, by measuring the perceived size of stimuli in which visual and haptic sizes were varied independently. The weight given to each sensory cue changed with tool gain in a manner that closely resembled the predictions of optimal sensory integration. The results are consistent with the idea that different tool geometries are modeled by the brain, allowing it to calculate not only the distal properties of objects felt with tools, but also the certainty with which those properties are known. These findings highlight the flexibility of human sensory integration and tool-use, and potentially provide an approach for optimizing the design of visual-haptic devices

Fractionating the unitary notion of dissociation:disembodied but not embodied dissociative experiences are associated with exocentric perspective-taking

It has been argued that hallucinations which appear to involve shifts in egocentric perspective (e.g., the out-of-body experience, OBE) reflect specific biases in exocentric perspective-taking processes. Via a newly devised perspective-taking task, we examined whether such biases in perspective-taking were present in relation to specific dissociative anomalous body experiences (ABE) - namely the OBE. Participants also completed the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale (CDS; Sierra and Berrios, 2000) which provided measures of additional embodied ABE (unreality of self) and measures of derealization (unreality of surroundings). There were no reliable differences in the level of ABE, emotional numbing, and anomalies in sensory recall reported between the OBE and control group as measured by the corresponding CDS subscales. In contrast, the OBE group did provide significantly elevated measures of derealization ("alienation from surroundings" CDS subscale) relative to the control group. At the same time we also found that the OBE group was significantly more efficient at completing all aspects of the perspective-taking task relative to controls. Collectively, the current findings support fractionating the typically unitary notion of dissociation by proposing a distinction between embodied dissociative experiences and disembodied dissociative experiences - with only the latter being associated with exocentric perspective-taking mechanisms. Our findings - obtained with an ecologically valid task and a homogeneous OBE group - also call for a re-evaluation of the relationship between OBEs and perspective-taking in terms of facilitated disembodied experiences