Keeping conceptualizations simple: Examples with family carers of people with dementia

This paper forms the second in a series of three articles on conceptualizations of older people's distress. The focus is on simple and concrete "mini-formulations" that keep the amount of information in them to a minimum, yet retain explanatory and predictive power. Such formulations can be used as the basis for action plans for intervention, while avoiding overburdening the cognitive capacity of the client or therapist. Simple linear and cyclical models are described, as are cognitive triad and dyad models. The uses of "mini-formulations" for group and individual settings are illustrated in a case example of a lady caring for her husband who has dementia

Pre-late Devensian high-arctic marine deposits in SW Scotland

We present new interpretations of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data and marine fossils collected from three sites on the Rhins of Galloway which, contrary to recent proposals, suggest that the landforms and deposits of the region do not represent evidence for a readvance during the Lateglacial Period. Rather we suggest that the high-arctic fauna found in the region are representative of an earlier, colder part of a Middle Devensian ice-free interval. The predominantly streamlined topography, and distinct lack of identifiable discrete moraine limits argues for only minor, local glacial advances, in combination with widespread rapid retreat across the peninsula at the end of the Lateglacial

A characterization of associativity

A necessary and sufficient condition for associativity of a function is given, in terms of a particular relation being a function. The concept of an associative function is generalized to the concept of a function being asssociative relative to a sequence and a characterization of such relative associativity is also given. These two characteristics are applied to the problem of proving the associativity, or relative associativity, of a function

Regularity of Polynomials in Free Variables

We show that the spectral measure of any non-commutative polynomial of a non-commutative $n$-tuple cannot have atoms if the free entropy dimension of that $n$-tuple is $n$ (see also work of Mai, Speicher, and Weber). Under stronger assumptions on the $n$-tuple, we prove that the spectral measure is not singular, and measures of intervals surrounding any point may not decay slower than polynomially as a function of the interval's length.Comment: The second version (joint with I. Charlesworth) considerably improves our previous results. The main new result is non-singularity of the spectral measure of a non-commutative polynomial of n variables under assumptions of existence of Voiculescu's dual syste

Future state maximisation as an intrinsic motivation for decision making

The concept of an “intrinsic motivation" is used in the psychology literature to distinguish between behaviour which is motivated by the expectation of an immediate, quantifiable reward (“extrinsic motivation") and behaviour which arises because it is inherently useful, interesting or enjoyable. Examples of the latter can include curiosity driven behaviour such as exploration and the accumulation of knowledge, as well as developing skills that might not be immediately useful but that have the potential to be re-used in a variety of different future situations. In this thesis, we examine a candidate for an intrinsic motivation with wide-ranging applicability which we refer to as “future state maximisation". Loosely speaking this is the idea that, taking everything else to be equal, decisions should be made so as to maximally keep one's options open, or to give the maximal amount of control over what one can potentially do in the future. Our goal is to study how this principle can be applied in a quantitative manner, as well as identifying examples of systems where doing so could be useful in either explaining or generating behaviour. We consider a number of examples, however our primary application is to a model of collective motion in which we consider a group of agents equipped with simple visual sensors, moving around in two dimensions. In this model, agents aim to make decisions about how to move so as to maximise the amount of control they have over the potential visual states that they can access in the future. We find that with each agent following this simple, low-level motivational principle a swarm spontaneously emerges in which the agents exhibit rich collective behaviour, remaining cohesive and highly-aligned. Remarkably, the emergent swarm also shares a number of features which are observed in real flocks of starlings, including scale free correlations and marginal opacity. We go on to explore how the model can be developed to allow us to manipulate and control the swarm, as well as looking at heuristics which are able to mimic future state maximisation whilst requiring significantly less computation, and so which could plausibly operate under animal cognition

Disastrous social theory: lessons from New Orleans

Contemporary social theory struggles to deal with disasters not just because of epistemological shortcomings regarding the continued dualistic nature of its dealings with social phenomena and events, relegating disasters to the real of “extraordinary events,” but also because it has effectively foreclosed on its ability to deal with social reality. The latter is less the consequence of epistemic shortcomings but itself a social by-product of the institutionalization of social thought in the academy. Divorced from an ability to come to terms with social reality, because it lacks both an empirical grounding and a sense of urgency to understand that which lies outside the comfort zone of academic life, social theory is left rather aimlessly afloat amid a sea of debris that signals that the apocalypse has already happened