BORDaR Bournemouth Online Research Data Repository
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Access to Finance for SMEs
No full textThe data is a description of the main findings from a seminar series funded by the ESRC.
Lending to Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), including micro businesses, remains at the top of the agenda for governments around the world. With various political and economic incentives introduced to support SMEs, it is important not to overlook the practicalities of institutional arrangements for access to finance, especially in the environment of prudent lending. This proposed seminar series brings together practitioners and academics in order to discuss the most pertinent issues of SME finance and of credit risk, with a view to setting a research agenda relevant to lenders and regulators. The government reports that the current support scheme appears to be working well, but banks have been criticised for their reluctant handling of the scheme. Critics emphasise that the uptake is far below the last year's Small Firms Loan Guarantee Scheme, but the British Banker's Association confirmed that total lending to SMEs rose. The government scrutinises the scheme and it was noted that banks were increasing charges and fees and require more personal security. New initiatives include the launch of the British Business Bank, local banks and credit unions. The German partners will contribute a comparative element for the institutional environment drawing upon. The German Kreditanstalt fuer Wiederaufbau (KfW) is considered to be a successful role model.
Participants will engage in debate and invite keynote speakers from academia, government agencies and industry. Social science research will be promoted by drawing on leading researchers and through interaction of speakers and attendees, which will include breakout sessions related to sub-schemes such as micro finance, the role of regional funds, gender and development agencies. There has been a string of reports on SME lending, funding and equity gaps. Now is the time to take stock, draw it all together and make a preliminary assessment of the various initiatives in light of those reports
Developing attentional control in naturalistic dynamic road crossing situations
No full textIn the last 20 years, there has been increasing interest in studying visual attentional processes under more natural conditions. In the present study, we propose to determine the critical age at which children show similar to adult performance and attentional control in a visually guided task; in a naturalistic dynamic and socially relevant context: road crossing. We monitored visual exploration and crossing decisions in adults and children aged between 5 and 15 while they watched road traffic videos containing a range of traffic densities with or without pedestrians. 5-10 year old (y/o) children showed less systematic gaze patterns. More specifically, adults and 11-15 y/o children look mainly at the vehicles' appearing point, which is an optimal location to sample diagnostic information for the task. In contrast, 5-10 y/os look more at socially relevant stimuli and attend to moving vehicles further down the trajectory when the traffic density is high. Critically, 5-10 y/o children also make an increased number of crossing decisions compared to 11-15 y/os and adults. Our findings reveal a critical shift around 10 y/o in attentional control and crossing decisions in a road crossing task
The combined influence of the own-age, -gender, and -ethnicity biases on face recognition
No full textData for a study investigating the own-group biases in face recognition.
Abstract
Whether the own-group (own-ethnicity, own-gender, and own-age) biases in face recognition are based on the same mechanism and whether their effects are additive or not are as yet unanswered questions. Employing a standard old/new recognition paradigm, we investigated the combined crossover effects of the own-ethnicity, own-gender, and own-age biases in a group of 160 participants. Result showed that while face recognition accuracy decreased as the number of out-group features increased, the own-ethnicity bias appeared to have more of a unique influence on face recognition than the other biases. Furthermore, we established that in a single group of participants, these biases appear to be based on different mechanisms: the own-ethnicity bias is based on individuation whereas the own-age and own-gender biases are based on motivation
The contribution of visual attention and declining verbal memory abilities to age-related route learning deficits 2015-2018
No full textOur ability to learn unfamiliar routes declines in typical and atypical ageing. The reasons for this decline, however, are not well understood. Here we used eye-tracking to investigate how ageing affects people’s ability to attend to navigationally relevant information and to select unique objects as landmarks. We created short routes through a virtual environment, each comprised of four intersections with two objects each, and we systematically manipulated the saliency and uniqueness of these objects. While salient objects might be easier to memorise than non-salient objects, they cannot be used as reliable landmarks if they appear more than once along the route. As cognitive ageing affects executive functions and control of attention, we hypothesised that the process of selecting navigationally relevant objects as landmarks might be affected as well. The behavioural data showed that younger participants outperformed the older participants and the eye-movement data revealed some systematic differences between age groups. Specifically, older adults spent less time looking at the unique, and therefore navigationally relevant, landmark objects. Both young and older participants, however, effectively directed gaze towards the unique and away from the non-unique objects, even if these were more salient. These findings highlight specific age-related differences in the control of attention that could contribute to declining route learning abilities in older age. Interestingly, route-learning performance in the older age group was more variable than in the young age group with some older adults showing performance similar to the young group. These individual differences in route learning performance were strongly associated with verbal and episodic memory abilities
Leaders' creation of shared identity impacts group members' effort and performance: Evidence from an exercise task
No full textThere is growing evidence that leaders’ effectiveness derives in part from their creation of a sense of identity that is shared by members of a group they are attempting to lead (i.e., their identity entrepreneurship). Little is known, however, about the impact of identity entrepreneurship in sport and exercise settings, particularly in relation to its effect on group members’ effort and performance. Using a pre-post between subjects experimental design, we examined the effect of leaders’ identity entrepreneurship on group members’ effort and performance during 5km cycling time trials. Following a baseline session (in which time trials were completed individually), participants (N=72) were randomly allocated to either a high or low identity entrepreneurship condition, and further randomly divided into groups of five (including a leader who was a confederate). In the subsequent test sessions (which participants attended with their fellow group members), leaders displayed either high or low identity entrepreneurship behaviors. Results indicated that, compared to participants in the low identity entrepreneurship condition, those in the high identity entrepreneurship condition maintained greater effort (maximum heart rate), and demonstrated improved (rather than poorer) performance (average power output in the first 60 seconds of time trials). Examination of pacing showed that the largest increases in participants’ average power output occurred in the early stages of their second time trials for those in the high identity entrepreneurship condition only. Results provide causal evidence that leaders who create a shared sense of identity among team members are able to inspire greater participant effort and performance
Age-related differences in visual encoding and response strategies contribute to spatial memory deficits
No full textSuccessful navigation requires memorising and recognising the locations of objects across different perspectives. Although these abilities rely on hippocampal functioning, which is susceptible to degeneration in older adults, little is known about the effects of ageing on encoding and response strategies that are used to recognise spatial configurations. To investigate this, we asked young and older participants to encode the locations of objects in a virtual room shown as a picture on a computer screen. Participants were then shown a second picture of the same room taken from the same (0°) or a different perspective (45° or 135°) and had to judge whether the objects occupied the same or different locations. Overall, older adults had greater difficulty with the task than younger adults although the introduction of a perspective shift between encoding and testing impaired performance in both age groups. Diffusion modelling revealed that older adults adopted a more conservative response strategy, while the analysis of gaze patterns showed an age-related shift in visual-encoding strategies with older adults attending to more information when memorising the positions of objects in space. Overall, results suggest that ageing is associated with declines in spatial processing abilities, with older individuals shifting towards a more conservative decision style and relying more on encoding target object positions using room-based cues compared to younger adults, who focus more on encoding the spatial relationships among object clusters
Transformations in Global Economic Governance: Integration via Free Trade Agreements
No full textThe data is a description of the main findings from a seminar series funded by the ESRC.
The seminar series aimed to generate new research, create networks, foster capacity building and user engagement by providing an interdisciplinary forum for debate and discussion on: (a) the regulatory, economic and social aspects of regional integration through FTAs; (b) what FTAs bring to partner countries; and (c) the current state of play in FTA activity in the EU, USA and Asia. By providing a wide geographical spread of seminars that focus on specific themes of regional trading agreements, its effects and the move towards a common regulatory framework, we propose to engage with academics, early career and established researchers from all over the world to create new research networks and build on existing works as well as engage with and bring together stakeholders, i.e. policy makers, small and medium sized businesses and civil society groups, that have an interest in FTAs being negotiated in and by Asia, EU and America
Quantifying the habitat and zoogeomorphic capabilities of spawning European barbel Barbus barbus, a lithophilous cyprinid
No full textThe availability of suitable gravels is critical for the spawning success of lithophilous fishes, including redd builders. Redd construction during spawning can alter bed topography, sedimentary structures and sediment grain-size distributions, indicating the potential importance of spawning as a zoogeomorphic activity. Here, interactions between redd building fish and their spawning environment were investigated using European barbel Barbus barbus with a comparative approach across three English rivers: Teme (western), Great Ouse (eastern) and Idle (central). Surface sediments of spawning habitats were coarser in the Teme than in the other rivers but other sediment characteristics including sub-surface fine sediment (<2 mm) content was similar across the three rivers (≈ 20% content). Water velocities were also similar at spawning sites despite differences in channel width and water depth. Spawning redds were characterised by a pit and tailspill, with minor differences in surface grain size characteristics between these and the surrounding riverbed. Estimates of the fraction of particles that could be moved by spawning barbel exceeded 97% in all rivers. There was variation in the estimated reproductive potential between rivers (3098 to 11142 eggs m–2) but not in predictions of egg mortality. These results demonstrate that relatively minor differences in substratum characteristics between rivers are potentially having disproportionate impacts on barbel spawning success and that spawning non-salmonid fishes are capable zoogeomorphic agents
Colonial consumption and Imperial Measures
No full textThis record lists the sources consulted, along with notes taken, in relation to the following Wellcome Trust funded projects: 'Colonial consumption: alcohol, medicine and society in British India' and 'Imperial measures: beer, medicine and health in colonial India'.
'Colonial consumption' (grant reference: 208333/Z/17/Z) engaged with the role of alcohol in colonial British India c.1800-1947. It analysed the extent to which alcohol was embedded in medical, social and cultural discourses of colonial society, producing a range of conflicted and contradictory practices.
'Imperial measures' (grant reference: 200435/Z/16/Z) engaged with the role of alcohol - specifically ale, beer and porter - in the history of colonial British India c.1800-1950. It analysed the extent to which the medical, social and cultural perception of these drinks were not only linked, but were subject to contradiction and conflict in a colonial context
Being observed caused physiological stress leading to poorer face recognition
No full textBeing observed when completing physical and mental tasks alters how successful people are at completing them. This has been explained in terms of evaluation apprehension, drive theory, and due to the effects of stress caused by being observed. In three experiments, we explore how being observed affects participants' ability to recognise faces as it relates to the aforementioned theories - easier face recognition tasks should be completed with more success under observation relative to harder tasks. In Experiment 1, we found that being observed during the learning phase of an old/new recognition paradigm caused participants to be less accurate at the test phase than not being observed. Being observed at test did not affect accuracy. We replicated these findings in an line-up type task in Experiment 2. Finally, in Experiment 3, we assessed whether these effects were due to the difficulty of the task or due to the physiological stress being observed caused. We found that while observation caused physiological stress, it did not relate to accuracy. Moderately difficult tasks (upright unfamiliar face recognition and inverted familiar face recognition) were detrimentally affected by being observed, whereas easy (upright familiar face recognition) and difficult tasks (inverted unfamiliar face recognition) were unaffected by this manipulation. We explain these results in terms of the direct effects being observed has on task performance for moderately difficult tasks and discuss the implications of these results to cognitive psychological experimentation