1,720,962 research outputs found
Children's Environmental and Moral Conceptions of Protecting an Endangered Animal
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2014Emerging research suggests that children extend moral regard to the natural world (e.g., forests and waterways). When they do, their moral reasoning is predominately focused on human concerns, wherein the natural world has value insofar as it has value to humans. Biocentrism is the moral view that the natural world has value independent of its value to humans. Previous research has found only about 4% of children employed biocentric reasoning and that there was little evidence that it appeared in children younger than 10-12 years old. The research thus far has largely focused on scenarios where humans cause harm to non-sentient natural entities and ecosystems. The current study is the first to focus on children's moral reasoning in the context of humans harming an animal species. Fifty-two children equally divided across two age groups (7- and 10-years-old, gender balanced) were interviewed regarding their understanding of, and beliefs/values about protecting an endangered animal (the gray wolf); their moral obligatory judgments towards humans harming the animal; and their conceptions of animal rights. Results showed that children as young as seven-years-old extended moral obligations to not harming the wolf. Children as young as seven-years-old endorsed biocentric reasoning, particularly in the form of intrinsic value concerns. Furthermore, there was a developmental shift in biocentric reasoning. Ten-year-olds were more likely to express justice-oriented biocentric reasoning (and did so to a greater degree) than the seven-year-old participants. Still, a substantial number of seven-year-olds endorsed biocentric justice-oriented reasoning. Implications for understanding the construction of moral concerns for the environment are discussed, and applications of these findings and future directions for research are offered
Inequitable Effects of COVID-19 on Time Spent in Urban Nature Associated with Sense of Belonging: A Case Study of Seattle with Asian, Black, Latino, and White Residents
No full textThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2022The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted basically everyone in urban areas. Some of these impacts in the United States have negatively affected People of Color more than their White counterparts. Using Seattle, Washington as a case study, I investigated whether inequitable effects would appear in residents’ interactions with urban nature (such as urban green space), and, if so, why. Using a 48-question instrument developed for this study, 300 residents were surveyed, equally divided across 4 racial/ethnic groups: Asian, Black, Latino, and White. Results showed that during the span of about six months after the onset of the pandemic, Black and Latino residents experienced a significant loss of time in urban nature, while Asian and White residents did not. This decrease in the Black and Latino groups was partly explained by their feeling like they did not belong in their surrounding urban nature, as assessed by a newly developed measurement for Sense of Belonging. This measurement consisted of six themes: Ease of Access, Safety, Feeling Out of Place, Unwelcomeness, Institutional Acceptance, and Different Ways of Interacting with Nature Acceptance. These six themes provide guidance for how governmental agencies can promote more equitable access to urban nature during the pandemic and beyond
Adults' Attributions of Psychological Agency, Credit, and Fairness to a Humanoid Social Robot
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2014People frequently collaborate with one another - they work on intellectual, artistic, or other pursuits to generate ideas or products that are different, and ideally better, than an individual alone could create. In our evolving technological landscape, the collaborative process is changing. Not only can we communicate with one another and access and share information through our technologies, but we can also interact directly with our technologies, like social robots. Provocative and important questions emerge with regard to the creative products we may generate with them: Will robots be credited for their contributions? What characteristics does a robot need to have in order to beget attributions of credit? Finally, would it be unfair to a robot not to attribute credit to the robot when it makes a contribution, and if so, what is the nature of that unfairness? This set of four studies sought to address these questions by investigating adults' attributions of psychological agency, credit, and fairness to a humanoid social robot, Robovie. In Study 1, 24 adults interacted with Robovie for approximately 30-minutes, and were then interviewed about creditworthiness and fairness. In Study 2, 80 adults were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions (40 per condition) in which Robovie's behavior was described either as internally or externally generated (i.e., remotely controlled). In Study 3, 240 adults were randomly assigned to 1 of 8 conditions (40 per condition) that involved manipulating three aspects of Robovie's behavior: speech, movement, and eye gaze (a 2 x 2 x 2 design). All participants from Studies 2 and 3 then watched a 4-minute video of a Study 1 participant interacting with Robovie, and answered questions about Robovie's psychological agency and creditworthiness. In Study 4, 48 adults were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 conditions (24 per condition) in which Robovie's behavior was described as either internally or externally generated. All participants watched a 7-minute human-robot interaction video, then were interviewed to ascertain their attributions of psychological agency, creditworthiness, and fairness to Robovie. Across all four studies, results indicated that adults do attribute credit to a social robot that engages with a person on a collaborative task. Results from Studies 2, 3, and 4 show that adults attribute significantly more agency to Robovie when its behaviors, specifically speech (Study 3), are self-generated, and further demonstrate that attributions of agency fully mediate the relationship between self-generated behavior and the attribution of credit to Robovie (Study 2). Finally, results from Study 4 suggest that adults are willing to commit to Robovie as the kind of entity that can find itself in an unfair situation --significantly more so when its behaviors are self-generated than when they are remotely controlled --while simultaneously reporting that Robovie cannot experience unfairness. Results are discussed in light of the possibility that social robots are part of a novel category of beings, about which we reason differently than we do about canonical agents. Further discussion addresses the implications of this work for robot design; what it means for an entity to have a mind; and whether, in creating technologies that appear to think and feel, we are engaging in a form of deception. Also discussed are future directions for research in this exciting new area of investigation
Presence Scale Development: Psychometrics and Validity
Full text linkThesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2023This Master’s Thesis reports on Exploratory Factor Analyses in two pilot samples (N = 599, N = 384) and Confirmatory Factor Analyses (N = 601) in a new nationally representative sample to complete a scale to measure Presence, a newly identified construct. After the factor structure of Presence replicated in both pilot studies, the conceptual model of Presence was revised and item deletion was performed through a series of Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses on both pilot datasets to evaluate item properties, such as cross-loadings, reliabilities, and model fit, in tandem with theoretical considerations. Confirmatory Factor Analyses on the final new dataset revealed that the 14 item Presence Scale exhibited strong psychometric properties and model fit. Validity analyses comparing Presence with theoretically related constructs were also examined and indicate that Presence is a novel contribution to psychology
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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