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The Effects Of Manipulating Problem Completion Rates On Assignment Choice And Preference Consistency, Kiley Bliss

Theses and Dissertations

A procedure known as mathematics interspersing provides students with additional opportunities (i.e., brief math problems) to complete math problems within an assignment by embedding brief additional problems among longer target problems. Previous research (e.g., Cates & Dalenberg, 2005) found that the more problems completed on an assignment with interspersing, the higher the likelihood the student chooses that assignment relative to an assignment without interspersing. Some students, however, choose assignments without interspersing.

The purpose of this investigation was to focus on students who do not choose assignments (i.e., non-choosers) with interspersing relative to assignments without interspersing and replicate and extend previous …

Sharing: Social Behavior In Situations Of Risk, Stephanie Theresia Stilling

Dissertations

The present study will experimentally investigate human cooperation (sharing) in a laboratory foraging task that simulates environmental variability and resource scarcity (shortfall risk). Specifically, it investigates whether a risk-reduction model of sharing developed by evolutionary biologists (derived from a risk-sensitive optimization model known as the energy-budget rule) could predict human cooperative behavior. Participants respond to earn points exchangeable for money when point gains were unpredictable. Failures to acquire sufficient points result in a loss of accumulated earnings (a shortfall). Participants are given the choice between working alone or working with others. The difficulty of meeting the earnings requirement is manipulated …