Browsing by Supervisor "McEwan, James S.A."
Now showing items 1-20 of 44
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A Magnitude Effect in Temporal discounting with Hens
(University of Waikato, 2014)This study aimed to determine whether a magnitude effect could be obtained in temporal discounting with brown shaver hens. Subjects responded in a classic self-control situation for the choice between a smaller-sooner ... -
A Test of Weber's Law with Dogs
(University of Waikato, 2013)This study investigated Weber’s Law through a temporal bisection procedure using domestic dogs as subjects, a previously untested species in temporal bisections. Six dogs were trained to response to the blue lever when the ... -
A visual discrimination task to identify judgement bias in hens (Gallus gallus domesticus).
(University of Waikato, 2016)This study aimed to investigate whether the use of a judgement bias task with differential reinforcement was suitable to assess emotional states (positive or negative affect) in domestic hens. Six hens were trained to ... -
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Stress and Burnout: Evaluating the effect of the online training, PsyFlex6 for Behavioural Therapists
(University of Waikato, 2017)The present research used a randomized controlled design to evaluate the effects of ‘PsyFlex6,’ an online Acceptance and Commitment Training paradigm, for behavioural therapists. Twelve participants completed the six-week ... -
An Analysis of the Impact of Reinforcement on Response Variability on Multiple Behavioural Dimensions
(University of Waikato, 2016)A series of four experiments were carried out to examine whether increases in variability in responding on some dimensions of a behaviour as a result of reinforcement generalised to other dimensions of the same behaviour. ... -
An Investigation into Establishing (Motivating) Operations
(University of Waikato, 2017)Motivating Operations (MOs) are a fundamental concept in behavioural psychology. Despite this, empirical research into MOs is lacking. The overall aim of this thesis is to contribute to the experimental literature base for ... -
An Investigation Into Rate-building and Cues on Conditional Discrimination Performance Using a Repeated Acquisition Procedure
(University of Waikato, 2014)The present study consisted of eleven experiments divided between two series of studies. The first part of Series 1 aimed at replicating the findings of Porritt (2007) and Porritt et al. (2009). Findings from Series 1 ... -
An investigation into the persistence-strengthening effects of differential reinforcement of alternative (DRA) behaviour
(The University of Waikato, 2018)Ten experiments used hens to investigate the effects of different disruptive events and ways of introducing differential reinforcement of alternative behaviour (DRA), on the persistence of responding. Of interest was the ... -
Body Weight as a Motivating Operation: The Effect of Body Weight on Demand for Food in Hens.
(University of Waikato, 2014)Demand for wheat and puffed wheat was examined in six hens, using an ascending geometric progression of fixed-ratio schedules of reinforcement. Hens responded by pecking a key for 2-s access to food in 40-min sessions. The ... -
Choosing Choice: An Assessment of Children's Preference to Choose
(University of Waikato, 2016)The current study examined the effects of choosing among alternatives for five children in a series of experiments. In the first, a concurrent-chains arrangement was used to assess all participant’s preferences for choice ... -
Choosing to Choose: Preference for free-choice over forced-choice
(University of Waikato, 2013)Brown Shaver hens responded on a concurrent chain procedure, containing two independent initial link keys, that ran on VI 30-s schedules. Following the conclusion of the initial link schedules either 1 or 2 terminal link ... -
Contingency Control of Spatial Responding
(University of Waikato, 2014)This study aimed to investigate fluency in domestic hens. Three experiments involved a simple grid task to see if correct responses, or components such as pecking, could become fluent for reinforcement, whilst incorrect ... -
Demonstrating and Investigating Resurgence with Human Participants in Laboratory Research
(University of Waikato, 2015)Resurgence is the recurrence of a previously extinguished behaviour. Resurgence, a behavioural phenomenon, is of increased interest in animal and clinical human research. Three recent accounts have explained the resurgence ... -
Differential Reinforcement of Low-Rate Behaviour In The Brush Tail Possum Explicit Alternative Responses During Differential Reinforcement of Low-Rate Responding
(The University of Waikato, 2017)Differential reinforcement of low rate responding (DRL) can be defined as withholding reinforcement until probability of a target behaviour has decreased to a particular criterion. Typically, the DRL lowers the overall ... -
Dog Behaviour - Effect of Delay To Reinforcement
(University of Waikato, 2012)Dogs were fed dry food as reinforcement and were required to touch a wand with their nose to get that reinforcement. In the first study, half the dogs were given immediate reinforcement, while for the remaining dogs ... -
The effect of altering maintenance diet on demand for reinforcers.
(University of Waikato, 2011)Six hens’ preferences between whole grain wheat, commercial laying pellets and puffed wheat were assessed using a free-access procedure. Wheat was found to be the preferred food of three hens, pellets were preferred by ... -
Effect of response rates on non-distracted and distracted conditional discrimination performance
(University of Waikato, 2012)Two experiments were carried out in order to see if higher rates of responding during training result in higher stability of accuracy in the face of distraction. In the first experiment hens were exposed to a repeated ... -
The Effectiveness of Precision Teaching when Working with Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(The University of Waikato, 2010)A two-dyad multiple baseline design was used to determine if Precision Teaching (PT) was effective in improving the target skills of sight word recognition for two boys aged six and eight (Group A) and multiplication for ... -
Effects of sample-set size on delayed-matching-to-sample
(The University of Waikato, 2002)In a series of experiments the discriminative performance of university students was assessed using a Delayed-Matching-to-Sample task. White disks, presented on computer screens, served as stimuli. For the general DMTS ... -
Habituation and Dishabituation of Physical Activity
(University of Waikato, 2015)Three experiments with single subject research designs were conducted to see whether habituation occurred as human participants completed physical activity. Experiment 1 had an arrangement where participant’s rates of ...
