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Multiple instance verification
(Microtome Publishing, 2025) Xu, Xin; Frank, Eibe; Holmes, Geoffrey
We explore multiple instance verification, a problem setting in which a query instance is verified against a bag of target instances with heterogeneous, unknown relevancy. We show that naive adaptations of attention-based multiple instance learning (MIL) methods and standard verification methods like Siamese neural networks are unsuitable for this setting: directly combining state-of-the-art (SOTA) MIL methods and Siamese networks is shown to be no better, and sometimes significantly worse, than a simple baseline model. Postulating that this may be caused by the failure of the representation of the target bag to incorporate the query instance, we introduce a new pooling approach named “cross-attention pooling” (CAP). Under the CAP framework, we propose two novel attention functions to address the challenge of distinguishing between highly similar instances in a target bag. Through empirical studies on three different verification tasks, we demonstrate that CAP outperforms adaptations of SOTA MIL methods and the baseline by substantial margins, in terms of both classification accuracy and the ability to detect key instances. The superior ability to identify key instances is attributed to the new attention functions by ablation studies.
“I don’t want to be this chaos that I live in”: Stories of resilience from adult survivors of child maltreatment
(The University of Waikato, 2026) Cameron, Lita; Jackson, Kimberly M.
Child maltreatment is a devastating public health issue with enduring effects across the lifespan. Research has focused on resilience to understand how individuals cope and adapt following adversity. However, psychological research predominately characterises resilience as an individual trait, focusing on protective factors to inform individual, therapy based interventions. Drawing on community psychology’s liberatory orientation, this thesis takes a qualitative, relational approach to resilience research, exploring how adult survivors of childhood maltreatment understand and experience resilience. It investigates what survivors find meaningful in facilitating their resilience, the role of community and social supports, and how their accounts compare with the dominant model of resilience as adaptive ‘bouncing back’. Narrative methods were used to explore how participants storied their resilience, contextualised by my insider researcher position. Semi-structured interviews, incorporating a mind mapping activity, were conducted with three participants. Narrative analysis was used to examine the function of participants’ stories of resilience. Participants’ accounts reflected a broader landscape of healing than typically emphasised in resilience literature, with therapeutic resources and interventions forming a small role. Participants also storied their resilience through ‘giving back’, using their experiences to prevent others’ suffering. Finally, resilience was formed and maintained through ongoing, exhausting labour. Overall, this thesis argues that recognising resilience as labour has important implications for conceptualising resilience and supporting survivors.
Affiliative and hostile grooming in child sexual abuse cases: Juror blame attribution and the role of expert testimony
(The University of Waikato, 2026-05-16) Van Den Anker, Kate; Evelo, Andrew
This study examined whether mock jurors’ evaluations of child sexual abuse (CSA) differ as a function of grooming type (affiliative vs. hostile) and the presence of expert testimony. Drawing on attribution theory, rape-myth frameworks, and the Sexual Grooming Model, it was hypothesised that affiliative grooming would be associated with greater victim blame, reduced perpetrator responsibility, and more lenient sentencing relative to hostile grooming, and that expert testimony would reduce these biases by clarifying the manipulative and strategic nature of grooming behaviours. A 2 × 2 × 2 mixed-subjects experimental design was used, in which participants (N = 271) recruited via CloudResearch Connect read a CSA vignette depicting either affiliative or hostile grooming, with or without expert testimony. Participants then completed measures of victim and perpetrator blame and provided sentencing recommendations. Contrary to predictions, grooming type and expert testimony did not significantly influence victim blame, perpetrator blame, or sentencing recommendations. Across conditions, participants attributed high responsibility to the perpetrator and minimal responsibility to the victim. Equivalence testing indicated that observed differences in sentencing were not statistically equivalent within a pre-specified one-year bound, although effects were small and generally consistent in direction with hypotheses. These findings suggest that when CSA is clearly established and offender responsibility is uncontested, juror judgments may be driven primarily by moral certainty rather than variations in grooming presentation. The absence of expert testimony effects further suggests that such interventions may be most relevant in contexts characterised by ambiguity, misinformation, or evidentiary uncertainty, rather than cases where responsibility is already clearly assigned. Overall, this study introduces an affiliative–hostile grooming framework within juror decision-making research and suggests that grooming distinctions may have limited influence under conditions of confirmed abuse. Future research should examine these effects in contexts involving greater evidentiary ambiguity and more ecologically valid trial processes.
Reporting guidelines for running biomechanics and footwear studies using three-dimensional motion capture
(Taylor & Francis, 2023) Hébert-Losier, Kim; Dai, Boyi; Nunome, Hiroyuki; Kong, Pui Wah; Hobara, Hiroaki; Hsu, Wei-Chun; Bradshaw, Elizabeth J.; Fong, Daniel T.P.; Vanwanseele, Benedicte
Running shoes act as an interface between the foot and the ground and play a central role in running. Running shoes are constantly evolving, as is the research on running biomechanics and footwear. Experts agree that comfort, injury prevention, and performance are important factors to consider in the design and manufacturing of running footwear; however, these topics are often complex to investigate due to their multifactorial, individualised, or subjective nature with no clear evidence-based direction for footwear prescription.
Moving beyond models: Theorizing physical disability in the sociology of sport
(Human Kinetics, 2021) Brighton, James; Townsend, Robert C.; Campbell, Natalie; Williams, Toni L.
In this paper we explore current theoretical approaches available from the discipline of critical disability studies (CDS) for conceptualizing physical disability and advocate how these understandings can advance sociological research on disability sport. After reviewing a dominant “models” approach that has historically been employed, we illuminate how theoretical architecture provided by selected sociological theorists (Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Zygmunt Bauman) and from aesthetic, cyborg, and new materialist approaches can help reveal the materialist conditions, sociocultural structures, and lived realities of disability. In doing so, we appeal to researchers of disability sport to develop critical understandings of why alternative theoretical approaches are valuable, what theoretical choices to make, and how we can use theory to highlight oppression and empower those involved in disability sport.