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International literature on early childhood education refers to visual arts education as central to educational practice. However, visual art lessons in mainstream reception units tend to focus on individual children experimenting individually with art media. An assumption underpinning this research was that structured group activities in art lessons can benefit children with autism in developing social interaction skills. Some scholars recommended modifying mainstream art activities in order to facilitate reciprocal interaction among children with autism, their peers and teachers. The limited number of studies in this field that stimulated the current research into the potential use of visual arts lessons to teach young children with autism. The project took the form of action research in a reception class of a mainstream school in the south west of Greece with four separate cycles of planning, acting, observing and reflecting on practical action. The research developed, implemented and evaluated the effectiveness of a visual arts-based curriculum unit for children with autism, aged 4 to 7 years. It consisted of four sessions and the outcome was a small video animation. The curriculum content was organised around constructing and narrating the story, creating the characters using the traditional art medium of plasticine and finally using the stop-motion application of the iPad to create a video animation. The curriculum intervention set out to: (i) enhance children on the spectrum social interaction skills and (ii) bolster their task engagement through digital storytelling and animation, as part of a team. The main findings showed that the children with autism were more engaged and motivated during the plasticine and iPad tasks. During these tasks, children on the autism spectrum were more included and reinforced for social interactions, such as turn-taking and give-and-take with their peers. They were less engaged or included during a story narration task. However, their engagement and attention were sustained when the narration was accompanied by drawings and pictures. Overall, the visual arts curriculum unit offered opportunities for interaction and enhancement of co-operation, task participation and inclusion. The structure of the sessions and the visual instruction strategies were beneficial, regarding understanding sessions' content, managing challenging behaviours, as well as improving motivation, participation and turn-taking. Finally, the study discusses effective strategies to include young children with autism in mainstream classrooms. It also discusses the original development of visual arts curriculum units that combine traditional art media with information and communications technology (ICT) devices, and their delivery from teachers to classes, comprising children that are both 'typically' developing and with autism.

Now as in the past, White, middle-class men in Britain, despite their numerical minority status, are over-represented in positions of power. The normative discourses of Whiteness, masculinity, and middle-classness have provided them the freedom to perform their identities 'unremarked upon' and afforded them intersectional privilege. However, the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo campaigns have shone a critical light on the day-to-day cultural practices of White, middle-class men and cast them as unacceptable. Consequently, the invisibility of their intersectional privilege is being eroded and the hegemonic social conditions their normativity creates are being challenged. This thesis seeks to understand how White, middle-class men are responding to these challenges and their new-found visibility. The existing scholarship on privilege theorises that privilege is maintained through its invisibility and by hegemonic discourses' ability to adapt in changing social contexts. As such, existing accounts do not reveal how privilege responds when it is made visible. To resolve this problem, drawing on Foucault's and Butler's theories of subjectification, identity, and agency, whilst working with the literature on Whiteness, masculinity, class, and privilege, I develop a framework that identifies talk as the site of enquiry and provides for the examination of how White, middle-class masculine subjects agentively respond to this critical visibility. These processes are explored through qualitative sociological research involving 37 'conversations' with 19 respondents representing a range of ages, professions, and levels of income and education across 29 social settings over a 6-month period. The study reveals that in conversation with each other White, middle-class men agentively articulate 'strategies of signification' in their talk about race, gender, and class that work to reconstitute their normativity, despite their visibility, and reinforce existing social hierarchies. They do this in ways that re-establish the acceptability of their identities without necessitating any change in behaviour or relinquishing their privilege.

Social and physical disorders arising from global population ageing present acute and formidable challenges for future spatial planners. While the awareness of place-based risk factors for negative phenomena such as social isolation and loneliness is gathering pace, the current understanding of the relationship between perceived neighbourhood characteristics and social interaction is relatively underdeveloped. In particular, little is known about how perception of diverse neighbourhood characteristics in suburban neighbourhoods relates to diverse forms of social interaction, with the argument made that current local spatial planning policy is abstract in its reference to the social wellbeing of older adults. Drawing on a case study located in a south Belfast neighbourhood disaggregated by socio-economic and deprivation characteristics, the thesis investigates opportunities for and barriers to social interaction emerging from neighbourhood characteristics. In attempting to understand this dynamic, the theoretical lens of environmental affordances is adopted as a framework for understanding the transitory and often mobility-dependent nature of the spatial opportunities offered to older adults. Through the use of a comprehensive questionnaire survey with 347 residents, the research investigates the inter-relationships between self-rated mobility, frequency and type of social interaction and perception of neighbourhood quality, applying factor analysis to identify the dominant discourses underlying subjective neighbourhood quality. The analysis indicates that positively rated neighbourhood characteristics related to better mobility and higher frequencies of diverse modes of social interaction. Through follow-up interviews with public health and planning policy and practice, the research uncovers a reluctance around the concept of age-specific planning policy, underscored by an adherence to spatial equality. Accordingly, the thesis uses the results of the survey to suggest a series of short term and long-term recommendations for planning policy and practice which instead aim to improve spatial equity for older adults through the provision of better environmental maintenance, access to greenspace, the reduction of car dependency and the rethinking of in-neighbourhood housing options. Finally, it is recommended that urban planning scholars give more credence to socio-spatial affordances experienced by older adults in suburban neighbourhoods.

The 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and subsequent restrictions on families in England interrupted children's typical social activities. The requirement to stay at home issued by the government (Prime Minister's Office, 2020a) in Spring 2020 meant that children's access to social interactions in settings such as schools, clubs, parks, neighbours' gardens, family member's homes was affected. In this research, my aim was to explore the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on children's social lives. I focused on children in middle childhood (defined here as 7-11) owing to the significant role of friendships and peer interaction for children in this age range (Maunder & Monks, 2019). In both phases of the research, the focus was on children's experiences prior to the full school reopening in September 2020. In phase one, I sought to understand any changes in children's social interactions and play during the COVID-19 restrictions and factors associated with changes. Data collected in phase one included questionnaire responses from 68 caregivers and 63 children, in addition to interviews with seven caregivers. In phase two, I interviewed seven children to gather their perceptions of any changes to their social interactions and play during COVID-19 restrictions. For analysis, I examined questionnaire data separately for caregivers and children using both descriptive and inferential statistics. I then also analysed a linked sample of questionnaire responses where both caregiver and child had completed the survey (n = 80; 40 paired responses). To analyse interview data, I used reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019) to understand participant's experiences and perspectives. The findings of this research illustrate the many ways in which children's social interactions with household and non-household members had changed during the COVID-19 restrictions. Findings discussed include changes to children's: time spent with others; mediums of interaction and digital media use; quality of relationships with others; and experiences of social wellbeing. The findings also document some factors associated with changes to children's social interactions including factors associated with the caregiver (e.g. working commitments or self-efficacy), factors associated with familial context (e.g. space within the home) and factors associated with the child (e.g. gender or additional needs). Results highlight the ways in which participants both positively and negatively appraised changes to social interactions. The findings from questionnaire and interview responses are presented separately in chapters four to seven and are then followed by an overall discussion in chapter eight. In chapter eight, I bring together findings from the quantitative and qualitative results into four key areas which are: Positive aspects of changes to children's social interactions; increased use of digital media for social interactions; the impact of caregiver self-efficacy on children's social interactions; and the impact of caregivers' working patterns on children's social interactions. I end by considering limitations to this research and outlining areas where these findings could be applicable beyond the COVID-19 pandemic for practice, policy, and future research.

Visual perspective taking lies at the heart of social interactions, allowing people to readily compute what another person can see, or how they see it (Flavell et al., 1981). This ability not only links to the unique human propensity to infer others’ beliefs, desires, and goals (Schurz et al., 2015), but also to more general spatial abilities such as navigation skill (Kozhevnikov et al., 2006) and action planning (Creem-Regehr et al., 2013). What is unclear is how others’ perspectives are represented. While several studies have in the past implied that others’ perspectives are represented in a similar way as our own viewpoint (e.g. Freundlieb et al., 2016; Sampson et al., 2010; Surtees et al., 2016) none have demonstrated the form that this overlapping perspective takes, and how these altercentric representations interfere with our own. The experiments in this thesis provide the first known evidence that when taking another’s perspective, representations of their visual input take a (quasi)-perceptual form, and can drive perceptual decision making in the same way as own input (e.g. Roelfsema & de Lange, 2016). Using a modified mental rotation paradigm (Shepard & Metzler, 1971), we simply asked participants to state whether alphanumeric characters appearing at varying orientations away from upright were canonical or mirror inverted (e.g. “R” vs. “Я”). In some scenes another person was present, seen sitting at 90 degrees either to the left or the right of the character. We first confirmed the classic mental rotation effect, where response times increase gradually as a function of the item’s increasing angular disparity away from upright. Crucially, we also found that the angular disparity relative to the inserted persons also produced this response pattern, and found that participants responded surprisingly quickly to items that would normally be difficult when they were facing the other person. These effects occurred spontaneously, and specifically in the presence of a human (but not a lamp), even when the other person was task irrelevant. Subsequent studies showed these effects were not sensitive to the looking direction of the other person, but instead reflected their position in space more generally. Finally, we found that a person’s perceived ability to move (and therefore motorically emulate the position of the other person) did not influence these effects. These findings show that (1) others’ perspectives can indeed ‘stand in’ for our own input, taking the form of a perceptual simulation, which paints the (imagined) perspective of another person onto our own perception, (2) these simulations reflect what someone could – in principle – see from their position in space, and speculate that (3) VPT emerged primarily to support navigation of, and interaction with, the environment and that more sophisticated Theory of Mind may then capitalise on the epistemic insight derived through more primitive forms of VPT.

This thesis puts forward a strong argument for why more up-to-date interactional research is needed into disputes and why disciplines, methodological approaches and theories should come second to the phenomenon. This thesis investigates how people behave in disputes. Disputes are a ubiquitous part of everyday life - we know a great a deal about disputes in particular contexts, how people disagree, and how disputes can be resolved. However, little is known about the specific interactional features of public disputes. Public disputes are disputes which occur in a public place where there are onlookers - for instance, on public transport, on the radio, or during protests, for instance. These are activities which regularly occur throughout everyday life as our opinions, beliefs, views, identity and/or knowledge etc. clash. This research examines actual, naturally-occurring disputes between strangers in public. The focus is on the ways that people challenge those contestations, resist those challenges, and manage their relationship with their co-disputant. The data comprises a corpus of over 100 recordings of disputes between members of the public. The data were collected, transcribed, and analysed within an ethnomethodological framework using a combination of conversation analysis, membership categorisation analysis, and discursive psychology in order to demonstrate how the phenomenon is handled sequentially and rhetorically. This combination of approaches centres the phenomena rather than focusing on the application of methods. The three analytic chapters are organised around different features of disputes and address the overall structural organisation of a dispute. The first analytic chapter inspects enticing sequences, which is a way that a challenge can be produced that reverses the logic of the other's argument. This chapter (Chapter 3) builds on previous research, and lays the groundwork for the other chapters, to show the sequential placement and forms of resistance to challenges. This illustrates resistance as a solution to the practical problem of being trapped in a challenge with nowhere to go. The second analytic chapter investigates how people do partitioning, that is, how they exploit the boundaries of their situated identity, or category (i.e. from radio caller to father). This chapter (Chapter 4) shows how people reconfigure their relationship with their co-disputant(s), and how certain actions (i.e. requests, directives, instructions) trade on the relevance of this new relationship. The final analytic chapter examines how people work to appear 'reasonable' in a dispute. People seek to win a dispute and one way of accomplishing that is to be the 'reasonable' person relative to the other's unreasonable behaviour. In this chapter (Chapter 5), I unpack this to show how, through meta-talk, people present their behaviour as reasonable, or the other's behaviour as unreasonable, to produce a purportedly-rational argument. I reveal that whilst participants rarely express reasonableness, they do respond to transgressions of conversational norms (i.e. turn-taking, sequence). Consequently, this accomplishes a turn-at-talk and a chance to control the direction of the dispute. The thesis presents a state-of-the-art examination of disputative interactions and contributes significantly to our understanding of the structural organisation of disputes and how people behave in public places. Throughout the course of the thesis, I establish frameworks for future research that combine ethnomethodological approaches, deals with the 'messiness' and difficulty of public video-recordings, and develops an understanding of what a dispute actually is.

In social marketing's efforts to address health-related societal issues such as the insufficiency of physical activity and the rise of obesity, the field has recently embraced the idea of gamification. Drawing from extant literature on social marketing and gamification, this study focuses on value co-creation, motivation and perceived value, and explores an existing gamified system for physical activity from the customers' point of view. The purpose is to learn as much as possible from that system and translate it into meaningful insights which can be used by social marketers in designing and successfully implementing interventions that incorporate gamification. Netnographic methods are being deployed (Kozinets 2015), which involve a fourteen-month long participation in the platform, with the output of a netnographic diary, data from private online discussion groups, and semi-structured interviews. The gamified system is considered as a service, and studied according to the Service-Dominant Logic (Vargo & Lusch 2008). A map of the field is drawn, which is based on the interactions between providers and customers (Grönroos & Voima 2013), and the notion of 'value-in-engagement' is introduced and explained. Subsequently, a thematic analysis is conducted where positive and negative value creation processes are identified, and subdivided into value (co-)creation, (co-)protection/ (co-)recovery, (co-)inhibition, and (co-)destruction (Echeverri & Skålén 2011; Grönroos & Voima 2013). The analysis continues with an investigation of the motivational processes behind value creation, by exploring the main constructs of the Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan 1985a; 1985b). Finally, four processes of developing value perceptions are identified and explained, while dimensions of perceived value in social marketing literature (Zainuddin et al. 2017) are being applied and extended. Implications for research and practice are drawn which highlight the role of the intervention provider as a value facilitator and of the customer as a value co-creator, while taking into consideration the importance of motivational energy and direction, psychological needs satisfaction and cognitive processes of developing value perceptions. Recommendations for future research are provided.

Visual 'person perception' research has largely focused on responses to individual human stimuli, for example, single faces or bodies presented in isolation. However, social interactions contain unique social information that cannot be inferred from isolated individuals, for example, whether two interactors share a common goal. Similarly, recent behavioural research demonstrates that visual responses to face and body information of interacting individuals are qualitatively different than when they are not interacting. However, little is known about the neural basis of these responses to interactive behaviour. The work presented in this thesis aims to characterize the neural correlates of third person social interaction perception. Across three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies, converging evidence implicates the posterior temporal lobe as a key region in recognizing, differentiating, and integrating interactive information. The results from these experiments suggest that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and extrastriate body area (EBA) play important complementary roles in third person social interaction perception, making valuable contributions to the emerging field of social interaction research.

This thesis is about knowledge that interconnects across different domains, and the social interactions that support the mobilisation of such knowledge for clinical practice. These issues are explored in the context of sepsis care in Scotland. Sepsis claims the lives of at least 52,000 people in the UK each year, more than breast, bowel and prostate cancer combined. While Hippocrates observed the dangers of sepsis well over two thousand years ago, only in the last 25 years has a coordinated research strategy been established to guide modern therapeutic efforts. Yet despite a mounting clinical evidence base, the cause(s), progression, treatment and even the very definition of sepsis remain often unclear and sometimes contested. In care settings, the clinical manifestations of sepsis are frequently subtle and difficult to distinguish from other common conditions, and the lack of a definitive diagnostic test heightens the range of knowledge clinicians depend upon in order to recognise and treat potentially septic patients. Within this context of uncertainty, connecting the domains of research, policy and practice remains an enduring concern in sepsis care, as with many other clinical issues. In particular, there are significant challenges in ensuring that knowledge (and knowing) in each of these domains better connect for continued improvements in patient care. This thesis then contributes to improved understanding of the persistent ‘knowing in practice' problem: using a knowledge mobilisation framing to capture the development, sharing, and use of knowledge, where these processes are conceptualised as multifaceted and intertwined rather than segmented and detached. With a dual focus on both knowers and their knowledge, this work seeks a closer understanding of the social interactions that contribute to an interconnected ‘knowledge network', a network that can, in turn, underpin better, safer patient care. Using a qualitative case study design, this study provides a detailed exploration of an interconnected knowledge network (on sepsis care in Scotland) that successfully drew together the research, policy, and practice communities and resulted in improved patient outcomes. Drawing on documentary, observational, and interview data, this work found that knowledge is carefully curated (through social interactions) in order to connect knowledge from the different domains and to support the mobilisation of new actionable understandings for care. Tensions within both what knowledge ‘is', as well as the social system in which knowledge is employed, are negotiated and nurtured by social practices that have been termed ‘shepherding'. Shepherding practices are those that tend to the social interactions that support the mobilisation of knowledge, and they are in evidence throughout the distributed areas of research, policy and practice. In concluding, this thesis argues that – because knowledge is complex and emergent, and because mobilising knowledge is an ongoing social process – a developmental perspective needs to be taken as the normative frame for the ‘knowing in practice' problem. The thesis makes two main contributions: • empirically it provides a rich and detailed account of interconnected knowledge and the social interactions that contribute to the mobilisation of that knowledge in sepsis care in Scotland; • theoretically, this work extends the academic literature that explores the diversity, complexity, and interconnectivity of knowledge for practice by emphasising the role of social interactions in supporting knowledge networks; and the study demonstrates the successful use of Soft Knowledge Systems (SKS) and Clinical Mindlines (CM) as a combined ‘relational knowledge systems' lens to better understand knowledge mobilisation processes.

Over the last few decades, the emergence of various social problems within the urban neighbourhoods of cities, especially in developed countries such as the UK, has called for further research into the relationship between the built environment and the social sustainability of urban developments. Recently, the Scottish government and local authorities have started to revisit and refine their policies and guidelines in order to promote positive social interaction between residents, which is a critical factor in creating a sense of community, and preventing social problems, such as segregation, crime, and apathy. However, in the absence of any detailed information or any practical framework for designers, these policies and guidelines have ended up drawing pictures of an ideal world without helping the designers with the socially responsive solutions. Using multiple case studies, this research aims to establish if and how the design of urban residential developments can facilitate social interaction between residents in Scotland. To achieve this aim, primary data have been collected from seven urban residential developments in Scotland. Self-completion questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and a site survey, have been used to collect data in three areas: social interaction patterns, use of communal spaces and design qualities of the communal spaces within selected developments. Content analysis and GIS analytical maps have been used to analyse the data. The findings show that the access routes and service spaces of urban residential developments, such as entrances, lifts and corridors accommodate most of the interactions between residents. This calls for more attention to the design of these unintentional communal spaces as actual places of contact among neighbours. A number of physical attributes, mostly concerned with the affordance, privacy, physical proximity and visual attractiveness of communal spaces have been found to affect social interaction and the use of space patterns within selected case studies. This research contributes to the much-needed empirical evidence to inform the design of future sustainable housing developments in Scotland by creating a detailed list of design recommendations based on empirical evidence along with modifications of existing assumptions about the quality and quantity of social interaction among residents and the role of communal spaces in facilitating these interactions. It also contributes to our knowledge by introducing new methods of empirical research in the built environment, specifically for research on building scale by expanding the use of analytical GIS maps and the refinement of existing indicators and measures.

Robots have been used in a variety of education, therapy or entertainment contexts. This thesis introduces the novel application of using humanoid robots for Robot-Mediated Interviews (RMIs). In the initial stages of this research it was necessary to first establish as a baseline if children would respond to a robot in an interview setting, therefore the first study compared how children responded to a robot and a human in an interview setting. Following this successful initial investigation, the second study expanded on this research by examining how children would respond to different types and difficulty of questions from a robot compared to a human interviewer. Building on these studies, the third study investigated how a RMI approach would work for children with special needs. Following the positive results from the three studies indicating that a RMI approach may have some potential, three separate user panel sessions were organised with user groups that have expertise in working with children and for whom the system would be potentially useful in their daily work. The panel sessions were designed to gather feedback on the previous studies and outline a set of requirements to make a RMI system feasible for real world users. The feedback and requirements from the user groups were considered and implemented in the system before conducting a final field trial of the system with a potential real world user. The results of the studies in this research reveal that the children generally interacted with KASPAR in a very similar to how they interacted with a human interviewer regardless of question type or difficulty. The feedback gathered from experts working with children suggested that the three most important and desirable features of a RMI system were: reliability, flexibility and ease of use. The feedback from the experts also indicated that a RMI system would most likely be used with children with special needs. The final field trial with 10 children and a potential real world user illustrated that a RMI system could potentially be used effectively outside of a research context, with all of the children in the trial responding to the robot. Feedback from the educational psychologist testing the system would suggest that a RMI approach could have real world implications if the system were developed further.

Everyday face-to-face social interaction is increasingly being supplemented by computer- and video-mediated communication. With mediation, however, comes the potential loss of important non-verbal cues. It is therefore important to attempt to maintain the quality of the mediated interaction, such that it retains as many of the aspects of a real-world interaction as possible. Social presence is a measure of how similar a mediated interaction is to face-to-face, the most socially present situation, in terms of perceptions of and behaviour towards an interlocutor. Social presence can be mediated by many factors, one of which is mutual gaze, and social perceptions of an interlocutor are also thought to be related to task performance. For a successful interaction, therefore, an optimum amount of mutual gaze for maximising social presence and task performance is desirable. This research aims to investigate the relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and social presence, in order to discover the ideal conditions under which a successful mediated interaction can occur. Previous gaze research paradigms have involved one conversational partner staring continuously at the other, and the resulting mutual gaze being measured. It is hypothesised that this method may actually suppress mutual gaze, primarily due to social reasons. It is potentially, therefore, not the optimum experimental design for mutual gaze research. The first study in this thesis used eye-tracking to explore this hypothesis and investigate the relationship between mutual gaze and task performance. A suitable paradigm was developed, based on that used in previous research into eye movements and non-verbal communication. Two participants – Instruction Giver (IG) and Instruction Follower (IF) – communicated via avatars in Second Life to solve simple arithmetic tasks. There were two between-participant looking conditions: staring (the IG’s avatar stared continuously at the IF); and notstaring, (IG’s avatar looked at IF and task-relevant objects). Constant staring did, indeed, show evidence of decreasing mutual gaze within the dyad. Mutual gaze was positively correlated with task performance scores, but only in the not-staring condition. When not engaged in mutual gaze, the IF looked more at task-related objects in the not-staring condition than in the staring condition; this suggests that social factors are likely to be driving the gaze aversion in the staring condition. Furthermore, there are no task-related benefits to staring. The second study explored further how much looking by one person at another will maximise both mutual gaze and task performance between the dyad. It also investigated the relationship between mutual gaze, task performance and both manipulated and perceived social presence. Individual participants interacted with a virtual agent within the Second Life paradigm previously used in the human-human study. Participants were either told they were interacting with a computer (i.e. an agent) or another human (an avatar). This provided the between-participants manipulated social presence variable, or agency. The virtual agent was programmed to look at the participant during either 0%, 25%, 50% or 75% of the interaction, providing the within-participants variable looking condition. The majority of effects were found in the 75% looking condition, including the highest mutual gaze uptake and the highest social presence ratings (measured via a questionnaire). Although the questionnaire did not detect any differences in social presence between the agent and avatar condition, participants were significantly faster to complete the tasks in the avatar condition than in the agent condition. This suggests that behavioural measures may be more effective at detecting differences in social presence than questionnaires alone. The results are discussed in relation to different theories of social interaction. Implications and limitations of the findings are considered and suggestions for future work are made.

his thesis argues that anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) are the imperfect expression of a new type of community-based liability which seeks to regulate an individual’s behaviour in the context of his relationship with a particular community. The combination of civil and criminal elements in ASBOs stems from a political will to address responsibility for behaviour which is harmful to a community. Despite the central conceptual role played by the community relationship in ASBOs, legal provisions have failed to define the nature of that relationship, relying on judicial discretion to shape the orders’ application in practice. Judicial interpretation of ASBO legislation confirms the alternative nature of the orders, and the importance of the concept of community in creating a different type of liability. From a theoretical perspective, communitarian principles provide a basis for explaining how the individual/community relationship can justify and shape liability. The figure of a responsible individual constituted by his social interactions forms the premise of this type of liability, and the concept of community in this context is established as a fluid rather than rigid notion, defined as a social group connected by a range of specific interests. A model of community-based liability can be constructed from these principles: interference with a community’s interests can justify the imposition of liability, provided the individual’s behaviour represents a wilful engagement with that particular community. This model of liability provides a useful framework through which to re-examine ASBOs. While the case law broadly adopts the defining elements mentioned above, the use of ASBOs shows examples of misapplications of the principles of a community-based model of liability. Nevertheless, this framework also shows how ASBOs can be seen as a flexible and potentially integrative approach to regulating different types of individual/community relationships, despite the missed opportunities sometimes created by their practical application.

The nature of sociability in the digital world has attracted much attention, with theories of the network society describing the formation of networked connections across distant geographies. Policymakers are optimistic about the potential for these new forms of connectivity to overcome some of the longstanding disadvantages of rural life. However, a prerequisite for full and meaningful participation in the network society is equal access to digital infrastructure, and a persistent urban–rural divide in this regard has been documented across Britain. The thesis argues that the meaning of the divide has been under-investigated with the result that our understanding of rural sociability in contemporary society is theoretically underdeveloped. This is addressed through a study of sociability in rural Britain, which adopts a “facet methodology” approach, examining the research problem from different angles using a range of methods. The first facet of the research compares the perceptions of rural and urban Internet users through an analysis of the Oxford Internet Survey. The second facet conducts a social network analysis of the online connections formed by a group of bloggers in the Scottish islands. The third facet explores the discursive interactions of the same set of bloggers through a thematic analysis of their writings. Together, the methods shed light on key aspects of the research problem. The findings reveal that people living in the country's rural areas are experiencing a different relationship with digital technology from urban residents. Rather than occupying peripheral or inferior positions in the network society, however, they are cultivating unique forms of digital sociability, informed by particular influences and motivations that set their social behaviour apart from the networked norm. Throughout the thesis, an understanding of the place of rural in the digital world is elaborated and the network society is shown to be differentiated across multiple dimensions.

Studies on market trader activism in Africa routinely approach traders' claims-making practices from the perspective of the state's regime of signifying order, in relation to which opposition simply seeks to render itself “legible” (Scott 1998). In contrast, this dissertation contends that one must pay close attention to the multiple significations of order and disorder that exist in any social situation and which, through their continuous permeation, fuel transformations of normative plausibilities and, by extension, of the grounds for claims. With a grounding in the theory of the social and political quality of time, I show how the idea of coeval temporalities sensitises observers to the multiple sources of significations of order and disorder – particularly, with regard to subjects' relation to authority – and their creative adaptation in the moment of temporal convergence. The central marketplace of Accra, the capital of Ghana, provides the context for this study. My empirical analysis of this social arena that is closely connected to global flows of people, capital, consumer items and, inevitably, ideas, including those related to order and associated grounds of entitlement adds to the underappreciated theoretical strand the actor-centred process of translation that engenders creative adaptations between converging coeval temporalities.

The premise of this study is the in-depth exploration and investigation of the nature of Ethical Decision Making (EDM) in marketing research. More specifically, this research is concerned with exploring the understanding and the holistic conceptualisation of Ethical Decision Making (EDM) through the investigation of different moral agents in marketing research in the United Kingdom. In particular, marketing research researchers' (MR researchers) and marketing research respondents' (MR respondents) ethical judgements and behavioural intentions have been investigated based on two marketing research techniques that generate ethical issues; neuromarketing [NM] and autoethnography [AE], Despite the examination of the two aforementioned moral agents, at the heart of this thesis has been the investigation of MR researchers' (un)willingness to adopt or practice (i.e. behavioural intentions) these marketing research techniques. This study employed a qualitative design and was initiated on descriptive behavioural ethics, in order to investigate MR researchers' behavioural intentions, while it has a nonnative purpose towards norm generation in the field. Thus, the Theory of Planned Behaviour' and the 'General Theory of Marketing Ethics' (i.e. H-V model) were applied for the initial theoretical considerations of this thesis. By utilising descriptive and nonnative ethical accounts, this study has found that Ethical Decision Making (EDM) in marketing research is grounded in a social contract ethics foundation of a multidimensional structural functionalistic premise. Within this ethical setting the MR researcher is considering the MR respondent's decision making processes with regards to norm generation, governed by social consensus, social proof and conformity. This results from a multidimensional interdependent social interaction of the two moral agents. Finally, this thesis concludes that Ethical Decision Making (EDM) in marketing research is not conceptualised in a linear progressive manner, but it consists of numerous constructs that fit with each other in a rather loosely coupled modular manner depicting a rather complex and dynamic system of multilayered factors and multi-dimensional constructs.

Music and language are both deeply rooted in our biology, but scientists have given far more attention to the neurological, biological and evolutionary roots of language than those of music. Because of this, and probably partially due to this, the purpose of music, in evolutionary terms, remains a mystery. Our brain, physiology and psychology make us capable of producing and listening to music since early infancy; therefore, our biology and behaviour are carrying some of the clues that need to be revealed to understand what music is “for”. Furthermore, music and language have a deep relationship, particularly in terms of cognitive processing, that can provide clues about the origins of music. Non-verbal behaviours, including voice characteristics during speech, are an important form of communication that enables individual recognition and assessment of the speaker’s physical characteristics (including sex, femininity/masculinity, body size, physical strength, and attractiveness). Vocal parameters, however, can be intentionally varied, for example altering the intensity (loudness), rhythm and pitch during speech. This is classically demonstrated in infant directed speech (IDS), in which adults alter vocal characteristics such as pitch, cadence and intonation contours when speaking to infants. In this thesis, I analyse vocal modulation and its perception in human social interaction, in different social contexts such as courtship and authority ranking relationships. Results show that specific vocal modulations, akin to those of IDS, and perhaps music, play a role in communicating courtship intent. Based on these results, as well the body of current knowledge, I then propose a model for the evolution of musicality, the human capacity to process musical information, in relation to human vocal communication. I suggest that musicality may not be limited to specifically musical contexts, and can have a role in other domains such as language, which would provide further support for a common origin of language and music. This model supports the hypothesis of a stage in human evolution in which individuals communicated using a music-like protolanguage, a hypothesis first suggested by Darwin.

This thesis examines young people’s preferences for social interaction with others perceived to be similar and different, and school staff’s interpretations of the young people’s social behaviour. The issue is explored with reference to a tension between social inclusion, the principle of embracing difference, and homophily, the sociological concept that similarity breeds connection. The idea of examining the two notions together was given by an analogy from aesthetics: as inclusion is understood as an ethical obligation to embrace difference, it may come into tension with people’s actual preferences for social interaction that can be represented by homophily. The project, influenced by personal construct psychology, focused on participants’ perceptions of similarity and difference. The tension was explored empirically using scenarios to conduct in depth semi-structured interviews with young people with Asperger syndrome, visual impairment and without disabilities, and school staff from mainstream and special settings. As the tension was expected to have an ethical dimension, the methods were influenced by research in moral psychology. According to the findings, homophily was consistent with the experiences of the participants in the study, and inclusion was considered to be an ethical obligation. The data also suggested that homophily and inclusion can come into a tension. This tension is evident in education, as students with disabilities or other differences might express a preference to be among similar others. School staff then would face the tension of respecting their preferences or enforcing inclusion, something that young people stressed would show lack of respect. As homophily can also conceal discrimination, the tension was not easily resolved. The matter is related to school policies about difference but, since it cannot be fully resolved by them, it can be related to a particular ethos that would recognise the role of open dialogue. Theoretically, the homophily/inclusion tension is one between individuality and commonality. It can challenge our understanding of what the ethical obligation to inclusion actually entails, and what treating the students respectfully should mean. Overall, it questions the justice of inclusion and opens a debate about participatory decision-making and democratic school management. The practical significance of the study can be located in the implications of the tension in the everyday school life. The particular approach to inclusion that the study suggests can be translated into appropriate training activities for the management of difference at school level. It can also inform school policies of inclusion and difference to acknowledge students’ preferences and tensions of values.

Aim: In recent years, research has concluded that social anxiety plays a key role in quality of life. The overall aim of this research was to evaluate social anxiety in adolescents with respect to determining how social anxiety affects quality of life. Method: This study was a cross-sectional study. A pilot study was conducted to cross-culturally adapt all scales by the recommended translated and back-translated method. The correlations of socio-demographic parameters with the SAS-A scores were examined. Data from a sample of 564 students (273 boys 48.4%, 291 girls 51.6%) were analysed. Adolescents from Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom were screened and compared. Confirmatory factor analysis was utilised to build the proposed model based on prior research and theoretical findings. Finding: No significant sex difference in the SAS-A total score, fear of negative evaluation and social avoidance were found. Comparing the boys and girls on SPIN scores, Fear, Avoidance and Authority Problems, the results showed that boys reported higher in SPIN total, fear and avoidance (except authority problem subscale score) than did girls. SAS-A scores were higher in those with a low socio-economic level. Moreover, social anxiety symptoms among Saudi adolescents were more severe in boys. Results showed that adolescents without social anxiety scored higher on quality of life and its subscales than adolescents with social anxiety as measured by ASA-A. No significant difference was found in psychical health. Adolescents without social anxiety scored higher on quality of life and its subscales than adolescents with social anxiety as measured by SIAS. Adolescents without social anxiety scored on Positive Individualism more than adolescents with social anxiety. No significant difference was found in Positive Relatedness. In the cross-cultural study, the results showed no significant difference on SIAS scores for Saudi adolescents and British adolescents. However, a marginally significant differences was found on BAI scores, where Saudi adolescents reported higher level of anxiety than British adolescents. The British sample reported higher on the fear of negative evaluation than the Saudi sample. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was utilised to test hypotheses on the links between scores on the study scales. The findings indicate that the overall fit of the SAS-A model was acceptable. Direct effects between the study variables and significant positive correlation between cognitive factors and social anxiety were found. Mediation effects of SAS-A and SPIN were investigated by reporting direct effects, indirect effects and total effects. Results indicte that social anxiety significantly mediated the relationships between subjective anxiety, positive individualism, and cognitive and environmental health. Conclusion: It is therefore imperative that socially anxious students be provided with appropriate consultations and treatment so that they can improve their quality of life through integrating better with social institutions. If untreated, the impairment caused by social phobia could lead to poor academic and professional outcomes, as well as poor psychosocial outcomes.

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to understand the lived experiences of secondary English language arts teachers implementing personalized learning in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Teachers who personalize learning must currently determine their own method of doing so without adequate research about the process to inform their pedagogy. The theory guiding this study was Vygotsky’s theory on social development, as it highlights the necessity of social interaction to help students stay within the zone of proximal development even in a personalized learning framework. The ten participants for this study were selected by purposive sampling, and data were collected through semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations, and document analysis. Data analysis was conducted to organize information into themes. The four main themes that emerged from the data analysis process were: a) student engagement, b) time and resources, c) positive relationships, and d) multitasking and balancing.

This dissertation demonstrates, in a non-semantic information-theoretic framework, how the principles of 'maximisation of relevant information' and 'information parsimony' can guide the adaptation of an agent towards agent-agent interaction. Central to this thesis is the concept of digested information; I argue that an agent is intrinsically motivated to a.) process the relevant information in its environment and b.) display this information in its own actions. From the perspective of similar agents, who require similar information, this differentiates other agents from the rest of the environment, by virtue of the information they provide. This provides an informational incentive to observe other agents and integrate their information into one's own decision making process. This process is formalized in the framework of information theory, which allows for a quantitative treatment of the resulting effects, specifically how the digested information of an agent is influenced by several factors, such as the agent's performance and the integrated information of other agents. Two specific phenomena based on information maximisation arise in this thesis. One is flocking behaviour similar to boids that results when agents are searching for a location in a girdworld and integrated the information in other agent's actions via Bayes' Theorem. The other is an effect where integrating information from too many agents becomes detrimental to an agent's performance, for which several explanations are provided.

This thesis explores the impact of two behavioural finance concepts, social psychology and psychology, on household financial decisions. Under social psychology, I investigate whether the variety and intensity of social engagement enhances stock market participation. With regard to psychology, I examine two behavioural biases. First, I investigate whether mental accounting influences portfolio choice in three asset classes and whether financial advice and housing tenure increase (decrease) the effects of mental accounts on portfolio choice. Second, I examine whether households’ self-reported housing wealth are anchored on published house price indices and whether anchoring bias is mediated by market information, mortgage refinancing decisions and social factors. The main contributions and findings in the three studies are as follows. First, although there is an elaborate body of research concerning the relationship between social engagement mechanisms and portfolio choice, most studies investigate specific mechanisms in isolation. Using three waves in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), I bring together five social engagement measures in one model and show that socially engaged individuals are more likely to participate in the stock market. Consistent with Granovetter’s (1973) theory of social networks I find that a weak tie (measured by social group involvement) has a positive effect on stock market participation whereas a strong tie (measured by talking to neighbours) has no effect. More trusting individuals are more likely to participate in the stock market, as are those who identify with a political party. In contrast, the degree to which religion is important appears to have little impact. These results are robust using different specifications. Overall, the results of this study demonstrate that the likelihood of stock market participation increases with the variety and intensity of social engagement. Second, despite the established theoretical underpinnings of mental accounting in behavioural portfolio theory (BPT) and recent extensions, not much is known about their implications in real life situations. I use a recent UK household survey, the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS), which has comprehensive information about financial assets to investigate whether there are differences in the ownership and portfolio share of three asset classes among individuals who exhibit no mental account, a single mental account and multiple mental accounts, and the conditional influences of financial advice, housing, cognitive ability, time preference and risk tolerance. Overall I find that mental accounting together with financial advice and housing tenure explain variations in both the probability of ownership and portfolio share in the three asset classes. Households that exhibit a single mental account have low share of investments in, and are less likely to own, a risky asset when compared to those that exhibit no mental account or exhibit multiple mental accounts. I also find that, when compared to having no mental account, exhibiting a single mental account or multiple mental accounts increases both the probability and investment share in a fairly safe asset but decreases portfolio share in safe assets. In addition, among those that exhibit a single mental or multiple mental accounts, financial advice decreases portfolio share in risky assets and fairly safe assets and increases portfolio share in safe assets. Housing tenure increases both the probability and portfolio share in risky assets, decreases portfolio share in fairly safe assets and increases portfolio share in safe assets. These results are consistent using multi-equation regressions, sub-samples, reparametrised variables and poisson regressions. Finally, as little is known about how households derive the self-reported house prices estimates that are commonly used to determine housing wealth, the third study examines whether households are anchored on published house price indices. The key conjecture is that, while assessing the values of their homes, homeowners place more weight on house price news at the expense of property characteristics and other market information. I find support for this hypothesis using sixteen waves of the BHPS, multiple methods, and both regional and national house price indices. I conclude that changes in self-reported housing wealth are anchored on changes in published house price indices. Specifically, ownership through a mortgage and greater financial expectations increase anchoring effects while mortgage refinancing decreases the effects. Moreover, use of money raised from refinancing for home investment, as opposed to other consumption purposes, has a positive association with change in self-reported house value and both uses reduce anchoring bias. In addition, I find that computer use increases anchoring bias and, among social engagement mechanisms, religiosity reduces anchoring while other measures have no effect. These results are robust to internal instrumental variables, national aggregate house prices, alternative indices and sub-samples.

This thesis is concerned with the key areas of social interaction and emotional understanding in children with autism with regard to their development. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a ten sessions long intervention programme with the objective of facilitating the children’s social-emotional understanding, as well as promoting their social skills and interaction with both peers and adults. Two methods of studies were used with 6 children - aged 7 to 11 - who had previously been diagnosed with high-functioning autism. The quasi-experimental study divided the sample into an experimental and control group in order to evaluate the intervention. The second method was a case study involving two children in the experimental group. Both approaches provided evidence of the effectiveness of the intervention programme in enhancing the social and emotional components. The results from the first study showed that the intervention programme was associated with improvements for the children in the experimental group in their overall social-emotional understanding, as well as their social skills and interaction with their peers. Moreover, there was strong agreement between the three sources (parents, teachers and children) about this improvement, which supports the reliability of the outcomes. On the other hand, children from the control group did not improve in the tested areas. The results from the second study revealed the typical description of emotional and social deficits in the two children with high-functioning autism. In each case there were specific aspects to their level of difficulties and the way in which they interacted with their friends and family. The data collected after the intervention supports the hypothesis that children with autism can learn emotional understanding (including empathy), and this was associated with an improvement in their social functioning. The case studies also showed agreement between the parents in their dissatisfaction about the level of support that their children received at school. None of the children had received any type of social training programme particularly aimed at teaching them these specific skills. The two methods of evaluation complemented each other. Although caution should be taken when interpreting the findings, owing to the small sample size, the study suggests that children with high-functioning autism respond well to interventions designed to support their social and emotional understanding.

How do non-vocal practices function within sequences? This thesis addresses silence and gesture in the context of social interaction involving human participants through the framework of conversation analysis (CA) to answer this question. Although it is certainly possible, and indeed common, for gestures and other non-vocal practices to occur during talk, this thesis focuses on those that occur without accompanying talk. In order to understand the role of non-vocal practices in this environment, we must first understand the role of silence (or the absence of talk) in participants’ interactions. How does silence function within the sequential environment? How does context affect how silence and nonvocal practices are treated by participants? If one organisation (or aspect of an organisation) is affected, are all organisations (or aspects of that organisation) affected? I draw on psychological, sociological, and linguistic literature to show why silence and gesture are related in interactional research and how this affects conversation analytic methodology. The work that forms this thesis brings together cross-cultural perspectives and technical advances with respect to silence and non-vocal practices both individually and when they occur together (i.e. non-vocal practices without accompanying talk). I begin with a broad overview of research and theories of gesture and silence before discussing CA as a method and its relationship to silence and non-vocal practices. The empirical studies begin with silence in relation to culture and context and issues in analysing and transcribing silence. I then examine how one sequential environment, in which psychotherapy clients are obligated to respond by orienting to the therapeutic agenda, has a preference structure that is very different from ordinary conversation. In this sequential environment, silence and elaboration are marks of preferred responses rather than dispreferred. The preference structure is made particularly visible through accountability that becomes relevant when a client’s response is produced promptly following the therapist’s overtly therapeutic action. Silence in this environment contributes Inaction and Silent Action in Interaction 3 to clients’ performance of sincerity and participation in the psychotherapeutic process, and non-vocal practices during longer silences can show that the client remains engaged with the sequence. Many authors have accounted for silences that are not treated by participants as problematic by applying constructs such as ‘continuing states of incipient talk’. This construct, however, is variably used and has not been developed through empirical examination. It does not adequately explain interactions that involve silence or gesture, as I show through a content analysis and systematic review. After recommending that researchers engage with participant orientations in environments that differ from canonical conversations, I describe an environment that is commonly thought of as constituting a ‘continuing state of incipient talk’ – television-watching. I show that contrary to some claims about ‘incipient talk’ environments, although response relevance is relaxed, both sequence organisation and turn-taking are strongly oriented to by participants. Compared to ordinary conversation, television-watching also involves more gestures and other nonvocal practices without accompanying talk. I examine how non-vocal practices without accompanying talk are used in interaction. As responsive actions, gestures can be used without accompanying talk as a resource for doing sensitive interactional work, particularly in places where giving offence might be a concern. Non-vocal practices can also be used in other situations to accomplish sequential actions that could otherwise be spoken. These uses of non-vocal practices create methodological questions for conversation analysis, which has traditionally focused on the talk of participants. By clearly distinguishing between actions and turns (two classic CA concepts) and examining the timing of non-vocal practices, I show that non-vocal practices can have a clearly defined role in sequence organisation. CA can thus be a useful method for examining the entire situation of social interaction, including non-vocal practices.

Due to the high rate of e-government projects failures occurring in developing countries and the researcher being from a developing country, an impetus to undertake this research was provided. In IS research, diffusion of e-government products and services was noted to be slow within developing countries, and most developing countries striving to adopt e-government have undertaken it under the heavy burden of gender inequalities and strong multicultural beliefs. However, these social factors were shown to liberally influence users’ perception, which in turn influences users’ intentions and usage behaviour. Although there has been much research to explain users’ perceptions, few have been conducted on e-government diffusion using developing country experiences. The identified gap prompted this research to investigate how the citizens of a country ‘Nigeria’ receive information about the egovernment products and services and how this information has influenced the way they feel, form opinions and make judgments on egovernment products and services. Therefore, the aim of this research is to examine the implication of culture and gender upon e-government diffusion within Nigeria. For this purpose, a conceptual model was formed combining social interaction, trust of egovernment delivery personnel and constructs from Roger’s theory of diffusion and Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to study e-government diffusion from the citizens’ perspective. Additionally, the culture and gender elements were considered. In turn, these elements were expected to determine and explain predictor constructs that would be used to explain, determine and predict citizen’s acceptance of e-government products and services. To acquire the data to this research, a qualitative research approach involving the case study method was employed. The data collection techniques used included interviews, personal observations, and examination of archival documents. The three main indigenous communities of Nigeria Yoruba, Ibo and Hausa were used and cross case analysis employed. This led to the findings identifying social interaction and the trust of personnel providing egovernment as the novel parts of the framework for this research. The main conclusions drawn from this research were that culture and gender were observed to have strong influences on social interaction as an e-government awareness channel; but significantly low influence on the other means of e-government awareness channels. Further, social interaction was noted to be a very strong determinant of communication within the indigenous societies. From the research findings it was learnt that for e-government to spread extensively, social interaction should be employed to improve the diffusion of e-government products and services. Future directions of this research include using a quantitative research approach to improve research findings and also investigating the relationships of trust of egovernment personnel and other forms of trust identified by previous research, i.e. the trust of government and trust in e-government. However, the view of this research is that since few studies of this kind are emphasized within IS research evaluating e-government diffusion, developing countries, culture and gender, other researchers interested in a topic similar to this research will learn of the importance of this research and these factors for other developing countries in the world. Due to the limitations of time and distance and financial constraints all the indigenous communities could not be represented. Hence, this was also considered to be a limitation to this research.

In contemporary UK preschool, technological resources have become a standard feature of the environment. This has prompted widespread discussion around the appropriateness of technologies in preschools and for some time concerns were raised that technology is socially detrimental for children. These concerns have since been challenged as it has been argued that they are unsubstantiated and not evidence-based. Yet despite this realisation, few studies have been conducted about children’s social interaction around technologies in order to contribute to this debate. Furthermore, negative concerns have largely been attributed to the technological artefacts themselves and the cultural and wider preschool context is often overlooked. In the 1980s, research on the ecological preschool environment in relation to children’s social behaviours was widely available but similar studies situated in contemporary technology-rich preschool environments is limited. Thus, a body of literature to inform the technology debate in relation to social interaction is restricted. This study provides an empirical foundation to begin exploring 3 to 5 year old children’s social interactions in technology-rich local authority preschools by: identifying the observable child-child interactions as children engage with technology in preschools; exploring the preschool characteristics which may contribute to these interactions; and exploring the role that technologies play in contributing to these interactions. The study adopts an inclusive definition of technology and addresses a broad range of resources, providing a new perspective on the role of technologies in education and in relation to social interactions. These areas of interest were addressed using four qualitative methods: observation, activity mapping, researcher-led games with children and interviews with practitioners. Following the nine-month data collection phase and iterative thematic analysis, two key findings emerged from the data. Firstly, children’s social interactions during technological activities in preschool were complex and multifaceted with few discernible patterns emerging. Secondly, the wider preschool context made a large contribution to the contingent and divergent interactions observed, diluting claims that technological artefacts alone influence children’s social interactions.

This thesis provides a framework for viewing socio-political contexts and how these relate to interventionist projects. The framework draws on and combines strands from international relations and sociological perspectives of social interaction. The central question becomes how intervention and existing social contexts interact to produce unintended outcomes. It applies the analysis to two separate wider contexts: Afghanistan and Somalia, with a particular focus on the self-declared independent Somaliland as an internally generated and controlled transformational process. Unlike abstract directions of theoretical development the framework seeks to provide a platform that sets aside ideological assumptions and from which interventionist projects can be observed and evaluated based on literature, field observations and interviews. Drawing on such diverse influences as fourth generation peace and conflict studies, Morphogenetics, and social forces theory, the framework explores conditions and interest formations to capture instances of local agency that are part of a continuity of local realities. It views social interaction without imposing Universalist value assumptions, but also without resorting to relativism or raising so many caveats that it becomes impractical. It exposes the agency of local interest formations hidden beneath the discourses of ideologically framed conflicts. These social agents are often dismissed as passive victims to be brought under the influence of for example the state, but are in reality able to subvert, co-opt, constrain or facilitate the forces that are dependent on them for social influence. In the end, it is the modes of mobilisation that emerge as the most crucial factor for understanding the relevant social dynamics.

Background: The main aim of the studies in this thesis is to provide insights into the neonatal phencyclidine (PCP) induced deficits in male and female rats as a neurodevelopmental animal model of schizophrenia. Methods: Both male and female rats were treated with neonatal PCP on postnatal days (PNDs) 7,9 and 11 or vehicle, followed by weaning on PND 21-22. The rats were then tested in behavioural paradigms such as novel object recognition, spatial memory and social interaction in their adolescent and adult stages and were also tested with acute treatment of typical and atypical antipsychotic agents. Results: Neonatal PCP treatment (10 & 20 mg/kg in males and 10 mg/kg in females; once a day for 3 days on PND 7,9 and 11) caused novel object recognition and spatial memory impairment in male and female rats both in the adolescent (PND35-56) and in the adult stages (PND>56) (chapter 2) and robust deficits in social interaction behaviours in the adolescent stage. The SI deficits were observed in adulthood in female but not in male rats thereby establishing a sex-specific social behavioural deficit (chapter 3). The object memory and social interaction deficits induced by neonatal PCP treatment were reversed following acute risperidone but not haloperidol. Finally, the temporal profile of this treatment regime was investigated and the male and female animals were tested on PND 190 and PND 365. The animals did not have any challenge dose of PCP during their testing stage. The result showed that there was significant deficit in object and spatial recognition memory in both male and female animals at both time points, thereby establishing enduring deficits. Conclusion: Given the heterogeneity of the schizophrenic disorder and its complex aetiology, it is understandably difficult to find animal models that completely mimic most or all of the symptoms associated with the disorder. However, data from the studies in this thesis support the use of neonatal PCP as a valid animal model of cognitive and negative symptoms, and explores the effect of antipsychotics in understanding the model. Also, in light of the efficacy of neonatal PCP to produce robust object, spatial memory and social interaction deficits in rats, it appears that this model may be a useful tool to investigate the potential of novel therapeutic candidates that may help improve therapy and understand the illness.

Young people’s challenging behaviour in the school classroom and elsewhere has long been subject to research and policy attention. Despite inherent definitional difficulties, challenging behaviour is often constructed as a product of an individual young person’s pathology (whether biologically, psychologically or socially determined). Adopting an alternative starting point, this study focuses on a youth work setting and conceptualises challenging behaviour as something created in and through social interaction. The aim of this study is to contribute to a contextualised understanding of challenging behaviour as a social phenomenon that ordinarily arises when working with young people. As an exploratory study of everyday youth work practices, a year-long ethnographic study was conducted of an open-access youth club, located in a Scottish secondary school. Data were generated through participant observation, interviews, question sheets and written evaluation records. The data were analysed to identify significant themes facilitating the construction of a meaningful and accurate account of challenging interactions in this youth club. The thesis suggests that ‘doing’ and drawing attention to challenging behaviour functions to delineate the boundaries around acceptable and unacceptable behaviour in the youth club. Challenging behaviour plays a substantial role in the social interactions of this setting, linked to personal and professional identities. The youth club is described as a chaotic (dynamic, bodily and playful) space, where challenging behaviour is expected and normalised yet it is still identified and disciplined. The study suggests it is difficult to reach a subjective contextual definition of challenging behaviour because although certain types of behaviour are repeatedly acknowledged as problematic, in practice there are inconsistencies in whether and how these behaviours are challenged. Challenging interactions are argued to emerge in the negotiation of control over the behaviour of self and others. The research indentified ‘humour’ and ‘playfulness’ as significant in the construction, diffusion and emotional management of recurring challenging interactions. The study concludes that it is fruitful to conceptualise challenging behaviour as a social phenomenon - something created in the moment - in advancing an understanding of the complexity of working with young people perceived to be challenging. The findings, and limitations, of this study suggest that it would be useful to conduct further research into: the emotional aspects of challenging interactions; potential age and gender differences in negotiating challenging interactions; and the relationship between challenging behaviour, creativity and transformative actions.

This thesis explores the links between emotion processing and social participation in the acute and chronic phases of stroke. Three aspects of emotion processing are examined: 1) Emotion Perception 2) Emotion Regulation 3) Depression and Anxiety. Social Participation refers to engagement in life situations including a range of social activities and social networks. Stroke survivors are known to experience a reduction in social participation, independently of activity limitations. The current research tests the hypothesis that impairments in any of the aspects of emotion processing may affect social participation. Previous research has established that following stroke, difficulties in emotion perception and depression and anxiety occur, but there is little research on post stroke emotion regulation difficulties. While the link between post stroke depression and anxiety and social participation has been explored, this is not the case with emotion perception or emotion regulation. In a pilot study, emotion processing and social participation measures were administered to stroke patients. Emotion processing difficulties were shown to occur in stroke survivors and were significantly correlated with social participation. In the main study participants’ emotion processing, social participation and activity limitations were assessed at 2 and 18 months post stroke. In the acute phase, all three aspects of emotion processing correlated with social participation, but only emotion regulation predicted social participation restrictions independently of activity limitations. In the chronic phase, emotion processing correlated with social participation, with emotion regulation and depression predicting social participation independently of activity limitations. Further analyses revealed acute phase problems with emotion perception predicted chronic phase social participation limitations, while acute phase social participation restrictions predicted chronic phase depression and emotion regulation. These findings highlight the importance of the links between emotion processing and social participation post stroke. Future research priorities in this field are outlined.

This thesis explores age differences in the ability to decode basic social cues from the face and, in particular, the eye region. Age-related declines in complex aspects of social perception, such as forced choice labelling of emotional expressions and theory of mind reasoning, are well documented.  However, research, to date, has not assessed age differences in more basic aspects of social perception such as eye-gaze detection, joint attention, or more implicit responses to emotional cues.  The first two experimental chapters of this thesis report a series of studies investigating age-related changes in gaze processing.  Both the ability to detect subtle differences in gaze direction and to subsequently follow the gaze cues given by others was found to decline with age. Age-related changes were also found in the integration of gaze direction with emotional (angry, joyful and disgusted) facial expressions, when making emotion perception and approachability judgements (Chapters 4 and 5).  Age differences in responses to happy facial expressions are further investigated in Chapter 6 by assessing sensitivity to discriminate between enjoyment and non-enjoyment smiles.  Findings indicated that older adults demonstrated a greater bias towards thinking that any smiling individual was feeling happy.  They were also more likely than younger participants to choose to approach an individual displaying a non-enjoyment smile.  The final experimental chapter explores whether the age of the face influences age-related changes in gaze following.  Age-related declines in gaze following were greatest when following the gaze cues of younger (vs. older) adults, highlighting the importance of closely matching age of stimulus and participant when investigating age differences in social perception.  Perceptual, neuropsychological and motivational explanations for these results are evaluated and implications of these research findings for older adults’ social functioning are discussed.

This thesis offers an account of the nature of self and identity through an analysis of the life stories of a group of 28 British born Muslim women of Asian origin. This is set within the context of a theoretical consideration of the way in which selves and identities are created. Current theoretical contentions have served to challenge identity as a naturalised, completed and singular phenomena and have offered formulations which point to its multiple articulations and instability. Whilst such developments have repudiated the given and the definitive, they do not account for the concrete and contexualised constructions of identity which can assume variable and shifting forms. This piece of work offers such an account through an engagement with the lives of the women who provide its focus. In order to allow for a complex and shifting repertoire of identity formations, the argument is made for a distinction between understandings of self and identity. Drawing upon post-structuralist and interactionist accounts, the self is argued to be created through its insertion into multiple and interconnected frames of reference, engaging with questions of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class and religion. It argues that the self is formed through an ongoing process of social interaction both with wider discursive and material practices contained within cultural formations, structured power relationships and religious understandings, and with micro forms of social interaction. This process engages its multiple and intersected references and de-naturalises their incomplete creations allowing for processes of reformulation and synthesis at the intersection of permeable boundaries. Whilst identity can also be reflective of this process it is argued that its expression needs to be understood in terms of its contingent and contexualised articulation involving shifting repertoires according to different and changing experiences, responses to these and the points of reference through which they are spoken.

In the face of rapid urbanization, megacities have witnessed the rise of skyscrapers as central social hubs. However, the predominant design approach for these towering structures has primarily focused on practical considerations, often overlooking the spiritual well-being of individuals. This oversight has led to detrimental consequences such as mental health challenges, pervasive social isolation, and increased crime rates. While halting skyscraper construction is not a practical solution, a compelling need emerges for a fresh design approach. A paradigm shift in skyscraper design is proposed, drawing inspiration from the organic formation of neighborhoods. This approach advocates for creating vertical settings within skyscrapers, which aim to offer rejuvenating experiences through abundant social spaces. These vertical neighborhoods blend communal learning areas, recreational zones, relaxation spaces, and green areas that foster natural human connections. By strongly emphasizing enclosed and open public spaces and implementing programs encouraging interaction, the envisioned design seeks to nurture healthy relationships and facilitate genuine human connections, ultimately fostering a more cohesive and closely-knit society.

Abstract: Sociality incurs costs and benefits for group-living animals that may influence small-scale behavioural trade-offs such as vigilance and foraging. I examined interaction, vigilance, and foraging behaviours among elk in the partially migratory Ya Ha Tinda elk herd (Cervus canadensis) in Alberta, which exhibits a western migration to montane summer ranges in Banff National Park, while resident elk remain on the sympatric winter range year-round. In recent years, a third eastern migratory tactic has emerged, moving to industrial forest lands east of Ya Ha Tinda during the summer. Previous studies have shown that despite high spatial overlap, western migrants showed different vigilance patterns in areas of human and predation risk than resident elk, which was attributed to differential exposure to predators and humans during the summer. However, the influence of social interactions on foraging and vigilance behaviours among the three migrant tactics is not well known, and it is unknown how eastern elk respond to human and predation risk on the winter range. I examined social interactions at the home range, foraging patch, and individual levels using GPS telemetry data to compare home range overlap and sequential patch use among collared female elk on the winter sympatric range and used direct observations of interaction behaviours in focal elk to assess differences in interaction rates and aggression among individuals. I used behavioural observations to examine the influence of conspecific interactions, predation risk, and human activity on vigilance behaviour during foraging, and the cost of those interactions in terms of time to resume feeding. I determined the influence of environmental factors and where the focal individual was located relative to other elk on the amount of time spent vigilant directly after a conspecific interaction compared to routine vigilance (no interaction), and assessed whether vigilance levels differed among migratory tactics. I found all migrant tactics had a high degree of home range overlap that increased as winter progressed, and migrant elk were more likely to enter foraging patches following resident elk. While interaction rate and duration were similarly low among all tactics, eastern migrants were more aggressive than both western migrant and resident elk. However, interactions made up < 2% of total observation time and disruption times from foraging following interactions were similar among all tactics. Similarly, vigilance bouts were not longer or more frequent following interactions compared to routine vigilance. Instead, vigilance in elk was more strongly related to environmental variables. My study uniquely addresses the influence of conspecific interactions as a differential cost among migrant tactics on a sympatric winter range, and contributes to our understanding of the influence of small-scale behavioural trade-offs on the maintenance of migratory tactics in a partially-migratory population.

Having lived in apartments in densely populated cities most of my life, I felt this stark difference between my experiences in India and residing in the United States for the last several years. The silence, hiding neighbors, smiles consumed by KN 95 respirators, deserted ground plane, long narrow corridors, disconnection from the rest of the city, all this prevented me from seeing a home in the apartment I had rented in the United States. Philosopher Lars Svendsen's analysis and understanding of this feeling of perceived disconnection has made me to give it a name – Loneliness. One may reasonably hold the global pandemic accountable for this feeling. It can be true; the pandemic has forced a lot of us to spend all of our time at home, and be socially distant from other human beings. But surveys and studies suggest that the pandemic has only accelerated this feeling and is not the only causal factor. This thesis explores the widespread feeling of loneliness and how it relates to the design of physical space. As we continue to spend a lot of time at home, I have chosen to rethink the conception of a multifamily residential complex keeping in mind the opportunities architecture can create for people to redefine the space they occupy, connect with neighbors and retain the option of solitude as they choose. If there is something we think that we never have enough is time. We spend a lot of our time in cars commuting to and from work during the week and to the grocery store over the weekend. In a time when we are slowly moving towards normalcy, if normalcy still is physically going to places, I wanted to take into account some factors to help me identify a suitable site - access to public transportation, walkability, property prices, access to a grocery store, census data on demographics, household income, and car ownership. These factors are considered to motivate residents to interact with the street and provide flexibility for people of different age groups to live together.

This dissertation contributes toward our understanding of social change and socio-economic development. Chapter 1 introduces multiple key factors driving social change and leading to economic and social development. In Chapter 2 to Chapter 4, by analyzing historical natural experiments, I study the role of information, social interactions, and human capital in social changes, and their relationship with economic and social development.Chapter 2, “Political Information, Social Interactions, and Protest in Late Imperial China”, investigates how information and social interactions drive social change by leading to collective actions (protests). A modern communication infrastructure allows information to reach people through the news media, while social interactions are needed to coordinate social movements. The postal system’s rapid construction in 1903-1910 in China let newspapers spread information directly to an increasing portion of the population. The change in information diffusion coincided with intensive media attention on revolutionary activities before the Revolution of 1911. I find that the construction of more post offices in a place led to more protests in the years with more reports about revolutionary activities in newspapers. I further disentangle the roles of direct information diffusion and social interactions. I define a village network based on the village’s location, the walking time between villages, and the village’s dialect group. I build and estimate a game-theoretical model based on the village network. As political information directly changed the villages which had post offices nearby and could receive information, I also find a strong peer effect: a village was affected by its expectation of its neighbors’ actions. The peer effect spread the direct impact of political information through social interactions.Chapter 3, “Wartime Social Interactions and Veteran Migration in The Post-American Civil War Era”, explores the role of social interactions in social change and economic development after the American Civil War. I focus on temporary social interactions among African American veterans during the American Civil War (1861--1865), and examine the long-term impacts of temporary social interactions on veterans’ migration and income in 1870--1900. I find that wartime social networks (veterans from the same company) persistently affected veterans’ location choices in the post-Civil War period. By estimating discrete choice migration models, I quantified that the veterans were more likely to move to a county where men from their military company lived. I further show the long-term benefits of living together. Veterans earned higher incomes after the war if they lived in the same county with wartime friends who had higher incomes after the war.Chapter 4, “Temple Destruction, School Construction, and Modern Human Capital in 20th Century China” (jointly written with Shaoda Wang), studies how modern human capital emerged in early 20th-century China and its impacts on economic development. We documented a historical episode known as the Temple Destruction Movement (TDM), during which Chinese local governments appropriated huge amounts of Buddhist and Taoist temple assets to support the modernization of the local schooling system. We found that before the TDM, the initial stock of temple assets was uncorrelated with the levels and trends of human capital development. However, after the TDM started, regions with higher initial stocks of temple assets constructed more modern schools, enrolled more students in modern educational programs, and produced more modern elites.

Childhood is generally conceptualized as a social construct in contemporary research within the social sciences — while the immaturity of children is a biological fact, how such immaturity in this particular period of human life is perceived and made sense of is a structural and cultural component of a society. However, little research has empirically examined precisely how this social construction is accomplished on a moment-by-moment basis in everyday life. Taking a conversation analytic approach, this dissertation investigates how childhood is constructed in the turn-by-turn sequential unfolding of everyday interaction. In modern society, childhood is predominately viewed as a time of innocence, during which children are seen as having limited rights to autonomy. Previous interactional studies also suggest that children’s membership status is characterized by their limited rights to participate in interaction. In this dissertation, I draw on naturally occurring adult-child conversational data in English and Mandarin and examine the rights, obligations, and accountability associated with the status of being a child participant in interaction. Chapter 2 shows that adults constantly attend to children’s performances in question-answer sequences and work to safeguard their rights to respond, thereby validating their status as interaction participants. Chapter 3 documents how parents assert epistemic primacy over their children, thereby treating them as having reduced rights to make claims about their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Grounded in this asymmetrical relationship between children and their parents, Chapter 4 illustrates that third-party interlocutors (e.g., relatives, friends, and other children) also orient to such asymmetry. That is, the construction of the asymmetrical parent-child relationship is a collaborative effort involving children, parents, and other interlocutors. It is through these special orientations to children that their status as children is constructed in social interaction. By demonstrating how the relative rights of children and adults are manifested in the details of naturally occurring interaction, this dissertation formulates the interactional construction of childhood, which can be related to a wide set of interests in children, including social psychology, child development, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics, and makes important contributions to the insights of childhood in the social sciences more generally.

The primary aim of this dissertation is to explore the social interaction and relationship of people within the NSW construction industry through social media data analytics. The research objective is to perform social media data analytics through Twitter and explore the social interactions between different stakeholders in the construction industry to understand the real-world situations better. The data analytics was performed on Twitter tweets, retweets, and hashtags that were collected from four clusters on construction stakeholders in NSW, namely construction workers, companies, media, and union. Tweets, retweets, and hashtags that were collected from four clusters on construction stakeholders in NSW, namely construction workers, companies, media, and unions. The thesis seeks to perform social media data analytics in order to explore and investigate the social interactions and links between the different stakeholders that are present in the construction industry. Investigating these interactions will help reveal a multitude of other related social aspects about the stakeholders, e.g., their genuine attitudes about the construction industry and how they feel being involved in this field of work. In order to facilitate this research, a social media data analytics study was carried out to find out the links and associations that are present between the construction workers, companies, unions, and media group entities. Five types of analyses were performed, namely sentiment analysis, link analysis, topic modelling, geo-location analysis, and timeline analysis. The results indicated that there are minimal social interactions between the construction workers and the other three clusters (i.e., companies, unions, and the media). The main reason that has been attributed to this observation is the way workers operate in a rather informal and casual manner. The construction companies, unions, and the media define their behavior in a much more formal and corporate attitude, hence they tend to relate to one another more than they do with workers. A number of counteractive approaches may be enforced in an effort to restore healthy social relations between workers and the other three clusters. For example, the company management teams should endeavor to develop stronger interactions with the workers and improve the working conditions, in overall.

This exploratory study sought to better understand power in the context of working relationships between child welfare practitioners providing prevention services and parents receiving court-ordered services. Twenty-five participants were recruited for this study: 13 parents receiving mandated prevention services for child abuse and neglect, and 12 child welfare practitioners providing mandated prevention services. Naturalistic and phenomenological inquiry guided the methodological framework. The data was collected using qualitative, in-depth, semi structured, repeated interviews. Research questions addressed how parents and child welfare practitioners perceived "power" and how they perceived goal planning and decision-making in their working relationship. The findings indicate that how workers and parents interact is the key to how power is distributed in the relationship. Participants indicated both reciprocal (shared, negotiated power) and strained relationships (power imbalance). The findings specifically indicate that the actions and reactions of parents and workers were associated with parent-worker coaction, where the reciprocal nature of the relationship was dependent on the independent actions of workers and parents. Worker parent coaction was grounded in trust, respect, honesty and openness. Moreover, the distribution of power is a fluid, not static, changing and adapting based on the interaction. Four categories of power were identified in the working relationship: (a) power exercised over the parent without parent consent, (b) power exercised over the parent with parent consent, (c) power predictably and systematically shared with parent, and (d) power unpredictably shared with parent. The results of this study offer implications for theory, practice, and future research in child welfare practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socioeconomic segregation in residential neighborhoods is an occurrence that according to the Pew Research Institute, is plaguing 27 of the nation’s 30 largest major metropolitan areas. Adjacent neighborhoods which differ radically in socioeconomic status (SES) are at odds with each other; and this is best understood through a set of observable institutional and social disparities. Upon reviewing the origin, context, effects, and previously deployed solutions to these institutional and social disparities, this thesis will propose guidelines for a project that seeks to address all of the most crucial of these issues; a mixed-class co-living housing experiment as an architectural response to the enduring effects of socioeconomically disparate residential conditions. This response involves a unification of a modified community planning strategy as a response to the institutional woes, and a set of architectural design and programming principles that respond to social disparities. The institutional disparities that have allowed residential neighborhoods to be socioeconomically segregated are rooted in racial segregation, as well as income segregation or “concentration of poverty.” Mixed-income housing projects of the past may have been effective at times of achieving its primary goal of deconcentrating poverty but have not proven to be effective in addressing social issues. Instead of deconcentrating poverty with mixed-income housing, the community planning strategy for this thesis seeks to mend socioeconomically differing neighborhoods through “mixed-class” housing; this involves a mixture of residents based on not only income, but also education and occupation. This strategy will allow for a much more diverse mixture of people based on the socioeconomics of a given site, while providing a more opportunistic condition for the involved social disparities to be addressed through architecture, programming, and spatial design.The social disparities that arise from socioeconomically segregated neighborhoods decrease the likelihood for residents to engage in daily social interactions that would lead to advantageous community relationships. The architectural response incorporated in this thesis involves examining the most crucial of these issues, and proposing a series of design principles, programmatic elements, and strategic adjacencies with a focus on co-living social architecture as precedent. These strategies represent the means of encouraging more community relationships in a housing development that would house residents with a mixture of socioeconomic classes. This thesis explores the basis of dismantling institutional norms that contribute to socioeconomic segregation in broader neighborhoods through mixed-class, and how incorporating that ideal gives more validity to reinforcing diversity, engagement, and social interaction among the classes at the building scale.

Hospitality can be regarded as a cornerstone of Ethiopian culture. The intense social interaction also can be perceived easily even if it is exercised in various ways depending on the number, condition, and locale of the community. Ethiopians are substantially attached to their culture and ethics, and as a result, these inveterate traditions were brought to North America by Ethiopian immigrants. These traditions have been passed on to the second and third generations, though, where and how the new immigrants practice these might differ. In the case of Cincinnati, religious institutions play a major role in being the locus where such traditions are put into practice.As Ethiopian immigrants began forming a congregation, local church buildings purchased from other religions, mainly Catholic and protestant churches, were used as places of worship as a stopgap measure. However, some of the spaces of the church have to be transformed to abide by Ethiopian Orthodox church ordinances such as a partitioned sanctuary (where the altar rests) and qidist (where communicants stand during liturgy), secluded church building from the ancillary programs, and related space requirements. The ordinances have a great value which distinguishes the Ethiopian church from the other Eastern Orthodox churches that share the same doctrine. As ordinance in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahdo is defined as a directive of implementing the church’s dogma, it applies to every aspect in the observance of worship since the physical building or the congregation or the human body itself can be referred to as a church. The rendered spatial adaptations and modifications are very substantial as they revamp the interior space to be efficient for the ritual activity, mainly, in liturgical service. Introducing social interaction into the church building itself, however, has been controversial to envisage with the ordinance, since the communal practice and the church tradition are different in space utilization and character, apart from the specific set decree that the church has regarding the adjoining programs to the sanctuary.This project analyzes how the home culture is practiced by the diaspora as well as the second and third generation of Ethiopian immigrants in the United States and follows several lines of inquiry. How can the communal activity co-exist with the church discipline? Which functions go along with the church's decree? What are the major regulating parameters and space altering directives that bring up the architectural transformations? The research will also scrutinize the programmatic and aesthetic implications triggered while enhancing the remodeled spaces as a case test in spatial exploration. In addition, this project explores how distinct elements of Ethiopian architecture can be sought to be envisioned in the repurposing process and how it can rejuvenate the existing interior or exterior scheme. This study will conclude by examining the effects of spatial evolutions on human perception and experience in contrast with the different accustomed practices and views of an original Ethiopian church building structure and social gathering spaces as they have appeared in immigrant communities in the United States.

Social control theory, as developed by Hirschi, has long been considered one of the more comprehensive examinations of the link between social factors and delinquency. Hirschi's four elements of the social bond serve to explain how weak ties to the social order can set the stage for a juvenile to become involved in delinquent acts. Following Hirschi's own test of the model, researchers have both replicated Hirschi's study and tested revised versions of it. These revisions have often involved the examination of possible interactive effects, as well as the addition of the variable of delinquent peers which has taken on considerable importance in the explanation of delinquent behavior. The present study is based on Hirschi's theoretical assumptions and attempts to reanalyze the four elements of the bond in terms of interactive effects. In addition, delinquent peers is examined to determine the role this variable plays, both alone and in interaction with the social bonding variables. Analysis consists primarily of comparisons of the explained variance, offered by different theoretical models, especially the contrast between additive and interactive models. Results show that interactions among the social bonding variables themselves do not lead to significant increases in explained variance. While the interaction of commitment and belief does show significance on occasion, there is no clear pattern to this interactive effect and it is not overwhelming in light of the numerous equations examined. The interactions between the delinquent peers variable and the social bonding variables led to the largest increases in explained variance. In particular, the combination of delinquent peers and social bonding explained forty percent of the variance in delinquency for the nonwhite subgroup. It must be highlighted that neither the elements of the social bond or delinquent peers, by themselves, explain inordinate amounts of delinquency. Results indicate that the most general causal model, for this sample, is a combination of decreased ties to the social order and the presence of an environment in which delinquent processes can be learned and practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of the dissertation is to examine reciprocal effects between crime rates and social disorganization using data for 60 urban neighborhoods. To measure social disorganization, I use one survey item that asks respondents how frequently they, or any member of their household, get together with neighbors either in the neighbors' or their own home. Since the literature does not provide clear guidance, I operationalize social disorganization as the percentage of neighborhood residents that interact with their neighbors daily, once a week or more, several times a month or more, once a month or more, and once a year or more. I use each measure of social interaction in subsequent analysis. In Chapter 5, Regression analyses indicate, after controlling for ecological variables, that measures of social interaction that reflect relatively infrequent social interaction among a relatively large proportion of the neighborhood population have strong negative effects on burglary, motor vehicle theft, and robbery rates. I argue that social networks based on infrequent social interaction among a large percentage of the population create effective informal social controls on the behavior of neighborhood residents and thus reduce crime. In Chapter 6, I turn the models around and examine the effects of crime on social interaction. The results indicate that burglary and robbery significantly reduce social interaction when the social interaction measure reflects relatively infrequent social interaction among a large percentage of the population. I argue that residents engaged in social networks based on infrequent social interaction are likely to reduce their involvement in these networks when the threat from crime is high because the networks are not essential for their day to day survival. In Chapter 7, I examine feedback loops among crime, fear of crime, and the social interaction measures. The results indicate that neighborhood feedback loops are operative when the social interaction measure reflects infrequent social interaction among a relatively large percentage of the population. However, the results must be interpreted cautiously because the models are somewhat sensitive to the inclusion of additional variables. I conclude that results from the analyses provide reasonable support for the social disorganization and consequences of crime perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the racial differences in informal contact and support from relatives and friends as well as the use of formal organizations and services in later life. In addition, the relationships between informal and formal interaction and support are examined. Using data from the National Health Interview's 1984 Supplement on Aging (SOA), results from logistic and multiple regression analyses show older white respondents are more likely to have contact with and receive support from kin. Black respondents were more likely to use formal organizations (especially churches) and community services for the elderly. Two-stage least squares regression was used to determine the nonrecursive relationship between the use of informal versus formal sources of contact and support. Results showed that members of both racial groups who have a high degree of contact with relatives and friends also participate in a number of voluntary organizations. Patterns of social support varied significantly by race. Blacks and whites who receive help from relatives are less likely to use formal services. However, those white elderly respondents who use formal services are less likely to receive help from their relatives. This pattern is not evident among older blacks. This suggests that older black respondents are more likely to integrate the use of formal services into their informal caregiving networks, without losing support from family members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), a chronic disorder characterized by excessive and difficult-to-control worry, has been shown to be associated with a global pattern of avoidance, emotion dysregulation, negative affectivity, dysfunctional social cognition, and maladaptive interpersonal behavior. However, limited research exists examining functioning and connection during social interactions. The present study aimed to investigate how individuals with GAD respond while engaged in an intense, online social interaction aimed at increasing level of connectedness. Participants were adult females (N = 101) with and without GAD who engaged in either an evocative or non-evocative/control online interaction. Results revealed that individuals with GAD experienced lower positive affect, higher negative affect, and perceived their interaction partner more negatively (hostile-submissive, hostile, submissive) compared to those without GAD during the interaction. Relatedly, individuals with GAD were perceived more negatively and less positively by their interaction partner during the interaction. However, GAD status did not predict participant likeability, desire to engage in future interaction, intimacy, openness, or commitment to the relationship with their interaction partner. Individuals with GAD further reported experiencing lower levels of connectedness with their interaction partner while engaged in a deep and intimate interaction aimed at fostering connectedness. Results support the notion that the pathology associated with GAD interferes with the ability to engage in prosocial behavior and cultivate close connected relationships. Implications of these findings are discussed.

The dissertation proposes a new hierarchical computational framework for social interaction understanding, addressing four core challenges - interactiveness, shared attention, gaze communication and triadic belief dynamics. The goal of the framework is to represent and model the underlying structure of social interaction, from the outside to the inside, and from the bottom to the top, and to build a bridge between typical pattern recognition in computer vision and Theory of Mind understanding in Artificial Intelligence. To achieve the goal, we firstly build a computational model for interactiveness perception from motion trajectories. Secondly, we studied the typical phenomenon shared attention, and proposed a model to temporally and spatially detect whether there is shared attention or not in the social interaction scenario, and if yes, where is the shared attention. Thirdly, in a follow up work, we extend the work to further study the general gaze communication systematically. Based on previous studies in psychology, computer vision and robotics, we summarize and define the gaze communication in two hierarchical levels, i.e., the atomic level, and the event level. We proposed a graph neural network to model what kind of gaze communication is going on in the social interaction. Finally, we step further into the underlying mental world from the appearance observations. We learn what’s the on-going belief dynamics in a triadic social interaction caused by their nonverbal communication. We jointly parse the social interaction scenario into a six-level parse graph. At the bottom are the detected entities, such as objects and human agents; the entities belong to a certain frame, and the frames are then temporally clustered into interactive segments; we recognize what is the nonverbal communication category for each interactive segment; finally, we infer the belief dynamics caused by the nonverbal communication. Our hierarchical computational framework can give a more holistic and deeper understanding of social interaction in videos beyond simple pattern perception and recognition.

Social interactions are complex and constantly changing decision making environments. Prior research (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995) has found that people use their trust in others as a criterion for decision making during social interactions. Trust is not only relevant for human-human interaction, but has also been found to be important for human-machine interaction as well, which is becoming a growing feature in many work domains (De Visser et al., 2016). Prior research on trust has attempted to identify the behavioral characteristics an individual (trustor) uses to assess the trustworthiness of another (trustee) to determine the trustor's level of trust. Experimental findings have been used to develop into various models of trust (Mayer et al., 1995; Juvina, Collins, Larue, Kennedy & de Mello, 2019) to explain how a trustor comes to trust a trustee. An aspect of trust that has not been investigated is how or if trust changes when a trustor attempts to interact with a trustee, but cannot interact with the trustee. Under such situations Juvina et al.’s (2019) trust model makes the novel prediction that trust will decrease. To assess the prediction of Juvina et al. (2019) model, a new experimental design (the multi-arm trust game) was developed to evaluate how trust is affected under conditions where an individual variably interacts with multiple trustees. Additionally, the identity the trustee (human and machine) was manipulated to examine differences between human-human and human-machine trust. Before data were collected, the model made ex-ante predictions of the participants’ behavior. The accuracy of these predictions was then evaluated after the data were collected. The results from our experiment found that our model was able to predict general characteristics of the data confirming the necessity of the model’s discounting mechanism, while also highlighting model limitations that are areas for future research.

Understanding the interaction between people from images is yet a challenging task in recent years. Several approaches attempted to address this challenge by different proposed models and compact descriptors encoding the consistency between people's spatial-temporal body features or their overall activities. Among all human body features, the head pose provides a distinct description of an individual's attention and is considered a key feature to interpret social interactions. In this thesis, I present a novel approach to infer interaction among a group of people in a group conversation scenario using the Markov Random Field model. A novel interaction feature is proposed to represent the transactional segment using the head pose. Furthermore, I extend the approach to infer the hierarchical structure of a group with the contextual information, which improves the leading method in the analysis of interactions among people and detect the emergent leader of the group. The qualitative result shows the effectiveness of interaction inference using a state-of-art dataset.