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Fall 2018
A near miss is considered a special type of failure that approximates a goal. In skillful activities, near misses are indeed contingent on behaviour. Therefore, they can suggest how behaviour ought to be modified to achieve a desired end. However, near misses in games of chance do not share this...
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Fall 2015
The ability to perceive and act upon the external world is fundamental to every organism. For species such as humans and pigeons, vision is a dominant modality that allows interaction with the world. In this dissertation I examine the similarities and differences between humans and pigeons, two...
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Generalizing the Effect of Extreme Outcomes in Risky Decision Making: A Cross Species Comparison of Pigeons and Humans
DownloadSpring 2016
Research has shown that when decisions between risky and fixed options are based on repeated exposure to the governing contingencies, preference is often influenced by an overweighting of the most extreme outcomes appearing in the decision context. Known formally as the extreme-outcome rule, this...
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Fall 2014
In our everyday lives we often make decisions based on our prior experiences, whether it be choosing to park without putting money in the meter or deciding what to buy as a gift for a loved one. Inevitably, our decisions in the present are informed by our memories of experiences past. In this...
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The role of geometric and non-geometric environmental cues in reorientation: Pigeons’ and humans’ use of relative wall lengths, angular information, and features
DownloadFall 2012
The purpose of the following studies was to explore how humans and pigeons encode and use the geometric and featural information of their environments to orient and navigate. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the use of angular amplitude and relative wall length information in parallelogram-shaped...