This paper presents results from a recent classroom study using Betty’s Brain, a choice-rich learning environment in which students learn about a scientific domain (e.g., mammal thermoregulation) as they teach a virtual agent named Betty. The learning and teaching task combines reading and understanding a set of hypertext resources with constructing a causal map that accurately models the scien...

Phase synchronized states can emerge in the collective behavior of an ensemble of chaotic coupled map lattices, due to a mean field interaction. This type of interaction is responsible for synchronized chaotic global activity of the lattices, while the local activity of each map remains unsynchronized. The resulting collective dynamics is called “weak synchronization.” The transition to such a ...

We study the evolution of cooperation in the collective-risk social dilemma game, where the risk is determined by a collective target that must be reached with individual contributions. All players initially receive endowments from the available amount of common resources. While cooperators contribute part of their endowment to the collective target, defectors do not. If the target is not reach...

Research and commerce activity has been expanding the potential of micro-task markets. Initially used for simple, disconnected tasks, they have now been able to achieve impressive results in creative domains such as writing and design. The goals for this research are to further explore the possibilities of micro-task markets for performing creative work by defining a set of tasks and processes ...

The non-dictatorial asymmetric Nash bargaining solution is characterized on the basis of independence of irrelevant alternatives, independence of equivalent utility representations, and a new axiom—moderate collective rationality. The latter is logically weaker than Roth’s (1977) strong individual rationality and logically stronger than Anbarci and Sun’s (2011) weakest collective rationality.

Two main functions of evaluation are to enable accountability and collective learning. Both of these – and their combination – run into divers complications when applied in complex multi-actor policy processes. The article explores these complications and illustrates these with examples from the field of spatial policy. In doing so a third function of evaluation in such contexts is identified, ...

Cognitive/causal maps have been widely used as a powerful way of capturing decisionmakers’ perceptions about a problem, representing it as a causes-effects discourse. Several ways of making causal inferences from this type of model have been proposed in the Operational Research and Artificial Intelligence literatures, but none, as far as we are aware, has attempted to use a causal map structure...

Mountain landscapes have changed drastically during the 20th century. The knowledge of changing patterns and processes is currently considered a key element for conservation and management. This integrative study combines different data sources, methodologies and representations that contribute to the history of common property land in Leomil highlands (Beira Alta, Portugal). The evaluated mate...

In two studies, 6–12-year-old children (Study 1: N = 58; Study 2: N = 38) and adults (Study 2: N = 22) rank ordered intentional, teleological and essentialist explanations for different behaviours of living-kind groups representing a range of biological kinds from plants to humans. Overall, humans elicited more intentional explanations, insects and plants elicited more essentialist explanations...