Context‐dependent behaviour and connectivity of recolonizing brown bear populations identify transboundary conservation challenges in Central Europe

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. R. Recio ◽  
F. Knauer ◽  
A. Molinari‐Jobin ◽  
Đ. Huber ◽  
S. Filacorda ◽  
...  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice de Gelder ◽  
Jari Kätsyri ◽  
Aline de Borst

Virtual reality (VR) promises methodological rigour with the extra benefit of allowing us to study the context-dependent behaviour of individuals in their natural environment. Pan and Hamilton (2018, Br. J. Psychol.) provide a useful overview of methodological recommendations for using VR. Here, we highlight some other aspects of the use of VR. Our first argument is that VR can be useful by virtue of its differences from the normal perceptual environment. That is, by virtue of its relative non-realism and poverty of its perceptual elements, it can actually offer increased clarity with respect to the features of interest for the researcher. Our second argument is that VR exerts its measurable influence more by eliciting an acceptance of the virtual world (i.e., ‘suspension of disbelief’) rather than by eliciting a true belief of the realism of the VR environment. We conclude by providing a novel suggestion for combining neuroimaging methods with embodied VR that relies on the suspension of disbelief.


2015 ◽  
Vol 93 (5) ◽  
pp. 353-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Marone ◽  
S.R. Camín ◽  
V.R. Cueto

Flexibility of foraging behaviour affects our capacity to predict ecological outputs such as population responses to habitat change. Some birds forage following rules of absolute value of the food item (i.e., absolute valuation). Their realized diet is strongly correlated with the profitability of the food item and it is predictable. Consumers, however, do not always follow absolute rules. Opportunistic foragers adjust food consumption based on the availability of the food item. Their diet is still predictable but more elusive. Relativistic or context-dependent foragers change the ranks of food preferences depending on the presence of alternative food options in the choice set. Predicting their contingent diet is particularly difficult. We tested if the context of seed availability affects foraging decisions of three seed-eating bird species (the Rufous-collared Sparrow (Zonotrichia capensis (Statius Muller, 1776)), the Many-colored Chaco Finch (Saltatricula multicolor (Burmeister, 1860)), and the Common Diuca Finch (Diuca diuca (Molina, 1782))) using choice experiments aimed at detecting if seed preferences for two types of target seeds changed according to context. Birds showed very similar rankings of preferences for target seeds; however, preferences for attractive food items were not fixed but often increased in less valuable contexts. Although results imply some degree of context-dependent behaviour, predictability of bird diet was preserved because the ranking of preferences remained mostly unchanged between contexts (and among bird species), and the higher consumption of target grass seeds in a less attractive context was widely expected from the intrinsic properties of the seeds.


2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 153-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanne Nauts ◽  
Oliver Langner ◽  
Inge Huijsmans ◽  
Roos Vonk ◽  
Daniël H. J. Wigboldus

Asch’s seminal research on “Forming Impressions of Personality” (1946) has widely been cited as providing evidence for a primacy-of-warmth effect, suggesting that warmth-related judgments have a stronger influence on impressions of personality than competence-related judgments (e.g., Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007 ; Wojciszke, 2005 ). Because this effect does not fit with Asch’s Gestalt-view on impression formation and does not readily follow from the data presented in his original paper, the goal of the present study was to critically examine and replicate the studies of Asch’s paper that are most relevant to the primacy-of-warmth effect. We found no evidence for a primacy-of-warmth effect. Instead, the role of warmth was highly context-dependent, and competence was at least as important in shaping impressions as warmth.


Author(s):  
Alp Aslan ◽  
Anuscheh Samenieh ◽  
Tobias Staudigl ◽  
Karl-Heinz T. Bäuml

Changing environmental context during encoding can influence episodic memory. This study examined the memorial consequences of environmental context change in children. Kindergartners, first and fourth graders, and young adults studied two lists of items, either in the same room (no context change) or in two different rooms (context change), and subsequently were tested on the two lists in the room in which the second list was encoded. As expected, in adults, the context change impaired recall of the first list and improved recall of the second. Whereas fourth graders showed the same pattern of results as adults, in both kindergartners and first graders no memorial effects of the context change arose. The results indicate that the two effects of environmental context change develop contemporaneously over middle childhood and reach maturity at the end of the elementary school days. The findings are discussed in light of both retrieval-based and encoding-based accounts of context-dependent memory.


2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Herbert ◽  
Sharon Bertsch
Keyword(s):  

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