Browsing by Subject "aggression"
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Item Aggressive children's memory for attachment relevant information(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Collie, Claire FutamaseThis study examined a measure of children's memory for information from a story about a hypothetical mother and child, the Story Task, as a potential tool to delineate subtypes of aggressive children based on the pattern of information processing revealed through their Story Task performance. The Story Task scores of 263 second and third grade aggressive children were subjected to a cluster analytic procedure. Although four apparently distinct subgroups emerged from the cluster analysis (negative recall, low recall, defensive processing, and positive projection), validation analyses of these clusters against external variables failed to reveal significant group differences. Potential exaplanations for the failure to find meaningful subgroups of aggressive children and general limitations of the study are discussed.Item Cost, Precision, and Task Structure in Aggression-based Arbitration for Minimalist Robot Cooperation(2012-10-19) Mitra, TanushreeMulti-robot systems have the potential to improve performance through parallelism. Unfortunately, interference often diminishes those returns. Starting from the earliest multi-robot research, a variety of arbitration mechanisms have been proposed to maximize speed-up. Vaughan and his collaborators demonstrated the effectiveness of an arbitration mechanism inspired by biological signalling where the level of aggression displayed by each agent effectively prioritizes the limited resources. But most often these arbitration mechanisms did not do any principled consideration of environmental constraints or task structure, signalling cost and precision of the outcome. These factors have been taken into consideration in this research and a taxonomy of the arbitration mechanisms have been presented. The taxonomy organizes prior techniques and newly introduced novel techniques. The latter include theoretical and practical mechanisms (from minimalist to especially efficient). Practicable mechanisms were evaluated on physical robots for which both data and models are presented. The arbitration mechanisms described span a whole gamut from implicit (in case of robotics, entirely without representation) to deliberately coordinated (via an established Biological model, reformulated from a Bayesian perspective). Another significant result of this thesis is a systematic characterization of system performance across parameters that describe the task structure: patterns of interference are related to a set of strings that can be expressed exactly. This analysis of the domain has the important (and rare) property of completeness, i.e., all possible abstract variations of the task are understood. This research presents efficiency results showing that a characterization for any given instance can be obtained in sub-linear time. It has been shown, by construction, that: (1) Even an ideal arbitration mechanism can perform arbitrarily poorly; (2) Agents may manipulate task-structure for individual and collective good; (3) Task variations affect the influence that initial conditions have on long-term behaviour; (4) The most complex interference dynamics possible for the scenario is a limit cycle behaviour.Item Evaluation of traits associated with bucking bull performance and behavior(2009-05-15) Romero, Natasha ElizabethVideo and industry data were used to assess the inter-relationships of aggression, delivery, coat color, year of birth, number of outs, buckoff percent and score in rodeo bulls. An evaluation of laterality based on observations of how the individual animals were loaded into chutes at 11 bull riding events showed 63% left-handed delivery and 37% right-handed delivery across all observations (n = 525). There was a similar distribution for aggressiveness (based on whether or not the bull charged after the rider dismounted) with 64% of bulls being non-aggressive and 36% of bulls being aggressive. Significant linear relationships existed between score and number of outs and score and buckoff percentage indicating that experience impacted performance. The correlation between number of outs and buckoff percentage was low to moderate (0.06 to 0.30), depending upon the subset of data evaluated. The r-square value for the analysis of score among all bulls was 0.14; however, the r-square value in the subset of bulls with known sires with more than one son was 0.68 when sire was included in the model. Similar increases in r-square values were observed for 2006 average score, career average score, buckoff percentage, and career buckoff percentage, indicating important genetic influences on these traits and/or their component traits. Investigations into the relationship between performance and aggression may help bucking stock producers improve the selection criteria they use. The current trend within the industry is for several breeders to breed ?hot? or flighty, nervous cattle to achieve higher performing offspring. Given that there was no association between aggression and score based on chi-square test, aggression may be removed from the criteria for using certain animals for breeding purposes. Based on results from this work, if bucking stock breeders want to make genetic changes in these traits, documentation of pedigree information is vital.Item Perceptions of aggression in mental health clients(2008-06-23) Cathy Leigh Hueske; Dr. Kathleen Lucke; Dr. Ruth Levine; Dr. Peggy Landrum; Dr. Elnora Mendias; Dr. Carolyn PhillipsIn mental healthcare identifying factors including those that exist within the client-caregiver alliance is important so that aggression can be eliminated or minimized. The naturalistic inquiry method answered the following research questions: 1) What factors do licensed and unlicensed mental health workers perceive as triggers of aggressive behavior responses in hospitalized mental health clients? and 2) How do licensed and unlicensed mental health workers perceive their actions and behaviors influence the precipitation of aggressive behaviors among hospitalized mental health clients? A purposive sample of 15 mental healthcare workers was necessary to obtain saturation and redundancy. Demographic data were collected from caregivers with an average of 15 years of mental health experience working in nursing and social service departments. The purposes of this study were to: 1) describe the perceptions mental health workers have of the causes of aggressive responses in hospitalized mental health clients, and 2) explore mental health workers perceptions of how their actions and behaviors influence the precipitation of aggressive behaviors among hospitalized mental health clients. Participants interviewed were audiotaped to gather rich thick descriptions of the phenomena understudy. Audiotapes of the interview were transcribed for data analysis. Guided by the theoretical framework of Symbolic Interactionism, the overarching concept of aggression as an interactive process emerged from the participants’ descriptions. The supporting constructs were building, exploding and recovering from aggression. The categories for the constructs were knowing, managing, resulting outcomes and procession aggression emerged from several subcategories and themes. The findings of this study provide direction for further research involving triggers of aggression in the mentally ill and the influence of caregivers’ actions and behaviors on the hospitalized mentally ill.Item The effects of normative classroom aggression and teacher support on changes in ethnically diverse elementary students' aggression(Texas A&M University, 2008-10-10) Kuhns, Clarissa IvetteThis study examined the joint effects of the quality of teacher-student relationship support (TSRS) and normative levels of classroom aggression on individual aggression in a sample of 687 second-grade children who entered first grade with relatively low reading readiness skills. Using a prospective design, the present study explored the joint effects of teacher-rated TSRS and normative classroom aggression on both teacher- and peer-rated aggression, controlling for levels of baseline aggression. The study also examined the effect of peer-rated TSRS on teacher- and peer-rated aggression. Furthermore, ethnic and sex differences on study variables and on their relationships were examined. Boys were rated by teachers and peers as having higher aggression levels and lower Time 1 and Time 2 TSRS than girls. African American students were rated by teachers and peers as having higher Time 1 and Time 2 aggression levels. African American students were rated by teachers as having lower Time 1 and Time 2 TSRS than Hispanic and White students. Hispanic students had higher peer-rated TSRS than African American students at Time 1. Furthermore, African American and Hispanic students were more likely to be placed in higher aggressive classrooms than were White students. Regression analyses found that, after controlling for baseline aggression, teacher-rated TSRS predicted peer- and teacher-rated aggression. However, neither normative classroom aggression nor the interaction of normative classroom aggression with teacher-rated or peer-rated TSRS predicted teacher-rated aggression. Peer-rated TSRS did not predict teacher-rated or peer-rated aggression. There was no evidence ethnicity moderated the relationships between TSRS and aggression. Study limitations and implications for intervention are also discussed.