Although we represent other people in terms of both what they look like and how they behave, these two aspects of person knowledge have rarely been studied together. While vision scientists have focused on the processing of faces and bodies,…

We describe an adaptation of the knowledge gradient, originally developed for discrete ranking and selection problems, to the problem of calibrating continuous parameters for the purpose of tuning a simulator. The knowledge gradient for continuous parameters uses a continuous approximation…

Amidst the disintegration of the Qing Empire (1644-1911), men and women in China began to understand their differences in terms of modern scientific knowledge. Why Sex Mattered provides an explanation for the relatively recent emergence of a psycho-biological notion of…

Current theories of physics cognition require specification of complex mechanisms for explaining knowledge acquisition. I demonstrate that a quantitative model of physics perception can be constructed by assuming that physics problem perception provides an optimal summary of a set of…

The use of concepts underlies the most basic cognitive processes. Consequently, psychologists have long been interested in understanding the behavioral and neural correlates of conceptual knowledge and its manipulation. This has led to a rich set of research results that…

International organizations and governments throughout the developing world have long provided agricultural extension services to farmers with the hopes of raising agricultural productivity and reducing rural poverty. These programs train farmers in modern agronomic techniques through instruction and demonstration, sometimes…

This dissertation focuses on the specific strategies by which authors of the travel writing genre seize narrative agency. Throughout its centuries-long history, the genre of travel writing has offered multiple generations of authors a means by which to convey observations…

Japan is one of the most active users of ART in the world. Infertile women in Japan have shared
a complex relationship with the technology due to paternalistic and pronatalist influences. ART
has given a means for the medical and…

My dissertation centers on the meaning of dreams as interpreted by literati in the late Ming (1368-1644), viewed through the lens of the 1636 encyclopedia Forest of Dreams. This thirty-four-juan tome is the largest extant Chinese dream encyclopedia and includes…

This dissertation is the first comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of Ottoman economic thought within the context of modernization during the reign of Abdülhamid II (1876-1909). Drawing on a broad array of primary sources ranging from textbooks and manuals of economics…