The purpose of the present thesis was to examine psychosocial and behavioural factors associated with the decision-making process involved in uptake of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine. In Canada, the HPV vaccine has been approved for women and men aged…

My study focuses on b-boying, the archetype of hiphop dance, to better understand the informal teaching and learning processes embodied in the freestyle or raw b-boy cipher (improvisational dance circle). I draw from an ethnographic approach to investigate how hiphop…

Objective: Despite the established effectiveness of medication in improving symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Spencer et al 2000), rates of adherence to pharmacotherapy are low, ranging from 34% to 91% (Gau et al., 2006). Since higher adherence rates are…

This thesis investigated how instructional environments might be optimally designed for all students to restructure prior knowledge and learn counter-intuitive science concepts, referred to as conceptual change. Three independent variables were examined in relation to real-time cognitive processes and subsequent…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of epistemic beliefs and knowledge representations in cognitive and metacognitive processing and conceptual change when learning about physics concepts through text. Specifically, I manipulated the representation of physics concepts in…

Throughout university, students are required to complete complex writing tasks that involve a host of cognitive and metacognitive strategies, yet little is known about the differences in students' approach to the writing process. In particular, the role of students' beliefs…

Placebo effects constitute context-dependent medical phenomena, and exemplify the link between psychosocial factors and physiological processes. By surveying medical students (Study 1) and practicing physicians (Study 2), the present thesis explores the knowledge and attitudes towards the role of placebos,…

Structured knowledge representations are becoming central to the area of Information Science. Search engines companies have said that constructing an entity graph is the key to classifying their enormous corpus of documents in order to provide more relevant results to…

Marketers often use scarcity to influence consumers, with announcements such as "limited quantities," "until stocks last," "few tickets left for this event," "limited time offer," or "24 hour sale." Past research indicates that scarcity often has a positive effect on…

Interfaces between subsystems in collaborative product development projects are presently defined by interface control documents. These documents are created after agreements are made between designers on how to design subsystem interfaces. The designers must commit to the definitions given by…