Human navigation is an ability central to many activities. A prevalent hypothesis for different navigation strategies is the cognitive maps hypothesis, which is a complex navigation strategy that...Show moreHuman navigation is an ability central to many activities. A prevalent hypothesis for different navigation strategies is the cognitive maps hypothesis, which is a complex navigation strategy that relies on survey knowledge of the environment and involves the formation of mental representations, allowing navigators to efficiently and flexibly navigate through different strategies to reach any target location. Learning plays a crucial role in the development of navigation abilities, with individual differences observed. This thesis aims to explore the relationship between learning and navigation performance in real-life and virtual environments among Mbendjele BaYaka children, a hunter-gatherer community from the Congo Basin that relies on daily navigation for collecting food and has little experience with technology. I will focus on travel speed, contributing to our understanding of the suitability of virtual reality (VR) for spatial navigation research. The virtual navigation experiment involved children playing a computer game to find and collect food items in a three-dimensional virtual environment. The real-life navigation experiment included partially the same children participating in a real-life honey-finding game. Both experiments have been set up to investigate different spatial skills and their impact on navigation performance among children ranging in age from 4 to 16. My research took advantage of the fact that certain navigation tasks in this experiment were identical, namely repeated returns to the same location. The research investigates the travel speed of children, using linear mixed models to analyse the effect of trial number on spatial learning while controlling for age and comparing their spatial performances in real and virtual environments. The results showed that trial number and session had different effects in each setting, and there was no correlation between real-life and virtual navigation performance. This shows that more research is needed to improve study design, to make environments more similar, and to make reward moments more congruent.Show less
Associative learning underlies much of our everyday decision-making. Understanding the factors that impact associative learning abilities thus represents an important research aim. Childhood trauma...Show moreAssociative learning underlies much of our everyday decision-making. Understanding the factors that impact associative learning abilities thus represents an important research aim. Childhood trauma has been shown to negatively impact associative learning, but little is known about the impact of trauma in adulthood in healthy populations, or the impact of combined childhood trauma and recent trauma. Recent research suggests that associative learning may also differ across social and non-social contexts. This study utilised a matched aversive learning task and a within-subjects design to examine the impact of self-reported childhood trauma, recent trauma, and combined childhood and recent trauma on associative learning in social and non-social contexts. 250 participants were recruited via Prolific; 192 (97 female) were included in analysis. This was a healthy community sample. Results revealed distinct contributions of self-reported childhood trauma, recent trauma, and combined childhood and recent trauma to poorer associative learning scores. Overall associative learning performance was similar across social and non-social contexts. Combined trauma impacted associative learning scores significantly more in the non-social than social condition. This suggests qualitative differences in the processes underlying associative learning across contexts, and may illustrate strengths in navigating social uncertainty that emerge in those who experience both childhood and recent trauma. This study illustrates the potential of traumatic exposures to affect associative learning across the lifespan, and that experiences of both childhood and recent trauma may be superadditive in their impact. Recommendations for future research and appropriate designs to overcome this study's limitations are outlined.Show less
In this research it was analysed whether students learn from mentoring conversations; to what extent learning is influenced by their beliefs on professional learning, their valuing of their mentor,...Show moreIn this research it was analysed whether students learn from mentoring conversations; to what extent learning is influenced by their beliefs on professional learning, their valuing of their mentor, their reflection report and the conversational moves in mentoring conversations; to what extent the students’ beliefs on professional learning and their valuing of their mentor are associated with the conversational moves in mentoring of the mentor; and to what extent these are influenced by the students’ reflection report. It was analysed which conversational moves occurred during mentoring conversations and how often. Use was made of student teachers’ questionnaires and reflection reports. It appeared that students learn from mentoring conversations. Learning was probably positively influenced by the numbers of the conversational moves not relevant, orienting, reflective, directive, regulative and constructive. Students learn more when they value their mentor more positively and when the quality of their reflection report becomes higher. Students’ beliefs on professional learning are positively associated with the numbers of the conversational move regulative and students’ valuing of their mentor is positively associated with the numbers of the conversational moves recollect, orienting, reflective and constructive. The conversational move ‘mainly not content oriented’ only occurred with the student with a low quality of reflection. Mentoring conversations are effective to educate students when the right conversational moves are used in the right extent.Show less
