The increased diffusion of the Internet has made computer-mediated communication (CMC) very popular. However, a difficult question arises for psychologists and communication researchers: "What are the communicative characteristics of CMC?" According to the "cues-filtered-out" approach, CMC lacks the specifically relational features (social cues), which enable the interlocutors to identify corre...

The Socio-Cognitive Systems (SCS) Section at Defence Research and Development Canada—Toronto (DRDC Toronto) has undertaken a Technology Investment Fund (TIF) Project entitled “A Conceptual Framework for Understanding Armed Non-state Actors (ANSAs): Strategic Roles and Operational Dynamics.” The aim of this Project is to advance our understanding of (a) the strategic roles of ANSAs in the contex...

This paper reviews the literature about social and cognitive functions of spatial features used when collaborating in both physical and virtual settings. Those concepts come from various fields like social, cognitive as well as environmental psychology or CSCW (Computer Supported Collaborative Work). We briefly summarize the social and cognitive affordances of spatial features like distance, pr...

Employees’ failure to comply with IS security procedures is a key concern for organizations today. A number of socio-cognitive theories have been used to explain this. However, prior studies have not examined the influence of past and automatic behavior on employee decisions to comply. This is an important omission because past behavior has been assumed to strongly affect decision-making. To ad...

The mental model theory claims that the ability to falsify is at the core of human rationality. We assume that cognitive conflicts and socio-cognitive conflicts induce falsification, and thus improve syllogistic reasoning performance. Our first study assesses adults’ ability to reason in two different conditions in a single experimental session. In both conditions the participants are presented...

Agents that behave maliciously or incompetently are a potential hazard in open distributed e-commerce applications. However human societies have evolved signals and mechanisms based on social interaction to defend against such behaviour. In this paper we present a computational socio-cognitive framework which formalises social theories of trust, reputation, recommendation and learning from dire...

Rebel agents are intelligent agents that can oppose goals or plans assigned to them, or the general attitudes and/or behavior of other agents. They can serve purposes such as ethics, safety, and task execution correctness; enhance social co-creativity, and provide or support diverse points of view. We previously proposed a framework for AI rebellion and explored various scenarios that have posi...

Promisingness Judgments as Facilitators of Knowledge Building in Elementary Science Bodong Chen Doctor of Philosophy Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto 2014 Recognizing promising ideas is an important component of expertise and creativity (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Csikszentmihalyi, 2009; Gardner, 1994). The goal ...

This paper describes mathematical models for network evolution when ties (edges) are directed and the node set is xed. Each of these models implies a speci c type of departure from the standard null binomial model. We provide statistical tests that, in keeping with these models, are sensitive to particular types of departures from the null. Each model (and associated test) discussed follows dir...

Most investigation into climate adaptation to date has focused on specific technological interventions and socio-economic aspects of adaptive capacity. New perspectives posit that socio-cognitive factors may be as or more important in motivating individuals to take adaptive actions. Recent research indicates that incorporating insights from motivation theory can enhance theorization of adaptive...