No abstract

In 2004 in Australia, controversy over the alleged involvement of elite footballers in incidents of sexual assault highlighted a tendency to denigrate the victims and excuse the perpetrators. To investigate whether rape myths were prevalent enough to explain this public response, 102 university students were surveyed for their beliefs and determinations of blame in rape situations. Although there was a gender difference in the rates of rape myth acceptance, with males more likely to accept these beliefs, these were not evident in decisions about victim blame or perpetrator blame. However, males and high rape myth acceptors were significantly more likely to minimize the seriousness of the rape situation. These effects increased with familiarity depicted in the situation.

Animal-Robot Interaction experiments have demonstrated their usefulness to understand the social behaviour of a growing number of animal species. In order to study the mechanisms of social influences (from parents and peers) on behavioural development, we design an experimental setup where young quail chicks, after hatching, continuously live with autonomous mobile robots in mixed triadic groups of two chicks and one robot. As precocial birds are subject to imprinting, we compare groups where chicks meet the robot as their very first social partner, on their first day after hatching (R chicks), with groups where chicks meet a real conspecific first (C chicks), and the robot later (on the second day after hatching). We measured the behavioural synchronization between chicks and robot over three days. Afterwards, we directly tested the existence of a possible social bond between animal and robot, by performing separation-reunion behavioural tests. R chicks were more synchronized with the robot in their daily feeding-resting activities than C chicks. Moreover, R chicks emitted numerous distress calls when separated from the robot, even in the presence of another chick, whereas C chicks emitted calls only when separated from the other chick. Whether the observed chick-robot attachment bond reflects filial, or sibling-imprinting of chicks towards the robot remains unclear, as the latter process is not fully understood in natural familial groups. Still, these results reveal the necessary initial conditions for stable, cohesive mixed groups of chicks and robots, a promising tool to experiment on the long-term dynamics of social behaviour.

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It is widely accepted that engineering graduates should not only be technically competent but they should also be skilled in communication and teamwork, have social and global awareness, be self-directed and have an expectation of lifelong learning. However it is much less clear how these "soft skills" are best developed in undergraduate engineers in the context of their studies. We have worked with over 350 students from freshman to seniors to develop a reflexive approach to their work. This has been done in the context of project-based, design courses, involving both individual and group work in the disciplines of mechanical and chemical engineering. We conclude that student attitudes clearly evidenced the need for engineering staff to model reflective practice and place regular emphasis on its value as a professional learning tool. Exercises in reflective thinking are most effective if integrated into other more 'traditional' engineering tasks rather than being set as 'stand alone' tasks. We argue that the best way to make expert knowledge accessible to non-experts is through getting the experts to reflect on their successes and failures.