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Social facilitation is a well-known phenomenon where the presence of organisms belonging to the same species enhances an individual organism's performance in a specific task. As far as fishes are concerned, most studies on social facilitation have been conducted in standing-water conditions. However, for riverine species, fish are most commonly located in moving waters, and the effects of hydrodynamics on social facilitation remain largely unknown. To bridge this knowledge gap, we designed and performed flume experiments where the behaviour of wild juvenile Italian riffle dace (Telestes muticellus) in varying group sizes and at different mean flow velocities, was studied. An artificial intelligence (AI) deep learning algorithm was developed and employed to track fish positions in time and subsequently assess their exploration, swimming activity, and space use. Results indicate that energy-saving strategies dictated space use in flowing waters regardless of group size. Instead, exploration and swimming activity increased by increasing group size, but the magnitude of this enhancement (which quantifies social facilitation) was modulated by flow velocity. These results have implications for how future research efforts should be designed to understand the social dynamics of riverine fish populations, which can no longer ignore the contribution of hydrodynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Virtual fencing is an alternative to the ubiquitously used physical fences. It uses GPS to determine the location of livestock relative to a virtual line. The system deters livestock from leaving the enclosure by using an auditory warning followed by an electric impulse during approach and crossing of the fence line. This paper assessed the social effects on learning between cattle with and without prior experience with virtual fencing through three case studies: one with a gradual and two with an instant introduction method. These were applied to assess if improvements in associative learning could be made. Due to the non-standardised experiments, it was not possible to analyse the effect across the case studies and therefore to conclude whether the number of experienced cattle or the different introduction methods influenced the inexperienced cattle. Agricultural industries rely on physical fences to manage livestock. However, these present practical, financial, and ecological challenges, which may be solved using virtual fencing. This study aimed to identify how experienced cattle through social facilitation and the introduction method influence inexperienced cattle. Based on three stocks held in Fanø, Denmark, containing 12, 17 and 13 Angus (Bos taurus), we examined the virtual fence learning in three case studies using one gradual introduction with zero experienced cattle (A) and two different instant introductions with one (B) and ten (C) experienced cattle. Gradual introduction had the virtual fence moved 20 m every other day for eleven days, and in the two instant introductions, the physical fence was removed in one day. Warnings and impulses were recorded during an 11-day learning period and a 26-day post-learning period, using the impulses per warning to quantify if the cattle adapted. Case studies A and B showed a significant reduction in the warnings and impulses, but only A showed a significant reduction in the impulses per warning when comparing the learning period to the post-learning period. Due to the non-standardised experiments, it was not possible to conclude if the number of experienced cattle or the introduction method had an effect on the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the educational applications of social robots has shown how they can motivate children and help improve academic learning outcomes. Here, we examine how robots can support skill learning and, more specifically, musical instrument practice. Drawing from social facilitation theory and evaluation apprehension theory we expected that the robot's mere presence would impact children's performance and that this effect would be contingent upon the children expecting the robot to evaluate their performance. We report an experiment with children (N = 31) aged nine to twelve who practiced a familiar and new piece alone, in the presence of an evaluative robot, and in the presence of a non‐evaluative robot. We found that children performed better in terms of rhythm, pitch, and general impression in the presence of the non‐evaluative robot. These findings offer important insights for designing robot tutors for music learning. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Social robots have been applied in different educational scenarios (e.g., second language, math, and programming) and were proven to be beneficial for children's motivation.Musical instrument learning requires practice, perseverance, and social support to become successful.Social robots can be used as a provider of social support during musical instrument practice.Children tend to perform better on easy or well‐rehearsed tasks and worse on complex tasks or new ones with the presence of observers, but only when they believe the observer can evaluate them.What this paper adds Social robots are beneficial for children's performance in musical instrument learning.Limited evidence was found to prove that children tend to perform better on old melodies and worse on new melodies in the presence of a social robot. However, the results confirmed that the level of evaluative of the robot matters.Children tend to have better performance with the robot that did not provide evaluative comments when practicing a new melody (a difficult task) than alone and with the robot that offered evaluative comments.This study confirmed that social robots can provide support to children in practicing music, helping to improve their performance.Implications for practice and/or policy Social facilitation and evaluation apprehension effects need to be taken into consideration during the behaviour design of companion robots in learning scenarios.Robots, which were intended to motivate children in learning, should be designed to not provide evaluative comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Observation and replication of observed behavior are two key components to organisms surviving and flourishing. In a corresponding manner, people observe the behavior of others in organizations, replicating adaptive while avoiding detrimental behaviors. Learning by observation allows workers to develop repertoires in which adaptive behaviors are reinforced while maladaptive behaviors undergo extinction or are socially and financially punished. Moreover, observers often improve their own performance when monitoring and recording the behavior of others. However, observers also might replicate inappropriate behavior. Imitation, observational learning, observational performance, and rule-governed behavior are discussed in these contexts. Finally, being viewed by others frequently enhances worker responding and accomplishments. These behaviors occur at the individual, group, and organizational levels, allowing some workers, teams, and organizations to flourish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reciprocity is one of the most prominent explanations for the evolution of stable cooperation. Although reciprocity has been studied for decades in numerous animal species and behavioural contexts, its underlying proximate mechanisms remain unclear. Domestic dogs provide a useful model species for the study of proximate mechanisms, though there are currently inconsistent findings regarding dogs' propensity to reciprocate. Here, we investigated whether, after minimal training, pet dogs would press a button, which remotely controlled a food dispenser, to deliver food to an enclosure occupied by a helpful conspecific that had provided them with food or an unhelpful conspecific that had not provided them with food. We included an asocial control condition in which the enclosure was unoccupied and a social facilitation control in which the food delivery mechanism was non‐functional. Whether subjects were familiar with the helpful and unhelpful conspecifics was also varied. In addition, to investigate potential mechanisms underlying reciprocity, we measured subjects salivary oxytocin concentration before and after they experienced the helpful and unhelpful acts. There was no effect of the previous helpfulness or the familiarity of the partner on the number of times subjects pressed the button. However, there was also no effect of the presence of a partner or the operationality of the food delivery mechanism on the number of button presses, indicating that subjects were not pressing the button to provision the partner. Moreover, the experience of the helpful or unhelpful act did not influence subjects' salivary oxytocin concentration. Variation in findings of reciprocity across studies appears to correspond with differing training protocols. Subjects' understanding of the task in the current study may have been constrained by the limited training received. Additional tests to verify subjects' understanding of such tasks are warranted in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns are known to affect alcohol consumption. This study examines drinking expectancies and contexts upon alcohol consumption of Argentinean students. Objectives: To assess within-person changes in alcohol consumption in Argentinean college students (aged 18–24), from August 2019 with a one-year follow-up during the COVID-19 lockdown, considering alcohol expectancies, drinking contexts, and main socio-demographic variables. To validate the stability of these predictors, we discuss the effects on the alcohol consumption across dependent and independent measures. Methods: We assessed one longitudinal (N = 300, 70% female) and one cross-sectional (N = 165, 78% female) sample via online surveys and applied multilevel analysis and regressions, respectively. Results: Alcohol consumption significantly increased during lockdown compared to one-year before (mean: 6.91 and 8.26 alcohol units, correspondingly). In the longitudinal sample, social facilitation (medium effect sizes [ES]: 0.21, 0.22) and parental presence (medium ES: 0.12, 0.21) significantly and stable (through time) predicted increasing effects on consumption. In the cross-sectional sample, stress control (high ES: 0.78) and parental presence (high ES: 0.42) were associated with higher consumption during lockdown. Conclusion: College students increased their alcohol consumption during lockdown, suggesting that restrictive sanitary measures may negatively affect consumption. Literature is not conclusive as both decreases and increases in alcohol consumption in students from developed countries were reported. Before and during COVID-19 lockdown, parental presence is a stable predictor of increased alcohol consumption, though unusual according to the literature. Health policies aimed at modifying the behavior of parents who promote/share alcohol consumption with their offspring may help reduce drinking in college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social learning is beneficial in almost every domain of a social animal's life, but it is particularly important in the context of predation and foraging. In both contexts, social animals tend to produce acoustically distinct vocalizations, alarms, and food calls, which have remained somewhat of an evolutionary conundrum as they appear to be costly for the signaller. Here, we investigated the hypothesis that food calls function to direct others toward novel food items, using a playback experiment on a group of chimpanzees. We showed chimpanzees novel (plausibly edible) items while simultaneously playing either conspecific food calls or acoustically similar greeting calls as a control. We found that individuals responded by staying longer near items previously associated with food calls even in the absence of these vocalizations, and peered more at these items compared with the control items, provided no conspecifics were nearby. We also found that once chimpanzees had access to both item types, they interacted more with the one previously associated with food calls than the control items. However, we found no evidence of social learning per se. Given these effects, we propose that food calls may gate and thus facilitate social learning by directing listeners' attention to new feeding opportunities, which if integrated with additional cues could ultimately lead to new food preferences within social groups. Highlights: Tested the social facilitation functional hypothesis of food calls in chimpanzees.Found that chimpanzees stayed near, peered at, and interacted more with the item that had been previously paired with food calls as compared with items paired with greeting calls.Lack of strong subsequent preference bias suggests cross‐modal integration is needed to complement this vocal aid and result in stable socially‐learned novel behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored how the use of fitness apps (based on the Technology Acceptance Model) and gamification elements are related to users' self-efficacy in physical activities (PA) by examining their attitudes and motivation to participate in PA (based on the theory of planned behavior). We analyzed 87,074 reviews of Fitbit users to explore their ideas about using fitness apps, then recruited survey participants who have had PA via fitness apps. Gaming mechanisms in fitness apps (i.e., self-monitoring, goal-setting, social facilitation, and rewards) encouraged users' PA and improve users' self-efficacy in PA, which in turn, enhanced users' motivation for PA participation. The current study explored the implications of fitness apps' use as a proactive technology for health. Further, this study proposed an integrated model of two theories through gamification aspects to examine how fitness apps arouse users' perception of and motivation for PA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research showed that young domestic pigs learn through observation of conspecifics by using social learning mechanisms like social facilitation, enhancement effects, and even object movement re-enactment. The latter suggests some form of emulative learning in which the observer learns about the object's movements and affordances. As it remains unclear whether pigs need a social agent to learn about objects, we provided 36 free-ranging domestic pigs with varying degrees of social to non-social demonstrations on how to solve a two-step manipulative foraging task: observers watched either a conspecific or a human demonstrator, or self-moving objects ("ghost control"), or a ghost control accompanied by an inactive conspecific bystander. In addition, 22 subjects that were previously tested without any demonstrator were used as a non-observer control. To solve the task, the subjects had to first remove a plug from its recess to then be able to slide a cover to the side, which would lay open a food compartment. Observers interacted longer with the relevant objects (plugs) and were more successful in solving the task compared to non-observers. We found no differences with regard to success between the four observer groups, indicating that the pigs mainly learned about the apparatus rather than about the actions. As the only common feature of the different demonstrations was the movement of the plug and the cover, we conclude the observer pigs learned primarily by emulation, suggesting that social agents are not necessary for pigs when learning through observation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This brief commentary adds to the recent study by paper by Yokomitsu, Kono and Takada (2022). Their study examined social presence in gambling by experimentally investigating the effects of the presence of other people on risky betting among high-risk gamblers. This commentary argues that the paper by Yokomitsu et al. provided a highly selective review on available studies and omitted many of the key studies in the area of social presence and social facilitation in which their findings could have been compared. The commentary also briefly outlines a number of studies that have I co-authored in this area over the past three decades using a variety of different methodologies (e.g., non-participant observation studies, experiments, data mining of account-based tracking data), none of which were mentioned by Yokomitsu et al. despite their clear relevance to this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participatory modeling (PM) is a craft that is often learned by training 'on the job' and mastered through years of practice. There is little explicit knowledge available on identifying and documenting the skills needed to perform PM. In the modeling literature, existing attempts to identify relevant competencies have focused on the specific technical skills required for specific technical model development. The other skills required to organize and conduct the stakeholder process seem to be more vaguely and poorly defined in this context. The situation is complicated by PM being an essentially transdisciplinary craft, with no single discipline or skill set to borrow ideas and recommendations from. In this paper, we aim to set the foundation for both the practice and capacity-building efforts for PM by identifying the relevant core competencies. Our inquiry into this topic starts with reviewing and compiling literature on competencies in problem-solving research areas related to PM (e.g., systems thinking, facilitated model building, operations research, and so forth). We augment our inquiry with results from a PM practitioners' survey to learn how they perceive the importance of different competencies and how the scope of these competencies may vary across the various roles that participatory modellers play. As a result, we identified five core competency areas essential for PM: systems thinking, modeling, group facilitation, project management and leadership, and, more recently, designing and running virtual workshops and events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Challenge, adventure, and risk in outdoor adventurous education (OAE) have long been recognised as foundational components in the framing of valuable and transformational experiences for participants. Whilst the literature has identified the benefits of these types of learning experiences, what has remained largely absent is an interrogation of the emerging emotional effects surrounding the fear response. This paper presents the examined interrelationships of facilitator perspectives on fear and how fear influences the developmental potential for participants in OAE. Multiple-case study research interviewed four OAE facilitators and observed participants' experiences of fear-related practice through a caving activity. The findings demonstrate a distinct and complex tension between the intentional facilitation of fear and the diverse impact fear can have for participants. Two primary outcomes emerged: the historically situated assumptions of a fear for all approach are challenged, and fear was recognised to isolate and marginalise participants unable to successfully interact with fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: With the decrease in physiologic birth due to fear, researchers became interested in the mechanisms affecting mothers' tendency to deliver naturally. Studies have indicated that environmental factors significantly influence the fear experienced by women during labor. This research aims to examine the extent to which environmental parameters can facilitate Iranian mothers in managing their fear during physiologic childbirth. Methods: The comparative analysis drawn from the relevant literature about environmental factors and mothers' perception of these factors has led to a reevaluation of this subject. Consequently, a research project was carried out, using a structured questionnaire and employing the exploratory factor analysis methodology. Results: According to the findings, the most important environmental factors that encourage Iranian mothers to physiologic delivery are as follows: "objective quality of life (Eigenvalue of 9.400)", "attractive environmental stimuli (Eigenvalue of 6.267)", "environmental and physical health (Eigenvalue of 5.126)", "friendly atmosphere (Eigenvalue of 4.596)", "environmental vitality (Eigenvalue of 4.375)", "environmental privacy (Eigenvalue of 3.866)" and "tangible technology (Eigenvalue of 3.689)". Conclusion: Promoting the environmental quality of the delivery room through architectural interventions such as interior design and the general configuration, can help mothers, their partners, and medical staff in managing childbirth more effectively, ultimately leading to a higher incidence of physiologic delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous literature has indicated that Black men are twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes compared to their non-Hispanic White counterparts and are also more likely to have associated complications. Furthermore, Black men have lower access to quality health care, and masculinity norms have been shown to hinder them from seeking the limited care that is available. In this study, we aim to investigate the effect of peer-led diabetes self-management education and long-term ongoing support on glycemic management. The first phase of our study will consist of modification of existing diabetes education content to be more appropriate for the population of interest, Then, in the second phase, we will conduct a randomized controlled trial to test the intervention. Participants randomized to the intervention arm will receive diabetes self-management education, structured diabetes self-management support, and a more flexible ongoing support period. Participants randomized to the control arm will receive diabetes self-management education. Diabetes self-management education will be taught by certified diabetes care and education specialists, while the diabetes self-management support and ongoing support period will be facilitated by fellow Black men with diabetes who will be trained in group facilitation, patient-provider communication strategies, and empowerment techniques. The third phase of this study will consist of post-intervention interviews and dissemination of findings to the academic community. The primary goal of our study is to determine whether long-term peer-led support groups in conjunction with diabetes self-management education are a promising solution to improve self-management behaviors and decrease A1C levels. We will also evaluate the retention of participants throughout the study, which has historically been an issue in clinical studies focused on the Black male population. Finally, the results from this trial will determine whether we can proceed to a fully-powered R01 trial or if other modifications of the intervention are necessary. Trial registration: Registered at ClinicalTrials.gov with an ID of NCT05370781 on May 12, 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Humans stand out for their capacity to flexibly cooperate, possibly because they understand their partners' role. Researchers have explored if such understanding is unique to humans by assessing whether non-human species wait to manipulate a cooperative apparatus until a delayed partner arrives. If animals do wait, then it is assumed that they recognize the need for a partner. However, success in these tasks may be the result of social facilitation, while failure may be due to poor inhibitory control. Moreover, this approach does not test if animals take their partners' actions into account. Here we trained dogs to press a button simultaneously with their human partner. Afterwards, we tested them in several conditions to disentangle which elements of their partner's behaviour they take into account. Dogs waited to press the button until the delayed partner arrived, the button was available to the partner and the partner acted (pressed the button). We found no relationship between inhibitory control and success. We conclude that dogs are not merely reacting to the presence of their human partners, but are also taking their actions into account when coordinating with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and Design: Individuals' food intake may vary depending on their situation and with whom they are having their meal. Thus this systematic review aimed to compare the effect of social facilitation between eating alone and eating with others, and evaluate the social modeling effect when eating with familiar or unfamiliar others, on food intake. Data Sources: Articles were screened and reviewed based on titles, abstracts and keywords. Inclusion criteria included experimental design, English language, open-accessed, and published from 1980 until the review was conducted in 2018. Review Methods: Using the PRISMA method, potential studies were identified on Science Direct, ProQuest, PubMed, Scopus, and BASE databases using two different keywords combinations. Results: Seventeen studies were included. For social facilitation, seven studies found that food intake increases when eating alone while five others stated it would increase when eating with others. One study suggested that it increases in both situations. For social modeling of food intake, two studies found that it commonly occurs when an individual eats in the presence of unfamiliar others, while one study reported that it happens more often with familiar others. Two other studies observed that social modeling occurs in both situations. Conclusion and Impact: Food intake tends to increase when eating alone than eating with others while the presence of familiar or unfamiliar others may either increase or limit an individual's food consumption to socially match their co-eaters' intake. Thus, good self-control is crucial for setting a dietary limit regardless of whether ones are eating alone or with familiar or unfamiliar others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research, mainly focusing on the situational preconditions of rule violations, indicates that feelings of being watched by other agents promote rule compliance. However, the cognitive underpinnings of this effect and of rule violations in general have only attracted little scientific attention yet. In this study, we investigated whether cues of being observed not only reduce the likelihood of violating rules but also affect the underlying cognitive processes of such behavior when still putting a rule violation into action. Therefore, we applied a motion-tracking paradigm in which participants could violate a simple stimulus-response mapping rule while being faced with pictures of either open or closed eyes. In line with prior research, temporal and spatial measures of the participants' movements indicated that violating this rule induced substantial cognitive conflict. However, conflict during rulebreaking was not moderated by the eye stimuli. This outcome suggests that rule retrieval constitutes an automatic process which is not or is only barely influenced by situational parameters. Moreover, our results imply that the effect of perceived observation on rule conformity is driven by normative influences on decision-making instead of social facilitation of dominant action tendencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well-established that people tend to mimic one another's actions, a crucial aspect of social interactions. Anticipating imitation has been shown to boost motor activation and reaction times for congruent actions. However, prior research predominantly focused on dyads, leaving gaps in our knowledge regarding group dynamics. This study addresses this gap, conducting three experiments using extensive online data. Participants engaged in anticipated imitation tasks with one versus three virtual agents. The results across all three experiments (n = 77; n = 239; n = 457) consistently support the existence of an anticipated imitation effect, with faster reaction times for congruent actions. Furthermore, the research unveils a social facilitation effect, with participants reacting more swiftly when anticipating three agents compared to one. However, we did not find the expected increase of the congruency effect with multiple agents; rather, the data indicates that anticipating multiple agents instead decreases this effect. These findings are discussed within the framework of ideomotor theory, offering insights into how they relate to recent research on the automatic imitation of multiple agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Zajonc's (1965) motivation based theory, the presence of a conspecific should increase motivation and the effect of an increase in motivation should depend on the nature of the target behavior. If the target behavior is already in the animals repertoire, the presence of a conspecific should increase the target behavior. If, however, the target behavior needs to be acquired, it should retard its acquisition. There is evidence that pigeons will choose suboptimally when given a choice between a 20% chance of signaled reinforcement and a 50% chance of unsignaled reinforcement. Under these conditions, once a preference is found, Zajonc's theory suggests that the presence of a conspecific should increase suboptimal choice. However, there is also evidence that social experience by pigeons outside the experimental context reduces suboptimal choice. In the present experiment, pigeons performed this task either in the presence of a conspecific or without a conspecific present. Inconsistent with Zajonc's theory, the results indicated that pigeons that performed the task in the presence of a conspecific chose suboptimally less often than pigeons that performed the task on their own. The results suggest that the presence of a conspecific may provide an alternative source of reinforcement, thus replacing some of the effect of the conditioned stimulus provided by the signal for reinforcement. Further testing with increased experimental sample size is recommended to confirm these preliminary findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of first-person action research to improve the facilitation of a continuing professional development (CPD) project in Early Years leadership. The intention of this project was to support Early Years Leaders (EYLs) from a diverse range of Early Years settings in NW England to improve their practice and hence strengthen the quality of Early Years provision. The project gave rise to a nested action research inquiry carried out by both EYLs and the lead facilitator of the CPD. As the EYLs used the approaches offered by the facilitator to articulate and evaluate their experiences of leading Early Years provision, their sayings, the articulation of their expertise and burgeoning confidence in using that expertise, challenged the facilitator to find her own locus of knowledge. The article focuses on this process of building respectful partnerships for reflexive learning and how the facilitator, using her own overarching inquiry, developed insights into the process of facilitation itself. The concept of practice architectures was used as a framework to analyse the data. Findings include the importance of recognising diverse forms of expertise and where this lay and the emotional labour of relinquishing control of the process to enable authentic shared enquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alongside difficulties with communication and social interaction, autism is often accompanied by unusual sensory and perceptual experiences including enhanced visual performance on tasks that involve separating local parts from global context. This superiority may be the result of atypical integrative processing, involving feedback and lateral connections between visual neurons. The current study investigated the integrity of these connections in autistic adults by examining two psychophysics tasks that rely on these processes - collinear facilitation and contour integration. The relative contribution of feedback and lateral connectivity was studied by altering the timing of the target relative to the flankers in the collinear facilitation task, in 16 autistic and 16 non-autistic adults. There were no significant differences in facilitation between the autistic and non-autistic groups, indicating that for this task and participant sample, lateral and feedback connectivity appear relatively intact in autistic individuals. Contour integration was examined in a different group of 20 autistic and 18 non-autistic individuals, for open and closed contours to assess the closure effect (improved detection of closed compared to open contours). Autistic individuals showed a reduced closure effect at both short (150 ms) and longer (500 ms) stimulus presentation durations that was driven by better performance of the autistic group for the open contours. These results suggest that reduced closure in a simple contour detection paradigm is unlikely to be due to slower global processing. Reduced closure has implications for understanding sensory overload by contributing to reduced figure-ground segregation of salient visual features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In chapter eight, Vanderbilt sums up his overall learning from the year-long journey of beginnings: no one is never too old to learn, no one is ever too young to learn, and learning is a lifelong sport. As an educator and adult learner, I Beginners i inspired me to continue to look for something new to begin, as Vanderbilt challenges all readers to do in the end. Chapter seven emphasizes how the learner talks to yourself; the importance of inserting more positive voices in your head - reminding beginners that washing out the negativity and focusing on the process is essential in learning something new. [Extracted from the article]

Visual categorization improves when object-context associations in scenes are semantically consistent, thus predictable from schemas stored in long-term memory. However, it is unclear whether this is due to differences in early perceptual processing, in matching of memory representations or in later stages of response selection. We tested these three concurrent explanations across five experiments. At each trial, participants had to categorize a scene context and an object briefly presented within the same image (Experiment 1), or separately in simultaneous images (Experiments 2–5). We analyzed unilateral (Experiments 1, 3) and bilateral presentations (Experiments 2, 4, 5), and presentations on the screen's horizontal midline (Experiments 1–2) and in the upper and lower visual fields (Experiments 3, 4). In all the experiments, we found a semantic consistency advantage for both context categorization and object categorization. This shows that the memory for object-context semantic associations is activated regardless of whether these two scene components are integrated in the same percept. Our study suggests that the facilitation effect of semantic consistency on categorization occurs at the stage of matching the percept with previous knowledge, supporting the object selection account and extending this framework to an object-context reciprocal influence on matching processes (object-context selection account). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation is the ability to solve novel problems or find novel solutions to familiar problems, and it is known to affect fitness in both human and non-human animals. In primates, innovation has been mostly studied in captivity, although differences in living conditions may affect individuals' ability to innovate. Here, we tested innovation in a wild group of Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus). In four different conditions, we presented the group with several identical foraging boxes containing food. To understand which individual characteristics and behavioural strategies best predicted innovation rate, we measured the identity of the individuals manipulating the boxes and retrieving the food, and their behaviour during the task. Our results showed that success in the novel task was mainly affected by the experimental contingencies and the behavioural strategies used during the task. Individuals were more successful in the 1-step conditions, if they participated in more trials, showed little latency to approach the boxes and mainly manipulated functional parts of the box. In contrast, we found no effect of inhibition, social facilitation and individual characteristics like sex, age, rank, centrality, neophobia and reaction to humans, on the individuals' ability to innovate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years ago, Zajonc, Heingartner, and Herman (1969) conducted a famous experiment on social enhancement and inhibition of performance in cockroaches. A moderating effect of task difficulty on the effect of the presence of an audience, as revealed by impaired performance in complex tasks and enhanced performance in simple tasks, was presented as the major conclusion of this research. However, the researchers did not test this interaction statistically. We conducted a preregistered direct replication using a 2 (audience: present vs. absent) × 2 (task difficulty: runway vs. maze) between-subjects design. Results revealed main effects for task difficulty, with faster running times in the runway than the maze, and for audience, with slower running times when the audience was present than when it was absent. There was no interaction between the presence of an audience and task difficulty. Although we replicated the social-inhibition effect, there was no evidence for a social-facilitation effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facilitating groups in outdoor education can sometimes be very challenging, and self-doubt and the fear of facilitating inadequately add to difficulties that facilitators must sometimes manage. In this paper, I will explore some of the ways by which facilitators contribute to the difficulties they experience and, furthermore, to explore some solutions. Negative self-talk can sabotage our best intentions as facilitators, by reducing the levels of free attention that are needed to facilitate well. I draw on the findings of a naturalistic inquiry conducted with 7 facilitator educators and 104 graduates of facilitator education programmes. Data collected through semi-structured interviews, participant observation and qualitative surveys were analysed using the constant comparison method.. Based on my research findings, I contend that outdoor education programmes do not need perfect facilitators. Rather, facilitators who can be authentic, self-aware and fully present for their groups will improve outdoor education programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grounded in social facilitation theory, this study compared the impact on exercise intensity of a virtual versus a live competitor, when riding a virtual reality-enhanced stationary bike ("cybercycle"). It was hypothesized that competitiveness would moderate effects. Twenty-three female college students were exposed to three conditions on a cybercycle: solo training, virtual competitor, and live competitor. After training without a competitor (solo condition for familiarization with equipment), participants competed against a virtual avatar or live rider (random order of presentation). A repeated-measures analysis revealed a significant condition (virtual/live) by competitiveness (high/low) interaction for exercise intensity (watts). More competitive participants exhibited significantly greater exercise intensity when competing against a live versus virtual competitor. The implication is that live competitors can have an added social facilitation effect and influence exercise intensity, although competitiveness moderates this effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Children and adults performed a numerosity task and a reading task in an MRI scanner. • Both groups were facilitated when observed by a familiar peer. • Task-specific (number or language processing) regions showed no reliable change under observation. • Observation-driven changes occurred in domain-general (mentalizing, reward, and attention) networks for both tasks. • All but attentional changes were shared by children and adults. There is ample behavioral evidence that others' mere presence can affect any behavior in human and non-human animals, generally facilitating the expression of mastered responses while impairing the acquisition of novel ones. Much less is known about i) how the brain orchestrates the modulation of such a wide array of behaviors by others' presence and ii) when these neural underpinnings mature during development. To address these issues, fMRI data were collected in children and adults alternately observed and unobserved by a familiar peer. Subjects performed a numerosity comparison task and a phonological comparison task. While the former involves number-processing brain areas, the latter involves language-processing areas. Consistent with previous behavioral findings, adults' and children's performance improved in both tasks when observed by a peer. Across all participants, task-specific brain regions showed no reliable change in activity under peer observation. Rather, we found task-independent changes in domain-general brain regions typically involved in mentalizing, reward, and attention. Bayesian analyses singled out the attention network as the exception to the close child-adult resemblance of peer observation neural substrates. These findings suggest that i) social facilitation of some human education-related skills is primarily orchestrated by domain-general brain networks, rather than by task-selective substrates, and ii) apart from attention, peer presence neural processing is largely mature in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The amount of meat consumed is having a negative impact on both health and the environment. This study investigated the probability of eating meat and the amount eaten at a meal within different social, temporal and situational contexts. Dietary intake data from 4-day diet diaries of adults (19 years and above) taken from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey (2008/9-2013/14) were used for the analysis. Individual eating occasions were identified and the effects of where the food was eaten, with whom, day of the week, age and gender on the probability of eating meat and amount of meat eaten were modelled using general linear mixed models. Each factor showed distinctive effects on the probability of eating meat and the amount consumed. The amount of meat eaten was greater when eating with family members compared to when alone or with other companions. Both the probability and amount of meat eaten in a single eating occasion were higher on Sundays compared to the rest of the week. Eating out (e.g. restaurants/cafes) increased the probability of consuming meat and the amount compared to other situations (e.g. home, work). When considering the factors influencing meat consumption, attention must be paid to the effects of social, temporal, and situational factors as they all work to shape consumption behaviour. This information should be used in the design of interventions and development of policies for the most effective way to reduce meat consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • The mere presence of a conspecific lowered the performance accuracy of rats. • The mere presence of a conspecific accelerated the speed of motor performance. • Such changes in motor performance in rats were similar to those seen in humans. Abstract Many studies on humans and animals have shown that the mere presence of another individual or individuals accelerates the motor performance speed of the subject individual. However, it has not been well investigated whether the mere presence of another individual affects the accuracy of motor performance in animals. In this study, we developed a novel task (run-and-pull task) to simultaneously investigate both the speed and accuracy of motor performance in rats and examined the effect of the mere presence of another rat on the task performance of the subject rat. Rats were first trained in isolation to run a runway and then pull a lever on the terminal end of the runway. After training, the subject rats were required to perform the task in isolation (Single) or in front of a non-competitive confederate rat without direct interaction (Pair). The results showed that the latency to start running and to pull the lever were shorter and the accuracy of the lever-pull movement was lower in the Pair condition than in the Single condition. These findings suggest that the mere presence of another individual increased the speed and decreased the accuracy of the motor performance of rats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There still appears to be a gap between what online learning promises and what it can deliver in terms of student learning. Developments in online pedagogies and professional learning appear to lag behind the developments in technology and the promised benefits of technological transformation may not be realised. In this paper, we bring together perspectives that highlight vital aspects of online group-learning by reviewing the group-facilitation literature and the latest online learning literature to interrogate the pedagogical theories and practices currently used in online group-learning in higher education. We specifically focus on the interpersonal interactions between teachers and students, which are described in the online learning literature using the terms instructor immediacy, teaching presence, and social presence. We note differences in the literature regarding how teacher presence is interpreted and enacted and we expound the importance of the personal characteristics of the online teacher. Finally, we provide some signposts that might help course designers and teachers to improve online group learning: the intentional use of effective online learning pedagogies; a deeper understanding of what constitutes teacher presence; and strategies to enact that teacher presence with online groups. Recommendations for further research in online group facilitation are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article examined the effects of using different extra-laboratorial testing procedures in usability testing. Three experiments were conducted using different artefacts (website, computer-simulated mobile phone, fully operational smartphone) to compare different methodological approaches in field testing (synchronous and asynchronous remote testing, classical field testing) to lab-based testing under different operational conditions (dual task demands, poor product usability). Typical outcome variables of usability testing were measured, including task completion time, click rate, perceived usability and workload. Overall, the results showed no differences between field and lab-based testing under favourable operational conditions. However, under difficult operational conditions (i.e. dual task demands, poor product usability) differences between field and lab-based testing emerged (corresponding to small and medium effect sizes). The findings showed a complex pattern of effects, suggesting that there was no general advantage of one testing procedure over another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In today's society, we can easily connect with people who share our ideas and interests. A problem with this development is that political reasoning in like-minded groups easily becomes lop-sided since there is little reason to critically examine information that everyone seems to agree with. Hence, there is a tendency for groups to become more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. We designed an experiment to test whether introducing deliberative norms in like-minded discussions can alleviate such group polarization. Based on their attitudes toward a linguistic minority, participants were divided into a positive and a negative opinion enclave. Within the two enclaves, the participants were randomly assigned to group discussions either with or without deliberative norms. Both face-to-face and online discussions were arranged. We found that free discussion without rules led to group polarization in like-minded groups, whereas polarization could be avoided in groups with deliberative norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • We examined equine social learning in a detour task with the group leader as the demonstrator. • We refined previous studies by using non observer and social facilitation controls. • Our results show a significant role of social facilitation unrelated to learning. • We found no evidence for higher level learning processes. • Simple mechanisms could account for much complex social behaviour in horses. Abstract Learning through the observation of others allows the transfer of information without the costs incurred during individual trial and error learning. Horses (Equus caballus) are a highly social species, which might be expected to be capable of learning from others, but experimental findings are inconsistent, and potentially confounded by social facilitation effects not related directly to the learning of the task. We refined the methods used in previous equine social learning studies, to examine and distinguish specific social influences on learning of a task: we used predefined group leaders rather than agonistically dominant individuals to demonstrate a detour task to familiar conspecific observers; in addition we had two control groups: a non-observer (true control) and a group with the demonstrator simply present at the goal (social facilitation control). 44 socially kept horses were allocated to one of the three test conditions and took part in five trials each. Success rate, latency and detour direction were recorded. There was no significant difference between the three groups in the likelihood of them succeeding in the task nor latency to succeed; however there was a significant difference in the route chosen by the groups, with the true control choosing the side with the entrance gate significantly more than either the observer group or social facilitation group. Both of the latter two groups chose to go in the same direction relative to themselves, regardless of which side the gate was. Seven out of nine horses in the observer group chose the same direction as their demonstrator every time. Our results show a significant role of social facilitation on detour behaviour and highlight the importance of including adequate controls for simpler cognitive influences on behaviour before claims can be made about the specific learning of motor actions or goal directed behaviour. Social cues may be important to horses if the task is sufficiently challenging and motivationally important, so future work should consider more demanding, but ecologically relevant situations, in order to maximise the potential revelation of social learning effects which do not depend on simple local or stimulus enhancement effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine how the talk of the facilitator shapes group workshop interactions by using the conversational object ‘formulation’. The data consist of video recordings of a corpus of four facilitated workshops held with management and development teams. By adopting an exploratory video-based investigation using conversational analysis to examine our data, we highlight the significance of three distinct set of formulations used by facilitators in workshops. Specifically, our findings show how formulations that encourage reflection or facilitate action, together with those collaboratively produced, enable sense making and the achievement of a temporal conversational order among participants. This research contributes to the study of facilitated workshops by offering a more nuanced approach to the understanding of the craftsmanship of doing facilitation, its effects on the workshop process and, ultimately, workshop outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects our ongoing interest in discovering essential elements of facilitation in decision support for groups with members having different perspectives on a strategic problem. We investigated questioning behaviour, a critical aspect of microlevel behaviour, of the facilitator in a classroom experiment with five-person groups (N = 26). The supported groups used a facilitated modelling approach, that is, group model building, which is based on system dynamics. In the control condition, one of the participants led the group discussion in the role of chairperson. As expected, we found that the facilitator asked more questions than the chairperson. Subsequently, based on proposed functions of questions by discussion leaders in group decision making, we distinguished three categories of questions; related to (a) rational and social validation, (b) reflection, and (c) information management. Analysis of question type frequencies revealed that facilitators mainly ask questions from the rational and social validation category, and that this question type declines over the course of the discussion process. Questions prompting reflection increased over time. Information management questions were mostly used in the beginning and middle part of the session. In the groups led by a chairperson, a less clear picture emerged. There was a great variety between groups with respect to type of questions and sequence in which the chairperson asked questions. The only consistent result for unsupported meetings is that information management primarily took place at the end of the sessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of an independent coactor on vigilance task performance. It was hypothesized that the presence of an independent coactor would improve performance in terms of the proportion of false alarms while also increasing perceived workload and stress.Background: Vigilance, or the ability to maintain attention for extended periods, is of great interest to human factors psychologists. Substantial work has focused on improving vigilance task performance, typically through motivational interventions. Of interest to vigilance researchers is the application of social facilitation as a means of enhancing vigilance. Social facilitation seeks to explain how social presence may improve performance.Method: A total of 100 participants completed a 24-min vigil either alone or in the presence of an independent (confederate) coactor. Participants completed measures of perceived workload and stress.Results: The results indicated that performance (i.e., proportion of false alarms) was improved for those who completed the vigil in the presence of an independent coactor. Interestingly, perceived workload was actually lower for those who completed the vigil in the presence of an independent coactor, although perceived stress was not affected by the manipulation.Conclusion: Authors of future research should extend these findings to other forms of social facilitation and examine vigilance task performance in social contexts in order to determine the utility of social presence for improving vigilance.Application: The use of coactors may be an avenue for organizations to consider utilizing to improve performance because of its relative cost-effectiveness and easy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many species, learning is an essential mechanism for dealing with the environment correctly and efficiently. Animals that quickly learn important information, and learn at a young age, can gain a competitive advantage in exploiting resources. Moreover, animals that learn indirectly through social observations can avoid the fitness costs of directly learning about potential dangers. Here we tested such learning capabilities in ringed salamanders, Ambystoma annulatum , a species where adults are primarily solitary and do not provide parental care. Adults lay eggs in ponds where embryos have the opportunity to learn from chemical cues in their environment before hatching, whereupon the high density of larvae provides an opportunity to learn from social information. In this study, we found that these salamanders can learn an attraction to novel food stimuli as embryos and that naïve observer larvae can learn from conspecifics that show attraction to stimuli. Embryonic exposure to a novel food stimulus (shrimp odour) caused attraction to that stimulus posthatching, and this response appeared to be generalized to another potential prey stimulus (mussel odour) but not to a novel plant stimulus. In a test of social learning, only observers that were paired with models corralled near a novel food stimulus were subsequently attracted to the stimulus. This study is the first to report embryonic learning of food or social learning by salamanders, providing more evidence for generalized learning by embryos and social learning by species lacking more complex social behaviours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participants' performance differs when conducting a task in the presence of a secondary individual, moreover the opinion the participant has of this individual also plays a role. Using EEG, we investigated how previous interactions with, and evaluations of, an avatar in virtual reality subsequently influenced attentional allocation to the face of that avatar. We focused on changes in the alpha activity as an index of attentional allocation. We found that the onset of an avatar's face whom the participant had developed a rapport with induced greater alpha suppression. This suggests greater attentional resources are allocated to the interacted-with avatars. The evaluative ratings of the avatar induced a U-shaped change in alpha suppression, such that participants paid most attention when the avatar was rated as average. These results suggest that attentional allocation is an important element of how behaviour is altered in the presence of a secondary individual and is modulated by our opinion of that individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this exploratory, descriptive study we examined how discussion goals were accomplished during face-to-face and online case-based discussions facilitated by the same co-instructors. An analysis of discussion transcripts suggests that despite different instructor and student participation patterns across contexts, the instructors’ goals of creating social cohesion and supporting students’ case understanding were equally met. However, coverage of the targeted problem space indicated greater attention to “problem finding” (i.e., identifying relevant issues) by face-to-face students and greater attention to “problem solving” (i.e., identifying workable solutions) by online students, as indicated by the frequencies with which these different aspects were discussed. We interpret results by considering how the affordances of each context shaped both teacher-student interactions and students’ coverage of the problem-finding and problem-solving space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptually, there is a common association between gambling games with fast speeds of play and problem gambling. This relationship however, is largely correlational in nature, which comes at the expense of carefully controlled empirical investigation. Research that does exist aimed towards investigating the impact of gambling speeds on psychological and behavioural factors, is in its relative infancy, and the research possesses disparate methodologies and variables of interest. The aims of the current review is therefore to evaluate and summarise the existing body of evidence relating to speed of play in gambling, as well as discuss how this evidence can be used to inform harm minimisation approaches aimed at facilitating self-control during gambling. Eleven studies were selected for review based on the inclusion criteria, comprising nine experimental and two qualitative studies (one self-report focus group study and one observational study). There was a consistent finding across studies that games with faster speeds of play were preferred and rated as more exciting for all gamblers, ranging from non-problem to problem gamblers. Of concern, was the repeated finding that fast games are particularly appealing to those suffering with a gambling problem. Behavioural results were more inconsistent across studies, though the general trend supports the notion that games with faster speeds of play encourage more wagers, longer game play, and caused players, particularly problem gamblers, to experience difficulty in ceasing gambling. The implications of these findings for gambling policy, harm minimisation approaches, and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals behave differently in the presence of others. Some scholars argue the mere presence of others has the capacity to improve task performance, while other researchers demonstrate individuals become “social loafers,” exerting less effort in group tasks unless they perceive potential for evaluation. I investigate these claims in the context of evaluating poll‐worker performance using two randomized field experiments conducted in New York City during a special election that took place in February 2009 and during the presidential primary conducted in April 2016. The results suggest that manipulating the presence of observers, or even poll workers’ perceptions of the potential for evaluation, likely enhances their performance overall, resulting, especially, in greater efficiency and potentially strengthening voters’ confidence that their ballots were accurately counted and diminishing perceptions of electoral fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a variety of what the author refers to as creative artists support groups are described. The descriptions illustrate a great deal of divergence in terms of structure and range of group leadership or facilitation, ranging from virtually leaderless groups modeled along the lines of the structure of 12-step support groups, to groups led by a trained psychotherapist who directs the group with a series of structured therapeutic techniques, to a Rogerian person-centered facilitator who gently guides the group with little or no structure whatsoever. Furthermore, person-centered group facilitators of creative artists support groups may adhere to the basic ingredients of Rogerian person-centered individual psychotherapy by relating to the essence of the person but may do so in a flexible way that allows for occasional active interventions inclusive of the facilitator sharing his or her relevant personal feelings. Utilizing autoethnographic research, inclusive of a description of the author’s motivation in writing this article, illustrations are given of some therapeutic interactions from the author’s own creative artists support group to demonstrate this kind of flexibility in the facilitation of a person-centered creative artists support group. It is concluded that a common foundational ingredient in all the creative artists support groups described in this article is the dual focus on creativity and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of increased attention to research-based interventions for substance use disorders (SUDs), a formidable research-practice gap impedes the implementation of evidence-based treatments (EBTs). An underappreciated dimension of this gap is a mismatch in treatment modality: Whereas clinical trial and implementation research has focused primarily on individual therapy, the majority of SUD specialty treatment is in group format, with open-enrolling groups being most common. This study aims to narrow this research-practice gap by exploring clinicians' perspectives on complexities with group therapy facilitation in SUD specialty treatment settings. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 group clinicians from among three outpatient SUD specialty clinics-diverse in their operational structures, treatment philosophies, clientele, and services-located in the same Midwestern U.S. metropolitan area. Interview questions addressed organizational characteristics, services provided, group therapy curricula, and use of EBTs or other structured treatments. Clinicians emphasized the importance of having flexibility in facilitating groups, through built-in group processes and clinicians' own adaptions and accommodations; this flexibility was especially emphasized for the use of EBTs or manualized interventions. Clinicians also had difficulties with group facilitation generally, as evidenced by their reported difficulty in managing complex group dynamics, their limited group therapy experience and training, and their reliance on educational groups. We discuss specific strategies for improved innovation and implementation of EBTs for SUD group therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout our lives wemust perform tasks while being observed by others. Previous studies have shown that the presence of an audience can cause increases in an individual's performance as compared to when they are not being observed-a phenomenon called 'social facilitation'. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this effect, in the context of skilled-task performance for monetary incentives, are not well understood. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to monitor brain activity while healthy human participants performed a skilled-task during conditions in which they were paid based on their performance and observed and not observed by an audience. We found that during social facilitation, social signals represented in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) enhanced reward value computations in ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC).We also found that functional connectivity between dmPFC and ventral striatumwas enhanced when participants exhibited social facilitation effects, indicative of a means by which social signals serve tomodulate brain regions involved in regulating behavioral motivation. These findings illustrate how neural processing of social judgments gives rise to the enhanced motivational state that results in social facilitation of incentive-based performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite many observations of cooperation in nature, laboratory studies often fail to find careful coordination between individuals who are solving a cooperative task. Further, individuals tested are often naïve to cooperative tasks and there has been little exploration of partnerships with mixed expertise. In the current study, we examined acquisition of a cooperative pulling task in a group with both expert ( N = 4) and novice ( N = 11) chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes). We used five measures of competence and understanding: (1) success at the task, (2) latency to succeed, (3) efficiency, (4) uncoordinated pulling, and (5) pulling when a partner was present versus absent. We found that novices showed evidence of trial and error learning and developed competence over time, whereas the behavior of experts did not change throughout the course of the study. In addition to looking at patterns over time, we compared the performance of novices in this mixed- expertise group to an earlier study of novices in a group of all- novices. Novices in the mixed- expertise group pulled the same overall amount but for shorter periods of time, leading to higher pulling rates than individuals in the all- novice group. Taken together, these results suggest that learning in the presence of experts led to rapid and frequent success, although not necessarily careful coordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food tastes better and people eat more of it when eaten with company than alone. Although several explanations have been proposed for this social facilitation of eating, they share the basic assumption that this phenomenon is achieved by the existence of co-eating others. Here, we demonstrate a similar “social” facilitation of eating in the absence of other individuals. Elderly participants tasted a piece of popcorn alone while in front of a mirror (which reflects the participant themselves eating popcorn) or in front of a wall-reflecting monitor, and were found to eat more popcorn and rate it better tasting in the self-reflecting condition than in the monitor condition. Similar results were found for younger adults. The results suggest that the social facilitation of eating does not necessarily require the presence of another individual. Furthermore, we observed a similar “social” facilitation of eating even when participants ate a piece of popcorn in front of a static picture of themselves eating, suggesting that static visual information of “someone” eating food is sufficient to produce the “social” facilitation of eating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adventure programming has seen considerable growth throughout the world. While newly established programs aim to meet the needs of their prospective clients, failing to account for cultural differences when conducting or designing programs may impede this goal. Non-western approaches to implementing adventure programs have rarely been discussed, because there is a lack of a clear theoretical framework for addressing cross-cultural issues in adventure programming. This article seeks to address these limitations by drawing attention to the existing literature on the impact of cultural differences on adventure programming and relevant fields (e.g. education), providing suggestions for how such theories could inform facilitation styles. It is proposed that a model adapted from the work of Hofstede offers one useful framework for assessing groups from different cultural contexts, which can strengthen the practice of adventure programs to better meet the needs of participants. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]