Habits Of Animals Research Articles

"Creatures of habit": influential factors to the adoption of computer personalization and accessibility settings.

Customizing the accessibility and ease-of-use settings of a computer can improve the overall user experience for people with and without disabilities. However, the adoption of such settings remains poor. This study investigates why various factors may influence people as they personalize and when they choose to integrate those changes into everyday use. To better understand how these factors may impact people's personalization process, we conducted a series of interviews involving 15 people with and without disabilities across several months in 2020 when computer usage became required due to the COVID-19 lockdown. We used grounded theory to analyze 49 semi-structured interviews with participants. During these interviews, people reflected upon: past attempts at personalization using built-in accessibility or ease-of-use features of their Operating System (OS) or other assistive technologies (AT), current customization activities using the personalization software, Morphic, and future opportunities for personalization systems and features. We identified several barriers, facilitators, and perpetuating factors that can influence why and when people choose to adopt and integrate their personalization changes. We also outline the overall personalization lifecycle, which illustrates when various factors may impact computer personalization. Personalization activities are complex and easily affected by an ecosystem of influential factors that surround them. When paired with the three design considerations and ten lessons learned from this qualitative study, the overall personalization lifecycle may be useful during the design and development of future personalization systems or features for people with and without disabilities.

Food Habits: Insights from Food Diaries via Computational Recurrence Measures.

Humans are creatures of habit, and hence one would expect habitual components in our diet. However, there is scant research characterizing habitual behavior in food consumption quantitatively. Longitudinal food diaries contributed by app users are a promising resource to study habitual behavior in food selection. We developed computational measures that leverage recurrence in food choices to describe the habitual component. The relative frequency and span of individual food choices are computed and used to identify recurrent choices. We proposed metrics to quantify the recurrence at both food-item and meal levels. We obtained the following insights by employing our measures on a public dataset of food diaries from MyFitnessPal users. Food-item recurrence is higher than meal recurrence. While food-item recurrence increases with the average number of food-items chosen per meal, meal recurrence decreases. Recurrence is the strongest at breakfast, weakest at dinner, and higher on weekdays than on weekends. Individuals with relatively high recurrence on weekdays also have relatively high recurrence on weekends. Our quantitatively observed trends are intuitive and aligned with common notions surrounding habitual food consumption. As a potential impact of the research, profiling habitual behaviors using the proposed recurrent consumption measures may reveal unique opportunities for accessible and sustainable dietary interventions.

Recovering the Story of Pragmatism in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar, John Dewey, and the Origins of Navayana Pragmatism

Recovering the Story of Pragmatism in India: Bhimrao Ambedkar, John Dewey, and the Origins of Navayana Pragmatism

Learning Unlearning: Deja Tu Huella: Youth Art And Unlearning In Colombia

We are all on a journey of learning and unlearning. I’ve always heard that it’s more difficult to re-teach a student a concept once they’ve learned it incorrectly - and I think the same is true for unlearning. We are creatures of habit, and must make a deliberate effort to do this type of work. Who will lead the charge? If Colombia is any indication, it’s the youth who will continue to push global societies to unlearn. Just as it was here in the United States and around the world during the Black Lives Matter summer protests of 2020, youth are the catalysts for unlearning - and often, art is their medium. One of my favorite concepts that I gleaned from this experience is the idea of Deja Tu Huella. In Latin American cultures, this phrase embraces the action of pushing boundaries with your unique individuality and translates to “leave your mark” in English. One of the youth art exhibits I witnessed was entitled Deja Tu Huella and featured youth contributions of what they hoped to see in Colombia’s future - perhaps their own contributions to the betterment of society. I love the specificity and action-oriented nature of this phrase, and it seems to be fairly embedded in the fabric of Latin American cultures. What could be more profound than doing the hard work of unlearning and passing that on, thereby leaving your mark for the greater wellbeing of society?

Quantification of planarian behaviors.

Research on individual behaviors can help to reveal the processes and mechanisms that mediate an animal's habits and interactions with the environment. Importantly, individual behaviors arise as outcomes of genetic programs, morphogenesis, physiological processes, and neural functions; thus, behavioral analyses can be used to detect disorders in these processes. Planarians belong to an early branching bilateral group of organisms that possess a simple central nervous system. Furthermore, planarians display various behavioral responses to the environment via their nervous system. Planarians also have remarkable regenerative abilities, including whole-brain regeneration. Therefore, the combination of planarians' phylogenetic position, behavioral properties, regenerative ability, and genetic accessibility provides a unique opportunity to understand the basic mechanisms underlying the anatomical properties of neural morphogenesis and the dynamic physiological processes and neural function. Here, we describe a step-by-step protocol for conducting simple behavioral analyses in planarians with the aim of helping to introduce researchers to the utility of performing behavioral analyses in planarians. Since the conditions of planarians impact experimental results and reproducibility, this protocol begins with a method for maintaining planarians. Next, we introduce the behavioral tests as well as the methods for quantifying them using minimal and cost-effective equipment and materials. Finally, we present a unique RNAi technique that enables conditional silencing of neural activity in the brain of planarians.

Becoming creatures of habit: Among- and within-individual variation in nesting behaviour shift with age.

The quantification of repeatability has enabled behavioural and evolutionary ecologists to assess the heritable potential of traits. For behavioural traits that vary across life, age-related variation should be accounted for to prevent biasing the microevolutionary estimate of interest. Moreover, to gain a mechanistic understanding of ontogenetic variation in behaviour, among- and within-individual variance should be quantified across life. We leveraged a 30-year study of painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) to assess how age contributes to variation in the repeatability of nesting behaviours. We found that four components of nesting behaviour were repeatable and that accounting for age increased the repeatability estimate for maternal choice of canopy cover over nests. We detected canalization (diminished within-individual variance with age) of canopy cover choice in a reduced data set despite no shift in repeatability. Additionally, random regression analysis revealed that females became more divergent from each other in their choice of canopy cover with age. Thus, properly modelling age-related variance should more precisely estimate heritable potential, and assessing among- and within-individual variance components in addition to repeatability will offer a more mechanistic understanding of behavioural variation across age.

Body-focused repetitive behaviours are associated with being a ‘creature of habit’

Abstract Theories of body-focused repetitive behaviours (BFRBs), such as nail-biting and skin-picking, have hypothesised that they are caused by a need to regulate negative emotions or an innate ‘grooming urge’. However, such theories fail to explain why performance of BFRBs becomes habitual, and such knowledge could have important implications for cognitive and behavioral therapies. In the present study, using a case-control design, we investigated whether BFRBs represent a more general tendency to behave in a habitual fashion. We recruited two groups of subjects, one group who engaged regularly in BFRBs (N = 40) and a control group who did not (N = 40). Both groups completed a questionnaire assessing the frequency with which they engage in a wide variety of repetitive behaviours, and the ‘Creature of Habit’ Scale (COHS), which measures the extent to which people behave in a habitual fashion in everyday life. Subjects in the BFRB group reported significantly higher frequency of performance of a wide range of habitual behaviours, including behaviours commonly observed in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), as well as significantly higher scores on the COHS. The findings suggest BFRBs should not be treated as an isolated set of grooming behaviours but as part of a wider spectrum of habitual behaviours associated more generally with being a ‘creature of habit’.

Character on Autopilot

I'm a creature of habit. When I wake up, I go to the bathroom sink, fill the orange plastic cup next to it with water, drink it, brush my teeth, pad downstairs, turn on the electric kettle, grind coffee, and check my email while waiting for the water to boil…. This is a pretty complex routine, but I've repeated it so often that it's second nature. You probably have your own morning ritual, and it surely differs from mine (unless you, too, are still using the unbreakable cup you bought at Ikea for your toddler ages ago). What we have in common is that we're getting through the opening moments of the day on autopilot. It turns out that nearly half of what we do, think, and feel in the course of a day is habitual.

Creatures of Habit: The Neuroscience of Habit and Purposeful Behavior

Creatures of Habit: The Neuroscience of Habit and Purposeful Behavior

Explaining Online News Engagement Based on Browsing Behavior: Creatures of Habit?

Understanding how citizens keep themselves informed about current affairs is crucial for a functioning democracy. Extant research suggests that in an increasingly fragmented digital news environment, search engines and social media platforms promote more incidental, but potentially more shallow modes of engagement with news compared to the act of routinely accessing a news organization’s website. In this study, we examine classic predictors of news consumption to explain the preference for three modes of news engagement in online tracking data: routine news use, news use triggered by social media, and news use as part of a general search for information. In pursuit of this aim, we make use of a unique data set that combines tracking data with survey data. Our findings show differences in predictors between preference for regular (direct) engagement, general search-driven, and social media–driven modes of news engagement. In describing behavioral differences in news consumption patterns, we demonstrate a clear need for further analysis of behavioral tracking data in relation to self-reported measures in order to further qualify differences in modes of news engagement.

Transitions: Looking Back and Looking Ahead

Life, both personal and professional, is a series of transitions. Clients come and go. New colleagues are hired, and others move on to new opportunities. Loved ones are born into our lives and pass away from our lives. Executive directors change, and organizations mature. This is a certainty in all facets of our lives. Social work educators train students in effective termination techniques, thereby acknowledging in early professionalization efforts that transitions are omnipresent and should be handled deliberately and carefully. Transitions can be challenging. I am a creature of habit and enjoy the predictable in an unpredictable world. My wardrobe falls into various shades of blue and I hold onto physical things long past their usefulness simply because of their familiarity. Studies have shown that nostalgia brings comfort in stressful times (Batcho, 2013). As such, it is natural for us to look for stability in times of change and to embrace the familiar.

Creature of Habit or Embracer of Change? Contrasting Consumer Daily Food Behavior with the Tourism Scenario

This research investigates tourist food consumption patterns and food choice motives while on trips, in comparison to their food behavior in the everyday life scenario. The results suggest that consumers’ food choice motives and behaviors during travel are inconsistent with their food regimens followed at home. In addition, gender is found to be a significant variable in explaining such inconsistencies. Implications pertaining to these findings are discussed in the context of tourism experience satisfaction and the role travel destinations can play in consumer wellness management.

Professional Virtue and its Habitual Underpinnings

Habits ought to be celebrated: they not only make us who we are, they also make us capable of wondrous feats, whether they be of a professional nature or not. Yet there are times when we wish we (or others) weren’t such creatures of habit. When a doctor or bleary eyed legal official insists on following patently inadequate, routine proceedings in spite of significant clues calling for critical, renewed engagement on their part, they fall prey to what I have called the ‘compromising’ aspect of habituation. The latter is concomitant with a degradation in the type of automaticity underlying the relevant habits: this degradation can be the result of a lack of aspiration, as shown by Annas, but it need not be. In a morally loaded, professional context, this degradation can also stem from what I refer to as a lack of ‘teleological plasticity’. The latter is not just a matter of adapting to changing circumstances, as is the case with a skill such a tennis (weather or type of play). It is also a matter of retaining a willingness to question the pertinence of the goals one associates with one’s professional practice (and its underlying habits). These goals are never settled in advance, hinging as they do upon the specificities of each lay-professional encounter.

Nutrition and Inflammation: Are Centenarians Similar to Individuals on Calorie-Restricted Diets?

Individuals capable of reaching the extreme limit of human life such as centenarians are characterized by an exceptionally healthy phenotype-that is, a low number of diseases, low blood pressure, optimal metabolic and endocrine parameters, and increased diversity in the gut microbiota-and they are epigenetically younger than their chronological age. We present data suggesting that such a remarkable phenotype is largely similar to that found in adults following a calorie-restricted diet. Interviews with centenarians and historical data on the nutritional and lifestyle habits of Italians during the twentieth century suggest that as children and into adulthood, centenarians lived in an environment that was nonobesogenic, but at the same time the environment did not produce malnutrition. Centenarians appear to be creatures of habit, and we argue that their habit of eating meals at the same time each day favored the maintenance of circadian rhythms, including their sleep cycle. Finally, we argue that centenarians' chronic inflammatory status, which we dubbed inflammaging, is peculiar, likely adaptive, and less detrimental than in younger people.

Creatures of habit

Creatures of habit

Approaches to the Study of Law

One might assume that the most important decision for an academic at the beginning of their career is deciding in what area of law to specialise, but a more fundamentally important decision is what approach to the law to adopt. The choice will be shaped by the individual’s experiences, education, and worldview. The decision need not be final and many academics’ approaches develop over time, although for the most part not dramatically. Academics like others are creatures of habit. A particular approach becomes second nature; it is how we see the law. It is therefore worth reminding ourselves on occasion that our particular perspective is one of many and that there is much to be gained from having an appreciation of the alternative approaches to legal research and teaching to be found in academia.

Life of a professor: Year 1

We are creatures of habit. Change is never easy, as it challenges us out of our comfort zones and forces us to face our fear of the unknown. On a more basic level, it also means more work, as glitches, obstacles, and resistance are far more likely to appear. For a chemist in academia, there is no more uncertain time, or a more crucial time for change, than when individuals transition into their first year as assistant professors. As a budding first-year academic, you may be tempted to look back and feel that you have done a lot of work to get where you are. You know it’s going to get harder, at least for a while, but you think you are organized and the months of prep will pay off. And you’ll be wrong. Soon, uncertainty creeps in. Besides the huge learning curve that comes with setting up a

A Creature of Habit

A Creature of Habit

A Changing Workforce Brings New Challenges, Opportunities

![Graphic][1] “For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice . And to make an end is to make a beginning!' “Little Gidding,” T. S. Eliot I am a creature of habit, uncomfortable with the idea of change. As I approach the end of my fellowship, my fellow cohorts, who started training with me five years ago, are all moving on to become practicing pathologists out there in the “real world.” While I am happy for them as they start this new chapter in their lives, I can't help feeling a bit sad to part ways after these years of camaraderie and friend-ship. Though saying goodbye is difficult, finding a job represents the crucial next step in every trainee's career. However, this can be an overwhelming task. I mean, I haven't had to apply for a job since high school, when I submitted an application to the local Ben and Jerry's. Like myself, other residents are just as nervous when it comes to looking for their first job out of training. In fact, when the American Society of Clinical Pathology (ASCP) Resident Council polled residents about issues that matter most, the top three were passing boards, applying for fellowships, … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif

Magie a estetika odkouzlení u Collingwooda

This essay presents an argument for a Collingwoodean social philosophy of art that centres on the opposition between art and magic as developed by R. G. Collingwood in Principles of Art and his folklore manuscript. The author agrees with Collingwood’s critics that one of the most problematic aspects of his aesthetics is its identification of art with the expression of emotion. Nevertheless, he aims to show that a Collingwoodean philosophy of art can dispense entirely with the notion of emotion. Other writers have demonstrated that Collingwood’s understanding of emotion is so broad as to loose firm contours. The author argues that a similar point holds for Collingwood’s treatment of magic. In the light of Collingwood’s interpretative liberty, the distinction between an expression of emotion and its mere release proves hard to sustain. It is argued here that by removing the controversial concept of emotion from the equation, Collingwood’s philosophy of art can be transformed into a more plausible Collingwoodean social philosophy of art where artistic expression reveals not the inner emotional states of the artist, but the contours of the shared habituated codes of communication and comportment, making the audience aware of their second nature as creatures of habit.