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Decision making under condition of sleep deprivation
Hurych, Jan ; Niederlová, Markéta (advisor) ; Polák, Jakub (referee)
The paper concerns itself with the question, which risks are associated with the lack of sleep especially with the ability to make decisions. It analyses a number of processes, which can have an effect on the process of decision-making: vigilance, attention, memory, emotions, divergent and flexible thinking, executive functions and at least but not last also the ability to communicate clearly. Some benefits and risks of routinely available countermeasures are also discussed. The sleep deprivation is associated with a significant number of negative consequences, which can affect the processes mentioned above, thus it can have a detrimental impact on decision-making itself. The commonly available countermeasures are not effective in compensating for all of these consequences, only the sleep in sufficient quality and quantity is. Keywords: Sleep, deprivation, decision making, cognitive functions
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Sexual size dimorphism and related phenomena in ungulates
Polák, Jakub ; Frynta, Daniel (advisor) ; Remeš, Vladimír (referee) ; Sedláček, František (referee)
Sexual size dimorphism (SSD) defined by differences in body size of a conspecific male and female are widespread phenomenon in the animal kingdom and ungulates belong among the most dimorphic mammals. In most species males are the larger sex which is often explained by differing sex-specific reproductive roles. While parental investment is predominantly left to females which are the selective sex, males have to fight for access to receptive mates in intensive combats where body size, strength, and condition are often critical. The relationship between male body size and reproductive success varies according to a mating system with the highest SSD being achieved by harem and promiscuous species. Even though several compilation studies of SSD have been done on ungulates it is rare that systematic research is closely concentrated on a well-defined specialised homogenous group where detailed knowledge on its life-history traits is also available. I have focused on subfamily Caprinae and Bovinae with the objective to conduct a detailed analysis of their SSD and its evolutionary traits. Using advanced phylogenetic methods I could reconstruct the ancestral state in wild goats and sheep that was characterised by medium SSD which then took two different routes of evolution depending on a type of habitat and...
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Individual differences in maternal behavior (maternal style) of mammals
Leszkowová, Iva ; Špinka, Marek (advisor) ; Polák, Jakub (referee)
The expression "maternal style" in the wider sense serves to describe the interspecies interindividual and intraindividual, variability in the maternal care. In the narrow sense it is used only to designate permanent variability in the maternal behaviour among different mothers of the same species. The concept of the maternal style is based on a well-documented fact, that individual parts of maternal behaviour correlate with one another and this mutual bond enables to describe the varied repertoire of the mothers' behaviour by a few dimensions, such as e.g. protectiveness, restrictive, rejection and laissez-faire. Maternal style of primates was described in a wide range (e.g. Berman, 1990; Fairbanks, 1996). Up to today the existence of maternal style has been confirmed also with some rodents (guinea-pig: Albers, 1999; mouse: Benus a Rondigs, 1996), domestic animals (pig: e.g. Špinka et al., 2000; sheep: Dwyer a Lawrence, 2010; goat: O'Brien, 1984) and predators (dog: Wilsson, 1984). KEYWORDS : Maternal style, Maternal behavior, Individual differences, Parent-offspring conflict, Protectiveness, Rejection
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Characteristics and use of play signals
Palečková, Marie ; Špinka, Marek (advisor) ; Polák, Jakub (referee)
There are many different behavioural elements and patterns in play behaviour. A play sequence may include elements which are unique for play and also elements which are similar to movements from other behavioural contexts such as predation, aggressive behaviour or sexual behaviour. One group of the play-unique elements are play signals. Play signals are highly ritualized movements or gestures and animals use them for communicating their playfull intentions to their play partners. These actions can be used in the beginnig of a play bout for initiation of social play, or during the play bout when they are used to maintain social play in situations when the play could be interrupted by patterns from serious behaviour or could be broken off. Many scientists started to focuse their research on play behaviour and play signals in the past fifty years. However, there is still lack of sequence analysis of play of particular species. More of such analysis could bring out new interesting findings.
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Loafing and punishment: psychological study of laziness
Polák, Jakub ; Horáková Hoskovcová, Simona (advisor) ; Slaměník, Ivan (referee)
Contrary to our intuitive expectations about a positive group influence on human performance behaviour, there is a vast body of literature proving the opposite. All the research is based on findings of Max Ringelmann who more than 120 years ago proved in the oldest social psychological experiment ever known that people cooperating on a common task tend to exert less effort than what would be their potential. This performance decrement is caused by coordination losses which relate to the very principles of a team work as well as motivation losses. Because of the tendency of people to limit their effort in collective settings the newly discovered phenomenon has been called social loafing. A group influence on individual's performance became also a main subject of this diploma thesis. Compared to a majority of research dealing with the same topic the present one employs a completely new type of interactive task which involves an intensive cooperation of all group members. We have used in our experiment an original simulation where players are in a role of top management in one movie production company and their goal is to make a strategic decision based on the information distributed among all the team members that will bring them the biggest profit. Consequently we have directly analysed behaviour of...
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