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<p>Virtual assistants such as Amazon's Alexa can emulate a variety of emotions in their spoken feedback to user requests. The persuasive impact of these emotional displays depends on the inferences individuals make about these emotional displays. This dissertation investigates a class of inferences –attributions of cause to a virtual assistant's emotional display –which individuals use as social information about computer-interactants. The project hypothesized that three key factors influence individuals' attributions of cause to virtual assistants' emotional displays. The first is general tendencies in peoples' attributions of virtual assistants' emotional displays. Second is the target of a virtual assistant's emotional display –the communicated object of their displayed emotional state. The final component is borrowed from Kelley's covariance theory of attribution –the distinctiveness with which a specific emotional display repeatedly co-occurs with plausible explanations for the emotional display. Four attributional outcomes were predicted based on combinations of emotional display targets and the distinctiveness of the emotional display's covariance with potential causes for the emotional display. Findings suggest that individuals first and foremost attribute virtual assistant's emotional displays to the virtual assistant rather than situational causes, that emotional display targets can influence attributions, and that further work is needed to assess the role of distinctiveness in attributions of virtual assistant's emotional displays.</p>

Ur ett humanekologiskt helhetsperspektiv belyser detta kandidatarbetet gröna miljöers potential för ett främjande av hållbar utveckling. Byggnadens syfte är att praktiskt beskriva naturkontaktens betydelse för människan, arterna och dess samverkan. Att besöka platsen ska leda till en ökad kunskap till hur kunskap och vetenskap kan främjas genom design och pedagogiska metoder. Detta folkets hus + är en byggnaden i symbios mellan natur och människa. Ett utbildningscentrum med mål att lära ut och observera miljöförändringarnas påverkan på vår miljö. Huvudmålet med Domus Natura är att främja den biologiska mångfalden genom tekniska lösningar integrerade direkt i byggnaden och på sätt åter introducera arter som tidigare funnits i regionen. Erbjuda utbildning, föreläsningar, observationsplatser, säsongsbetonade och dagliga aktiviteter,  evenemang och utställningar. / From a human ecological perspective, this candidate project illuminates green environmental potentials for sustainable developments. The purpose is to practically describe the significance of the nature contact for man, species and its collaboration. Visiting the building will lead to increased knowledge about the impact of science and how it can be shown through design and educational methods. Domus Natura is a building in symbiosis between nature and man. An educational center for teaching and observing the influence of the environmental changes. The main objective of Domus Natura is to promote biodiversity through technical solutions directly into the building. A way to introduce species that previously existed in the region. A center that will offer training, lectures, observation sites, seasonal and daily activities, events and exhibitions.

It is well established that musicians deviate substantially from regular timing in music performance, and numerous studies have sought to characterize the origin of different expressive deviations. However, this work has thus far been limited by the necessity of analyzing renditions produced by highly-trained adult musicians, which precludes the opportunity to ask questions about how development and formal experience might affect expressive timing. In the present dissertation, I introduce a new paradigm for examining musical production in non-expert participants, the musical dwell time paradigm. In Chapters 2 and 3, I show that musically untrained adults and children as young as three years pause on phrase-final chords when self-pacing through chord sequences, mirroring the phenomenon of phrase-final lengthening that has been reported in expert music performance. I additionally demonstrate that by four years of age, this lengthening can be elicited by harmonic cues when other cues to phrase boundaries (metrical regularity and melodic contour) are controlled for. In Chapter 4, I show that when communicating different emotions through music, nonmusicians use expressive cues in a way that is highly consistent with expert musicians, and that there is striking similarity across participants despite a wide range of musical training. Finally, in Chapter 5, I demonstrate that children as young as 5 years olds’ performances mirror adults’ in their use of timing and loudness cues, and that their renditions become more adult-like by 7 years. Altogether, these findings corroborate previous claims that musically untrained adults are “listening experts” with substantial musical knowledge, extend these results to show that in performance musically untrained adults use timing and loudness similarly as expert musicians to delineate phrases and express emotions, and show that some elements are in place by early childhood. Overall, the musical dwell time paradigm offers a new, highly flexible method for examining musical production in participants with a wide variety of musical training. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Musicians often deviate from the durations notated in their musical score, slowing and speeding over the course of a performance. In the absence of deviations, music sounds mechanical or computerized rather than expressive. Studies of performances by highly-trained musicians have identified patterns in the way these duration changes are implemented, but no previous research has investigated whether formal musical experiences and development contribute to these patterns. I developed a simple music production apparatus that enables musically untrained adults and children to perform music. I asked participants to “perform” chord sequences under different conditions and measured the amount of time they spent on each chord. I uncovered how young children and untrained adults use timing deviations to delineate musical phrase groups and to communicate musical emotions. Overall, my work offers a new way to examine expressive timing patterns and suggest that formal training alone does not fully account for these patterns.

This thesis comprises research investigating explicit EM biases in MDD during acute depression and euthymia (i.e., clinical remission). First, a systematic review was conducted to investigate whether acutely depressed and euthymic MDD participants display an explicit EM bias. An ‘explicit EM bias’ was operationally defined to denote enhanced memory for negative or positive stimuli compared to matched healthy controls (HCs). Studies that were included in this systematic review investigated explicit EM using free recall and recognition memory paradigms. The main finding from this investigation was that acutely depressed MDD participants do not display an explicit EM bias. An unintended consequence of this investigation was the identification that research on explicit EM in MDD during euthymia is surprisingly sparse. Next, building upon the findings from our systematic review, we conducted an empirical investigation of explicit EM within a sample of well-characterized euthymic MDD participants compared to age/sex/gender/IQ-matched HCs. In this study, participants performed incidental encoding (i.e., emotional reactivity) and recognition memory tasks (separated by one week). These tasks employed emotionally-valent picture stimuli obtained from the International Affective Picture System. Results from this study revealed that, compared to matched HCs, euthymic MDD participants do not display an emotional reactivity or explicit EM bias. Taken together, the findings from this thesis suggest that explicit EM represents a sub-domain of cognition that may be unaffected in individuals with MDD. Our findings have important implications for the unified model of depression and may represent a basis upon which future research can build in an attempt to understand the nuanced cognitive phenotypes associated with MDD. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the most common mental disorders worldwide. It is estimated that over 10% of Canadians will experience MDD at some point in their lifetime. The symptoms of MDD include, among other things: depressed mood, loss of interest in regular daily activities, and impairments in cognition (e.g., attention, emotion, memory, etc.). Clinicians and researchers have argued for years that MDD is associated with negative cognitive biases, including increased attention to, and more accurate memory for, negative information; however, attention, emotion and memory are general forms of cognition, and the existence of cognitive biases for specific sub-domains of cognition in MDD are largely unknown. Given that MDD has a negative effect on emotion and memory, one potentially important sub-domain of cognition is explicit emotional memory (EM; i.e., conscious memory for emotionally-stimulating information). The purpose of the current thesis was to investigate whether MDD, during both the active (i.e., acute) and euthymic (i.e., clinically-remitted) stages, is associated with explicit EM biases compared to healthy volunteers. This thesis discusses how patterns of explicit EM may be important for our understanding of the development of MDD.

Previous work on conveyed musical emotion has often focused on experimentally composed and manipulated music, or multi-lined music selected to express overt emotions. This highly controlled approach may overlook some aspects of the complex relationship between composers, performers, and listeners in transmitting emotional messages. My PhD research focuses on how listeners perceive emotion in music, specifically, how listeners interpret musical features such as timing, mode and pitch in complex musical stimuli. I also demonstrate how listeners with musical expertise use cues differently to perceive emotion and the effect of performer interpretation on this communication process. Throughout this dissertation I use a dimensional approach capturing perceived valence and arousal to assess complex musical stimuli. I adapted a technique used in other domains to music, affording an opportunity to explore nuanced relationships between cues and listener ratings of emotion. In Chapter 1 I show that musically untrained adults mainly use cues of timing and mode when rating emotional valence, mirroring previously reported. Additionally, I show that although pitch information emerges as a significant predictor of listener’s valence ratings, listeners use it less than cues such as timing and mode. Further, I demonstrate that neither mode nor pitch information help listeners rate perceived arousal. Finally, in Chapter 4, I show differences in performer interpretation mediate the strength of individual cues, as well as the distribution of emotional ratings across each album. In Chapter 3, I demonstrate that listeners with musical training use cues differently than untrained listeners, with more reliance on information communicated through mode when making judgements of emotional valence. Altogether these findings corroborate previous evidence suggesting timing and mode cues are of the greatest importance in conveying /perceiving emotion, this process is further mediated by individual differences in both pianist (interpretation) and listener (musical training)—underscoring the complex relationship between composer, performer, and audience. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Musical performers and composers express emotions through the selection and use of various musical features, or cues. Studies exploring how listeners perceive emotion in music have identified several cues important to this process—often using tightly controlled (and constrained) tone sequences crafted for experimental purposes. More work is needed to examine how listeners decode communicated emotion in unaltered passages created by renowned composers—the kind of music routinely performed and enjoyed by audiences for generations. Here in three sets of experiments I apply a novel stimulus set and analysis to determine the relative importance of three musical features. Additionally, I explore the role of the listener’s level of expertise as well as the importance of performers’ interpretative decisions. My work offers a new way to understand the relationship between musical features and emotional messages, helping to clarify one of music’s most mysterious and powerful capabilities.

Alexithymia is a multidimensional psychiatric construct indicating impaired emotional awareness. Its main features are (i) difficulties in identifying feelings and distinguishing them from bodily sensations, (ii) difficulties describing feelings to others, (iii) an externally oriented style of thinking, and (iv) a poor imaginal capacity. Alexithymia attracts great attention among practitioners and researchers in the clinical field because it has the potential to unveil the emotional disturbances occurring in several mental and physical diseases. As has recently been shown, most of these diseases are not only characterized by an altered perception of emotional states but, more generally, by an altered perception of internal bodily states, namely an altered interoceptive awareness. Consequently, a large body of research has focused on the interplay between alexithymia and interoceptive deficits. Yet, the extent of their association is to date unclear. This question is coupled with a further one concerning whether all or just a few features of alexithymia have clinical relevance and/or an association with interoceptive deficits. Indeed, differences in interoceptive ability are not the only candidate to explain differences in emotional awareness. Rather, the sociocultural environment the individual is surrounded by might play a role at least in the way emotions are expressed, but also in the way emotions are felt. This thesis considers both the mentioned issues, thus addressing the relationship that alexithymia entertains with interoceptive abilities on the one hand and with sociocultural factors on the other. I call these, respectively, the embodied and the embedded aspects of alexithymia. This manuscript is articulated in four parts. Part I introduces alexithymia and shows how the operationalization of the construct through time has facilitated the broadening of its conceptual nucleus. Part II focuses on the embodied aspect of alexithymia, namely its relationship with interoceptive deficits. This section outlines results from two empirical studies testing the association between alexithymia and self-reported interoceptive awareness across three large nationality samples. Part III examines the embedded aspect of alexithymia, namely its relationship with sociocultural factors. Together these studies show that (1) interoceptive deficits are a core component of alexithymia, although the latter cannot be reduced to the former, and (2) differences in externally–oriented thinking are empirically predicted by sociocultural factors more than by self-reported interoceptive awareness, even within the same ethnocultural group. In the fourth and last part, a general discussion summarizes the contribution of this work, raising criticisms regarding the current operationalization of alexithymia and the misunderstandings it can cause, especially when combined with a fallacious interpretation of nosological categories. The thesis concludes with the suggestion that adopting a stricter conception of alexithymia and analyzing the interplay between its interoceptive and cognitive subcomponents is beneficial for both emotion theory and clinical practice.

Yes / Social acceptance for wind turbines is variable, providing a challenge to the implementation of this energy source. Psychological research could contribute to the science of climate change. Here we focus on the emotional responses to the visual impact of wind turbines on the landscape, a factor which dominates attitudes towards this technology. Participants in the laboratory viewed images of turbines and other constructions (churches, pylons and power-plants) against rural scenes, and provided psychophysiological and self-report measures of their emotional reactions. We hypothesised that the emotional response to wind turbines would be more negative and intense than to control objects, and that this difference would be accentuated for turbine opponents. As predicted, the psychophysiological response to turbines was stronger than the response to churches, but did not differ from that of other industrial constructions. In contrast with predictions, turbines were rated as less aversive and more calming compared with other industrial constructions, and equivalent to churches. Supporters and non-supporters did not differ significantly from each other. We discuss how a methodology using photo manipulations and emotional self-assessments can help estimate the emotional reaction to the visual impact on the landscape at the planning stage for new wind turbine applications. / This work was partly funded by an ESRC First Grant RES-061-25-0512 to DT

Yes / Being able to recognize facial expressions of basic emotions is of great importance to social development. However, we still know surprisingly little about children’s developing ability to interpret emotions that are expressed dynamically, naturally, and subtly, despite real-life expressions having such appearance in the vast majority of cases. The current research employs a new technique of capturing dynamic, subtly expressed natural emotional displays (happy, sad, angry, shocked, and disgusted). Children aged 7, 9, and 11 years (and adults) were systematically able to discriminate each emotional display from alternatives in a five-way choice. Children were most accurate in identifying the expression of happiness and were also relatively accurate in identifying the expression of sadness; they were far less accurate than adults in identifying shocked and disgusted. Children who performed well academically also tended to be the most accurate in recognizing expressions, and this relationship maintained independently of chronological age. Generally, the findings testify to a well-developed ability to recognize very subtle naturally occurring expressions of emotions.