Tidigare forskning har kopplat låga och höga nivåer av mentalisering till diverse psykiatriska diagnoser. Dock har det inte studerats i lika stor grad om höga nivåer av mentalisering kan bero på faktorer som inte är patologiska, som personlighetsdraget neuroticism. Att undersöka om det finns icke-patologiska förklaringar till högre nivåer av mentalisering kan vara viktig kunskap som kan användas vid utformandet av effektiv behandling för människor med diagnoser där höga nivåer av förmågan förekommer. Denna studie undersökte om högre nivåer av neuroticism bidrar till högre nivåer av mentalisering hos vuxna. Forskningsfrågan var: Finns det ett samband mellan högre nivåer av neuroticism och högre nivåer av mentalisering? Urvalet bestod av 66 deltagare över 18 år. Jag samlade in data genom en webbenkät som bestod av skalorna EPQ-R och MentS som mätte neuroticism respektive mentalisering. Jag analyserade datan via en hierarkisk regressionsanalys, en korrelationsanalys och ett oberoende t-test. Resultatet visade att neuroticism inte hade ett samband med mentalisering. Sambandet förändrades heller inte när jag kontrollerade för kön och ålder. Att höga nivåer av neuroticism inte bidrog till att man mentaliserade mer kan eventuellt förklaras av att nivåerna av neuroticism inte var särskilt höga i urvalet samt storleken på urvalet. Mer forskning behövs via ett större urval med högre nivåer av neuroticism. / Previous studies have connected low and high levels of mentalization to various psychiatric diagnoses. However, there have been fewer studies examining whether high levels of mentalization are related to factors that are not pathological, such as the personality trait neuroticism. Examining whether there are non-pathological explanations to high levels of mentalization can be important knowledge that is useful when designing effective treatment aimed for people with diagnoses where high levels of the ability occur. This study examined whether higher levels of neuroticism contribute to higher levels of mentalization among adults. The research question was: Is there a relationship between higher levels of neuroticism and higher levels of mentalization? The sample consisted of 66 people aged 18 and above. I collected data through a web survey that consisted of the scales EPQ-R and MentS which measured neuroticism and mentalization respectively. I analyzed the data by using a hierarchical regression, a correlation analysis and an independent samples t test. The results showed that there was no relationship between neuroticism and mentalization. Neither did the relationship change when I controlled for gender and age. The fact that higher levels of neuroticism did not contribute to higher levels of mentalization could potentially be explained by the levels of neuroticism within the sample not being particularly high and the size of the sample. More studies are needed with a larger sample and where the levels of neuroticism are higher.

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In what ways and under what circumstances can a movie be a resource for individuals and their thoughts about existential matters? This central research question has been investigated using a both quantitative and qualitative approach. First, a questionnaire was distributed amongst 179 Swedish students to provide a preliminary overview of film habits. The questionnaire was also used as a tool for selecting respondents to individual interviews. Second, thirteen interviews were conducted, with viewers choosing their favourite movie of all time. In the study socio-cognitive theory and a schema-based theoretical tool is adopted to analyze how different viewers make use of movies as cultural products in an interplay between culture and cognition in three contexts; a socio-historic process, a socio-cultural interaction with the world and inner psychological processes. Summarizing the interviews some existential matters dominated. Matters of immanent orientation were in the foreground. Transcendental questions received much less attention. Summarizing the schema-based theoretical question, assessing which cognitive schema structures the narratives were processed through, the study found an emphasis on a combination of two main cognitive structures, person schema and self schema. Detailed person schematic cognitive processes about fictitious characters on the screen and their role model behaviour were combined by the respondents with dynamic cross-references to detailed self schematic introspections about their own characteristics, related to existential matters at some very specific moments in their lives. The viewers in the study seem to be inspired by movies as a mediated cultural resource, promoting the development of a personal moral framework with references to values deeply fostered by a humanistic tradition. It is argued that these findings support theories discussing individualised meaning making, developing ‘self-expression values’ and ‘altruistic individualism’ in contemporary western society.

Child and adolescent mood and anxiety symptoms are common and debilitating, with long-term effects on well-being. Research presented in this thesis examines interpersonal cognitive factors in the emergence of anxious and depressive symptoms in late childhood through to early adulthood. The thesis considers this issue using three main approaches. For the first, data are presented showing that biases in the appraisals of social situations are the aspects of interpersonal cognition most closely associated with emotional symptoms. For the second, longitudinal twin data are used to examine genetic and environmental origins of these interpersonal cognitive biases and their temporal prediction of symptoms across a 2-year period. Data show that interpersonal cognitive factors are strongly influenced by non-shared environmental factors, and moreover, predict symptoms across time. The final section of the thesis comprises four studies using Cognitive Bias Modification of Interpretations (CBM-I) training methodology to show that both positive and negative interpretive biases for interpersonal information can be induced in adolescents. Positive biases are shown to persist for at least 24 hours after training, and induced positive and negative biases are shown to differentially predict anxious responses to an experimental stressor. Evidence is also provided to suggest that effects following training positive interpretive biases may transfer to other cognitive measures, namely appraisals of ambiguous emotional faces. Finally, data tentatively show that CBM-I training may be useful in reducing negative interpretations of interpersonal information made by 11-year-old children undergoing the transition to secondary school. In summary, studies in this thesis support the contribution of cognitive biases to mood and anxiety symptoms in childhood and adolescence. They further extend this knowledge by suggesting that these reflect individual-specific (non-shared) environmental risks to predict symptoms across time. These biases may also be amenable to change through training interventions, with some - albeit weak - effects on other cognitive outcomes.

Behaviour is guided by accumulated experience, valuation and comparison. While many aspects associated with these functions are mediated by the frontal lobes, the precise contribution from particular regions remains debated. This thesis will deal with how an organism comes to select an option and will specifically focus on the role of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in two mechanisms in this process: learning of outcome specificities and selecting between multiple options based on their expected values. Despite evidence emphasizing anatomical and connective heterogeneity within this structure, the OFC is often regarded as a uniform region. This thesis aims to resolve some of this uncertainty by assuming that the medial and lateral regions of the OFC contribute differentially to learning and decision-making. Two distinct methodologies were used in these investigations. First, the contribution of the medial OFC to social and emotional processing was examined. The findings from this study disprove previously held beliefs that the medial regions of the OFC guide social and emotional behaviours, but indicted a role for this region in value-guided decision-making. The second study examined functional differences between the lateral and medial OFC by making circumscribed lesions to either region in macaque monkeys. The animals performed a number of 3-armed bandit tasks which were designed to investigate different aspects of value assignment and comparison. The results show that while lateral OFC was required for "credit assignment" – the correct assignment of values to visual cues – medial OFC was critical for comparison of the cues' values during decision-making. In unchanging probabilistic environments, mOFC lesions induced decision-making impairments when value comparison was difficult without affecting credit assignment and associative learning. By contrast, lateral OFC lesions caused the opposite pattern of impairment. The final study used human-neuroimaging techniques to investigate the differential representation of outcome-specific contingency learning and found not only that the expectation of a unique outcome facilitated learning and memory recall but that this was supported by a neural network which included the lateral regions of the OFC and the anterior cingulate cortex. Activity in the mOFC did not correlate with outcome-specific contingency learning but instead reflected both the value associated with the receipt and expectation of a reward. Taken together, the results from this thesis suggest that specific parts of the OFC make markedly different contributions to these very different cognitive functions.

Cette recherche s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’élaboration d’espaces numériques d’interaction tactile, en tant qu’ils sont rendus possibles par la connexion en réseau d’un dispositif de suppléance perceptive. Dans ce contexte, nous avons articulé une recherche appliquée, centrée sur les analyses d’usage du dispositif dans des contextes écologiques, à une recherche fondamentale, dirigée par les questions théoriques soulevées par les usages eux-mêmes.Pour cela, la méthodologie minimaliste nous offre une occasion originale d’étudier la constitution même des rencontres interpersonnelles, à travers un espace de couplage sensorimoteur inédit. Nos résultats généraux suggèrent que le processus de l’interaction est une dynamique relationnelle autonome qui émerge de l’engagement mutuel des participants. Dans une approche énactive et interactionniste de la cognition sociale, il s’agit alors de considérer que le croisement perceptif entre deux sujets, même réduit à son expression la plus simple, consiste en la rencontre de deux activités perceptives construisant du sens. Dans le contexte de rencontres strictement dyadiques, nous tentons de caractériser cette dynamique, de façon à en isoler les éléments constitutifs. Nous montrons alors que la coordination interpersonnelle résulte d’un processus actif de co-ajustements dynamiques qui se joue autant à un niveau microscopique (qualité de l’accroche perceptive) qu’à un niveau macroscopique (organisation de séquences d’interaction). Dans le contexte de l’exploration mutuelle d’un contenu numérique, nous montrons que cette dynamique d’interaction permet aux participants de faire sens de leurs engagements respectifs en fonction des objets présents. La coordination des activités perceptives se présente alors comme le support de la co-constitution d’un monde partagé de significations, à travers une compréhension interpersonnelle ancrée dans un contexte pragmatique. En outre, l’articulation des expérimentations et des analyses d’usage écologiques nous a conduits à proposer des spécifications techniques et fonctionnelles pour les espaces numériques partagés, de façon à proposer un dispositif pertinent pour les utilisateurs déficients visuels. / Our research is part of the design of tactile interaction digital spaces, as they are made possible by a network connection between perceptual supplementation devices. Within this framework, we articulated an applied research, focused on the analysis of use of the device in ecological contexts, with a fundamental one, led by theoretical issues raised by the usage itself. In this respect, minimalist methodology gives us an opportunity to study the very constitution of interpersonal encounters, through a new space of sensorimotor coupling for users.Our overall results suggest that interaction process is an autonomous relational dynamics that emerges from the mutual engagement of participants. Within an enactive and interactionist approach of social cognition, we consider that this perceptual crossing, even when reduced to its simplest expression, involves the meeting of two perceptual activities which inherently produce sense. In the context of strictly dyadic encounters, we try to characterize this dynamic, so as to isolate its fundamental features. We show that interpersonal coordination results from an active process of dynamic co-adjustments that unfolds both on a microscopic level (quality of the perceptual coupling) and on a macroscopic level (organization of interaction sequences). In the case of mutual exploration of digital content, we show that this dynamic interaction allows participants to make sense of their respective engagement relatively to the present objects. The coordination of perceptual activities is then presented as a support for the co-constitution of a shared world of meanings, from an interpersonal understanding rooted in a pragmatic context.In addition, these experiments, coupled to ecological usage analysis, have led us to propose technical and functional specifications for shared digital spaces, so as to provide a relevant device for visually impaired users.

Le monde social est par essence fortement incertain, dans la mesure où les informations peuvent varier rapidement et de façon imprévisible, et il est essentiel de pouvoir s’y adapter. Les personnes avec autisme présentent souvent une intolérance au changement et une recherche d’immuabilité, associées à des difficultés dans le domaine de la prise de décision. Elles rapportent également que leurs difficultés sont amplifiées lorsque la prise de décision implique un changement de routine et lorsqu’elle fait entrer en jeu une composante sociale. Si la prise de décision dans un environnement social a été beaucoup explorée, l’influence de l’incertitude du contexte (c’est-à-dire d’un changement brutal des probabilités de survenue d’un événement) et son interaction avec la nature sociale de l’environnement n’ont jamais été étudiées dans le cadre de l’autisme. Cette thèse vise à mieux comprendre les spécificités du traitement du caractère imprévisible du contexte chez les personnes autistes de haut niveau (High-Functioning Autism : HFA) et avec un Syndrome d’Asperger (AS). La question posée ici est de savoir si c’est l’aspect social, ou bien l’aspect imprévisible, qui pose problème aux personnes avec autisme dans les interactions sociales. Nous avons fait l’hypothèse d’une altération du traitement du caractère imprévisible chez ces personnes, comparées à des sujets neurotypiques appariés, et nous souhaitions préciser l’influence de la nature sociale ou non-sociale de la source d’information sur cette altération. Dans la première étude, comportementale, de cette thèse, nous avons adapté une tâche de prise de décision de Behrens et al. (2007, 2008), comportant une condition stable et une condition instable (i.e. incertaine), cet aspect stable ou instable pouvant venir d’un indice social ou non-social. Cette première étude a permis de montrer que, dans notre tâche, les difficultés rencontrées par les personnes HFA/AS dans un environnement social tiennent plus à son caractère imprévisible qu’à son aspect social. A cela s’ajoute une difficulté globale à intégrer les indices contextuels dans la prise de décision. Notre deuxième étude, en IRM fonctionnelle, visait à identifier les régions cérébrales impliquées dans le traitement du caractère imprévisible du contexte, ainsi que l’effet de la nature sociale de l’environnement sur ce traitement, chez des personnes avec autisme. Cette seconde étude a montré que les personnes HFA/AS mobilisent moins le réseau attentionnel fronto-pariétal que les personnes neurotypiques dans un contexte incertain (qu’il soit social ou non). On observe également chez ces personnes une difficulté à réorienter l’attention lorsque les indices contextuels ne sont pas pertinents. Par ailleurs, dans un environnement social les personnes HFA/AS activent moins les aires du « cerveau social » que les personnes neurotypiques. La discussion établit un parallèle entre ces résultats et la littérature existante, et propose des perspectives en termes de prise en charge dans l’autisme / The social world is inherently very uncertain, as the information can change rapidly, unpredictably, and thus it is essential to be able to adapt. People with autism often show a resistance to change and a preference for sameness, associated with decision-making difficulties. They also report that their difficulties are augmented when the decision involves a change in the routine and when a social component is involved. While the decision-making in a social environment has been widely investigated, the influence of the uncertainty of the context (i.e. of a sudden change in the probability of occurrence of an event) and its interaction with the social nature of the environment has never been studied in the context of autism. This thesis aims to better understand how people with High-Functioning Autism (HFA) and Asperger's syndrome (AS) process an unpredictable context. The main question asked here is which of the social or unexpected aspects denote a problem for people with autism in social interactions. We hypothesized that processing of uncertainty is altered in HFA/AS people compared to matched controls, and we wanted to determine what is the influence of a social or a non-social source of information on this alteration. In the first study of this thesis (a behavioural study), we adapted a decision-making task from Behrens et al. (2007, 2008), which implies a stable and an unstable (i.e. uncertain) conditions. The stable or unstable aspect could derive from a social or a non-social cue. The study showed that in our task the difficulties faced by people with HFA/AS in a social environment are more linked to the uncertainty of the context than to its social aspect. HFA/AS participants also showed a global difficulty to integrate contextual cues in decisionmaking. The second study (a functional MRI study) aimed to identify brain regions involved in the uncertainty processing, as well as the effect of the social nature of the environment on this processing. We observed in HFA/AS participants a weaker engagement of the fronto-parietal attentional cerebral network in an unstable context (regardless whether the cue was social or non-social). We also observed in these participants a difficulty to redirect their attention when contextual cues were not relevant. Moreover, in a social environment people with HFA/AS activated less than controls brain areas belonging to the "social brain”. The discussion draws a parallel between these results and the literature, and opens to rehabilitation perspectives for people with autism

Com maiores publicações no início do século XXI, o tema superimitação, ou overimitation, tem despertado interesse de alguns psicólogos e biólogos por se tratar de um possível mecanismo social que leva os humanos a copiarem comportamentos irrelevantes na resolução de uma situação problema a partir de um modelo. Neste contexto, a presente dissertação de mestrado objetivou uma análise do comportamento de superimitação com mecanismos das funções executivas e cognição social de crianças da educação infantil, de 4 a 5 anos de idade. Participaram 36 crianças da educação infantil selecionadas de uma EMEI em São Paulo, segundo critérios pré-estabelecidos, avaliadas com os testes: superimitação (resolução da caixa problemas), teoria da mente - ToM (teste de falsa crença), testes para funções executivas de memória operacional (Missing Test), flexibilidade mental (DCCS), e raciocínio lógico (Teste de Matrizes Coloridas Progressivas de Raven). Os resultados indicaram que a superimitação não apresentou correlação com as funções executivas examinadas. Foram verificados indícios de tratar-se de uma atividade social, por consequência da associação com a função de teoria da mente, em detrimento a uma atividade isolada de resolução de problema cognitivo / Having experienced a growth in number of studies at the beginning of the 21st century, the subject of overimitation has caught the interest of psychologists and biologists in referring to a possible social mechanism that makes humans copy irrelevant behavior during the resolution of problem situations from a model. In that context, the present dissertation has as its objective an analysis of the overimitation behavior in relation to executive function and social cognition mechanisms in preschool children, 4 to 5 years of age. Thirty-six children participated in the study. They wereselected from a public municipal school (EMEI) in São Paulo, Brazil, according to preestablished criteria and evaluated using the problem box resolution task (overimitation), false belief test (ToM), and tests for executive functions of working memory (Missing Test), mental flexibility (DCCS), and logical thinking (Ravens Progressive Matrices Test). The results indicate that overimitation presented no significant correlation to executive functions. The findings provide evidence that overimitation is a result of social activity, since it showed possible association to theory of mind, instead of signs of an isolated activity cognitive problem solving

Le cerveau des primates, et plus encore celui de l’homme, a évolué en s’adaptant à un environnement socialement complexe. Le nombre élevé d’individus qui composent le groupe, la sophistication des modes d’interaction et le risque de manipulation constituent autant de pressions de sélection exercées sur le cerveau. Cette perspective évolutionnaire a alimenté tout un courant de recherche en psychologie développementale tourné vers la cognition dite sociale. Ces recherches se sont portées sur la lecture des intentions, la distinction soi/autrui, l’altruisme, l’empathie, la morale, la compétition et la coopération. Toutes ces capacités constituent les premières briques de ce que l’on pourrait appeler une sociologie naïve. Mais certaines de ces capacités sont restées au second plan, et l’objectif général de ce projet sera d’aborder l’une des plus ignorées mais pas des moins centrales : l’aptitude à traiter les hiérarchies. Les relations dominance, ou d’ascendance, constituent une dimension essentielle de la vie des espèces sociales. Sur le plan évolutionniste, un rang social élevé confère des avantages adaptatifs décisifs car il garantit un accès privilégié aux ressources nutritives et reproductives. Le rôle crucial du rang social va dès lors exercer un certain nombre de contraintes cognitives. Les individus doivent, par exemple, être capables d’identifier l’organisation hiérarchique de leurs groupes et représenter les avantages offerts par le statut. On peut donc penser que chez bon nombre d’espèces sociales, des mécanismes cognitifs dédiés aux hiérarchies sociales aient évolué selon un processus sélectif. Néanmoins, les hiérarchies sociales chez l’homme se distinguent de celles des autres espèces par deux aspects importants. Premièrement, les attributs qui définissent la dominance sont beaucoup plus diversifiés et dépassent le simple cadre des relations agonistiques. Deuxièmement, à la différence des primates, les cultures humaines présentent des variations fortes dans le degré de structuration hiérarchique des sociétés. Il est donc possible d’imaginer que les mécanismes cognitifs impliqués dans le traitement des hiérarchies soient modulés par l’environnement culturel. La méthode interculturelle suivie ici permettra d’identifier des mécanismes potentiellement universels et d’autres sujets à une variation culturelle. Au cours des années 70 et 80, l’étude des hiérarchies chez l’enfant a connu une période féconde. Les travaux produits, largement inspirés par l’éthologie, ont permis de montrer que les relations de dominance étaient fréquentes, même chez des enfants très jeunes (1 à 2 ans), et qu’elles s’organisaient selon des structures linéaires. Néanmoins ces études, de part les méthodologies employées, ont largement négligé la perspective cognitive et n’ont pas donc permis d’établir des mécanismes précis impliqués dans le traitement des hiérarchies. Cette thèse vise à réintroduire l’étude de la dominance sociale au sein de la psychologie cognitive du développement. Elle s’articule autour de deux axes principaux : 1) Identifier la dominance : la capacité à identifier le statut hiérarchique et ses différents attributs et inférer les avantages que confère un statut élevé. 2) Agir face à la dominance : la distribution de ressources en fonction du statut et la préférence sociale en fonction du statut. Huit expériences sont rapportées dont une incluant une comparaison inter-culturelle entre la France, le Liban et le japon. Ces expériences ont montré la capacité des enfants dès 3 ans à identifier les relations de dominance et à inférer un certain nombre de caractéristiques à partir de ces relations. Les inférences de la dominance aux caractéristiques des individus incluent l'asymétrie de ressources, de compétences ainsi que le genre ; les enfants de trois cultures différentes ont associé le genre masculin au personnage dominant........ / According to the social brain hypothesis, the computational demands of living in large and complex societies favored the selection of unusually large brains and complex cognitive capacities (Dunbar & Shulz, 2007). Social cognition, that is, the cognitive processes devoted to monitor, control, and predict the behaviors of others, is vital to navigate the social world. It is especially essential for humans, who live in societies characterized by a dense convolution of social relationships. Given the importance of asymmetrical relationships within and across social groups (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001; Bente, Leuschner, Al Issa & Blascovich, 2010), the perceptual and inferential strategies necessary for processing dominance are certainly central to social cognition. Dominance is indeed pervasive in the human species (Fiske, 1992), it affects reproductive success (Ellis, 1995; Fieder, Huber, Bookstein, Iber, Schäfer, Winckler & Wallner, 2005; Kanazawa, 2003) and plays a central role in the formation of short and long-term alliances (Watts, 2010). Work in the human ethological tradition has described preschoolers' spontaneous social dominance structures: they are linear and stable (Strayer and Strayer, 1976; Lafrénière & Charlesworth, 1983); based on verbal and physical strategies (Hawley, 1999; Pellegrini, 2008) and are associated to social competence and affiliative structures (Vaugh & Waters, 1981; Hold, 1976). However, the observational approach adopted in these studies and the methodological shortcomings of some parallel experimental attempts (Omark & Edelman, 1975; Sluckin & Smith, 1977) preclude conclusions about the specific cognitive mechanisms responsible for coping with dominance relations.In line with the naïve sociology framework proposed by Jackendoff (1992) and Hirschfeld (1995), the present thesis takes an experimental developmental psychology approach to highlight the cognitive strategies that allow children to identify dominance relations, to form relevant expectations and to take action on the light of these expectations. A series of eight experiments investigated preschoolers’ abilities to make sense of social dominance situations, following two axes:Dominance Identification: the capacity to identify hierarchical status using several cues and to infer advantageous consequences of high status. Taking action in dominance contexts: allocation of resources and social choices in dominance contexts. The first set of experiments showed that preschoolers are able, from 3-years-old, to infer dominance not only from physical supremacy but also from decision power, age and resources. The second set of experiments showed that preschoolers have some expectations regarding how a dominant and subordinate individual are likely to differ. In particular, they expect that an individual who imposes his choice on another will exhibit higher competence in games and will have more resources. Another, intercultural experiment showed that children from 3 countries differing in gender equality norms associated masculine gender to dominant behavior since their 4th year. The three final experiments belonged to the second axis and showed a systematic age effect that suggests that choices that reinforce the status-quo are more salient before 5-years-old.

Avaliação de sistemas de informação e frames tecnológicos (estruturas cognitivas compartilhadas em relação à tecnologia) constituem-se as temáticas focais desta pesquisa cujo objetivo foi compreender como se estabelece a relação entre processos de avaliação formais e informais de um sistema de informação e frames tecnológicos. A estrutura de avaliação conteúdo-contexto-processo e o arcabouço teórico de frames tecnológicos, especialmente seus elementos constitutivos - conhecimentos, pressupostos e expectativas - foram associados visando a esta compreensão. A pesquisa foi realizada em uma instituição de ensino superior e o objeto de estudo tratou-se de um sistema de informação acadêmico (Peoplesoft), implementado e em uso nesta instituição. Especificamente analisaram-se: avaliações formais e informais do sistema acadêmico em relação à estrutura conteúdo-contexto-processo; a natureza e extensão de diferenças em frames tecnológicos de grupos sociais distintos; e como frames tecnológicos moldam e são moldados por avaliações formais e informais de um sistema de informação. Com pressupostos epistemológicos sustentados pela perspectiva interpretativista, metodologicamente o estudo caracterizou-se por uma abordagem qualitativa do tipo estudo de caso único e incorporado (grupos sociais como sub-unidades de análise). Entrevistas em profundidade, observação participante, revisão documental e artefato físico constituíram-se as fontes de dados empíricos. Adotaram-se os fundamentos do método hermenêutico-dialético para a análise e interpretação dos dados coletados. O estudo propiciou identificar que: frames tecnológicos e avaliações do sistema de informação, sejam formais ou informais, influenciam-se reciprocamente; características pessoais, contextuais e tecnológicas integram-se criando, reforçando e modificando frames tecnológicos; diferentes avaliações sobre o sistema acadêmico são socialmente construídas pelos indivíduos inseridos em grupos sociais e fortemente afetadas pelo que acreditam, conhecem e esperam deste sistema; frames tecnológicos manifestam-se tanto no conteúdo da avaliação quanto no processo avaliativo, influenciando a identificação de fatores do conteúdo assim como o teor do julgamento destes fatores, o modo pelo qual se avalia e o próprio contexto da avaliação; em contrapartida, processos de avaliações informais, decorrentes da interação social, afetam frames tecnológicos; nestes processos, conhecimentos prévios são validados, ampliados ou refutados, pressupostos e expectativas criados e recriados; igualmente, o modo como avaliações formais são configuradas desencadeia conhecimentos, pressupostos e expectativas sobre a tecnologia. / Information systems evaluation and technological frames (shared cognitive structures that relate to technology) are the main themes of this research. Its general goal has been to establish how the relationship between formal and informal processes of information systems evaluation and technological frames operates. The structure of evaluation (content-context-process) and the theoretical stance of the technological frames, especially in respect to its constitutive elements, have been analyzed and linked to each other. The research has been conducted in a graduate institution and its object of analysis, a software called \"Peoplesoft\", which was already implemented and that is in use nowadays. Specific analysis deal with the following topics: a) both formal and informal evaluations of the information system in relation to the \"content-context-process\" structure; the nature and extension of the differences that sustain technological frames for different groups as well how these technological frames are molded and formed by formal and informal assessment (evaluations) of such system. Epistemological suppositions were held by an interpretative perspective while, methodologically, this study is characterized by a qualitative perspective of a unique case in which social groups act as sub-units of analysis. In-depth interviews, paticipative observations, documental review and physical artifacts have been the sources of empirical data. Data analysis and interpretation has been backed up by a dialectic-hermeneutic method. The results point to reciprocal influences between technological frames and information systems evaluations (both formal and informal ones). Personal and contextual characteristics as well as technological ones are integrated creating, reinforcing and modifying technological frames. Thus, different evaluations of the academic information system are socially constructed by the individuals and become greatly affected by their prior knowledge of the system, their assumptions and expectations towards it. Technological frames manifest themselves in relation to both the content and processes of evaluation, thus influencing the identification of generating factors of such judgments, as well as their substance; frames also influence the manners how evaluations are made and the context where they take place. On the other hand, informal evaluation processes, the product of social interaction, affect technological frames. In these processes, previous knowledge is validated, amplified or refuted; assumptions and expectations are created and/or recreated. At the same time, the ways in which formal evaluations are proposed trigger certain knowledges, expectations and assumptions about technology.