The aim of this experiment was to study whether completing a questionnaire either related or unrelated to various aspects of the workplace could induce different implicit and explicit stereotypic associations with Down syndrome. Subjects read one of three questionnaires before completing a task designed to measure implicit associations. The task consisted of photo primes of faces belonging to individuals with Down syndrome and typically developing individuals, followed by an evaluative decision task with adjectives related to the stereotype dimensions of warmth and competence. Following the implicit task, participants were asked directly about their associations between Down syndrome and each of the target traits. It was hypothesized that Down syndrome would be systematically associated with low competence, regardless of the context primed, but that it would be associated with greater warmth when morale-related aspects of the workplace were primed than when efficiency-related aspects of the workplace were primed. These hypotheses were not supported, and questionnaire type did not seem to prime specific associations in the implicit task. However, consistent with past research, Down syndrome was associated with high ratings of warmth on the explicit measure, and implicit results suggest Down syndrome may be implicitly associated with greater warmth as well. Methodological limitations of the study are discussed, as well as possible directions for future research.

Child abuse and neglect is a significant social issue with long term consequences for affected children and young people, including increased risk of emotional and social difficulties. Models of the impacts of maltreatment outline a developmental process in which maltreating parent-child relationships affect the development of neural networks, which in turn undermine developing cognitive processes, including emotion regulation and social understanding, thereby increasing risk of emotional and social difficulties. This study explores a subset of these cognitive processes in a sample of adolescents in long-term out-of-home care as a result of maltreatment, relative to a sample of non-maltreated peers, including situation selection (conditioned avoidance and risk-taking), attentional deployment (attention biases and attention control) and cognitive change (interpretation bias), as well as aspects of social understanding (mentalising, emotion understanding and prosocial responding). Further, the relative effects of maltreatment factors, and the relationship between emotion regulation and social understanding with adolescent adjustment was also explored. Results demonstrated maltreatment-related effects in conditioned avoidance, risk-taking, attention processes and social understanding, and explored the relative effect of exposure to physical abuse on the development of these processes, differences in such processes did not appear to significantly predict poor or normative adjustment of maltreated adolescents. These results are discussed with respect to models of maltreatment, emotion regulation and social understanding, with implications for the development and implementation of interventions.

Facial motion provides an abundance of information necessary for mediating social communication. Emotional expressions, head rotations and eye-gaze patterns allow us to extract categorical and qualitative information from others (Blake & Shiffrar, 2007). Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition characterised by a severe impairment in social cognition. One of the causes may be related to a fundamental deficit in perceiving human movement (Herrington et al., 2007). This hypothesis was investigated more closely within the current thesis. In neurotypical controls, the visual processing of facial motion was analysed via EEG alpha waves. Participants were tested on their ability to discriminate between successive animations (exhibiting rigid and nonrigid motion). The appearance of the stimuli remained constant over trials, meaning decisions were based solely on differential movement patterns. The parieto-occipital region was specifically selective to upright facial motion while the occipital cortex responded similarly to natural and manipulated faces. Over both regions, a distinct pattern of activity in response to upright faces was characterised by a transient decrease and subsequent increase in neural processing (Girges et al., 2014). These results were further supported by an fMRI study which showed sensitivity of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) to perceived facial movements relative to inanimate and animate stimuli. The ability to process information from dynamic faces was assessed in ASD. Participants were asked to recognise different sequences, unfamiliar identities and genders from facial motion captures. Stimuli were presented upright and inverted in order to assess configural processing. Relative to the controls, participants with ASD were significantly impaired on all three tasks and failed to show an inversion effect (O'Brien et al., 2014). Functional neuroimaging revealed atypical activities in the visual cortex, STS and fronto-parietal regions thought to contain mirror neurons in participants with ASD. These results point to a deficit in the visual processing of facial motion, which in turn may partly cause social communicative impairments in ASD.

The current thesis explored participants' stereotypes and auto-stereotypes of old age within the UK, and the consequences of auto-stereotype activation on older adults' memory performance and well-being. Study 1 employed a questionnaire design to explore young (aged 17-25 years) and older adults' (aged 60-75 years) experiences and stereotypes of ageing. Older participants demonstrated high subjective age bias, reporting subjective ages significantly below their chronological age. Older adults also demonstrated a greater understanding of positive aspects of old age than young adults, although no significant differences emerged between cohorts over the valence of generated stereotype content. Study 2 modified the questionnaire to further differentiate between more positive versus less negative aspects of ageing. Findings indicated that although older adults displayed less negative perceptions of old age than young adults, they did not demonstrate more positive representations. Study 3 explored the structure (as opposed to content) of age-related stereotypes using a free-sorting task, and included old-old adult participants (aged 75-91 years). Confirming previous findings, subtype structure formed two high level clusters, consisting of positive or negative categories. Old-old adults demonstrated the most complex subtype structure from the three groups, with no significant differences emerging between young and older adults. Finally, Study 4 employed a subliminal priming paradigm to examine the impact of positive or negative auto-stereotype activation on older adults' memory performance and well-being. Findings suggested that negative auto-stereotype activation had a detrimental impact on participants' memory performance, although the low power of the study means additional work is required to confirm this effect pattern. No significant effects of priming emerged for young adults. In summary, the current findings suggest that stereotypes and auto-stereotypes of old age are complex, consisting of both positive and negative elements, and point to the importance of considering subjective, rather than chronological age when assessing age-related identity.

Executive function (EF) and theory of mind (ToM) skills develop rapidly during the preschool years and have been found to directly and indirectly contribute to school readiness. Evidence indicates that EF may influence ToM development, though this relation may not be consistent across children from different backgrounds. Additionally, socioeconomic status (SES) has been shown to affect preschoolers’ EF, while the literature is mixed regarding the effects – if any – that SES may have on ToM development. Though the relation between EF and ToM appears robust across the literature, the possible effects of SES on this relation have yet to be fully explored. As children from low-SES homes are more likely to fall behind at the start of school, and this achievement gap is likely to widen through the school years, it is important to understand how the cognitive components that contribute to school readiness develop and are affected by SES so that we may work toward improving preschool education for children across all socioeconomic backgrounds. The primary purpose of the current study was to determine whether SES affected the relation between EF and ToM among urban preschool children (ages 3-5 years) from various SES backgrounds. In addition to examining the EF-ToM relation, relations among SES, general cognitive skills, EF, and ToM, as well as relations among age, EF, and ToM, were examined. Results from correlational and regression analyses indicated that SES was related to EF but not ToM, and that EF was not related to ToM after controlling for age. Inconsistent with the majority of previous findings, the results did not support the hypothesized link between EF and ToM. However, the findings from this study do add support to the large body of literature pertaining to the positive relation between SES and EF, and provide evidence that ToM may be relatively protected from the negative effects of low-SES among preschoolers. Results also support previous reports of large age-related changes in EF and ToM that occur during the preschool years. The implications for preschool development and education are discussed.

The role of the primate frontopolar cortex (FPC) has been investigated using human neuroimaging, lesion and disruption techniques. The results of these investigations have led to a variety of theories regarding the function of this region. It has been linked to the formation of task sets, the performance of multiple tasks, reasoning, context-specific memory (including episodic memory, prospective memory and source memory), attention to internally or externally generated information, mentalising and decision-making. It has not previously been possible to study this area using animal lesion techniques. Here, behavioural experiments conducted using non-human primates (rhesus macaque monkeys) who have received lesions to the frontal pole investigate the contribution of this region to context-specific memory, decision-making and social cognition. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is used to investigate changes in functional network connectivity which occur after lesions to this region. A long-lasting impairment is observed in contextual memory judgements (specifically, how recently a stimulus was encountered) after lesions to the frontal pole. An analysis of the influence of the outcomes of previous choices on behaviour on an analogue to the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) indicate that monkeys with lesions to area 10 may be less influenced by the outcomes of an extended history of rewards than control animals. Long-lasting widespread disruption to functional networks after lesions to this region indicate that indirect anatomical connections from this region to posterior areas play a crucial role in the normal functioning of posterior networks.

The aim of this thesis was to present a comprehensive overview of current knowledge in the field of gender research and social cognition as well as to contribute with results of my own research. The biggest emphasis of the theoretical part lies on stereotypes and gender differences in personality characteristics, topics that are closely related to the research part of this paper. The empirical part answers the question whether information about the sex of a person has impact on how we assess this person's personality. After reading a short biography of a fictitious person, respondents described this person on 30 items of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Bem, 1974). Results showed that respondents rated some characteristics differently for the male figure than the woman figure. Respondents of both sexes perceived the described man as significantly less Forceful and less Defending his own believes than the described woman. Although not always significantly, all 10 items satiating the BSRI masculinity score showed the same tendency to evaluate the figure of the man as less masculine than the figure of the woman. Part of the Discussion is dedicated to possible interpretations of these results. To obtain a deeper understanding, further research is required.

ANGLICKÝ ABSTRAKT Thesis Title: The SCORS Scale - An Assessment of Processing of Social Information and Object Relations of Men with Pathological Sexual Aggression Author: Mgr. Bc. Lucie Táborská Department: Department of Psychology Thesis Advisor: PhDr. Tereza Soukupová, Ph.D. Email of Thesis Advisor: tereza.soukupova@pedf.cuni.cz This empirical Thesis Essay titled The SCORS Scale - An Assessment of Processing of Social Information and Object Relations of Men with Pathological Sexual Aggression focuses on study of social skills of men with the diagnosis mentioned. The theoretical portion of the Thesis centers around the subject of sexual deviation as such, namely around pathological sexual aggression and projective methods; in particular, the TAT method and its specific SCORS scoring system. The fundamental research question was whether or not the answers of sample respondents would fall into the sphere of the pathological. Furthermore, the Thesis explores whether the differences between individual segments of the scale are significant or, on the contrary, corresponding. Subsequent examination of the phenomena follows. There were 20 participants in the survey, the individuals belonging to three different psychiatric asylums. D. Westen's SCORS was the method chosen for acquisition of data. The research has...

Introduction It is widely reported that people with schizophrenia have social cognition deficits. In addition to their negative impact on functioning and quality of life, these deficits may also contribute to the use of violence. It has recently been established that social cognitive interventions (SCIs) can ameliorate deficits in facial affect recognition (FAR). This project aimed to systematically review whether SCIs can also improve theory of mind (ToM) abilities in people with schizophrenia. The empirical study aimed to explore whether the extent of the deficits in FAR and ToM in people with schizophrenia differed between those with and without a substantial history of violence. Method A systematic review was undertaken to identify studies where SCIs were provided to adults with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Key findings were highlighted with the quality of the studies’ methodology and reporting assessed. A quantitative research study was also undertaken involving 22 men aged 18-64 with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, comparing those with and without a substantial history of violence (SHV) on measures of FAR and ToM. Results The majority of the 13 studies included in the systematic review found that the provision of SCIs led to significant improvements in ToM. However, all studies demonstrated a potential for bias and were limited by inadequate sample size. In the empirical study, less than half of participants scored within the normal range for overall FAR ability, with no difference identified between the SHV and no-SHV group. However, the SHV group were poorer at recognising sadness and showed a tendency to perform better at the detection of faux pas, compared to the no-SHV group. Conclusions The systematic review identified that a wide range of SCIs can improve ToM abilities in people with schizophrenia. Its findings highlight that stringent, adequately powered studies should be undertaken, utilising standardised assessments of a range of levels of ToM ability, to enable identification of the most effective intervention. The findings of the empirical study are limited by a small and imbalanced sample size between groups and so must be interpreted with caution. However, patterns observed in the results highlight areas for further exploration. The strengths of this study’s design and recruitment challenges are discussed.

Human faces, bodies, and hands convey critical social information (e.g., emotions, goals, and desires). Infants, like adults, are sensitive to such social information. Unlike infants’ knowledge of the structure of the human face and body, not much is known about infants’ knowledge of hands and feet. The current study tested infants for their preference between intact hand images and ones in which the same hands were distorted (i.e., location of at least one finger was altered to distort the typical structure of the hand). Infants at 3.5 months of age had a preference for the reorganized hand image, demonstrating that 3.5-month-olds have sufficient knowledge of the configural properties of hands to discriminate between intact versus distorted images. Furthermore, when the same images were inverted, infants displayed no such preference, indicating that infants were not relying solely on low-level features to detect differences between intact versus reorganized hands. Contrastingly, when shown images of intact and reorganized feet, even 9-month-olds did not exhibit evidence of sensitivity to structural disruptions in images of feet. These results indicate that infants’ structural knowledge of hands, but not necessarily feet, develops along the same trajectory as their knowledge of faces and bodies.