Women may present with slightly more subtle symptoms and could be more likely to only be diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) during adulthood, which may have implications for the way in which they view themselves, and for potential relationships. This dissertation explores the experience of intimate relationships of women who have been diagnosed with ASD in adulthood. Semi-structured interviews were used to interview eight participants. The data was transcribed and analysed using the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) method.

Background: People with an intellectual disability often require carers to provide assistance in their basic living needs and to help them achieve the best quality of life possible. The increased prevalence of dementia in people with an intellectual disability over recent years has prioritised the importance of research into the impact this has had on people with an intellectual disability with dementia, their carers, and their support services. There has been a lack of qualitative studies investigating the experiences of carers for people with an intellectual disability and dementia and their perceptions of services that support them to carry out their role. These carers fulfil an important need within the community and this study explored family and paid carers’ experiences of caring for people who have an intellectual disability with dementia. Method: This paper describes a qualitative study that used semistructured interviews to investigate both paid and family carer’s experiences of caring for people with an intellectual disability with dementia. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 12 carers and the resulting data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: The analysis generated 9 meta-themes including a carer’s identity, transitions in the carer experience, self-care, difficulties in caring, changes to services, recommendations for change, barriers to accessing carer support, sources of support and resources, and sharing carers’ best practice. Conclusions: The implications of the results are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided.

People with CFS/ME suffer from physical symptoms and restriction in roles. Having a contested condition means facing scepticism, stigma and disbelief. Previous researcher-mediated studies found that people with CFS/ME excluded psychological explanations, to ward off negative stereotypes and to position themselves as genuinely ill. In this study I used social identity theory and discourse analysis methods to explore the identities exhibited by people with CFS/ME on an online forum. This study confirmed previous findings, namely that posters experienced biographical disruption owing to symptom severity and loss of roles and relationships. It also found that posters re-asserted limited self-efficacy to renegotiate their roles, to persuade family, friends and doctors that they were seriously ill and to position themselves as experts in CFS/ME. This raised the social status of the ingroup, people with CFS/ME. A new finding was that some posters considered psychological factors as exacerbating or causing CFS/ME.

The single versus dual processing systems debate is one that has taken centre stage in the human learning literature. The existence of a propositional reasoning system is not disputed in this thesis, but whether a secondary processing system is required is. This is specifically tackled by investigating the mechanisms which underlie the Perruchet effect, an effect which is used widely to support a dual processing systems stance. During the Perruchet paradigm a single conditioned stimulus (CS) is partially reinforced by an unconditioned stimulus (US). Conditioned responding is found to dissociate from conscious expectation of the US across runs of reinforced (CS-US) and non-reinforced (CS-noUS) trials. US expectancy ratings typically fluctuate in accordance with the gambler's fallacy. Conversely associative mechanisms are postulated to govern the variable strength of the conditioned response (CR). The associative nature of the CR is the subject of this thesis as it is queried whether a non-associative mechanism might explain this result. Three different methodological strands of the Perruchet effect are studied in this thesis: autonomic conditioning (Chapters 2 and 3), eyeblink conditioning (Chapter 3) and reaction time (RT) studies (Chapters 4 and 5). Additionally transcranial magnetic stimulation (Chapter 5) and computational modelling (Chapter 6) are used as tools to investigate the CR. It is concluded in this thesis that the associative explanation of the CR in the Perruchet effect cannot be dismissed, although the strength of such an effect has perhaps been overstated in previous research. Evidence from autonomic conditioning provides the strongest evidence for an influence of CS-US association in the Perruchet effect as removal of the CS abolishes the CR in this thesis (Chapters 2 and 3). However, evidence from the eyeblink (Chapter 3) and RT (Chapters 4 and 5) variants of the effect suggest that there is undoubtedly a non-associative contribution to these effects. Although the exact mechanistic nature of this non-associative mechanism is unknown, priming is given as a possible explanation, and it is confirmed that such effects cannot be explained propositionally (Chapter 5). Overall a single processing system explanation of learning is not sufficient to explain the Perruchet effect.

Inhibition is a facet of executive control that can be an area of weakness, in particular in people who overeat. However, laboratory studies suggest that interventions that target disinhibited eating can strengthen response inhibition and ultimately reduce overeating. The current study investigated whether response inhibition could be trained to help reduce food consumption. Eighty four adults who were self-reported disinhibited eaters and predominantly overweight or obese completed five response-inhibition training sessions in a two-week food training study. Participants were randomly allocated to a go/no-go task condition (control versus active) that mapped either non-food stimuli (control) or high-calorie foods (active) on to no-go signals. Participants’ weight, calorie intake, daily snacking and food evaluations were measured at baseline and post-intervention. Results indicate that participants in the active condition showed significant weight-loss post-intervention [F (1, 38) = 5.625, p < .023, ηp2 = .129] as well as a reduction in overall calorie intake [F (1, 39) = 7.951, p < .008, ηp2 = .169] compared with the control group [F (1, 38) = 0.142, p = .709]. However, there was no change over time [F (1, 79) = 2.280, p = .135] or group differences [F (1, 79) = .144, p = .706] in self-reported daily snacking frequency post–intervention. The active group showed a reduction in ratings of liking of unhealthy (no-go) foods from pre- to post-intervention [t (38) = -1.974, p = .056] compared with the control group [t (40) = 1.040, p = .305]. At one-month follow-up, both groups reported significant weight loss [F (1, 64) = 40.679, p < .001, ηp2 = .389] as well as a reduction in monthly snacking frequency [F (1, 69) = 14.018, p < .001, ηp2 = .169]. The results provide supporting evidence that training response inhibition may be an effective technique to help disinhibited eaters become more self-controlled and ultimately reduce their weight.

This thesis explores the impact of new technologies on learning and teaching and draws on research work carried out over a ten-year period. The thesis looks at the facilitators and barriers to using digital technologies effectively and explores the challenges for educators as they respond to the changes brought about by these digital technologies. It presents eight published works that have investigated the impact of digital technologies and collected data using a range of qualitative and quantitative techniques. The core paper provides a model by which the impact of digital technologies can be analysed and understood and the remaining papers populate that model. The model identifies a system of learning spaces that describe the ways that learners, teachers and managers respond to the challenges and opportunities that digital technologies bring to learning. The papers explore how the school space, the teaching space, the personal learning space and the living space have all been transformed by digital technologies. These papers highlight the ongoing tension within education brought about by the conflicting ambitions of managers to control learning while at the same time encouraging personalisation. The papers consider the nature of digital divides and also the potential hazards presented to young people by digital technologies. Finally, the papers explore the relationship between the use of digital technologies and academic achievement. The work presented here provides a coherent contribution to the field that offers new understandings of the impact of digital technologies on learning, and identifies key issues for further research.

There is now good evidence to show that family therapy is effective in helping families with a wide range of presenting problems (Carr, 2014a; Shadish & Baldwin, 2003; Stratton, 2011). Although family therapy has a strong evidence base, much of the focus in the research literature has been on outcomes; far fewer studies have attempted to investigate the process of change in family therapy, and there has been a call for greater research in this area (Heatherington et al., 2005; Sexton & Datchi, 2014; Vilaça, Margarida, & Ana Paula, 2014). The inability to evidence how the process of family therapy works leaves it open to criticisms concerning credibility. Since family therapy is one of the few alternatives to one-to-one talking therapies (such as cognitive behavioural therapy) (Stratton & Lask, 2013), its devaluing would limit client choice. In order to justify its position as an alternative to one-to-one ways of working, family therapy needs to be able to evidence the link between theories of change, the process of change and outcomes. The present study attempts to address some of the above concerns by exploring how family therapists in the U.K understand the change process in family therapy both in theory, and in their practice. In addition, it explores how the rationale that therapists’ provide for their interventions in specific therapy sessions relates to how families conceptualise and experience change in the same sessions. A multi-modal triangulation methodology was used, whereby eight family therapists were interviewed in prospective qualitative interviews, and then two families and two family therapy teams were interviewed while they reviewed therapy sessions using the process methodology of Inter-personal process recall (IPR). The two methodologies revealed several themes. Three super-ordinate themes emerged from the prospective interviews: ‘safe-space’, ‘perspective taking’ and ‘privileging the change’. The IPR interviews yielded four super-ordinate themes: two from family therapy teams; ‘expressing a clear rationale’ and ‘linking theory and process is difficult’ and two from families ‘things we found helpful’ and ‘things that we didn’t like’. Convergence and divergence between the data sets are discussed as well as implication for further research and limitations of the current study.

Social media has received considerable media attention due to concerns that its use may be linked to risky behaviours, e.g., sharing personal information (Tow, Dell, & Venable, 2010), sexual communication with strangers (Baumgartner, Valkenburg, & Peter, 2010b) and extreme communities that may encourage self-harm and eating disorders (Lewis, Heath, Sornberger, & Arbuthnott, 2012). This thesis identifies who is using social media, what factors influence usage and willingness to engage in online risk behaviour, whether there is a link between content viewed on social media and offline risk behaviour, and the role of extreme communities for users. A mixed method approach is applied to survey and social media data. The first part of the thesis identifies younger users and female users as those most intensively using social media (partially explained by stronger social norms and experiencing more positive outcomes). Attitudes towards risk takers, norms and past behaviour predict willingness to engage in online risk. There is also a link between the content that users view on social media and engaging in offline risk behaviour; this link was stronger for male users. However no age differences were found. The second half of this thesis focuses on online communication around eating disorders and self-harm. Although some content did encourage these behaviours, the majority of the content was of a positive nature and appeared to provide social support for users. These findings suggest that the media portrayal of social media may be misleading. Two important outcomes are highlighted; Firstly, younger users may not necessarily be more vulnerable and, second, that care is needed to ensure that interventions respect the positive side of social media use and limit risks without disrupting potentially positive social networks. Implications include the guiding of such interventions, future research and policy.

No description available.

This thesis explores perfectionism in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) using a series of discrete but inter-related studies: Study 1: A pilot study of a group intervention targeting perfectionism in adults with AN (N=21). Reductions in self-reported perfectionism were observed between pre- and post-intervention. Study 2: A systematic review and meta-analysis of interventions targeting perfectionism. Support was found for the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy in reducing perfectionism and psychopathology. Study 3: An investigation of performance based perfectionism in participants with AN (N=81) compared with healthy controls (HC; N=72). Evidence was found for elevated performance based and cognitive aspects of perfectionism in the AN group. Study 4: An investigation of associations between perfectionism and cognitive style (rigidity, attention to detail) using self-report and behavioural measures in adults and adolescents with AN (N=82) and HCs (N=84). Strong associations were found between perfectionism and self-reported cognitive style but not between perfectionism and performance on tasks of set-shifting and central coherence. Study 5: An investigation of self-reported and performance based perfectionism in unaffected AN mothers (N=21) compared with HC mothers (N=20). AN mothers did not differ from HC mothers on performance based or self-reported perfectionism. This thesis provides pilot evidence that it is possible to significantly reduce perfectionism in adults with Anorexia Nervosa using a specific group based cognitive behavioural intervention. It also provides wider evidence of the efficacy/effectiveness of cognitive behavioural interventions in reducing perfectionism in those with psychiatric disorders associated with perfectionism and/or those with clinical levels of perfectionism and outlines available evidence based interventions. The thesis contributes to knowledge of perfectionism in AN. It provides behavioural evidence of performance based perfectionism in AN compared to HCs on novel practical tasks. The findings of this thesis suggest that whilst perfectionism is associated with everyday self-reported difficulties with rigidity and excessive detail focus, it is not related to performance on neuropsychological tasks of set-shifting and central coherence. Neither self-reported nor performance based perfectionism was found to be elevated in unaffected mothers of those with AN. The findings have implications for the way in which perfectionism is targeted in treatment both in individuals with AN and more widely. Cognitive behavioural interventions specifically targeting perfectionism appear to be effective in significantly reducing perfectionism across a range of disorders including eating disorders and those with clinical perfectionism. The behavioural perfectionism tasks used within this thesis may be adapted for use within such interventions as a means of illustrating or targeting perfectionism. The findings of this thesis do not however support the use of neuropsychological assessment or the targeting of maternal perfectionism in addressing perfectionism in AN.