By using a modified version of the misinformation paradigm, this thesis examined a new and ecologically realistic domain for the investigation of false memories: Brands retroactively replaced in photographs. The main research questions addressed in this work was whether retroactively replaced brands in doctored photographs could influence memories for previously experienced brands. Following from this, the question of whether false brand memories would have any attitudinal or behavioural consequences for falsely remembered brands was addressed. Five experiments were carried out that included four misinformation studies (Experiments 1, 3, 4, and 5) as well as one brand norming study (Experiment 2). Whereas all four misinformation studies examined the effects of a ‘brand misinformation effect’, Experiment 5 went one step further and examined the behavioural and attitudinal repercussions of false brand memories. In line with previous research, the results of all misinformation studies revealed reliable misinformation effects. These effects were found in more manufactured settings in which brands were experienced as brand placements in photographs (Experiments 1 and 3) but also in settings in which participants were misled on actual past autobiographical brand experiences (Experiments 4 and 5). Furthermore, the results of this thesis suggest that false brand memories could be accompanied by preference changes. That is, the data of Experiment 5 showed that false brand memories for ‘less liked’ competitor brands led to a positive shift in attitudes and behaviour towards these falsely remembered brands. These findings extend the applicability of the classical misinformation paradigm by showing reliable misinformation effects in a new and ecologically relevant context – retroactively changed brands in photographs. Second, these findings show the additional consequences of false memories for a new kind of stimuli that are real and competitive in nature and are associated with participants’ personal preferences. The practical and theoretical implications of misinformation-induced false memories elicited by suggestive photographs are discussed.

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The experiments presented in this thesis were based on the evidence of previous research that suggests that the memory functions dependent on the integrity of the hippocampus and frontal lobes, namely declarative and working memory respectively, are sensitive to the effects of corticosteroids (stress hormones). The first experiment investigated the effects of acute changes of three different levels of cortisol (high vs. control vs.low) and time of day (am vs. pm) on working memory and the episodic and semantic components of declarative memory. This was carried out using a singleblind, mixed (3 x 2) design with three groups of young, healthy males (N = 20 per group). Whilst significant differences in salivary cortisol levels were observed, the results failed to demonstrate any significant differences in any aspect of memory performance as a function of corticosteroids. However, whilst the results also failed to demonstrate significant differences in either aspect of memory performance as a function of time of day, they did identify a significant positive relationship between morning cortisol levels in the control group and two measures of episodic memory in the morning; this suggests that, in the morning, these aspects of memory performance were facilitated by higher cortisol levels. They also identified a significant negative relationship between afternoon cortisol levels in the high cortisol group and one measure of semantic memory in the afternoon; this suggests that, in the afternoon, this aspect of memory performance was impaired by higher cortisol. The second experiment investigated the effects of acute changes in corticosteroids following activation of the different corticosteroid receptors on working memory and the episodic and semantic components of declarative memory. This was carried out using a repeated measures design with nine patients with Addison's disease. The results suggest that, whilst significant effects were not identified across all memory tasks, activation of the mineraIocorticoids appears essential during sensory storage (i.e., encoding) whereas activation of the glucorticoids appears essential during memory consolidation and retrieval. This supports previous research carried out in rats (Oitzl & De Kloet, 1992). The results also suggest that balanced activation of the mineralocorticoids and glucocorticoids is necessary for optimal memory function. The contributions made by both experiments are discussed

Processing language is postulated to involve a mental simulation, or re-enactment of perceptual, motor, and introspective states that were acquired experientially (Barsalou, 1999, 2008). One such aspect that is mentally simulated during processing of certain concepts is spatial location. For example, upon processing the word “moon” the prominent spatial location of the concept (e.g. ‘upward’) is mentally simulated. In six eye-tracking experiments, we investigate how mental simulations of spatial location affect processing. We first address a conflict in previous literature whereby processing is shown to be impacted in both a facilitatory and inhibitory way. Two of our experiments showed that mental simulations of spatial association facilitate saccades launched toward compatible locations; however, a third experiment showed an inhibitory effect on saccades launched towards incompatible locations. We investigated these differences with further experiments, which led us to conclude that the nature of the effect (facilitatory or inhibitory) is dependent on the demands of the task and, in fitting with the theory of Grounded Cognition (Barsalou, 2008), that mental simulations impact processing in a dynamic way. Three further experiments explored the nature of verticality – specifically, whether ‘up’ is perceived as away from gravity, or above our head. Using similar eye-tracking methods, and by manipulating the position of participants, we were able to dissociate these two possible standpoints. The results showed that mental simulations of spatial location facilitated saccades to compatible locations, but only when verticality was dissociated from gravity (i.e. ‘up’ was above the participant’s head). We conclude that this is not due to an ‘embodied’ mental simulation, but rather a result of heavily ingrained visuo-motor association between vertical space and eye movements.

The thesis is intended to contribute to the growing understanding of the indispensable role played by phenomenal consciousness in human cognition, and specifically in making our concepts of the external world available. The focus falls on so called observational concepts, a type of rudimentary, perceptually-based objective concepts in our repertoire — picking out manifest properties such as colors and shapes. A theory of such concepts gets provided, and, consequently, the exact role that perceptual consciousness plays in making concepts of this sort available gets settled. In the first half of the thesis, observational concepts get construed as a special type of recognitional concepts. On an analogy with perceptual demonstratives, having such concepts would involve having non-trivial knowledge of their reference. The experiential basis of such concepts would, among other things, provide for such constitutive knowledge. The theoretical background relevant to the hypothesis gets provided in the first chapter. A defence of the hypothesis follows in the second. In the second half of the thesis, care is taken to distinguish among two ways in which the constitutive knowledge of the reference of an observational concept could be fleshed out. In the third chapter, perceptual experience is shown to provide the basis both for knowledge of observational properties by acquaintance, and for knowledge of the essence of such properties — provided that knowledge of essence gets construed in the right, modest way. It might be natural to take knowledge by acquaintance to be the sort relevant to observational concept possession, especially given that in the case of perceptual demonstratives this is the role likely played by experience. However, this initial impression proves to be mistaken. The constitutive knowledge of the referent of an observational concept turns out to consist in the capacity to determine a priori the essence of the respective property. To show this, an argument gets provided in the penultimate fourth chapter, based on the key role played by experiences of instances of observational properties in optimal viewing conditions in enabling the possession of the respective observational concept.

Previous research has demonstrated that earlier acquired and frequently occurring words and concepts are processed significantly faster and more accurately than their later acquired and infrequently occurring counterparts. These effects have been observed across samples, languages, stimuli sets and experimental paradigms; suggesting that the phenomena are valid and reliable. However, a number of methodological limitations are evident in the literature and these issues have hindered attempts to identify the nature and loci of these effects. These limitations were subsequently addressed in this thesis. This enabled the researcher to investigate the effects of age-of-acquisition (AoA) and word frequency during perceptual processing, semantic processing, indirect lexical access, direct lexical access, lexical retrieval and articulation. The programme of research outlined in Chapter 2 consisted of a systematic series of laboratory experiments which each assessed different aspects of cognitive processing. Standardised, semi-factorial stimuli sets were also designed and implemented throughout this programme of research to improve validity. Furthermore, methodological and analytical elements were controlled across the experimental paradigms to ensure reliability and facilitate the comparison of AoA effects across levels of processing. Chapters 3 – 8 report six studies consisting of twelve semi-factorial experiments in which the effects of AoA and word frequency were investigated during perceptual identification, picture-category verification/falsification, picture-name verification/falsification, immediate picture naming task, immediate word reading task and delayed picture naming. These experiments revealed that AoA exerted significant, strong and consistent effects on processing speed across all of the experimental paradigms reported in this thesis when word frequency, imageability, concreteness, familiarity, visual complexity, orthographic neighbourhood density, picture-name agreement and word length were controlled. However, word frequency did not exert a consistent, significant effect when AoA, imageability, concreteness, familiarity, visual complexity, orthographic neighbourhood density, picture-name agreement and word length were controlled. Therefore, AoA effects were independent of word frequency effects. Chapter 9 reports a comparison of the AoA effects which were observed across these experimental paradigms. This chapter indicates that while AoA influenced all levels of processing, the effects were strongest during tasks which required indirect lexical access and arbitrary mapping between levels of representation. These findings lend considerable support to the multi-loci perspective and dispute both the Phonological Completeness Hypothesis (PCH) and the Semantic Hypothesis (SH). Indeed, AoA is a prominent factor which plays a pivotal role in determining processing speed throughout cognitive system rather than solely during one level of processing. Based on the evidence reported in this thesis, the researcher subsequently argues in Chapter 10 that there is at least one, strong locus of AoA effects which occurs during semantic-lexical encoding and at least one weaker locus which occurs during perceptual-semantic encoding.

This thesis defines and extends the psychological concept of ‘decision inertia’: the redundant deliberation of choice for no positive gain. The concept was developed following observation in the real-world that emergency incidents were most often criticised, not because of poor decision making, but because actions simply failed. It is argued, therefore, that the need to develop a psychological understanding to explain the relationship between stimulus and non-response is of conceptual importance. Rather than avoid a choice, decision inertia is crucially associated with a strong desire to take action yet, for reasons that will be discussed in this thesis, action fundamentally fails. A Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) approach was followed to investigate decision making in the real-world context of emergency response environments. A mixed methods approach was used to qualitatively interview command level decision makers and then explore decision making in an empirical simulation setting. Two key findings emerged from the data: (i) the relationship between uncertainty and decision inertia appeared to be mediated by the anticipation of negative consequences associated with both action and inaction; and (ii) the context of extreme environments can exacerbate these effects by making (usually adaptive) cognitive processing styles (i.e. approach goals; cognitive flexibility) inappropriate. Implications with regards to both the conceptual importance of decision inertia and more practical advice for decision making in extreme emergency contexts is provided.

Theories of sarcasm comprehension make different predictions regarding how various linguistic and contextual factors might affect the processing of written sarcasm. Modular theories predict a processing difficulty associated with sarcastic remarks (the standard pragmatic model), especially unfamiliar ones (the graded salience hypothesis) as compared to literal language, irrespective of contextual factors. Interactive theories however, predict that contextual factors can facilitate sarcasm processing, for example echoing an antecedent (the echoic mention theory), making the speaker’s expectation explicit (the implicit display theory), or a variety of other factors (the constraint satisfaction model). The present research systematically manipulated utterance literality (Experiments 1-7), utterance familiarity (Experiments 2 and 6), echo (Experiments 1 and 2), speaker’s expectation (Experiments 4 and 6), and speaker’s communicative style (Experiment 7), and used eye-tracking while reading to investigate their effect on sarcasm processing. Results indicated that (1) sarcastic comments were not always more difficult to process than literal ones, (2) utterance familiarity, echoing a contextual antecedent, and knowing the speaker’s communicative style, all aided sarcasm comprehension, while, (3) making the speaker’s expectation explicit did not. Taken together, the present results are better accommodated by interactive theories of language processing, and more specifically by the constraint satisfaction model. However, the constraint satisfaction model is not a testable theory in its current formulation, hence suggestions are made for ways of better specifying it, in order to develop it into a testable and comprehensive theory of sarcasm processing.

Introduction: This study investigates cognitive theory of autistic spectrum disorder. Based on the argument that the disorder may have a genetic component to its aetiology, cognitive characteristics similar to those associated with the condition are hypothesised to be evident in the parents. Theory of mind, central coherence and executive function are therefore investigated. Relationships between these three areas of cognitive function are also explored. Methodology: Nineteen parents of children with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome were compared with 18 gender-matched parents of normally developing children, on measures of theory of mind, central coherence, and executive function. Results: Executive function was significantly poorer in the parents of children with autistic spectrum disorder, than in the control group; but theory of mind and central coherence were similar across the two groups. Overall, 52.6 % of the autism group and only 5.6 % of the control group fell below age and IQ weighted cut-off scores on the Hayling and Brixton tests of executive dysfunction, A number of significant correlations between test measures were found. Discussion : These findings provide further support for the genetic argument and the executive function theory of autism, but fail to support the theory of mind or central coherence models. Possible interpretations of the significant associations between test scores were considered in the light of previous findings. Methodological issues were considered important. Limits of the executive dysfunction model as a stand-alone theory of autistic spectrum disorder were also highlighted. Ideas regarding clinical relevance and future research were discussed.

Improving retention of learned content by means of a practice test is a learning strategy that has been researched since a century and has been consistently found to be more effective than comparable learning strategies such as restudy (i.e., the testing effect). Most importantly, practicing test questions has been found to outperform restudy even when no additional information about the correct answers was provided to practice test takers, rendering practice tests effective and efficient in fostering retention of learning content. Since 15 years, additional scientific attention is devoted to this memory phenomenon and additional research investigated to what extend practicing test questions is relevant in real-world educational settings. This dissertation first presents the evidence for testing effects in applied educational settings by presenting key publications and presenting findings from a methodological review conducted for this purpose. Within this dissertation, theories are presented why practicing test questions should benefit learning in real-world educational settings even without the provision of additional information and key variables for the effectiveness of practicing test questions are presented. Four studies presented in this dissertation aimed at exploring these assumptions in actual university classrooms while also trying to implement new methods of practicing learning content and thus augment course procedures. Findings from these studies—although not often consistent—will be incorporated and interpreted in the light of the theoretical accounts on the testing effect. The main conclusion that can be drawn from this dissertation is that, given the right circumstances, practicing test questions can elicit beneficial effects on the retention of learning content that are independent of additional information and thus taking a practice test per se, can foster retention of real-world learning content. / Seit einem Jahrhundert wird die positive Wirkung von Abrufübungen auf das Behalten gelernter Inhalte untersucht. Diese Untersuchungen belegen durchgängig, dass Abrufübungen für das Behalten förderlicher sind als vergleichbare Lernaktivitäten wie beispielsweise nochmaliges Lesen (Der Testungseffekt). Der Testungseffekt ist besonders bedeutsam wenn er in Settings untersucht wird in denen keine Informationen über die Richtigkeit des abgelegten Tests an die Lernenden gegeben werden und somit belegen, dass Abrufübungen nicht nur effektive sondern auch effiziente Methoden der Behaltensförderung darstellen. Seit 15 Jahren intensiviert sich das wissenschaftliche Interesse am Testungseffekt und immer mehr Forschung untersucht auch das Ausmaß der Übertragbarkeit auf reale Lernumgebungen. Diese Dissertation stellt zuerst Befunde aus Untersuchungen des Testungseffekts in angewandten Lernsettings dar, wobei zentrale Studien besprochen werden und hier ein eigens zu diesem Zweck angestelltes methodisches Review vorgestellt wird. Innerhalb der Dissertationen werden Theorien erläutert, warum Abrufübungen in realen Lernsettings das Behalten auch ohne zusätzliche Darbietung der korrekten Antwort fördern sollten und welche Variablen dafür essentiell sind. In dieser Dissertation warden zudem vier Studien präsentiert, die diese Variablen in universitären Lernumgebungen untersuchten, teilweise mit dem Ziel, Abrufübungen noch effektiver zu machen. Die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse aus diesen vier Studien—obwohl sie nicht immer konsistent sind—werden abschließend diskutiert und in Bezug zu den vorgestellten Theorien gesetzt. Eine zetrale Schlussfolgerung aus den vorgestellten Studien ist die Erkenntnis, dass unter den richtigen Bedingungen Abrufübungen den Testungseffekt hervorrufen können, die unabhängig von zusätlicher Information sind und dass es demnach die Abrufübung per se ist, die zum Behalten gelernter Information beiträgt.