No description available.

No description available.

Categorisation, whereby people are thought of in terms of their applicable social categories (e.g., age, sex, race) is a common tactic employed by the social perceiver in order to make sense of others. Is this facet of the person perception process inevitable however?  One factor which may modulate category activation is task-relevancy.  To explore this issue, participants were required to categorise verbal stimuli while ignoring task-irrelevant response matching and mismatching distractors under various experimental conditions.  The initial issue of interest was whether capacity limits in visual attention moderate the extraction of sex and identity cues from face and object distractors. The results revealed that perceivers could prevent identification of multiple faces and objects, but were unable to prevent categorizing both one and two faces by sex (Expts. 1 and 2).  In addition, participants extracted sex cues from to-be-ignored face distractors when they were presented in a predictable spatial location (Expt. 3).  Distractor repetition also failed to moderate perceivers’ ability to prevent categorizing task-irrelevant faces by sex (Expts. 4, 5 and 6).  However, repetition did modulate the sex categorization of name distractors (Expt. 7), and also face identification (Expt. 8).  Mismatching face flankers also continued to interfere with a sex-classification task even if they were inverted (Expt. 9).  Crucially, however, perceivers were able to prevent sex category activation if hair cues were cropped from the facial distractors (Expt. 10).  Extending this finding, faces displaying counter-stereotyped hairstyles (i.e., males with long hair and females with short hair) produced categorical errors, whereby the hair length and not the internal facial features drove category activation of both unfamiliar (Expt. 11), and familiar faces (Expt. 12).  Provided that category specifying features are present and sufficient to trigger response competition, distractor processing therefore appears to be inevitable.

Theories of spatial learning, such as those of Siegal and White (1975) and Piaget and Inhelder (1967) have considered active exploration of environments to be beneficial or essential for the development of specific spatial knowledge. Real world empirical research in the form of both laboratory experimental and broader environmental studies tends to support this suggestion, demonstrating that active exploration of an environment, in both children and adults, gives better spatial learning than passive experience. Based on these findings, the working hypothesis adopted in this thesis is that active exploration of a virtual environment (VE) would also result in better spatial learning than passive experience of the same VE. Also considered is the equivalence of real and virtual world experiences, and the degree of transfer of spatial learning between VEs and real equivalent environments. Seven experiments were undertaken, all utilising a yoked active passive paired-subjects design. A range of VEs was employed across the experiments, including a room, a corridor, and both complex and simple small towns. Three studies used children as participants and five, adults, all having both males and females. The key finding was that the experimental hypothesis was supported for children but not for adults. Active child participants (when using a familiar input device) demonstrated superior spatial learning to that of their passive counterparts, but active adult participants did not show superior spatial learning to that of passive counterparts. Underestimation of distances was a universal feature, but was greater in female than male participants. Otherwise, the general equivalence of real and virtual world experiences was confirmed, with transfer of spatial learning occurring from virtual environments to real world equivalent environments for both adults and children.

No description available.

When meeting someone for the first time, we not only extract a wealth of information about their age, gender, ethnicity, or mood, but we also evaluate them on social dimensions such as attractiveness, trustworthiness, or dominance. What makes these social inferences important and interesting is the fact that people agree with each other’s evaluations and that they can influence our attitudes and behaviours, even if evidence for their accuracy is only limited. Existing face evaluation models focus on the identity level, arguing that a person is either, say, trustworthy or untrustworthy, regardless of the many different ways they might look. Recent evidence, however, suggests that images of the same person can vary just as much as images of different people, i.e. people rather have trustworthy- or untrustworthy-looking images of themselves. Here, I explore the spread and magnitude of such within-person variability in social evaluation. This is accomplished by sampling natural face variability and using images with different pose, emotional expression, lighting, etc. that are representative of real life social interactions. In addition to idiosyncratic variability, experiments described here aim to examine social evaluation across gender and familiarity as well as investigate the implications of trait inferences for face recognition. I then address social evaluation across modality, integrating visual information from the face and acoustic information from the voice. My findings show comparable within- and between-person variability in social ratings and demonstrate that idiosyncratic variability alone can bring about significant changes in trait attribution. This suggests that social evaluation depends on both identity and image properties. Finally, I demonstrate the automaticity of audiovisual integration in social evaluation and show that the relative contribution of face and voice cues is different for the two fundamental social dimensions. Ultimately, this brings us a step closer to understanding integrated person perception.

This PhD thesis focused on subliminal priming, that is, the presentation of information below conscious awareness (Vernon, 2009), which has been shown to influence both cognitive and affective behaviours. Information can be presented subliminally using both ‘Single-Word’ and ‘Multiple-Word’ written primes, although the two prime types have not yet been compared. Currently there is no reported optimal procedure for the presentation of subliminal stimuli, thus such a comparison could guide future research concerning prime choice. Hence, this thesis empirically compared the effects produced by Single-Word and Multiple-Word primes in a series of experiments. In Experiment 1 96 participants were subliminally stimulated with one of six alternative primes, three Single-Word primes (cognitive: intelligent; affective: one; neutral-control: walking), and three Multiple-Word primes (cognitive: I am intelligent; affective: mommy and I are one; neutral-control: people are walking), and their performance measured on a range of cognitive (e.g., working memory, intelligence, selective attention) and affective (e.g., mood and state anxiety) tasks. Results of Experiment 1 showed no clear change in participants’ intelligence, selective attention, mood, or state anxiety. However, post hoc analysis found participants’ significantly improved their working memory performance following exposure to all positive (e.g., cognitive and affective) subliminal primes, regardless of prime type (i.e., Single-Word and Multiple-Word). Experiment 2 followed this up by exploring the effect of subliminal priming on working memory performance. Sixty participants were primed with one of the six subliminal stimuli to assess whether the non-differential effect between prime types found in Experiment 1 was due to the varied length of time between the end of subliminal exposure and the onset of the task. Results found all participants’ performance iv improved regardless of prime type and prime content and thus was concluded to reflect a practice effect. Experiment 3 considered that the absence of any subliminal priming may have been due to participants’ potential lack of motivation to attain the goal of improving working memory. Hence, 106 participants were primed with one of the six subliminal stimuli and their motivation to achieve this goal was enhanced using falsepositive feedback on performance and reading a false article extract highlighting the benefit of a good working memory. Results found, despite increased motivation to improve working memory, that subliminal priming did not have any effect on performance. Experiment 4 considered whether the specific content of the subliminal stimuli, the short prime-target stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), or the type of task could be accountable for the null results. Thus, in addition to enhancing participant motivation, the content of the stimuli were refined to become more task-relevant, the prime-target SOA was extended from 14ms to 514ms to allow more time for unconscious processing. Eighty-three participants were primed with one of four subliminal stimuli; two Single-Word primes (memory-specific: remember; neutralcontrol: walking) and two Multiple-Word primes (memory-specific: I can remember well; neutral-control: people are walking), and performance was measured using two working memory tasks. Results found all participants’ performance improved on both working memory tasks regardless of prime type and prime content and was concluded to reflect a practice effect. Finally, a meta-analysis conducted on the data from the Conceptual Span Task from all four experiments confirmed an improvement on performance over time but no evidence of any subliminal priming effects. Overall, this thesis found it was not possible to establish a difference between the two prime types, although findings indicate that subliminal priming may not be able to improve performance of the phonological loop component of working memory.

Drawing in William syndrome (WS), a rare genetic disorder, is often characterised by production of poorly integrated drawings that focus on the detail of a figure but fail to capture the global configuration. Little research has sought to understand drawing behaviour in WS despite frequent use of drawing as evidence of a local processing bias. This thesis examines factors that influence drawing in WS and typically developing (TD) groups to better characterise drawing performance in WS. In contrast to previous literature, this thesis demonstrates that drawing ability in WS cannot be typified by a bias towards local elements of a figure. Drawing in WS and TD groups was largely comparable, including for local elements. Instead, it is argued that drawing in WS represents reduced strategy-use, associated with two central components of drawing that are unrelated to motor or planning ability. First, individuals with WS demonstrate a failure to represent multiple spatial relations. This is clear from a greater sensitivity to complexity of ' the figure to-be-copied. Complexity in term of the number and type of lines reduced the frequency of strategy use when drawing in WS. Second, individuals with WS show poor attention to a model when copying. This is evidenced by reduced looks to a model in the WS group when drawing, relative to the TD group. Facilitation of drawing to increase the frequency in which drawing strategies are employed improved performance in the WS group to the level of TD individuals. It is argued that the benefit of facilitation is likely to depend on both an improvement in the representation of multiple spatial relations and on increased attention to the model. As a result of an understanding of the factors affecting drawing in both groups and the shortcomings of existing models, a new model of drawing is proposed.

In this thesis, I argue that earlier Kantian conceptualism, the combined view of the structure and content of perceptual experience that John McDowell recommends in his writings that culminate in Mind and World, is ostensibly similar to Kantian structurism, the combined view of the structure and content of perceptual experience that Nelson Goodman recommends throughout his writings. Whereas McDowell thinks that Kantian conceptualism puts us in a position to conceive experience as openness to the layout of reality, Goodman thinks that Kantian structurism leaves us in the position of having to conceive experience as confinement to ways of describing whatever is described. I argue that Goodman's view implies an objection to McDowell' s earlier view of the structure of experience. I combine Goodman's objection with Donald Davidson's objection to McDowell's earlier view of the content of experience to form the Goodman-Davidson objection, an objection to McDowell's earlier view of the structure and content of experience. I argue that later Kantian conceptualism, a new view of the structure and content of perceptual experience that McDowell recommends in his writings after Mind and World, is less vulnerable to the Goodman-Davidson objection, and I reinforce this by arguing that McDowell's later Kantian conceptualism is Rot vulnerable to familiar objections to earlier Kantian conceptualism by Michael Friedman and Christopher Peacocke. I argue that later Kantian conceptualism is underwritten by a different view of the relation between the conceptual and the propositional than earlier Kantian conceptualism. I argue that McDowell's later Kantian conceptualism earns the right to reject the confinement imagery of Goodman and Davidson, but it does not entitle McDowell to the openness imagery of Mind and World.

In this thesis, I examine a 'conceptualist' theory of perceptual experience, according to which: Conceptualism: Any normal human perceptual experience has the representational content that it does exclusively in virtue of its drawing into operation concepts that the subject of the experience possesses at the time of the experience. The main aim of the thesis is to establish whether this theory is true or false.