The importance of investigating Emotion Regulation (ER) may be self-evident, given that emotions have a substantial impact on our daily lives. ER encompasses set of processes that people go through in order to cultivate their feelings that arise at the moment and produce some response. Brain-imaging studies of ER have broadly focused on examining cognitive strategies, such as reappraisal, in order to understand underlying variables that contribute to the development of this particular process of emotions. The main focus in this paper was to summarize some of the observation done by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) on neural processes underlying cognitive reappraisal. Furthermore, the paper will discuss some of these experiments that have been made through the last 15 years in the field where indications have been somewhat confusing when it comes to certain aspects of presented data, especially in comparison with other studies. Finally, a brief overview and some of the significant contributions, such as a process model of ER, to the field of ER have been presented and discussed. Cognitive reappraisal has been shown to effectively down-regulate subjective emotional experience. Even though many studies have been performed in measuring brain-activity when engaging in cognitive reappraisal, a unified and accepted agreement has yet not been found. In broader terms, brain-responses when engaging in cognitive reappraisal seem to operate in a particular manner where different parts of prefrontal and parietal cortex execute control over subcortical regions, such as amygdala.

The primary purpose of the current study was to investigate how individuals navigate in an unfamiliar environment while using a map. What are the dynamical processes transpiring when an agent navigates in the environment using a tool to his aid? The emphasis was more specifically on the dynamic interaction between agent and artifact that together worked according to the Principle of Ecological Assembly (PEA) (Clark, 2008) and how this dynamical interaction could be analyzed from a situated problem-solving perspective. Moreover, the fact that individuals rely on cognitive artifacts in different circumstances is a quite trivial statement, but the related and less scrutinized question concerns temporality of cognitive work – when does the process of ecological assembly emerge during a problem-solving situation? Using cognitive ethnography as methodological approach to investigate the aforementioned research question, 17 research participants took part in this study that took place at the campus area of UC San Diego. The participants were given a physical map that represents the UCSD campus, and were given the primary task to reach a target destination from their current location within the campus area. It was found that individual sense of direction predicted the probability with which the ecological assembly was initiated, supporting the underlying assumption that the formal probability (P) of ecological assembly in any given domain relies on a set of variables where individual proficiency at any given task is a continuous variable. The hypothesis was confirmed in conjunction with a set of peripheral but relevant and interesting findings regarding how individuals increase the cognitive congeniality (Kirsh, 1996) of their environment during thehighly interactive problem-solving activity. An unexpected finding was also that individuals relying primarily on route knowledge during navigation, rather than survey knowledge, more frequently spontaneously aligned the map in synchrony with the surrounding environment while navigating, suggesting a different registration process preference between map as pictorial external representation and the world.

Tidigare forskning har visat att vi drar slutsatser om andra personer redan utifrån ansikten och detta påverkar oss i många skeden i livet. Till viss del har även korrektheten av dessa bedömningar undersökts i olika situationer, t.ex. foto och/eller text utifrån arbetsansökningar och sociala medier. Ingen studie har undersökt hur väl vi kan bedöma andra individers personlighet beroende på relationsperspektiv och grad av information. Vi testade därför två hypoteser gällande Facebook; 1) Närstående bedömer bättre en individs personlighet än främlingar, oavsett informationsgrad, 2) Mer information kommer ge främlingarna en mer korrekt bedömning. För att besvara hypoteserna fick 90 deltagare skatta 15 deltagares personlighet utifrån tre olika relationsperspektiv; närstående, främling utifrån profilbild eller främling utifrån Facebookprofil. Samtliga deltagare rekryterades huvudsakligen från två lärosäten och genom bekvämlighetsurval. Resultatet gav stöd för första hypotesen men inte andra hypotesen. En närstående bedömer personlighet bättre än en främling och informationsgrad påverkar inte främlingars korrekthet signifikant. Dock kunde främlingar göra en bedömning som påvisade en bättre korrelation än noll. Detta menar vi har implikationer för främst rekryterare som ofta utgår från sociala medier i sin bedömning av arbetsansökande.

This licentiate thesis is based on the growing interest in Swedish elderly care. The aim of this thesis is to investigate what generates satisfaction with elderly care among older persons. The dominant ideology in both privately and publically run elderly care is individualized care, also called person-centered care, which holds the older person’s satisfaction as one of the main quality indicators. The proportion of older people is increasing and to maintain high levels of satisfaction with elderly care will require more knowledge. Data from the National Board of Health and Welfare’s (2012) nationwide survey on seniors’ experiences with elderly care was collected. Statistical analyses of this sample formed the basis for the results of the thesis and were reported in two papers. Study I used Donabedian’s (1988) model of quality of care in terms of structure, process, and outcome, and all municipal units in Sweden were included (N = 324). The results showed that structural variables (i.e. budget, staff, and training level) have minimal or no relationships with older persons’ satisfaction with care, while process variables (i.e. experiences of respect, information, and influence) have strong relationships with satisfaction with care. Study II made use of the long-standing person versus situation- model in social psychology, and was analyzed on an individual level (N = 95,000). The results showed that care process factors (i.e. experiences of treatment, safeness, staff- and time-availability) had a stronger relationship, than individual factors (i.e. health, anxiety, and loneliness) with satisfaction with care. The results also showed that older persons with home care generally felt better treated than older persons in nursing homes, but also felt less safe. Mediational analyses, based on this comprehensive elderly data, suggest that the individual aging condition of loneliness can be countered by providing safeness and treatment, resulting in high satisfaction with care. In conclusion, satisfaction with elderly care in Sweden today can largely be explained from a psychological perspective by the older persons’ perception of the care process, not by the amount of structural resources or the conditions of the aging persons. These findings could help facilitate the future quality development in municipalities and care organizations.

This study aimed to develop and test the feasibility of a peer-led parenting intervention for parents living in London in temporary accommodation, seeking help with managing behavioural difficulties of a child (aged 2–11). A structured, group-based intervention (‘Empowering Parents, Empowering Communities- Temporary Accommodation’) was delivered by peer facilitators to N=15 parents across three group cohorts. Twelve parents (80%) completed the group programme at first attempt; one parent completed on their second attempt after re-joining in a different cohort. A mixed-method formative evaluation was used. The intervention’s feasibility was assessed in terms of attendance and completion rates (% parents completing ≥6 sessions); acceptability was assessed by satisfaction measure and qualitative participant interviews; and potential for impact was assessed by parent-reported standardised measures of child behaviour, parenting behaviour, parental wellbeing, parenting stress and social support. Reductions in child behavioural difficulties and improved parenting knowledge and practices were reported on standardised measures. Improved parental outcomes were described in qualitative interviews. Participants were highly satisfied with the intervention. The study concluded that peer-led parenting groups are feasible and potentially effective interventions for parents living in temporary accommodation. These findings warrant further testing under controlled conditions.

Inkonsekvent terminologi anses ofta vara något att fördöma då det kan skapa osäkerhet och försämrad kvalité. Samtidigt finns uppfattningen att ordvariation ger möjligheter till lärande och gör språket tilltalande. Denna studie syftar till att undersöka huruvida inkonsekvent terminologi påverkar läsförståelse i tre olika domäner – hälso- och sjukvård, ekonomi och data. Dessutom kontrolleras ordförståelse i varje domän för att se sambandet till läsförståelse. Resultaten indikerade att läsförståelse inte kan förklaras av terminologi och tyder på att individer kan få en bra förståelse oberoende om termer varieras eller ej. Dock förutsätter detta förmodat kunskap om termerna, vilket leder till slutsatsen att målgruppens kunskaper och syftet med texten bör identifieras innan beslut om konsekvent eller inkonsekvent terminologi avgörs.

Anspänning, oro och stress är tre begrepp som har studerats länge, vilket har gett upphov till flertalet modeller, teorier och domäner där dessa begrepp har studerats och fortfarande studeras. I denna uppsats så kommer dessa tre begrepp bland annat att redogöras för var för sig med koppling till mätmetoder, idrott och kognitiv neurovetenskap. Syftet med uppsatsen är att beskriva hur idrottsprestationer kan påverkas av anspänning, oro och stress för att utifrån det kunna redogöra för evidensbaserade metoder som kan appliceras för att främja en idrottsprestation. Först kommer anspänning att redogöras för, anspänning följs sedan av oro som i sin tur följs av stress som sista begrepp. Avslutningsvis så behandlas även problematik och möjligheter för dessa begrepp inom forskningsfältet och dess tillämpningsområden.

Stanovich and West (2008) explored if measures of cognitive ability ignored some important aspects of thinking itself, namely that cognitive ability alone is not enough to generally prevent biased thinking. In this thesis a series of decision making (DM) tasks is tested to see if emotion regulation (ER) is a factor for the decision process and therefore should be a measured in decision making competence. A set of DM tasks was compiled involving both affective and cognitive dimensions. 400 participants completed an online web-survey. The results showed that ER ability was significantly associated with performance in various DM tasks that involved both heuristic and biased thinking. These findings suggest that ER can be a factor in decision making competence.

Hyman Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis (Minsky, 1977) proposes that cyclicality in the financial market is caused by a rational process of learning and inference of probabilities. Although a substantial literature is available on the perception of stationary probability distributions, the learning of non-stationary distributions has received less interest. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate people’s cognitive ability to learn cyclical changes in an underlying probability from feedback. Key aspects of the design of Gallistel et al. (2014) are replicated, but under continuously, rather than stepwise, changing Bernoulli distributions to establish: (i) if the learning process is continuous or discrete, (ii) if there is only local learning or if people induce the underlying functional form, and (iii) if there are any differences in performance between perceptual and cognitive formulations of the task. The step-hold updating model introduced by Gallistel et al. (2014) is compared to two simple trial by trial updating models. The results suggest that (i) the learning process is continuous, (ii) people perceive the functional form explicitly but do not extrapolate, and (iii) there are some differences depending on framing. One of the trial by trial models outperforms the step-hold model for the majority of subjects in this sample and version of the task.

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