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Syftet med denna studie är att belysa hur lärare beskriver sin undervisning av multiplikation i årskurs 1−3 och årskurs 4−6 när det kommer till introduktion, fortlöpande undervisning och tabellträning. Kvalitativa intervjuer med sex lärare har genomförts för att undersöka vilka mål de intervjuade lärarna har med sin multiplikationsundervisning samt hur lärarna beskriver innehållet i sin multiplikationsundervisning. Bakgrunden är att lärares uppfattning om vad multiplikation är samt vad multiplikationsundervisningen ska innehålla påverkar vilka lärandemöjligheter eleverna får. Detta innefattar val av förklaringsmodeller, arbetssätt samt lektionsinnehåll, vilket i högsta grad påverkar elevers förståelseutveckling av multiplikationsbegreppet. Att svenska lärare typiskt sett baserar sin undervisning på läromedel lyfts av forskning som en orsak till att svenska elevers taluppfattning och kunskap om aritmetik är svag. Lärare behöver därför komplettera läromedlens framställning av multiplikation i undervisningen. Studiens resultat visar att lärarnas mål med undervisningen berör områden som enligt läroplan och forskning är viktiga för elevers begreppsförståelse och procedurkunskap, men att viktiga bitar i undervisning verkar saknas. Detta berör undervisning om multiplikativa förklaringsmodeller, räknelagar och begrepp kopplade till multiplikation. Lärarnas undervisning om de grundläggande multiplikationstabellerna, där både strategier för att härleda tabellfakta samt drillövningar av dessa uppges ingå, verkar ligga i fas med vad forskning lyfter fram som viktigt för att uppnå automatisering av tabellerna. / The purpose of this study is to illustrate how teachers describe their multiplication teaching in grades 1−3 and 4−6 when it comes to the introduction, continuous teaching and table training. Qualitative interviews with six teachers have been conducted to examine what objectives the interviewed teachers have with their multiplication teaching and how they describe the contents of their multiplication teaching. The reason behind is that teachers’ perception of what multiplication means and their thoughts on what multiplication teaching should cover affects the learning opportunities pupils receive. This includes teachers’ choice of explanatory models, methods and lesson content which highly affects the pupils’ development of understanding regarding the concept of multiplication. The fact that Swedish teachers typically base their teaching on textbooks is indicated by research to be a contributing factor why Swedish pupils’ number sense and understanding of arithmetic is weak. Teachers therefore need to complement the presentations that textbooks contain regarding multiplication in teaching. The result of this study shows that teachers’ teaching objectives affects areas that the curriculum and research highlights as important for pupils’ conceptual understanding and procedural knowledge, but that important pieces seems to be missing in their teaching. These concerns the teaching about the multiplicative models of explanation, mathematical properties and concepts related to multiplication. However, teachers’ teaching about the basic multiplication facts, where both strategies to derive facts and drill exercises of facts is said to be included, seems to correspond largely with what research highlights as important in achieving automaticity in multiplication facts.

Background: Exercise behaviour has largely been studied via reflective social cognitive approaches over the last thirty years. Emerging findings have shown habit to demonstrate predictive validity with physical activity. Habit represents an automatic behaviour that becomes developed from repeated stimulus-response bonds (cued and repetitive action) overtime. Despite the correlation with PA, the literature lacks research in understanding habit formation in new exercisers and experimental evidence of this construct. Hence, the purpose of this dissertation was to: i) understand the behavioural and psychological requirements of habit formation in new gym members, ii) investigate how regular gym members maintain their exercise habit, and iii) incorporate these findings to design a randomized-controlled trial (RCT) to test the effectiveness of an exercise habit building workshop in new gym members. In particular, the RCT sought to test if the habit group would develop greater exercise improvement over a control condition and another intervention group that employed a variety-based approach. Methods: Participants for all three studies were healthy adults (18-65) who were recruited from local gym and recreation centres in Victoria, BC. Studies I and III included only new gym members who were not meeting the Canadian Physical Activity guidelines upon recruitment while study II were a sample of gym members who have been exercising for at least one year. The first two studies were prospective, observational designs (twelve and six weeks respectively) while the third was a CONSORT based experimental study. Results: The first study found that exercising for at least four bouts per week for six weeks was the minimum requirement to establish an exercise habit. Trajectory change analysis revealed habit and intention to be parallel predictors of exercise in the trajectory analysis while consistency of practice revealed to be the best predictor. The second study highlighted the distinction between the preparatory and performance phases of exercise and further found intention and preparatory habit to be responsible for behaviour change across time. This study also found consistency to be the strongest predictor for habit formation. The intervention found the habit group to increase in exercise time compared to the control (p<.05, d=.40) and variety (p<.05, d=.36) groups. Mediation analysis found habit to partially mediate between group and behaviour. Contextual predictors revealed cues and consistency to mediate habit formation and group type. Conclusions: This dissertation provided significant novel contributions to the literature which included: i) calculating the behavioural and psychological requirements for establishing an exercise habit, ii) distinguishing two behavioural phases of exercise and iii) conducting the first exercise habit-based RCT. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed habit-based worksheet which could be helpful for trainers and new gym members in facilitating an exercise habit. / Graduate / kaushal@uvic.ca

Une grande partie de notre vie quotidienne, y compris nos activités physiques(AP) et nos comportements sédentaires (CS), s’articule autour de comportements habituels qui ont acquis un haut degré d'automaticité. Cette thèse adopte une approche multidimensionnelle de l'automaticité (i.e., manque d’intentionnalité, difficulté à contrôler le comportement, efficacité), avec pour principaux objectifs de: (a) démontrer la validité d’outils de mesure en français et en espagnol, appliqué aux AP et aux CS, (b) examiner dans quelle mesure ces propriétés prédisaient l’adoption des comportements d’AP et sédentaires, (c) étudier l’évolution de ces propriétés lors de l’adoption d’un nouveau comportement (pratique d’une nouvelle AP), et suite à une intervention (visant à diminuer les CS au travail). À cet effet, un programme de 8 études empiriques a été mis en oeuvre.Les principaux résultats indiquent que (a) les versions française et espagnole de l’Echelle Générique Multidimensionnelle d’Automaticité présentent des propriétés psychométriques satisfaisantes (validité interne, validité convergente et prédictive) ; (b) les propriétés automatiques contribuent significativement à la quantité d’AP et de CS, y compris lorsque ceux-ci sont évalués par accéléromètres ; (c) le niveau d'absence de contrôle augmente au fil du temps lors de l’adoption d’une AP, et le niveau et les changements d’automaticité sont impactés par les caractéristiques de l’AP pratiquée ; (d) enfin, une intervention ciblant les processus automatiques est efficace pour réduire le temps de sédentarité au travail.Mots-clés : automaticité, déclenchement, absence de contrôle, efficacité, mode de transports, position assisse, santé / Much of our daily life, including our physical activities (PA) and our sedentary behaviours (SB), is organized around habitual behaviours that have acquired a high degreeof automaticity. This thesis adopts a multidimensional approach to automaticity (i.e., lack ofintentionality, difficulty in controlling behaviour, efficiency), with the main objectives of: (a)demonstrating validity of measure instruments in French and Spanish, applied to PA and SB,(b) examining the extent to which these properties predict the adoption of PA and SB, (c)studying the evolution of these properties during the adoption of a new behaviour (practiceof a new PA), and following an intervention (reduction of SB at work). To this end, aprogramme of 8 empirical studies has been carried out. The main results indicate that (a) theFrench and Spanish versions of the Generic Multidimensional Scale of Automaticity havesatisfactory psychometric properties (internal validity, external convergent and predictivevalidity); (b) automatic properties contribute significantly to the amount of PA and SB, evenwhen they are assessed by accelerometers; (c) the level of lack of control increases over timewhen a new PA is adopted, and the level and changes in automaticity are influenced by thecharacteristics of the PA performed; (d) lastly, an intervention targeting automatic processesis effective in decreasing sedentary time at work.Key-words: automaticity, triggering, lack of control, efficiency, mode of transport, sitting,health

Objective: Anxiety and depression have been conceptualised as being associated with “an abundance of habit and a dearth of control” (Hertel, 2015, p. 1). There has been a recent and burgeoning interest toward understanding the role of habits in health psychology and in the psychological disorders of obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction in particular. To the author’s knowledge, there has been no previous systematic review that aimed to summarise the research investigating the involvement of mental habits in anxiety and depression in clinical and non-clinical populations. Method: The term habit was operationalized and inclusion criteria were specified in the domains of habit measurement, research paradigms, and manipulation tasks. A search across four databases was conducted: Web of Science, EBSCOhost, PubMed and OVID (PsycARTICLES and Journals@OVID). A progressive screening procedure yielded 8 relevant studies related to mental habits in anxiety (n = 1), depression (n = 4) and both anxiety and depression (n = 3). Results: Self-report habit measures correlate with the presence of symptoms. Computational modelling reinforcement learning and goal-devaluation paradigms demonstrate that anxiety and depression are associated with deficits in goal-directed learning and decision-making in favour of habitual learning strategies. Cognitive bias modification meets the criteria for enabling habit change and can strengthen or weaken interpretative habits in response to training. Conclusions: Despite considerable variability and limitations in the design of the studies appraised in this review, overall findings indicate support for habitual thought processes being implicated in anxiety and depression. Treating problematic thought processes in anxiety and depression as habitual – cued automatically by contextual cues, not goal-dependent and resistant to change – may be beneficial for future research and clinical applications. Abstract (Experimental Study) This study investigated predictions from the habit-goal framework for depressive rumination (Watkins & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2014) using a simultaneous replication single case experimental design in a multiple baseline case series. Seven high ruminators were recruited from community and university settings (with one participant’s data later excluded due to insufficient baseline rumination). Following a baseline monitoring period, participants received an intervention that included (i) spotting personal triggers for rumination and (ii) the practice of a scripted concrete thinking exercise (CTE) in response to these triggers, utilising an implementation intention (If-Then plan). It was predicted that practice of the IF-THEN CTE, linked to warning signs, would result in a significant reduction in both frequency and automaticity of rumination in the intervention phase compared to baseline. At the group level, using randomization tests (Onghena & Edgington, 2005), reductions in automaticity of rumination were trending toward statistical significance whilst the impact of the intervention on rumination frequency was not statistically significant. Effect size calculations, using nonoverlap of all pairs, demonstrated a medium effect of the intervention on automaticity (NAP = .76) and weak to medium effect on frequency of rumination (NAP = .66). Visual and statistical analysis of individual data demonstrated that two participants experienced statistically significant benefits (p < .05) for a reduction in automaticity of rumination and one participant’s frequency of rumination was significantly reduced. These two participants also showed the greatest levels of automaticity for the IF-THEN-CTE intervention during the intervention phase. Five participants demonstrated a strong or medium effect of the intervention on automaticity and two participants demonstrated a medium effect on frequency. Taken together, the data is broadly consistent with the predictions made by the habit-goal framework. Pre and post measures indicate reductions for all participants in rumination as habit using the self-report habit index (SRHI) and overall rumination levels rated on the ruminative responses scale (RRS). At post intervention three participants no longer met criteria for inclusion to the study on the RRS. Despite mixed results, feedback at debrief indicated that the intervention was acceptable to participants who reported that they would carry on using it after the study ended.

Ongoing investigations of drunken aggression tend to focus on 1) situational cues, and 2) individual variables such as personality traits. This study investigated the hypothesis that an undergraduates attention would be pulled toward a nonconscious presentation of aggression stimuli, especially in the presence of alcohol cues, and especially if he or she was high on trait anger [as measured using the State Trait Anger Expression Inventory (STAXI); Spielberger, 1988] and had high expectancies for behaving aggressively while drinking alcohol [as measured using the Expectancy Questionnaire for Alcohol and Aggression Lo Dose (EQAAL); Epps, Hunter, LeVasseur, Steinberg, and Hancock, unpublished manuscript]. Seventy-nine of the participants who completed questionnaires also completed one of the two computer tasks (adapted from John Bargh and associates) weeks later in either the Barroom or the Cleanroom. Attention to HiAggression words (as measured by reaction time or error rate difference scores) was significantly higher than attention to NonAggression words using the parafoveal visual task, with observed power at 1. No significant differences were found using the dichotic listening task. Additionally, there was a significant three-way interaction (Word Type X Setting X Angry Temperament) when participants where blocked according to high vs. low angry temperament scores. Follow-up analyses as well as regression analyses for the specific hypothesis provided mixed results. Individuals lower on angry temperament tended to demonstrate higher levels of attentional interference for aggression words, but only in the presence of alcohol cues. Conversely, individuals higher on angry temperament evidenced higher levels of attentional interference, but only in the absence of alcohol cues. It appears that the relationships among these variables are by no means straightforward. Studies that include an opportunity to aggress behaviorally may shed more light on whether ones level of attentional interference and self-reported personality traits can be combined to predict aggression in the presence of alcohol cues. The parafoveal visual task is recommended as the methodology of choice for these future studies.

It has long been held that processing at the single word level during reading is automatic. However, research has recently begun to emerge that challenges this view. The literature surrounding the processing of emotion while recognizing printed words is limited, but some findings in the processing of emotion in faces suggest that negative stimuli (especially threat stimuli) promote quick and accurate processing. The purpose of the present experiments is to investigate whether negative emotionally-laden words are afforded priority processing in visual word recognition compared to positive emotionally-laden words. Two experiments are reported that manipulated the lexicality and valence of the target and distractor stimuli (Experiments 1 & 2), the validity of a spatial pre-cue (Experiments 1 & 2), and the presence of a distractor item (Experiment 2). Participants were asked to determine whether the target stimulus spelled a word or not. Response times on valid trials were faster compared to invalid trials, response times to negative emotionally-laden words were slower compared to positive emotionally-laden words, and the presence of a distractor item encouraged better focus on the target stimuli in the absence of any evidence that the valence of the distractor itself was processed. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that visual word recognition is not automatic given that processing benefited from the accurate direction of spatial attention. Furthermore, negative emotionally-laden words benefited equally compared to positive emotionally-laden words and therefore provide no evidence of automatic processing.