UK Government policy advocates that as far as possible, adults with a learning disability should be supported within mainstream community settings (Department of Health, 1993; 2001; 2007). However, for individuals who present with mental health problems or exceptional challenging behaviour, admission to a specialist inpatient unit is sometimes necessary. Despite a growing body of literature exploring service users’ views of community and healthcare services, research exploring their views and experiences of inpatient admission remains limited. The aim of the current study was to address this gap in the literature by conducting a qualitative exploration of service users’ experiences in specialist inpatient assessment and treatment units. The study employed a Grounded Theory methodology to obtain multiple perspectives on service users’ experiences, using semi-structured interviews with service users, carers and staff members. Verbatim interview transcripts were analysed in line with the Grounded Theory approach to develop a rich and in-depth understanding of service users’ experiences. From the data analysed, five core concepts were constructed which provided a theoretical model for understanding service users’ experiences of admission. This model proposes that service users’ experiences can be understood in relation to procedural aspects of ‘the course of admission’ as well as the psychological processes ‘sense of self and connectedness’, ‘sense of agency’ and ‘creating safety and protection’ which contribute to the construction of ‘understanding and meaning’. Findings are considered in relation to the existing literature and social constructionist, systemic and attachment theories. Clinical and service development implications from the research findings highlight the need for inpatient staff to consider the impact of psychosocial factors and processes on service users’ experiences, as well as the procedural aspects of admission. Recommendations are also made for maintaining family involvement, creating a context in which shared understandings between staff, carers and service users can be constructed, and developing links with community services.

Review of the research literature on the prevalence of physical aggression in community teams for adults with a learning disability (CLDTs) suggests that services are managing people who are physically aggressive, which impacts on services. This suggests that there is a need for services to use risk assessment instruments of physical aggression to support teams to accurately identify those who will be physically aggressive to others. Established risk assessment instruments are resource intensive and so a screen, such as The Risk Assessment Protocol for Intellectual Disabilities (RAPID), developed in forensic psychiatric patients with a learning disability (LD), could support services to target their limited resources. The predictive validity of the RAPID to predict physical aggression, property aggression and verbal aggression, in a community sample of adults with a LD was evaluated. The RAPID was compared to an established risk assessment instrument, the VRAG, in order to assess its concurrent validity. The predictive validity of the items of the RAPID were analysed to provide a measure of construct validity. The RAPID was also compared to a Risk Rating made by staff, to assess incremental validity. In addition, the ability of the RAPID to be easily and reliably scored was evaluated. The RAPID predicted incidents of physical aggression with a large effect size. The RAPID was highly correlated with the VRAG, which suggests that it has good concurrent validity. Some of the items of the RAPID predicted physical aggression, which suggests some construct validity. It was not possible to establish that the RAPID has incremental validity above the VRAG or the Risk Rating. The RAPID was found to have good inter-rater reliability. The findings of the study suggest that the RAPID could be used to support CLDTs to make informed decisions about the completion of risk assessment instruments, risk management plans and interventions that aim to reduce the risk of physical aggression.

Previous research has consistently shown that children tend to hold negative attitudes toward their peers with disabilities when compared to those without disabilities (Diamond & Huang, 2005; Nowicki & Sandieson, 2002). What is more, children’s attitudes towards those with physical disabilities are more positive than their attitudes towards those with learning disabilities (Nowicki & Sandieson, 2002). Developmental factors such as age, gender, and previous experience with others with disabilities have been explored as potential moderating variables, however, findings have been inconclusive. This paper is the first to explore the role of implicit person theories (IPTs) in moderating children’s of attitudes towards their peers with disabilities. IPTs refer to the belief that attributes are either fixed and not subject to change (an entity theory) or malleable and changeable with effort (an incremental theory) (Dweck, 2000). Holding different IPTs has been associated with having differences in social perception (Dweck & Molden, 2008), which may affect children’s attitudes. The current research has two broad aims; to replicate previous research findings of children’s attitudes towards their peers with physical and learning disabilities as described above, and to explore the role of IPTs in moderating these attitudes. This paper comprises of two parts. The first is a literature review which aims to critically discuss and synthesise literature from the two relevant fields of research; that which investigates children’s attitudes to their peers with disabilities, and research relating to IPTs. The second part is a research paper giving details of the research that was carried out.

In this thesis I have addressed two questions of particular interest regarding spatial learning. The first question is concerned with the nature of the associations formed during spatial learning; do animals form S-R or S-S* associations? Evidence that animals acquire S-S* associations which can then be used to locate a hidden goal was provided by Experiment one using placement training to produce latent spatial learning. Experiments 2 – 8A produced results consistent with this finding. Experiment 8B provided evidence that animals also use S-R associations. The second question concerned the type of cues that enter into S-S* associations with the goal. Experiments in Chapter 3 provided evidence that animals can use features of the environment to locate the goal, but no evidence of a global representation was found. Chapter 4 explored the role of the hippocampus in the acquisition of S-S* associations, and demonstrated that the hippocampus is required for the learning based on spatial S-S* associations, but not for S-R associations.

Literature relating to the role of the educational psychologist (EP) suggests that the profession has been experiencing role conflict in recent years (Boyle & Lauchlan, 2009). The profession has also been experiencing changes, which have resulted in redundancies and budget cuts within Local Authorities (Association of Educational Psychologists; AEP, 2011). The aim of the current study is to explore EPs’ current perceptions of their job role and job satisfaction. Research has shown the importance of job role for an individual’s wellbeing (Ford, 2001) and how job role can have an impact on one’s job satisfaction (Cuhadar, 2008). Research has also shown that employee job satisfaction is linked to client job satisfaction (Collins et al., 2008). Consequently, since EPs work with vulnerable individuals, it is important to maintain and increase EPs’ job satisfaction. Fourteen EPs from 6 Welsh LAs’ were asked semi-structured, open-ended questions about their current job role and job satisfaction. The data were analysed using thematic analysis, and eight main themes emerged; difficulty defining the EP role, varied role of the EP, negative aspects of the EP role, positive aspects of the EP role, desired changes to the EP the role, EPs’ definition of job satisfaction, extrinsic factors to improve EP job satisfaction and intrinsic factors to improve EP job satisfaction. Each main theme had sub themes. This resulted in various implications and recommendations for the profession.

A fundamental issue in the study of verbal behaviour is whether the underpinning representation of speech, while derived from different modalities, is itself amodal. The current thesis contributes to this debate, utilising two behavioural phenomena to show that verbal performance is not simply limited to representations independent of the modality through which they were derived. Firstly, similarities in verbal short-term memory performance across presentation modalities have been explained in terms of a phonological level of representation. Namely, both auditory and visual modes of presentation demonstrate similar patterns of performance within the recency portion of the serial position curve. However, it is shown that while recall at the terminal list item for an auditory list is immune to the disruptive effect of task-irrelevant background sound and articulatory suppression, lipread recency is note immune. In addition, although the effect of an auditory suffix on an auditory list is due to the perceptual grouping of the suffix with the list, the corresponding effect with lipread speech is shown to be due to misidentification of the lexical content of the lipread suffix. Furthermore, even though a lipread suffix does not disrupt auditory recency, an auditory suffix does disrupt recency for lipread lists due to attentional capture. These findings are subsequently explained in terms of modality-specific perceptual and motor-speech output mechanisms, rather than to the storage and manipulation at some phonological level of representation. Secondly, the mechanisms underlying the integration of seen and heard speech is investigated via the McGurk effect in order to understand the stage at which auditory and visual modes of speech come to be integrated. It is shown that concurrently articulating verbal material out loud or silently mouthing speech during syllable identification reduces he McGurk effect, whereas passive listening to task‐irrelevant speech or sequential manual tapping does not. On the basis that both concurrent articulation and silent mouthing mpede Subvocal speech production processes, that both manipulations also disrupt the McGurk effect suggests that subvocal motor mechanisms necessary for speech production are involved in audiovisual integration. Taken together, if progress is to be made in understanding the underlying representations of verbal behaviour, an approach should be adopted that not only requires an amodal, phonological representational form, but also considers the extent to which modality-specific systems primarily serving perceptual and motor processes contribute to performance.

Study Aim: Despite ‘Assertive Outreach’ being a widely researched model of mental health delivery, previous research has mainly focused on how features of the service model encourage service users to engage with the service. Little is known about how the staff working in such services promote service user engagement, especially with service users who are particularly difficult to engage. This qualitative study explores how assertive outreach staff engage and maintain engagement with their service users. Design, Setting and Participants: Eight care co-ordinators were recruited from three assertive outreach teams in South East Wales. Participants were interviewed about how they engage and maintain engagement with service users. Transcribed interviews were analysed using Grounded Theory. Four of the participants also attended a subsequent focus group and discussed the preliminary analysis of the interview data. Findings: Three themes appeared to conceptualise the engagement process, ‘Building the therapeutic relationship’, ‘Maintaining the therapeutic relationship’, and ‘Service factors enabling engagement’. The first two conceptualise the personal factors (i.e. approaches, strategies and personal attributes) that staff use on a daily basis to engage and maintain engagement with service users. The final theme, ‘Service factors enabling engagement work’, focuses on the service related factors staff identify as being important in enabling them to engage with the people who use their service. Conclusion: Results from the current study provide a number of useful insights into the specific approaches, techniques and strategies used by assertive outreach staff to engage and maintain engagement with ‘hard to engage’ service users. The study also identified service elements and personal staff qualities that appear to facilitate the effective engaging of clients. Clinical implications are discussed and suggestions made regarding clinical practice and future research.

The development of competency in personal and professional skills and values is likely to increase in importance as Clinical Psychologists in-training take on leadership and consultancy roles and work with greater complexity on qualification. However, the literature on how this competency develops and what helps and hinders this within Clinical Psychology training programmes is very limited. An understanding of the experience of Clinical Psychologists’ in-training development of this competency is important to inform teaching and supervisory practice and to promote development of self awareness, professional effectiveness and resilience. Given the lack of literature and the exploratory nature of the research question, a qualitative approach was undertaken which explored Clinical Psychologists’ in-training lived experience of developing personal and professional skills (PPD) through managing risk. A focus on such situations was chosen because managing risk is experienced by many trainees as taking them to the limits of their competence and to often demand interprofessional working. The research explored how the experience of managing such risks and complexity enhanced or diminished PPD learning. A systematic review of the extant literature was conducted and semi-structured qualitative interviews were pursued with ten Clinical Psychologists’ in-training across the UK, from a range of doctoral training programmes. An interpretative phenomenological approach was employed to analyse participants’ accounts. Four themes which interlinked to form a learning cycle: ‘event perception’, ‘managing the professional self’, ‘reflective practice’ and ‘identity’. The emergent themes were interpreted with reference to the literature on PPD in broader populations of health professionals. The findings have a range of implications for training programmes, supervisors, trainees, and for the British Psychological Society/The Committee of Training in Clinical Psychology accreditation criteria which is currently being revised. Implications of the findings for risk management in clinical practice and recommendations for future research are also presented.

It has often been suggested that verbal short-term memory, the ability to maintain verbal information for a brief period of time, is based on the upload of to-be-remembered material into passive, dedicated, information stores. Alternatively, it has been claimed that all information is remembered but that access to it gets obstructed because of interference by subsequent similar material. The aim of the present thesis was to challenge both these approaches and to examine the viability of a different, perceptual-gestural, view of information buffering over the short term. This approach conceptualizes verbal short-term storage as an active process that emerges from, and is defined by, the recruitment of receptive and (speech) productive mechanisms.In Experiments 1-3, the significant impact of non-verbal concurrent motor tasks on verbal short-term memory suggests an active involvement of productive mechanisms. These experiments also cast doubt on the proposal that forgetting occurs because of interference by similar content. Experiment 4 expands upon this challenge of the interference-based view by showing that a temporary lesion of a brain area involved in speech planning (Broca’s area), induced with transcranial magnetic stimulation, affects verbal short-term memory performance in the absence of any additional potentially interfering verbal input. Further, challenging the store-based view, the virtual lesion of Broca’s area also attenuated the phonological similarity effect,a hallmark effect of the function of the hypothetical language-independent store. Finally, Experiments 5-9 sought to determine the origin of variations in recall performance as a function of sensory-modality of input. It is concluded that only the perceptual-gestural approach can offer an account of presentation type-based differences in verbal list recall that goes beyond a redescription of the observed effects. The thesis closes with an outline of a neurological model of active storage of verbal information over the short-term.

The present thesis focuses on two main areas of deception research. The first of these examines the cognitive processes involved in telling a lie and the second examines human ability to detect deception. Since deception research has historically lacked a solid theoretical basis, this work extends previous research by providing a greater theoretical understanding of both the processes involved in telling lies, and also those involved in successfully discriminating truthful messages from deceptive ones. In the first section, a simple response time paradigm is used to examine how cognitive processes differ when individuals lie compared to when they tell the truth. This paradigm is manipulated to examine the effect of a variety of different factors on potential processing differences, such as the number of lie response options available and the order of lie and truth responses. Overall, the contention that telling a lie is more cognitively demanding than telling the truth was supported. This additional cognitive load should aid in the discrimination of false and truthful messages by human observers. The second section of the thesis therefore examines individual differences in human ability to detect deception. A number of individual difference variables were examined, including extraversion and autism spectrum characteristics, allowing for the exploration of the potential relationship of these measures with both deception detection accuracy and degree of truth bias when judging the messages of individuals from different cultural backgrounds. Overall, reliable individual differences in ability levels were not found. A positive relationship between extraversion and degree of truth bias, however, was demonstrated when participants judged individuals from the same cultural background as themselves compared to a different cultural background.