Marked differences have been found in men’s and women’s sexual response patterns, contingent upon their sexual orientation; opposite- and same-gender attracted men demonstrate greatest genital and self-reported arousal to their preferred stimulus type, whereas other-gender attracted women do not, and findings of same-gender attracted women have been mixed (e.g., Chivers, Seto & Blanchard, 2007; Chivers, Bouchard, Timmers, & Haberl, 2012). Given the complex nature of sexual stimuli that are used in research paradigms involving category-specificity of sexual arousal, however, it is often unclear to what extent contextual cues (cues other than the sexual actor’s sex characteristics; body movement, level of sexual activity, etc.) influence participants’ sexual response patterns. As such, the current study attempted to parse contextual cues from sexual stimuli and examined genital, self-reported, and continuous self-reported responses of same- and other-gender attracted men and women to prepotent sexual features (stimuli believed to elicit automatic sexual arousal: erect penises and vasoengorged vulvas), nonprepotent sexual features (flaccid penises and pubic triangles) and neutral stimuli (clothed men and women). All samples were found to exhibit a category-specific pattern of genital, self-reported, and continuous self-reported sexual arousal. Similarly, genital, self-reported, and continuous self-reported arousal was generally found to be greatest to “prepotent” sexual conditions. Limitations and implications are discussed. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2013-08-30 11:37:10.216

Unlike men, women’s genital arousal is category-nonspecific with respect to sexual orientation, such that their genital responses do not differentiate stimuli by gender. A possible explanation for women’s nonspecific sexual response is the inclusion of women at different phases of the menstrual cycle or women using hormonal contraceptives in sexual psychophysiology research, which may be obscuring a specificity effect. The present study employs the ovulatory-shift hypothesis – used to explain a shift in women’s preferences for masculine traits during peak fertility – as an explanatory model for women’s nonspecific sexual arousal. Twenty-nine naturally-cycling women were tested at two points in their menstrual cycles (follicular and luteal) to determine the role of hormonal variation, as estimated by fertility status, on the specificity of genital (using vaginal photoplethysmograph) and subjective sexual arousal. Cycle phase at the time of first testing was counterbalanced; however, no effect of order was observed. Inconsistent with the ovulatory-shift model, the predicted mid-cycle shift in preferences for masculinity or sexual activity at peak fertility was not obtained. Category-specificity of genital arousal did not increase during the follicular phase. A statistical trend was observed for higher genital arousal to couple sex stimuli during the follicular phase compared to the luteal phase, suggesting that women’s genital arousal may be sensitive to fertility status with respect to sexual activity (specifically, couple sex), but not gender. Subjective arousal was not influenced by fertility status. This study is the first to provide evidence that women’s genital arousal may be influenced by the probability of conception. / Thesis (Master, Psychology) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-29 08:51:26.973

Image format (Laws, Adlington, Gale, Moreno-Martínez, & Sartori, 2007), ceiling effects in controls (Fung et al., 2001; Laws et al., 2005; Moreno-Martínez, & Laws, 2007; 2008), and nuisance variables (Funnell & De Mornay Davis, 1996; Funnell & Sheridan, 1992; Stewart, Parkin & Hunkin, 1992) all influence the emergence of category specific deficits in Alzheimer‟s dementia (AD). Thus, the predominant use of line drawings of familiar, everyday items in category specific research is problematic. Moreover, this does not allow researchers to explore the extent to which format may influence object recognition. As such, the initial concern of this thesis was the development of a new corpus of 147 colour images of graded naming difficulty, the Hatfield Image Test (HIT; Adlington, Laws, & Gale, 2009), and the collection of relevant normative data including ratings of: age of acquisition, colour diagnosticity, familiarity, name agreement, visual complexity, and word frequency. Furthermore, greyscale and line-drawn versions of the HIT corpus were developed (and again, the associated normative data obtained), to permit research into the influence of image format on the emergence of category specific effects in patients with AD, and in healthy controls. Using the HIT, several studies were conducted including: (i) a normative investigation of the effects of category and image format on naming accuracy and latencies in healthy controls; (ii) an exploration of the effects of image format (using the HIT images presented in colour, greyscale, and line-drawn formats) and category on the naming performance of AD patients, and age-matched controls performing below ceiling; (iii) a longitudinal investigation comparing AD patient performance to that of age-matched controls, on a range of semantic tasks (naming, sorting, word-picture matching), using colour, greyscale, and line-drawn versions of the HIT; (iv) a comparison of naming in AD patients and age-matched controls on the HIT and the (colour, greyscale and line-drawn) images from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) corpus; and (v) a meta-analysis to explore category specific naming in AD using the Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) versus other corpora. Taken together, the results of these investigations showed first, that image format interacts with category. For both AD patients and controls, colour is more important for the recognition of living things, with a significant nonliving advantage emerging for the line-drawn images, but not the colour images. Controls benefitted more from additional surface information than AD patients, which chapter 6 shows results from low-level visual cortical impairment in AD. For controls, format was also more important for the recognition of low familiarity, low frequency items. In addition, the findings show that adequate control data affects the emergence of category specific deficits in AD. Specifically, based on within-group comparison chapters 6, 7, and 8 revealed a significant living deficit in AD patients. However, when compared to controls performing below ceiling, as demonstrated in chapters 7 and 8, this deficit was only significant for the line drawings, showing that the performance observed in AD patients is simply an exaggeration of the norm.