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Depression is a global problem, causing disability and economic burden. Many people currently do not obtain treatment. Development of more accessible, cost-effective treatments is essential. An identified mechanism by which depression treatments work is through modifying underlying negative cognitive biases, which mediate changes in mood. A specific negative information-processing bias in depression is a tendency to interpret ambiguous facial expressions as sad rather than happy. The emotion recognition task is a treatment paradigm developed as a cognitive bias modification intervention to target this emotion recognition bias. Previous studies showed promising signs that this novel intervention could modify biases in people with low mood outside of laboratory conditions and potential to increase positive affect within laboratory conditions. The current study built on these developments, aiming to investigate, using a randomised controlled trial with follow-up at 2 and 6 weeks, whether a web-based version of the emotion recognition task could reduce depressive symptoms in addition to modifying emotion recognition biases. An analogue sample of 124 participants with low mood was recruited. Evidence was found that the intervention modified participants’ biases, compared to the control group but there was no evidence of improvement in mood. Study limitations included a high rate of attrition and non-adherence to the intervention. Future recommendations include modifying the intervention to increase acceptability, investigating generalizability of increased positive bias to different stimuli, and identifying consistent reductions in symptoms of depression before examining its efficacy with a clinical population.

Structural equation modeling was utilized to test a hypothesized model for the effects of negative biases, thought suppression, experiential avoidance, and mindfulness on pathological anxiety. Self-report scales were used to measure each construct. Confirmatory factor analyses were used to test the factor structure of each scale. Identified factors were disparate from those in previous research on some scales, so items from scales were pooled to create scales for each construct. Alternate models were tested. No models showed adequate fit. Significant paths between most constructs partially supported our theory. Surprisingly, thought suppression did not predict anxiety. This finding is important because previous literature cites parallels between thought suppression and experiential avoidance to explain the role of experiential avoidance in anxiety. Additionally, the effects of mindfulness on anxiety were mediated by experiential avoidance and negativity bias, providing a possible explanation for the efficacy of mindfulness based treatments for anxiety.

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether computer-based cognitive bias modification (CBM) procedures could alter appraisal style toward viewing events from a big picture perspective and thereby influence emotional reactivity. Big picture appraisal entails viewing difficult situations and one's reactions to them in terms of a larger context. Appraisal training was implicit in that participants completed a series of vignettes, framed as a reading comprehension task, which trained either a big picture perspective or a personal/evaluative focus. When subsequently confronted with novel vignettes, participants produced interpretations that were consistent with assigned training condition. In addition, participants trained in big picture as compared to personal/evaluative appraisal subsequently demonstrated less emotional reactivity to a stressful task. / text

Mental representations can be consciously experienced in mental imagery format, and verbal-linguistic format. Mental imagery representations of emotional information can evoke more powerful emotional responses than verbal-linguistic representations of the same information. Biases in mental imagery-based cognition are postulated to play a role in the maintenance of emotional disturbance in depression. Despite growing research, two questions remain: 1) is dysphoria (mild to moderate depression symptoms) associated with mood-congruent bias in the frequency of mental imagery generation; and 2) are such biases related to state emotional experience and emotional response to emotional information in dysphoria? To examine question one, participants varying in levels of dysphoria reported the occurrence of mental imagery in real time under task contexts that were emotional (negative and positive verbal cues) and unemotional (neutral verbal cues). Mental imagery generation was assessed under two task conditions: a) when participants were instructed to generate mental imagery in response to verbal cues (Study 1 & 2); and b) when participants were not instructed to generate mental imagery (or verbal-linguistic representations) during exposure to similar verbal cues (Study 2, 3, & 4). Results from all studies, across both instruction types, showed that dysphoria was associated with a loss of positive bias in mental representation generation, driven by reduced positive representation generation (Study 1, 2 & 4), but also by elevated negative representation generation (Study 1, 2 & 3). Interestingly, evidence of a loss of positive bias was most consistently observed when given neutral verbal cues, but also when given positive verbal cues. However, such dysphoria-linked effects were not disproportionately evident for mental imagery relative to verbal-linguistic representations, when both were allowed to naturally occur in Study 2, 3, & 4. Unexpectedly, dysphoria was associated with reduced tendency to generate negative imagery relative to negative verbal-linguistic representations in Study 2, though this finding was not replicated in Study 3 or Study 4. To examine question two, participants provided state mood ratings in addition to reporting mental representation occurrence during exposure to auditory emotional information (Study 3: verbal cues; Study 4: news stories). Dysphoria and mental representation generation was found to be unrelated to emotional response on negative trials (Study 3 & 4). However, greater occurrence of mental imagery, but not verbal-linguistic representation generation was related to greater positive emotional response on positive trials for individuals with dysphoria (Study 3), and all participants (Study 4). Study 5 analysed existing clinical trial data and found that the vividness of positive future event imagery is related to optimism in depression, such that those able to envision a brighter future are relatively more optimistic, and regain optimism more quickly, than those less able to do so, even when currently depressed. In summary, dysphoria was associated with loss of positive bias in mental representation generation, though such effects were not unique to imagery. Importantly, greater occurrence of mental imagery-based, but not purely verbal-linguistic, representations were associated with greater positive emotional response to positive information, and may hold value as a target for future translational research.

Current explanations for anchoring phenomena seem to be unable to account for the diversity of effects found by 40 years of research. Additionally, the theories do not have much to say about the processes that make anchors so resilient to modification. I argue that by focusing on the mechanisms involved in spatial representation, we can account for most anchoring effects which have spatial components.

Animals are sentient beings, capable of experiencing emotions. Being able to assess emotional states in farm animals is crucial to improving their welfare. Although the function of emotion is not primarily for communication, the outward expression of an emotional state involves changes in posture, vocalisations, odours and facial expressions. These changes can be perceived and used as indicators of emotional state by other animals. Since emotions can be perceived between conspecifics, understanding how emotions are identified and how they can spread within a social group could have a major impact on improving the welfare of farmed species, which are mostly reared in groups. A recently developed method for the evaluation of emotions in animals is based on cognitive biases such as judgment biases, i.e. an individual in a negative emotional state will show pessimistic judgments while and individual in a positive emotional state will show optimistic judgments. The aims of this project were to (A) establish whether sheep and goats can discriminate between images of faces of familiar conspecifics taken in different positive and negative situations, (B) establish whether sheep and goats perceive the valence (positive of negative) of the emotion expressed by the animal on the image, (C) validate the use of images of faces in cognitive bias studies. The use of images of faces of conspecifics as emotional stimuli was first validated, using a discrimination task in a two-armed maze. A new methodology was then developed across a series of experiments to assess spontaneous reactions of animals exposed to video clips or to images of faces of familiar conspecifics. Detailed observations of ear postures were used as the main behavioural indicator. Individual characteristics (dominance status within the herd, dominance pairwise relationships and humananimal relationship) were also recorded during preliminary tests and included in the analyses. The impact of a low-mood state on the perception of emotions was assessed in sheep after subjecting half of the animals to unpredictable negative housing conditions and keeping the other half in good standard housing conditions. Sheep were then presented with videos of conspecifics filmed in situations of varying valence. Reactions to ambiguous stimuli were evaluated by presenting goats with images of morphed faces. Goats were also presented with images of faces of familiar conspecifics taken situations of varying emotional intensity. Sheep could discriminate images of faces of conspecifics taken either in a negative or in a neutral situation and their learning process of the discrimination task was affected by the type of emotion displayed. Sheep reacted differently depending on the valence of the video clips (P < 0.05); however, there was no difference between the control and the low-mood groups (P > 0.05). Goats also showed different behavioural reactions to images of faces photographed in different situations (P < 0.05), indicating that they perceived the images as different. Responses to morphed images were not necessarily intermediate to responses to negative and positive images and not gradual either, which poses a major problem to the potential use of facial images in cognitive bias experiments. Overall, animals were more attentive towards images or videos of conspecifics in negative situations, i.e., presumably, in a negative emotional state. This suggests that sheep and goats are able to perceive the valence of the emotional state. The identity of the individual on the photo also affected the animals’ spontaneous reaction to the images. Social relationships such as dominance, but also affinity between the tested and photographed individual seem to influence emotion perception.

The idea that humans are prone to widespread and systematic biases has dominated the psychological study of thinking and decision-making. The conclusion that has often been drawn is that people are irrational. In recent decades, however, a number of psychologists have started to call into question key claims and findings in research on human biases. In particular, a body of research has come together under the heading of adaptive rationality (henceforth AR). AR theorists argue that people should not be assessed against formal principles of rationality but rather against the goals they entertain. Moreover, AR theorists maintain that the conclusion that people are irrational is unsupported: people are often remarkably successful once assessed against their goals and given the cognitive and external constraints imposed by the environment. The growth of literature around AR is what motivates the present investigation, and assessing the plausibility of the AR challenge to research on human biases is the goal of this thesis. My enquiry analyses several aspects of this suggested turn in the empirical study of rationality and provides one of the first philosophically-informed appraisals of the prospects of AR. First and foremost, my thesis seeks to provide a qualified defence of the AR project. On the one hand, I agree with AR theorists that there is room for a conceptual revolution in the study of thinking and decision-making: while it is commonly argued that behaviour and cognition should be assessed against formal principles of rationality, I stress the importance of assessing behaviour against the goals that people entertain. However, I also contend that AR theorists have hitherto failed to provide compelling evidence in support of their most ambitious and optimistic theses about people’s rationality. In particular, I present a great deal of evidence suggesting that people are often unsuccessful at achieving prudential and epistemic goals and I argue that AR theorists have not made clear how, in light of this evidence, optimistic claims about human rationality could be defended.

This thesis presents the development and application of methods to assess cognitive markers of emotion and psychological wellbeing in a species of nonhuman primate, the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta). In humans, vulnerability to emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression is characterized by particular cognitive profiles, known as cognitive biases. For example, anxious people automatically attend to threat-relevant information, interpret ambiguous information negatively, and have negative expectations of future events. In this thesis, I first describe two treatments that were used prior to cognitive testing to induce positive and negative shifts in inferred affective state in the monkeys (enrichment and a health-check, respectively) and discuss the impact of these treatments on the monkeys’ behaviour and physiology (Chapters 2 and 3). In the first cognitive study (Chapter 4), I present a method that uses eye-gaze to assess the extent to which threatening (versus non-threatening) stimuli capture visual spatial attention when two stimuli are presented at different locations. In the second study (Chapter 5), I present a simple operant touch-screen task to assess the extent to which a threatening distractor stimulus captures attention and impairs performance on an ongoing task when presented at the same location as the taskrelevant stimulus. In the third study (Chapter 6), I present a Go/NoGo touchscreen task to assess judgements about the reward value of ambiguous stimuli. In all of these studies, the two treatments led to different cognitive profiles in the monkeys. Monkeys showed a) automatic capture of attention by threatening stimuli, which was followed by avoidance following the health-check, but not Post-enrichment; b) impaired task performance when a threatening distractor stimulus was presented Post-health-check, and improved performance on these trials Post-enrichment; and c) a more negative judgement about the reward value of ambiguous stimuli Post-health-check versus Post-enrichment. I discuss these cognitive biases in light of available data from humans, and recent work with nonhuman animals. These data indicate that furthering our understanding of primate and other animal psychological wellbeing, may be achieved through the development of measures of cognitive bias, such as those presented here.

Both animal and human studies suggest that cognitive bias toward negative information, such as that observed in major depression, may arise through the interaction of cortisol (CORT) and norepinephrine (NE) within the amygdala. To date, there is no published account of the relationship between endogenous NE and CORT levels and cognitive bias. The present study examined salivary CORT and salivary alpha-amylase (sAA), an indirect measure of NE, in relation to masked affective priming of words in young female participants. Women with higher salivary CORT showed increased priming to negative word pairs only when sAA was also high; when sAA was low, no effect of CORT on priming was observed. These results are in line with previous research indicating that increased CORT is linked to enhanced processing of negative information. However, our findings extend this literature in providing evidence that CORT predicts enhanced processing of negatively valenced information only in the presence of higher sAA.