BACKGROUND: Alcohol and tobacco misuse and dependence are highly comorbid disorders. Varenicline alleviates symptoms of cigarette craving while preventing nicotine from binding to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, thereby reducing nicotine’s reinforcing effects. Recent studies have shown that varenicline decreased alcohol self-administration in animal models and in one human study of heavy-drinking smokers. AIMS: To assess the effect of two-week varenicline (0.5-2mg) vs. placebo administration on cue-induced craving for tobacco and alcohol in smokers with heavy alcohol use (n = 24). METHODS: Subjects participated in two study visits where nicotine and alcohol craving and withdrawal were assessed with self-report questionnaires under four conditions (abstinence/one cigarette/neutral cues/tobacco-alcohol cues). RESULTS: Two-week administration of varenicline reduced tobacco-alcohol cue-induced cigarette cravings and reduced emotionality aspects of alcohol craving after smoking a cigarette compared to abstinence in heavy-drinking smokers. CONCLUSION: It is possible that varenicline may have particular advantages as a smoking cessation aid in heavy drinkers.

BACKGROUND: Alcohol and tobacco misuse and dependence are highly comorbid disorders. Varenicline alleviates symptoms of cigarette craving while preventing nicotine from binding to nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, thereby reducing nicotine’s reinforcing effects. Recent studies have shown that varenicline decreased alcohol self-administration in animal models and in one human study of heavy-drinking smokers. AIMS: To assess the effect of two-week varenicline (0.5-2mg) vs. placebo administration on cue-induced craving for tobacco and alcohol in smokers with heavy alcohol use (n = 24). METHODS: Subjects participated in two study visits where nicotine and alcohol craving and withdrawal were assessed with self-report questionnaires under four conditions (abstinence/one cigarette/neutral cues/tobacco-alcohol cues). RESULTS: Two-week administration of varenicline reduced tobacco-alcohol cue-induced cigarette cravings and reduced emotionality aspects of alcohol craving after smoking a cigarette compared to abstinence in heavy-drinking smokers. CONCLUSION: It is possible that varenicline may have particular advantages as a smoking cessation aid in heavy drinkers.

Retail shelves acts as extrinsic cues which influence consumers’ perceptions and facilitates them in their purchase dilemma. This study is about determining any possible association between vertical shelf levels and consumers’ perception of values. The assumption that consumers perceive a product at higher place as of higher value (quality) was analyzed by means of primary data and further explained by cue utilization theory. The research attempts to quantify values (extrinsic cue effect) by means of prices of the products. Here, both shelf levels and price are considered as extrinsic cues. In other words, this research analyzed the influence of one extrinsic cue on the other and thus how this affects consumer perception of the product’s value. For this purpose, a primary research was conducted involving consumer group of Swedish people (N=90) and price data was collected for three products placing at different shelf levels. Results from the questionnaire were analyzed by means of one way ANOVA test. The results disapproved hypothesis that was tested yet showed a positive trend for one the value product e.g., coffee. On the basis of result, it can be deduced that further research with different experimental techniques could be applied on the same subject matter to bring more accurate results.

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Human behavior relies on the accumulation of task-relevant information to narrow the range of possible responses to a single response. How do we utilize advance information that can help us select and prepare responses to a task? How is this performance benefit facilitated in the brain? Previous literature suggests a subset of brain regions involved in cue-specific processing. We investigated how informative cues affect brain processing. Specifically, to what extent is activity modulated for stimulus-related and response-related cues versus neutral cues in control- and processing-related regions? Participants made manual responses to the identity of face or place stimuli in a variation of the response cuing paradigm while fMRI BOLD signal was recorded. Prior to the stimulus, a letter cue indicating the upcoming stimulus type (face or place) or response hand (left or right) or a neutral cue was presented. We proposed three hypotheses: 1) control-related activity (e.g., prefrontal, parietal) would increase for cued vs. uncued trials; 2) activity in face and place processing regions and left and right premotor regions would activate for their respective cues, although all cues were letters; and 3) stimulus processing regions would also be activated by response cues, and vice versa.

The current study tests the use of vowel duration as a cue for the voicing of the following stop by Saudi ESL learners. It is mainly constructed on the Language Transfer Theory (LTT) established by Gass and Selinker (1994), the Ontogeny Phylogeny Model (OPM) formulated by Major (2001), the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) developed by Best (1994, 1995), and the Speech Learning Model (SLM) developed by Flege (1995). The instrument contained 30 English monosyllabic minimal pairs of the type CVC. The participants, who were living in the US, consisted of two groups: 5 advanced Saudi ESL learners with linguistic knowledge and 10 advanced Saudi ESL learners without linguistic knowledge. Results showed that both groups of participants (those with linguistics background and those without linguistics background) were fairly accurate at predicting final voiceless Coronal and Dorsal stops after a shorter vowel. On the other hand, they both had equal difficulties predicting voiced stops in this environment. This would explain why participants in both groups overall seemed to be listening for the voicing status of the final stop and disregarding differences in vowel length as a predictor of that voicing. Individual participants, overall, were quite uniform in their responses regardless of any background in linguistics. This finding suggests that participants in both groups relied much more on the actual voicing of the final stops than they did on the length of the preceding vowel.

The aim of this dissertation was to develop a novel behavioural method to assess young children’s capacity for episodic foresight. Specifically, I developed a marble game paradigm to assess whether 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children would save marbles for future enjoyment. Study 1 demonstrated that preschoolers will save more spontaneously when they can draw on a recent past experience compared to when the context is completely novel. Results from study 1 also suggest that preschoolers are sensitive to the relative value of future rewards. Study 2 revealed that providing children with a verbal prompt alerting them to their possible courses of action (i.e., saving or spending) facilitated saving, that 5-year-olds saved more than 3-year-olds, and that children’s performance on this behavioural (i.e., nonverbal) measure of saving was independent of their language proficiency. Children’s saving was not associated with other capacities hypothesized to relate to episodic foresight (theory of mind, inhibitory control, and working memory). Implications for children's saving, the development of episodic foresight, and future research are discussed.

Introduction: This thesis hypothesized that synchronous feedback which is supportive in nature would have a positive impact on the learning and transfer of the skills of visual and auditory cue identification in osteopathic diagnostic procedures. It was believed that the positive impact of supportive feedback would be evident through accurate identification of both visual and auditory cues. The categories of cues were visually identifiable asymmetrical motion, visual or auditory expressions of pain, and visually identifiable cues of a possible soft tissue tear or motor nerve issue. Methods: All participants received the same video-based learning resource which was optimized for content (what/how) and cognition (why) followed by the same instructions for the practice phase. During the practice phase all participants were shown a video of a previously learned diagnostic procedure which contained visual and auditory cues. Between videos, participants were all asked the same questions in the same order. In the Supportive Feedback with Specific Content (SC) group participants would receive supportive comments regardless of accuracy of answers and, if they had identified an appropriate physical phenomenon but ascribed it to an incorrect category, they would receive feedback to correct the categorization error. The Supportive Feedback (S) group would receive supportive comments regardless of accuracy of answers but no feedback in relation to categorization errors. The No Feedback (NF) group would receive no supportive comments or feedback in relation to categorization errors. Responses were coded as accurate detection of cues, or categorization errors (detection of cues that were not there, or incorrect categorization of cues). Results: All groups performed similarly with respect to accurate identification of auditory and visual cues such that there was no identifiable impact in relation to group condition during both the practice and transfer phases. The SC group did commit less categorization errors (11.43%) when compared to the S (28.21%) and NF (31.43%) groups. Conclusion: The experimental findings supported the hypothesis that supportive feedback enhanced learning outcomes. While not demonstrated through accuracy of cue identification, this was demonstrated through a reduction in cue categorization errors. An additional hypothesis generated from the results of this thesis is that educational designs that allow for the commission of errors by learners followed by correction in the form of direct feedback or group lecture may predict faster attainment of expertise as noted in the reduction of errors. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Synchronous feedback has the ability to aid learning. It was hypothesized in this thesis that synchronous feedback that was supportive in nature would improve learning and transfer for learning the skill of visual and auditory cue identification in osteopathic diagnostic procedures. All participants received the same initial learning material, the same instructions for the practice phase of the experiment, and the same videos of a previously learned diagnostic procedure that they identified visual and diagnostic cues from. During the practice phase the three groups were the Supportive Feedback with Specific Content (SC), Supportive Feedback (S), and No Feedback (NF). The differences between groups were evident between diagnostic videos subsequent to the collection of answers for identified cues. The material differences were the delivery of supportive comments regardless of accuracy of answers (SC and S groups), the delivery of specific feedback when accurate cues were identified but placed in the wrong category (SC group only), or the absence of any commentary (NF group). All groups identified cues at similar levels such that the supportiveness of feedback showed no impact on performance. There was a notable difference between groups in relation to the commission of categorization errors where the SC group made less categorization errors with the S group and NF group committing errors at similar rates. The primary benefit of synchronous feedback in this experiment is that the instructor is able to identify errors and provide insight for correction.

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Imagery have been utilized in psychological practices and treatment. VR has recently been the focus of research with treatments for post traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, and phobias, among other social and behavioral issues. VR allows the researcher to create realistic controlled environments in which they are able to manipulate the experiment. Imagery permits the individual to imagine and recall scenarios from their past in order to create a more personal environment. This experiment aimed to expand upon VR practices and treatment in regards to alcohol research. In this experiment, 70 participants, 39 females and 31 males, were exposed to two VR alcohol and two Imagery alcohol cue environments. Subject craving and psychophysiological measures were taken across all four scenes and all baselines. Overall, craving measures demonstrated that female nondrinkers developed higher cravings during Imagery. Conversely, male social drinkers demonstrated higher cravings during VR. This study supports the use of VR environments in the study of alcohol cue reactivity.

<p> The role of verbal hypotheses in concept identification was explored by manipulating three variables affecting the relation between verbalized rules and classification performance. (i) Verbalizing rules before and after classification changed subjects' cue-sampling strategies and the control of verbal hypotheses over sorting performance. (ii) The difficulty of stimulus description affected how subjects utilized verbal hypotheses, and whether verbalized rules completely specified the cues used for classification. (iii) The number of irrelevant attributes changed the relative efficiency of stimulus-learning over rule-learning for concept identification.</p> <p> These investigations demonstrate effective techniques for varying and evaluating the importance of verbal rules for classification; and suggest that subjects' prior verbal habits markedly affect the degree of reliance placed on verbal hypotheses in concept attainment.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)