The goal of the present investigation was to explore the effects of automatic emotion regulation on the desirability bias. The desirability bias is the tendency to believe that one will experience desirable outcomes and not experience undesirable outcomes. Previous research has demonstrated that the desirability bias is due to affective reactions to potential events. Further, deliberate emotion regulation has been shown to reduce the desirability bias. The present investigation explored whether the desirability bias can be reduced by priming a nonconscious goal to regulate emotion before experience of affective reactions to an event. Participants were primed to either express or regulate their emotions before playing a game of chance where cards could result in positive, negative or neutral outcomes. Results showed that the method of priming emotion regulation or expression did not effectively elicit nonconscious goals. Because the manipulation was not effective, the effect of automatic emotion regulation on the desirability bias could not be examined and there was no effect of the prime on bias. Despite the failed manipulation, the findings are still beneficial to the desirability bias literature in that they demonstrate a clear desirability bias in participants' predictions with the use of a within-subjects design. A follow up study using a stronger prime of regulation to test the influence of automatic emotion regulation in reducing the desirability bias is discussed.

Reasoners who adopt the perspective of another can increase the proportion of logically valid inferences they make (Thompson, Evans, & Handley, 2005). A possible explanation is that shifting perspective promotes analytic reasoning. If this were the case, then shifting perspectives should also reduce the belief-bias effect. Furthermore, strong evidence should be preferred over weak evidence. To test this, 256 participants read twenty-four research descriptions that varied in evidence quality and degree of personal belief content. Participants indicated whether the data supported the researchers hypotheses. Belief bias was reduced when participants evaluated the data from the researchers perspective relative to their own. Evidence strength was an important determining factor in decision-making and it was sensitive to perspective and individual differences.

Reasoners who adopt the perspective of another can increase the proportion of logically valid inferences they make (Thompson, Evans, & Handley, 2005). A possible explanation is that shifting perspective promotes analytic reasoning. If this were the case, then shifting perspectives should also reduce the belief-bias effect. Furthermore, strong evidence should be preferred over weak evidence. To test this, 256 participants read twenty-four research descriptions that varied in evidence quality and degree of personal belief content. Participants indicated whether the data supported the researchers hypotheses. Belief bias was reduced when participants evaluated the data from the researchers perspective relative to their own. Evidence strength was an important determining factor in decision-making and it was sensitive to perspective and individual differences.

According to Joshua Greene’s dual-process theory, our moral judgments are processed in one of two systems in the brain referred to as the emotional (quick, unconscious) and rational (slow, conscious) system. The reason for why people tend to answer differently in the footbridge dilemma compared to the trolley dilemma is because the emotional system is dominating over the rational system. Research has demonstrated that patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage make more utilitarian judgments in moral dilemmas in relation to harmful situations. According to the dual-process theory, this is because the emotional system has been impaired which results in that the only working system is the rational system. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the dual-process theory tries to explain why our moral judgments tend to differ in some moral dilemmas. This thesis will also look at how the dual-process theory tries to explain why patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage make utilitarian judgments in relation to harmful situations. This thesis will sustain that the dual-process theory have gained strong empirical support, especially from the research that has been made on patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex damage. This thesis will also argue that some modifications needs to be made on the dual-process theory in order to make it stronger.

The goal of this proposal is to design a neurobiologically-based model that describes the switching mechanism in category learning based on existing category learning theory and model. COVIS is a neurobiologically-detailed theory of multiple systems in category learning. COVIS postulates two systems that compete throughout learning—a frontal-based declarative hypothesis-testing system that uses logical reasoning and depends on working memory and executive attention, and a basal ganglia-mediated system that uses procedural learning. However, no biological mechanism has been proposed to account for the interaction between the COVIS systems. We propose a model that employs a neurobiological-based circuit that describes the interaction and switching between the hypothesis-testing system and the procedural learning systems in COVIS. With the hypothesis-testing system and procedural learning system modeled as black boxes, the model focuses on the network that facilitates switching. In COVIS, both learning systems generate a response signal in each trial based on the stimuli given. Our model incorporates the Izhikevich firing model that represents the activity of the neuronal cells from the hyperdirect pathway of the cortico-basal ganglia network. The hyperdirect pathway acts as a gate for the response signal of the procedural learning system to reach the premotor units for action selection. We propose that the procedural learning system’s response is inhibited from approaching the premotor units when the hypothesis-testing system is in control of the response. However, if rule-based strategies fail, inhibition to the procedural system’s response is reduced. The reduction in inhibition results in the acceptance of responses from both learning systems in the premotor units. To validate the proposed model, we fit the model to two groups of participants in a perceptual category-learning task. One group of participants used the optimal procedural strategy in the task and the other used a suboptimal rule-based strategy. The categorization task was an information-integration task, whereby participants had to switch away from rule-based strategies and learn to integrate the stimulus dimensions to be able to perform optimally. We were able to differentiate the switchers from the non-switchers by adjusting the parameters in the model. In addition, we fitted another task to the model in which participants from different age groups with or without Parkinson’s disease were asked to switch between rule-based and procedural strategies on a trial-by-trial basis. We were able to match the learning curve, accuracy switch cost, and proportion of switchers of the different groups of participants.

SAMMANFATTNING Bakgrund Sjuksköterskor möter regelbundet patienter som befinner sig i akuta krissituationer, vilket är ett naturligt tillstånd i svåra lägen. För att identifiera och ge möjlighet att lindra patienters lidande i dessa situationer samt stödja patienter i en konstruktiv återhämtning, har sjuksköterskor ett betydelsefullt ansvar. Insikt i krisprocesser, sorgbearbetning, Dual-Process Theory samt klinisk definition av lidande kan då vara ett viktigt stöd. Detta då lindring av lidande är ett av sjuksköterskors fundamentala ansvarsområden. Syfte Syftet var att belysa sjuksköterskors upplevelser och erfarenheter av att möta patienter i akuta kristillstånd. Metod Studien utfördes som en litteraturöversikt. Datainsamlingen utgick från databaserna PubMed, CINAHL och PsycINFO. Totalt inkluderades 16 vetenskapliga artiklar, varav 13 med kvalitativa och tre med kvantitativa ansatser. Dessa redovisades i en matris och i löpande text med en efterföljande integrerad analys. Resultat Efter analys av resultaten identifierades tre kategorier. ”Kunskaper och erfarenheter” skildrade sjuksköterskors brist på kunskap inom krishantering samt värdet av erfarenheter. ”Utmanande omvårdnadsarbete” beskrev sjuksköterskors utmanande yrkesroll i krissituationer. ”Sjuksköterskors hanteringsstrategier” belyste självinsikt, självreflektion, stöd samt hanteringsförmåga. Slutsats Kunskapsbrist i krishantering och behov av mer utbildning upplevdes hos sjuksköterskor. Med rätt kunskap kan patienters behov mötas i akuta kriser och onödigt lidande undvikas, vilket kan resultera i lägre vårdkostnader. Sjuksköterskerollen ansågs betydelsefull för krisens utveckling och bör präglas av närvaro, lyhördhet, empati och existentiell reflektion. Omvårdnadsarbetet upplevdes utmanande utifrån patienter och anhörigas krav, samt ett integrerat teamarbete, vilket blir avgörande i krissituationer. Behovet av emotionell vård var omfattande och vårdlidande uppstod genom olika livsvärldsperspektiv hos sjuksköterska och patient.

Humans are a social species. Automatic affective responses generated by neural systems wired into our brains create a moral intuition or “gut-feeling” of wrong and right that guides our moral judgments. Humans are also an intelligent, problem solving and planning species with neural structures that enable cognitive control and the ability to reason about the costs and benefits of decisions, and moral judgments, not the least. Previous research suggests that moral intuition and moral reasoning operates on different neural networks - a dual process of moral cognition, that sometimes gives rise to an inner conflict in moral judgments. Early lesion studies found correlations between damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and changes in moral behaviour. This has been further established through brain imaging studies and the suggestion is that VMPFC mediates affective signals from the amygdala in moral decision making and is highly involved in generating the gut-feeling of right and wrong. However, some moral issues are complex and demand higher level processing than intuition, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) seems to be responsible for the rational, cost-benefit reasoning during moral judgments. Further, recent research suggests that during moral judgments, the brain employ neural systems that generates the representation of value, perspective and cognitive control as well as the representation of the mental and emotional states of others. The present thesis aims to investigate prominent and up to date research on the neural correlates of necessary components in moral cognition, and to examine the function of moral intuition versus reason in relation to current complex moral issues. Moral intuition is supposedly an adaption to favour “us” before “them”, not to be concerned with large scale cooperation, which may explain why we treat many moral issues with ignorance. Understanding how the moral brain works involve understanding what sort of tasks the neural mechanisms in moral cognition evolved to handle, which may explain why some modern issues are so difficult to solve.

The dual process theory proposes that evaluative conditioning is a form of learning distinct from Pavlovian conditioning and that it displays different functional characteristics such as not being subject to modulation. However, when assessed online as opposed to post-experimentally, modulation of evaluative conditioning by context change has been found in a contingency reversal procedure. Reversal of evaluative learning was found to be faster when trained in a different context rather than in the original training context. The present study addressed the question whether context change or instructions would affect the rate of reversal of evaluative learning and whether reversal learning would accelerate across repetitions. A picture-picture paradigm was used to expose participants to CS-US pairs and contingency was reversed three times during the experiment. Participants were required to provide online causal judgements and valence ratings after each set of 10 training trials. Context change, but not instructions, displayed a trend in affecting reversal of evaluative learning with participants displaying faster learning on trials immediately subsequent to contingency reversal. Instructions affected the reversal of contingency judgements. There was no evidence of acceleration across repetitions for either measure or manipulation.

The dual process theory proposes that evaluative conditioning is a form of learning distinct from Pavlovian conditioning and that it displays different functional characteristics such as not being subject to modulation. However, when assessed online as opposed to post-experimentally, modulation of evaluative conditioning by context change has been found in a contingency reversal procedure. Reversal of evaluative learning was found to be faster when trained in a different context rather than in the original training context. The present study addressed the question whether context change or instructions would affect the rate of reversal of evaluative learning and whether reversal learning would accelerate across repetitions. A picture-picture paradigm was used to expose participants to CS-US pairs and contingency was reversed three times during the experiment. Participants were required to provide online causal judgements and valence ratings after each set of 10 training trials. Context change, but not instructions, displayed a trend in affecting reversal of evaluative learning with participants displaying faster learning on trials immediately subsequent to contingency reversal. Instructions affected the reversal of contingency judgements. There was no evidence of acceleration across repetitions for either measure or manipulation.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:37:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CleantoRRF_DISSERT.pdf: 2516767 bytes, checksum: 61225edcfbca1f2e0d1e4f5701b940f5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-07-30 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico / The episodic memory system allows us to retrieve information about events, including its contextual aspects. It has been suggested that episodic memory is composed by two independent components: recollection and familiarity. Recollection is related to the vivid e detailed retrieval of item and contextual information, while familiarity is the capability to recognize items previously seen as familiars. Despite the fact that emotion is one of the most influent process on memory, only a few studies have investigated its effect on recollection and familiarity. Another limitation of studies about the effect of emotion on memory is that the majority of them have not adequately considered the differential effects of arousal and positive/negative valence. The main purpose of the current work is to investigate the independent effect of emotional valence and arousal on recollection and familiarity, as well as to test some hypothesis that have been suggested about the effect of emotion on episodic memory. The participants of the research performed a recognition task for three lists of emotional pictures: high arousal negative, high arousal positive and low arousal positive. At the test session, participants also rated the confidence level of their responses. The confidence ratings were used to plot ROC curves and estimate the contributions of recollection and familiarity of recognition performance. As the main results, we found that negative valence enhanced the component of recollection without any effect on familiarity or recognition accuracy. Arousal did not affect recognition performance or their components, but high arousal was associated with a higher proportion of false memories. This work highlight the importance of to consider both the emotional dimensions and episodic memory components in the study of emotion effect on episodic memory, since they interact in complex and independent way / O sistema de mem?ria epis?dica nos permite recuperar informa??es sobre eventos, incluindo os seus aspectos contextuais. Tem sido sugerido que a mem?ria epis?dica ? composta por dois componentes independentes: lembran?a e familiaridade. A lembran?a est? relacionada com a recupera??o v?vida e detalhada dos itens e sua informa??o contextual, enquanto a familiaridade ? a capacidade de reconhecer os itens previamente vistos como familiares. Apesar do fato de que a emo??o ? um dos processos mais influentes na mem?ria, poucos estudos t?m investigado o seu efeito sobre a lembran?a a familiaridade. Outra limita??o dos estudos sobre o efeito da emo??o na mem?ria ? que a maioria deles n?o considerou adequadamente os efeitos diferenciais do alerta e val?ncia positiva / negativa. O principal objetivo do presente trabalho ? investigar o efeito independente do alerta e val?ncia emocional na lembran?a e familiaridade, bem como testar algumas hip?teses que t?m sido sugeridas sobre o efeito da emo??o na mem?ria epis?dica. Os participantes da pesquisa realizaram uma tarefa de reconhecimento de tr?s listas de fotos emocionais: negativa de alto alerta, positiva de alto alerta e positiva de baixo alerta. Na sess?o de teste, os participantes tamb?m avaliaram o n?vel de confian?a de suas respostas. As avalia??es de confian?a foram utilizados para tra?ar curvas ROC e estimar as contribui??es da lembran?a e familiaridade no desempenho do reconhecimento. Como principais resultados, verificou-se que a val?ncia negativa aumentou o componente de lembran?a, sem qualquer efeito sobre a familiaridade ou acur?cia do reconhecimento. O alerta n?o afetou o desempenho de reconhecimento ou de seus componentes, mas o maior alerta foi associado com uma maior propor??o de falsas mem?rias. Este trabalho destaca a import?ncia de considerar as dimens?es emocionais e componentes de mem?ria epis?dica no estudo do efeito da emo??o sobre a mem?ria epis?dica, uma vez que eles interagem de forma complexa e independente