The aim of the thesis was to study how cognitive styles influence decision-making. From structural point of view, the thesis is divided into two parts. In the introductory theoretical part we point at decision-making, its definition and theory, and then we deal with structure and factors which influence decision-making, as well as rules for decision-making and decision errors. In theoretical part we concentrate on cognitive styles. We define cognitive styles and present their possible classifications to a reader, at the same time we focus on few of them in detail. Thereafter we concentrate on relation between cognitive styles and decision-making. In conclusion of theoretical part we focus on adolescence, we describe specific of cognitive and emotional development, as well as adolescents' decision-making. The aim of empirical part was to find out whether decision errors occur in decision-making between older adolescents and to what extent, and how intervening variable influences them - cognitive style reflexivity-impulsivity, gender, and attended secondary school. Research consisted of 184 secondary school graduates from three secondary schools in Senica. Test TE- NA-TO was used for exploration of cognitive styles. At the same time we studied framing effect and anchoring and adjustment effect...

The abuse of prescription stimulants among college students is a growing public health concern. While these substances are often viewed as safe, “smart drugs”, they are associated with a number of maladaptive outcomes, ranging from poorer academic performance to cardiovascular incidents and even death. To date, the majority of research on the abuse of these substances have focused on demographic factors which are not amenable to intervention, such as race, Greek organization status, and class rank. The current study examined family factors, academic stress, and impulsivity as potential risk factors which are amenable to intervention. In a sample of 335 undergraduate students, no associations were found between family variables and prescription stimulant abuse or academic stress and prescription stimulant abuse. Inconsistent support was found for an association between impulsivity and prescription stimulant abuse.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has become the disorder of the nineties. The name has been bandied about by experts, teachers, parents, lay people and specifically the media, however, when a child or children are diagnosed with this disorder, parents, and in particular for this study, mothers, are left feeling confused, frightened and uncertain. The method of treatment is the specific study of this research. Ritalin is the most popular form of treatment utilised for the alleviation of symptoms, yet mothers are afraid they are drugging their children or taking the easy way out. Constant media hype and ignorance exacerbate the mother’s experiences and they are left in a quandary of which course to follow. The purpose of this research was to investigate if mothers share similar experiences when administering Ritalin for the treatment of symptoms of ADHD. Literature indicates enormous controversy surrounding this disorder and in particular the treatment methods recommended to alleviate symptoms. There are two strongly opposed camps regarding the negativity or positivity toward utilising this schedule 7 drug. Media publicity intensifies the individual’s uncertainty of administering this drug and suggests bad parenting as the reason mothers resort to Ritalin. The goal of this study is to highlight the mother’s experiences and to become aware of their feelings and isolation when being advised that their child or children have ADHD. The lack of awareness and the uncertainty of which course to follow seems to have profound affects and cause mothers to have negative experiences. The purpose of this research is to see if mothers share similar experiences regarding the administering of Ritalin as a treatment method for ADHD. The researcher is hopeful that the outcome of this small study will assist experts, counselors and lay people to empathize and recognize the mother’s plight in this regard, and consequently for them not to feel as troubled and unaided without this knowledge. Finally, she expects that the research may help mothers to be aware that they are not alone with their predicament and sense of apprehension and uncertainty regarding the administering of a drug like Ritalin to assist in alleviating the symptoms presented. / Dissertation (MA (Counselling Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Psychology / unrestricted

The weight loss industry has come under fire from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in recent years due to consumer claims that many firms, marketing weight loss products, are using advertisements in an attempt to deceive consumers. Illegitimate weight loss claims have created so much concern that a White Paper call-to-action to investigate misleading weight loss advertisements has been filed. Despite recent interest, little attention has been garnered concerning the understanding of why consumers respond to potentially misleading weight loss claims. Intuitively, an understanding of why consumers fall prey to weight loss claims may aid academics, practitioners, and policy makers as they make important decisions relative to the weight loss industry and its practices. This study fills that void by applying a theory of visceral influences (TVI) to the context of weight loss advertising. Loewenstein's TVI was developed to aid in explaining why consumers make decisions contrary to their long-term self-interest. Visceral influences are drive states that have a direct hedonic impact, have an effect on the relative desirability of various goods and activities, and consequently, have a strong influence over the decisions consumers make. Common visceral cues (cues associated with any reward linked to a visceral factor) include proximity of reward, vividness of reward, and visual priming. To adequately test TVI in the context of weight loss advertising, a two step approach was used. First, advertiser intent was assessed through content analysis of weight loss advertisements. Second, composite advertisements were created from the content analysis to assess subject response to visceral cues common in weight loss advertising. MANOVA results show that the presence of visceral cues affected subjects' thoughts, buying impulse, affective reaction, intentions, and product evaluation. This research makes the following contributions. First, it addresses an area of public policy where there is a need for research to shape future legislation. Second, it provides an initial empirical examination of the effects of visceral cues on subjects' providing a foundation for further application and theory building. Third, it reveals that visceral cues effects are moderated by an individual's level of involvement with a reward.

Objectives: The objective of this study was to prove concepts in the characterization of suicidal patients and the possible usefulness of those markers to potentially identify patients with a higher risk for suicidality. Methods: Patients with a recent suicide attempt were compared with patients suffering from depression, adjustment disorder, anxiety, or eating disorders without suicidality, healthy controls and remitted patients with a history of at least 1 suicide attempt (≥1 year). We analyzed impulsivity (Barratt Impulsivity Scale, BIS) and saliva cortisol concentrations. Results: Independently of suicidality and disease state patients display higher BIS scores than healthy controls. Saliva cortisol levels tend to be higher in patients in the acute disease state than in remitted patients and healthy controls. Conclusions: Saliva cortisol may be a useful marker that reveals alterations in nonsuicidal patients suffering from depression, adjustment disorder, anxiety, or eating disorders who might be at risk.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(医学) / 甲第22745号 / 医博第4663号 / 新制||医||1046(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻 / (主査)教授 林 康紀, 教授 伊佐 正, 教授 村井 俊哉 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Medical Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a certain set of abuse household dysfunction experiences that many children in the United States experience. Children who experience multiple ACEs are more likely to have negative mental and physical health issues as they grow older. These outcomes include ADHD, depression, cancer, heart disease, and early death. In this study, I examined the effectiveness of child centered play therapy (CCPT), a developmentally appropriate treatment modality, with children who have experienced two or more ACEs and who are also demonstrating inattention and impulsivity symptoms. Participants were 34 students from five Title 1 elementary schools in the southwest United States (28 males and 6 females; age range 5-8 years old with a mean age of 6.12). In the sample, participants were comprised of 29.4% African American (n = 10), 38.2% Caucasian (n = 13), 17.6% Hispanic/Latino (n = 6), and 14.7% identified as biracial (n = 5). Participants were randomly assigned to a treatment group that received 16 CCPT 30-minute sessions twice a week (n = 17) or a waitlist control group (n = 17) that received treatment at the conclusion of the study. Using a factorial ANOVA, results indicated statistically significant improvement of CCPT treatment group over waitlist control group on the ADDES-4 School Total and the DOF Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Problems scale indicating that CCPT was an appropriate treatment model for children who have experienced ACEs and inattention and impulsivity symptoms.

Fear of crime is an issue that has long been a part of mainstream society through politics and media. However, research on the specific mechanisms of fear and the effects on behavior is sparse. After considering the victim-offender overlap consistently found within the literature, the present study was based on the theory posed within Schreck, Stewart, and Fisher (2006) in which those who are low in self-control may have altered perceptions of fear or risk of crime that might increase the likelihood that the individual will be in risky locations conducive to victimization. The current study also included a novel feature in which fear of crime is measured by two separate constructs, an emotional fear response to crime as well as a cognitive risk perception of crime as suggested in Rountree and Land (1996). This study will utilize data collected from 3,692 seventh-graders in Kentucky as part of the Rural Substance Abuse and Violence Project. It is believed that this study will help to better explain the process behind school victimization in particular, not only for intervention and prevention purposes for offending behavior, but to also prevent victimization.

Impulsivity-related traits explain a significant and meaningful level of variance in the prediction of drinking behavior. Previous research has demonstrated that although risk taking propensity has been conceptualized as a "trait-like" construct, there are contextual and situational factors that affect an individual's likelihood of engaging in risk taking behavior, including drinking behavior. Despite the well-established relationship between alcohol use and risk behavior (e.g., risky sexual behavior, physical assault, etc.), it is unclear how alcohol-related context influences risk taking on a computerized behavioral task. Grounded in alcohol expectancy theory (which holds that information processing about the rewarding effects of alcohol mediates the influences of different affective processes on drinking-related behavior), the present study—using online-based assessments—examined whether implicitly priming undergraduate social-drinking participants with alcohol-related stimuli (images and arousing expectancy words) would lead to greater risk taking and disinhibition on computerized tasks. Results were complicated by baseline group differences in drinking, expectancies, and the day of the week in which participants completed the task; regardless, the central hypothesis was not supported, as participants exposed to alcohol images and expectancy words were not significantly riskier on the BART or more impulsive on the Go/No-Go than participants exposed to neutral images and words. Exploratory analyses indicated that participants who completed the tasks on days associated with drinking (Thursdays through Saturdays) were significantly riskier than participants who completed the tasks on other days, and that this effect was the strongest when participants were exposed to alcohol primes. While consistent with the context sensitivity of alcohol cognitions and risk taking, the lack of random assignment to day of the week precludes causal interpretation. Nonetheless, the results indicate that research on the assessment of risk taking in a naturalistic context (e.g., through ecological momentary assessment) is warranted.

Recent research suggests that obesity is linked to prominent alterations in learning and decision-making. This general difference may also underlie the preference for immediately consumable, highly palatable but unhealthy and high-calorie foods. Such poor food-related inter-temporal decision-making can explain weight gain; however, it is not yet clear whether this deficit can be generalized to other domains of inter-temporal decision-making, for example financial decisions. Further, little is known about the stability of decision-making behavior in obesity, especially in the presence of rewarding cues. To answer these questions, obese and lean participants (n = 52) completed two sessions of a a computerized monetary delay discounting task, including a novel priming paradigm. In the first session, general differences between groups in financial delay discounting were measured. In the second session, I tested the general stability of discount rates. Additionally, participants were primed by affective visual cues of different contextual categories before making financial decisions. I found that the obese group showed stronger discounting of future monetary rewards than the lean group, but groups did not differ in their general stability between sessions nor in their sensitivity toward changes in reward magnitude. In the obese group, a fast decrease of subjective value over time was directly related to a higher tendency for opportunistic eating. Obese in contrast to lean people were primed by the affective cues, showing a sex-specific pattern of priming direction. The findings demonstrate that environments rich of cues, aiming at inducing unhealthy consumer decisions, can be highly detrimental for obese people. It also underscores that obesity is not merely a medical condition but has a strong cognitive component, meaning that current dietary and medical treatment strategies may fall too short.:1. Introduction 1.1 Obesity as a global epidemic 1.2 Etiology of the obesity epidemic 1.3 The cognitive component – impulsivity as a potential risk factor for the development of obesity 1.4 Impulsivity 1.4.1 Impulsivity and obesity – current knowledge 1.4.2 Outlook: impulsivity and eating behavior in obesity 1.5 Delay discounting 1.5.1 Neurological correlates of delay discounting 1.6 Delay discounting and obesity 1.6.1 First aim of the present thesis: establishing a general difference in delay discounting task performance between lean and obese 1.7 General stability of decision-making preferences 1.7.1 Stability towards external cues / Priming 1.7.2 Priming and obesity 1.8 Aim of this thesis 2. Original publication 3. Summary 3.1 Introduction and research questions 3.2 Methods 3.3 Results and discussion 3.4 Implications 4. Bibliography 5. Anlagen