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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.

Perspective taking, the main cognitive component of empathy, is considered within the psychological literature to be a significant part of human interaction. Despite extensive investigation into the outcomes of this construct, the process by which people take another's psychological point of view has received comparatively little attention. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate in three studies what the individual does when attempting to take the perspective of another person. The first study investigated the particular strategies which individuals use when engaging in perspective-taking behaviours. Dominant themes to emerge from this qualitative assessment of the perspective-taking process were the use of self- (e.g., switching places) and other-information (e.g., targets personal characteristics), of which the former appears to play the central role. Further elements of the perspective-taking process were also identified with the self-information theme. Of these, having experienced a situation similar to that of a target (similar past experience) was found to be a particularly strong aspect of the perspective-taking process and subsequently informed the rationale for the remaining two studies. In view of the findings from Study 1, the second study tested whether past experiences made it easier for participants to take the perspective of another person in a new, but similar situation and the extent to which other aspects, such as switching places with the target, made the perspective-taking process less effortful. Results revealed that similar past experience was the strongest predictor of the ease of the perspective-taking task. Moreover, the extent to which similar past experience increased ease of the perspective-taking process was moderated by the extent to which the participant reflected on that past experience. The final study in this thesis picked up the notion of reflection and examined whether increasing the extent to which an individual engages in self-reflection leads to a concomitant increase in the tendency to take another perspective and the ease with which this can be accomplished. After completion of an intervention program which had a strong focus on self-reflection and understanding of self, there was a noticeable trend for participants to improve on their capacity for self-reflection. The findings also revealed that individuals with a tendency to self-reflect in an insightful and non-ruminative manner demonstrated a similarly high level of general perspective-taking propensity and ease of perspective taking. The studies support the vital role of reflection on similar past experience to that of a target when engaging in perspective taking. This research underscores the importance of examining perspective taking as a process.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karolinska institutet, 2007. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karol. inst., 2004. / Härtill 6 uppsatser.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 39-41). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

The theory of relational complexity (RC) developed by Halford and his associates (Halford et al., 1998a) proposes that, in addition to the number of unique entities that can be processed in parallel, it is the structure (complexity) of the relations between these entities that most appropriately captures the essence of processing capacity limitations. Halford et al. propose that the relational complexity metric forms an ordinal scale along which both task complexity and an individual's processing capacity can be ranked. However, the underlying quantitative structure of the RC metric is largely unknown. It is argued that an assessment of the measurement properties of the RC metric is necessary to first demonstrate that the scale is able to rank order task complexity and cognitive capacity in adults. If in addition to ordinal ranking, it can be demonstrated that a continuous monotonic scale underlies the ranking of capacity (the natural extension of the complexity classification), then the potential to improve our understanding of adult cognition is further realised. Using a combination of cognitive psychology and individual differences methodologies, this thesis explores the psychometric properties of RC in three high level reasoning tasks. The Knight-Knave Task and the Sentence Comprehension Task come from the psychological literature. The third task, the Latin Square Task, was developed especially for this project to test the RC theory. An extensive RC analysis of the Knight-Knave Task is conducted using the Method for Analysis of Relational Complexity (MARC). Processing in the Knight-Knave Task has been previously explored using deduction-rules and mental models. We have taken this work as the basis for applying MARC and attempted to model the substantial demands these problems make on limited working memory resources in terms of their relational structure. The RC of the Sentence Comprehension Task has been reported in the literature and we further review and extend the empirically evidence for this task. The primary criterion imposed for developing the Latin Square Task was to minimize confounds that might weaken the identification and interpretation of a RC effect. Factors such as storage load and prior experience were minimized by specifying that the task should be novel, have a small number of general rules that could be mastered quickly by people of differing ages and abilities, and have no rules that are complexity level specific. The strength of MARC lies in using RC to explicitly link the cognitive demand of a task with the capacity of the individual. The cognitive psychology approach predicts performance decrements with increased task complexity and primarily deals with aggregated data across task condition (comparison of means). It is argued however that to minimise the subtle circularity created by validating a task's complexity using the same information that is used to validate the individual's processing capacity, an integration of the individual differences approach is necessary. The first major empirical study of the project evaluates the utility of the traditional dual-task approach to analyse the influence of the RC manipulation on the dual-task deficit. The Easy-to-Hard paradigm, a modification of the dual-task methodology, is used to explore the influence of individual differences in processing capacity as a function of RC. The second major empirical study explores the psychometric approach to cognitive complexity. The basic premise is that if RC is a manipulation of cognitive complexity in the traditional psychometric sense, then it should display similar psychometric properties. That is, increasing RC should result in an increasing monotonic relationship between task performance and Fluid Intelligence (Gf) - the complexity-Gf effect. Results from the comparison of means approach indicates that as expected, mean accuracy and response times differed reliably as a function of RC. An interaction between RC and Gf on task performance was also observed. The pattern of correlations was generally not consistent across RC tasks and is qualitatively different in important ways to the complexity-Gf effect. It is concluded that the Latin Square Task has sufficient measurement properties to allows us to discuss (i) how RC differs from complexity in tasks in which expected patterns of correlations are observed, (ii) what additional information needs to be considered to assist with the a priori identification of task characteristics that impose high cognitive demand, and (iii) the implications for understanding reasoning in dynamic and unconstrained environments outside the laboratory. We conclude that relational complexity theory provides a strong foundation from which to explore the influence of individual differences in performance further.

The role of discourse in the construction of institutional and academic knowledge is now recognised within a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, including social constructionism, the sociology of scientific knowledge, the rhetoric of inquiry and discursive psychology. The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which such discursive knowledge construction practices occur in relation to psychological phenomena. The site of this investigation was the highly contentious debate surrounding the reality of repressed/recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Ten 'popular' psychology texts (five supporting the concept of recovered memories and five questioning it) were discursively and rhetorically analysed in order to gain an understanding of how the authors of these texts deployed arguments to support their own positions and undermine those of their opponents. Five broad rhetorical resources were identified as being prominent in the texts, each of which was examined in detail to determine more specifically the source of their persuasive power. The five resources included authorial credibility, definitions, science, history and personal experience. Despite the meta-rhetoric surrounding the debate, which suggests that it is essentially an argument between researchers (drawing on scientific evidence) and clinicians (drawing on clinical experience), what was apparent was that all of these resources were utilised to varying degrees to support both pro- and anti- recovered memory positions. This analysis suggested that a reasonably structured set of discursive resources were available for making arguments about the nature of psychological phenomena. Furthermore, when given the opportunity, rhetors utilised as many of these resources as possible in order to produce a convincing argument, even when this resulted in inconsistencies within their texts. It was concluded that in the memory debate, the demands of the rhetorical imperative (to persuade the audience) often appear to be paramount, and should not be discounted by those seeking to understand this difficult and often distressing topic.