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The relation between mental ability and speed of auditory discrimination was investigated during an auditory oddball task with backward masking. Behavioural and electrophysiological data were collected from 58 females. Across target discrimination conditions that varied in the interval between the target and the masking stimuli and in the tonal frequency of the target and masking stimuli, HA participants displayed faster RT and more accurate discriminations than LA participants. HA participants also had shorter P300 and MMN latency and larger P300 amplitude than LA participants. The effects suggest that the speed of accessing STM is faster for HA than LA participants. Moreover, the pattern of results obtained with these data eschews task difficulty effects that would endorse a sensory discrimination hypothesis.

Theories of contingency judgements generally agree that (1) memory is a structure that possesses a limited capacity and that (2) it plays an important role in the detection and assessment of covariations. Empirical evidence, although limited in the specific context of contingency judgements, seems to support these notions. While theorists agree that some information needs to be held in memory in order to reach a contingency judgement, they disagree, however, on the exact type of information. As a result, they offer different predictions as to what would increase memory load as involved in contingency judgements. Kareev (1995, 1997) implicitly assumes that people attempt to memorize the sequence of events leading to a contingency judgement and, therefore, the longer the series of events, the higher the memory load. On the other hand, Wagner (1976, 1981; Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) proposes that people base their judgement on the strength of a "mental bond" rather than the recall of the series of episodes. In this view, the manipulation that taxes memory capacity is not the length of a series of events but the presence of multiple simultaneous contingencies. The current thesis aimed at clarifying the role that memory plays in the assessment of covariations by contrasting these two opposing viewpoints. Five experiments examined the role of memory capacity in contingency judgements by means of: (1) increasing the length of the series of single events experienced; (2) increasing the number of contingencies presented simultaneously; (3) examining the effect of individual memory capacity. Results generally support Wagner's theory with additional findings falling outside of the theory's explanatory power.

In 4 experiments, participants judged the contingency between compound predictors and an outcome, as well as the contingency between the compounds' constituent elements and the outcome, in different contingency and similarity conditions. The Rescorla-Wagner (1972) and Pearce (1987) models of associative learning describe different processes through which a compound predictor becomes associated with an outcome, and how responses to a compound are mediated by the association between its constituent elements and the outcome. According to the Rescorla-Wagner model, when a compound is paired with an outcome an association will develop between each element of the compound and the outcome, and responding to the compound will reflect the associative strength accrued to each element in an additive fashion. According to the Pearce model, a compound is associated with the outcome in its entirety (i.e., as a configural cue), and responding to the compound is related to both the associative strength of the configural cue and the associative strength generalised to the compound from other predictors as a function of similarity. Across experiments and conditions, compound predictors were assessed independently of the normative relation between their constituent elements and an outcome. Manipulations of the similarity among predictors, measured as the proportion of elements they share, did not impact judgements of compound predictors. Findings are consistent with the notion that compound predictors are functionally independent of their constituent elements, and possible modifications of the Rescorla-Wagner and Pearce models to account for these findings are discussed. A configural associative model that assumes no generalisation of associative strength among predictors appears to provide the best fit to the empirical findings.

The cognitive approach to the study of emotion is grounded in the belief that individuals are active agents and are able to exercise control over thought processes, motivation and behavior. Cognitions, causal thoughts in particular, play a central role in behavior and affect generation. Emotion depends upon how the individual cognitively appraises an event, not the event per se. Vallerand (1987) has proposed an intuitive-reflective appraisal model for self-related affects to examine the roles of intuitive (e.g. subjective performance assessment) and reflective (e.g. causal attributions) appraisals in the generation of self-related and general-type affects. The purpose of the present study was to test this model in a competitive fencing tournament and ascertain the relationships between three cognitive antecedents (intuitive appraisal, causal attributions, and intellectualization) and self-related and general-type affects. Results showed support for the main postulates of the model. Intuitive appraisal was found to have important and necessary effects on self-and general-type affects. This intuitive appraisal was shown to have more of an effect on affects than objective outcome (win/loss). Reflective appraisal processes, in the forms of causal attributions and task importance, were not necessary for affect generation, though task importance played a significant minimizing role in the experience of positive self- and general-type affects, particularly in the perceived failure condition. The results of the present study promote the use of sport specific models in the understanding of the relationship between athletes' cognitive antecedents and affect generation.