<p> Adherence to psychotropic medication is a critical aspect of treatment for the management of psychotic disorders. While the literature on the need for medication adherence is extensive, little research has explored the relationship between the negative symptoms of psychosis and medication adherence. Since negative symptoms are enduring, stable, and strongly correlated with poor outcome, it is vitally important for research to explore the role of negative symptoms in regards to adherence to psychotropic medication. Given its potentially significant consequences for treatment interventions, the purpose of this study was to contribute to the exceedingly limited body of research exploring the relationship between the negative symptoms seen in psychosis and medication adherence. This study examined if there is a relationship between the two and whether causality could be determined should a significant relationship exist between medication adherence and negative symptoms. This study utilized data previously collected at the UCLA Aftercare Research Program for studies examining aspects of outpatient psychiatric treatment. The 148 participants had a mean age of 22.5 years and were in the midst of their first psychotic episode upon study entry. Data from the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale, Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms, and medication adherence ratings were collected over the course of 12 months. Analyses revealed a significant relationship between the presence of negative symptoms and medication nonadherence. Analyses examining the temporal relationship between the two variables revealed that initial medication nonadherence was significantly associated with subsequent negative symptoms. However, once the impact of positive symptoms was controlled for as a potential mediating variable, the strength of the relationship between medication adherence and negative symptoms dissipated. After controlling for the role of reality distortion, the only negative symptoms significantly associated with medication nonadherence were the BPRS Negative Symptom Factor, BPRS Emotional Withdrawal, and BPRS Self-Neglect. Consequently, it appears that negative symptoms are more strongly associated with positive symptoms than with medication adherence. Replication of these findings and further research exploring the relationship between positive and negative symptoms as they relate to medication adherence is needed in order to improve treatment interventions focused on medication adherence.</p>

An experiment was conducted to examine how eye movements during reading of regular and phrase-segmented texts vary with reading performance. Each participant read a set of either regularly formatted or phrase-segmented texts as eye movements were monitored. Each text was followed by a set of comprehension questions. The effects of individual differences (high- vs. low-performance readers) and text formatting (regular vs. phrase-segmented) were investigated by examination of readers' eye movement patterns. Previous research has revealed that poor readers' performance on tasks that require syntactic processing differs from that of good readers', and that poor readers' comprehension and reading rate improves when presented with phrase-segmented text. It was hypothesized that high- and low-performance readers' eye movements would differ during regular text reading in replication of previous research, and that furthermore low-performance readers' eye movements while reading phrase-segmented text would resemble those of high-performance readers' in the same condition. Results revealed differences between high- and low-performance readers' eye movements for regular texts, but not for phrase-segmented texts. This was due to changes in eye movement measures across text conditions for low-performance readers only.

The basis for the present research stems from concerns for women who smoke after they deliver their infants. This becomes especially relevant when behaviors that affect the woman's health and the health of her infant are jeopardized. Based on the tenets of Bandura's social-cognitive theory, factors associated with cigarette smoking for this population emerge. Self-efficacy theory, a major component of social-cognitive behavior, supports the contention that self-efficacy is a major component to self-regulation of one's behavior and applicable to smoking cessation for women in the postpartum period. For this study, a cognitive-behavioral model of smoking status was developed in order to examine the role of self-efficacy in the smoking process. Stress and social support, known to be associated with levels of self-efficacy, have been included in the model to understand their relationship to postpartum women and smoking status. Data for this analysis was obtained from a follow-up study of 103 of the 385 eligible women who were one year or more postpartum and who were previously enrolled in a randomized clinical trial known as the Perinatal Education Program (PEP, N = 469). As proposed by the model, results indicate remote from delivery time (12 months or more postpartum), self-efficacy is a mediating factor in the stress smoking relationship. However, social support was not found to moderate self-efficacy and the smoking relationship. As a whole, when comparing women who currently smoke and women who quit or never smoke, higher stress, lower number of supportive individuals, and a partner who smokes were significantly related to a woman's increased likelihood to be a smoker.

The current research was aimed at addressing several specific questions regarding the integration of world knowledge during language comprehension. First, what is the time course of the on-line integration of semantic and world knowledge information? Secondly, which are the crucial brain areas involved in these processes? It is a long-standing issue whether or not semantic information is prepackaged into the mental lexicon and therefore more immediately available than world knowledge that is necessary to assign a truth-value to a sentence. Two ERP studies were performed to investigate this question. Subjects were presented with sentences like the following types (critical words are underlined): (a) "Amsterdam is a city that is very old and lively." (Correct); (b) "Amsterdam is a city that is very new and lively." (World Knowledge Violation); (c) "Amsterdam is a city that is very thin and lively." (Semantic Violation). Sentence (b) is semantically well-formed, but not true, when considering the founding date of Amsterdam. In contrast, in sentence (c) the semantics of the noun "city" makes the adjective "thin" not applicable. The question was whether or not the waveforms for (b) would result in an N400 effect with the same latency and topography as a lexical semantic N400-effect (c). The ERP waveforms for both (b) and (c) resulted in a clear and sizable N400 effect, with comparable onset and peak latencies. Additionally, (c), but not (b) resulted in an additional late positivity with a posterior distribution. To address the second issue: what are the crucial brain areas involved in these processes, a fMRI version of the experiment was performed. Results indicated that both (b) and (c) activated the left inferior frontal gyrus. In addition, (c), but not (a) or (b), resulted in activation of the left posterior parietal region. Post-integration processes may be responsible for this differential activation found for the world knowledge and semantic conditions. The results of this research indicate that during on-line sentence comprehension world knowledge information is integrated as quickly as lexical semantic information. The left prefrontal cortex might be involved in this recruitment/integration process.

Present models of bilingual lexical processing assume common meaning representations between lexicons. The nature of these representations is such that a single meaning "node" or "set of nodes" is thought to subserve L1 and L2 translation-equivalent forms. Models of this type face two critical problems. First and foremost is the very real problem that there are very few true translation equivalents. Not only do translation "equivalents" frequently mean slightly different things, but quite often they can be used language specifically in ways the translation equivalent is unable to capture. The second problem facing these models is asymmetrical lexical performance between languages in translation priming tasks. For example, priming is robust in the L1 → L2 direction, but not in the L2 → L1 direction. Models assuming a symmetrical relationship between a common meaning node (or set of nodes) and translation-equivalent lexical forms cannot provide a straightforward account of these phenomena. In the present thesis I propose the sense model, which holds that meaning representations are comprised of distinct semantic senses, some of which may be shared across languages. A representational asymmetry is assumed between lexicons, such that, on average, L1 forms are associated with more semantic senses than L2 forms. Initially, L2 forms are associated with a restricted number of semantic senses that have been extracted from the semantic entry of the L1 translation equivalent. Later on in L2 lexical development, semantic senses specific to the L2 are incorporated into the semantic entries of L2 lexical items. The value of the sense model comes in its ability to account straightforwardly for (one) how translation "equivalents" can be used language specifically in ways not captured by its translation (the particular sense is not shared across languages); and (two) the patterns of asymmetrical lexical performance between languages. Because many of the senses represented in L2 entries are also represented in their L1 equivalent, the proportion of L2 senses activated by the L1 equivalent is large, if not complete. Conversely, because there are many senses represented in L1 entries that are not similarly represented in the L2 equivalent entry, the proportion of L1 senses activated by the L2 equivalent is very small. Hence, the translation priming asymmetry is argued to be the logical consequence of the representational asymmetry assumed by the sense model.

Recent theories propose that subtle emotional feelings can guide decision-making when insufficient information about the source of those feelings exists. To assess whether emotion experiences possess the properties necessary to play this functional role, subjects in the present study reported on feelings elicited by visually masked emotional pictures. Potential sources of individual differences in the ability to discriminate subtle "gut feelings" were also explored. 16 long-term meditators and 18 non-meditators viewed a series of pictures with pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant content, both masked and nonmasked, and reported on experienced valence and arousal, while measures of skin conductance (SCR), facial electromyography (EMG), and heart rate (HR) were simultaneously recorded. Masked emotional pictures did not elicit discriminatory SCR or EMG responses. HR discriminated among masked pictures by arousal, but not by valence. Both meditators and controls discriminated among masked stimuli in self-reported arousal, but only non-meditators demonstrated accurate valence discrimination. Unpleasant pictures were better discriminated from neutral pictures than were pleasant pictures. Ability to detect feelings elicited by masked stimuli was unrelated to heartbeat detection ability, cardiac vagal tone, or self-reported attention to emotional states, though self-reported emotional clarity predicted better arousal discrimination. It is proposed that awareness of emotion experience may involve both a visceral awareness and a non-visceral awareness of feeling qualities. Long-term meditation practice of the type adopted by participants in the present study, with its focus on the former, may reduce access to non-visceral feeling states.

The purpose of this study was to explore the course conditions that support the development of meaningful student learning in an introductory undergraduate human anatomy and physiology course. The study was conducted during an 8-week summer-session at a small mid-western university. Classroom observations and taped recordings of class sessions were used to determine content episodes within the instructional unit, opportunities for learning created by the instructor, demonstrations of information processing by the students, and the ways in which the instructor used the Personal Response System (PRS). Student interviews were used to determine students' level of understanding of pre-test and post-test items. Student interviews and a questionnaire were used to determine students' perceptions of the PRS as a learning tool. Findings reveal that the instructor had different expectations of students when posing verbal questions in-class than he had when posing PRS questions. The use of verbal questions did not permit demonstrations of student understanding; however, the use of the PRS did result in demonstrations of student understanding. Questions posed via the use of the PRS were categorized according to cognitive level. The cognitive level of the questions increased with time over the instructional unit and within the content episodes. Students demonstrated deeper understanding of the topics after instruction than they did before instruction. Students reported more in-class thinking about the content, more discussion of the content with their neighbors, more regular class attendance, more opportunities for deeper learning, and a general preference for the PRS over traditional lectures. Findings of the study indicate that the instructional decisions about the use of questions influences the opportunities for students to process information and demonstrate their understanding of the content and that students valued these opportunities. A better understanding of the conditions that promote meaningful student learning may help us make decisions that result in improved student learning in our own classes.

Concepts are not sets of necessary and sufficient conditions. This fact has caused trouble for both psychologists and philosophers. The resultant psychological theories of concepts, which are primarily aimed at the functional role of concepts, are very specific but this specificity is at the expense of excluding some types of concepts. The resultant philosophical theories of concepts, which are primarily aimed at the content of concepts, are general but this generality is at the expense of understanding the role concepts play in the mind. My dissertation proposes a bridge between psychological and philosophical theories of concepts. This bridge has two parts: The first part is a general model of the functional role of concepts which is philosophically rigorous but can house existing psychological theories of concepts. The second part is a theory of the (narrow) content of concepts, which is informed by the mass of psychological evidence, but is general enough to encompass all concepts. The key in both parts is the role that concepts play in inference. I argue for the inferential model of concepts, which claims that the functional role of a concept is its inferential role. I also argue for inferential-role semantics which claims that the (narrow) content of a concept is determined by its inferential role. The overlooked advantage of this inferentialist position is the ability to draw on an account of reasoning to solve problems in developing a theory of concepts. My dissertation can then be seen as unifying philosophical and psychological work on concepts with philosophical and psychological work on reasoning. This is most obviously seen in the final chapter which offers an account of compositionality for inferential-role semantics.

Cognitive representations of the world have been typically studied by means of either qualitative approaches or bivariate association. The sketch map technique and other strategies of data collection have been used in the past, in many instances applied to reduced sets of world nations. In the present study sketch maps of the world drawn by Brazilian university students were examined in terms of frequency of inclusion of nations to verify the combined influence of potential determinants of that inclusion. A graphical procedure was devised to differentiate shared and parochial views of the world and to simultaneously indicate possible predictive variables. The quantitative analysis of the effects of world countries' characteristics upon the inclusion of nations on the sketch maps was proposed as an additional step for a better understanding of the complex process of formation of cognitive representations of the world. Map features and other characteristics of world countries were analyzed and selected by correlational techniques, including exploratory factor analysis, to be part of multiple regression models used to account for the inclusions of nations. The exploratory regression analyses were performed on a random half of the Brazilian sample of students, according to a combined use of hierarchical analysis, based on classes of causal precedence of the independent variables, and stepwise selection within those classes. The final multiple regression equations accounted for approximately 75 percent of the variance of the dependent variable. A cross-validation procedure was then accomplished, which confirmed the results of the exploratory phase. The main influences upon the inclusion of nations by the Brazilian students were exerted by world indicators of geopolitical, military and economic power, as represented by the strategy board game "WARII" and citations of nations on a Brazilian newspaper. The second group in importance was formed by structural characteristics of the countries, such as their size and map positioning. Cultural aspects of world countries, including the involvement of the country in soccer, presented the smallest effect.

The purpose of this project was to investigate which spatial and physical object properties 9-month-old infants would use to trace an object in time and space. The particular object characteristics of interest were size, location and features. A two-location task was used, with looking time as the dependent measure. Infants observed a small toy troll, which was subsequently occluded. When the two flaps were removed, the infants observed either a standard or a change event. During the standard event no change occurred (the small troll was revealed at the same location). During a change event, some sort of physical or spatial change took place; the object might have changed its size (the large troll was revealed at the same location), its location (the small troll was revealed at the other location), its features (the small bear was revealed at the same location), or some combination of these attributes. Infants only observed one type of change event, depending on which of the seven conditions they were assigned to. The findings from this study can be interpreted in terms of two default assumptions: the Same Location/Same Object Rule and the Different Location/Different Object Rule. Nine-month olds use size cues to inform them about object identity in both situations; additionally, they use featural cues to inform them in the second case.