The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most popular indirect measure of attitudes in social psychology. It has been suggested that salience asymmetries are a non-associative contaminant of the IAT that threatens the accurate assessment of attitudes. Salience asymmetries in the IAT are claimed to correspond with visual search asymmetries, and differences in target familiarity. In this thesis, I propose that processing fluency is the common mechanism underlying both visual search asymmetries and familiarity. Several experiments were conducted to determine whether visual search asymmetries, familiarity, or processing fluency most reliably corresponds with salience asymmetry effects in the IAT. The first series of experiments revealed that processing fluency is a better predictor of salience asymmetry effects in the IAT than is visual search asymmetry (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3, a novel method was developed to distinguish between the effects of valence and salience in the IAT. Using this method, I demonstrated that the effects of salience in the IAT are consistent with a fluency account of salience asymmetries. Familiarity was also shown to produce salience asymmetry effects in the IAT (Chapter 4), which is also consistent with the fluency account. When fluency and familiarity were set against each other in Chapter 5, it was processing fluency, rather than familiarity, that predicted salience asymmetry effects in the IAT. Although processing fluency is a good predictor of salience asymmetries, the results of Chapter 6 reveal that the fluency account cannot explain all examples of salience asymmetries in the IAT. The data presented here are consistent with the view that the more fluently processed target category is compatible with the pleasant attributes on the grounds of salience asymmetries. The current experiments suggest that when there are valence differences between the target categories, salience asymmetries can potentially distort IAT effects. When the positive target category is more salient, salience asymmetries appear to increase IAT effects. In contrast, when the negative target category is more salient, salience asymmetries appear to decrease IAT effects. However, further evidence is required to determine how the effects of salience and valence combine in the IAT.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder commonly presenting with perceptual and cognitive dysfunction. Whereas previous work in PD suggests that abnormal basal ganglia activity has profound effects on integrated functioning of widespread cortical networks, the relation of specific network functions to the perceptual and cognitive impairments is still poorly understood. Here, I present a series of fMRI investigations of network-level functioning in non-demented individuals with PD with the aim of elucidating these associations. Study 1 examined the neural correlates of optic flow processing in 23 individuals with PD and 17 age-matched control participants (MC). An optic flow network comprising visual motion areas V6, V3A, MT+ and visuo-vestibular areas PIVC and CSv is known to be important for parsing egomotion depth cues in humans. The hypothesis was that individuals with PD would show less activation in these regions than MC when processing optic flow. While MC participants showed robust activation in this network, PD participants showed diminished activity within MT+ and CSv. Diminished CSv activity also correlated with greater disease severity. Study 2 investigated intrinsic network organization in PD with a focus on the functional coupling among three neurocognitive networks: the default-mode network (DMN), the salience network (SN), and the central executive network (CEN). Twenty-four individuals with PD and 20 MC participants were scanned at rest. The hypothesis was that PD participants would demonstrate dysfunctional SN coupling with the DMN and CEN. Relative to MC, in PD the CEN was less positively coupled with the SN and less anti-correlated with the DMN. Study 3 investigated the association between functional coupling and cognition in the same group that participated in Study 2. As hypothesized, anti-correlated functional coupling between the SN and DMN was related to successful performance on tests of executive function, psychomotor speed, and memory retrieval in MC but not in PD, suggesting that dysfunction within these networks could underlie early cognitive deficits in PD. Together, the results from the three studies suggest that dysfunctional activity in cortical networks important for visual motion processing and neurocognitive efficiency may underlie aspects of perceptual and cognitive impairment in PD. / 2017-12-06T00:00:00Z

Crises disrupt an organisation’s operations and harm its stakeholders. How an organisation-in-crisis is perceived to respond to the needs of affected stakeholders may significantly affect the firm’s recovery and future viability. Stakeholders and observers acquire much of their information about a crisis from news media coverage. This study accepts the principle that media framing can influence audience’s perceptions of reported stories. The research explores how three news media sources in Taiwan and Singapore framed the salience of stakeholders affected by the October 2000 crash in Taipei of Singapore Airlines’ flight SQ006. The study introduces a conceptual framework of crisis stakeholder salience drawn from stakeholder theory, crisis communication and media framing of crises and disasters. Using a mixed methods content analysis approach, the framework is applied to investigate the news media framing of SQ006 stakeholders in the sampled media texts. The findings show that the SQ006 crisis stakeholders were framed as salient through more dimensions than the three attributes of power, legitimacy and urgency recognised in a seminal stakeholder theory model of stakeholder salience. The findings have implications for further research and applications for crisis management practice, which are discussed.

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While hearing aids are optimized for listening to and hearing speech in noisy environ- ments, there are still many challenges when using hearing aids to listen to music. This could mean that hearing impaired individuals do not perceive music the same way a normal hearing person would. When two musical tones are played simultaneously at equal presentation levels, the tone with the higher frequency will be perceived as more salient for a normal hearing person. This phenomenon is referred to as the high voice superiority effect. This study examined how different types of hearing loss affect the neural pitch salience profile obtained with a computational model of the auditory periphery. More specifically, the high voice superiority effect was examined by generating neural pitch salience profiles for different combinations of simultaneous tones at different sound presentation levels. To model other aspects of hearing aid processing, an Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) and simple noise reduction filter were added to some of the simulations. The results show that less severe hearing loss types tend to have pitch salience profiles closer to normal after hearing aid amplification. The addition of the ADC to the simulation seems to have little effect on the pitch salience, whereas the noise reduction filter has a noticeable effect on how closely the pitch salience profile matches that of a normal hearing ear. For each different type of hearing loss there appears to be a trade-off between the ability of the upper tone and the lower tone to match normal hearing performance. Along with simulated piano tone results, pitch salience results are shown for live recordings of several instruments through hearing aids. The recordings are compared to ideal versions of the instrument parts. This study provides a starting point to improve hearing aid processing for music perception. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc) / While hearing aids are optimized for listening to speech, they still face challenges when listening to music. This study examined how different types of hearing loss and hearing aid amplification affect music perception, using the measure of neural pitch salience. The results show that less severe hearing loss types tend to have pitch salience profiles closer to normal after amplification. Along with simulated piano tone results, pitch salience results are shown for live recordings of several instruments through hearing aids. The recordings are compared to ideal versions of the instrument parts. This study provides a starting point to improve hearing aid processing for music perception.

The question "what is an emotion?" has been asked often throughout the history of philosophy, but few have come to an agreement about a definition or even how to study the emotions. In this thesis, I attempt to describe the nature and importance of emotions in terms of the way emotions affect one's experience of the world. I begin by analyzing five different theories of emotion: those of the Stoics, Aristotle, Spinoza, William James, and Sartre, which depict a wide range of theories that view emotion in both a positive and a negative sense. From them, I come to general definition of emotion that utilizes the strengths of the historical theories and goes beyond them. Then, I tum to addressing the way emotions affect the way the world is experienced. Using Heidegger, I claim that emotions attune people to the world, so that they notice different aspects of the world in one emotional state than they would in another emotional state. From here, the relationship between emotions and rationality is addressed. I claim that emotions are not irrational or arational, but are important to reason because they function as salience generators. As salience generators, emotions focus the reasoning process, narrowing down the options so that one can reason more quickly and with personal purpose. Finally, it is explained that emotion, though helpful to reason, is not a perfect way of knowing. Emotions are shown to be subjective, but not in a negative sense. They can be misleading at times, but they can still be trusted through three methods: (1) harmony between ways of knowing, (2) intersubjective corroboration, and (3) personal reflection.

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Memory plays an important role in defining how one behaves. The neurobiological mechanisms of memory have been studied extensively in animal models and the NMDA glutamate receptor has been identified to play an important role in the consolidation and reconsolidation of appetitive memories. Certain memories, depending on what was learned, can function differently and can be more difficult to disrupt based on a number of factors. Currently, no study has examined whether or not a reward-predictive stimulus attributed with incentive value is more difficult to disrupt than a stimulus that functions as a general reward-predictor. To determine the role of the NMDA receptor on memory consolidation with different functioning reward-predictive stimuli rats underwent a Pavlovian conditioned approach, where a post-session NMDA receptor antagonist was administered daily. Furthermore, to determine the role of the NMDA receptor on memory reconsolidation, another set of rats were trained on a Pavlovian conditioned approach task, after training was complete rats were presented with a reward-predictive stimuli followed by an administration of a NMDA receptor antagonist and then re-tested.