Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1991.

Introduction: An active area of tobacco regulatory science research focuses on examining the effects of varying the nicotine content of cigarettes as part of a potential national policy to lower their nicotine content levels to reduce addiction potential. The present study examines differences in the behavioral effects of reduced nicotine content cigarettes related to their menthol status. Menthol is the only cigarette flavoring that is still legally permissible according to Food and Drug administration regulations. Methods: Participants were 26 current adult smokers from three populations especially vulnerable to tobacco use and addiction (economically disadvantaged women, opioid-dependent individuals, individuals with affective disorders) dichotomized as menthol (n=11) or non-menthol (n=15) smokers. Participants completed 14 experimental sessions following acute smoking abstinence (CO<50% baseline level). Across sessions, participants smoked four Spectrum research cigarettes (22nd Century Group, Clarence, NY) with varying nicotine content levels (0.4mg/g, 2.4 mg/g, 5.2 mg/g, 15.8 mg/g) or their usual brand cigarette. Research cigarettes were mentholated or non-mentholated corresponding to participants usual brand. Upon completion of smoking, participants completed tasks measuring reinforcing efficacy, subjective effects, topography, and withdrawal and craving measures. Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance was used for all analyses (p<.05). Results: Main effects of menthol status, as well as interactions of nicotine dose and menthol were noted across subscales of subjective effects and direct assessments of reinforcing efficacy. Usual brand mentholated cigarettes produced a profile of equal or greater relative reinforcing effects than usual brand non-mentholated cigarettes, while mentholated research cigarettes produced a profile of effects that fell below (i.e., lower relative reinforcing effects compared to usual brand or non-mentholated cigarettes) those of non-mentholated research cigarettes. Conclusions: Mentholated research cigarettes produce a lower profile of reinforcing and subjective effects, without discernible differences in smoking topography. The potential impact of mentholation on reinforcing efficacy and subjective effects should be considered when using Spectrum research cigarettes.

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This experiment examined the effects of instructions on the prosocial behavior (i.e., helping, sharing, teaching, and sympathy) of preschool children. Forty-eight individual children (X = 56.7 months) interacted with two adult women on two separate occasions, an initial session measuring baseline levels of prosocial behavior, and a second session several days later. In the second session, children received instructions in helping, sharing, and teaching, and an opportunity to rehearse, or practice, these prosocial behaviors. Children were given either power assertive instructions (i.e., instructions which directly told the child what to do), or inductive instructions (i.e., instructions which focused the child's attention on the needs of others). A control group received no instructions to behave prosocially. At the close of the second session, all children were given an immediate test to assess their level of helping, sharing, and teaching in the absence of instructions. An opportunity to display sympathy or comforting behavior was included to test for generalization of the instructional training to a new behavior. Approximately one week later a third session, where the child interacted with two new adult women who gave no instructions but presented opportunities for the child to help, share, teach, and sympathize, was included to test for internalization and long term generalization.

The repeated-measures experimental design utilized in the present study permitted a controlled comparison of the clinical efficacy of meditation treatment (MT), biofeedback treatment (BT), and pharmacological control (PC) conditions in the reduction of seven dependent variables: (1) within clinic (W-C) systolic blood pressure (SBP), (2) W-C diastolic blood pressure (DBP), (3) outside-clinic (0-C) SEP, (4) 0-C DBP, (5) within-session (W-S) SEP, (6) W-S DBP, and (7) antihypertensive medication requirements. Twenty-four medicated subjects with medically .verified essential hypertension were matched by rank-order on sex, age, and mean baseline levels of SBP and DBP, and randomly assigned to MT, BT, or PC conditions, each composed of five females and three males.

Although traditionally researchers have focused on making robotics more user-friendly from a human perspective, a new theory has begun to take shape in which humans take on the perspective of a robotic entity. The following set of studies examined the concept of technomorphism defined as the attribution of technological characteristics to humans. This concept has been mentioned anecdotally and studied indirectly, but there is nothing currently available to tap in to the various forms that technomorphism may take. Therefore, one goal of this dissertation was to develop a scale to fill that purpose. The results of the Technomorphic Tendencies Scale (TTS) indicated that there are marked differences between those who technomorphize and those who do not. Further, the wording of the TTS items may have influenced an individual’s propensity to respond in a technomorphic way. It may also be that, since technology is so new from an evolutionary perspective, it was difficult for humans to have the adequate verbiage to express their feelings about it. The other goal of this dissertation was to examine where the individual differences may lie in the tendency to technomorphize. During the scale validation process, the Technomorphic Tendencies Scale was used alongside other scales, including those measuring anthropomorphism, acceptance of technology, perceptions of robots, and personality characteristics to determine what characteristics helped determine in what contexts people technomorphize. The results indicated that there were indeed individual differences between those who do and do not technomorphize as it relates to other constructs. iv An examination of the individual differences also was performed by capturing the low level and more objective differences that may have existed. To do this, the researcher utilized an eye tracker to examine exactly what the participant focuses on while viewing the model pictures. There were indeed differences in the self reported and attentive level scores between those who fell in the different ranges of technomorphism. The results of both the scale validation and individual differences component of this dissertation suggested that technomorphism does indeed exist. Furthermore, it may be related to how we see each other. Through the study of technomorphism, researchers have come slightly closer to the question of how technology is influencing our perceptions of what it means to be human. The findings from this work should help fuel the desire of others in the field to think about the potential influences of technomorphism during the design and implementation of new devices as well as in how technology may be related to how we perceive each other.

The unique linguistic experience of bilingualism purportedly produces cognitive control advantages. Although there is a significant body of evidence supporting this view, there are also several recently published research studies that failed to replicate bilingual advantages. Furthermore, there is some evidence of a publication bias that favors findings supporting a bilingual advantage. The purpose of this study was to address this discrepancy in the literature by examining performance of bilinguals and monolinguals on a variety of cognitive control tasks. A second purpose was to determine how bilinguals are able to achieve better performance if they do indeed have an advantage. Specifically, we were interested in whether there were differences in the tendency for bilinguals and monolinguals to mind wander, a phenomenon associated with poorer cognitive control performance. We hypothesized that bilinguals would demonstrate better performance than monolinguals on Operation Span, Numerical Stroop, SART, Color- Shape, and Letter Memory tasks, which are measures of working memory, proactive inhibition, reactive inhibition, shifting, and updating, respectively. We further hypothesized that if bilinguals outperformed monolinguals on these tasks, this would be associated with less mind wandering for bilinguals. Participants completed all measures of cognitive control and were probed periodically throughout the tasks for mind wandering. Accuracy and reaction times where appropriate were recorded for each task, and data from 52 monolinguals and 52 bilinguals were analyzed. The results did not reveal any bilingual advantages. For all tasks, performance of the two groups was equivalent with the exception that monolinguals had faster reaction times for Numerical Stroop, SART, and Color-Shape tasks. There were also no differences between language groups in mind wandering tendencies. Secondary analyses examining age of acquisition (i.e., early versus late) and similarity of languages (i.e., same-script versus differentscript) did not change the overall pattern of no bilingual advantages. The lack of a bilingual advantage supports recent calls to temper bilingual advantage claims and shows a need for future research to address which underlying factors of bilingualism may or may not have an effect on cognitive control.

The purpose of this experiment was to determine whether rats’ preference to freeload (eat food pellets from a food cup) or to work for food (obtain food pellets by bar pressing) could be influenced by observing either a working or freeloading model in an adjacent operant chamber. Following equal amounts of bar press and freeloading training, 18 male Sprague-Dawley rats approximately 100 days cold were divided into three experimental groups. The first group was permitted to view a working model while being presented a choice between bar pressing and free-loading. A second experimental group was exposed to a freeloading model while also being presented a choice between bar pressing and freeloading. A control group was permitted to make a choice between working and freeloading with no model present. Two measures of the dependent variable were taken: the ratio of the amount of food earned by bar pressing to the total amount of food consumed and the number of food pellets obtained by bar pressing. The results of the study indicated that across testing days, there was a trend for the three groups to perform as expected. The group expose to the freeloading models earned only about one-third of its total food consumption while preferring to freeload the remainder. The group exposed to the working models preferred to earn more than half of its total food consumption via bar pressing. The total amount of food earned by the control group, predictably, fell between the amounts earned by the other two groups. The results are interpreted in terms of social facilitation.

The feature positive effect (FPE) is a phenomenon in discrimination learning by which learning occurs more quickly when the presence (Feature positive; FP), rather than absence (Feature negative; FN) of a stimulus indicates a response should be made. Although the FPE has been extensively corroborated, a reversal, or feature negative effect (FNE), has been found when a target stimulus comes from a smaller set of stimuli (Fiedler, Eckert, & Poysiak, 1988). Age differences in FP and FN learning indicate that older adults perform more poorly than young adults on both FP and FN tasks, and are likely related to decline in working memory (WM) throughout adulthood (Mutter, Haggbloom, Plumlee, & Schrimer, 2006). This study used a successive discrimination task to compare young and older adults’ performance across FP and FN conditions under low (three of a set of four stimuli were presented) and high (three of a set of six stimuli were presented) information load (IL). Results from rule articulation, final incorrect and 12 consecutive trials correct did not support the hypotheses, but trend analyses provided partial support. Under low IL, YA demonstrated a FN response bias whereas OA showed no bias. Under high IL, YA and OA demonstrated equivalent performance whether the target stimulus was present or absent in the FP condition. In the FN condition OA performed better when the target stimulus was absent while YA showed no bias. These findings indicate FN task performance varies by age and this variation changes based on IL condition.