<p> Overgeneral memory (OGM) is a phenomenon of reduced autobiographical memory specificity observed in major depressive disorder (MDD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Individuals demonstrating OGM tend to describe past events generally rather than specifically recalling single memory occurrences. Research shows that OGM is perpetuated by three mechanisms: capture in the memory hierarchy due to trait rumination (CaR), functional avoidance of specific memory retrieval (FA), and impaired executive control (X), which together make up the CaR-FA-X model of OGM. Research on the CaR-FA-X model has historically looked at each mechanism in isolation. The current research aimed to compare the contributions of all three mechanisms to a measure of OGM, as well as to investigate possible interactions between the mechanisms, and compare the contributions of the CaR-FA-X model to those of an encoding predictor. Psychometric data on the three CaR-FA-X mechanisms, autobiographical memory specificity, cognitive attributional style, and mental health were collected from 107 undergraduate psychology students via online surveys, then analyzed in a hierarchical linear regression model. Executive control explained significant unique variance in OGM, with rumination making an indirect contribution. No other anticipated contributions from the CaR-FA-X model or memory encoding were observed. Methodological issues in non-clinical and computerized OGM research are highlighted.</p><p>

<p> Emotional Reaction of Experiencing Crisis in Virtual Reality (VR)/360&deg; Immersive technology is being used to provoke emotion and move millions of people to action. Because organizations and filmmakers are exploring more ways to use the immersive technology of VR and 360-degree video to evoke emotion, it is important to investigate what emotional reactions are experienced. Both VR and 360&deg; fall under the category of immersive media and the terms are used interchangeably in this study. NVivo 11 is used for the analysis of 1,700 Twitter texts between the years 2015 and 2017 after people view the crisis <i> Clouds Over Sidra</i> in VR/360&deg;. The appraisal theory of emotion serves as the framework to explore the interpretation of the subject&rsquo;s emotional reactions. Sentiment and thematic analysis reveal (a) an increase in empathy, (b) reports of emotional reactions including feelings of sadness, grief and anger, (c) greater understanding of the crisis (d) intentions to act related to the crisis, (e) importance of VR/360&deg; for educational use, and (f) the power of VR/360&deg; and its ability to alter fields of education, humanitarian work, and politics. This study finds the immersive experience of viewing a crisis in VR/360&deg; generates a range of highly emotional reactions. It is an important goal to understand the role VR/360&deg; plays in generating emotional reactions and behavioral change, particularly in view of the accelerating development of emotional VR/360&deg; content and people&rsquo;s access to immersive technology. </p><p>

<p> The human brain is an ongoing dynamic system not activated by experience but nudged from intrinsic activity into new network configurations during perception and learning. Ongoing neural activity during rest is assumed to reflect these intrinsic dynamics in a relatively closed system state. Traditionally, inter-regional connectivity in this system is measured by obtaining time-locked correlations in BOLD activity using fMRI. It is well documented, however, that neural activity unfolds across time and is not isolatent to some reference point. </p><p> This exploratory study is a theoretical analysis of how a lagged analysis of resting state dynamics in fMRI could represent persistent representations of knowledge in the neocortex. A novel procedure using both surface based maps and independent component analysis (ICA) is applied to a small group of 54 adolescents. The ICA methods appear to reveal lagged structures with different information than traditional resting state analysis. The group level results are symmetrical between hemispheres and may represent high level perceptual systems.&nbsp;</p><p> The components obtained from this exploration are then used to attempt understand how these knowledge systems in neocortex frame mind-wandering frequency when reading aloud in a subset of 38 individuals. The results did not correlate with any known neural systems related to mind wandering, but the methods here are unique. One of the identified components shows significant difference in the lag structure of the occipital cortex as a function of mind wandering frequency during oral reading. This demonstrates that it may be worth exploring the timing in visual system to understand why individuals mind wander when reading aloud. Reverse inference is used to interpret results and suggest future approaches.</p><p>

<p> This thesis seeks to explore the effects of food and food focus on the cognitive phenomenon of boundary extension (BE). BE occurs when people are asked to remember pictures. It is an error of commission that takes place within milliseconds and results in people reporting the picture they previously saw with wider boundaries than it actually had. Although much research points toward the automaticity of this effect, other studies indicate that picture characteristics and individual differences among participants can moderate BE. To test for how pictures of food and the individual difference of food focus impact boundary ratings, participants completed the Power of Food Scale as a measure of food focus and then rated pictures pairs depicting food and nonfood objects for how close-up or far away the second image in each pair (i.e., target pictures) was as compared to the first. They also gave a confidence rating for the boundaries they reported. BE was measured using four picture conditions: two involving identical pictures (i.e., close-close and wide-wide) and two involving non-identical pictures (i.e., close-wide and wide-close). As predicted, participants produced boundary ratings indicative of BE. Less expected was that participants reported target food pictures as closer than target nonfood pictures when the first member of the picture pair was shown at a wide angle. As for the individual difference of food focus, follow-up analyses revealed that participants with high food focus showed greater BE than participants with low food focus in response to food pictures; however, this difference was only found to be significant for identical trials. It could be that people with high levels of food focus automatically engage in higher levels of food avoidance such that the boundary extension pattern is exaggerated. Potential clinical implications for the findings as related to eating disorders are discussed.</p><p>

<p> When someone hears regular, periodic sounds, such as drum beats, footsteps, or stressed syllables in speech, these individual stimuli tend to be grouped into a perceived rhythm. One of the hallmarks of rhythm perception is that the listener generates expectations for the timing of upcoming stimuli, which theorists have described as endogenous periodic modulations of attention around the time of anticipated sounds. By constructing an internal representation of a rhythm, perceptual processes can be augmented by proactively deploying attention at the expected moment of an upcoming stressed syllable, the next step in an observed stride, or during the stroke of a co-speech hand gesture. A hypothetical benefit of this anticipatory allocation of attention is that it might facilitate temporal integration across the senses, binding multisensory aspects of our experiences into a unified &ldquo;now,&rdquo; anchored by temporally-precise auditory expectations. The current dissertation examines this hypothesis, exploring the effects of auditory singletons, and auditory rhythms, on electrophysiological indices of perception and attention to a visual stimulus, using the flash-lag paradigm. An electroencephalography study was conducted, where sounds, either isolated or presented rhythmically, occurred in alignment with a task-relevant visual flash. Results suggest a novel dissociation between the multisensory effects of discrete and rhythmic sounds on visual event perception, as assessed by the N1 component of the event-related potential, and by oscillatory power in the beta (15&ndash;20 Hz) frequency range. This dissociation is discussed in the context of classic and contemporary research on rhythm perception, temporal orienting, and temporal binding across the senses, and contributes to a more refined understanding of rhythmically-deployed attention. </p><p>

<p> This thesis explores schizophrenia from a depth psychological and neuropsychological perspective with the goal of contributing to understanding the experience of schizophrenia and improving its treatment, thereby helping to relieve the helpless feelings of both people in the counseling room. It addresses the research question: How can schizophrenia be explained as a metaphor for the experience of an inability to tolerate the conflicting dichotomies between The Real and The Imaginary? Using an alchemical hermeneutic methodology, the research weaves together the author&rsquo;s clinical work with Lacanian theory, the work of psychoanalyst Darian Leader, Jungian analyst James Hillman&rsquo;s concept of pathologizing, and the trauma theory of Donald Kalsched. Drawing on these theorists and current neuroscientific findings, the author works toward an equilibrium between the conscious and unconscious mind in a dialogical process of finding and giving meaning to the experience of schizophrenia through metaphors and the alchemy of language.</p><p>

<p> This study explored educators&rsquo; perceptions of the impact of exposure to violence on children and their intellectual development. Substitute concepts such as corporal punishment, child maltreatment, and others were considered relevant to formation of an individual&rsquo;s identity. The study also explored the psychological impact of trauma over time, and its effect on an individual&rsquo;s cognitive development, identity formation, and relational development. Various aspects of exposure to violence were examined, as questions arose regarding how these multiple forms of exposure to violence impact an individual&rsquo;s level of functionality. This study utilized a general qualitative approach informed by case study methodologies. </p><p> Four educators who worked with children previously exposed to violence were interviewed. Although both teachers and tutors were solicited, only tutors responded to the invitation to participate; therefore, the results are based upon interviews with four tutors. Four specific themes emerged from the participant interviews, namely: <i>the realities of children exposed to violence, the impact of violence, academic performance</i>, and <i>the role of the tutor</i>. Within some themes, subthemes emerged such as emotional violence, physical violence, limited family support, the impact of violence, resiliency, combativeness, and lack of friendships. A narrative of themes and subthemes was presented. Commensurate with the focus of the research, the predominant theme identified in this research was that of violence and aggression on the part of adults, seen through the prism of the experiences of the children in their care.</p><p>

M.Com. (Human Resource Management) / In this study the changing role of artisans was analysed from a behavioural scientific and more specifically, from a psychological point of view. Because of the fact that cognitive psychology has become increasingly dominant in psychological research during the past decade, it was decided to approach the study within a cognitive psychological framework. The fact that "man as information processor is seen as a primary approach within cognitive psychology was the reason for examining the changing role of artisans in terms of their information processing activities - thus also their cognitive style. Because the dynamic working environment and technological changes are placing new intellectual demands on artisans it was decided to analyse the changing role of artisans in terms of their information processing structures and activities.

<p> In speech convergence, people's speech becomes more like the speech they hear. Such convergence behavior has been observed along many domains of linguistic structure and in many different situational contexts. Convergence has been argued to be socially motivated (Communication Accommodation Theory &ndash; Giles et al. 1991), and also to be an unconscious, resource-free process (Interactive Alignment Theory &ndash; Pickering &amp; Garrod 2004). This dissertation presents an alternative approach in which convergence is not a discrete process in itself; rather, convergence behavior is the consequence of episodic storage and recall, moderated by attention. </p><p> The first chapter of this dissertation consists of an elaboration of this approach, called the categorization schema account. In this approach, episodic storage is constrained by the categorization schemata that are currently active, and categories are only active when attention is paid to those categories' defining features. Convergence across disparate domains of linguistic structure is then an empirical pattern that falls out naturally from the assumption that multiple representations of the same input are stored separately and recalled independently. In consequence, speakers may converge to different domains of linguistic structure at different rates, depending on which domains have their attention. </p><p> The two subsequent chapters report the results of a pair of studies designed to examine predictions made by the categorization schema account. A Mechanical Turk experiment, discussed in Chapter 2, failed to find a significant difference between convergence to words and convergence to pseudowords. In a dyadic game task experiment comparing convergence rates across levels of linguistic structure, discussed in Chapter 3, participants exhibited different patterns of convergence to phonetic features on the one hand, and to lexical and syntactic features on the other hand. Additionally, participants who self-reported a greater degree of personal autonomy in this experiment exhibited less convergence behavior across domains. </p><p> Chapter 4 discusses the ramifications of these findings for theories of sound change, and reports the results of an experiment illustrating that accommodation can directly result in the appearance of new variants within an interaction, providing a possible pathway for the actuation of sound change. </p><p>

The purpose of this investigation was to identify the cognitive control operations involved in task switching, and to apply this understanding to a theoretical account of the qualitatively different task-switching deficits associated with aging versus Parkinson's disease (PD). Participants in young (N = 33), elderly (N = 34) and PD ( N = 34) samples switched between color naming and word reading in response to incongruent, neutral, or congruent Stroop stimuli and vocal response time (RT) was recorded. The results suggested that executive processes involved in switching selective attention between object attributes determined a substantial portion of task-switching RT costs. More specifically, these component control processes were identified as: (a) shifting selective attention from the stimulus dimension just attended to on the previous response to the now-relevant stimulus dimension (SHIFT), and (b) a preventative operation characterized by the partial inhibition of selective attention to the now-relevant stimulus dimension, carried out when the probability is high that the now-relevant dimension must be ignored on a future response (MODERATE). A multilayer, linear, parallel distributed processing (PDP) model was presented to demonstrate how these cognitive processes may be implemented by the cognitive system, and how these findings relate to the executive function concepts of the Supervisory Attentional System (SAS) and Contention Scheduling (CS). In addition, a cost associated with responding to the first member of a stimulus pair or triplet was also identified (FIRST); however, this operation appeared to function independently from the executive control operations involved in switching tasks (i.e., FIRST was also present for task repetition trials). Finally, a number of two-way interactions between these three main effects (SHIFT, MODERATE and FIRST) accounted for unique variance in task-switching RTs, such that RT was increased when these effects co-occurred. In the neuropsychological investigation it was demonstrated that the SHIFT and MODERATE effects were significantly greater for an elderly sample compared to a young sample, resulting in an increase in task-switching RT. This deficit was attributed to an inefficient shifts of selective attention. Conversely, PD did not necessarily affect the SHIFT and MODERATE operations, when compared to age-matched controls; however, the disease was associated with difficulty overcoming Stroop interference while switching tasks. This deficit was interpreted as affecting the SHIFT operation under the most taxing conditions, attributable to a central resource deficit in PD. In contrast, no between-group differences on the effect FIRST were observed. / Graduate