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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Hypnotic susceptibility, often regarded as a relatively stable individual characteristic, has been found to be related to the personality dimension of absorption. To test the hypothesis that this relationship is a function of the nature of the sensory response to stimulus events and the development of cognitive models pursuant to the processing of that information, a group of hospitalized, chronic pain patients were assessed on the following dimensions: absorption, clinical hypnotic responsiveness, cognitive resistance to interference, and visual automatization.

Few studies have examined depression in children from an Information Processing (IP) perspective. In this thesis a number of domains of IP (known to be associated with adult depression)are examined in children and adolescents, in particular, autobiographical memory specificity in both clinical and non-clinical samples. Foremost, overgeneral memory (OGM) was found for the first time, to be characteristic of dysphoric (Study 1) and clinically depressed children (Study 2). Similarity in the extent of the OGM bias in depressed and dysphoric children was observed. OGM was also comparable across child, adolescent and adult depressed groups (Study 2). Second, OGM predicted depressive symptoms in children during a stressful life event, in the first longitudinal diathesis-stress investigation of OGM to date (Study 3). OGM was also linked for the first time to an overgeneral thinking style and to a depressive attributional style (Study 3) thereby offering possible mechanistic insight in OGM. Third, in support of Williams' (1996) developmental origins hypothesis, OGM was also demonstrated in children in residential care who had suffered significant independently verified negative life events (Study 5). OGM in these youth was positively correlated with deficits in social problem solving and facial-affect identification, in part contextualizing OGM in children alongside depresso-typical biases. Performance on the AMT also varied as a function of severity of abuse with more abused children demonstrating less OGM -a recency memorial coping strategy is proposed to account for this effect. Fourth, a new measure of EF was introduced and highlights the importance of encoding preferences in explaining 0GM (Studies I& 5). Finally, considerable attention is paid to the pattern of valence results across studies. It is noted that effects most often lie with biases in the processing of positive information and that future studies may benefit from a concentration on this aspect of depressogenic bias utilizing a developmental perspective. Several key theoretical and practical implications are carefully discussed.

published_or_final_version / Business / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis puts forward a formal theory of levels and algorithms to provide a foundation for those terms as they are used in much of cognitive science and computer science. Abstraction with respect to concreteness is distinguished from abstraction with respect to detail, resulting in three levels of concreteness and a large number of algorithmic levels, which are levels of detail and the primary focus of the theory. An algorithm or ideal machine is a set of sequences of states defining a particular level of detail. Rather than one fundamental ideal machine to describe the behaviour of a complex system, there are many possible ideal machines, extending Turing's approach to reflect the multiplicity of system descriptions required to express more than weak input-output equivalence of systems. Cognitive science is concerned with stronger equivalence; e.g., do two models go through the same states at some level of description? The state-based definition of algorithms serves as a basis for such strong equivalence and facilitates formal renditions of abstraction and implementation as relations between algorithms. It is possible to prove within the new framework whether or not one given algorithm is a valid implementation of another, or whether two unequal algorithms have a common abstraction, for example. Some implications of the theory are discussed, notably a characterisation of connectionist versus classical models.

The study examined children's evaluations and attributions in response to ingratiating acts directed at different targets in the presence or absence of an ulterior motive. According to an attributional analysis of ingratiation (Jones & McGillis, 1976; Jones & Wortman, 1973), attributions of enduring behavioral dispositions to ingratiators and evaluation of these ingratiators should vary as a function of presence or absence of ulterior motives and as a function of target status, because very high status targets are likely to control desirable benefits even when these are not made explicit. Ingratiators with ulterior motives and those who ingratiate high status targets should be evaluated less positively, and they should be seen as less likely to repeat their "nice" acts in other situations or to other targets. These "idealized predictions rest on the assumption of differential perception and evaluation of ingratiators ' motives under different circumstances. Children's ability to use motives in making moral evaluations of others has long been a subject of debate. However, few researchers have asked children about the dispositional implications of their moral evaluations. The present study was thus intended to examine children's evaluations and attributions in response to a morally relevant behavior (ingratiation) somewhat different from the behaviors most studies have investigated. It was expected that age-related changes in evaluation of strategic behaviors and changes in patterns of attribution would reflect a shift away from reliance on adult rules in judging acts and a corresponding increase in reliance on peer group norms. Male and female first, third, and fifth graders and an adult control group heard four stories about children who opinion conformed or did favors . The target of the acts was either a disliked (low, status) peer, a well-liked (high status) peer, or an adult (the ingratiator's teacher). Each act either occurred with no explicit ulterior motive, or it occurred after the ingratiator learned that the target controlled a benefit that the ingratiator very much desired, so that an ulterior motive was prominent. Subjects used rating scales to evaluate the ingratiators , to estimate the probability that they would repeat their acts, and to rate the effectiveness of the ingratiation. Subjects' were also asked for free response explanations of the ingratiators' behaviors, and they explained what they would do if they wanted to get a desirable benefit from one of the story targets. Favor doing was regarded far more positively than opinion conforming, and evaluation of ingratiation declined steadily with age. First graders tended to see all ingratiation as quite positive, likely to generalize, and likely to be effective. First graders were able to explain strategic favor-doing, but they had difficulty with opinion conformity. Among the other groups , motive became increasingly important with age as a determinant of both evaluations and predicted repetition of the act. Motive effects were not always in the expected direction, however. Ulterior motive opinion conformity to an adult was evaluated more positively than no ulterior motive opinion conformity, indicating that ingratiation of this target was less deplorable if the ingratiator was strongly tempted. Third graders in particular showed signs of regarding opinion conformity to an adult in a fairly favorable light. They thought an adult would be relatively likely to pick an opinion conformer to receive a desirable benefit, where- as the other age groups saw favor-doing as much more effective with an adult target. I^en asked how they themselves would try to influence a target, younger subjects of ten mentioned providing physical benefits while adults were more likely to suggest a straightforward request. The patterns of main effects seen on the measures pertaining to predictions of future behavior appeared to strongly resemble the one predicted by an attributional analysis of ingratiation. Children seemed more sensitive than adults to the power of the very high status adult target to elicit ingratiating acts . Patterns of attribution among third graders sometimes appeared more adult-like than those appearing among fifth graders . This paradoxical finding and third graders' relatively favorable responses to adult oriented opinion conformers are discussed in terms of third graders’ greater tendency to judge behavior in line with adult rules, while fifth graders may be more sensitive to peer groups norms. / This thesis was digitized as part of a project begun in 2014 to increase the number of Duke psychology theses available online. The digitization project was spearheaded by Ciara Healy.

Auditors form judgments by integrating the evidence they gather with information stored in memory (knowledge). As they acquire experience, auditors have the opportunity to learn how different patterns of evidence are associated with particular audit problems. Research in experimental psychology has demonstrated that individuals with task-specific experience can match the cues they encounter with patterns they have learned, and form judgments without consciously analyzing the individual cues. Accounting researchers have suggested that auditors develop judgment templates through task-specific experience, and that these knowledge structures automatically provide decisions in familiar situations. I examined whether auditor knowledge leads to reliance on judgment templates. To test this thesis, I synthesized a theoretical framework and developed research hypotheses that predict relationships between task-specific experience (my surrogate for knowledge) and (1) measures of cognitive effort, (2) accuracy of residual memory traces, and (3) performance with respect to identifying potential problems. To test these predictions, I provided senior auditors with comprehensive case materials for a hypothetical client and asked them to use analytical procedures to identify potential audit problems. Subjects acquired information and documented their findings on personal computers using software that I developed to record their activities.

The perception of visual motion is an integral aspect of many organisms' engagement with the world. In this dissertation, a theory for the perception of visual object-motion is developed. Object-motion perception is distinguished from objectless-motion perception both experimentally and theoretically. A continuoustime dynamical neural model is developed in order to generalize the ndings and provide a theoretical framework for continued re nement of a theory for object-motion perception. Theoretical implications as well as testable predictions of the model are discussed. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection