This dissertation presents an investigation of the modifying role of attention and awareness in human learning and decision making. A series of experiments showed that performance in a range of tests of unconscious cognition can be better explained as resulting from conscious attention rather than from implicit processes. The first three experiments utilised a modification of the Serial Reaction Time task in order to measure the interaction of implicit and explicit learning processes. The results did not show evidence for an interaction, but did exhibit an effect of explicit knowledge of the underlying rules of the task. Subsequent studies examined the role of selective attention in learning. The investigation failed to provide evidence that learning inevitably results from the simple presentation of contingent stimuli over repeated trials. Instead, the learning effects appeared to be modulated by explicit attention to the association between stimuli. The following study with a novel test designed to measure the role of selective attention in prediction learning demonstrated that learning is not an obligatory consequence of simultaneous activation of representations of the associated stimuli. Rather, learning occurred only when attention was drawn explicitly to the association between the stimuli. Finally, the Deliberation without Attention Paradigm was tested in a replication study along with two novel versions of the task. Additional assessment of the conscious status of participants' judgments indicated that explicit deliberation and memory could best explain the effect and that the original test may not be a reliable measure of intuition. In summary, the data in these studies did not require explanation in terms of unconscious cognition. These results do not preclude the possibility that unconscious processes could occur in these or other designs. However, the present work emphasises the role conscious attention plays in human learning and decision making.

The research presented in this PhD dissertation examines the phenomenon of semantic implicit learning, using semantic preferences of novel verbs as a test case. Implicit learning refers to the phenomenon of learning without intending to learn or awareness that one is learning at all. Semantic preference (or selectional preference – as preferred in computational linguistics) is the tendency of a word to co-occur with words sharing similar semantic features. For example, ‘drink’ is typically followed by nouns denoting LIQUID, and the verb ‘chase’ is typically followed by ANIMATE nouns. The material presented here spans across disciplines. It examines a well-documented psychological phenomenon - implicit learning – and applies it in the context of language acquisition, thereby providing insights into both fields. The organisation of this dissertation groups its experiments by their methodology. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the current psychological and linguistic literature. Chapter 2 includes a pen-and-paper study carried out in a classroom environment on Polish learners of English, where awareness is assessed by subjective measures taken at each test question as well as a post-experiment questionnaire. Chapter 3 includes a collection of 5 computer-based experiments based on a false-memory paradigm. After exposure to sentential contexts containing novel verbs, participants are shown to endorse more previously unseen verb-noun pairings that follow the correct semantic preference patterns to the pairings that violate it. The result holds even when participants do not reveal any explicit knowledge of the patterns in the final debriefing. Awareness is additionally assessed using indirect measures examining correlations of confidence judgements with performance. Chapter 4 examines whether implicit learning of novel verb semantic preference patterns is automatic. To this end, a reaction time procedure is developed based on two consecutive decisions (“double decision priming”). The method reveals that semantic implicit learning, at least in the described cases, exerts its influence with a delay, in post-processing. Chapter 5 comprises research done in collaboration with Dr Nitin Williams, University of Reading. It documents an attempt at finding neural indices of implicit learning using a novel single-trial analysis of an electroencephalographic (EEG) signal, based on empirical mode decomposition (EMD) denoising. Chapter 6 presents a final discussion and indications for future research. The main contribution of this dissertation to the general field of implicit learning research consists in its challenging the predominant view that implicit learning mainly relies on similarity of forms presented in training and test. The experiments presented here require participants to make generalisations at a higher, semantic level, which is largely independent of perceptual form. The contribution of this work to the field of Second Language Acquisition consists of empirical support for the currently popular but seldom tested assumptions held by advocates of communicative approaches to language teaching, namely that certain aspects of linguistic knowledge can develop without explicit instruction and explanation. At the same time, it challenges any view assuming that vocabulary learning necessarily relies on explicit mediation. The experiments collected here demonstrate that at least word usage in context can be learnt implicitly. A further contribution of this dissertation is its demonstration that the native language may play a key role in determining what is learnt in such situations. A deeper understanding of the phenomenon of semantic implicit learning promises to shed light on the nature of word and grammar learning in general, which is crucial for an account of the processes involved in the development of a second language mental lexicon.

Since its creation in 1998, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) has become a commonly used measure in social psychology and related fields of research. Studies of the cognitive processes involved in the IAT are necessary to establish the validity of this measure and to suggest further refinements to its use and interpretation. The current thesis used ERPs to study cognitive processes associated with the IAT. The first experiment found significant differences in P300 amplitude in the Congruent and Incongruent conditions, which were interpreted as a reflection of greater equivocation in the Incongruent condition. The second experiment tested the task-set switching account of the IAT in much greater detail by analyzing each trial type separately. In the Congruent condition, all trial types elicited the same amplitude P300. Local probability, and the consequent checking and updating of working memory, was thought to be responsible for differences between trials of the Incongruent condition that required or did not require a task switch. The final experiment examined the role of working memory in the IAT by introducing obtrusive and irrelevant auditory stimuli. The results of Experiment 3 indicated that the introduction of an obtrusive and irrelevant auditory increment deviant has little overall effect on the IAT, and a similar effect on switch and no-switch trials within the Incongruent condition. This could have been because both the Congruent and Incongruent conditions of the IAT make such extensive demands on central processing resources that few are available to allow for the switching of attention, or it is possible that the IAT does not require significant updating of working memory. The usefulness of ERPs in the study of the IAT effect is demonstrated by the current research. In particular, the finding that behavioural results were not always consistent with the ERP results demonstrates that electrophysiological measures can complement traditional behavioural measures.

This study reviews the burgeoning literature on followership and tests propositions from a recently developed theoretical framework to explore the relationship between follower behaviours, leaders’ perceptions of follower trustworthiness (trusting beliefs), and leaders’ subsequent willingness to be vulnerable to the actions of their followers (trusting intentions). Leaders’ implicit followership theories (IFTs) were examined as a potential moderator of both relationships. Results revealed that passive followership influenced leaders’ trusting beliefs negatively, whereas collaborative followership had a positive influence on leaders’ trusting beliefs as well as leaders’ trusting intentions. The most extreme form of proactive followership, challenging followership, had nonsignificant relationships with leaders’ trusting beliefs and intentions. In addition, leaders’ IFTs did not interact with followership behaviour to produce any change in leaders’ trusting beliefs. However, IFTs were found to moderate the relationship between leaders’ trusting beliefs and trusting intentions. Implications for research and practice are discussed in light of the results.

Exploring the relationship between prejudice and ethical decision-making within individuals that wish to pursue a career in the field of criminal justice has the potential to yield valuable insights on the ways that moral decisions may be impacted by extraneous factors. The objective of this thesis was to explore this relationship by means of quasi-experimental design and through examining 30 potential criminal justice candidates. Results suggested that significant associations between explicit racial attitudes and ethical decision-making are largely context-specific. Conversely, there was no significant relationship found between implicit racial attitudes and decision-making. In conducting this study, a better understanding of the role that explicit factors contribute within the decision-making process was revealed and a gap within the literature was identified. Also worthy of note, this study was the first known research inquiry into the relationship between both implicit and explicit attitudes and ethical decision-making within a Canadian criminological setting.

This thesis investigated possible effects of explicit and implicit focus on form (FonF) instruction on the acquisition of Spanish future of probability (SFP) by Anglophone and Francophone students at a Canadian bilingual university. We also analyzed a possible L1 transfer from French to L2 Spanish in the acquisition of SFP, due to the typological similarity of this linguistic feature in the two languages. Twenty seven B1/B2 Spanish level students including L1 English and L1 French learners of L2 Spanish were divided into three groups according to the instruction type: explicit focus on form instruction group, implicit focus on form instruction group and control group, which received no additional instruction. All the participants were tested before the lesson (pretest), immediately after (posttest) and four weeks later (delayed posttest). The battery of tests included Untimed Grammaticality Judgment (UGJT), Written Production (WPT) and Oral Production (OPT) tasks. They aimed to test our four hypotheses which focused on both short-term and long-term effects of the two types of instruction on grammaticality judgment, written and oral production of SFP, respectively. The results demonstrated a positive effect of explicit and implicit FonF instruction on grammaticality judgment, oral and written production of SFP compared to the control group. In particular, both instructional groups distinguished grammatical and ungrammatical uses of SFP with state and activity verbs immediately after the treatment. After four weeks, both groups retained the acquired knowledge equally well. In the implicit FonF group we found an advantage of the L1 French over the L1 English students, possibly due to the similarity of the future tense morphology in Spanish and French, as well as the fact that French uses future morphology for present time probability, although in very limited contexts (a subset of state verbs). The results of the WPT suggest an advantage of the explicit FonF group in both immediate and long-term results and showed no difference between the L1s in either of the instructional groups. We also noticed an overgeneralization of the use of SFP with telic verbs in both instructional groups after the treatment, which is considered ungrammatical. Therefore, our participants did not distinguish the written use of telic and atelic verbs in epistemic conditions after the two types of treatment provided. The OPT results demonstrated that similarly to the previous two tasks both experimental groups performed better than the Control group. However, there was no significant difference between the two instructional groups. L1 had no significant effect on the oral production of SFP either. Similarly to the WPT, we found an overgeneralization of the use of SFP in telic verb conditions. Overall, Anglophone and Francophone students appear to have similar opportunities for successful acquisition of SFP and both explicit and implicit FonF instruction, activities and feedback may lead to positive results in the acquisition of SFP. To conclude this thesis, we discuss some challenges of this study and possible directions of future research.

Thesis advisor: Andrea Heberlein / Dehumanization of outgroup members in situations of intergroup competition has been widely reported (Haslam, 2006), but the effects of individual competition on dehumanization have not yet been extensively explored. A previous study in our lab examined this effect and found an unexpected gender difference, with women showing greater implicit dehumanization than men. The present study aimed to explore a possible mechanism for that gender difference: gendered expectations of maintaining positive interpersonal relations, and subsequent discomfort in competitive situations, may motivate the implicit dehumanization of competitors. Participants interacted briefly with a confederate and were then given instructions for a competitive or non-competitive game. Participants then completed two Single-Category Implicit Association Tests measuring dehumanization of their game partner. Participants also completed the Mind Perception Questionnaire, which measures explicit dehumanization of participants’ game partners. We predicted that in the Competition condition, female participants would implicitly dehumanize their game partners more than men would. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Psychology.

The Process Dissociation Procedure (PDP) and Verbal Report Framework (VRF) have demonstrated that both explicit (Explicit Adaptation, EA) and implicit processes (Implicit Adaptation, IA) contribute to visuomotor adaptation. However, the definition of EA is inconsistent across the two paradigms, such that the PDP refers to EA as reflecting one’s knowledge regarding how they have to reach in the novel visuomotor environment, while the VRF refers to EA as reflecting pre-planned aiming strategies. The objective of the current experiment was to compare EA as assessed via the PDP and VRF and hence provide insight into if they are assessing similar explicit processes. Sixty-one participants were evenly divided into three groups (PDP, VRF and VRF-No Cursor) and trained to reach in a virtual environment with an aligned cursor (1 block of 45 trials) and then a cursor rotated 40° clockwise (CW) relative to hand motion (3 blocks of 45 trials). EA and IA were assessed immediately following each block of rotated reach training trials, and again 5-minutes later. In the assessment trials, the PDP group reached while using any learned strategy (EA+IA), or while not engaging in a strategy (IA) and the VRF group reported their planned aiming direction by picking a number from an array of numbers surrounding the target (EA), before reaching to the target (EA+IA) with visual feedback. The VRF-No Cursor group completed the same assessment trials as the VRF group, but no visual feedback was presented during assessment of EA and IA. Following this, participants completed a post-experiment questionnaire and a drawing task to assess their awareness of the visuomotor rotation and changes in their reaches respectively. We found that all groups adapted their reaches to the 40° CW cursor rotation. As well, averaged across participants, the magnitude and retention of EA and IA were similar between the PDP and VRF groups. However, the magnitude of EA established via the VRF was not related to participants’ post-experiment awareness of the visuomotor distortion and how they had changed their reaches, as observed in the PDP and VRF No-Cursor groups. Together, these results indicate that, while the PDP and VRF suggest similar contributions of EA and IA to visuomotor adaptation, the methods of assessment engage different explicit processes. EA assessed within the VRF does not reflect one’s awareness of the visuomotor distortion at the end of the experiment or how they changed their reaches.

<p>Performance management is not a new area within IO psychology research, however recently there has been growing interest with how to increase its effectiveness. Scholars are calling for more research to examine the antecedents of actual performance management behaviors that managers enact on a daily basis. The current study addresses this gap by utilizing Implicit Person Theory to understand the effect of supervisor perceptions on their behaviors that contribute towards the goal(s) of performance management. Previous research has suggested that Implicit Person Theory leads to more coaching behaviors, however, has failed to identify an explanatory mechanism. The current study relies on the three-component model of commitment to offer a mediating variable between Implicit Person Theory and differing degrees of performance management behaviors due to its more proximal relationship to the target behaviors compared to the broad antecedent of perception of others. The researchers tested this mediation using survey data from a broad sample of supervisors across the United States. Managers’ Incrementalism was positively and significantly related to discretionary performance management behaviors via affective commitment to performance management, however the relationship between Incrementalism and focal performance management behaviors via continuance commitment was non-significant. This research extends previous performance management research by providing evidence for the influence of key supervisor attitudes and implicit beliefs on varying levels of performance management behaviors. Theoretical contributions, limitations and future research directions are discussed.</p>

Huvudsakliga syftet med studien är att beskriva hur medarbetare i konkurrensutsatta yrken uppfattar kunskapsdelning samt hur de vill att det ska ske på deras arbetsplats. För att ta reda på detta utfördes 7 intervjuer med informanter som levde upp till specifika kriterier för att försäkra relevanta svar och insikter. Intervjuerna transkriberades och analyserades med ad hoc metoderna hitta mönster och teman, skapa kontraster och teoretiskt/begreppsligt för att redogöra innebörden i informanternas svar. För analys av material användes Ellströms handlingsteoretiska teori och Nonakas kognitiva teori om kunskapsdelning. Resultatet visar att medarbetare uppfattar kunskapsdelning som erfarenhetsutbyte och förmedling av information. Medarbetare uppfattar kunskapsdelning som något som sker både kollegor emellan och mellan medarbetare och kund. Medarbetare vill dela och ta emot meta-kogntiv och teoretisk kunskap genom fysiska träffar där reflektion, erfarenhetsutbyte och diskussion sker i det utvecklingsinriktade lärandet. De kunskaper som de huvudsakligen delar sker genom ett anpassningsinriktat lärande och är implicit, procedur- och teoretisk kunskap. Delningen sker huvudsakligen via samtal på telefon och genom fysiska träffar, men procedurkunskap och till viss del implicit kunskap delas även genom mejl och andra digitala medel. Kunskapsdelning börjar framför allt genom socialisering där implicit kunskap skapas och internaliseras. Viss kunskap som förmedlas är explicit och kan internaliseras genom egen reflektion eller gemensam diskussion. Resultatet visar även på att medarbetare i konkurrensutsatta yrken uppskattar och önskar mer tid till fysiska träffar där reflektion och diskussion kring tidigare erfarenheter och problem är på agendan. Medarbetare uppfattar kundmöten som en stor del i deras kunskapsdelning vilket verksamheter bör uppmärksamma och försöka förstå sig på för att möjliggöra utveckling. Genom kundmöten och observation skapar medarbetare egna säljknep och processer som de överlag inte delar med kollegor trots att de själva vill ta del av den typen av teoretisk kunskap. Trots den digitala utvecklingens fart finns en önskan och uppfattning av att möten och samtal med kollegor är mest givande och utvecklande, vilket är viktigt att poängtera och fokusera på för verksamheter som vill vara i framkant gällande kunskapsdelning.