Cultural differences in compliments were examined across five studies. The results are consistent with cultural differences in self-enhancement and self-criticism and suggest that compliment responses may reflect underlying differences in self-views. Asian golfers were less accepting and more rejecting of compliments about a tournament win than European golfers (Study 1). Cultural differences in responses to compliments about close others were found to mirror those about the self. Asian Canadian mothers were less accepting and more rejecting of compliments about their children than were European Canadian mothers (Study 2). Study 3 examined cultural differences in response to compliments that focus on natural ability (person-praise) versus those that focus on effort (process-praise). European Canadians were more accepting and less rejecting of person-praise compliments about their basketball shooting ability than Asian Canadians, whereas no differences were found in responses to process-praise compliments. Cultural differences in giving compliments were examined using both cultural artifacts (Study 4) and self-report (Study 5). The results are consistent with previous research on differences in implicit theories of ability. Chinese graduation cards contained more process- than person-praise compliments, whereas the reverse was true of American cards (Study 4). Chinese parents indicated that they would be more likely to select and Chinese students indicated that they would be more likely to receive graduation card messages containing process- versus person-praise compliments (Study 5). American parents and students showed no effects of type of compliment.

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.

Two Inattentional Blindness type experiments involving 446 participants were performed in order to examine how unexpected objects are noticed. Perception of these unexpected objects was measured using explicit and implicit measurements. Despite initial difficulty in determining implicit perception, results showed a dissociation between implicit measurements and explicit measurements, providing strong evidence for unconscious processing. Research into attention capture often emphasizes the role of either expectations or stimulus properties in attention capture; the current research examines both. Critical objects presented were either of a colour that participants were familiar with, or of a new colour. The different patterns of results for these two categories of objects provide evidence for two separate mechanisms of attention capture: a parallel process driven by the features of objects, and a serial process, driven by the intentions of the observer. Predications of the recent theoretical work produced by Most, Scholl, Clifford & Simons, (2005) are examined, and support is obtained for their theoretical formulation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-94).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 110-142).

Thesis (M.Sc.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2003. / Bibliography: leaves 54-60. Also available online.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on October 23, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

Web-based Application Programming Interface (API) has become an important tool for modern software development. Many enterprises have developed various types of web APIs to support their business services, such as Google Map APIs, Twitter APIs, and eBay APIs. Due to the huge number of web APIs available in public domain, unfortunately, choosing relevant and low-risk web APIs has become an important problem for developers. This research is aimed at enhancing the recom- mendation engine for web APIs from several aspects. First, a new scanning technique is developed to detect the usage of web APIs in source codes. Using our scanning technique, we scanned over 1.7 million Open Source projects to capture the API usage patterns. Second, we integrated three machine learning models to predict compliance risks from web APIs based on their terms of services or other legal documents. Third, utilizing the knowledge learned from scanning results and compliance risks, we built a new recommendation engine for web APIs. We conducted an experimental study to evaluate our Web API recommendation engine and demonstrate its effectiveness. Some other modules, such as finding similar web APIs and searching function-related web APIs, have also been discussed. / Graduate

Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) and climate models parametrize the effects of boundary-layer turbulence as a diffusive process, dependent on a diffusion coefficient, which appears as nonlinear terms in the governing equations. In the advection dominated zone of the boundary layer and in the free atmosphere, the air flow supports different wave motions, with the fastest being the sound waves. Time integrations of these terms, in both zones, need to be implicit otherwise they impractically restrict the stable time step sizes. At the same time, implicit schemes may lose accuracy compared to explicit schemes in the same level, which is due to dispersion error associated with these schemes. Furthermore, the implicit schemes need iterative approaches like the Newton-Raphson method. Therefore, the combination of implicit and explicit methods, called IMEX or semi-implicit, has extensively attracted attention. In the combined method, the linear part of the equation as well as the fast wave terms are treated by the implicit part and the rest is calculated by the explicit scheme. Meanwhile, minimizing the dissipation and dispersion errors can enhance the performance of time integration schemes, since the stability and accuracy will be restricted by these inevitable errors. Hence, the target of this thesis is to increase the stability range, while obtaining accurate solutions by using IMEX and semi-implicit time integration methods. Therefore, a comprehensive effort has been made toward minimizing the numerical errors to develop new Runge-Kutta schemes, in IMEX and semi-implicit forms, to temporally integrate the governing equations in the atmospheric field so that the stability is extended and accuracy is improved, compared to the previous schemes. At the first step, the A-stability and the Strong Stability Preserving (SSP) optimized properties were compared as two essential properties of the time integration schemes. It was shown that both properties attempt to minimize the dissipation and dispersion errors, but in two different aspects. The SSP optimized property focuses on minimizing the errors to increase the accuracy limits, while the A-stability property tries to extend the range of stability. It was shown that the combination of both properties is essential in the field of interest. Moreover, the A-stability property was found as an essential property to accelerate the steady state solutions. Afterward, the dissipation and dispersion errors, generated by three-stage second order IMEX Runge-Kutta scheme were minimized, while the proposed scheme, so called IMEX-SSP2(2,3,2) enjoys the A-stability and SSP properties. A practical governing equation set in the atmospheric field, so called compressible Boussinesq equations set, was calculated using the new IMEX scheme and the results were compared to one well-known IMEX scheme in the literature, i.e. ARK2(2,3,2), which is an abbreviation of Additive Runge-Kutta. Note that, the ARK2(2,3,2) was compared to various types of IMEX Runge-Kutta schemes and it was found as the more efficient scheme in the atmospheric fields (Weller et al., 2013). It was shown that the IMEX-SSP2(2,3,2) could improve the accuracy and extend the range of stable time step sizes as well. Through the van der Pol test case, it was shown that the ARK2(2,3,2) with L-stability property may decline to the first order in the calculation of stiff limit, while IMEX-SSP2(2,3,2), with A-stability property, is able to retain the assigned second order of accuracy. Therefore, it was concluded that the L-stability property, due to restrictive conditions associated with, may weaken the time integration’s performance, compared to the A-stability property. The ability of the IMEX-SSP2(2,3,2) was proved in solving different case, which is the inviscid Burger equation in spherical coordinate system by using a realistic initial condition dataset. In the next step, it was attempted to maximize the non-negativity property associated with the numerical stability function of three-stage third order Diagonally Implicit Runge-Kutta (DIRK) schemes. It was shown that the non-negativity has direct relation with non-oscillatory behaviors. Two new DIRK schemes with A- and L-stability properties, respectively, were developed and compared to the SSP(3,3), which obtains the SSP optimized property in the same class of DIRK schemes. The SSP optimized property was found to be more beneficial for the inviscid (advection dominated) flows, since in the von Neumann stability analysis, the SSP optimized property provides more nonnegative region for the imaginary component of the stability function. However, in most practical cases, i.e. the viscous (advection diffusion) flows, the nonnegative property is needed for both real and imaginary components of the stability function. Therefore, the SSP optimized property, individually, is not helpful, unless mixed with the A-stability property. Meanwhile, the A- and L-stability properties were compared as well. The intention is to find how these properties influence the DIRK schemes’ performances. The A-stability property was found as preserving the SSP property more than the L-stability property. Moreover, the proposed A-stable scheme tolerates larger Courant Friedrichs Lewy (CFL) number, while preserving the accuracy and non-oscillatory computations. This fact was proved in calculating different test cases, including compressible Euler and nonlinear viscous Burger equations. Finally, the time integration of the boundary layer flows was investigated as well. The nonlinearity associated with the diffusion coefficient makes the implicit scheme impractical, while the explicit scheme inefficiently limits the stable time step sizes. By using the DIRK scheme, a new semi-implicit approach was proposed, in which the diffusion coefficient at each internal stage is calculated by a weight-averaged combination of the solutions at current internal stage and previous time step, in which the time integration can benefit from both explicit and implicit advantages. As shown, the accuracy was improved, which is due to engaging the explicit solutions and the stability was extended due to taking advantages of implicit scheme. It was found that the nominated semi-implicit method results in less dissipation error, more accurate solutions and less CPU time usage, compared to the implicit schemes, and it enjoys larger range of stable time steps than other semi-implicit approaches in the literature.

Attractiveness can provide an individual with advantages that less attractive people may not be granted. These advantages can be seen in everyday life through the perception that attractive individuals are more intelligent, friendly, and employees. Many researchers have found that attractiveness can have an influence on who gets the job and who does not. Past research on the influence of attractiveness on hiring practices has been conducted from an explicit attitude perspective. Explicit attitudes are evaluations that are thought out and conform to social norms, while implicit attitudes are unconscious evaluations before the influence of social norm. Implicit and explicit attitudes are considered two different constructs and accessed for different reasons. It was hypothesized that hiring agents would consider attractive applicants better suited when using an implicit attitude. Additionally there would be differences between male and female hiring agents. Results indicate that hiring agents associated attractive applicants with good job attributes when using an implicit attitude. However, there was no difference between male and female hiring agents, as both associated attractive applicants with good job attributes equally. The results also demonstrated that not all implicit and explicit attitudes diverge as previous research has indicated. The study also found a number of applicant attributes that contribute to the influence of whether to interview and hire attractive and unattractive applicants.