Recently, investors have asserted that firms' loss contingency disclosures are not adequate to allow them to assess the likelihood of material losses due to litigation (i.e., litigation risk), and a debate has developed over whether the threshold for disclosure should be lowered to provide investors with more information relating to litigation. Using an experiment, I investigate two unintended consequences of lowering a disclosure threshold, as the FASB has recently proposed. First, I find that adding low probability lawsuits to the disclosure of reasonably possible lawsuits lowers prospective investors' perceptions of litigation risk relating to the disclosure, even though more lawsuits are disclosed. Second, lowering the threshold allows firms to portray the entire disclosure opportunistically, diverting attention from higher probability to lower probability lawsuits. I find evidence that firms can use such an opportunistic presentation under a lower threshold to their advantage. Specifically, prospective investors' and even short investors' perceptions were just as favorable to the firm as long investors' when the disclosure threshold was lower and firms adopted an opportunistic disclosure strategy. Thus, my findings suggest that the FASB's proposal to require disclosure of lower probability loss contingencies may have unintended consequences for investors' perceptions of firms' loss exposure.

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<p>Audio-visual temporal processing, and integration of auditory and visual information, is necessary for perceiving the world around us. Although previous research has indicated a slowing of temporal processing in older adults for unisensory stimuli, little work has examined the role of aging on multisensory temporal processing. The goal of this thesis is to use temporal-order judgment (TOJ) tasks to investigate age-related changes in audio-visual temporal processing. Overall, our results indicate that older adults do not demonstrate impairments on simple audio-visual TOJs, but they do exhibit deficits on more complex TOJ tasks. We also found no influence of spatial cues on TOJs for younger or older adults. Finally, we found age differences in complex TOJ tasks could not be explained by changes in the ability of older adults to detect a gap between sequential visual stimuli. The work in the thesis suggests that although there may be slowing in audio-visual temporal processing in complex situations, there are circumstances where audio-visual temporal processing is spared. By categorizing multisensory processing deficits in the elderly, we can aim to improve quality of life by preventing fails and perpetuating social interactions.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Females continue to be underrepresented in leadership despite research demonstrating that leadership effectiveness does not vary by leader gender (Paustian-Underdahl et al., 2014). The current study examines the gender bias in leadership through the lens of leadership perceptions and evaluations; in particular, how perceivers' ratings of a leader would change as a function of the leader's gender. Leadership judgments are based on the leader prototype activated in the perceiver and how consistent/inconsistent the leader is perceived to be with the activated prototype (Lord et al., 2001). Due to the mismatch between the communal-oriented female gender stereotype and agentic-oriented expectations of a successful leader (Eagly and Karau, 2002), it was expected that the female leader would be rated more negatively than the male leader. Furthermore, the perceiver's gender and prior engagement in emotion suppression are investigated as two additional factors that could bias information processing when evaluating leaders. Male perceivers, who tend to hold a stronger masculine understanding of leadership (Koenig et al., 2011), were expected to evaluate the female leader more harshly than the male leader. Additionally, those depleted of their finite self-regulatory resources due to prior emotion suppression (i.e. being in a state of ego depletion; Baumeister et al., 1998) were predicted to rely more heavily on their stereotypes when making subsequent judgments; hence, ego-depleted individuals would demonstrate more bias in their ratings of the female leader relative to the male leader. In the current study, participants were randomly assigned to an emotion suppression or no suppression condition as they watched funny clips from the comedy series "The Office''. Then, they watched four business videos featuring a leader and three business managers. Participants were also randomly assigned to one of the two versions of the business videos portraying either a male or female leader. Leadership perception and leader effectiveness ratings were collected after each of the four business videos, and leader competence and leader warmth ratings were measured once after all four videos. Additionally, behavior recognition accuracy of agentic and communal leadership behaviors that were displayed in the four business videos was assessed. Contrary to expectations, the study findings demonstrate a dominant female leader effect; the female leader was evaluated more favorably than the male leader on all four leader judgments. This was observed both within the repeated measures and overall leadership ratings. An ego depletion effect was also observed; ego-depleted individuals showed lower accuracy in behavior recognition ratings and more leniency in leader warmth ratings. Furthermore, ego-depleted individuals showed less discernment by giving higher leader effectiveness ratings over time compared to non-ego-depleted individuals. Perceiver gender did not meaningfully affect leadership judgments. The unexpected pattern of bias in favor of the female leader instead of against her suggests that the nature of gender and leader stereotypes may be changing; the incongruence between the female stereotype and leader expectations may be decreasing, leading to more favorable evaluations of the female leader by both male and female perceivers. Moreover, the ability to provide fair and accurate judgments of leader effectiveness is reduced when depleted. Limitations and future research directions are discussed. / Doctor of Philosophy / The gender gap persists in leadership; although leader effectiveness has not been found to vary by the leader's gender, female leaders tend to be perceived and evaluated more negatively than male leaders. One reason for this is the mismatch between societal expectations for how women are ideally expected to behave and the expectations associated with a successful leader. In this study, gender bias in leader judgments and behavior recognition accuracy is examined by a leader's gender. Additionally, the perceiver's gender and prior engagement in emotion suppression are studied as two additional factors that can influence bias in leader ratings. Study findings demonstrate an unexpected but dominant female leader effect, where the female leader was perceived as more leader-like and rated more effective, more competent, and warmer than the male leader by both male and female perceivers. The amount of self-regulatory resources available also affected subsequent processing capabilities; those who suppressed their emotions and were depleted of their self-regulatory resources were less accurate in their behavior recognition ratings and were more lenient in their leader warmth ratings. Future research should explore if and how the nature of gender and leader stereotypes are changing, as evaluations of female leaders may not be as negatively-biased as it was previously.

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The primary purpose of this study was to determine the status of brand loyalty to art festivals with reference to Klein Karoo national Arts Festival (KKNK). This was achieved by firstly analysing and discussing the role of branding in tourism marketing. Secondly, a literature study was conducted to analyse the concept brand loyalty. Thirdly, the results of the empirical research were discussed and finally the conclusions were drawn from the research and recommendations were made with regard to visitors’ loyalty to the KKNK. Literature indicated that when marketing a tourism product or service it involves a complex bundle of value, which is intangible, inseparable, variable and perishable. Therefore the tourist’s experience with the product is important to keep in mind. Every tourist counts in the tourism industry therefore knowledge related to the needs and wants of the tourists. This can be determined by market research that is designed to collect, analyse, interpret and report information. The marketer can use this information to create a marketing mix, however, in the tourism and hospitality industry the four P’s (price, promotion, product, place) are extended with more P’s, namely people, physical environment, processes, packaging, participation, productservice mix, presentation mix and communication mix. The tourism product or festival should be positioned in the minds of the tourists and this cannot be achieved without branding the product. The brand name is used to identify and differentiate the product from its competitors. It also creates meaning for the tourist and establishes a competitive position in the minds of the tourist. Brand loyalty should be an important marketing goal of the tourism product because it reduces a brand’s vulnerability to competitors’ action and create a committed relationship with the tourists that insure lifelong visiting behaviour among tourists or positive word-of-mouth recommendations. Brand loyalty is build on six levels which can also be utilised to determine the visitors loyalty towards the brand and to assist the marketer on focussing on areas which should be improved to achieve a higher level of loyalty. The aim of the marketer should be to achieve the highest level of brand loyalty namely Resonance. For the purpose of this study the visitors’ profile and the current status of brand loyalty, were measured by means of a questionnaire and the objective of the questionnaire was to determine how loyal the visitors were to the KKNK. The questionnaires were distributed among the visitors at the KKNK in Oudtshoorn, in April 2009. Availability sampling was used to collect the data based on the fact that the respondents were conveniently available on the festival grounds and at show venues and willing to complete the questionnaires. A total of 422 questionnaires were completed during the festival. The factor analysis determined that Brand Feelings were the loyalty level that was rated the highest by the respondents to the KKNK. Therefore it was determined that the visitors’ loyalty to KKNK is currently at the fifth loyalty level and will have the most influence on the visitors when deciding to visit or recommend the KKNK. This is expected for a festival that is 15 years old however, the organisers of the KKNK can continue to improve the visitors loyalty until they reach the sixth and highest, loyalty level. This study contributes to the limited available literature on brand loyalty to arts festivals. / Thesis (M.Com. (Tourism))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

Judgments of Learning (JOLs) are judgments of the likelihood of remembering recently studied material on a future test. Although JOLs have been extensively studied, particularly due to their important applications in education, relatively little is known about the cognitive and neural processes supporting JOLs and how these processes relate to actual memory processing. Direct access theories describe JOLs as outputs following direct readings of memory traces and hence predict that JOLs cannot be distinguished from objective memory encoding operations. Inferential theories, by contrast, claim JOLs are products of the evaluation of a number of cues, perceived by learners to carry predictive value. This alternative account argues that JOLs are made on the basis of multiple underlying processes, which do not necessarily overlap with memory encoding. In this thesis, the neural and cognitive bases of JOLs were examined in a series of four ERP experiments. Across experiments the study phase ERP data showed that JOLs produce neural activity that is partly overlapping with, but also partly distinct from, the activity that predicts successful memory encoding. Furthermore, the neural correlates of successful memory encoding appear sensitive to the requirements to make a JOL, emphasising the close interaction between subjective and objective measures of memory encoding. Finally, the neural correlates of both JOLs and successful memory encoding were found to vary depending on the nature of the stimulus materials, suggesting that both phenomena are supported by multiple cognitive and neural systems. Although the primary focus was on the study phase ERP data, the thesis also contains two additional chapters reporting the ERP data acquired during the test phases of three of the original experiments. These data, which examined the relative engagements of retrieval processes for low and high JOL items, suggest that encoding processes specifically resulting in later recollection (as opposed to familiarity) form one reliable basis for making JOLs. Overall, the evidence collected in this series of ERP experiments suggests that JOLs are not pure products of objective memory processes, as suggested by direct access theories, but are supported by neural systems that are at least partly distinct from those supporting successful memory encoding. These observations are compatible with inferential theories claiming that JOLs are supported by multiple processes that can be differentially engaged across stimulus contents.

"The purpose of this study are (1) to identify some of the factors involved in this perceptual ability, (2) to devise a test to measure these factors, and (3) to determine if this test has any predictive validity."--4.