Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Decisions by the EEOC in favor of claimants perceived to have disabilities disproportionately exceeded those in favor of claimants with documented disabilities. This finding lends support to the assertion that unconscious/implicit bias is persistent in the workplace.

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Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Il presente lavoro si propone di prendere in considerazione il rapporto tra linguaggio e stati mentali in ottica life-span. In primo luogo si è deciso di analizzare le conversazioni e le narrazioni a contenuto emotivo riguardanti eventi vissuti dal bambino in ambito familiare e scolastico. Successivamente si è deciso di approfondire la comprensione di alcuni aspetti del linguaggio figurato, in particolare l’attenzione si è concentrata sulla comprensione dell’ironia negli adulti. I primi due studi si sviluppano attorno al tema della costruzione di dialoghi emotivi entro le diadi mamma/bambino e insegnante/bambino. A partire dalla traduzione dello strumento denominato “Dialogo sulle Emozioni” di Oppenheim e colleghi (2000, 2003), tali studi si propongono di analizzare la capacità di sintonizzazione emotiva di alcune diadi e di verificare i legami tra alcune componenti dello strumento e le abilità linguistiche e mentalistiche dei partner conversazionali. Il terzo studio, effettuato su un campione di adulti e con l’ausilio di un eye tracker per registrare i movimenti oculari dei partecipanti, si propone di individuare i processi di elaborazione di base del rapporto tra il significato di enunciati ironici e la realtà di riferimento. I risultati sono letti alla luce della Graded Salience Hypothesis proposta da Giora (2003). / The present dissertation aims to analyse the relationship between language and mental states in a life-span perspective. First we decided to analyse familiar and scholastic conversations about emotional themes and events lived by children in their past. Subsequently we investigated the understanding of figurative aspects of language, in particular the comprehension of irony, in a young adult sample. First and second studies develop themselves around the theme of the construction of emotional dialogues in asymmetrical relationship between children and their familiar or scholastic caregiver. Starting from the translation of a task developed by Koren-Karie, Oppenheim and colleagues (2000, 2003), the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogue (AEED), the studies aim to analyse the capacity of a set of dyads to build dialogues around emotional themes and the connections among AEED characteristics and mentalistic or linguistic abilities of the conversational partners. The third study, carried out on a young adults sample through the eye tracking methodology, aimed to identify the basic processes regarding the relationship between the meaning of ironic sentences and the reality. These results are interpreted in accordance with the Graded Salience Hypothesis proposed by Giora (2003).

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Background: Considering recent advances in the field of early detection and intervention in young people with increased levels of psychotic symptoms seeking help, this thesis proposes that early attachment insecurity triggers an inability to regulate emotional distress, to engage in positive interpersonal interactions with others, to use adaptive coping mechanisms and to manage social support appropriately. These constructs appear to be linked to psychosis; however, considering continuity between subthreshold psychotic symptoms and the later development of psychosis, it is vital to understand if these underlying affective and interpersonal mechanisms increase the risk of psychosis in help-seeking young people. Objectives: This study was cross-sectional and investigated the following research questions: 1) Does attachment insecurity signpost the risk of developing psychosis? 2) Do coping strategies, interpersonal difficulties, social support and emotional distress have an indirect effect on the relationship between attachment insecurity and the risk of developing psychosis? Methods: A total of 76 help-seeking young people were recruited from Community Mental Health Services in Edinburgh. All participants completed a number of questionnaires exploring their coping strategies, interpersonal problems, perceived social support and emotional distress. A semi-structured interview was undertaken, to assess their socio-demographic background. The Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States was administered and coded to assess their risk of psychosis and associated psychopathology, while path analysis was used to analyse the data and to address the research questions. Results: The profile of help-seeking young people in this sample (n=76) was made up of individuals with a moderate degree of difficulties in relation to coping strategies employed to manage stress and interpersonal problems dealing with others, moderate levels of emotional distress and discrepancies between their ideal and received social support. From the total help-seeking sample, the attachment dimensions anxiety and avoidance were relatively high. These young people were found to have had mild, psychotic-like experiences, especially in the domains associated with unusual thought content and perceptual abnormalities. When considering the subgroup of help-seeking young people with an at-risk mental state (ARMS) (n=46), the results revealed that this group had high levels of difficulties in interpersonal relationships, relied on non-productive coping strategies, presented emotional distress levels of clinical importance and also had discrepancies in their ideal and received social support. From the subsample of help-seeking young people with an ARMS the attachment dimensions anxiety and avoidance were reasonably high. These young people were found to have had moderately severe psychotic experiences, especially in the domains associated with unusual thought content and perceptual abnormalities. Path analysis revealed that attachment insecurity directly predicted psychotic symptoms in the total sample but not in the subgroup of young people with an ARMS. Emotional distress played a partially moderating role between attachment insecurity and the severity and distress associated with disorganised speech and perceptual abnormalities in the total sample but not when considering only those with an ARMS, while interpersonal problems did not mediate the relationship between attachment insecurity and the risk of psychosis in either group. Discrepancies between ideal and received social support fully mediated the relationship between attachment insecurity and the distress associated with disorganised speech in the total sample but not when considering those with an ARMS. The tendency to use less adaptive coping strategies was found to mediate directly the relationship between attachment anxiety and the distress associated with perceptual abnormalities in young people with an ARMS, albeit not in the total sample. Discussion: The clinical and theoretical implications of these results are discussed within the clinical staging model for intervention in psychosis. The findings strongly indicate that clinicians should take into consideration the mechanisms of attachment, coping strategies and social support, as well as the deleterious effects of associated emotional distress, when working with young people with increased levels of psychotic symptoms.

Après avoir traité le viol d'un point de vue anthropologique et juridique nous abordons ce crime d'un point de vue psychologique en mettant en avant que c'est un acte de violence interpersonnelle reconnu comme l’un des événements les plus traumatisants. Il occasionne de multiples conséquences psychologiques et somatiques à court terme, moyen et long termes. Notre travail de recherche vise à mettre en évidence, au cours de l’entretien psychologique avec cinq victimes de viol, les états mentaux que celles-ci attribuent à leurs agresseurs dans leur appropriation subjective de l'événement traumatique. En effet, dans sa quête de sens relative à l’agression sexuelle subie, la victime peut être amenée à rechercher des causes, des raisons au(x) passage(s) à l'acte de l’agresseur. Pour cela, nous analysons les discours des victimes et la structure de leur raisonnement grâce à la logique interlocutoire, méthode d’étude de la pragmatique du discours dialogué / After treating the rape of an anthropological and legal perspective, we approach this crime from a psychological point of view by emphasizing that it is an act of interpersonal violence recognized as one of the most traumatic events. It causes many psychological and physical consequences in the short, medium and long terms. Our research aims to highlight, during the psychological interview with five rape victims, the mental states that they attribute to their attackers in their subjective appropriation of the traumatic event. Indeed, in her quest for meaning of sexual aggression, victim may have to search for causes, reasons for the occurrence of the trauma. For this, we analyze the speech of victims and the structure of their reasoning through the interlocutory logic, study method of the pragmatics of dialogued speech

This thesis presents a close reading of the award-winning novel The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) by Margaret Atwood. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory as a framework, and the notion of embodiment, the study sheds light on metaphorical linguistic expressions that contribute to the realization of conceptual container metaphors pertinent to the main character’s psychological state. The thesis demonstrates that there are dual results for containment. Firstly, the author conceptualizes the character’s body as a container that is imprisoned because of the patriarchal regime’s control. Secondly, the body is portrayed as a container for safety and love before the regime’s takeover. In addition to this, the thesis examines themes of nature symbolism and time. The containment of nature serves as a metaphor for oppression because of environmental destruction in the country. Nevertheless, it carries a glimpse of hope and freedom and/or different forms of escape. Finally, through time conceptualized as a container, the character enters the past, and the memories it brings. This either provides an escape from the present reality — mental time travel that has positive or negative effects on the character’s mental state, or reminds her of the imprisoned life she is presently in.

Les états mentaux réfèrent à la qualité de la capacité d’un individu à élaborer mentalement et à s’ouvrir à son expérience subjective dans l’ici et maintenant. Les divers états mentaux varient quant à la disponibilité des ressources représenta-tionnelles et affectives pouvant être activées afin d’organiser l’expérience vécue, ainsi que dans leur utilisation de stratégies défensives et d’autorégulation. La présente thèse avait pour objectifs 1) d’approfondir l’évaluation des états mentaux par le développement et la validation d’un instrument pratique, le Mental States Task (MST), développé afin d’évaluer différentes qualités d’états mentaux et 2) d’investiguer les propriétés psychiques et les répercussions des différents états mentaux. Le premier article avait pour but de valider le MST. La première partie de l’article est consacrée à la validation du MST dans sa version francophone, et la deuxième partie porte sur la traduction et la validation du MST dans sa version anglophone. Les résultats fournissent des indices convaincants de validité et de fidélité, ainsi qu’une valeur prédictive adéquate. Le MST semble représenter de façon conforme autant les états mentaux de bas niveau que de haut niveau selon le continuum de réflexivité. De fait, les états mentaux de bas niveau et de haut niveau ont été respectivement associés à un large spectre de construits négatifs/immatures et positifs/matures. De plus, chaque état mental évalué par le MST semble posséder des propriétés particulières relativement aux processus mentaux et émotionnels utilisés pour traiter l’expérience. Le second article avait pour objectif d’approfondir l’étude de la valeur prédictive du MST par le biais de l’évaluation des coûts psychiques engendrés par les différentes qualités d’états mentaux—coûts présumés dépendant des ressources représentationnelles disponibles et du type de stratégies de régulation utilisées. Les résultats suggèrent que les états mentaux de bas niveau génèrent des coûts énergétiques plus élevés, ayant pour répercussion d’entraîner subséquemment un effet de déplétion du moi. Inversement, les états mentaux de haut niveau engendrent de moindres coûts, protégeant contre un état subséquent de déplétion du moi. Le MST s’est avéré être un outil efficace d’évaluation des répercussions énergétiques occasionnées par les divers états mentaux. / Mental states refer to the quality of one’s capacity to mentally elaborate and open up to his/her subjective experience in the here-and-now moment. Mental states differ relatively to the availability of the representational and affective resources triggered in order to organize the experience, and in the type of defensive and self-regulatory strategies used. The aims of this thesis were 1) to deepen the evaluation of mental states through the creation and validation of a practical measure, the Mental States Task (MST), in order to evaluate differences in quality of mental states, and 2) to investigate the psychic properties and repercussions of the different mental states. The goal of the first article was to validate the MST. The first part of this article was dedicated to the validation of the French version of the MST, and the second part to the translation and validation of its English version. Results provide convincing evidence of validity and reliability, as well as an adequate predictive value with respect to a large range of related concepts, in both its French and English versions. The MST appears to well represent both low- and high-level mental states according to the reflective continuum, which were found to be linked to a large range of negative/immature and positive/mature constructs, respectively. In addition, each mental state measured by the MST appears to have particular characteristics relative to the mental and emotional processes used to deal with the experience. The purpose of the second article was to deepen the investigation of the predictive value of the MST, through the evaluation of the psychic costs generated by the different qualities of mental states—the costs presumably depending on the representational resources available and the regulatory strategies used. Results suggest that using low-level mental states generates higher energetic costs, resulting in a subsequent ego-depletion effect. Conversely, high-level mental states generate fewer costs, protecting from a subsequent ego-depletion effect. The MST appeared to be an efficient tool in the assessment of the energetic repercussions produced by the different mental sates.