The extent and consequences of exposure to violence on child and adolescent adjustment are well documented. Empirical studies have focused on identifying the risk and protective factors that may increase or decrease the likelihood of poor outcomes. In terms of resilience and adaptation, some adolescents appear to be capable of coping with the stress of exposure to violence, while others are not. Coping with violence exposure requires both internal and external resources that ultimately determine how adaptive or maladaptive the outcome will be. Given that adolescence is a time during which peer relationships become increasingly important, they may serve as external coping resources. The present study hypothesizes that various facets of peer relationships (i.e., friends' behavior, friendship reciprocity, peer acceptance, and peer intimacy/closeness) will have an effect on the relationship between community and family violence exposure and psychological and behavioral outcomes, specifically, aggression and anxiety, as both have been consistently and empirically linked to violence exposure. Data were collected from 667 middle school students, followed from 6th grade to 8th grade, living in a high crime school district in New York City. Data were also collected from their parents and classmates. Prosocial friends and their influence on the cognitive processing of social information, leading to fewer hostile attributions, were expected to help adolescents cope by minimizing the negative impact of exposure to violence on aggression. Further, reciprocated friendships, peer acceptance, and close, intimate friends were expected to lessen the negative impact of exposure to violence on anxiety. Controlling for gender, six models were tested positing separate moderating and mediating effects of the aforementioned variables on the associations between violence exposure and aggression and also anxiety. Friends' Antisocial behavior was found to mediate the relationship between violence exposure and later aggressive behavior. Hostile attribution alone did not explain the relationship between violence exposure and later aggression, but when Friends' Antisocial behavior and hostile attribution were examined in the same model, together they mediated the association between violence exposure and later aggressive behavior. Of note, Friends' Antisocial behavior was a stronger predictor than hostile attribution. Greater social acceptance moderated the relationship between violence exposure and later reported anxiety when violence exposure was low. Peer intimacy/closeness, while demonstrating a direct effect on anxiety, failed to moderate the association between violence exposure and anxiety. Finally, Friends' Prosocial Behavior could not be tested for whether it buffered the effect of violence exposure on later aggression because the data did not meet criteria for performing tests of moderation. However, Friends' Prosocial behavior was related to other study variables in the expected direction; it was significantly negatively associated with violence exposure, hostile attribution bias, and Friends' Antisocial behavior. Therefore the emphasis on friends' prosocial behavior in current prevention efforts to reduce aggressive outcomes is warranted.

Lesbians continue to be an invisible, stigmatized group in the United States, and as a result, engage in sexual identity management strategies to conceal and reveal their sexual identity across several different contexts. The experiences of sexual minorities in the workplace is one domain that has garnered scholars' recent attention, especially as it relates to sexual orientation disclosure; however, the unique experiences of lesbians' management of their sexual identity remains underexplored. Furthermore, while scholars assert that there is most likely an association between lesbians' disclosure of their sexual orientation in the workplace and their intimate relationship, this remains unclear. As such, the present study investigated antecedents and outcomes of sexual orientation disclosure in the workplace among a sample of 201 self-identified lesbians in the context of their intimate relationship. As hypothesized, a multiple linear regression revealed that the higher prevalence of affirming organizational policies and practices, less perceived treatment discrimination towards sexual minorities in the workplace, lower levels of internalized homophobia, and greater relationship commitment was associated with the use of greater sexual identity management strategies that reveal a lesbian's identity in the workplace. A multivariate General Linear Model (GLM) was utilized to assess the outcomes of sexual orientation disclosure in the workplace among lesbians. As expected, the use of greater sexual identity management strategies that reveal a lesbian's identity was positively associated with higher levels of psychological well-being and relationship satisfaction. Contrary to what was predicted, the use of sexual identity management strategies was not significantly associated with job satisfaction, and possible explanations for this finding are addressed. Furthermore, two simple linear regression analyses revealed that greater relationship commitment was associated with bringing one's partner to work-related events and bringing one's partner to work-related events was associated with greater relationship satisfaction. This study improves present understanding of lesbians' experiences of sexual orientation disclosure in the workplace. The findings are useful for organizations and practitioners in their pursuits to better understand their lesbian employees and clients, and will hopefully motivate other researchers in the field who are interested in contributing to the growing literature in this area. Limitations and implications for theory, research, practice, and training are discussed.

This study investigated cognitive style (CS) as a mediator between parental psychological maltreatment (PM) and depression (DEP) in a sample of adolescent boys. Rose and Abramson (1992) hypothesized that PM affects the development of DEP more than physical abuse (PA) or sexual abuse (SA) due to its unique characteristic of being a direct attack on an individual's self-worth (e.g., "You are stupid," "You never should have been born"). To assess PM in isolation, without confounding the data with other forms of maltreatment, PA and SA were measured and controlled in this study. In addition, this is the first time a comprehensive measure of PM (Comprehensive Assessment of Psychological Maltreatment - Child Version; Brassard et al., 2003-2011) has been used to assess the relationship between PM, CS, and DEP. A sample of 169 middle to upper-middle class ninth grade boys were administered five questionnaires: the Comprehensive Assessment of Psychological Maltreatment - Child Version, the Children's Cognitive Style Questionnaire (CCSQ; Abela, 1997), the Depression Subscale of the Behavior Assessment System for Children - Second Edition - Self-Report Adolescent (BASC-2; Reynolds and Kamphaus, 2004), and the Physical Assault Subscale and a single Sexual Abuse item from the Conflict Tactics Scale Parent-Child (CTSPC; Straus et al., 1998). On these measures, 10.4 percent of the participants reported significant PM, 8 percent reported negative CS, and 12.5 percent reported at risk or clinically significant levels of DEP. It was predicted that the relationship between PM and DEP would be partially mediated by CS, when controlling for PA and SA, as existing research on the development of depression indicates numerous contributing factors (e.g., biological predisposition, negative life events). This hypothesis was tested using Baron and Kenny's (1986) four-step procedure for determining mediation and Sobel's (1982) test of significance. The results supported the prediction of partial mediation: controlling for PA and SA, CS was found to be a significant mediator between PM and DEP. Specifically, CS mediated 11 percent of the total effect of PM on DEP. Controlling for PA, PM alone accounted for 28 percent of the variance in DEP. Adding CS to the model increased the total variance in DEP to 30 percent. The results of this study suggest that PM specifically affects CS and subsequently DEP, which until now has only been speculated by researchers. Conclusions about the directionality of the data are based on a theoretical understanding that DEP and CS do not cause PM to occur. Due to this study's cross-sectional design, causality cannot be determined. Thus, the conclusions of this study must be interpreted with caution.

This work was guided by the question: which ways of thinking can facilitate self-regulation in the domain of eating behavior change and weight-loss, and why? In Experiment 1 we found that a minimally induced focus on the food's health vs. taste value was sufficient to activate a healthy eating goal among female participants as observed in their food choices and consumption during a subsequent, seemingly unrelated, tasting task in the lab. In Experiment 2, we tested two explicitly instructed cognitive strategies for regulating overeating during the Thanksgiving holiday dinner and found that thinking of refraining from overeating as an act of care towards oneself was effective in helping participants limit overeating and dessert consumption, as compared to thinking of overeating as an act that the individual would later regret. Finally, in Experiment 3, we systematically varied the frame-valence (positive vs. negative) and time-focus (present vs. future) of a goal-directed cognitive strategy in order to investigate the unique contribution and interaction of these factors in rendering particular strategies effective in the context of self-regulation for healthier eating and weight-loss among both male and female participants. What we found was a time-focus by frame-valence interaction, such that, when focusing on future outcomes, a positively framed strategy (i.e. thinking of how healthy choices would eventually lead to reaching one's future goal) resulted in significant weight-loss and healthier eating over a two-week period, whereas a negatively framed strategy (i.e. thinking of how unhealthy choices would not lead to reaching one's future goal) did not. On the other hand, when focusing on present progress, a negatively framed cognitive strategy (i.e. thinking of how an unhealthy choice constitutes taking a step away from one's goal) resulted in significant weight-loss and healthier eating, whereas a positively framed strategy (i.e. thinking of how a healthy choice constitutes taking a step towards one's goal) did not. Current health communication policy in the United States and abroad is primarily focused on raising awareness about the future, negative consequences of unhealthy behaviors such as overeating - a strategy that we found to be ineffective and that previous research has found to be associated with harmful effects such as reinforcing the stigma against overweight and obese people. This thesis adds to the voices that question the advisability of this communication policy and instead proposes alternative, effective, ways of promoting healthy eating behavior.

Are people able to determine when they are correct or incorrect in their interpretation of another's emotional state? This question of whether or not individuals are capable of making accurate judgments about this ability was briefly explored in a handful of studies that concluded that individuals could not make such judgments. This finding did not seem to be consistent with our high-level social abilities. It is difficult to image that individuals are capable of fluently moving though social interactions, emotional exchanges, and interpersonal relationships absent any ability to determine if they are indeed correctly interpreting other's emotions. In an effort to revisit this question it was necessary to take a deeper look at the methodology used in the original studies. The procedure used to establish metacognitive accuracy, although not incorrect, was not the appropriate choice. Instead of relying on the global measures of metacognition that previous research used, we shifted the focus to relative measures of metacognition that allow individuals to make item-by-item decisions about their perceived accuracy on each stimulus. This methodology has been used in studies involving both static (posed facial expressions and cartoon images) and dynamic (body gait and verbal prosody) stimuli. In each experiment, for each type of stimulus, individuals are able to distinguish those items that they know from those that they do not know - demonstrating metacognition of emotion recognition. This knowledge is not limited to adults, but appears to be developing in the 3rd grade and fully developed by the 5th grade. These findings are discussed with respect to the importance of emotion recognition in social interactions, the variety of cues that might be useful during the process of emotion recognition, and cognitive development in general.

What factors boost student motivation? Three studies were designed to test whether fit (Higgins, 2000) between students' goals or beliefs and the message conveyed by academic tasks increases engagement and learning. Given past research (Rodriguez, Romero-Canyas, Downey, Mangels & Higgins, 2011) showing that fit between beliefs about the interdependence of the self and task framing led to better performance, Study 1 tested the hypothesis that students would be more motivated to select tasks that fit their beliefs about the interdependence/independence of the self. Results showed that students tended to select math tasks consistent with their beliefs and this subsequent selection predicted greater math performance. Though Study 1 explored how fit affects students' choices, it did not address the learning processes that are influenced by fit. Hence, studies 2 and 3 were undertaken to investigate this issue. Study 2 specifically looked at students' experience studying. Drawing from the persuasion literature, it was explored whether fit can impact persuasion through "feeling right" about one's evaluative response to a persuasive message and can also increase engagement during the act of studying to enhance performance. Students were asked to focus their studying on either the persuasiveness of an article's message or on their opinion of its proposal. Results indicated that among students who experienced regulatory fit (vs. non-fit) and focused on a science article's persuasive message, the more positive their attitudes were about studying, the more persuasive they perceived the article to be; and the more negative their attitudes about studying, the less persuasive they perceived the article to be. When students under fit instead focused on their opinion of the article's proposal, regulatory fit but not study attitudes predicted perceived persuasiveness. Reading comprehension of the text, which captured their strength of engagement in the studied material, was directly enhanced by fit. While in Study 2 participants were explicitly told how to focus their attention on the task, it is also important to investigate the role of attention as students progress through a task. Study 3 tested how students naturally allocate attention during a challenging verbal task that resulted in poor performance. It was investigated whether fit between students' achievement goals and task framing helped them correct their errors. In order to identify the attentional mechanisms that explain how fit may help, event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded. Participants completed the initial task with two blocks. One block was framed to emphasize mastery goals (e.g. effort, learning, mastery of knowledge) and another was framed to emphasize performance goals (e.g. outperforming others as to demonstrate one's competency). For each task question, participants received performance feedback (wrong vs. right) and learning feedback (correct answer). Subsequently, participants were given a surprise retest on all items answered incorrectly from the initial task. Results showed that fit between achievement goals and task framing led to greater correction of items at retest. Furthermore, ERP analyses and structural equation modeling identified different attentional pathways through which fit led to better learning. Whereas in the performance frame model the pathway was through greater sustained attention to negative performance feedback, in the mastery frame model it was through greater processing of the correct answer. Overall, these three studies draw from different literatures to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how regulatory fit can boost student engagement and learning.

This paper is based on a study examining the performance on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) of a group of male adolescents aged 16-18 years incarcerated at a secure corrections facility located near New York City. At the time of IGT administration, 45% of the study participants had been charged with crimes but not yet sentenced; 55% of the study participants had been sentenced. 61% of the subjects had been charged with having committed violent felonies and 39% of the subjects had been charged with committing non-violent felonies or misdemeanors. In an effort to contextualize the results of the study sample's performance on the IGT, participant performance was compared to the IGT performance of two groups of adolescents that had never been incarcerated (N = 42, N = 31). Findings demonstrate that the study sample performed significantly worse on the IGT than the community-based samples. Study participant performance was also compared to IGT performance of a group of previously incarcerated adults (N = 25). There was no statistically significant difference in the mean performances of these groups. The study also examined the relationship between antisocial behavior and psychopathic traits and decision-making (as measured by the IGT). No significant differences on IGT performance were identified between study participants charged with committing violent felonies and study participants charged with non-violent felonies and misdemeanors. No association was found between the presence or absence of psychopathic traits, specifically callous-unemotional traits, and IGT performance. Implications for research and practice are considered

Research on the perception of time has focused on isolating an internal time keeping mechanism. This focus has caused research in this domain to stay focused on perceptual mechanisms. However, information that has been perceived must also be stored into memory. The dominant model of time perception, SET, specifies a clock stage, a memory stage, and a decision stage, but there has been comparatively more research focusing on the internal clock than on memory mechanisms. This dissertation focuses on the memory for time by incorporating manipulations used in non-temporal memory research into timing tasks. Chapter 1 targets working memory for time and shows that brief delays between learning and recall cause temporal estimates to lengthen. Chapter 2 targets retention and storage of multiple time intervals over a delay of a few minutes and shows that the estimates of target times learned together will migrate towards each other in memory. We also showed that scalar variability arises at retrieval. Chapter 3 attempts to reconfigure a categorization task to target implicit memory for time. Overall, the research demonstrates that exploring memory mechanisms for time will increase our understanding of time perception and provide us with information that focusing on the internal clock will not.

Visual processing in humans has both objective and subjective aspects. Objective aspects of visual processing consist in an observer's ability to accurately discern objective properties of visual stimuli. Subjective aspects of visual processing consist in an observer's visual experience of the stimuli and the observer's metacognitive evaluation of the reliability of objective visual processing. What is the nature of the relationship between objective and subjective visual processing? A wide range of views exists in the literature today, but a broad distinction can be drawn between (1) views holding that objective and subjective visual processing are intimately interrelated, such that changes in subjective processing should be associated with changes in objective processing; and (2) views holding that subjective visual processing is a separate, higher-order process, such that it is possible to change subjective processing without changing objective processing. Here we perform a series of psychophysical experiments to arbitrate between these views. To make the data analysis more powerful, we created a novel extension of signal detection theory for analyzing the informational content of subjective ratings of perceptual clarity and confidence (Appendix A). We constructed a wide array of signal detection theoretic models capturing different hypotheses on the relationship between objective and subjective visual processing and performed a formal model comparison analysis in order to discern which model structures best accounted for a data set in which objective stimulus discrimination performance was dissociated from subjective ratings of visual clarity (Chapter 1). Results from this analysis favor a higher-order view of subjective visual processing. If the higher-order view is correct, it should be possible to disrupt the informational content carried by subjective ratings of perceptual clarity and decision confidence without affecting an observer's objective ability to visually discriminate stimuli. We found two lines of novel empirical evidence for such dissociations. We show that when subjects perform a working memory task in which the contents of working memory require extensive manipulation, ratings of confidence in a concurrent perceptual task carry less information about perceptual task performance, even taking the influence of task performance into account (Chapter 2). Similarly, we show that transcranial magnetic stimulation to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex selectively impairs the metacognitive sensitivity of visual clarity ratings without affecting perceptual task performance (Chapter 3). Finally, we show that perceptual and metacognitive performance can dissociate over time as an observer performs a continuous block of trials in a visual discrimination task, contrary to views holding that perceptual discrimination and metacognition are closely intertwined processes (Chapter 4). We show that this dissociation can be partly attributed to individual variability in gray matter volume of regions of anterior prefrontal cortex previously linked to visual metacognition. We interpret these results as suggesting that limited prefrontal resources can be dynamically allocated to support the performance of either perceptual or metacognitive processes. Taken together, these results provide converging evidence supporting a higher-order view of subjective visual processing. Functionally, objective and subjective processing are organized hierarchically, such that downstream subjective processes reflect the properties of objective processing but can be independently manipulated. Anatomically, these high-level subjective processes are linked to regions of prefrontal cortex rather than posterior perceptual areas.

This body of work begins to investigate the following three overarching questions on errors and learning. First, when are errors helpful for memory? Second, why are errors beneficial in certain circumstances? Third, are learners aware of when errors are advantageous for learning? These questions cover two unique dimensions of learning by making errors, both from a memory and a metacognitive point of view. From a memory perspective, it might seem surprising that making an error compared to simply studying (no mistakes) could be beneficial for memory. We began our investigations with a replication and extension of previous work on the error generation effect: When does making errors enhance correct retention above studying? By investigating boundary conditions, this helps inform theory of the mechanism responsible for the error generation effect. We found that error generation only enhanced retention for related materials but not for unrelated word-pairs, and therefore, confirm that the error generation benefit is more than simply due to the act of generation. However, what is the role of the error: Does it serve as a semantic mediator linking directly to the semantically related target, or can the error serve as an episodic link, bridging to the original learning episode, even if it is not directly linked to the target? If a learner remembers her error, does this help or hurt memory for the correct answer? By using materials that enabled errors that were either congruent (related) or incongruent (unrelated) to the correct answer, we found generating errors during learning led to benefits of memory, both when the error was congruent and incongruent to the target. Furthermore, when one could recall her error at test, correct answer memory was higher than when one could not recall her original error. These findings suggest that just a semantic explanation for the error generation is likely insufficient, and point to the importance of episodic recollection at retrieval for error generation to aid memory above study alone. Lastly, we investigated this errorful learning methodology from a metacognitive perspective. Even when errors were beneficial for learning, we found that learners were unaware of the memorial advantage. We sought to ensure this underconfidence was not merely a function of poor performance accuracy or source monitoring. We were also interested in exploring if this bias was stable, or if one could correctly update her metacognitive knowledge simply by making item-level judgments. These initial projects open the doors for exciting research investigating individual differences on learning from generating errors, from both a memory and metacognitive perspective.