The purpose of this study was to determine whether affective responses, as measured by electrical skin conductance, could be vicariously instigated and classically conditioned to a previously neutral stimulus in a two-person social situation. A naive observer watched a model (a confederate of the experimenter) attempt a difficult motor task. The task involved lifting a marble, supported on the end of a specially grooved rod, to the top of a three foot vertical channel, and then into a funnel. It was hypothesized that the model's failure experiences on the task would increase the frequency of the observer's affective responses to a greater extent than would the model's success. This same relationship was hypothesized for conditioning effects. The addition of instructions to the observer that the model's failure on the task would result in an electric shock to the model was expected to enhance both instigation and conditioning effects. Differences In male and female reactivity, as well as a decline in frequency of responses over time, were expected. Subjects were 50 volunteers from introductory psychology classes, 25 male and 25 female. They were randomly assigned to five experimental groups, with the stipulation that each group contain an equal number of males and females. A four factor analysis of variance design constituted the main statistical analysis. Main effects for Shock, Failure, Sex, and Blocks of Trials were analyzed in terms of their relationship to three response classes - Vicariously Instigated Responses (VIR); Conditioned Responses (CR); and Unconditioned Responses to the CS (UCR to CS). The CS was a small light warning the observer that the experimenter predicted the performer's failure on the task was imminent; the UCS to the observer was the Inferred emotional response of the performer to his success or failure on the task. A secondary analysis comprised three of the five experimental groups in which only the effects of shock, sex and blocks of trials were examined. Initial basal conductance levels were recorded and analyzed. In addition, ratings of the quality of the performance, the difficulty of the task, and comments by Observer's about their subjective attitudes during the experiment were examined. It was found that the paradigm employed effectively instigated affective arousal, and that this arousal could be conditioned to a warning signal. Shock contingent upon failure was no more effective than failure alone in producing these instigation and conditioning effects. No sex differences in responsivity were found. Significant declines in arousal over blocks of trials were observed. Ratings of the quality of the performance and the difficulty of the task conformed to expectations. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Child Attachment-Related Conceptualizations of Parents, Teacher and Self; Forced Choice Visual Representations Along a Permitting/Blocking Access Dimension. Twenty-three 5 to 7-year-old boys were shown drawings depicting themselves with their mother, father or main teacher in one of 8 attachment-related situations. Subjects were primarily Caucasian and lived in a suburban neighbourhood in Richmond, B.C. They were asked to select from 4 response categories the caregiver "most like" their mom, dad or main teacher. Response categories were generated from attachment theory. Individual and group inner image profiles were developed from the 552 selections. The variable "situation", but not the variable "caregiver", was determined by loglinear analysis to be significant beyond the .05 level (p. = .035). The childrens' selections were demonstrated to be relevant and non-haphazard within and across response categories. The analyses provide significant support for the validity of the response categories and the centrality of the underlying dimension of "permitting/blocking access". In addition, the study supports the notion of viewing main female teachers after 9 or 10 months with a child - as an attachment figure to that child. A fairly generalized meta-structure of internal working models is suggested by this group profile. Finally, this study gives support to the notion of situational specificity of caregiver response under conditions of child attachment behavioural system activation. / Education, Faculty of / Graduate

Four foreperiods, 6.1, 2.1, 1.1, and 0.6 seconds, were used to investigate the relationships between some components of the OR to a warning signal and reaction time to a stimulus. It was found that reaction time was slowest with the longest foreperiod and fastest with the shortest foreperiod. Duration of the components of the OR correlated negatively with reaction time, and no correlation was found between reaction time and heart-rate deceleration. Heart-rate deceleration was found to be maximal during the 6.1 second foreperiod and to correlate positively with the duration of the deceleration. The findings are discussed in terms of a central process, and the implications for individual learning differences are discussed in terms of the response requirements of the task. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 54 p. : ill. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Science in Audiology

Human behavior relies on the accumulation of task-relevant information to narrow the range of possible responses to a single response. How do we utilize advance information that can help us select and prepare responses to a task? How is this performance benefit facilitated in the brain? Previous literature suggests a subset of brain regions involved in cue-specific processing. We investigated how informative cues affect brain processing. Specifically, to what extent is activity modulated for stimulus-related and response-related cues versus neutral cues in control- and processing-related regions? Participants made manual responses to the identity of face or place stimuli in a variation of the response cuing paradigm while fMRI BOLD signal was recorded. Prior to the stimulus, a letter cue indicating the upcoming stimulus type (face or place) or response hand (left or right) or a neutral cue was presented. We proposed three hypotheses: 1) control-related activity (e.g., prefrontal, parietal) would increase for cued vs. uncued trials; 2) activity in face and place processing regions and left and right premotor regions would activate for their respective cues, although all cues were letters; and 3) stimulus processing regions would also be activated by response cues, and vice versa.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves: 129-131)

Dissertation (PhD)--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / Bibliography. Also available via the Internet.

No description available.