Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 75-89) Also available online.

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2006. / Thesis advisor: C. Charles Mate-Kole. "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts ... Department of Psychology." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 30-35). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Notetaking during lectures has been mainly investigated using an input-output procedure where particular subject variables are related first to notes-asproduct, then to comprehension test scores. In contrast, the purpose of this thesis was to look at notetaking as a process rather than a product and to discover factors that influence the process. The first, orienting study took a fairly traditional approach of training students in the use of two strategies -summarizing and networking- hypothesized to improve notetaking activity. Training was administered for a period of six weeks. Results indicated a main effect for mathematical ability but not for training. Differences in mean scores for training methods were non significant and not in the hypothesized direction'fnetworking > summarizing> control. The next study was a first-approximation to a true processing analysis. Students' self-estimates of prior knowledge, as well as the volume of their notetaking were linked to strategic and tactical processing variables such as whether lecture material was written down as heard or translated into own terms; whether they wrote only important points, and so on. This pattern was then further related to self-estimates of lecture comprehension. The pattern of relationship among processes, and between these processes, note volume and comprehension varied with differing amounts of prior knowledge and with language ability. The third study was more ambitious in its approach to processing variables. A videotaped lecture was segmented into idea units with a pause between each unit. For each segment, students took notes as well as recording their understanding of it. A regression model for the data shows that while self-estimated prior knowledge appeared related to outcome variables (e.g. comprehension), 2 it did not relate to understanding of the lecture as it was being delivered. A more detailed analysis by segments revealed that notes reflected the status of transmitted information with regard to importance and the level of understanding achieved for specific pieces of information. Mean lecture comprehension accounted for the largest percentage of variance in the number of words in notes. Findings are discussed with respect to contemporary theories of note taking and comprehension. A cognitive model of notetaking detailing how the various processes are instantiated and related is also offered.

M.A. (Psychology) / The present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between personality and risk taking behaviour in the South African context. Personality was measured with the Basic Traits Inventory (BTl), an assessment specifically developed to measure the broad dimensions of the five factor model of personality (John & Srivastava, 1999) in South Africa. The five dimensions on the BTl have the same names as the well-known five factor model, namely: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the underlying personality structure across ten different forms of risk-related behaviour. The risk behaviours included smoking, alcohol consumption,.illegal drug use, sexual promiscuity, thrill-seeking activities, gambling, physical violence, romantic infidelity and other behaviours that may have led to a respondent being arrested. Given South Africa's unique population, a further objective ofthis study was to examine the degree to which the results from the study would be in line with those reported in so-called Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. The sample consisted of 683 respondents, all second-year students from a bilingual (Afrikaans and English) university in Johannesburg. There were 142 men and 538 women in the sample. Three of the respondents' gender was unknown. There were 425 White respondents, 120 Black respondents, 83 Indian respondents, 46 Coloured respondents and nine respondents who did not specify any population group. Respondents' mean age was 20.99 years with a standard deviation of5.10 years. The sample was not representative ofthe South African population, with men being underrepresented and White respondents overrepresented in comparison to other population groups. A multivariate technique, Descriptive Discriminant Analysis, was used to analyse personality differences across groups. The groups were formed based on the frequency with which individuals engaged in the different risk-behaviours. Post-hocanalyses allowed for a close rexamination of group differences. The results revealed that a single, statistically significant discriminant functionemergedfor all ten of the risk variables with the exceptionof one, for whichtwo possible discriminant functions were identified. This showed that different combinations of the five personality factors were, to some extent, able to account for group separation on each of the risk variables. Considering the results as a whole, some interesting findings were revealed: It became evident that no single personality structureexists across the different risk-variables of this study. It was clear that some personality factors were more important, whereas others were less important, depending on the type of risk-behaviour being considered. Despite these seeming differences, important patterns of personality emergedacross the risk-variables. Conscientiousness, and in particular, Extraversion were identified as the most salient predictors of the risk-behaviours in this study, although important contributions were also made by the remaining personality factors: Conscientiousness was further found to be the most important predictor of health-risk behaviours such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and druguse. In general, Opennessto Experience, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism appeared to be more selectively associated with specific risk-behaviours when compared to Extraversion and Conscientiousness. Overall, the findings reported in this study were largely in line with those reported in so called WEIRD countries. The results of this study further supported the generalisability of prior research regarding the relationship between personality and risk-taking. It also demonstrated the utility of the five factor model as a promising predictor of risky behaviour. For future research it is recommended that the facet-scale level of the BTl be used to further investigate the personality-risk relationship.

The first two experiments examined the relationship between risk and trust behaviour in two field situations. The third experiment was a replication of Wright, Maggied, and Palmer (1975). A conceptualization of trust, which included the factors: disposition, risk assessment (level of risk and interpersonal variables), and behavioural intention was outlined. The subject group was composed of 240 female undergraduates enlisted on the premises of the main library at the University of Victoria, Canada. In the first two experiments, a between groups' trust behaviour was compared over conditions of low and high manipulated risk. In both experiments, trust behaviour, which was found to vary significantly over risk conditions, was compared with ratings of risk assessment and scores obtained on Rotter's Interpersonal Trust Scale (ITS). Preliminary indications are that trust behaviour is not significantly related to risk-taking as reflected by subjects' choice of prize for completing the experiment. The third experiment did not replicate the results of Wright, et al. (1975) and showed no relationship between the number and type of questions asked by high or low scorers on the ITS. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Perspective taking is typically defined as the ability to reason about others’ mental states (e.g. their beliefs, thoughts, desires, and intentions) and to understand the role of those mental states in everyday situations (I. A. Apperly, 2012). Traditional accounts of perspective taking typically analyze the ability based on three different domains: visual, affective or emotional, and cognitive perspective taking (Flavell, 2004). From a behavioral viewpoint, perspective taking skills are built upon the ability to recognize our own behavior in relation to the context. Relational Frame Theory (RFT) is a contemporary behavioral account of human language and cognition (Hayes et al., 2007). From an RFT viewpoint, perspective-taking skills involve deictic relations between individuals, spaces, and time. Instead of using the three dimensions analyzed in the other fields, RFT studies the development of complex perspective-taking skills through three types of deictic frames: interpersonal (I-YOU-OTHER), spatial (HERE-THERE), and temporal (NOW-THEN-LATER). The purpose of this dissertation was to develop a set of behavioral assessments to measure visual, emotional, and cognitive perspective-taking skills from an RFT viewpoint. This dissertation made methodological and empirical contributions to the field by proposing three behavioral computer-based protocols for evaluating the role of deictic frames on visual, emotional, and cognitive perspective taking tasks. Experiment 1 results revealed significant differences in response latency and correct response levels on interpersonal and spatial deictic frames at simple and reverse levels of complexity on a visual perspective-taking task. These findings suggested that transforming stimulus functions following a mutually entailed relationship between interpersonal and spatial frames is not equivalent to performing conditional discriminations involving both interpersonal and spatial stimuli. Experiment 2 results revealed significant differences in response latency and correct response levels on interpersonal frames with simple, reverse, and double reverse levels of complexity on an emotional perspective-taking task. The finding showed that as the complexity of the deictic relations in emotional perspective taking increased, so did the number of errors and latency to respond. Furthermore, the findings of the study indicate that the valence of emotions has an effect on the levels of deictic relational responding. On a cognitive perspective-taking task, the results of Experiment 3 revealed significant differences in response latency and correct response levels on interpersonal frames with simple and reverse levels of complexity. False beliefs and false desires increased the number of errors and latency to respond to interpersonal deictic frames, according to the findings. Overall, these protocols improved the ecological validity of RFT-based protocols of deictic frames, extended previous research on perspective taking, and opened up new research avenues.

No description available.

Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 78-100) Also available in print.

The ability to gather accurate and complete information is important in scientific endeavors and the field of medicine is no exception. The medical interview is one of the primary methods by which the physician gathers information. His/her method should be no less than that used by the scientist. There are two components to the medical interview: The content, or the specific information, and the process, or the method by which the information is obtained. Traditional methods for teaching interviewing skills to medical students emphasized an on-the-job type of experience with students going out on the wards to interview actual patients. The method had several problems including lack of standardized methods of teaching and evaluating. This dissertation looks at a competency-based method of teaching and evaluating medical interview skills used at The University of Arizona College of Medicine. It uses patient instructors (PIs) to objectively evaluate interviewing skills. PIs are highly trained non-physicians who have been trained to function as patients, teachers, and evaluators. Analysis of the data collected on student interview performance from the classes of 1982-1984 indicated that there was no significant difference in content or process scores due to sex or prior occupational experience in a health-related profession. However, significant differences were found in content and process scores due to the age of the interviewer with students older than the class average scoring higher than the younger students.

While sleep loss has been shown to have detrimental effects on cognitive, physiological, and psychological processes, it has only recently been investigated as a possible causal factor of risk-taking behavior (i.e., a conscious choice to engage in dangerous behavior despite knowledge of possible loss or harm). Among the few studies that have been conducted in this field, the majority found that as individuals become sleepier, their propensity to engage in risk-taking behavior increased. The results of the current study indicated a positive relationship between increased sleep loss and two measures of specific risk-taking behavior (i.e., substance use, sexual compulsivity), but no significant relationship between sleep loss and measures of general risk-taking behavior. There was some evidence for temporal stability of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), though scores on the IGT were not related to scores on other measures of risk-taking, nor to measures of sleep loss. Negative mood was found to partially mediate the relationship between sleep loss and substance use, as well as the relationship between sleep loss and sexual compulsivity.