Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Cognitive inconsistency'

Despite much research into vegetarianism, the psychological relationship between eating meat and evaluating animals remains relatively neglected. Through focus groups, questionnaires and experiments, this study investigated whether people experienced psychological inconsistency in this relationship and, if so, how they handled that inconsistency. Unlike vegetarians' attitudes, the content of meat-eaters' attitudes towards eating meat rarely included animals. Meat-eaters' positive attitudes towards eating meat were consistent with their eating behaviour; however, their attitudes towards farm animals were more positive than their attitudes towards eating meat. It therefore depends upon which attitudes are salient at any given time to determine whether psychological consistency is maximised overall. By focusing on the relationship between their own genuinely-held attitudes towards farm animals, animals' slaughter, and eating meat, meat-eaters' cognitive dissonance increased. Their attitudes towards eating meat were expected to become more positive in order to restore consonance between their attitudes and eating behaviour. However, meat-eaters' attitudes towards eating meat became less positive and their attitudes towards animals' slaughter became more negative. In contrast, their attitudes towards farm animals resisted change. Therefore meat-eaters' attitudes towards farm animals became relatively even more positive than their attitudes towards eating meat and animals' slaughter. Hence, the attitudes stimulated by this research, in an environment which prevented psychological denial strategies, caused (a) meat eaters' attitudes to become more inconsistent with their behaviour and (b) the consequent lack of consonance restoration. This study both helps to understand the empirical relationship between eating meat and evaluating animals and extends cognitive dissonance theory's explanatory power to real-world complex phenomena.

Using the action-based model of dissonance (Harmon-Jones, Amodio, & Harmon-Jones, 2009) and self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2008) as theoretical frameworks, this thesis sought to explain the motivational processes underlying the environmental belief-action gap. The thesis examined why and how people resolve inconsistencies between their favourable attitudes toward environmental protection and their environmentally harmful behaviour. I hypothesized that accounting for individual differences in autonomous and controlled distal motives for effective and unconflicted action would clarify why attitude-behaviour inconsistencies are uncomfortable and explain how people compensate for them. I carried out 3 sets of studies to test the proposed hierarchical action-based model of inconsistency compensation in the environmental domain (HABICE). The objective of the first set of 3 studies was to test hypotheses about the role of individual differences in global and contextual motivation on dissonance arousal, in response to native attitude-behaviour inconsistencies encountered across and within important life domains. The second set of 3 studies tested hypotheses about the role of individual differences in contextual motivation toward the environment on the use and choice of strategies to compensate for a recent native inconsistency in the environmental domain. Finally, the goal of the final study was to test hypotheses about the moderating effect of social factors that direct attention to public (ego-invested) versus private (authentic) aspects of the self during the perception of inconsistencies on motivation and intentions to revise pro-global warming mitigation attitudes. The results of the 7 studies (total N = 2,209) supported the main predictions of the HABICE. The cumulative evidence supported the existence of two motivational orientations operating during inconsistency compensation processes. The autonomous motivational orientation, which embodies action tendencies to facilitate organismic integration via authentic regulation, motivated people to compensate for attitude-behaviour inconsistencies to restore the integrity of authentic self-structures. As a result, autonomous motivation toward the environment led people to reduce dissonance and to compensate for perceived inconsistencies by bringing their behaviour in line with self-relevant attitudes. The controlled motivational orientation, which embodies action tendencies to facilitate instrumental outcomes via contingent regulation, motivated people to compensate for attitude-behaviour inconsistencies to protect ego-invested self-structures by avoiding the aversive consequences of their counter-environmental actions. When inconsistencies aroused dissonance, controlled motivation predicted the use of overt behavioural strategies, for example enacting a compensatory pro-environmental action, to reduce dissonance. However, when inconsistencies did not arouse dissonance or there were barriers to behaviour change, controlled motivation predicted the use of cognitive strategies, for example revising or distorting pro-environmental attitudes, to minimize the inconsistency. Consequently, autonomous compensation processes predicted relatively infrequent attitude-behaviour inconsistencies in the environmental domain while controlled compensation processes predicted relatively frequent inconsistencies. The results imply that controlled motivation toward the environment may be driving the environmental belief-action gap, but that finding ways to promote autonomous motivation toward the environment in the general population has the potential to alleviate the gap.

Si les individus évoluent généralement dans un environnement fluide, où les événements vont dans le sens de leurs attentes, ils peuvent parfois être confrontés à des situations inattendues, non conformes à leurs connaissances ou croyances. Par exemple, un train annoncé comme supprimé arrive en gare, ou encore un ami n’agit pas en cohérence avec ses attitudes ou comportements passés en exprimant de fortes valeurs écologiques tout en ne triant pas ses déchets). Pour un être humain motivé par un besoin de consistance (Abelson et al., 1968 ; Cialdini et al., 1995), être exposé à de telles situations est une expérience inconfortable. L’inconsistance cognitive génère en effet des affects - essentiellement négatifs - et une motivation à revenir à un état de consistance, cette dernière entraînant la mise en place des stratégies visant à rendre cohérentes les attentes de l’individu et la situation qu’il expérimente (Gawronski & Brannon, 2019). Pourtant des exemples semblent indiquer que certains individus s’accommoderaient facilement de l’inconsistance. Plusieurs scandales ou affaires politiques font penser que les individus puissants peuvent agir de façon contradictoire ou être confrontés à leurs propres inconsistances sans pour autant exprimer le malaise qu’une telle situation provoquerait chez des individus moins bien dotés d’un point de vue hiérarchique. Le pouvoir protègerait-il des effets de l’exposition à l’inconsistance ? C’est à cette question que cette thèse cherche à répondre. Le pouvoir et ses effets ont largement été étudiés en psychologie sociale, tout comme les effets de l’inconsistance cognitive sur les individus. Cependant, à notre connaissance, peu d’études ont essayé d’observer les effets du pouvoir sur la gestion de l’inconsistance cognitive. Ce programme de recherche a pour objectif de tester l’hypothèse selon laquelle le pouvoir social limiterait les effets de l’inconsistance cognitive. Le fait de détenir du pouvoir agirait alors comme un bouclier permettant de protéger les individus des effets désagréables, notamment des affects négatifs engendrés par l’exposition à l’inconsistance. Sept études destinées à tester les effets du pouvoir sur différents type de situations générant de l’inconsistance cognitive (inconsistance provoquée par des processus automatiques, visant le système de connaissance, et impliquant le soi des individus) sont présentées. Les résultats obtenus ne sont pas stables et ne permettent donc pas de valider formellement notre hypothèse générale. Toutefois, dans deux études, un effet modérateur du pouvoir sur le niveau d’affects négatifs provoqués par l’exposition à une inconsistance a été mis en évidence. Il en est de même concernant les stratégies de compensation mises en place par les individus à la suite de cette exposition. Les contributions et limites de ces travaux sont discutés au regard des aspects processuels et émotionnels pouvant être impliqués dans leur compréhension
Although individuals generally evolve in a fluid environment, where everything goes according to their expectations, they can sometimes be confronted with unexpected situations that don't conform to their knowledge or beliefs. For example, a train announced as cancelled arrives at the station, or a friend doesn't act in line with his past attitudes or behaviors (expressing strong ecological values while not sorting his garbage). For a human being who is motivated by a need for consistency (Abelson et al., 1968; Cialdini et al., 1995), being exposed to such situations is an uncomfortable experience. Cognitive inconsistency generates affects - essentially negative ones - and a motivation to return to a state of consistency, the latter leading to the implementation of strategies aimed at making the individual's expectations and the situation he or she is experiencing consistent (Gawronski & Brannon, 2019). However, there is some evidence to suggest that inconsistency is easily acceptable to some individuals. Several scandals and political affairs suggest that powerful individuals may act contradictorily or be confronted with their own inconsistencies without expressing the discomfort such a situation would provoke in less hierarchically endowed individuals. Does power protect against the effects of exposure to inconsistency? This is the question this thesis aims to answer. Power and its effects have been widely studied in social psychology, as well as the effects of cognitive inconsistency on individuals. But to our knowledge, few studies have attempted to observe the effects of power on the management of cognitive inconsistency. The aim of this research program is to test the hypothesis that social power limits the effects of cognitive inconsistency. Holding power would then act as a shield to protect individuals from unpleasant effects, notably the negative affects engendered by exposure to inconsistency. Seven studies designed to test the effects of power on different types of situations generating cognitive inconsistency (inconsistency caused by automatic processes, targeting the knowledge system, and involving the individual's self) are presented. The results obtained are not stable and therefore do not allow us to formally validate our general hypothesis. However, in two studies, a moderating effect of power on the level of negative affect caused by exposure to inconsistency was found. The same is observed for the compensatory strategies implemented by individuals following exposure to inconsistency. The contributions and limitations of this work are discussed in terms of the processual and emotional aspects that may be involved in understanding it

Paper [I] theoretically analyzes how the level and uncertainty of future prospects affect incentives to abstain from sexual risk taking in the presence of HIV. The results suggest that, for individuals with limited access to HIV treatment, uncertainty of future health may be an important factor driving unsafe sex practices and support the empirical finding of a weak link between sexual behavior, HIV prevalence, and HIV knowledge in poor countries; therefore suggesting that AIDS policy needs to be calibrated in order to fit within different social contexts. Paper [II] empirically tests the link between uncertainty of future prospects and sexual risk taking in a group of young adults in Cape Town, South Africa. The findings indicate that expected income and health and future uncertainty are significant determinants of current patterns of sexual risk taking. However, the empirical results only provide limited support to a link between expected health and sexual risk taking. Paper [III] theoretically analyzes effects of affect and defensive denial on incentives to engage in sexual risk taking related to HIV. The results of the theoretical analysis suggest that the effect of rationalization of personal risk depends on the risk of being HIV positive. Although rationalization causes excessive risk taking behavior for individuals with a relatively low lifetime risk, it may prevent fatalism among individuals whose lifetime risk of HIV is perceived as overwhelming. Paper [IV] theoretically analyzes the role of identity conflict for the evolution of female labor supply over time. The results suggest the fear of becoming an outsider in society may have prevented a complete transition of women from housewives to breadwinners. In addition, our analysis shows that not recognizing that the weights attached to different social identities are endogenous may imply that the long-run effects on labor supply of a higher wage may be underestimated.

Les recherches menées dans le champ de l’influence sociale et permettant d’amener les individus au changement sont classiques en psychologie sociale. Le changement de comportement peut être obtenu par le biais de différentes techniques, comme celle de la porte-au-nez. Son mode opératoire est assez simple : obtenir un refus à une première demande trop coûteuse pour être acceptée dans le but de faciliter l’acceptation d’une seconde demande qui l’est moins, celle visée dès le début. Différentes interprétations ont été testées mais aucune d’entre elles ne fait l’unanimité à ce jour. L’objectif de cette thèse est d’une part d’étudier le rôle de la position du participant vis-à-vis de l’objet des requêtes dans le paradigme de porte-au-nez et, d’autre part, de proposer une nouvelle modélisation de l’effet porte-au-nez basée sur une inconsistance. Nous faisons l’hypothèse que l’efficacité de la technique de porte-au-nez repose sur la difficulté des personnes à tolérer l’inconsistance entre leur comportement de refus et leurs positions mesurées au travers de l’attitude, l’importance pour le Soi et les croyances normatives vis-à-vis de l’objet. Dans cette logique, l’acceptation de la seconde requête aurait lieu pour réduire cette inconsistance en adoptant un comportement cohérent avec leurs positions. Six expériences ont été menées pour répondre à cet objectif. Les deux premières ont permis de tester le rôle de la position initiale et elles montrent que seule l’importance du Soi peut influencer l’effet de porte-au-nez. Les deux suivantes ont permis de mettre en évidence le rôle de l’écart entre la position des individus et le comportement de refus sur l’intention. La cinquième expérience montre que les participants ressentent de la culpabilité lors du refus de la requête extrême surtout lorsque leur position est favorable à la cause des requêtes. Les résultats de la dernière confirment une interprétation en termes de gestion d’une inconsistance par rapport à une interprétation classique
Research conducted in the field of social influence and leading individuals to change are classic in social psychology. Behavior change can be achieved through different techniques, such as the door-in-the-face. Its operating procedure is simple: get a refusal on a first request too costly to be accepted in order to facilitate the acceptance of a second request less costly, the one targeted from the beginning. Different interpretations were tested based on contextual variables to argue their approaches, but none of them is unanimously approved to date. The objective of this thesis is to study the influence of interpersonal variables, such as attitude, self-importance and normative beliefs, in the door-in-the-face paradigm and to propose a new modelling of the door-in-the-face effect based on inconsistency. We hypothesize that the effectiveness of the door-in-the-face technique is based on the difficulty people have in tolerating the inconsistency between their refusal behavior and their measured positions through attitude, Self-importance and normative beliefs about the object. In this logic, the acceptance of the second request would take place to reduce this inconsistency by adopting a behavior consistent with their positions. Six experiments were conducted to achieve this objective. The first two have tested the role of the initial position and show that only the Self-importance can influence the door-in-the-face effect. The following two have highlighted the role of the difference between the position of individuals and the refusal behavior on the intention. The fifth experiment shows that the participants feel guilty when the extreme request is refused, especially when their position is favorable to the cause of the requests. The results of the last one confirm an interpretation in terms of inconsistency compared to a classical interpretation

Dans ce travail, nous nous intéressons à la place des systèmes de dialogue orientés-tâche à la fois dans le traitement automatique des langues, et dans l’interaction humain-machine. Nous nous concentrons plus particulièrement sur la différence de traitement de l’information et de l’utilisation de la mémoire, d’un tour de parole à l’autre, par l’humain et la machine, pendant une conversation écrite de type clavardage. Après avoir étudié les mécanismes de rétention et de rappel mémoriels chez l’humain durant un dialogue, en particulier dans l'accomplissement d'une tâche, nous émettons l’hypothèse qu’un des éléments susceptible d'expliquer que les performances des machines demeurent en deçà de celles des humains, est la capacité à posséder non seulement une image de l’utilisateur, mais également une image de soi, explicitement convoquée pendant les inférences liées à la poursuite du dialogue. Cela se traduit pour le système par les trois axes suivants. Tout d’abord, par l’anticipation, à un tour de parole donné, du tour suivant de l’utilisateur. Ensuite, par la détection d’une incohérence dans son propre énoncé, facilitée, comme nous le démontrons, par l’anticipation du tour suivant de l’utilisateur en tant qu’indice supplémentaire. Enfin, par la prévision du nombre de tours de paroles restants dans le dialogue afin d’avoir une meilleure vision de la progression du dialogue, en prenant en compte la potentielle présence d’une incohérence dans son propre énoncé, c’est que nous appelons le double modèle du système, qui représente à la fois l’utilisateur et l’image que le système renvoie à l’utilisateur. Pour mettre en place ces fonctionnalités, nous exploitons les réseaux de mémoire de bout-en-bout, un modèle de réseau de neurones récurrent qui possède la spécificité non seulement de traiter des historiques de dialogue longs (comme un RNN ou un LSTM) mais également de créer des sauts de réflexion, permettant de filtrer l’information contenue à la fois dans l’énoncé de l’utilisateur et dans celui de l’historique de dialogue. De plus, ces trois sauts de réflexion servent de mécanisme d’attention “naturel” pour le réseau de mémoire, à la manière d’un décodeur de transformeur. Pour notre étude, nous améliorons, en y ajoutant nos trois fonctionnalités, un type de réseau de mémoire appelé WMM2Seq (réseau de mémoire de travail par séquence). Ce modèle s’inspire des modèles cognitifs de la mémoire, en présentant les concepts de mémoire épisodique, de mémoire sémantique et de mémoire de travail. Il obtient des résultats performants sur des tâches de génération de réponse de dialogue sur les corpus DSTC2 (humain-machine dans le domaine de restaurant) et MultiWOZ (multi-domaine créé avec Magicien d’Oz); ce sont les corpus que nous utilisons pour nos expériences. Les trois axes mentionnés précédemment apportent deux contributions principales à l’existant. En premier lieu, ceci complexifie l’intelligence du système de dialogue en le dotant d’un garde-fou (incohérences détectées). En second lieu, cela optimise à la fois le traitement des informations dans le dialogue (réponses plus précises ou plus riches) et la durée de celui-ci. Nous évaluons les performances de notre système avec premièrement la f-mesure pour les entités détectées à chaque tour de parole, deuxièmement de score BLEU pour la fluidité de l’énoncé du système et troisièmement de taux d’exactitude jointe pour la réussite du dialogue. Les résultats obtenus montrent l’intérêt d’orienter les recherches vers des modèles de gestion de la mémoire plus cognitifs afin de réduire l’écart de performance dans un dialogue entre l’humain et la machine
In this work, we are interested in the place of task-oriented dialogue systems in both automatic language processing and human-machine interaction. In particular, we focus on the difference in information processing and memory use, from one turn to the next, by humans and machines, during a written chat conversation. After having studied the mechanisms of memory retention and recall in humans during a dialogue, in particular during the accomplishment of a task, we hypothesize that one of the elements that may explain why the performance of machines remains below that of humans, is the ability to possess not only an image of the user, but also an image of oneself, explicitly summoned during the inferences linked to the continuation of the dialogue. This translates into the following three axes for the system. First, by the anticipation, at a given turn of speech, of the next turn of the user. Secondly, by the detection of an inconsistency in one's own utterance, facilitated, as we demonstrate, by the anticipation of the user's next turn as an additional cue. Finally, by predicting the number of remaining turns in the dialogue in order to have a better vision of the dialogue progression, taking into account the potential presence of an incoherence in one's own utterance, this is what we call the dual model of the system, which represents both the user and the image that the system sends to the user. To implement these features, we exploit end-to-end memory networks, a recurrent neural network model that has the specificity not only to handle long dialogue histories (such as an RNN or an LSTM) but also to create reflection jumps, allowing to filter the information contained in both the user's utterance and the dialogue history. In addition, these three reflection jumps serve as a "natural" attention mechanism for the memory network, similar to a transformer decoder. For our study, we enhance a type of memory network called WMM2Seq (sequence-based working memory network) by adding our three features. This model is inspired by cognitive models of memory, presenting the concepts of episodic memory, semantic memory and working memory. It performs well on dialogue response generation tasks on the DSTC2 (human-machine in the restaurant domain) and MultiWOZ (multi-domain created with Wizard of Oz) corpora; these are the corpora we use for our experiments. The three axes mentioned above bring two main contributions to the existing. Firstly, it adds complexity to the intelligence of the dialogue system by providing it with a safeguard (detected inconsistencies). Second, it optimizes both the processing of information in the dialogue (more accurate or richer answers) and the duration of the dialogue. We evaluate the performance of our system with firstly the F1 score for the entities detected in each speech turn, secondly the BLEU score for the fluency of the system utterance and thirdly the joint accuracy for the success of the dialogue. The results obtained show that it would be interesting to direct research towards more cognitive models of memory management in order to reduce the performance gap in a human-machine dialogue

Cognitive dissonance theory and selective information exposure literature postulate that individuals ignore preference-inconsistent information and selectively process new information. Previous studies on selective information exposure have shown that preference-inconsistent information is not persuasive for consumer decision making. Given the limited amount of past research about the effect of preference-inconsistent information on decision-making in broad domains of consumer behavior studies, the current study investigated how preference-inconsistent information can persuade consumers to switch to a sustainable product alternative. The purpose of this study is to investigate the process how preference-inconsistent sustainability-related information can be considered as important, consequently changing consumers' initial preference to green alternatives. A series of online experiments was conducted using a shampoo product category. Study 1 tested a baseline effect on whether consumers in the preference-inconsistent condition were persuaded to change their initial choice significantly compared to those in the preference-consistent condition. Study 2 tested the effect of preference-inconsistent sustainability-related information in the acceptance process, focusing on the role of brand commitment and information quality. Study 3 examined the effect of preference-inconsistent sustainability-related information in the evaluation process, investigating the impact of consumer environmental concern and PCE. Findings of Study 1 revealed that consumers in the preference-inconsistent condition were significantly persuaded to change choice to a sustainable alternative, which is not consistent with selective exposure literature. However, Study 1 findings were not sufficient to determine what specific factors influenced respondents to be persuaded, which provides justifications for Study 2 and Study 3. Findings in Study 2 and Study 3 conclusively demonstrated the importance of the credibility of preference-inconsistent information in the acceptance process. Also, findings suggested that the effect of credibility is stronger than that of brand commitment in the acceptance process. Regarding brand commitment, the results have shown that high commitment consumers had a higher acceptance of inconsistent information which is opposite to expectations. Further, the findings demonstrated the importance of environmental concern and the conditional effect of PCE in the evaluation process. Moreover, results supported that the relative weighting of sustainability attributes is driving the effects of environmental concern and PCE as a mediator on persuasion outcomes in the evaluation process. The current study contributes to understanding the process in which the preference-inconsistent information can be effective in influencing consumer choice. Moreover, findings from this research can provide implications for selective exposure literature and sustainable consumption literature. Practically, the results of the study provide implications to guide marketers and information providers in establishing effective ways to change consumers' behavior in sustainable consumption context.

This study builds on previous research analyzing the effects of cognitive busyness on recall of stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent information by examining the real-world context of Facebook profiles. College students (N = 160) were randomly assigned to either a cognitively busy or unbusy condition. They then looked at either the profile of an African-American male or female target. After, they were given a recall test to assess the number of stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent descriptors correctly recalled. Results were expected to show that participants recalled more stereotype-consistent information when cognitively busy, even more so for male targets. Conversely, participants were expected to recall more stereotype-inconsistent information when cognitively unbusy, even more so for male targets. Neither cognitive busyness nor the interaction between cognitive busyness and target gender affected the type of information participants recalled. Both results were inconsistent with previous research. Future research should find ways to strengthen the construct validity of measures as they operate in real-world contexts such as Facebook.

Les recherches sur le vieillissement ont montré que la variabilité intra-individuelle (VII) du fonctionnement cognitif (dispersion et inconsistance) augmente avec l’âge. La VII pourrait jouer un rôle central dans la compréhension des changements cognitifs observés chez la personne âgée. Le but de cette recherche a été d’évaluer l’apport de la VII pour expliquer les différences d’efficience cognitive entre personnes âgées. Les relations entre deux formes de VII, dispersion (VII des scores entre plusieurs tests cognitifs) et inconsistance (VII des temps de réponse (TR) entre les essais à une tâche de contrôle cognitif), et l’efficience cognitive, ont été évaluées auprès d’un groupe d’adultes âgés de 61 ans et plus. La tâche de contrôle AX-cpt utilisée dans cette étude permet l’évaluation de processus de contrôle cognitif distincts (contrôle réactif et contrôle proactif). L’augmentation de la dispersion était associée à une diminution de la vitesse de traitement, de la capacité de la mémoire épisodique et de l’état cognitif plus général. L’augmentation de l’inconsistance semble traduire une difficulté supérieure associée à des capacités de maintien de l’information contextuelle et de résistance à l’interférence moins préservées. Toutefois, l’inconsistance pourrait exprimer une évolution positive de la cognition. Les fluctuations intra-individuelles du comportement paraissent être les caractéristiques d’un fonctionnement normal. L’irrégularité de l’instabilité temporelle des TR aux essais successifs d’une même tâche semble être un indicateur pertinent dans l’étude de la VII pour rendre compte d’une diminution de l’efficience cognitive. L’étude de la VII de la performance semble donc être une approche fructueuse pour expliquer la variabilité interindividuelle chez la personne âgée et prédire d’éventuels changements cognitifs
Aging research shows an age-related increase in intraindividual variability in cognitive functioning (dispersion and inconsistency). Intraindividual variability would play a central role in understanding cognitive changes in older adults. The purpose of the present research was to examine the contribution of the intraindividual variability study, in order to explain differences in cognitive efficiency between older adults. The relationship between two forms of intraindividual variability, dispersion (variability in scores across several cognitive tests) and inconsistency (variability in response time (RT) across trials in a cognitive control task), and the cognitive efficiency, was estimated in a sample of adults aged from 61 years and older. The control task AX-cpt used in this study allows the evaluation of distinct cognitive control process (proactive and reactive control). The increase in dispersion was associated with a decrease in processing speed, episodic memory ability and the more general cognitive state. The increase in inconsistency seems related to a difficulty of a cognitive system whose capacities of context information maintenance, and resistance to interference, are less preserved. However, the inconsistency could also reveal a positive evolution of cognition. Intraindividual fluctuations in behavior appear to be the characteristics of normal functioning. The irregularity of temporal instability of successive trials response times, seems to be a valid cue of the decrease in cognitive efficiency. The study of intraindividual variability in performance seems to be a fruitful approach to explain the variability between individuals observed in the elderly, and to predict possible cognitive changes

Current classification systems for identifying individuals at the earliest stages of dementia, based primarily on cognitive measures, may be limited in scope. The present study examined physical functioning in a sample of 304 nondemented, older adults, classified based on presence and severity of mild cognitive impairment. In general, lower levels of physical functioning and greater inconsistency in physical functioning were found in older participants and in participants with increasing severity of cognitive impairment. Evaluation of the combined and unique contributions of level of and inconsistency in physical functioning to predicting cognitive status group membership revealed that, for some physical measures, inconsistency in physical functioning provided unique information beyond level of performance. These results are consistent with the notion that inconsistency in performance may be a behavioural marker of compromised neurological functioning and that information regarding physical functioning may prove useful for identifying individuals at the earliest stages of dementia.

Objective: The purpose of this dissertation was to determine whether measures of reaction time inconsistency (RTI) can be applied clinically to detect cognitive impairment in older adults. Methods: Data were obtained from the Victoria Longitudinal Study (VLS), a longitudinal study of healthy aging, and PREVENT, a multivariate study of risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. Study 1 examined effects of task complexity and computational approach on the association between RTI and physical and cognitive functioning in participants of the VLS. Study 2 assembled normative data from the VLS and standardized RTI data from an independent VLS cohort against these normative data. Significant Study 1 findings were replicated in Study 2 using the obtained RTI T-Scores, and the clinical utility of results were evaluated using stratum specific likelihood ratios (SSLRs). Study 3 replicated Study 2 analyses in data from PREVENT. Results: Results of Study 1 identified four operationalizations of RTI from a choice reaction task that yielded consistent significant associations with cross-sectional cognitive performance. Consistent associations were not observed between these scores and cognitive change or performance on measures of physical functioning. Study 2 replicated Study 1 findings in an independent sample using RTI T-Scores. SSLRs supported the clinical utility of measures of RTI for detecting prevalent cognitive impairment. Study 3 replicated findings from Study 2, but SSLRs indicated that only low RTI scores yielded associations of sufficient reliability for clinical interpretation. Consistent with Study 1 and Study 2, associations between RTI T-Scores and measures of physical function were nonsignificant. Conclusions: Low RTI T-Scores were shown across two samples to be associated with a clinically meaningful reduction in the odds of cognitive impairment. Further research is needed in order to clarify the utility of high RTI scores for positive prediction of cognitive impairment.
Graduate

The purpose of the present investigation was to examine whether across-trials inconsistency in reaction time (RT), in addition to level of cognitive performance, is predictive of older adults’ performance on a measure of everyday problem solving through a series of three investigations. A sample of community dwelling non-demented older adults, ranging in age from 62 to 92, completed the Everyday Problems Test (EPT), a measure of everyday problem solving that indexes instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). Performance on the EPT varied according to age, cognitive status, and education, and was significantly predicted by measures of global cognitive status, cognitive decline, and various basic cognitive abilities (i.e., speed of processing, fluid abilities, episodic memory, crystallized abilities). Both inconsistency and mean latencies on measures of RT were found to be significantly associated with concurrent EPT performance, such that slower and more inconsistent RTs were associated with poorer everyday problem solving abilities. Finally, inconsistency in RT made a unique contribution in predicting performance on the EPT two years later, over and above age, education, and various basic cognitive abilities. Structural equation modeling analyses indicated that the relationship between inconsistency in RT and future EPT performance was mediated by fluid and crystallized abilities. Neither inconsistency nor cognitive functioning were significantly associated with changes in EPT performance across two years. Examination of the relationships between IADL functioning, as assessed through self- and informant-report, and inconsistency and basic cognitive abilities demonstrated that everyday problem solving and measures of IADLs tap into related but distinct constructs. The overall pattern of results obtained lends support to the idea that inconsistency in RT represents a behavioural marker of neurological dysfunction. In addition, the present investigation is the first to suggest a relationship between inconsistency in RT and real-world outcomes, such as everyday problem solving and IADL functioning.

碩士
中原大學
心理學研究所
91
Abstract When auditory and visual events occur closely in time domain but at somewhat disparate spatial locations, the source localization of one modality interacts with that of the other modality in characteristic ways. That is, the spatial localization of one modality will be biased toward the other modality. We use the collective term “Ventriloquism” to call all these similar auditory-visual spatial interactions. The influences of cognitive factors and physical structure factors on ventriloquism are a controversial issue. In this study, we tested these cognitive factors such as Cognitive Inconsistence, Practice and Anticipation to see how they influence the ventriloquism phenomena. We used fairly realistic materials to present visual and auditory stimulations. Subjects were asked to repeat Chinese double-character terms, and we counted the ratio of correct to avoid the defects in conventional position-judgment methods. There are three experiments in our study. In experiment 1, we used visual stimulus positions（left / right）and the visual-auditory cognitive consistence（consistence / inconsistence）as independent variables in a 2 × 2 mixed design；in experiment 2, we used the visual stimulus positions（left / right）and practices（practice / non-practice）as independent variables in a 2 × 2 mixed design；in experiment 3, we used the visual stimulus positions（left / right）and anticipation（anticipation / non- anticipation）as independent variables in a 2 × 2 mixed design. The dependent variables are response correct-ratios to test the cognitive factors such as Cognitive Inconsistence, Practice and Anticipation how to influence ventriloquism. There were 60 subjects participated in each experiment, and totally there were 180 subjects participating this study. The findings of the present study suggested that: the magnitudes of visual-auditory perceptual fusion were influenced by cognitive inconsistence and anticipation, but were not influenced by practice. The results showed the influences of cognitive factors on ventriloquism and a new experiment paradigm was suggested.

碩士
世新大學
公共關係暨廣告學研究所(含碩專班)
106
In recent years, society attention on corporate socially responsibility has gradually increased. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues today have become more common, and more corporations focus on it. Companies showcase CSR efforts to establish positive stakeholders relationship and image, and they hope that CSR’s halo affects stakeholders behavior in order to protect the company from crisis. However, is it really to evoke positive reactions among stakeholders? This paper explores the role of stakeholders’ perception of CSR and the impact of their perception during times of crisis. This research tests this by studying two company crises-Weichuan and ASE Group. The secondary data analysis and the in-depth interview are used to examine the impact on consumers and residents. The results indicate that most of participants understand CSR through philanthropy. They don’t really understand the individual CSR projects . Consumers and residents attribute more firm-serving than public-serving CSR motives to companies in a crisis situation, and they try to infer CSR motives in non-crisis situation. In addition, the author compares two industry’s interviews, food manufacturer and an independent semiconductor manufacturer, and the consistency of logical has found. The research findings describe how weak industrial laws and ineffectual Taiwanese resident protests influence the effectiveness of CSR. The findings point to three contributions. First, the author compares two different industries in the Taiwan context. Next, this study extends traditional Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT). Third, companies must rethink their CSR strategy.

碩士
國立暨南國際大學
資訊管理學系
99
The difference between consistent and inconsistent language came from interpretative error for stating the problem in different ways, while the difference between high and low need for cognition was resulted from taking different attitude and approach on dealing with information. Hence, both elements influence solving-problem capability. The stimuli of this research were arithmetic word problems with comparative types, and the verification was also made through repetitive quantitative statistical approach. It discovered that arithmetic word problems with consistent and inconsistent language significantly influenced time for solving, arithmetic error and reversal error, which were easily occurred in solving problems with inconsistent language. As for the cognition language, it only shows significant effects on arithmetic error. At last, this research recommended that taking instructions as a mean to elevate correctness in identification on arithmetic word problem was helpful for people solving arithmetic problems, and also the familiarity in integrating information in the problems or deriving the relational equations should be enhanced through practice.