http://hdl.handle.net/1842/2138 2013-06-20T04:18:29Z 2013-06-20T04:18:29Z Rutherford, Siobhan http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6590 2013-03-13T13:47:02Z 2013-07-02T00:00:00Z

Title: Can Dogs Be ‘Child’s Best Friend’? Authors: Rutherford, Siobhan Abstract: Pre-school children are at the highest risk of being bitten by dogs, and previous research suggests that this is due to limitations in their emotion recognition ability. The use of stimuli in emotion recognition literature has been criticised for being limited by using photographs as videos acquire better performance. 25 pre-schoolers from Edinburgh aged 3 – 5 years old (mean age=4.1 years) were shown photos and videos of dogs and humans displaying the four basic emotions (anger, happiness, sadness and fear) and were asked how they thought the dog or human was feeling. They were then asked what body parts they were looking at to be able to tell this, and why the child thought they could be feeling this way. Their attitude towards dogs and ability to understand that dogs have emotions was also compared to their dog emotion recognition performance. T-test comparisons found that pre-schoolers performed significantly better in the human (M=87%) than dog condition (M=43%), but stimulus type had no effect on performance. Children mainly attended to the face when looking at humans but looked at the whole body when recognising emotions in dogs. Attitude and ability to understand that dogs have emotions had no effect on ability to recognise dog emotions. Experience with dogs did not seem to have an effect but sampling limitations did not allow for inferential testing. The addition of sound to the stimuli in the future could aid video emotion recognition. If this did improve performance it could be helpful in dog bite prevention programmes and may in turn reduce the number of dog bite incidents. Similarly, if eye-tracking studies were carried out on similar stimuli, prevention programmes could assist children in learning where they need to attend to in order to recognise a dog’s emotion by focusing upon their weaknesses.

2013-07-02T00:00:00Z Jackson, Amy http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6548 2013-01-21T10:12:59Z 2010-06-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Enhancing creative performance : the effect of amusement and task-framing. Authors: Jackson, Amy Abstract: This study explored the effects of a specific positive emotion, namely amusement, and task framing on two aspects of creativity : divergent thinking and insight. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions : 1/ Neutral emotion-Neutral Task-framing, 2/Neutral emotion - Positive Task-framing, 3/ Amusement - Neutral Task-framing. 4/ Amusement- Positive Task-framing. Film clips were used to elicit amusement and task-framing instructions were inspired by Friedman, Forster and Denzler (2007). Participants performed both the Alternative Uses Task (Guilford, 1967) and the Remote Associates Task (Mednick, 1962). Amusement was found to facilitate creative performance on overall creativity. The literature consistently focuses on the facilitative effect of general positive moods on creative performance but this study shows that a specific positive mood can also facilitate performance on divergent thinking tasks. Positive task framing was found to facilitate creative performance on all measures of divergent thinking (fluency, overall creativity and creativity usefulness) and creative insight (RAT). Interactions were also found between emotion condition and task framing for fluency and overall creativity scores. The relationship between personality and creativity was also examined. Intellect (openness to experience) was found to positively correlate with all forms of creativity. Implications for educational and organizational settings are discussed.

2010-06-01T00:00:00Z Lemaigre, Charlotte http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6174 2012-07-13T15:36:10Z 2011-06-29T00:00:00Z

Title: The Prototype Effect in the Recognition of Familiar Faces: Sixteen Heads are Better than One Authors: Lemaigre, Charlotte Abstract: Naturally occurring inconsistencies across photographs, such as varying expressions, poses and lighting, have meant that both human and automatic face recognition systems tend to perform less than perfectly. Past research has shown that simply merging together individual composites of an identity, to form a prototype image, can yield better recognition and better likeness to that person than any of the single contributing photograph. It has also been shown that caricaturing images, the process by which distinctive features of a face are exaggerated against an average norm, can also produce more efficient recognition, particularly in studies requiring participants to match an individual’s name and face. British university students took part in a celebrity identity name-verification task in which performance accuracy and correct-response reaction times were explored. Four stimulus conditions were used: a veridical photograph, a photograph caricature, a veridical prototype and a prototype caricature. The aim of the study was to identify a prototype effect and/or a caricature advantage over veridical and/or non-caricatured images. Results revealed that prototype-based images were identified more accurately and faster than photograph-based images. However, no caricature advantages were found for accuracy or reaction time data. Limitations to the study are considered, as are motivations for further experimentation, such as altering priming mechanisms and employing caricatures of increased and varying degrees in forthcoming studies.

2011-06-29T00:00:00Z Murray, Aja http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6173 2012-07-13T15:35:36Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Spearman's Law of Diminishing Returns: A statistical artefact? Authors: Murray, Aja Abstract: Under “Spearman’s Law of Diminishing Returns” (SLODR) higher levels of general cognitive ability are associated with a more differentiated cognitive performance across ability tests. In the present study, evidence is presented that suggests that the phenomenon is a function of two methodological variables. First, the SLODR effect is greater when general ability is estimated on the basis of subtests which yield a more positively skewed distribution of scores. Second, SLODR direction is a function of the average subtest skewness in a battery, with SLODR associated with positive skewness and reverse SLODR associated with negative skewness. Contrary to previous speculation, task difficulty appears to be a relatively less important moderator. It is argued that together, these results imply problems with the manner in which SLODR is currently tested and raises the possibility that previous confirmations of SLODR are unreliable.

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z