http://hdl.handle.net/1842/1253 2013-05-19T03:14:14Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6592 Title: EDINBURGH COGNITIVE AND BEHAVIOURAL ALS SCREEN – ECAS English version 2013 Authors: Abrahams, Sharon; Bak, Thomas Abstract: to be added 2013-03-19T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6590 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 http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6583 Title: Interactions between languages in verb- and pronoun-agreement in bilingual sentence production Authors: Hatzidaki, Anna Abstract: This thesis investigates how fluent bilinguals make use of the grammar of their two languages when they construct verb- and pronoun-agreement only in one language (monolingual mode) or in both their languages (bilingual mode). We are particularly interested in the impact of the non-response language in sentence processing on the response language. Bilingual research has provided evidence for language integration in bilingual speech (e.g., Hartsuiker, Pickering, & Veltkamp, 2004) which is also consistent with the phenomenon of code-switching whereby speakers can use elements of each language in producing mixed-language utterances (e.g., Myers-Scotton, 2002). So far, studies at the lexical level have provided support for parallel language activation (e.g., Colomé, 2001), yet the issue of whether activation of either language can be strong enough to influence the workings of the other is still in dispute (e.g., Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot, & Schreuder, 1998, but see Costa, La Heij, & Navarrete, 2006). In three separate sections of the thesis we employ a sentence-completion paradigm widely used in monolingual agreement literature (Bock & Miller, 1991) to examine language interaction effects in the monolingual and the bilingual modes of speech (Grosjean, 2000). English-Greek and Greek-English fluent bilinguals produced completions to singular or plural subjects when the number of the translation was either the same or different, and when their completion either did or did not switch languages. The first section investigates whether there is influence of the divergent number properties of the nonresponse native language (L1) on verb-agreement in the response second language (L2). The results of Greek-English bilinguals show influence of the underlying number of the L1 on completions in the L2. We interpret this in terms of a markedness account (e.g., Eberhard, 1997) whereby parallel activation and competition between an L2 singular subject noun and its L1 plural translation results in plural verbagreement because the singular form is more vulnerable to the marked plural form. English-Greek bilinguals who perform on the same monolingual mode do not show influence of their L1 when speaking in the L2 (Greek). We attribute this finding to a difference of morphological/inflectional properties between the two languages which renders a language that displays fewer overt markings (English) easier to control when utterances are produced in a language that displays more overt markings (Greek) (e.g., Vigliocco, Butterworth, & Semenza, 1995). 2007-06-27T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1842/6548 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