http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/ The University of Queensland en Fez http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:275866 Global precedence, the priority of attention given to the global features of a visual percept relative to its local features, is a well-established phenomenon in visual attention. In response to McKone et al.‘s (McKone et al., 2010) finding of East-West differences in global precedence and conclusion that these differences were attributable to race, the present thesis investigated this claim using the same procedure (a composite-letter task) and similar groups with additional manipulations. Based on previous theory, we examined the malleability of global precedence and the group differences by priming collectivism–individualism and manipulating task instructions. In Study 1, default global precedence was significantly higher in Chinese participants than in Chinese Australians, with Caucasian Australians appearing to be in-between. In Study 2, priming individualist and collectivist mindsets made global precedence disappear, along with the group differences. In Study 3, global precedence re-appeared when participants were instructed to attend more to the global level, but not when they were instructed to attend more to the local level, with no group differences. Results show global precedence to be a malleable phenomenon, and suggest that cultural differences in default global precedence are due to modes of situated cognition, not genetics. 2012-06-19T00:00:00Z Stephen La Macchia http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222038 2010-11-23T00:00:00Z Watson, Don. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:276386 Exposure to a face can bias subsequent judgments of other faces. Looking at a sad face, for instance, can cause subsequent expressionless faces to be judged as happier than they would otherwise. It is thought that this happens because face recognition involves a norm-based opponent code, the mid-point of which shifts during prolonged exposure to a face. Here I explore an alternative possibility – that people tend to judge inputs relative to recently seen exemplars. Thus a neutral face might be judged as unlike the preceding sad face, and therefore as happy. This suggests that aftereffects could be induced between arbitrary categories. To test this, participants adapted to images of animals (cows or horses), fruit (apples or oranges), cutlery (knives or spoons) and to distinct classes of objects (rocks or cookies). In all cases repeated exposure to an unambiguous exemplar (e.g. a horse) resulted in a bias to report that test images (morphs between the two exemplars) looked more like the other exemplar (e.g. a cow). I also replicated effects thought to be characteristic of face adaptation with arbitrary non-face stimuli, namely size invariance, contingent adaptation, and the lack of an aftereffect after adapting to the average image. Animal aftereffects persisted when adapting and test images differed in size, ruling out an account based solely on low-level visual adaptation. Opposite fruit aftereffects could be induced simultaneously in different retinal locations, suggesting inputs tend to be judged relative to exemplars recently seen in the same location. Finally, adapting to an image at the boundary between two categories did not bias subsequent judgements. The data are consistent with the existence of a general contrast effect between successive images, rather than a face-specific opponent code. 2012-06-27T00:00:00Z Katherine Storrs http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:221551 2010-11-18T00:00:00Z Gunn, Andrew. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:294251 2013-03-20T09:39:22Z Tucker, John. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239752 The ability to remember how people have behaved in prior encounters is a crucial social skill as this knowledge can guide our behaviour towards them in future interactions. The neural structures that underlie this ability are largely unknown. This was the focus of the present research, which examined how the neural response to faces is influenced by whether a person behaved appropriately or inappropriately in initial social encounters. This research question was assessed over two experiments investigating both behavioural (Experiment 1) and neural (Experiment 2) effects. In both these experiments, participants were exposed to unfamiliar faces that consistently displayed either an „Appropriate‟ (e.g., smiling towards a chocolate sundae) or „Inappropriate‟ (e.g., smiling towards a plane crash) emotional behaviour. In Experiment 1, participants then completed face evaluation measures to assess perceived pleasantness and implicit memory for the faces. Participants‟ judgements showed no influence of faces‟ prior emotional behaviour. This was followed up with Experiment 2 to examine whether any traces of prior social knowledge would be evident at a neural level. As expected, the neural response to faces was modulated by the prior emotional behaviour associated with the faces, with greater activity in the right medial prefrontal cortex, insula, inferior frontal gyrus and putamen to Inappropriate faces than Appropriate faces. These findings provide a neural basis for the ability to retrieve knowledge of prior social experiences and associate this information with face identities. The functional significance of these neural areas, implications and future directions are discussed. 2011-04-05T00:00:00Z Claire Naughtin http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222054 No abstract available 2010-11-23T00:00:00Z Smith, F. J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:223372 2010-12-03T00:00:00Z Chai, Andreas. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:278987 2012-08-16T00:00:00Z Erick Huerta Velazquez http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:276319 Secondary controlCausal uncertainty beliefs are continual doubts about a person’s ability to detect the causes of events in the social world. For some people, these beliefs are persistently accessible. Due to the association between causal uncertainty and negative psychological outcomes, the present study was concerned with testing strategies for uncertainty management. Secondary control can moderate the relationship between causal uncertainty and negative affect by increasing adjustment and acceptance to uncontrollable events. The present study aimed to manipulate secondary control, and used a scrambled sentence priming task to do this. Seventy three participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions, designed to prime high or low secondary control. Participants’ state affect and endorsement of secondary control beliefs were used as dependent measures. It was predicted that participants would have higher secondary control beliefs after the high secondary control primes, compared to after the low secondary control primes. It was also predicted that the primes would moderate the relationship between causal uncertainty and negative affect, such that for participants who received the high secondary control primes, higher causal uncertainty would not be associated with greater negative affect. For participants who received the low secondary control primes, higher causal uncertainty would be associated with greater negative affect. No effect of condition was found on secondary control beliefs or affect. Main effects of causal uncertainty were found for secondary control beliefs and affect, such that such that higher levels of causal uncertainty were associated with lower positive affect, secondary control beliefs and higher negative affect. A relationship between perceived control and causal uncertainty was found, such that at lower levels of causal uncertainty and perceived control, people endorsed secondary control beliefs less. The results were discussed in terms of theoretical implications and directions for future research. 2012-06-25T00:00:00Z Parkhurst, Rosie http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:274601 2012-05-23T00:00:00Z Lindenmayer, Sarah. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:221932 No abstract available 2010-11-22T00:00:00Z Fletcher, Philip G. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239717 Previous research suggests that people trained in Open Monitoring (OM) meditation, a form of mental training that promotes a less object-focused state of attention, have a reduced attentional blink (AB). Research has also revealed that the AB can be reduced by adopting a less object-focused state of attention immediately prior to the task. The current research compared the AB task performance of a group of meditators with long-term experience in OM meditation with a group of age-matched meditation-naïve controls across two studies. Study 1 measured participants' AB task performance across three within-subjects conditions: at baseline, when given instructions to focus maximally on the digits (focused strategy), and when given instructions to adopt a less object-focused state of attention (unfocused strategy). Results on the AB task suggest that experienced meditators had an overall superior level of performance that was not due to, or influenced by, the conscious adoption of strategy. Nonmeditators however were influenced by the strategies, showing peak performance in the unfocused condition, where their AB was equivalent to that of meditators. In a follow-up to Study 1, Study 2 examined the AB task performance of the same subject's immediately following a short guided OM meditation session. Results suggest that the state of attention induced by a short meditation session does not influence performance on the AB task for either group. The present research extends the growing body of evidence that people with long-term experience in OM meditation display measurably different attentional performance to those without such training. 2011-04-04T00:00:00Z Alexander Short http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239709 Previous research has shown that whilst infants can recognize the human face shortly after birth, they do not reliably distinguish between typical and scrambled bodies until after the first year. Currently there is very little investigation into the mechanisms of development of body perception in infants. Learning through visual experience is an integral part of infant development and has been offered as one possible explanation for body perception development in the domain general process theory. Therefore, we hypothesised that initially 8-month-old-infants would not exhibit a preference between scrambled and typical body stimuli. In addition, we hypothesised that infants who were then exposed to visual experience of the human body will have a greater ability to discriminate between typical and non typical body representations than those who were not. Thirty one infants aged eight months were given a visual preference task and their looking time at each body picture was measured. They were presented with six picture sets each comprising of a typical and a scrambled body presented simultaneously for 15 seconds with a five second blank screen separating them. Infants were randomly assigned to either a control group and given a shape book or the experimental group and given a body image book. Parents were asked to read the book daily for three weeks after which the infants were retested using the visual preference task. Therefore a 2 (visual experience: body book versus shape book) x 2 (test phase: pre-visual experience and post-visual experience) x 2 (Body Stimuli: typical versus scrambled) mixed model ANOVA was conducted. There was no significant difference between looking times for typical or scrambled body stimuli in either the body or shape condition, before or after exposure to the visual experience. These results indicate partial support for the domain-general learning process theory but fail to find evidence of the underlying learning mechanisms that are thought to be responsible for body expertise in infants. 2011-04-04T00:00:00Z Rosina Epps http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:240003 Prolonged exposure (adaptation) to a stimulus drifting at a constant speed can bias the perceived speed of stimuli subsequently presented in the same location. Following adaptation, the speed of a test stimulus drifting at an identical or slower rate than the adaptor will generally be underestimated, while the speeds of test stimuli drifting faster than the adaptor will be overestimated. These biases can be used to infer the nature of the neural mechanism(s) that encode motion. It has recently been proposed that a combination of two distinct mechanisms, one tuned to direction and another that is non-directional, can best account for post adaptation biases in perceived speed. To assess this possibility, the non-directional mechanism was selectively adapted, as was a combination of the directional and non-directional mechanism. Doing so revealed that the non-directional mechanism is not tuned for movement per se, but for simple local rates of change (or temporal frequency). The directional mechanisms, however, was tuned for stimulus speed. The results suggest that outputs from these two mechanisms are summated, and based on the summated biases obtained from Experiment 1, we were able to predict a novel motion phenomenon – a dynamic motion aftereffect that is seen to move in same direction as adaptation. 2011-04-06T00:00:00Z Samuel Pearce http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:218797 2010-10-20T00:00:00Z Harris, Gaye A. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219165 2010-10-27T00:00:00Z Brownjohn, Cameron W. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:218085 2010-10-08T00:00:00Z Peng, Ti-Ching. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:276897 Australia welcomes international students from diverse culture groups however perceived group-based discrimination from society can severely impact their learning experience. The primary aim of this thesis was to examine the moderating effect of minority goals on the relationship between perceived discrimination and minority group identification, and the relationship between perceived discrimination and hostility. This thesis also aimed to explore how the interplay of minority goals and majority preferences impacts on psychological well-being and risky decision-making. In service of these goals an experiment was employed using a 2 (minority goals: integration goal versus separation goal) x 2 (majority preferences: inclusion preference versus exclusion preference) between-subjects design in the context of perceived discrimination. Participants (N = 105) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. Results showed some support for the moderating effect of minority goals in the relationship between perceived discrimination and minority group identification. No significant effect of hostility or negative emotion was found. In addition, results showed that risky decision-making was higher when minority goal converged with majority preferences than when minority goals diverged with majority preferences. The theoretical and practical implications of these results will be discussed. 2012-07-02T00:00:00Z Yuling Zhang http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:275888 The present study examines the effect of norms and ego depletion on individual health choices in the context of sun protection. Specifically, we have investigated what effect the source of normative message (ingroup or outgroup) and level of ego depletion have on an individual’s sun protection intentions and behaviours. A sample of 110 University of Queensland students were used in the study. The central aims of the study are (1) to test whether ego depletion and normative messages contribute to sun protection intention and behaviour, over and above what is explained by the theory of planned behaviour model, (2) to examine a theoretically novel backlash effect, and (3) to investigate the possible interactive effects of norm source and ego depletion on sun protection intentions and behaviour, a currently untested relationship. We also examine the moderating effect of group identification on ego depletion and norms. Evidence was found to support the use of the theory of planned behaviour model in predicting sun protection intentions. However, results revealed that the norm manipulation had a direct effect on behaviour only, such that a positive ingroup norm led to increased sun protection behaviour compared to a positive outgroup norm. Contrary to predictions, ego depletion was not found to lead to lower sun protection intentions and behaviour. While not in the predicted direction, a significant ego depletion x norms interaction emerged on intentions and a marginally significant interaction was found on behaviour, with ego depletion resulting in an erosion of all norm effects. Surprisingly, ego depletion also weakened the effects of norms for both high identifiers and low identifiers. 2012-06-20T00:00:00Z Michelle Livock http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:295778 2013-04-04T11:41:20Z Yuen, Woon. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:296477 2013-04-09T11:25:53Z Poon, Brandon. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219178 2010-10-27T00:00:00Z Lazzarini, Sandra. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219858 2010-11-06T00:00:00Z Custance, Matthew. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219223 2010-10-27T00:00:00Z Gilchrist, Carolyn J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219655 2010-11-02T00:00:00Z Siu, Michael. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:218792 2010-10-20T00:00:00Z Hsu, Pei-sheng. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:298241 2013-04-24T12:05:53Z Hyde, Lauren E http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:221540 2010-11-18T00:00:00Z Roche, Timothy J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:224177 2010-12-10T00:00:00Z Kingston, Owen L. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:223560 2010-12-06T00:00:00Z Philbrick, A. T. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:291514 2013-02-16T13:28:58Z Jenny Eather http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222216 2010-11-23T00:00:00Z Colthup, Grant. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:223001 2010-11-30T00:00:00Z Wijeratne, Jay. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:287639 This thesis provides new evidence that market power is a motivation for takeovers. I develop a proxy based on the market concentration doctrine that measures whether a takeover is likely to cause an increase in the market power of the acquirer. In a test of the determinants of the takeover premium it is found that it is over 10% higher when it is expected that the acquirer will gain additional market power in the transaction. This result indicates that, contrary to the existing literature, firms do use the market for corporate control as a tool to increase their market power. Furthermore, this thesis is the first study to consider the effect the influence a toehold provides the acquirer over the target has on the takeover premium. I develop a new non-linear model that allows for a more refined analysis of this. The results indicate that accounting for the degree of influence a toehold provides the acquirer is important when conducting empirical research on the takeover premium. 2012-12-21T14:10:34Z Richards, Adrian http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219270 2010-10-28T00:00:00Z Tan, Zhi En. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:277649 The market risk premium is a central component of corporate financing activities in practice. Cost of capital estimates that incorporate the market risk premium as a key input parameter are used in a variety of valuation processes, and are the basis for many management incentive schemes and regulatory frameworks. As a result, market risk premium estimation has been the focus of much academic research. However, this research often fails to model the time-variation in the market risk premium through business cycles. This thesis models the time-series variation in US market risk premiums as a function of several economic variables: dividend yield, term structure, default spread, relative short rate, aggregate consumption-wealth ratio, surplus consumption ratio and labour income-consumption ratio. In-sample analyses indicate a strong relationship between these variables and US market risk premiums. Out-of-sample analysis provides weaker evidence, however, this may be due to the particular pattern of returns in the out-of-sample period. 2012-07-17T00:00:00Z Studders, Merrick J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222901 2010-11-29T00:00:00Z White, Bruce. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:268625 2012-02-28T00:00:00Z Viles, Nathan Benjamin http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239965 Masculinity and femininity have been shown to be related to sociosexuality (an individual's propensity to engage in uncommitted sexual relationships). Masculinity is associated with an unrestricted sociosexual orientation (i.e. tendency to engage in uncommitted sex), while femininity is associated with a restricted sociosexual orientation (i.e. tendency not to engage in uncommitted sex). These two traits are shown to influence human mate preferences. This study used several questionnaire measures (including gender identity, sociosexuality, mate preferences, and personality), revealed preferences, and a speed-dating protocol to investigate the dynamic relationship between gender identity and sociosexuality, and their individual and interactive influences on human mate preferences. This study also assessed an array of other evolutionary hypotheses regarding attractiveness and human mating behaviour. Data was collected from 119 participants, predominately undergraduate students, (55 males, 64 female) with a mean age of 18.58 years. There were two competing primary hypotheses. The first predicted that all individuals would tend to prefer mates who are similar to themselves in sociosexuality and masculinity/femininity, given their shared interest in uncommitted sexual relationships. The second hypothesis opposed the first, and predicts that feminine men would prefer masculine women, and masculine women would prefer feminine men. Results for female participants supported the second hypothesis, and the accompanying theory that a sexatypical gender identity confers reproductive fitness in heterosexuals. Results also supported several additional evolutionary hypotheses. Results are discussed in terms of their insight into the human mating system, their advantage in being based on real-world interactions, and the various questions for future research they present. 2011-04-06T00:00:00Z Madeline Farmer http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:240479 2011-04-29T00:00:00Z Greenhalgh, Winsome Jill. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:291519 2013-02-16T13:56:36Z Chen Zhang http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:282554 2012-09-27T00:00:00Z Yousuff, Mohammed http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:268627 2012-02-28T00:00:00Z Willett, Matthew James http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222996 2010-11-30T00:00:00Z Rohde, Nicholas. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:297911 2013-04-17T12:29:53Z Whyte, Ryan http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219656 2010-11-02T00:00:00Z Stewart, Glenn. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:223142 2010-12-01T00:00:00Z Thomson, Matt. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:221493 2010-11-18T00:00:00Z Ang, Gerard S. L. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:300079 2013-05-14T09:56:33Z Ong, Henry