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:291513 2013-02-16T13:15:10Z Kurincheedaran Shanmugalingam http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:270573 2012-03-20T00:00:00Z Pham Thanh, Hien Thuc http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:276355 Research examining the experiences of young carers of ill or disabled parents has increased greatly in recent years. However, few studies have investigated whether certain individual characteristics influence the caregiving experiences of young carers. Despite this, the gender intensification hypothesis (Hill & Lynch, 1983) suggests that gender and age may be important when considering caregiving amongst adolescent-aged young carers particularly. The first aim of the present study was to compare the caregiving experiences of adolescent carers to a comparison sample of adolescent non-carers. Guided by the gender intensification hypothesis, the study secondly aimed to investigate gender differences in the caregiving experiences of adolescent carers. The final aim was to examine whether gender differences in the caregiving experiences of adolescent carers increased with age throughout adolescence. Two thousand and sixty nine adolescents aged 10–18 years completed questionnaires which included the Young Carers of Parents Inventory. Four hundred and thirty of these youth were adolescent carers. Consistent with predictions, findings revealed that adolescent carers reported greater caregiving responsibilities, worry about parents, activity restrictions, isolation, and perceived maturity, compared to adolescent non-carers. Contrary to expectations however, male adolescents reported less choice in caregiving, as well as greater caregiving responsibilities and activity restrictions. Moreover, age did not moderate the relationship between gender and caregiving experiences as predicted. Implications of the findings for young caregiving and the gender intensification hypothesis are discussed. 2012-06-26T00:00:00Z Signorini, Rachel http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:276583 This thesis examines whether the information environment as reflected by analysts’ forecast properties has been affected by the Global Financial Crisis under Australia’s statutory continuous disclosure regime. During times of uncertainties, quality and timely managerial disclosure becomes even more important than usual because information asymmetry is greater. As a result, the role of the continuous disclosure requirements also becomes crucial. Using not only the conventional measures of analysts’ forecast error and dispersion, but also the measures of information precision from the Barron, Kim, Lim and Stevens (1998) model, the results suggest that although analyst forecast properties deteriorated from 2007 to 2009, it is mainly driven by the inferior quality of analysts’ private information. Corporate disclosure remained steady during the crisis period. Further analysis of subsamples suggest that there is no evidence of deteriorated quality of public disclosure in financially distressed firms, and no particular industry appears poorer disclosure practices than other industries. 2012-06-28T00:00:00Z Xiaowen Peng http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219112 2010-10-26T00:00:00Z Barber, Vaughn. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:217639 2010-10-01T00:00:00Z Kartika, Dani. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:240010 Research has shown the benefits of social support, especially in times of high demand; however, the majority of this research has focussed on the effects of support in relatively homogenous groups. No research has investigated how the different structure of online social networking groups (such as Facebook or Twitter) might impact on the effectiveness of social support. Traditional homogenous groups and online social networks may differ in structural ways, such as entitativity. Entitativity is the extent to which a group is seen as a unit or coherent whole (Campbell, 1958). Entitativity may impact on the effect of social support by moderating the extent to which support from a group member is generalised to the group as a whole. A preliminary study revealed differences between online social networks and traditional groups on a number of dimensions of entitativity (e.g., see Lickel et al., 2000). Study 2 manipulated social support and group type. Participants (N = 83, 72.3% females, mean age = 20.70, SD = 6.67) completed demanding math problems and coping outcomes were obtained. Manipulation checks revealed that the support manipulation was successful, but not the group type manipulation. Support did not have any impact on coping outcomes. Regression analyses revealed that complexity of the group might affect primary threat appraisals and secondary appraisals. This research has implications for exploring the ways individuals appraise potential stressors in the context of groups differing in complexity. 2011-04-06T00:00:00Z Tamara Butler http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:220106 2010-11-10T00:00:00Z Shum, Yin Yin. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:217595 2010-10-01T00:00:00Z Peh, Wee Liong http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:217472 2010-09-29T00:00:00Z Lee, Daniel Shung-Wei. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219199 2010-10-27T00:00:00Z Chang, Michael C. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:277839 2012-07-23T16:15:21Z So Shan Ceara Hui http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:294169 2013-03-19T11:22:45Z Stafford, Erin http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222370 2010-11-24T00:00:00Z Ng, Khin. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222362 2010-11-24T00:00:00Z Costello, David. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219234 2010-10-27T00:00:00Z Glynn, Shane. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219143 2010-10-26T00:00:00Z Castner, Grant James. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:223148 2010-12-01T00:00:00Z Bradbear, Catherine. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:220208 2010-11-12T00:00:00Z Bullock, Ian. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:221539 2010-11-18T00:00:00Z Peters, Christopher J. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:217582 2010-09-30T00:00:00Z Baddeley, Michelle. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:223092 2010-12-01T00:00:00Z Wong, Kwok Yen. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:223629 2010-12-06T00:00:00Z Spencer, Scott N. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222314 2010-11-24T00:00:00Z Chudleigh, Alan David. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:221572 No abstract available 2010-11-18T00:00:00Z Tevita, Penelope. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222304 2010-11-24T00:00:00Z Adam, Latif. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222402 2010-11-24T00:00:00Z Molloy, Dennis Patrick. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219836 2010-11-06T00:00:00Z Kelly, Paul Daniel Neculce. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222892 2010-11-29T00:00:00Z Fox, Peter. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239791 Recently there has been a trend toward exploring the role emotions play in parenting for both the child and the parent (Zeman, Cassano, Perry-Parrish, & Stegall, 2006). The majority of these studies have been focused on child emotion socialisation (O'Neal & Magai, 2005), with the parental influence being explored through parental meta-emotion (Gottman, Katz, & Hooven, 1996). This study was interested in adding to this literature in the topic of parental emotion regulation investigating the role of parental emotion regulation plays on child outcomes. 113 Participant completed Questionnaires which were administered to parents around Brisbane and through online forums. These questionnaires looked at discipline techniques (in particular time-out and corporal punishment), parental emotion dysregulation and a variety of child outcome including behaviour difficulties, behaviour regulation and emotion regulation. Results found the discipline techniques were directly associated with child outcomes and that emotion dysregulation was directly related to child outcomes. A moderating effect was found with emotion regulation and timeout use such that high dysregulation attenuated the effects of time-out. In addition high time out usage in low dysregulated parents led to higher child behaviour difficulties. This study concluded that emotion regulation plays a vital role in child outcomes and should be adapted into parenting programs to optimise program success. 2011-04-06T00:00:00Z Genevieve Smith http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239747 Conventional models of binocular depth perception (stereopsis) hypothesise that depth perception results from the brain matching corresponding retinal points and computing the differences in image positions on the two retinas. However it is now acknowledged that stereopsis is more complex and cannot be explained by binocular matching alone. Importantly, monocular features arise when objects and surfaces at different distances from the observer occlude one another to different extents in the two eyes. These features are seen by only one eye and therefore have no match in the other eye. Gillam and Borsting (1988) reported that depth was perceived faster when the stimulus (random-dot stereogram) contained texture in the monocular occlusion zone than when texture was absent. Such facilitation of depth perception by monocular features has been demonstrated in various other contexts such as phantom stereopsis and monocular gap stereopsis. Nevertheless Grove and Ono (1999) failed to replicate Gillam and Borsting and have produced contradicting results, showing that same-textured monocular occlusion zones facilitated no more depth than ‘texture-less’ monocular occlusion zones. This thesis aimed to investigate the stimulus and procedural differences between the studies, such as texture (dot density), disparities, and eye movements (vergence) that might be responsible for this discrepancy. Despite three separate attempts there remains no evidence implicating differences in dot densities or disparities as the cause for the differing results between Gillam and Borsting and Grove and Ono. Moreover across all three experiments no significant differences were observed between monocular zone filled and absent conditions in influencing the speed of correct identification of depth in random-dot stereograms. Significant main effects of texture density and disparity were found. The author of this thesis suggests perhaps the size of monocular gap, the method of testing as well as fusional limit might explain these findings. 2011-04-05T00:00:00Z Chin Yan Jackie Yuen http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:220103 2010-11-10T00:00:00Z Gill, Angela C. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219236 2010-10-27T00:00:00Z Leong, Sook-Ching. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:217448 2010-09-29T00:00:00Z Kiflom, Tadesse. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219279 2010-10-28T00:00:00Z Kerwick, Anthony. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:221730 2010-11-19T00:00:00Z Ung, Karen. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:218737 2010-10-19T00:00:00Z Lee, Huey Yee. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:219844 2010-11-06T00:00:00Z Crease, Simon A. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222056 2010-11-23T00:00:00Z Ferguson, Ben. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:222269 2010-11-24T00:00:00Z Wittenberg, Renè. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:220221 2010-11-12T00:00:00Z Mulholland, Patrick. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:217625 2010-10-01T00:00:00Z Bradbury, Harley William. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239963 Perceiving and understanding the actions of others is an important part of everyday social life. Previous research investigating primate and human brain functioning has provided evidence for a parieto-frontal cortical mirror system that is postulated to play a role in action understanding and imitation. The current study aimed to investigate the role of the mirror system during the observation of actions in different contexts. Twenty healthy participants’ brain activity was measured using fMRI during the observation of hand actions in different conditions – imitate, understand, observe, respond, and passive observation. Across conditions, common activation was found in inferior parietal and ventral premotor cortex, regions previously associated with a mirror system in humans. Pairwise contrasts revealed differences between ‘imitate’ and all other conditions. Additionally, the ‘respond’ condition showed more activation than ‘passive observation’. Crucially we found no significant differences between the ‘understand’, ‘observe’, and ‘respond’ conditions. Although our results confirm the activation of a parieto-frontal mirror network during passive observation of actions, they question the crucial role of a human mirror system in action understanding. 2011-04-06T00:00:00Z Lydia Hayward http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:218872 2010-10-21T00:00:00Z Chen, Chun-Hsu. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:226172 2011-01-04T00:00:00Z Nowland, John http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:275606 It is crucial to understand the impact of television food advertising on food intake given Australia‟s current high level of exposure to food commercials. Consideration of the elements of Gray‟s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) may provide insight into the individual differences in response to food advertising. In Gray‟s theory, the Behavioural Activation System (BAS) is implicated as the structure that motivates approach behaviours in response to conditioned rewarding stimuli. This study aims to extend previous research using Gray‟s RST to investigate the interactive effects of BAS reactivity and exposure to television “healthy food” and “junk food” advertising on individual‟s “urge to eat”. The effects of television “junk food” and “healthy food” advertising are investigated through an experimental procedure in which participants are assigned to conditions in which they view television commercials for either energy dense “junk foods”, healthy foods or non-food items. Participants also completed a number of self-report measures assessing reward sensitivity and urge to eat (before and after the television program). It was hypothesised that BAS would show a strong positive association with desire to eat in the energy-dense commercials condition, and no association (or weaker) in the healthy food commercials and no association in the no food condition. As hypothesised, individuals high in BAS in the junk food condition showed a significant increase in urge to eat following the video. Those low in BAS showed an unexpected increase in urge to eat in the no-food condition. Both high and low BAS individuals showed an increase in the “healthy food” condition. These results were only evident in Caucasian participants. These results support the proposal that individual differences in reward sensitivity place such individuals at greater risk of over-eating when exposed to images of appetitive, high calorie food. Implications such as the focus on personality in treating eating disorders, as well as increased advertising of the rewarding properties in healthy food advertisement are discussed. 2012-06-12T00:00:00Z Samantha Byrnes http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239974 When two identical stimuli move towards each other on the same trajectory so that they coincide at the centre of the display and then continue to move past each other, the stimuli can appear to stream past one another or to bounce off one another. Despite both perceptions being equally likely, streaming is the dominant perception in visual-only displays. This perceptual bias reverses to mostly bouncing when additional sensory inputs, such as an auditory tone, are presented at the point of coincidence. This study investigated what effect an observer‟s manual control of the visual targets has on the stream/bounce illusion. The study (n=18) consisted of three tactile control conditions: automatic, in which observers had no control over the motion of the targets; semi-manual, in which observers initiated target motion with the movement of a computer mouse; and manual, in which observers fully controlled the motion of the targets with the motion of the mouse. These conditions were combined with two auditory conditions (tone or no tone at the point of coincidence). The stream/bounce effect manifested in all three tactile control conditions, though it was reduced in magnitude in the semi-manual and manual conditions compared to the automatic condition. A follow-up experiment (n=10) to identify if the participants were aware of the different level of control between the semi-manual and manual conditions revealed a difference in awareness between these conditions. These results suggest that, while tactile inputs promote a streaming perception, auditory inputs are given priority over tactile inputs for the formation of a visual perception within the stream/bounce effect. 2011-04-06T00:00:00Z Bernoff, Micah http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:239981 It has been suggested that empathy-related concern and empathy-related distress are two related but distinct emotions that are involved in an overall empathy response (Batson et al., 1987). Cognitive perspective taking has been linked to levels of empathy, however it remains unclear which model of perspective taking – Objective, Imagine-self or Imagine-other – promotes optimal empathy. State and trait anxiety have also been suggested to have a significant influence on empathy-related responses, however results from previous literature have been mixed. The current study investigated the effect of perspective taking instructions and anxiety on self-reported levels of empathy-related concern and distress felt for a target character in six different emotion-inducing vignettes. Perspective taking was manipulated within-subjects with all participants (N = 52) completing an imagine-self, imagine-other or objective Perspective Taking condition for two of the six vignettes. A Threat of Shock paradigm was used to manipulate anxiety between-subjects. Half of the participants ("threat of shock" group) were presented with an unpleasant electro-tactile stimulus at random during the experiment, the other half of the participants ("no shock" group) were not. Perspective taking instructions were found to have an effect on both empathy-related concern and empathy-related distress, with the Objective condition eliciting lower levels of both compared to the Imagine-other and Imagine-self conditions. Participants in the "threat of shock" condition reported higher levels of anxiety during the experiment and reported lower levels of empathy-related distress for the targets than participants in the "no shock" condition. Implications of the results will be discussed in terms of clinician training. 2011-04-06T00:00:00Z Negd, Monika http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:276348 The current study examines the relationship between maternal reflective functioning (RF) on stress and depression in mothers with preterm infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Research indicates that the NICU environment can cause high level of stress and depression, which impact on the development of a secure infant-mother relationship. Much research has been conducted to determine the factors that predict secure attachment. Recently RF has emerged as a strong predictor. Furthermore, RF has emerged as protective factor for the infant-parent relationship in situations where the family is experiencing high stress levels. The current study will investigate whether RF capacity is related to stress levels and depression in a NICU environment. It is hypothesized that mothers with high RF ability will report lower levels of stress and depression during their child‟s NICU admission, as compared to mothers with low RF. Twenty-four mothers, with 7- to 14-day-old preterm infants admitted in the Royal Brisbane Women‟s Hospital, were interviewed on the Parent Development Interview (PDI). The Reflective Functioning Scoring Manual was used to rate maternal RF on the PDI. The Parental Stress Scale: NICU and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale were administered to measure maternal stress and depression, respectively. The results showed that RF was not related to maternal reports of stress. However depression was found to be related to RF capacity. Mothers with high RF were less likely to be classified as depressed compared to mothers of low RF. The strengths, limitation of the are discussed and recommendations for future research are outlined. 2012-06-26T00:00:00Z Sidhu, Raychelle http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:275669 The role of advertising on alcohol consumption has received substantial criticisms, with longitudinal evidence demonstrating associations between media exposure to alcohol and drinking behaviour in adolescents. The present study aimed to investigate the more immediate effects of exposure to alcohol-related advertisements on affective responses and subjective ratings of desire to drink. Gray’s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST) was used as a framework for understanding individual differences in personality,specifically focusing on reward sensitivity, a neurobiological system proposed to underlie approach motivation in response to rewarding stimuli. Past research has shown that reward sensitivity is strongly associated with responses to alcohol-related cues. The primary aim of the current study was to investigate the influence of individual differences in reward sensitivity on reactivity to varied forms of alcohol-related advertising, including those promoting alcohol use, as well as Government initiatives aimed at reducing hazardous drinking levels in young adults. The results of the study demonstrate that individuals with heightened reward sensitivity, classified as hazardous drinkers, reported increases in subjective craving of alcohol following exposure to alcohol promoting advertisements. Individuals with high levels of reward sensitivity also demonstrated modest increases in craving after viewing aversive Government campaigns. In contrast, non-aversive Government campaigns were not found to influence affective responses or desire to drink alcohol. Observed results demonstrated mixed evidence for understanding the role of reward sensitivity in cued affective responses. Implications for these findings are discussed, along with limitations of the study and directions for future research. 2012-06-13T00:00:00Z Madeline Corke