Placebo expectancy effect of consuming psychoactive beverages on cognition and mood

Energy drinks have become very popular over the past few years with over half the student population in colleges and universities consuming them at least once a month (Malinauskas et al., 2007). It has been reported that the most common reasons why students consume energy drinks are to maintain alertness, reduce symptoms of hangover, increase energy, to help with driving and to prevent sleepiness (Attila and Cakir, 2011; Malinauskas et al., 2007). Previous research has suggested that energy drinks enhance sensorimotor speed, behaviour, and reduce levels of fatigue (Alford et al., 2001; Horne and Reyner, 2001; Howard and Marczinski, 2010; Kennedy and Scholey, 2004; Smit et al., 2004). The two key ingredients found in energy drinks are caffeine and glucose which have been examined together and alone, which have indicated enhanced reaction times, improvement in both verbal memory and sustained attention and more recently there is evidence to show that expectancy may play a key role in predicting intentions of future consumption (Adan and serra-Grabulosa, 2010). According to Kirsch (1997) people have specific expectations when they consume psychoactive substances that trigger physiological and psychological reactions, which tend to be independent of the psychoactive substance ingested. The concept of expectancy effects can be unambiguous especially when the information provided to the participants prior to the experimental study is specific to a possible outcome response. This thesis investigated the extent of expectancy effect on cognition and mood when psychoactive drinks containing caffeine and glucose were consumed in comparison to non-psychoactive drinks. The investigation commenced with examining the independent effects of caffeine and glucose, followed by the combination of caffeine and glucose as an energy drink on mood and cognition. The investigation advanced by comparing drink presentation effects (i.e., consuming the experimental drink from a branded bottle versus from a glass) irrespective of drink content on mood and cognition. Finally, the investigation lead to exploring what factors may predict expectancy effects when participants’ consumed psychoactive drinks among healthy adults. This was done by applying the Theory of Planned Behaviour model (TPB) (Azjen, 1991) to explore the contribution of specific attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control to the extent of expectancy effects as well as to behavioural intention, with additional variables including; beliefs, habits, past-behaviour, selfidentity. Self-identity representing someone who drinks energy drinks regularly. The level of internal consistency for Cronbach’s alpha was conducted for each variable within the TPB model and for the additional variables included for test reliability. This thesis consisted of four studies, which found that consumption of caffeine and glucose independently and also in combination resulted in psychoactive effects on mood and cognition. Experiment 2 was the only study, which indicated an expectancy effect for immediate verbal recall task and the mood subscale tension. Conversely, for experiment 4 there was a reverse effect found for the immediate verbal recall task. However, there were significant expectancy and psychoactive effects found for mood subscales throughout the four studies. It was also found that the TPB model had two significant variables past-behaviour and self-identity predicted intentions suggesting that participants who regularly consume psychoactive beverages have salient beliefs about consuming psychoactive drinks and the TPB model can be utilised to predict their intentions. Furthermore, the Theory of planned behaviour model found that habit and self-identity significantly predicted participants’ expectancy effects on the vigour. Indicating consumers of energy drinks are familiar with expected outcome response. This model was unsuccessful in predicting expectancy response for cognitive performance. Thus, overall the findings from the four studies indicated that caffeine and glucose have cognitive enhancing properties, which also positively improve mood. However, expectancy effects have been identified for mood only, whereas the overall findings within this thesis were unable to identify significant predictors of expectancy effect and response.

What does board capital really bring to the table? Exploring the effect of directors' human and social capital on effective governance during international expansion

What constitutes effective corporate governance? Which director characteristics render boards effective at positively influencing firm-level performance outcomes? This dissertation examines these questions by taking a multilevel, multidisciplinary approach to corporate governance. I explore the individual-, team-, and firm- level factors that enable directors to serve effectively as strategic resources during international expansion. I argue that directors' international experience improves their ability to serve as effective strategic consultants and resource providers to firms during the complex internationalization process. However, unlike prior research, which tends to assume that directors with the potential to provide important resources uniformly do so, I acknowledge contextual factors (i.e. board cohesiveness, strategic relevance of directors' experience) that affect their propensity to actually influence outcomes. I explore these issues in three essays: one review essay and two empirical essays.^ In the first empirical essay, I integrate resource dependence theory with insights from social-psychological research to explore the influence of board capital on firms' cross-border M&A performance. Using a sample of cross-border M&As completed by S&P 500 firms from 2004-2009, I find evidence that directors' depth of international experience is associated with superior pre-deal outcomes. This suggests that boards' deep, market-specific knowledge is valuable during the target selection phase. I further find that directors' breadth of international experience is associated with superior post-deal performance, suggesting that these directors' global mindset helps firms in the post-M&A integration phase. I also find that these relationships are positively moderated by board cohesiveness, measured by boards' internal social ties.^ In the second empirical essay, I explore the boundary conditions of international board capital by examining how the characteristics of firms' internationalization strategy moderate the relationship between board capital and firm performance. Using a panel of 377 S&P 500 firms observed from 2004-2011, I find that boards' depth of international experience and social capital are more important during early stages of internationalization, when firms tend to lack market knowledge and legitimacy in the host markets. On the other hand, I find that breadth of international experience has a stronger relationship with performance when firms' have higher scope of internationalization, when information-processing demands are higher.^

The Effect of Prenatal Auditory Enrichment on Perceptual Narrowing in Bobwhite Quail Neonates

The development of species-typical perceptual preferences has been shown to depend on a variety of socially and ecologically derived sensory stimulation during both the pre- and postnatal periods. The prominent mechanism behind the development of these seemingly innate tendencies in young organisms has been hypothesized to be a domain-general pan-sensory selectivity process referred to as perceptual narrowing, whereby regularly experienced sensory stimuli are honed in upon, while simultaneously losing the ability to effectively discriminate between atypical or unfamiliar sensory stimulation. Previous work with precocial birds has been successful in preventing the development of species-typical perceptual preferences by denying the organism typical levels of social and/or self-produced stimulation. The current series of experiments explored the mechanism of perceptual narrowing to assess the malleability of a species-typical auditory preference in avian embryos. By providing a variety of different unimodal and bimodal presentations of a mixed-species vocalizations at the onset of prenatal auditory function, the following project aimed to 1) keep the perceptual window from narrowing, thereby interfering with the development of a species-typical auditory preference, 2) investigate how long differential prenatal stimulation can keep the perceptual window open postnatally, 3) explore how prenatal auditory enrichment effected preferences for novelty, and 4) assess whether prenatal auditory perceptual narrowing is affected by modality specific or amodal stimulus properties during early development. Results indicated that prenatal auditory enrichment significantly interferes with the emergence of a species-typical auditory preference and increases openness to novelty, at least temporarily. After accruing postnatal experience in an environment rich with species-typical auditory and multisensory cues, the effect of prenatal auditory enrichment rapidly was found to rapidly fade. Prenatal auditory enrichment with extraneous non-synchronous light exposure was shown to both keep the perceptual narrowing window open and impede learning in the postnatal environment, following hatching. Results are discussed in light of the role experience plays in perceptual narrowing during the perinatal period.

What Does Board Capital Really Bring to the Table? Exploring the Effect of Directors’ Human and Social Capital on Effective Governance During International Expansion

What constitutes effective corporate governance? Which director characteristics render boards effective at positively influencing firm-level performance outcomes? This dissertation examines these questions by taking a multilevel, multidisciplinary approach to corporate governance. I explore the individual-, team-, and firm- level factors that enable directors to serve effectively as strategic resources during international expansion. I argue that directors’ international experience improves their ability to serve as effective strategic consultants and resource providers to firms during the complex internationalization process. However, unlike prior research, which tends to assume that directors with the potential to provide important resources uniformly do so, I acknowledge contextual factors (i.e. board cohesiveness, strategic relevance of directors’ experience) that affect their propensity to actually influence outcomes. I explore these issues in three essays: one review essay and two empirical essays. In the first empirical essay, I integrate resource dependence theory with insights from social-psychological research to explore the influence of board capital on firms’ cross-border M&A performance. Using a sample of cross-border M&As completed by S&P 500 firms from 2004-2009, I find evidence that directors’ depth of international experience is associated with superior pre-deal outcomes. This suggests that boards’ deep, market-specific knowledge is valuable during the target selection phase. I further find that directors’ breadth of international experience is associated with superior post-deal performance, suggesting that these directors’ global mindset helps firms in the post-M&A integration phase. I also find that these relationships are positively moderated by board cohesiveness, measured by boards’ internal social ties. In the second empirical essay, I explore the boundary conditions of international board capital by examining how the characteristics of firms’ internationalization strategy moderate the relationship between board capital and firm performance. Using a panel of 377 S&P 500 firms observed from 2004-2011, I find that boards’ depth of international experience and social capital are more important during early stages of internationalization, when firms tend to lack market knowledge and legitimacy in the host markets. On the other hand, I find that breadth of international experience has a stronger relationship with performance when firms’ have higher scope of internationalization, when information-processing demands are higher.

Faulkner revisited : narrating property, race, gender and history in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day

My thesis explores the formation of the subject in the novels of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. I attach the concept of property in terms of how male protagonists are obsessed with materialistic ownership and with the subordination of women who, as properties, consolidate their manhood. The three novelists despite their racial, gendered, and literary differences share the view that identity and truth are mere social and cultural constructs. I incorporate the work of Judith Butler and other poststructuralist figures, who see identity as a matter of performance rather than a natural entity. My thesis explores the theme of freedom, which I attached to the ways characters use their bodies either to confine or to emancipate themselves from the restricting world of race, class, and gender. The three novelists deconstruct any system of belief that promulgates the objectivity of truth in historical documents. History in the three novels, as with the protagonists, perception of identity, remains a social construct laden with distortions to serve particular political or ideological agendas. My thesis gives voice to African American female characters who are associated with love and racial and gender resistance. They become the reservoirs of the African American legacy in terms of their association with the oral and intuitionist mode of knowing, which subverts the male characters’ obsession with property and with the mainstream empiricist world. In this dissertation, I use the concept of hybridity as a literary and theoretical devise that African-American writers employ. In effect, I embark on the postcolonial studies of Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford, and Arjun Appadurai in order to reflect upon the fluidity of Morrison’s and Naylor’s works. I show how these two novelists subvert Faulkner’s essentialist perception of truth, and of racial and gendered identity. They associate the myth of the Flying African with the notion of hybridity by making their male protagonists criss-cross Northern and Southern regions. I refer to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson’s article on “Speaking in Tongues” in my analysis of how Naylor subverts the patriarchal text of both Faulkner and Morrison in embarking on a more feminine version of the flying African, which she relates to an ex-slave, Sapphira Wade, a volatile female character who resists fixed claim over her story and identity. In dealing with the concept of hybridity, I show that Naylor rewrites both authors’ South by making Willow Springs a more fluid space, an assumption that unsettles the scores of critics who associate the island with authenticity and exclusive rootedness.

Integrating Environmental Justice and Social-Ecological Resilience for Successful Adaptation to Climate Change: Lessons from African American Communities on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay

This research concerns the conceptual and empirical relationship between environmental justice and social-ecological resilience as it relates to climate change vulnerability and adaptation. Two primary questions guided this work. First, what is the level of resilience and adaptive capacity for social-ecological systems that are characterized by environmental injustice in the face of climate change? And second, what is the role of an environmental justice approach in developing adaptation policies that will promote social-ecological resilience? These questions were investigated in three African American communities that are particularly vulnerable to flooding from sea-level rise on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, I found that in all three communities, religious faith and the church, rootedness in the landscape, and race relations were highly salient to community experience. The degree to which these common aspects of the communities have imparted adaptive capacity has changed over time. Importantly, a given social-ecological factor does not have the same effect on vulnerability in all communities; however, in all communities political isolation decreases adaptive capacity and increases vulnerability. This political isolation is at least partly due to procedural injustice, which occurs for a number of interrelated reasons. This research further revealed that while all stakeholders (policymakers, environmentalists, and African American community members) generally agree that justice needs to be increased on the Eastern Shore, stakeholder groups disagree about what a justice approach to adaptation would look like. When brought together at a workshop, however, these stakeholders were able to identify numerous challenges and opportunities for increasing justice. Resilience was assessed by the presence of four resilience factors: living with uncertainty, nurturing diversity, combining different types of knowledge, and creating opportunities for self-organization. Overall, these communities seem to have low resilience; however, there is potential for resilience to increase. Finally, I argue that the use of resilience theory for environmental justice communities is limited by the great breadth and depth of knowledge required to evaluate the state of the social-ecological system, the complexities of simultaneously promoting resilience at both the regional and local scale, and the lack of attention to issues of justice.

Faulkner revisited : narrating property, race, gender and history in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day

My thesis explores the formation of the subject in the novels of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. I attach the concept of property in terms of how male protagonists are obsessed with materialistic ownership and with the subordination of women who, as properties, consolidate their manhood. The three novelists despite their racial, gendered, and literary differences share the view that identity and truth are mere social and cultural constructs. I incorporate the work of Judith Butler and other poststructuralist figures, who see identity as a matter of performance rather than a natural entity. My thesis explores the theme of freedom, which I attached to the ways characters use their bodies either to confine or to emancipate themselves from the restricting world of race, class, and gender. The three novelists deconstruct any system of belief that promulgates the objectivity of truth in historical documents. History in the three novels, as with the protagonists, perception of identity, remains a social construct laden with distortions to serve particular political or ideological agendas. My thesis gives voice to African American female characters who are associated with love and racial and gender resistance. They become the reservoirs of the African American legacy in terms of their association with the oral and intuitionist mode of knowing, which subverts the male characters’ obsession with property and with the mainstream empiricist world. In this dissertation, I use the concept of hybridity as a literary and theoretical devise that African-American writers employ. In effect, I embark on the postcolonial studies of Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford, and Arjun Appadurai in order to reflect upon the fluidity of Morrison’s and Naylor’s works. I show how these two novelists subvert Faulkner’s essentialist perception of truth, and of racial and gendered identity. They associate the myth of the Flying African with the notion of hybridity by making their male protagonists criss-cross Northern and Southern regions. I refer to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson’s article on “Speaking in Tongues” in my analysis of how Naylor subverts the patriarchal text of both Faulkner and Morrison in embarking on a more feminine version of the flying African, which she relates to an ex-slave, Sapphira Wade, a volatile female character who resists fixed claim over her story and identity. In dealing with the concept of hybridity, I show that Naylor rewrites both authors’ South by making Willow Springs a more fluid space, an assumption that unsettles the scores of critics who associate the island with authenticity and exclusive rootedness.

The reality of cross-disciplinary energy research in the United Kingdom:a social science perspective

Cross-disciplinary research is essential in understanding and reducing energy usage, however the reality of this collaboration comes with many challenges. This paper provides an insight into the integration of social science in energy research, drawing on the expertise and first hand experiences of a range of social science researchers (predominantly Early Career Researchers (ECRs)) working on UK cross-disciplinary projects in energy demand. These researchers, participants in a workshop dedicated to understanding the integration of social science in energy research, identified four groups of challenges to successful integration: Differing expectations of the role of social scientists; Working within academia; Feeling like a valued member of the team; and Communicating and comprehension between disciplines. Suggestions of how to negotiate those challenges included: Management and planning; Increasing contact; Sharing experience; and Understanding team roles. The paper offers a definition of ‘success’ in cross-disciplinary energy research from the perspective of social science ECRs, comprising external, internal and personal components. Using the logics of interdisciplinarity, this paper suggests that integration of the social sciences in the projects discussed may be partial at best and highlights a need to recognise the challenges ECRs face, in order to achieve full integration and equality of disciplines.

From emerging adults' unmet psychosocial needs to their problematic use of social networking sites: the mediating role of Fear of Missing Out

Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) is a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. Consequently, individuals experiencing FoMO wish to stay constantly in contact with what others are doing and engage with social networking sites for this purpose. In recent times, FoMO has received increased attention from psychological research, as a minority of users experiencing high levels of FoMO - particularly young people - might develop a problematic social networking site use, defined as the maladaptive and excessive use of social networking sites, resulting in symptoms associated with other addictions. According to the theoretical framework of the Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition- Execution (I-PACE) model, FoMO and certain motives for use may foster problematic use in individuals who display unmet psychosocial needs. However, to date, the I-PACE model has only conceptualized the general higher-order mechanisms related to the development of problematic use. Consistently, the overall purpose of this dissertation was to deepen the understanding of the mediating role of FoMO between specific predisposing variables and problematic social networking sites use. Adopting a psychological approach, two empirical and exploratory cross-sectional studies, conceived as independent research, were conducted through path analysis.

Investigating perceptual multisensory impairments in Autism through a neural network: a possible neural implementation for the shift from cross-modal competition to facilitation

Resolution of multisensory deficits has been observed in teenagers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) for complex, social speech stimuli; this resolution extends to more basic multisensory processing, involving low-level stimuli. In particular, a delayed transition of multisensory integration (MSI) from a default state of competition to one of facilitation has been observed in ASD children. In other terms, the complete maturation of MSI is achieved later in ASD. In the present study a neuro-computational model is used to reproduce some patterns of behavior observed experimentally, modeling a bisensory reaction time task, in which auditory and visual stimuli are presented in random sequence alone (A or V) or together (AV). The model explains how the default competitive state can be implemented via mutual inhibition between primary sensory areas, and how the shift toward the classical multisensory facilitation, observed in adults, is the result of inhibitory cross-modal connections becoming excitatory during the development. Model results are consistent with a stronger cross-modal inhibition in ASD children, compared to normotypical (NT) ones, suggesting that the transition toward a cooperative interaction between sensory modalities takes longer to occur. Interestingly, the model also predicts the difference between unisensory switch trials (in which sensory modality switches) and unisensory repeat trials (in which sensory modality repeats). This is due to an inhibitory mechanism, characterized by a slow dynamics, driven by the preceding stimulus and inhibiting the processing of the incoming one, when of the opposite sensory modality. These findings link the cognitive framework delineated by the empirical results to a plausible neural implementation.

Recovery and upgrading bovine rumen protein by extrusion: effect of lipid content on protein disulphide cross-linking, solubility and molecular weight

Bovine rumen protein with two levels of residual lipids (1.9 per cent or 3.8 per cent) was subjected to thermoplastic extrusion under different temperatures and moisture contents. Protein solubility in different buffers, disulphide cross-linking and molecular weight distribution were determined on the extrudates. After extrusion, samples with 1.9 per cent residual lipids content had a higher concentration of protein insoluble by undetermined forces, irrespective of feed moisture and processing temperature used. Lipid content of 3.8 per cent in the feed material resulted in more protein participating in the extrudate network through non-covalent interactions (hydrophobic and electrostatic) and disulphide bonds. A small dependency of the extrusion process on moisture and temperature and a marked dependency on lipid content, especially phospholipid, was observed, Electrophoresis under non-reducing conditions showed that protein extrusion with low feed moisture promoted high molecular breakdown inside the barrel, probably due to intense shear force, and further protein aggregation at the die end

Effect of performance level on pacing strategy during a 10-km running race

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of the performance level of athletes on pacing strategy during a simulated 10-km running race, and the relationship between physiological variables and pacing strategy. Twenty-four male runners performed an incremental exercise test on a treadmill, three 6-min bouts of running at 9, 12 and 15 km h(-1), and a self-paced, 10-km running performance trial; at least 48 h separated each test. Based on 10-km running performance, subjects were divided into terziles, with the lower terzile designated the low-performing (LP) and the upper terzile designated the high-performing (HP) group. For the HP group, the velocity peaked at 18.8 +/- A 1.4 km h(-1) in the first 400 m and was higher than the average race velocity (P < 0.05). The velocity then decreased gradually until 2,000 m (P < 0.05), remaining constant until 9,600 m, when it increased again (P < 0.05). The LP group ran the first 400 m at a significantly lower velocity than the HP group (15.6 +/- A 1.6 km h(-1); P > 0.05) and this initial velocity was not different from LP average racing velocity (14.5 +/- A 0.7 km h(-1)). The velocity then decreased non-significantly until 9,600 m (P > 0.05), followed by an increase at the end (P < 0.05). The peak treadmill running velocity (PV), running economy (RE), lactate threshold (LT) and net blood lactate accumulation at 15 km h(-1) were significantly correlated with the start, middle, last and average velocities during the 10-km race. These results demonstrate that high and low performance runners adopt different pacing strategies during a 10-km race. Furthermore, it appears that important determinants of the chosen pacing strategy include PV, LT and RE.

The perceptual magnet effect in Australian English vowels

Recent research (Kuhl, 1991) has suggested that the internal structure of vowel categories is graded in terms of stimulus goodness. It has been proposed that a best instance stimulus reflects a central point or prototype, which effectively renders within-category members perceptually more similar. Discrimination experiments suggest a nonlinear relationship between acoustic and perceptual space near category centers (Iverson & Kuhl, 1995b). This phenomenon has been described as the perceptual magnet effect. The present study investigated the presence of the perceptual magnet effect in five Australian vowel categories. Australian English speakers identified, rated, and discriminated between a pool of 32 vowel stimuli that varied in F1 and F2 values. The results from Experiments 1 and 2 showed that subjects were able to judge the quality and identity of each stimulus and that a general grading of stimulus quality was reported. This was not symmetrical, and the subjects' responses varied considerably. In Experiment 3, closer control of the methodology in the discrimination task and of contextual factors influencing the test materials was exercised. Despite this, evidence of the warping of perceptual space in discrimination data was not found. In general, these results do not provide support for the existence of the perceptual magnet effect, and explanations for this finding are discussed.

Local-global processing in early-onset schizophrenia: Evidence for an impairment in shifting the spatial scale of attention

In this study we report the results of two experiments on visual attention conducted with patients with early-onset schizophrenia. These experiments investigated the effect of irrelevant spatial-scale information upon the processing of relevant spatial-scale information, and the ability to shift the spatial scale of attention, across consecutive trials, between different levels of the hierarchical stimulus. Twelve patients with early-onset schizophrenia and matched controls performed local-global tasks under: (1) directed attention conditions with a consistency manipulation and (2) divided-attention conditions. In the directed-attention paradigm, the early-onset patients exhibited the normal patterns of global advantage and interference, and were not unduly affected by the consistency manipulation. Under divided-attention conditions, however, the early-onset patients exhibited a local-processing deficit. The source of this local processing deficit lay in the prolonged reaction time to local targets, when these had been preceded by a global target, but not when preceded by a local target. These findings suggest an impaired ability to shift the spatial scale of attention from a global to a local spatial scale in early-onset schizophrenia. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.