The concreteness effect in healthy ageing; An attenuation or preservation?

Previous research has shown that adults process concrete words faster when they share a taxonomic (similarity) relationship, and process abstract words faster when sharing a thematic (association) relationship (Crutch, Connell & Warrington, 2009). The current study tested if this dissociation could be replicated with older adults (65+) given conflicting evidence of the attenuation/preservation of the concreteness effect in healthy aging (Borghi & Setti, 2017; Peters & Daum, 2008). Healthy younger (N = 17) and older (N = 17) adults completed the odd-one-out task employed by Crutch et al. using four item sets in which the related words were either concrete or abstract, and related by similarity or association, e.g., Jeep-Taxi-Lorry-Mushroom (concrete-similarity), Crime-Punishment-Theft-Mimic (abstract-association). A significant interaction was found between concept type and semantic relation whereby reaction times were faster for concrete-similarity over concrete-association words, and faster for abstract-association over abstract-similarity words. No age effects were found in processing concrete or abstract concepts. The concreteness effect was found to be present for both younger and older adults suggesting that, contrary to expectation, older adults still show an advantage in processing concrete over abstract concepts with implications for Embodied Cognition.Non peer reviewedDownloa

Assessing the stability of thematic and taxonomic preferences across explicit and implicit measures

Assessments of similarity between objects has shown to draw upon both taxonomic and thematic properties. While cross-task preferences have been demonstrated (Mirman & Graziano, 2012), the current experiment aimed to examine the reliability of such preferences across an extended range of explicit and implicit measures of similarity. In a within-subjects design, 50 participants completed three established measures assessing preferences for taxonomic or thematic relations; a free sort task, a triad task and the Visual World Paradigm, with a further implicit measure developed based upon the single category Implicit Association Task. Preferences were calculated on the basis of choices made on the sorting and triad task, competitor viewing time on the VWP, and response time on the IAT. Across all measures, consistent preferences were not found. Furthermore, no significant correlations were found between the magnitude of preferences for the four measures including no correlations between the two explicit or the two implicit measures. In contrast to previous research demonstrating reliable cross-task preferences, performance on the tasks used here argue against stable individual differences in taxonomic and thematic processing and suggest that, for most people, the use of each processing pathway is flexible and determined by both context and goals.Non peer reviewe

The Impact of the Financial Crisis on the Bond Market

The Australian bond market functioned well during the financial crisis. Changes in investor sentiment and issuer behaviour led to a slowing in issuance and an increase in the average credit quality of new issuance. While the average bond term shortened and spreads widened, these trends have since reversed somewhat as market conditions have improved.bond issuance; financial crisis; bond spreads

Evaluation of readability and accuracy of information leaflets in general practice for patients with asthma

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Thermal biology of temperate and high-latitude arachnids

Temperate and high latitude terrestrial ecosystems have high thermal variability, and the ectotherms that inhabit these regions must have thermal tolerances that mirror these temperatures. However, the thermal limits of many high-latitude arachnids are unknown, as well as any underlying mechanisms of seasonal plasticity for any arachnid. The objective of my thesis is to measure the thermal tolerances of temperate, Arctic, and sub-Arctic arachnids, and identify if they have thermal plasticity, either seasonally or following acclimation. I collected the high-latitude pseudoscorpion Wyochernes asiaticus streamside from the Yukon Territory, where besides large thermal variability, they are also inundated with spring flooding. I also collected a variety of wolf spiders (Genus Pardosa) in the Yukon, Greenland, and Norway, where they are abundant and active on the tundra in the Arctic summer. In the lab, half of the of the air-exposed and low oxygen water-submerged pseudoscorpions survived for 17 days; showing that they are likely adapted to seasonal flooding. The pseudoscorpions and spiders I collected in the summer have thermal tolerances (the low and high temperatures at which activity stops) that range from -6°C in both pseudoscorpions and spiders, to 37.8°C (in pseudoscorpions) and 45°C (in spiders). Following 4°C-acclimation, the spiders did not show an ecologically significant change in their thermal tolerance breadths (Tbr, the difference between their low- and high-temperature tolerance), potentially because their Tbr is large enough to remain active during summer temperatures. I collected the temperate and freeze-tolerant red velvet mite in late fall, mid-winter, and early spring to compare their lower lethal temperature, and potential mechanisms associated with cold-tolerance. In mid-winter, the hemolymph osmolality and glycerol content increases, and water content decreases: all likely cryoprotectant mechanisms. Temperate red velvet mites show seasonal acclimatization resulting in freeze-tolerance, the first evidence of freeze-tolerance in microarthropods

The role of situational information in conceptual knowledge

This thesis investigated the influence of situational knowledge on the performance of two common tasks; category member generation under a free-emission procedure and the judgement of similarity between two items using rating scales. In both tasks, self-report protocols were used to identify the strategies that people seemed to be using to complete the tasks. The main goal was to identify the role of situational knowledge in the organisation of semantic memory. Traditional models would not predict a role for situational knowledge in either of the target tasks. In the category member generation studies (Chapter 2) participants frequently instantiated situations or perspectives to cue retrieval of category members for both taxonomic and ad hoc categories. Chapter 3 investigated the factors that determine subjective similarity: category type, typicality, context and presence or absence of self-report. The quantitative data analysis showed the need for careful qualifications to previous claims concerning the effect of context on similarity (Barsalou, 1982). Specifically, ad hoc category members were rated more similar with context only when judgements were made without self-report and when items were relatively typical. Self-report protocols showed that co-occurrence of items in a situation frequently entered into judgements of similarity. Chapter 4 investigated the role of events in determining the strength of this 'thematic' similarity. Individual indices of association strength between the items and an event were shown to predict similarity ratings - thus confirming that thematic similarity is driven, at least partially, by the association of items to common settings. The findings lend empirical weight to theoretical positions that present memory for situational information as an integral part of conceptual knowledge. This approach may underpin a new direction for research into concepts in both normal and clinical adult populations