Abstract:

This dissertation describes research procedures and software to investigate the structure of cognitive processes over time. Since prior research has established that cognitive processes are multidimensional, two programs from the Galileo system, ELQM and SPED, were modified to allow efficient collection of time series multidimensional data. In this dissertation we provide test data from the emotions domain.

Dissimilarities between 6 emotion concepts, 6 emotion attribute concepts, 3 social settings concepts, and a concept of self are measured in a Galileo space over time. In this space, attributes which seem to be similar are located close to each other, and objects which possess similar attributes are located close to each other. The final dataset collected is separated into several subsets according to the time interval participants spent on the comparisons between each pair of concepts. The dissimilarities data is then converted to coordinates data for each subset and these coordinates are rotated to fit a universal reference frame. How emotions change over time can be studied by comparing the change between different datasets.