This is a request for an ADAMHA Research Scientist Development Award (K02). The applicant's major objective is to develop an integrative theory of the cognitive representations and processes that underlie social judgment and inference, person perception, and stereotyping. These topics relate to mental health in several ways. For example, stereotypes contribute to concrete social conditions (such as prejudice and discrimination) that affect many people's mental health, and negative stereotypes also affect people's reactions to the mentally ill. Three lines of theoretical and empirical work will contribute to this-general objective: investigation of exemplar effects on social categorization and judgment; studies of the cognitive processes involved in social inference and judgment, including the way they change and increase in efficiency with use; and development of a new connectionist or neural-network model that will integrate both of these lines of research.
