Digital Commons Network^™

Factor Structure Of The Cpt-Ii, Mary Vertinski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The current study investigates the factor structure of the Conners' Continuous Performance Test-II (CPT-II) in four pediatric samples of participants: (a) patients with traumatic brain injury, (b) healthy controls, (c) patients with various clinical diagnoses, and (d) all of the previously mentioned subjects combined. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were used to investigate a one-, three- and four-factor model fit of the data. None of the models examined were an adequate fit for the data; however, it appears that the four-factor model seemed to be the best fitting of the models examined. Failure to find reasonably adequate fit precluded further analyses.

The Formation Of Situation Models In Multimedia, Kris Gunawan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

When people read traditional text-based stories, they construct mental representations of the described state of affairs, called situation models, to connect various details of events (e.g., time, space, entity) in memory (Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). According to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2005; 2011), stories presented as pictures and text generate independent channels of mental representations that can work hand-in-hand or separately to acquire and remember the materials presented. This dissertation consisted of two experiments that were used to further explore how the two modalities affect what is being mentally represented in memory. In Experiment 1, participants were …

Affect Identification And Interpersonal Skills: An In-Depth Evaluation Of Social Cognition In Schizophrenia, Griffin Pollock Sutton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The presence of deficits in various sub-domains of social cognition has been investigated to a degree in individuals with schizophrenia. Some of the most commonly researched and documented deficits have included impairments in the identification of affect portrayed in faces. Research has indicated that the performance of individuals with schizophrenia on such tasks is generally impaired as compared to normal controls. However, some have questioned the generalizability of such findings to real-world situations, as day-to-day interactions generally necessitate a constant, fluid assessment of the thoughts and feelings of others and are rarely, if ever, limited to still images of others. …

Frequency-Specificity And Pattern-Specificity Of The Buildup Of Auditory Stream Segregation, David Michael Weintraub

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

During repeating sequences of low (A) and high (B) tones in an "...ABAB..." pattern, the likelihood of hearing two separate streams ("streaming") increases with more repetitions of the patterns, a phenomenon referred to as "buildup". Previous studies have shown that buildup is frequency specific (Anstis & Saida, 1985) and that its biasing effects decays over several seconds (Beauvois & Meddis, 1997). No study has examined whether the frequency specificity of buildup persists for such a long duration. To address these issues, Experiment 1 tested the decay of frequency-specific and non-frequency specific buildup. The results revealed that (1) frequency-specific buildup effects …

Modality-Specific And Modality-General Encoding Of Auditory And Visual Rhythms, Amanda Pasinski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The perception of timing information plays a large role in our everyday activities, yet we still do not accurately understand the mechanisms underlying these perceptions. Both modality-general and modality specific mechanisms have been suggested to account for perceptual timing. The use of a new auditory tempo perception paradigm can be used to examine various brain responses - measured via electroencephalography (EEG) - thought to index timing perception. This study applied this paradigm to both auditory and visual rhythms, and compared event-related potentials (ERPs) to task performance. Auditory and visual contingent negative variation (CNV) components showed two distinct voltage patterns across …

Interactive Effects Of Working Memory Self-Regulatory Ability And Relevance Instructions On Text Processing, Nancy Jo Hamilton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Reading is a process that requires the enactment of many cognitive processes. Each of these processes uses a certain amount of working memory resources, which are severely constrained by biology. More efficiency in the function of working memory may mediate the biological limits of same. Reading relevancy instructions may be one such method to assist readers in utilizing working memory resources more efficiently.

This study examines the relationship between perspective relevance instructions and participants' ability to regulate their working memory resources. In a 3 x 2 x 2 design the study extended the literature by utilizing a measure of fluid …

A Comparison Of Bias In Four Measures Of Monitoring Accuracy, Fred Kuch

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Typically in calibration research, subjects perform a task and make a judgment about the success of the task. Accurate findings help subjects improve self-calibration. In addition, researchers rely on the accuracy of findings to make inferences about underlying metacognitive processes. Consequently, it is important that the measures used to assess monitoring accuracy are as free of bias as possible. Bias indicates whether an observed value of monitoring accuracy over- or underestimates the true value.

This study examined gamma and three other viable statistics, d', C, and the G Index, currently used to measure monitoring accuracy. Using Monte Carlo simulation techniques, …

Pain Tolerance And Thresholds In Women With Dyspareunia: Do Pain And Sex Primes Have Differential Effects?, Lea Thaler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Dyspareunia, defined as recurrent pain in the genital/pelvic region during sexual intercourse, is one of the most common types of female sexual dysfunction, affecting approximately 15% of women between the ages of 18 and 24. Women with dyspareunia display similar cognitive and emotional styles evidenced in other chronic pain conditions (e.g. hypervigilance for pain information, catastrophization, and negative affect); however, dyspareunia is a unique pain disorder in that it directly involves sexual functioning. This pairing of pain and sex raises the issue of conditioning. Is it possible that because intercourse is painful for women with dyspareunia, the presentation of any …

Visual Attention To Erotic Stimuli In Androphilic Male-To-Female Transsexuals, Sarah A. Akhter

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The present study investigated sex differences in visual attention to erotic stimuli by comparing three groups of individuals: heterosexual men, heterosexual women, and androphilic MtF transsexuals. Twenty men, 20 women and 13 MtF transsexuals were shown 10 split-screen slides, each featuring one nude erotic photo of a man shown on half of the screen and one nude erotic photo of a woman shown on the other half of the screen. Eye movements were tracked as participants viewed the slides. All participants were heterosexual (Kinsey 0-1) relative to gender identity, thus erotic targets for natal men were nude women in the …

Cognitive Load Of Critical Thinking Strategies, Hanem Shehab

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Critical thinking is important for today's life, where individuals daily face unlimited amounts of information, complex problems, and rapid technological and social changes. Therefore, critical thinking should be the focus of general education and educators' efforts (Angeli & Valanides, 2009; Oliver & Utermohlen, 1995). Despite passively agreeing or disagreeing with a line of reasoning, critical thinkers use analytical skills to comprehend and evaluate its merits, considering strengths and weaknesses. Critical thinkers also analyze arguments, recognizing the essentiality of asking for reasons and considering alternative views and developing their own point of view (Paul, 1990). Kuhn and Udell (2007) emphasize that …

Executive Function Profiles In Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury, Erik Nelson Ringdahl

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Traumatic brain injury is a common cause of disability and death among children in the United States. Insult to the frontal and temporal lobes are frequent in closed head brain injury. Cognitive deficits in a variety of domains are common sequelae of brain trauma. In many cases, trauma to the frontal and temporal lobe regions engender prominent deficits in higher-order cognitive processing, memory, and attention.

Higher-order cognitive processing, or Executive Functions are the grouping of cognitive processes necessary for organization of thoughts and activities, attending to the activities, prioritizing tasks, managing time efficiently, and making decisions (Alvarez & Emory, 2006; …

Bilingualism And Math Cognition, Michelle M. Guillaume

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Within cognitive psychology, the fields of bilingualism and math cognition have been investigated relatively separately from one another. Although there has been a substantial amount of research conducted in both areas, few studies have examined mathematical processes as they relate to bilinguals. A couple of the traditional effects found in the math cognition literature, the problem size and associative confusion effects, have been studied with bilinguals; however, bilingual categorization was not carefully controlled for in those studies. There have also been mathematical models applied to bilingual samples; one such model is the encoding-complex model, which has been extended to Chinese-English …

Predictors Of Recall And Reading Time For Seductive And Nonseductive Text Segments, Ivan V. Ivanov

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This correlational study explored how concreteness, relevance, importance, and interestingness related to the recall of seductive details and base text, while controlling for text coherence, and student background knowledge. Previous research has provided evidence for the significant relationship between these variables and the seductive details effect in particular and text recall in general. However, this is the first study to consider all these variables simultaneously. A group of 68 undergraduates read an expository text on lightning formation, performed an immediate test on free recall, and rated each text sentence for concreteness, relevance, importance, and interestingness. A simple regression analysis revealed …

Altering Explicit And Implicit Racial Prejudice Towards African American Males, Veronica A. Glover

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Researchers tested 281 undergraduates to determine if positive behavior messages about African American males presented during a learning task affected scores on explicit and implicit racial prejudice measures. During the learning task, we manipulated how many positive messages the participant viewed (100 vs. 150 or none) and the amount of African American males these messages applied to (1 vs. 3). Participants who viewed 150 positive messages about one African American male displayed more explicit prejudice than participants in control groups or participants learning 100 messages about one person. Results for the implicit measure indicated that participants who learned about three …

Verbal And Visual Learning And Memory Deficits As Trait Markers For Psychosis In Bipolar Disorder, Griffin P. Sutton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The presence of neurocognitive deficits in the affective and psychotic psychiatric disorders (i.e., bipolar disorder with psychotic features, bipolar disorder without psychotic features, and schizophrenia) has been well documented, with such these deficits having been found to overlap across these diagnostic categories to a degree. Along with other types of evidence reported, these findings suggest that bipolar disorder and schizophrenia may not be isolated disorders as suggested by the current diagnostic criteria outlined in the DSM-IV (APA, 1994), but rather may be related disorders on a spectrum marked by bipolar disorder without psychosis on one end and by schizophrenia on …

Inferring Rules From Sound: The Role Of Domain-Specific Knowledge In Speech And Music Perception, Aaronell Shaila Matta

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Speech and music are two forms of complex auditory structure that play fundamental roles in everyday human experience and require certain basic perceptual and cognitive abilities. Nevertheless, when attempting to infer patterns from sequential auditory input, human listeners may use the same information differently depending on whether a sound is heard in a linguistic vs. musical context. The goal of these studies was to examine the role of domain-specific knowledge in auditory pattern perception. Specifically, the study examined the inference of "rules" in novel sound sequences that contained patterns of spectral structure (speech or instrument timbre) and fundamental frequency (pitch). …

The Effects Of Cultural Experience And Subdivision On Tapping To Slow Tempi, Sangeeta Ullal

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Our ability to accurately synchronize with rhythmic patterns is constrained by two factors: temporal length and interval structure. By using strategies such as subdivision, we can improve synchronization accuracy at slow tempos, but our ability to utilize subdivisions is constrained by the nature of interval ratios contained in culture-specific subdivision types. Western music falls within a restricted temporal range and its metrical subdivisions contain simple ratios, but Indian music violates these constraints. The present study examines the effects of culture-specific experience on these constraints. American and Indian listeners were asked to perform synchronous tapping to a stimulus with a slow …

Exploring The Phenomena Of Inner Experience With Descriptive Experience Sampling, Janell M. Mihelic

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study provides a survey of the phenomena of normal, everyday inner experience using the Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) method. Results demonstrated that five types of inner experience (sensory awareness, feeling, unsymbolized thinking, inner seeing, and inner speech) occurred in approximately one-quarter of sampled moments and that there were significant individual differences regarding the frequency with which subjects experienced these phenomena. Three new dimensions (richness of inner experience, the number of experiences present, and the overall valence of the experience) along which inner experience could be characterized were identified and used reliably to characterize moments of experience. Finally, although there …

African American And Caucasian Males' Evaluation Of Racialized Female Facial Averages, Rhea M. Watson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The answer to what makes a face attractive has been debated for generations and studied in different disciplines. The current study investigated African American and Caucasian males' evaluation (attraction) to racialized female faces. Faces varied from 100% African American to 100% Caucasian (and included variations that were 25% of either group, or 50% of both groups). Twenty African American and 30 Caucasian men each viewed ten faces, and evaluated them in terms of their appearance and the likelihood that the men would interact with (befriend, date, or marry) the person pictured. Findings revealed that African American men found the 100% …

The Inner Experience Of Older Individuals, Todd Michael Seibert

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Older individuals are susceptible to the development of numerous age-related neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s Disease and Vascular Dementia. This is continuing to become a more serious social, financial, medical, and psychological problem as the average life span continues to increase across the world. Nevertheless, very little is known about the inner experience of older individuals. This study used Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) to investigate the inner experience of twelve older individuals with and without cognitive impairment. Five of six unimpaired individuals were able to engage successfully in DES compared to only one individual with cognitive impairment. The findings suggest that …