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Psychology

Theses/Dissertations

Attention

2016

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Task Manipulation Effects On The Relationship Between Working Memory Capacity And Go/No-Go Performance, Elizabeth A. Wiemers Dec 2016

Task Manipulation Effects On The Relationship Between Working Memory Capacity And Go/No-Go Performance, Elizabeth A. Wiemers

Open Access Theses

Seemingly minor task manipulations can have large and sometimes unpredicted effects on task performance. Despite this, single tasks are typical in both research and assessment applications. This series of experiments aims to systematically investigate the differences between various perceptual and semantic versions of go/no-go tasks and their relationships with working memory capacity (WMC) with the goal of determining the cause of inconsistencies in the literature. Because these versions of the go/no-go have not previously been systematically studied, the first experiment does so. After determining which performance differences exist based on versions of both task and decision, and noting that these …

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Hands, And Numbers, And Dots Oh My! Examining The Effect Of Nearby-Hands On Counting And Subitizing, Gabriel Allred Dec 2016

Hands, And Numbers, And Dots Oh My! Examining The Effect Of Nearby-Hands On Counting And Subitizing, Gabriel Allred

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The “nearby-hand” effect (Tseng, Bridgeman, & Juan 2012), an alteration of performance caused by the presence of our hands in the visuospatial area, has been found in learning, attention, and working memory tasks (Brockmole, Davoli, Abrams, & Witt, 2013a). However, no work to date has been published demonstrating a relationship between the nearby-hand effect and judgments of magnitude, including subitizing and counting. It is suggested by Tseng, Bridgeman, and Juan (2012) that nearby-hands affect attentional disengagement, yet little experimental evidence is available to support this notion. Given the serialized nature of counting, which requires attentional disengagement from item to item …

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The Relationship Between P300 Evoked Potentials And Prefrontal Cortex Oxygen Use: A Combined Eeg And Nirs Study, Will S. Rizer Dec 2016

The Relationship Between P300 Evoked Potentials And Prefrontal Cortex Oxygen Use: A Combined Eeg And Nirs Study, Will S. Rizer

All NMU Master's Theses

The P300 subcomponent, P3b, is an event related potential detected at the scalp surface when a working memory comparison results in differences between the contents of working memory and incoming stimulus information. Previous research has indicated that as infrequent targets become more difficult to detect (morphologically similar to a frequent non-target stimulus) the P300 becomes attenuated. fMRI research has also indicated increased prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity during P300 generation. To examine the relationship between P3b amplitude and PFC activity participants performed an easy and difficult target detection task in both EEG and NIRS called the oddball. The EEG and behavioral …

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The Impact Of Balance Disturbance On Cognition, Erin Quasney Oct 2016

The Impact Of Balance Disturbance On Cognition, Erin Quasney

Dissertations (1934 -)

There have been remarkable gains within the scientific literature over the last few decades contributing to our understanding of the sequelae, recovery, and treatment of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), yet our knowledge of relationships among symptoms remains elementary in comparison. Cognitive and balance deficits are two of the most prevalent consequence of mTBI. There is some indication that a challenge to one or both of these functions can result in cognitive detriments due to constraints on attentional capacity. However, the evidence remains both conflicting and sparse. This study examined the impact of increasing balance challenge on attention and working …

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Perceiving Oldness In Parietal Cortex: Fmri Characterization Of A Parietal Memory Network, Adrian Gilmore Aug 2016

Perceiving Oldness In Parietal Cortex: Fmri Characterization Of A Parietal Memory Network, Adrian Gilmore

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The manner in which the human brain recognizes certain stimuli as novel or familiar is a matter of ongoing investigation. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to improve our understanding of how this may be accomplished. More specifically, work contained herein focuses on a recently described "parietal memory network" (PMN; Gilmore et al., 2015) that shows opposite patterns of activity when perceiving novel or familiar stimuli: deactivating in response to novelty, and activating in response to familiarity. Critically, our understanding of this network is based on explicit memory tasks, in which subjects are deliberately instructed to learn or remember …

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The Effect Of Content-Related And Unrelated Break Activities On Test Results, Ryan Gentek Aug 2016

The Effect Of Content-Related And Unrelated Break Activities On Test Results, Ryan Gentek

Theses and Dissertations

Researchers have recently explored using brief breaks to maintain performance during prolonged tasks (Ariga and Lleras, 2011). However, research has yet to fully explore the effect of break activity content on the performance of the primary task. The present study sought to explore the differing effects of two break activities that were respectively similar and different in content to the main task. The present researcher compared past studies of task-switching and interruption studies to theories of the vigilance decrement and hypothesized that a brief similar task should result in significantly different main-task performance than the brief dissimilar task. 20 participating …

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Neural Circuitry Underlying The Intrusion Of Task-Irrelevant Threat Into Working Memory In Anxiety, Daniel Stout Aug 2016

Neural Circuitry Underlying The Intrusion Of Task-Irrelevant Threat Into Working Memory In Anxiety, Daniel Stout

Theses and Dissertations

Dispositional anxiety is an important risk factor for the development of anxiety and other psychological disorders. Symptoms commonly expressed by highly anxious individuals include intrusive memories, uncertainty, and worry — all occurring in the absence of immediate threat. This raises the possibility that anxious individuals have difficulty governing threat’s access to working memory, the mental workspace where goal-related information is actively retained for guiding on-going behavior. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while 81 subjects completed a well-validated working memory task, I show that threat-related and neutral distracters unnecessarily gain access to working memory, as evidenced by increased neural activity …

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Teacher Mindfulness In The Middle School Classroom: Reliability And Validity Of A New Scale, Nicolette Paige Rickert Jul 2016

Teacher Mindfulness In The Middle School Classroom: Reliability And Validity Of A New Scale, Nicolette Paige Rickert

Dissertations and Theses

Despite significant growth in research examining the effects of mindfulness interventions on teachers (Roeser, 2014), studies have mainly relied on self-reports of teacher mindfulness and have not examined observable behavioral manifestations of teacher mindfulness in the classroom. Due to possible biases in self-report measures (Dotterer & Lowe, 2011), as well as the need for a greater range of assessments of the effects of mindfulness trainings on teachers, the current study sought to create a new measure of teacher mindfulness in the classroom from three sources of information: teacher self-reports of their own behavior in the classroom, student perceptions of their …

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Attentional Window And Global/Local Processing, Steven Peter Schultz Jun 2016

Attentional Window And Global/Local Processing, Steven Peter Schultz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How does the focus of attention influence the encoding of information? Research has shown that size and allocation of the attentional window has an influence on what information is attended to or missed. The size-scale of features also effects processing of visual information. Previous research involving hierarchical stimuli suggests precedence for global features. In the present experiment, I investigated the influence of attentional window size on accuracy of encoding hierarchical stimuli at the global and local level. Here I introduce a new method for manipulating the size of the attentional window and for collecting unconstrained responses. At the start of …

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How Do Parent-Child Relationships Relate To Attention, Executive Functioning, & Working Memory In School-Aged Children?, Miriam Goldstein Jan 2016

How Do Parent-Child Relationships Relate To Attention, Executive Functioning, & Working Memory In School-Aged Children?, Miriam Goldstein

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This study examined how parent-child relationships may facilitate children’s higher-order cognition. A cross-sectional design was used to examine the relationship between positive and negative parenting factors and both neuropsychological and parent-report measures of children’s executive functioning (EF), attention, and working memory. Participants included ninety 8- to 12-year-old children and their parents. Though parenting was largely unrelated to neuropsychological performance, several positive and negative parenting dimensions were associated with parent ratings of children’s attention, EF, and working memory. Relational frustration and parental involvement were robust predictors of child difficulties with inattention and EF, controlling for relevant covariates. Though the causal direction …

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An Examination Of A Yoga Intervention And Elementary Students’ Selective Attention And Executive Function In The School Setting, M. Jill Rogers Jan 2016

An Examination Of A Yoga Intervention And Elementary Students’ Selective Attention And Executive Function In The School Setting, M. Jill Rogers

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of yoga on children’s executive function and selective attention. There were three primary aims of this study. The first aim was to examine whether yoga would have a positive effect on children’s selective attention in a school setting. Another aim was to explore if teachers will report an improved change in children’s executive function in the classroom. The final aim was to determine if yoga would be a socially acceptable intervention to teachers and students. Participants included three fifth grade students and two teachers. Mixed methods were used to visually …

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Biopsychosocial Models Of The Development Of Childhood Disruptive Behaviors, Anne Bernard Arnett Jan 2016

Biopsychosocial Models Of The Development Of Childhood Disruptive Behaviors, Anne Bernard Arnett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Hyperactivity/attention problems (HAP) and conduct problems (CP) are common and impairing disruptive behaviors in childhood and adolescence. Previous research has established that HAP and CP are highly comorbid, and that outcomes are worse for youth exhibiting both symptom clusters relative to youth with only one disruptive behavior type. Despite ample evidence that HAP and CP share common etiological factors and maladaptive outcomes, the nature of their developmental association remains unclear. This dissertation clarifies three important characteristics of comorbid HAP and CP development, in two replicate, longitudinal, population samples of youth. First, I test the theory that within-person variation in HAP …

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Attention And Mimicry In Minimal Groups, Heidi Blocker Jan 2016

Attention And Mimicry In Minimal Groups, Heidi Blocker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is a group effect on matching behavior; ingroups tend to be matched more than outgroups. Differences in attention to ingroup and outgroup members may correspond with group differences in matching. Determining how both attention and matching are influenced by minimal groups can help distinguish between potential mechanisms used to explain group effects in social behavior. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to know if attention biases can be trained to social groups. Study 1 replicated attention training to neutral faces, but study 2 failed to replicate attention training to emotional faces. Study 3 used the same attention training method, but …

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Practical Implications Of Learning From Unsuccessful Retrieval Attempts, Ann C. Rossmiller, James R. Houston Jan 2016

Practical Implications Of Learning From Unsuccessful Retrieval Attempts, Ann C. Rossmiller, James R. Houston

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Recent findings suggest that retesting oneself facilitates better learning than studying alone. Building off previous experiments where correcting participants has significantly increased correctness, the current study furthers our understanding about learning from unsuccessful retrieval attempts by manipulating the frequency of correction. Using a set of 42 associated word pairings, each participant was exposed to two blocks where they would memorize the word pairs. This was followed by two quizzing blocks and a final exam block where participants were asked to write down the associate to the stimulus presented on screen. Frequency of correction was manipulated during the quizzing blocks where …

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Emotional Factors Affecting Face-Name Memory : The Role Of Valence And Arousal During Encoding, Stephanie Ann Kazanas Jan 2016

Emotional Factors Affecting Face-Name Memory : The Role Of Valence And Arousal During Encoding, Stephanie Ann Kazanas

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The emotion literature has maintained that emotional stimuli are prioritized over neutral stimuli: Emotional words and images are detected faster, processed more automatically, and remembered better. However, the benefit from processing emotional stimuli can also be affected by valence, wherein some emotion advantages are driven by positive emotion and others by negative emotion. This is particularly evident in the face memory literature, in which researchers have investigated the role of expressed emotion in learning new faces. For example, some have found that happy faces are more memorable than angry and neutral faces. However, when comparing memory for happy faces with …

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When "Nothing" Captures Attention : Automatic Visuospatial Attentional Capture By A Gap In A Circle, Matthew Aaron Thomas Jan 2016

When "Nothing" Captures Attention : Automatic Visuospatial Attentional Capture By A Gap In A Circle, Matthew Aaron Thomas

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract

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A Computational Model Of The Temporal Processing Characteristics Of Visual Priming In Search, Jordan M. Haggit Jan 2016

A Computational Model Of The Temporal Processing Characteristics Of Visual Priming In Search, Jordan M. Haggit

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

When people look through the environment their eyes are guided in part by what they have recently seen. This phenomenon, referred to as visual priming, is studied in the laboratory through manipulations of stimulus repetition. Typically, in search tasks, response times are speeded when the same target is repeated relative to when it is changed (e.g., Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994). Although priming is thought to be based on a memory mechanism in the visual system, there is a debate in the literature as to whether such a mechanism is driven by relatively early (e.g., feature-based accounts) or later (e.g., episodic …

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Effect Of Mindfulness Training On Interpretation Exam Performance In Graduate Students In Interpreting, Julie E. Johnson Jan 2016

Effect Of Mindfulness Training On Interpretation Exam Performance In Graduate Students In Interpreting, Julie E. Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

Many graduate interpreting students struggle because the real-time, interactive nature of interpreting dictates that they be able to regulate their attention across different parallel cognitive activities and manage the inherent stress and unpredictability of the task. Within the framework of Cognitive Load Theory, this mixed-methods study explored the effect of short-term mindfulness training on consecutive interpreting exam performance using a quasi-experimental repeated-measures design. It also examined the relationships among mindfulness, stress, aspects of attention, and interpreting exam performance. The sample included 67 students (age M = 26.9 years; 82% female) across seven language programs (Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, …

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Designing Better Symbols: An Attentional Approach To Match Symbols To Performance Goals, Hannah North Jan 2016

Designing Better Symbols: An Attentional Approach To Match Symbols To Performance Goals, Hannah North

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Effective displays require symbol sets that are customized to specific tasks and performance goals. In order to create such sets, designers must account for the effects of top-down and bottom-up attention. The current work presents a pair of experiments that examined the effects of salience and cueing in a change detection tasks within the flicker paradigm (Rensink, O’Regan and Clark, 1997). Each trial, participants either received no cue or a cue indicating which symbol would be the target. This cueing manipulation isolated top-down effects to the cued condition. Consistent with previous studies (Orchard, 2012; Steelman, Orchard, Fletcher, Cockshell, Williamson & …

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