Digital Commons Network^™

Investigating Affective Pathways For The Influence Of Justification On Self-Control, Morgan Hill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

People struggle with temptation in their everyday lives. Research often attributes failures in self-regulation to overwhelming and uncontrollable impulses. However, research also supports the idea that cognitive factors (e.g., justification) can license tempting behavior and allow individuals to behave in ways that run counter to their long-term goals. In addition, it is likely that affect plays a role in justification-based self-control failure. The current set of three studies investigated the role of affect in justification-based self-control failure. Study 1 tested the prediction that recall of past successes would result in increased positive affect. Study 2 assessed whether justification results in …

The Effects Of Perceptual Fluency On Emotional Word Recognition, Joseph M. Nidel

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

To investigate if making a word harder to read attenuates emotional influences like valence and arousal, we used a sample of Warriner and colleagues’ (2013) corpus with valence and arousal norms, a font manipulation from the perceptual fluency paradigm, and a word naming task. We found that, contrary to our hypotheses, emotional influences of words on RT were not attenuated in the disfluent condition; in fact, disfluency seemed to amplify the facilitative effects of high arousal. These results suggest that models of word recognition should consider the role that emotions play in recognition. They also provide limited support to models …

Influences Of Intrinsic And Extrinsic Hand-Feel Touch Cues On Sensory Perception And Emotional Responses Toward Beverage Products, Ragita Cantika Pramudya

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Consumer perception of and preference toward products are influenced by intrinsic product-specific (e.g., product temperature) and extrinsic non-product-specific (e.g., packaging or container) characteristics. Besides communicating information between products and consumers to create expectations toward the content at the point of sale, packaging also influences sensory perception of the content during consumption. Previous cross-modal studies on packaging effects on the content had largely overlooked hand-feel touch cues. Touch closely relates to consumers’ emotional responses to and their quality evaluation of products. One way to manipulate hand-feel touch cues in a beverage consumption setting is to vary materials of cup sleeve, which …

A Dual-Process Team Mood Framework Of Team Creativity, Sean Teck Hao Lee

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

While it has been recognized that mood can exert a substantive influence on an individual’s level of creativity, much of the creative needs of organizations today are being fulfilled by brainstorming teams rather than individual employees. As such, researchers have begun to examine the effects of mood on creativity in the context of teams. Existing findings, unfortunately, have not been consistent, such that positive mood has been shown to be beneficial towards team creativity at times (e.g., Grawitch, Munz, Elliott, & Mathis, 2003), while at other times being harmful towards team creativity (e.g., Tsai, Chi, Grandey, & Fung, 2012). Similarly, …

Autism, Alexithymia, And Anxious Apprehension: A Multimethod Investigation Of Eye Fixation, Kevin G. Stephenson

Theses and Dissertations

Reduced eye fixation and deficits in emotion identification accuracy have been commonly reported in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (AS), but are not ubiquitous. There is growing evidence that emotion processing deficits may be better accounted for by comorbid alexithymia (i.e., difficulty understanding and describing one's emotional state), rather than AS symptoms per se. Another possible explanation is anxiety, which is often comorbid with AS; emotion processing difficulties, including attentional biases, have also been observed in anxiety disorders, suggesting that anxiety symptoms may also influence emotion processing within AS. The purpose of the current study was to test the …

Investigating The Interaction Of Emotion And Cognition: Conflict Adaptation And The Impact Of Emotionally-Salient Distraction, Samantha Goldsmith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Individual differences in cognitive control have significant implications for a broad range of everyday functions, from driving a car to maintaining healthy relationships. In a world filled with salient, task-irrelevant information, it is imperative to investigate cognitive control in the context of distraction. The current study investigated the interference effect of emotional versus non-emotional distraction in a conflict adaptation paradigm. Forty-seven young adults completed several individual difference measures and an emotional flanker task. Results failed to support the hypothesis that distractor valence would interact with prior and current flanker congruency, but showed a trend toward an effect of distractor valence …

Experiential Similarity Of Depression And Interpersonal Empathy, Sarah E. Caputo

Theses and Dissertations

The ability to build and maintain supportive, social relationships has been linked to both physical and psychological well-being (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Kawachi & Berkman, 2001). Yet, social struggles are a commonly observed symptom among individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), particularly with regards to interpersonal empathy. Perceptions of interpersonal similarity can influence empathic engagement with others (e.g., Batson et al., 1996; Hodges, Kiel, Kramer, Veach, & Villanueva, 2010); often, interpersonal similarity will lead to greater empathic engagement. The present study asked participants to listen to audio clips of a fictitious therapy client discussing either depression or non-depression-related financial …

Attentional Deployment, Cognitive Control, And Reappraisal In Schizophrenia, Kyle Robert Mitchell

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Recent studies posit that deficits in emotion regulation may lead to increased negative emotional experience in schizophrenia. While individuals with schizophrenia evidence a number of abnormalities in emotion regulation, it is unclear whether these deficits are discrete or related; furthermore, the mechanisms underlying these deficits are not clear. Cognitive control has been posited as an important mechanism supporting emotion regulation. The current study examined the relationship between attentional deployment and both lexical and self-reported indices of reappraisal, as well as the mediating role of cognitive control on this relationship in a sample of 22 individuals with psychotic disorders. A novel …

Emotion And Metacognitive Monitoring: The Role Of Emotion In The Development Of Learning Beliefs, Robert Craig Hoy

Individual, Family, and Community Education ETDs

Educators have daily experience with how students' emotional states influence their behaviors and levels of motivation. What is more poorly understood and even counterintuitive in effect is the subtler role of emotion in the role of metacognitive monitoring in the form of learning belief development. The research driving current understanding in this area is limited and fragmented across disciplines. The purpose of the current quantitative, cross-sectional study was to contribute to our understanding of the role that emotion plays in metacognitive monitoring. The study used self-report measures given before and after a video-based learning task. Metrics included measures of emotional …

Personality In California Sea Lions (Zalophus Californianus) And Harbor Seals (Phoca Vitulina): Methodological Convergence And Species-Specific Emotional Repertoires, Amber De Vere

Dissertations

Despite the wide acceptance of animal personality as a valid area of study, research on marine mammal personality remains remarkably scarce. What literature does exist predominantly focuses on bottlenose dolphins (Frick, 2016; Highfill & Kuczaj, 2007; Kuczaj, Highfill & Byerly, 2012; Lilley, de Vere, Yeatre & Kuczaj, 2018; Moreno, Highfill & Kuczaj, 2017). There is also strong evidence for individual differences in grey seals (Robinson et al., 2015; Twiss & Franklin, 2010; Twiss, Culloch & Pomeroy, 2011; Twiss, Cairns, Culloch, Richards & Pomeroy, 2012), and preliminary research has provided evidence of broad personality factors in pinniped species using behavioral coding …

Event-Related Potential Studies Of Error Monitoring To Affective And Non-Affective Stimuli In Adolescents And Emerging Adults, Rebecca K. Reed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is hypothesized that prefrontal cortex (PFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) function may be still under development in adolescents. As the generator of the error-related negativity (ERN) and the N2, the ACC is expected to be sensitive to the degree of development with age. In adults, these top-down control areas ideally serve to direct attention to goal-relevant information, which can increase the likelihood of making a correct choice, even in fast-response laboratory based tasks. However, adolescents may show increased susceptibility in these top-down control areas when the stimulus is social and emotional. In the first study, event-related potentials were …

Childhood Development: How The Fine And Performing Arts Enhance Neurological, Social, And Academic Traits, Katherine Rowe

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

Childhood development has always been a major topic when studying psychology and biology. This makes sense because the brain develops from the time a child is conceived to the time that child has reached around the age of twenty-seven. Doctors, psychologists, and sociologists look at numerous things when studying childhood development. However, how common is it for researchers to study how the fine and performing arts affect childhood development? Sociologists tend to be extremely open and mindful of all aspects of things such as culture, sexuality, religion, and even age. By taking a sociological standpoint when studying the arts …

Designing Interactive Virtual Environments With Feedback In Health Applications., Yi Li

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

One of the most important factors to influence user experience in human-computer interaction is the user emotional reaction. Interactive environments including serious games that are responsive to user emotions improve their effectiveness and user satisfactions. Testing and training for user emotional competence is meaningful in healthcare field, which has motivated us to analyze immersive affective games using emotional feedbacks. In this dissertation, a systematic model of designing interactive environment is presented, which consists of three essential modules: affect modeling, affect recognition, and affect control. In order to collect data for analysis and construct these modules, a series of experiments were …

Assessing The Long-Term Sequelae Of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Janna Mantua

Doctoral Dissertations

A mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), also known as a concussion, is defined as an injury that results in an alteration of consciousness or mental status. Previous studies have shown mTBI populations experience a number of chronic (> 1 year) symptoms, such as sleep disturbances (e.g., sleep stage alterations), mood alterations (e.g., depressive symptoms), and cognitive alterations (e.g., poor concentration). The three chapters of this dissertation sought to explore these long-term sequelae and the possible interrelations between them. In the first experiment, sleep-dependent memory consolidation of neutral stimuli was probed in a chronic mTBI sample and a control, uninjured sample. …

Age Group Differences In Affect Responses To A Stressor, Molly Mather

Masters Theses

Older adults may be better able to modulate their emotional experiences than younger adults, and thus may recover more quickly from negative stressors. Additionally, older adults may be more likely to experience co-occurrence of negative and positive emotions in the setting of negative stressors, which may facilitate emotion recovery. To date, few studies have investigated the nature of age group differences in spontaneous emotional responses to a standardized stressor. The current study utilizes a laboratory mood manipulation to determine age group differences in emotion recovery in negative and positive affects, as well as age group differences in the co-occurrence of …

Borderline Personality And Risk-Taking: Examining The Role Of Impulsivity Across Domains, Colten Karnedy

Masters Theses

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and high levels of BPD traits have demonstrated greater rates of engagement in risky, self-destructive behaviors compared to healthy controls. Specifically, impulsivity has been theorized to underlie many of these risky behaviors. Although existing self-report literature suggests that individuals with BPD are more impulsive than controls, evidence from behavioral measures remains inconclusive. Likewise, there is scant research examining specific domains of impulsivity associated with risky behaviors in BPD, which is problematic given that impulsivity is a diagnostic criterion for BPD. Thus, the proposed research aims to bridge this gap in the literature by examining …

A Sociofunctional Approach To Understanding Transphobia, Linas Mitchell

Master's Theses

Despite widespread evidence of anti-transgender prejudice and discrimination, research has yet to determine the nature of prejudice against transgender people. This study used the sociofunctional threat approach (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005) to examine threat perceptions (contamination threats, obstacle threats, physical safety threats, and threats to reciprocity relations) and emotional reactions (disgust, anger, fear, pity) to transgender (transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary people) and cisgender (cisgender women, cisgender men, and bisexual people) targets. Results from an online survey suggest that transgender targets evoke higher threat perceptions and negative emotions than cisgender targets; additionally, this tended to be the case for …

Does Posture Impact Affective Word Processing? Examining The Role Of Posture Across Adulthood In An Incidental Encoding Task, Lucas John Hamilton

ETD Archive

Research in emotional aging has primarily investigated mechanisms that could explain the age-related increase in positive emotionality despite various age-related losses. Of particular note is the increasing importance of age-related positivity effects and underlying biological influences on affective processes. Despite evidence of weakened mind-body connectivity in older adulthood presented in the maturation dualism framework, research shows age-similarities in subjective and objective reactivity for certain negative emotional states across adulthood. Thus, robust physiological-experiential associations may still exist in later life. Investigations of integrated mind-body connectivity have lead researchers to examine the influence of posture on cognitive outcomes. Prior evidence has observed …

Binocular Rivalry Of Emotional Expressions, Daniel Stephen Lumian

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A central debate in defining emotional space is whether emotions are organized categorically (e.g., fear, happy, disgust) or continuously (i.e., along the independent dimensions of valence and arousal). Emotional facial expressions are one tool often leveraged in trying to define emotional space. Faces are rich sources of social and emotional information. Faces, like emotions, can be organized in either categorical (e.g., happy, sad) or continuous (e.g., open-closed) ways. Therefore, understanding the relatedness of emotional facial expressions to each other may shed light on the underlying structure of emotions. Binocular rivalry (BR) is a tool which can be leveraged to measure …

Preserved Consciousness In The Absence Of A Cerebral Cortex, The Legal And Ethical Implications Of Redefining Consciousness And Its Neural Correlates: A Case For A Subcortical System Generating Affective Consciousness, Shadia Kawkabani

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Historically, the scientific and medical communities have taken a corticocentric view on consciousness, emphasizing the need for a cortex in producing the conscious experience. The preserved consciousness observed in hydranencephalic children and decorticated rats suggests that some form of consciousness may be produced by a subcortical network. The brainstem, a phylogenetically ancient and conserved brain structure, could serve as the major integrative machinery to produce this form of consciousness, which is called affective consciousness—the evolutionary antecedent to the reflective consciousness that allows humans to reflect on their experiences. The functional convergence of the brainstem with the amygdala, motor system, and …

An Analysis Of The Ego-Depletion Effects Of Emotion Versus Attention Draining Tasks: Even Emotionally Arousing Depletion Tasks Do Not Show An Ego-Depletion Effect, Savannah Binion

Senior Independent Study Theses

The theory of ego-depletion has come under intense scrutiny within the past few years. Beginning around 2010, researchers conducted meta-analyses and large replication studies that have investigated this topic, and found a wide range of evidence for and against the existence of an ego-depletion effect. Although the goal has been to determine whether this effect exists or not, the research has proved that the answer may be more complicated than that. The purpose of the current research was to examine the different theories about self-control, and to test two specific depleting tasks against a control group. The depleting tasks were …