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Is Social Rank Correlated With Cognitive Ability In Black-Capped Chickadees?, Gloria Hyun Young Cho

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Traditionally, dominant animals have been regarded as better competitors in all aspects of life, including cognition. However, the survival and reproductive advantages of being a dominant chickadee are surprisingly modest. It is possible that subordinate individuals compensate for the disadvantages of a lower rank with better cognitive abilities. If dominants are monopolizing prime food sources, subordinates may have developed better associative learning skills by learning to associate novel types of stimuli with food rewards. In this thesis, I asked whether dominance rank is correlated with cognitive ability in Black-capped Chickadees. I determined dominance rank in six flocks of six chickadees, …

Exploring Cognitive Maps Through Sketching, Melissa M. Nantais

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Abstract

Periodic testing has been found to improve the accuracy of participants’ cognitive maps when an onscreen map is provided, however, it is unclear whether the same results would occur without the onscreen map. The current study investigated whether drawing a map periodically while exploring the virtual environment Silcton would improve cognitive map accuracy. Participants explored Silcton and were stopped every 4 minutes to either sketch a map of Silcton, identify items seen in Silcton, or colour an unrelated picture, and a baseline group was not stopped. All groups drew a final sketch map and completed a direction estimation task. …

Individual Differences In The Allocation Of Visual Attention During Navigation, Mikayla Keller

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

There are large individual differences in the ability to create an accurate mental representation (i.e., a cognitive map) of a novel environment, yet the factors underlying cognitive map accuracy remain unclear. Given the roles that landmarks and cognitive map accuracy play in successful navigation, the current study examined whether differences in the landmarks that individuals look at while navigating are related to differences in cognitive map accuracy. Participants completed a battery of spatial tests: some that assessed spatial skills prior to a navigation task, and others that tested memory for the environment following exploration of a virtual world. Results indicated …

Does Sleep Enhance The Consolidation Of Implicitly Learned Visuo-Motor Sequence Learning?, Jeremy Viczko

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Sleep has been shown to facilitate the consolidation (i.e., enhancement) of simple explicit (i.e., conscious) motor sequence learning (MSL). It remains unclear the degree to which this applies to implicit (i.e., unconscious) MSL. Employing reaction time and response generation tasks, we investigated the extent to which sleep is involved in consolidating implicit MSL, specifically whether the motor or the spatial cognitive representations of a learned sequence are enhanced by sleep, and whether these changes support the development of explicit sequence knowledge across sleep but not wake. Our results indicate that spatial and motor representations can be behaviourally dissociated for implicit …

Dancing In The Dark: Sleep-Dependent Motor Skill Memory Consolidation And Periodic Limb Movement Disorder, Valya Sergeeva

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Periodic Limb Movement Disorder (PLMD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by dysfunction of the striatum and brief, repetitive limb movements during sleep. PLMD can severely disrupt non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Motor skills learning and memory consolidation are dependent on striatal activation, the latter enhanced by NREM sleep. Therefore, we investigated whether individuals with PLMD had learning and sleep-related memory deficits, and whether this putative deficit was related to sleep quality or symptom severity. 14 adults with a PLM index >15/hr underwent two nights (baseline, training) of polysomnographic recording. 15 age-matched healthy controls underwent three nights (baseline, undisturbed training and …

The Ha-Ha Holocaust: Exploring Levity Amidst The Ruins And Beyond In Testimony, Literature And Film, Aviva Atlani

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

ABSTRACT

Jewish humour sheds a crude light on the social, political, and historical realities of the Holocaust. Paradoxically, contentiously, doses of levity during this period were very much a reality, and even a psychological necessity. The purpose of my thesis is to explore the historical, social, and political ramifications of such laughter provoking manifestations. In doing so, the nuances are highlighted which are found within the laughter of the ghettos, the transit camps, and the concentration camps. Furthermore, some of these jokes, and their subsequent variations, reappear within the discourse of children of survivors. The dissertation explores how some of …

Musical Mood And Musical Arousal Affects Different Stages Of Learning And Memory Performance, Tram Nguyen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examined whether the effect of music on memory is attributable to musical mood, musical arousal, context, or some combination of these factors. In Experiment 1, participants performed a face-name paired-association task while music was played in the background. In Experiment 2, the perceptual context (Experiment 2A) and emotional context (Experiment 2B) of music was examined more thoroughly. Experiment 3 examined whether the context effect of musical mood and musical arousal occurs in a recall task (Experiment 3A), a recognition task (Experiment 3B), and an association task (Experiment 3C). The results showed that low arousal music enhanced memory while …

Causality And Similarity In Autobiographical Event Structure: An Investigation Using Event Cueing And Latent Semantic Analysis, Christopher M. O'Connor

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The influence of similarity- and causally-based relations on the organization of autobiographical events was investigated using extended strings of related event memories. These strings were elicited using an event cueing paradigm in which participants generated descriptions of memories from their life, which were then presented as cues to subsequent event memories. In Experiment 1, similarity between generated events was investigated using participants’ similarity ratings, Latent Semantic Analysis, and experimenter judgements of shared event properties. For events close together in a string, event owners’ similarity ratings were higher than non-owners’, and non-owners’ ratings were comparable to similarity calculated using LSA. In …