Digital Commons Network^™

Repeated Intracarotid Amobarbital Tests, T. Loddenkemper, H. H. Morris, Tara T. Lineweaver, C. Kellinghaus

Tara T. Lineweaver

Rationale:Our goal was to determine the frequency of repeated intracarotid amobarbital test (IAT) at our center and to estimate the retest reliability of the IAT for both language and memory lateralization. Methods: A total of 1,249 consecutive IATs on 1,190 patients were retrospectively reviewed for repeat tests. Results: In 4% of patients the IAT was repeated in order to deliver satisfactory information on either language or memory lateralization. Reasons for repetition included obtundation and inability to test for memory lateralization, inability to test for language lateralization, no hemiparesis during first test, no aphasia during first test, atypical vessel filling, and …

Hemispheric Bases For Emotion And Memory, Tad T. Brunyé, Sarah R. Cavanagh, Ruth E. Propper

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The goal of this Research Topic was to bring together diverse scientific perspectives on lateralized brain mechanisms underlying emotion, motivation, and memory. The Topic resulted in eight articles, three of which report original research and five of which review and synthesize past research with the aim of developing new hypotheses and theory. A range of international experts with diverse backgrounds, theoretical perspectives, and experimental methods contributed to the Topic. Contributions strongly reflect this diversity, ranging from examining pupil dilation in response to viewing Rembrandt portraits to understanding how caffeine supplementation influences levels of spatial processing. In all cases, the authors …

The Effects Of Reminder Distinctiveness And Anticipatory Interval On Prospective Memory, Natalee Baldwin

All Theses

Prospective memory failures (or failures to remember a future intention) can result in a wide range of negative consequences. The use of reminders has been shown to improve the rate of PM successes. The aim of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of reminders based on their type (text or picture) and their timing. We hypothesized that successful PM performance would be successfully maintained over longer anticipatory intervals when paired with picture reminders rather than with simple text reminders because of the inherent distinctiveness of pictures. We also expected that performance for younger adults would be better than …

Performance Or Processing? Effects Of Levels Of Processing And Divided Attention On Memory-Related Eye Movements, Wei An

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Human memories are expressed either with or without consciousness, termed as explicit and implicit memories, respectively. Different encoding manipulations like levels of processing and divided attention have been shown to affect explicit memories but not implicit memories. These dissociations, however, were only found between explicit and implicit item memories. Whether explicit and implicit relational memories will exhibit similar dissociations is still unknown. In order to determine whether explicit and implicit relational memories dissociated in a similar way as explicit and implicit item memories, the levels of processing and divided attention were manipulated in the present study and participants' relational memories …

The Role Of Napping On Memory Consolidation In Preschool Children, Laura Kurdziel

Doctoral Dissertations

Nocturnal sleep has been shown to benefit memory in adults and children. During the preschool age range (~3-5 years), the distribution of sleep across the 24-hour period changes dramatically. Children transition from biphasic sleep patterns (a nap in addition to overnight sleep) to a monophasic sleep pattern (only overnight sleep). In addition, early childhood is a time of neuronal plasticity and pronounced acquisition of new information. This dissertation sought to examine the relationship between daytime napping and memory consolidation in preschool-aged children during this transitional time. Children were taught either a declarative or an emotional task in the morning, and …

The Role Of Representational Flexibility In Toddlers' Manual Search, Lauren Hartstein

Masters Theses

In the model room task, children watch as a miniature toy is hidden somewhere in a scale model of a room and are asked to find the larger version of the toy in the corresponding place in the actual room. Previous work has shown that children under age three often perform very poorly on this task. One prominent theory for their failure is that they lack the ability to understand the model as both a physical object and as a symbolic representation of the larger room. An alternative hypothesis is that they need to overcome weak, competing representations of where …

Blue Is In The Eye Of The Beholder: A Cross Cultural Study On Color Perception And Memory, Mark Douglas Lowry

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

According the linguistic relativity hypothesis, the language one speaks affects how one thinks. Because languages differ in how they categorize color, linguistic relativity has often been tested by conducting experiments on color perception and memory. This study examines the linguistic relativity hypothesis using ecologically valid stimuli: pictures of eyes. Because Russian-speakers are more likely to describe blue/grey eyes as grey, whereas English speakers are more likely to describe them as blue, English and Russian participants were asked to match the overall color of blue eyes to a color scale. There were three conditions. In the first condition (perception), participants saw …

Directed Forgetting Of Happy And Angry Faces: The Effects Of Facial Emotion And Sex On Recognition Memory For Facial Identity, Kay Chai Tay

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The literature on directed forgetting – which refers to forgetting the specified information intentionally – has almost exclusively focused on either emotional words or pictures. Consequently, little is known about the impact of facial stimuli that demand more complex cognitive processing than words or pictures. A pilot study was conducted to obtain norm ratings on 152 facial images portraying neutral, happy and angry emotions. From this set of facial stimuli, 96 faces were selected for the main study. In the main study, 75 female participants were presented with 48 faces individually with equal number of happy and angry and, male …

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 …

Influence Of Seductive Details, Belief-Congruence, And Repeated Testing On Memory For Controversial Information, Daniel Adam Nuccio

Theses and Dissertations

People often encounter conflicting information on a wide array of topics. How they evaluate this information in relation to their current beliefs, and the effects of other influences, such as the weight given to superficial aspects of the information (e.g. pictures, anecdotes, or jargon that are at most minimally related to an author's argument), has been of interest to researchers for many years. One component of their processing

and evaluation of this information is their memory for the information. This study set out to examine the following questions: (1) Is belief-congruent in

formation remembered better or worse than belief incongruent …

Sharp Emergence Of Feature-Selective Sustained Activity Along The Dorsal Visual Pathway., Diego Mendoza-Halliday, Santiago Torres, Julio C Martinez-Trujillo

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Sustained activity encoding visual working memory representations has been observed in several cortical areas of primates. Where along the visual pathways this activity emerges remains unknown. Here we show in macaques that sustained spiking activity encoding memorized visual motion directions is absent in direction-selective neurons in early visual area middle temporal (MT). However, it is robustly present immediately downstream, in multimodal association area medial superior temporal (MST), as well as and in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC). This sharp emergence of sustained activity along the dorsal visual pathway suggests a functional boundary between early visual areas, which encode sensory inputs, …

Effects Of Popular Music On Memorization Tasks, Kristin Sandberg, Sarah Harmon

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This study investigated the effects that popular music has on memory performance. It was proposed that popular music would adversely affect both studying and memory recall. Forty introductory psychology students participated in the study. Subjects were given a list of fifty words to study in 6 ½ minutes, with music either being present or absent. This was termed the learning stage. In this study, four conditions were tested. In all 4 conditions, subjects were assigned to either a “music” pre-period or a “non-music” pre-period and a “music” post-period or a “non-music” post-period. After they had studied the words, subjects were …

Pupil Dilation Dynamics Track Attention To High-Level Information, Olivia E. Kang, Katherine E. Huffer, Thalia P. Wheatley

Dartmouth Scholarship

It has long been thought that the eyes index the inner workings of the mind. Consistent with this intuition, empirical research has demonstrated that pupils dilate as a consequence of attentional effort. Recently, Smallwood et al. (2011) demonstrated that pupil dilations not only provide an index of overall attentional effort, but are time-locked to stimulus changes during attention (but not during mind-wandering). This finding suggests that pupil dilations afford a dynamic readout of conscious information processing. However, because stimulus onsets in their study involved shifts in luminance as well as information, they could not determine whether this coupling of stimulus …

The Self-Reference Effect In Memory: A Meta-Analysis, Cynthia S. Symons, Blair T. Johnson

Blair T. Johnson

No abstract provided.

Memory Restoration, Julianne E. Henderson Ms.

julianne e. henderson ms.

Memory maintains the power to shape our realities: it can rewrite the past, influence our future, and it constantly informs our present. When synaptic connections fire to retrieve desired information passing between neurons, memories appear to be amorphous, fluid, and impressionable. They are not set in stone, but rather open to edits and alterations belonging to the observer in question. Our recall is like time-lapse photography, with frames lined up side by side to create a living and dynamic succession of events that are rich with colors, sounds, scents, textures, and feelings. The human mind constantly oscillates back and forth …

The Effect Of Local Element Density On Processing Of Visual Hierarchical Patterns: An Infant Erp Study, Sara M. Mosteller

Masters Theses

Previous research with infants, children, and adults has shown that global, or configural, information is processed before local, or featural, information in high density visual hierarchical patterns (Freeseman, Colombo, & Coldren, 1993; Ghim & Eimas, 1988; Kimchi, 1988; Navon, 1981; Navon, 1977). The current study used event-related potential to determine if a well documented bias toward global processing in infancy can be disrupted when the number and density of local elements is reduced through increasing the distance between elements. Infant responses were compared between high and low density conditions to global and local novel patterns and to familiar patterns. A …

Memory Retrieval Is Maintained By Intrinsic And Synaptic Plasticity In Prelimbic Cortex, James Otis

Theses and Dissertations

Abnormally strong memories underlie common disorders including addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Memory disruption would therefore be beneficial for treatment of these disorders. Evidence reveals that cocaine conditioned place preference (CPP) memories are susceptible to long-lasting disruption during memory retrieval. For example, inhibition of β-adrenergic receptor (β-AR) activity within the prelimbic medial prefrontal cortex (PL-mPFC) prevents cocaine CPP memory retrieval, and this retrieval impairment is both long-lasting and prevents subsequent reinstatement of the CPP. Despite this, whether PL-mPFC β-AR activity is a fundamental mechanism required to maintain retrieval of other memories is unclear. Furthermore, how PL-mPFC β-AR activity maintains …

Semantic Memory Functional Mri And Cognitive Function After Exercise Intervention In Mild Cognitive Impairment, J Carson Smith, Kristy A. Nielson, Piero Antuono, Jeri-Annette Lyons, Ryan J. Hanson, Alissa Butts, Nathan Hantke, Matthew D. Verber

Kristy Nielson

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is associated with early memory loss, Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology, inefficient or ineffective neural processing, and increased risk for AD. Unfortunately, treatments aimed at improving clinical symptoms or markers of brain function generally have been of limited value. Physical exercise is often recommended for people diagnosed with MCI, primarily because of its widely reported cognitive benefits in healthy older adults. However, it is unknown if exercise actually benefits brain function during memory retrieval in MCI. Here, we examined the effects of exercise training on semantic memory activation during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Seventeen MCI participants …

Prediction Of Cognitive Decline In Healthy Older Adults Using Fmri, John L. Woodard, Michael Seidenberg, Kristy A. Nielson, J Carson Smith, Piero Antuono, Sally Durgerian, Leslie Guidotti, Qi Zhang, Alissa Butts, Nathan Hantke, Melissa A. Lancaster, Stephen M. Rao

Kristy Nielson

Few studies have examined the extent to which structural and functional MRI, alone and in combination with genetic biomarkers, can predict future cognitive decline in asymptomatic elders. This prospective study evaluated individual and combined contributions of demographic information, genetic risk, hippocampal volume, and fMRI activation for predicting cognitive decline after an 18-month retest interval. Standardized neuropsychological testing, an fMRI semantic memory task (famous name discrimination), and structural MRI (sMRI) were performed on 78 healthy elders (73% female; mean age = 73 years, range = 65 to 88 years). Positive family history of dementia and presence of one or both apolipoprotein …

Spatial And Temporal Response Patterns On The Eight-Arm Radial Maze, Robert H.I. Dale

Robert H. I. Dale

Six maze-experienced hooded rats were timed during five trials on which they collected water from all arms of an eight-arm radial maze, then made five more choices. All subjects frequently exhibited a “task-completion pause:” The subjects rarely spent more than 1 sec in the center of the maze between choices until they had entered all eight arms, then stopped in the center of the maze. In contrast, the time spent in each arm gradually increased until all of the water had been obtained, then decreased slightly. Four subjects began every trial by choosing eight consecutive adjacent arms. The task-completion pause …

Examining The Effects Of Saccade Execution And Handedness On Proactive Interference., Montgomery A. Kroger

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

Proactive interference is the phenomenon by which previously-learned information impairs recall of more recently-learned information. The present experiment was conducted to investigate two factors that may affect the occurrence of proactive interference. The first of these factors is saccade execution. Saccade execution has been shown in numerous studies to improve performance on a wide range of memory tasks. The second factor was people’s consistency of handedness, a term referring to the strength of people’s tendency to use one hand (right or left) over the other. Although the results of the primary analyses were inconclusive, further exploration of the data led …

Chronic, Lethal Versus Acute, Non-Lethal Threats: A Look Inside The Memories Of Cancer Patients At The Time Of Their Diagnosis, Angeline M. Modesti

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Consequentiality, affect, and rehearsal are also important components that help contribute to the recall of autobiographical memories. Traditionally, these features have been assessed in public dramatic events in the past such as the Challenger explosion and the 9/11 terrorist attack. In opposition to these traditionally studied events, the present study examined the effects of these features on five different private events. An analysis of these different experiences was assessed to determine the role of consequentiality, affect, and rehearsal play on memory recall. These three components were assessed in five different events during different points of the lifetime. Adults diagnosed with …

Unforgettable: The Relationship Between Music And Memory, Samantha Beedy

Undergraduate Psychology Research Methods Journal

For generations, college students have claimed that listening to music helps them to study better. But does research support this idea? Past research on the subject has yielded mixed results. Some studies suggest that music helps enhance cognitive performance, some find no difference, and some studies find that music hinders cognitive performance. The present study explored the relationship between soft background music and working memory. Participants were given lists of words to memorize and recall on a blank sheet of paper. Each participant completed two memorization and recall trials, one with music and one without. Participant’s recall performance was compared. …

Is Contextual Cue Learning Flexible? An Eye-Movement Study Of The Contextual Cueing Task, Youcai Yang

Theses and Dissertations

Visual searching can be facilitated without awareness when the target is repeatedly presented in an invariant context in tasks such as contextual cueing (Chun & Jiang 1998). A behavioral cost (increased reaction time) was observed when the target was moved to a new location but no such cost was observed when the target returned to the initial location. The lack of cost for return suggests two possible explanations: One is that the learning can update the initial learning to acquire both target locations, which suggests the implicit learning is flexible. The other is that the contextual cue leaning cannot update …

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 …

The Effects Of Focality Of Processing And Delay On Event-Based Prospective Memory, Samantha Nicole Petrella

Theses and Dissertations

The current experiment proposes an examination of the effects of focality of processing and delays on event-based prospective memory tasks. Several perspectives regarding the process of remembering to perform an intended action in the future have been proposed by researchers in this area. Smith (2007) proposed the Preparatory Attentional and Memory (PAM) process theory regarding PM. According to the PAM theory, the retrieval of a prospective memory continuously requires resource-demanding preparatory attentional processes, or effortful and deliberate focus. Further, it suggests that successful PM retrieval is never automatic and that attention to the PM task interferes with and compromises ongoing …

Effects Of Classroom Design And Atmosphere Towards Affective Reactions And Memory Of Content, Brittney Bonnick

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of the present study was to investigate how a classroom’s design can alter an

individual’s memory of content and affective reactions towards the experience. 123 University of

Western Ontario Undergraduate students who were part of a first year psychology participation

pool listened to a video lecture on schizophrenia and then completed two paper and pencil

questionnaires. The first was a multiple-choice assessment of participant memory for lecture

material, and the second was a Likert scale on the perceived learning experience. The

atmosphere of the classroom as well as the design of the desk arrangements was changed for

different …

The Production Effect And Item-Order Encoding, Bethany Kregiel

Senior Honors Projects

When reading a mixed list of words, participants show better memory for uncommon words compared to common words (McDaniel & Bugg, 2008). The research suggests differential memory effects in item-order encoding between mixed and pure lists. Uncommon words lead to item-specific encoding whereas common words lead to order encoding. Similarly, the production effect shows that, when reading a mixed list (some words aloud, others silently), participants show better memory for the words read aloud, but the effect does not obtain for pure lists. The purpose of this study is to examine if the production effect is due to differences in …

Cognitive Bias Modification: Past Perspectives, Current Findings, And Future Applications, Paula T. Hertel, Andrew Mathews

Paula T Hertel

Research conducted within the general paradigm of Cognitive Bias Modification (CBM) reveals that emotional biases in attention, interpretation, and memory are not merely associated with emotional disorders but contribute to them. After briefly describing research on both emotional biases and their modification, we examine similarities between CBM paradigms and older experimental paradigms used in research on learning and memory. We also compare the techniques and goals of CBM research to other approaches to understanding cognition/emotion interactions. From a functional perspective, the CBM tradition reminds us to use experimental tools to evaluate assumptions about clinical phenomena and more generally, about causal …

Detecting Deception Via Eyeblink Frequency Modulation, Brandon S. Perelman

Michigan Tech Publications

To assess the efficacy of using eyeblink frequency modulation to detect deception about a third party, 32 participants were sent on a mission to deliver a package to an interviewer. 17 of the participants lied to the interviewer about the details of their mock mission and 15 responded truthfully. During the interview, eyeblink frequency data were collected via electromyography and recorded video. Liars displayed eye- blink frequency suppression while lying, while truth tellers exhibited an increase in eyeblink frequency during the mission relevant questioning period. The compen- satory flurry of eyeblinks following deception observed in previous studies was ab- sent …