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Full-Text Articles in Behavior and Behavior Mechanisms
What Cognitive Processes Drive Attentional Bias, And How Does Stress Affect Them?, Colton L. Hunter
What Cognitive Processes Drive Attentional Bias, And How Does Stress Affect Them?, Colton L. Hunter
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Attentional biases toward or away from emotionally evocative stimuli have been well documented and related to clinical outcomes such as social anxiety. Some work has suggested that stress modulates attentional biases, but there are a number of inconsistencies in this literature regarding the direction of that modulation, highlighting a need to examine moderators of that effect. Sex differences in stress effects could potentially explain this inconsistency, as acute stress can affect males and females differently. It is also possible that stress differentially influences multiple component processes underpinning attentional bias, but these processes have not been well character, and to date …
Prenatal Ethanol Exposure Impairs Performance On Spatial And Tactile Sequential Discrimination Task In Juvenile Rats, Caleb S. Bailey
Prenatal Ethanol Exposure Impairs Performance On Spatial And Tactile Sequential Discrimination Task In Juvenile Rats, Caleb S. Bailey
Theses and Dissertations--Psychology
Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs) are a set of cognitive and behavioral abnormalities that arise in ~5% of children who have been prenatally-exposed to alcohol. Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) can cause impairments in learning acquisition, working memory, response inhibition, and attentional-set shifting that result in exaggerated deficits in executive function and impairments in goal-seeking behavior. There are standard procedures used in rodent research to address some components of these deficits, but few procedures are sensitive enough to comprehensively assess such deficits. To address this issue in FASDs research techniques, we developed a procedure that requires prolonged executive function in a …
Frontal Brain Injury: Effects On Flexibility, Impulse Control, And Attention, Christopher Matthew O'Hearn
Frontal Brain Injury: Effects On Flexibility, Impulse Control, And Attention, Christopher Matthew O'Hearn
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is defined as an impact to the head, penetration of the skull, or rapid deceleration of the skull, resulting in an alteration of brain function or neurological deficit. Cognitive deficits are common following TBI and often go unresolved due to a lack of effective treatments. These deficits often perseverate into the chronic post injury phase, so the development of rehabilitative strategies is imperative. Behavioral flexibility, impulse control, and attention are a few cognitive processes that are commonly affected by TBI. The current research compares these processes between rats with and without a severe frontal brain injury …
Emotion Processing Deficits In Psychopathy: Does Cueing To Relevant Facial Features Increase Cognitive And Emotional Empathy?, Shawn E. Fagan
Emotion Processing Deficits In Psychopathy: Does Cueing To Relevant Facial Features Increase Cognitive And Emotional Empathy?, Shawn E. Fagan
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Psychopathy is a multifaceted disorder characterized by a lack of cognitive and emotional empathy. The traditional model of psychopathy divides the disorder into two factors: Factor 1 consists of the interpersonal and affective traits of psychopathy while Factor 2 measures antisocial behaviors and lifestyle choices. The attention-to-the-eyes hypothesis argues that psychopathic individuals have impaired emotion recognition (specifically for fear) due to deficits in orienting attention to salient facial features like the eyes. Psychopathic individuals also display blunted autonomic responding to emotional stimuli, though whether this is due to attention-orienting deficits remains to be clarified. The present project investigated whether empathy-related …
Using Meditation To Improve Measures Of Attention In Older Adults, Sabrina Ford
Using Meditation To Improve Measures Of Attention In Older Adults, Sabrina Ford
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Age-related cognitive decline greatly impacts quality of life for older adults. Previous research has indicated that meditation may act as a neuroprotective factor to prevent age-related cognitive decline. This thesis sought to replicate previous findings and investigate if a four-week meditation intervention would improve sustained attention. Participants 60 years and older (n=27, 17 female) were recruited and assigned to a focused-attention (FA) meditation or relaxation group which met for four weeks, three times a week. Resting-state EEG was used to collect individual alpha peak frequency (iAPF) and frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA). The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) was also …
The Effects Of Adenosine Antagonists On Vigilant Attention In Sleep Restricted Rats, Morgan Crewe
The Effects Of Adenosine Antagonists On Vigilant Attention In Sleep Restricted Rats, Morgan Crewe
Masters Theses, 2010-2019
The relation between chronic sleep restriction and performance on the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT) have been well documented in the human literature, with chronic sleep restriction as little as 7 hours per night resulting in significant impairment in sustained attention performance measured via the PVT. Recently, an analogous version of the human PVT has been developed for use with rodent models (rPVT). Recent studies have measured the effects of sleep restriction on rPVT performance, citing similar results found in the human literature. However, few studies to date have directly examined the role of adenosine accumulation during sleep deprivation in producing …
Exploring The Relationship Between Early Childhood Attentional Control And Language Ability, Jaima S. Price
Exploring The Relationship Between Early Childhood Attentional Control And Language Ability, Jaima S. Price
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Relatively few studies have investigated the relationship between early childhood attentional control and later cognitive outcomes, especially language development. The current study is an investigation of the relationship between the executive functioning (EF) component of attentional control and language ability in the second year of life. More specifically, the predictive nature of two aspects of attentional control, attentional focus and resistance to distraction, was be the primary focus of the proposed study. Although it was expected that children both high in attentional focus and resistance to distraction would have significantly superior language development than infants with lower attentional capacities, analyses …
The Neurophysiology Of Intersensory Selective Attention And Task Switching, Jeremy W. Murphy
The Neurophysiology Of Intersensory Selective Attention And Task Switching, Jeremy W. Murphy
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Our ability to selectively attend to certain aspects of the world and ignore others is fundamental to our day-to-day lives. The need for selective attention stems from capacity limitations inherent in our perceptual and cognitive processing architecture. Because not every elemental piece of our environment can be fully processed in parallel, the nervous system must prioritize processing. This prioritization is generally referred to as selective attention. Meanwhile, we are faced with a world that is constantly in flux, such that we have to frequently shift our attention from one piece of the environment to another and from one task to …