Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

And The Stars Look Very Different Today, Amy Rogin

The STEAM Journal

A personal reflection about synesthesia

The Influence Of Information Power Upon The Great Game In Cyberspace: U.S. Wins Over Russian Meddling In The 2018 Elections, Joseph H. Schafer

Military Cyber Affairs

The 2018 U.S. pivot in information and cyberspace degraded Russian operations in the 2018 election. Following pervasive Russian information power operations during the U.S. 2016 elections, the United States progressed from a policy of preparations and defense in information and cyberspace to a policy of forward engagement. U.S recognition of renewed great power competition coupled with Russia’s inability to compete diplomatically, militarily (conventionally), or economically, inspires Russia to continues to concentrate on information power operations. This great game in cyberspace was virtually uncontested by the U.S. prior to 2017. Widespread awareness of Russian aggression in 2016 served as a catalyst …

Failure To Protect?: Applying The Drri-2 Scales To Rwanda And Srebrenica, Elizabeth Mason

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article critically reanalyses the action, or lack of action, taken by UN peacekeepers in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the 1990's. The lack of action of UN peacekeepers in Rwanda and Bosnia has long been criticised as a conscious decision made by peacekeepers to not act in defence of those being targeted but instead to act as bystanders of genocide when they had the ability to prevent acts of genocide taking place. This article re-examines the actions of the UN command under Romeo Dallaire in Rwanda and Thom Karremans in Srebrenica, Bosnia in terms of the stress-related factors which influenced …

Uncovering The Neural And Behavioral Factors That Underlie Changes In Processing Visual Orientation, Patrick Sadil

Doctoral Dissertations

From moment to moment, the visual environment appears stable; despite prolonged scrutiny, the edge of a desk is not perceived to change. But this apparent stability emerges from perceptual and decisional systems that undergo continuous modulation. In two chapters, I focus on two different kinds of modulation to the processing of visual orientation (i.e., the tilt of an edge). In both chapters, the form of modulation is latent, obscured by standard analyses. To detect those latent changes in perceptual decisions, I develop in this dissertation new statistical tools, at both behavioral and neural levels. In the first chapter, I consider …

Factors Impacting Students’ Perceptions Of Mathematics, Amber Souza

Honors Program Theses and Projects

I want to be able to present math in a positive light to all of my future students, regardless of race, gender, and math background. However, for teachers as a whole to be able to take this important step, they must first develop a deeper understanding of why math is a sore spot for many students.

Outdoor Air Pollution Exposure And Inter-Relation Of Global Cognitive Performance And Emotional Distress In Older Women, Andrew J. Petkus, Xinhui Wang, Daniel P. Beavers, Helena C. Chui, Mark A. Espeland, Margaret Gatz, Tara Gruenewald, Joel D. Kaufman, Joann E. Manson, Susan M. Resnick, James D. Stewart, Gregory A. Wellenius, Eric A. Whitsel, Keith Widaman, Diana Younan, Jiu-Chiuan Chen

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The interrelationships among long-term ambient air pollution exposure, emotional distress and cognitive decline in older adulthood remain unclear. Long-term exposure may impact cognitive performance and subsequently impact emotional health. Conversely, exposure may initially be associated with emotional distress followed by declines in cognitive performance. Here we tested the inter-relationship between global cognitive ability, emotional distress, and exposure to PM2.5 (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter 2 (nitrogen dioxide) in 6118 older women (aged 70.6 ± 3.8 years) from the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study. Annual exposure to PM_2.5 (interquartile range [IQR] = 3.37 μg/m³) and NO₂ (IQR …

Difficult Turned Easy: Suggestion Renders A Challenging Visual Task Simple, Mathieu Landry, Jason Da Silva Castanheira, Jérôme Sackur, Amir Raz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Suggestions can cause some individuals to miss or disregard existing visual stimuli, but can they infuse sensory input with nonexistent information? Although several prominent theories of hypnotic suggestion propose that mental imagery can change our perceptual experience, data to support this stance remain sparse. The present study addressed this lacuna, showing how suggesting the presence of physically absent, yet critical, visual information transforms an otherwise difficult task into an easy one. Here, we show how adult participants who are highly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion successfully hallucinated visual occluders on top of moving objects. Our findings support the idea that, at …

Impact Of The Covid-19 On Religious Practices Of Muslim Students In Higher Education, Amir Duric

Muslim Student Life

Implications of religious practices in Islam go far beyond religiosity, and this paper analyzed the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and religious practices of Muslim students in higher education. The analyzed data is from the survey of the Muslim Student Life at Syracuse University and the Center for Islam in Contemporary World at Shenandoah University. The survey was conducted through a non-random convenience sampling from March 30th through April 10th of 2020 and had 498 responders. For this study, I analyzed 272 who provided their demographic information. The paper hypothesized and confirmed an overall increase in the engagement with the …

Influence Of Convenience, Time-Savings, Price, And Product Variety On Amazon Prime Members And Non-Prime Shoppers’ Online Apparel Purchase Intention, Md Rashaduzzaman

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The number of internet users and online shoppers in the United States has grown at an incredible rate over the past few decades. Greater convenience and availability of a wide assortment of apparel products at a cheaper price made online shopping very enticing to consumers. Amazon.com (Amazon) gained unprecedented popularity among consumers with its Amazon Prime program. Amazon’s retail revolutions changed consumer’s way of shopping and expectations. Both online and physical store retailers are facing tremendous pressure to fulfill that level of expectation. Thus, it is essential for retailers clearly understand the shopping expectations and preferences of Amazon Prime members …

Neural Correlates Of Individuation And Subordinate-Level Categorization Of Other-Race Faces In Infancy, Kelly Roth

Doctoral Dissertations

Perceptual narrowing is a domain-general process in which infants move from a broad sensitivity to a wide range of stimuli to developing expertise within often experienced native stimuli (Maurer & Werker, 2014). One outcome of this is the own-race bias, characterized by an increasing difficulty in discriminating other-race faces with age and experience for those raised in a racially homogenous environment (Anzures, Quinn, Pascalis, Slater, Tanaka, & Lee, 2013). Recent theorists have proposed that this is due to a categorization-individuation process, wherein infants begin to categorize non-native stimuli, such as other-species’ faces, but individuate native stimuli, such as often-experienced human …

Dual Mechanisms Of Cognitive Control: An Eye Tracking Study, Kyle Mobly

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to attempt to provide an ocular signature for the dual mechanisms of cognitive control (proactivity and reactivity) by utilizing an eye tracker to record gaze patterns while participants were administered a modified version of the AX-CPT 40. Additionally, we sought to clarify whether context updating or maintenance was responsible for the higher Total Visit Duration (TVD) on the cue location during the ISI that was found in previous studies by providing both a short (1.5 seconds) and long (3 seconds) ISI length. This allowed us to disentangle context updating from maintenance by removing …

Attentional Control In Young Drivers: Does Training Help Or Hinder Bottom-Up Processing In A Dynamic Driving Environment?, Sarah Elizabeth Yahoodik

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Anticipating hidden hazards on the road is a critical skill for safe driving, one that many young and novice drivers lack. Training programs are shown to improve hazard anticipation performance in young drivers, but whether these training effects persist in the presence of salient and potentially distracting stimuli remains relatively less explored. In this study, we examined whether the effectiveness of an existing driving training program, Risk Awareness Perception Training (RAPT), on increasing latent hazard anticipation on the road persisted with extraneous bottom-up stimuli in the road environment. Forty-one young drivers, aged 18-21, completed a series of driving scenarios with …

Knowledge-Intelligence Integrative Taxonomy, Ammar Yakan

Al Jinan الجنان

Knowledge and Intelligence constitute the base for human cognition processes. Knowledge and Intelligence are also reciprocal since intelligent behavior requires good knowledge and good knowledge about a problem implies an intelligent behavior to solve it. Educational psychologists have thoroughly studied knowledge and intelligence concepts while discussing the teaching and learning paradigms. Knowledge was defined to be information in action or the set of skills, competencies, beliefs, and insights owned by an individual and exerted during problem solving process. Intelligence, on the other hand, is the process conditions affecting the problem solution, such as time, place, shape, suitability, appropriateness, reliability, and …

Response To Commentaries On ‘Hard Criteria For Empirical Theories Of Consciousness’, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Michael H. Herzog

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

In consciousness research, we have a very large number of theories, which exceeds by far the number of theories in other fields. We recently presented a set of criteria for evaluating and comparing theories of consciousness, and then applied the criteria to a number of different theories. Our publication sparked strong responses as evident by the many comments published in Cognitive Neuroscience (this issue). Overall, there seems to be consensus that a theory of consciousness (ToC) needs to have an unconscious alternative, but other criteria sparked controversy. The hottest debate is to what extent consciousness needs to work with purely …

Psychological Contract Perception And Contractual Employee Performance, Robin Roberts, Stephanie Douglas Ph.D.

Publications

Contractual, short‐term employees are increasingly utilized to support organizational performance. The employee's perception of the psychological contract were explored in this qualitative study through semi‐structured interviews of 22 contractual workers. Psychological contract was fulfilled through transactional job tasks and psychological contract breaches were found in relationships with leadership and the organization. An exploratory examination from the contractual worker lens helped to influence the psychological contract on the employee performance and its use in leveraging this workforce to improve organizational performance.

Historical Trauma Response Scores As A Function Of Unresolved Grief And Substance Use Disorder In American Indian Populations, Andrew R. Saunders

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Abstract

Researchers are interested in the outcomes of interventions, specifically, measuring historical trauma (HT) among American Indian/Alaska Native communities and the long-term distress and substance abuse as a result of historical trauma response (HTR). Previous literature has implicated limitations in the clinical conceptualization of the relationship between intergenerational transfer of HTR and substance abuse. The aim of the current study is to examine treatment efficacy of 50 homosexual, American Indian males randomized to a culturally-adapted juxtaposition of (1) Group Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT), (2) Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and (3) Historical Trauma and Unresolved Grief Intervention (HTUG), or (4) waitlisted on …

Aerobic Exercise With Superimposed Virtual Reality Improves Cognitive Flexibility And Selective Attention In Young Males, Borja Sañudo, Ellie Abdo, Mario Bernardo-Filho, Redha Taiar

Publications

The literature to date is limited regarding the implantation of VR in healthy young individuals with a focus on cognitive function. Thirty healthy males aged between 22.8 and 24.3 years volunteered to participate in the study randomly and were assigned to one of two groups with alike exercises: an experimental group (GE, n = 15) that performed an exercise protocol with a VR game and a controlled group that performed the exercise protocol without the VR (CON, n = 15). A 128-card computerized version of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) and the Stroop test were completed before and after …

Wicked Problems: Depression, Sebastian Wendolowski

English Department: Research for Change - Wicked Problems in Our World

Depression is a disorder that can affect anybody and is the leading cause of disability and disorders in the United States. This year, due to COVID-19, it has hit an all time high, affecting many more people. Suicide rates have been steadily growing across all ages, and this year is at a record high too, showing correlation with depression. There are two types of depression, major depressive disorder and chronic depressive disorder. Diagnosis of depression is typically done physically or through a questionnaire, which is compared into a DSM-5. There are many risk factors for depression and other common mental …

Looking At Environmental Consciousness Through The Lenses Of Morphic Fields And Systems Theory, Johara Bellali

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper is an exploration of a space in which questions of self-determination and planetary crises can co-exist. It swims in uncomfortable seas of accepting that environmental consciousness is as innate as our existence, and at the same time not aligned to healthy ecosystems. In this paper, I will first explore environmental consciousness from an ecosystem perspective and present some self-organizing principles of our systems; then I will look into our perceptions, awareness, and sensing of them and finally propose an understanding of how the morphic fields in ecosystems and the creative flow of the life force co-exist in our …

The Journey Back To Wholeness That Already Is, Jenna Dishy Wes

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Sunrise’s father had had lost his own, rather impactfully at the tender age of seven, just as he was transitioning into what Piaget called the Concrete Operations Period. “With this change, he (began) to behave in many ways much like an adult and, indeed, in terms of lines for the self and moral reasoning, many adults never grow past this stage” (Combs, 2009). And so would be the case for Sunrise’s father. Having never been given the tools or guidance to heal from such trauma, he resorted to substances that subdued what it was he could not face. Sunrise …

An Exploration Of Linguistic Relativity Theory For Consideration Of Terence Mckenna’S “Stoned Ape Theory” On The Origins Of Consciousness And Language: Implications For Language Pedagogy, Nicole Lopez

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The “linguistic turn” from the early 20^th century created a shift in the ontological underpinnings of various disciplines within the social sciences. Several key figures asserted that much of what we think of as reality is constructed based on a system of social institution that we call language. Language shifted to becoming a fundamental aspect of the ontological realities within a given discipline in the social sciences. Most significant to my understanding of the relationship between language, its origins, and the emergence of higher forms of human consciousness is Terence McKenna’s Stoned Ape Theory. In this article, …

The Structure, State, And Stream Of Mary Consciousness In The Quest For The Knowing Body, Christine Dennis

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The science of consciousness has traditionally situated knowledge creation in the mind, and thus, marginalizes the knowing body. Returning to the body requires a decolonization of consciousness in Euro-Western research paradigms and in our bodies. This research is grounded in the spirituality indigenous to my Latinx matrilineage known as Mary consciousness, which frames the body as an epistemic pillar of knowledge creation. A feminist fleshing of the knowing body displaces the centrality of the mind by elevating indigenous ways of knowing. Material feminist worldviews contribute by expressing the degree to which the body has been marginalized as a valid source …

A Whiteheadian Innervation Of The Soma: A New Vision For The Peripheral Nervous System, David Milliern

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This essay draws attention to two problems in neuroscience’s set of assumptions. These self-defeating assumptions include: 1) the assumption that what the nervous system, especially the brain, does is synthesize experience, while also assuming philosophical realism, and 2) the problem of biological signal transduction. In the latter, neuroscientists and philosophers of biology have left unaddressed the issue that the signal differences between the inside and outside of the organismic boundary are of distinct ontological types; and yet no concern has been expressed regarding how it is possible that an organism’s inner states could reflect the experiential content flowing from outside …

Centaur Mind: A Glimpse Into An Integrative Structure Of Consciousness, Azin Izadifar

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Jean Gebser’s theory of consciousness suggests that we are experiencing a new era in the history of consciousness. Human consciousness moves like a pendulum. The current Integral Structure of Consciousness is not unprecedented, yet we are experiencing it in a multi-layered, deeper, and vaster way. Centaurs are imaginal creatures that first appeared within the Mythical Structure of Consciousness, making a bridge between the unity of the Magical and the duality of Mental structures. In this paper, I view the centaurs through the lenses of mythology and archetypal depth psychology and discuss the critical role of this mythic figure in the …

Scented Colours: Artistic Interest In The Crossmodal Connection Between Colour And Odour, Charles Spence

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication

Artists have long been interested in the crossmodal links that exist between colour and scent. While traditionally envisioned as a kind of synaesthesia, contemporary accounts of the connections between this particular pair of senses have typically focused on explanations in terms of involuntarily-induced crossmodal mental imagery and crossmodal correspondences instead. A large body of empirical research now supports the view that the majority of non-synaesthetic individuals do indeed systematically match colours to odours, via semantic (or source-object based) matching, and/or on the basis of emotional-mediation or perceptual similarity. Universal agreement with regard to the best- matching colours for odours is, …

Empowering Nurses Of Minority In The Face Of Incivility And Bullying: Through The Lens Of Phenomenology, Corrine Floyd

Dissertations

Abstract

Up to 85% of nurses have reported exposure to incivility in the workplace (Hunt & Marini, 2012). The often-subtle nature of incivility toward nurses in a minority population may partially explain why it remains a problem. Healthcare organizations realize the need for civility to counter the high turnover rate, staff shortages, and low job satisfaction reported by nurses, but lack understanding of how nurses of a minority population perceive incivility and bullying. This study aimed to answer the research question how do nurses with minority representation experience incivility and bullying versus empowerment in the workplace? A descriptive phenomenological design …

China’S “Three Warfares”: People’S Liberation Army Influence Operations, Edwin S. Cochran, U.S. Department Of Defense, Retired

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The following article—whose author is both a retired US Army officer and retired Department of Defense civilian employee with multiple publications—focuses on Chinese information operations. Readers might wish to speculate on matters such as why the Chinese have organized the way they have, whether the organization leads to optimal integration of tools of national security/political power, and how vulnerable specific populations and even intelligence cultures are to specific types of information operations. One might even conclude that the only thing that has not changed in thousands of years has been the technology available to influence others.

This article examines the …

The Cognitive Thalamus: Source Analysis Of Scene Working Memory Delay Activity, Bernard A. Gomes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Working Memory represents a limited-capacity store for maintaining information and manipulating the store's contents over a short period for the guidance of goal-directed behavior. Working Memory is an essential component of executive functions that are intricately associated with the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The PFC has been implicated in maintaining task-related information online for brief periods in the absence of relevant information. This active maintenance phase is called the delay period that occurs between encoding and retrieval of the stimulus. Previous studies have attempted to understand the relationship between working memory and the PFC, especially during the delay or maintenance phase …

Shared Neural Substrates Of Perception And Memory: Testing The Assumptions And Predictions Of The Representational-Hierarchical Account, D. Merika W. Sanders

Doctoral Dissertations

Proponents of the representational-hierarchical (R-H) account claim that memory and perception rely on shared neural representations. In the ventral visual stream, posterior brain areas are assumed to represent simple information (e.g. low-level image properties), but the complexity of representations increases toward more anterior areas, such as inferior temporal cortex (e.g., object-parts, objects), extending into the medial temporal lobe (MTL; e.g. scenes). This view predicts that brain structures along this continuum serve both memory and perception; a structure’s engagement is determined by the representational demands of a task, rather than the cognitive process putatively involved. In a neuroimaging study, I searched …

Validity Of The Perceptual Ability Test, Brandon Schmid

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

The Perceptual Ability Test (PAT), a subtest of the Dental Admissions Test (DAT), has been used for many years by US Dental Schools to evaluate the perceptual ability of incoming applicants of their program. Perceptual ability is broadly defined as the ability to accurately process and interpret visual sensory information. Perceptual Ability skills are important in the field of Dentistry, as they are critical to the applied use of various dental tools and in surgical skills. It is assumed that performance on the PAT is predictive of dental students’ surgical skill development. However, multiple studies have found that the PAT …