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Cognitive Psychology

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Masters Theses

Theses/Dissertations

2017

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Search Guidance Can Be Adjusted By Experience With Search Discriminability, Junha Chang Oct 2017

Search Guidance Can Be Adjusted By Experience With Search Discriminability, Junha Chang

Masters Theses

Several recent studies show that previous experience can influence observers’ search strategy in a way that improves search performance. The purpose of the present study is to investigate how the experience of difficult color discriminability affects search strategies. Two participant groups either experienced difficult color discriminability in a half of the trials (i.e., hard-discrimination group) or experienced easy search in all trials (i.e., easy-discrimination group) in a dual-target search task. Participants were required to respond to the presence of a target (colored T) among distractors (colored pseudo-L). Eye movements were recorded to understand which feature information is used to guide …


A Representational-Hierarchical Account: A New Theory Of False Memories, D. Merika Wilson Jul 2017

A Representational-Hierarchical Account: A New Theory Of False Memories, D. Merika Wilson

Masters Theses

Past research has supported a representational-hierarchical theory of memory and perception that extends the ventral visual stream into the medial temporal lobe. In this account, representations are organized in a hierarchical manner, such that structures located further anterior in the brain contain complex representations of whole objects and areas further posterior in the visual cortex contain representations of simple features. When conjunctive representations are compromised, an individual must rely on simple-feature representations to complete mnemonic and perceptual tasks. However, these simple-feature representations are susceptible to feature-level interference, which can cause false recognition of novel objects. The goal of the present …


Distinct Mechanisms Underlie Attraction Errors And Agreement With Coordination, Lap-Ching Keung Jul 2017

Distinct Mechanisms Underlie Attraction Errors And Agreement With Coordination, Lap-Ching Keung

Masters Theses

Previous research has suggested that attraction errors are not due to the proximity of the local noun and verb, as a more distant local noun can result in more errors than a nearer one (e.g., *The helicopter for the flights over the canyon are vs. *The helicopter for the flight over the canyons are; Franck, Vigliocco, & Nicol, 2002). However, the verb tends to agree in number with the nearer noun of a disjoined subject, suggesting that linear order can indeed play a role in agreement computation (e.g., The horse or the clocks are vs. The horses …