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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Relationship Between Mood And Implicit Learning, Kathleen Larson May 2017

The Relationship Between Mood And Implicit Learning, Kathleen Larson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation investigates whether a person’s current mood state influences their ability to learn implicitly. Implicit learning refers to learning about regularities in the environment without having conscious access to the information (e.g., Reber, 1967). According to the affect-as-information hypothesis, a positive mood increases global processing of incoming information and negative mood leads to local processing (e.g., Clore & Storbeck, 2006); however, most previous studies that investigated mood and cognition have focused on more explicit types of learning and decision making, but few have examined implicit processes. Thus, the current experiments examined how varying levels of mood and arousal affect …


An Examination Of Accuracy And Elaborations For Character Traits In A Narrative, Michael Palena May 2017

An Examination Of Accuracy And Elaborations For Character Traits In A Narrative, Michael Palena

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

When people read a story, they often form a highly detailed representation known as a situation model. The event-indexing model (Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995) proposes that situation models are constructed along several indices, one of which is protagonist or character. While much research has been devoted to the study of tracking and forming trait-based models of fictional characters, little attention has been paid to the representation of characters’ external attributes. In Experiment 1, participants read a short story containing various characters and their attributes. Participants were then asked to recall the characters and their attributes, either according to their …


Neural Processes Underlying Auditory Context Effects, Breanne Yerkes May 2017

Neural Processes Underlying Auditory Context Effects, Breanne Yerkes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Auditory information within our natural environments is disorganized and often ambiguous, leaving our auditory systems with a complex task: organizing sound into coherent objects. The auditory system uses both current and prior information to assist in completing this task. The influences of previous context on current perception have been referred to as context effects. A contrastive context effect results in a current perception that is opposite of what is expected based on the physical stimulus properties presented during an immediate context. A facilitative context effect results in a current perception that is the same as the perception during the immediate …


Reconsolidating: The Effect Of Spatial Context And Expectations, Chris R. Kiley May 2017

Reconsolidating: The Effect Of Spatial Context And Expectations, Chris R. Kiley

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Consolidation is the process by which memories become stable over time. Accessing a previously consolidated memory trace brings it back into a labile state where it must then undergo a re-stabilization process known as reconsolidation. During this process memories are again susceptible to interference and may be updated with new information. Reconsolidation has been demonstrated in animals as well as in the procedural and episodic human memory systems. The exact boundary conditions for reconsolidation are not yet known. Some studies suggest that reconsolidation is only necessary when new information is presented in a spatial context that is indistinguishable from the …