Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Humans Integrate Monetary And Liquid Incentives To Motivate Cognitive Task Performance, Debbie Yee

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is unequivocal that a wide variety of incentives can motivate behavior. However, few studies have explicitly examined whether and how different incentives are integrated in terms of their motivational influence. The current study examines the combined effects of monetary and liquid incentives on cognitive processing, and whether appetitive and aversive incentives have distinct influences. We introduce a novel task paradigm, in which participants perform cued task-switching for monetary rewards that vary parametrically across trials, with liquid incentives serving as post-trial performance feedback. Critically, the symbolic meaning of the liquid was held constant (indicating successful reward attainment), while liquid valence …

Social Networking Website Use And Eating Pathology: Relations, Moderators, And Motivation To Improve, Michelle S. St. Paul

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social networking website (SNW) use has been found to be associated with decreased body image or esteem and increased eating disorder (ED) symptoms. In turn, SNW use may also be associated with decreased motivation to improve body image (BI) and reduced self-efficacy in one’s ability to do so. However, the impact of SNW use on motivation or self-efficacy to improve BI has not yet been studied. Also, particular moderators of the relationships between SNW and eating pathology have not yet been evaluated. This study aimed to: 1) replicate past literature by examining the relation between SNW use and eating pathology, …

Relationship Between Serum Biomarkers And Three-Month Outcomes Following Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury (Tbi), Alicia Leanne Janos

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With more than 475,000 cases annually, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children. Promising new tools for the prediction of functional outcomes following pediatric TBI are biomarkers of brain injury that can be detected in blood serum. The most commonly studied biomarkers, S100β, neuron-specific enolase (NSE), and myelin basic protein (MBP), have myriad limitations which preclude their use in clinical care. In the present study, serum concentrations of two novel biomarkers of brain injury (i.e., ubiquitin carboxy-terminal hydrolase-L1, UCH-L1; glial fibrillary acidic protein, GFAP) were collected 24 hours following severe TBI in 30 …

Emotion Regulation Goals Influence Strategy Use And Outcomes, Lameese Eldesouky

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Functionalist theories of emotion posit that people regulate their emotions in ways that help them accomplish their goals, suggesting that goals may be important for strategy selection. Two studies were conducted to examine reappraisal and suppression use when pursuing emotional and instrumental goals, and to assess the utility of those strategies in achieving distinct goals. Both studies found a stronger link between emotional goals and reappraisal than between emotional goals and suppression, but found no preference between strategies when pursuing an instrumental goal. Study 1 found that reappraisal had higher utility than suppression in achieving emotional goals, but not instrumental …

Relationships Between Age And White Matter Integrity In Children With Phenylketonuria, Erika M. Wesonga

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Objective: Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a hereditary metabolic disorder associated with cognitive compromise. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has allowed detection of poorer microstructural white matter integrity in children with PKU, with decreased mean diffusivity (MD) in comparison with healthy children. However, very little research has been conducted to examine the trajectory of white matter development in this population. The present study investigated potential differences in the developmental trajectory of MD between children with early- and continuously-treated PKU and healthy children across a range of brain regions.

Methods: Children with PKU (n = 31, mean age = 12.2 years) were …

Breaking Apart The Reinforcement Learning Deficit In Schizophrenia, Adam Culbreth

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reinforcement learning deficits have long been associated with schizophrenia. However, tasks traditionally used to assess these deficits often rely on multiple processing streams leaving the etiology of these task deficits unclear. In the current study, we borrowed a recent framework from computational neuroscience, which separates reinforcement-learning into two distinct systems, model-based and model-free. Under this framework, the model-free system learns about the value of actions in the immediate context, while the model-based system learns about the value of actions in both immediate and subsequent states that may be encountered as a result of their actions. Using a decision task that …

How Do Voters Remember Flip-Flopping? Memorial And Social Consequences Of Change Recollection, Adam Lewis Putnam

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents 3 experiments that explore how people notice and remember a politician’s change in position. Subjects read position statements made by politicians at two different debates; sometimes the politicians were consistent across debates, sometimes they changed positions, and sometimes they only addressed an issue at Debate 2. Subjects recalled the positions from Debate 2 and reported whether they thought the politician had changed positions on that issue. The results showed that changing positions made it more difficult for people to remember a politician’s most recent position; however, recollecting that a change occurred eliminated that memory deficit. Experiment 1 …

Eye Contact And Social Anxiety Disorder, Julia Kane Langer

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The psychoevolutionary theory of social anxiety disorder (SAD) predicts that individuals with SAD will avoid eye contact to communicate submissiveness. However, direct testing of gaze avoidance in individuals with higher social anxiety through behavioral observation or measurement has produced mixed findings. The goals of this dissertation are to test one of the components of the psychoevolutionary theory, namely, that gaze avoidance is employed by people with SAD, as well as to test whether positive affect may play a role in regulating gaze avoidance. Specifically, based on prior research supporting the role of positive affect in regulating exploratory behavior, I hypothesized …

Manipulation Of Negative Social Evaluative Fears On Body Dissatisfaction And Eating Behaviors: Does Fear Of Social Evaluation Lead To Disordered Eating?, Cheri A. Levinson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Social anxiety and eating disorders are highly comorbid. Researchers have suggested that there may be shared vulnerabilities that underlie the development of these disorders. Two of these proposed vulnerabilities are fear of negative evaluation and social appearance anxiety (i.e., fear of negative evaluation specifically focused on one’s appearance). Regarding disordered eating, previous self-report research has found that social appearance anxiety may be especially relevant for body dissatisfaction, whereas fear of negative evaluation may be relevant for drive for thinness. In the current study I manipulated fear of negative evaluation and social appearance anxiety using a speech task in 160 undergraduate …

The Influence Of Word Frequency And Aging On Lexical Access, Emily Rebecca Cohen-Shikora

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Visual word recognition has been a central area of psychological inquiry over the past century. The current dissertation examines how visual word recognition changes as a function of age by focusing on the influence of word frequency, or how commonly a word is encountered. Word frequency is arguably the strongest predictor of visual word recognition performance across a variety of language tasks, and the most influential factor in models of language processing. All models of visual word recognition include a strong role for word frequency but often assume different underlying mechanisms, which produce differing predictions for age changes. Although there …

Striatal Activity Is Associated With Deficits Of Cognitive Control And Aberrant Salience For Patients With Schizophrenia, Alan E. Ceaser

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A recent study has shown that the locus of the largest known dopamine abnormality between patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls is in the associative striatum (Kegeles et al., 2010). This dopamine abnormality in the associative striatum is thought to bring about aberrant salience assignment for patients, which may underlie symptoms of psychosis like delusions and hallucinations (Howes & Kapur, 2009). Interestingly, the associative striatum has segregated, looped, connectivity with cortical regions including the prefrontal and parietal cortices (Draganski et al., 2008; Redgrave, Vautrelle, & Reynolds, 2011) and computational models have suggested that it may function as an information gate …

Gesture As Revelation, Laurel Panella

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The two divergent paths of fine arts and psychological research come together to demonstrate how physical gesture and facial expression communicates significant meaning regarding human emotion and intention. The conceptual framework of these paintings arises from the artist’s engagement with peer-reviewed psychological studies on Affective Science. The paintings balance qualities of both emotional and intellectual thinking, with the goal of calling them forth in equal strength during the viewing experience. The symbolic and representational language of gesture is examined through the painting titled Precarious Extension. Dynamics of compassion and affect theory are analyzed through the painting Transmission of …

Assessing The Boundary Conditions Of The Own-Age And Own-Race Perceptual Bias For Faces, Cynthia C. Flores

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Our interactions with other people rely on our ability to perceive and distinguish faces based on snap decisions about their features. Past research has revealed that facial recognition is consistently better when the observer shares the same race as the person being identified or is roughly in the same age category (Meissner & Brigham, 2001; Rhodes & Anastasi, 2012). Although a misidentification can be irritating in daily life, high discriminability is especially important in situations where a misidentification could have drastic consequences, such as in eye witness testimony or during security checkpoints conducted by law enforcement. Although much research has …

Spatial Proximity As A Determinant Of Cognitive Control Context, Nathaniel T. Diede

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The speed and flexibility of cognitive control is exemplified by the context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) effect. Two locations on a computer screen may be biased to present either mostly congruent (MC) stimuli or mostly incongruent (MI) stimuli, necessitating rapid shifts of cognitive control in order to maximize speed and accuracy of responding. The episodic retrieval account has posited that the speed and flexibility of control can be explained by attentional settings being bound with contextual cues (e.g. the location at which a stimulus appears) into an episodic representation—allowing for settings to be retrieved automatically. However, what determines which setting is …

Variable Semantic Input And Novel First-Language Vocabulary Learning, Nichole Runge

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vocabulary learning involves mapping a word form to a semantic meaning. An individual asked to learn the Spanish word for “apple,” for example, must map a new word form (manzana) onto the appropriate semantic representation. Previous studies have found that acoustic variability of word forms can improve second language vocabulary acquisition (Barcroft & Sommers, 2005; Sommers & Barcroft, 2007). The current experiments investigated whether variable semantic input could have a similar beneficial effect on first language vocabulary learning. Participants learned low-frequency English vocabulary words and their definitions. Half of the words were shown with the same verbatim definition …

The Effects Of Environmental Support And Age On Visuospatial Rehearsal, Lindsey Lilienthal

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although there is substantial evidence supporting the functional distinction between verbal working memory and visuospatial working memory, most research focuses on the verbal domain, and much is still unknown about how people maintain and manipulate visuospatial information. Previous experiments have demonstrated that the amount of environmental support for rehearsal provided to participants can have an important impact on their memory for locations (Lilienthal, Hale, & Myerson, 2014b), and that young adults may benefit more from the presence of support than older adults (Lilienthal, Hale, & Myerson, 2014a). The goal of the three experiments presented in this dissertation was to further …

Are There Multiple Kinds Of Episodic Memory? An Fmri Investigation Comparing Autobiographical And Recognition Memory Tasks, Hung-Yu Chen

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

What brain regions underlie retrieval from episodic memory? The bulk of research addressing this question has relied upon laboratory-based recognition memory. Another, less dominant tradition has employed autobiographical methods, whereby people recall events from their lifetime, often after being cued with words or pictures. Previous research comparing regions underlying successful memory retrieval between these two methodological approaches has shown mixed results. To examine the neural processes underlying recognition memory for materials encountered in the laboratory and autobiographical memory, we conducted a within-subject study using fMRI. We showed participants indoor and outdoor scenes under two types of instructions: In the lab-based …

Effects Of An Interdisciplinary Gerontology Course On First-Year Undergraduate Students, Christine Caroline Merz

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study evaluated the impact of an interdisciplinary course on aging designed to improve attitudes toward older adults and aging, and generate interest in aging-related careers. Main outcomes included knowledge of older adults and aging, attitudes toward older adults and aging, and anxiety about personal aging. Participants included first-year undergraduate students enrolled in the course (curricular intervention group) and first-year undergraduate students not enrolled in the course (control group). Data were collected at the beginning and end of one semester. At the end of the semester curricular intervention students had increased in their knowledge about aging and showed more positive …

Rapid Detection And Use Of Non-Verbal Confidence Cues During Adaptive Memory Biasing, Jihyun Cha

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prior literature has demonstrated that participants use probabilistic, verbal memory cues (‘Likely Old’ or ‘Likely New’) to adaptively bias their recognition judgments. Here we tested whether this is more effective when the cues are the actual videotaped responses of others taking the same recognition test, based on the possibility that observers might use non-verbal confidence signs to modulate their degree of cue reliance on each trial. Experiment 1 demonstrated observers could reliably rate the confidence of others (Models) from single recognition responses (‘old’ or ‘new’) and that when doing so, the latency of the model’s response was the primary influence, …

Stories In Mind – The Relationship Between The Narratological Categories Of Order And Time And The Reader’S Cognitive Structures As Exemplified In Büchner’S Play Woyzeck, Marc Breetzke

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Using The Encoding Specificity Principle To Assess The Nature Of The Secondary Memory Component Of Working Memory, Dung Chi Bui

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent theories and evidence suggest working memory involves secondary memory as well as primary memory. It is unclear, however, if the secondary memory component of working memory is the same as the secondary memory component underlying episodic long-term memory. The present investigation explores this issue by examining whether manipulating encoding and retrieval cues on a short-term memory task produces similar effects as to what is typically seen on episodic long-term memory tasks. More specifically, it is commonly observed on episodic long-term memory tasks that retrieval cues that were not also present during encoding produces worse recall compared to retrieval cues …

The Knowledge Of Others' Perceptions (Kop) Model: Practical Accuracy Among The Well-Acquainted, Brittany C. Solomon

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is possible that people, especially those who are well-acquainted, have information about others that goes beyond their own impressions. While previous studies primarily focus on the accuracy of a perceiver's own impressions of a target, they may miss information about the perceiver's knowledge of a target's identity and reputation. The present study is based on the notion that there may be more to knowing a person than having an accurate perception of his/her personality in the traditional sense. From a practical standpoint, it might also be important to know when others' impressions of a close other, such as a …

When Can We Trust Our Memories? Quantitative And Qualitative Indicators Of Recognition Accuracy, Kurt Andrew Desoto

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present a quartet of experiments that studied confidence ratings and remember/know/guess judgments as indicators of recognition accuracy. The goal of these experiments was to examine the validity of these quantitative and qualitative measures of metacognitive monitoring and to interpret them using the continuous dual-process model of signal detection (Wixted & Mickes, 2010).

In Experiment 1, subjects heard or read items belonging to categorized lists and took an old/new recognition test over studied and new items while making remember/know/guess judgments after each recognition decision. Consistent with prior literature, remember judgments were more likely to be accurate than …

Social Influences On Children's Option Valuations, Laura Pape Hennefield

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Children use a variety of strategies to determine the relative value of the objects they encounter, ranging from simple heuristics to the integration of information from multiple sources. Do children also incorporate social information - specifically, information pertaining to others' preferences - into their object valuations? Valuation is an important component of economic exchange, and is key to assessing how resources are fairly distributed or favors reciprocated. As humans often need to make critical decisions with limited information, garnering information about value via social sources might be an adaptive strategy. This dissertation has two primary goals: (1) to develop methodology …

Presence-At-Hand, Eric Lyle Schultz

Graduate School of Art Theses

Abstract

The writing that follows is intended to provide a theoretical framework for the motives behind my practice. The primary concerns addressed are the reception, transmission, and physical shape of knowledge. I will discuss a human condition that exists as a byproduct of both the legacy of representation as well as the innate biology of the brain. I will argue that as a society we are governed by the residue of an extreme logic, and that this condition places severe margins on our potential for creative solutions. I will propose that our ability to create meaning is stifled by the …