Psychology Commons^™

Exploring Students’ Epistemological Understanding Of Atomic Structure Models, Claire V. Ward, Morgan Balabanoff

The Cardinal Edge

Developing a robust understanding of atomic structure and the nature of matter is foundational across chemistry and STEM courses. The development of this concept is challenging because it relies on models to illustrate something not directly observable. Scientific models are important tools used to explain phenomena, particularly phenomena that are not directly observable. In general chemistry, students are typically asked to consider four different models: (1) the particle model, (2) the nuclear model, (3) the Bohr model, and (4) the Quantum model. Each depiction has its own advantages and limitations, where instructors introduce each model to explain specific parts of …

The Science Of Learning: Understanding The Learning Process And Its Implementation Into The Classroom, Robert Hawkins

The Cardinal Edge

College and higher education is often seen as the next step for many students pursuing a particular career or field. These institutions strive to facilitate learning and maintain a rewarding academic environment. However, students often face various challenges when first attending college which is reflected by high levels of dropout and withdrawal from general education courses, especially for first-time students. In fact, according to the education data initiation, “at 4-year institutions, 18.4% of first-time, full-time college freshmen dropped out between 2019 and 2020” (Hansen & Checked, 2022). One of these challenges is understanding the process of learning on a fundamental …

​​The Effects Of Viewpoint, Motion, And Affordance Priming On Perceptual Learning Of Feelies​, Catherine Dowell

Dissertations

According to Gibson and Gibson (1955) perceptual learning is a process of developing the skill to differentiate previously undifferentiated but available information. The initial investigations focused on object identification, lacking a behaviorally relevant functional task. In the current study participants learned to differentiate between novel objects (feelies). To test the role of visual exploration objects were viewed from either a side or a top view and were displayed as either static pictures or rotating about a vertical axis. In Experiment 1 a simple object discrimination task was used. Perfect accuracy was achieved sooner in static conditions compared to motion conditions …

Classical Conditioning Of Cognitive States, Arthur Burns

Neuroscience Honors Papers

Classical conditioning has been a fundamental concept and practice throughout the history of psychology. While classical conditioning traditionally seeks to elicit target behaviors in correlation to specific stimuli, we sought to do the same with cognitive states in place of behaviors. Specifically, we wanted to determine the effectiveness of conditioning states of cognitive arousal in human participants in conjunction with cues presented in a designed learning task. We designed a cognitive task specifically for this research, referred to as “the Tone Pitching Task”, which utilized a combination of working memory and mental processing in order to elicit cognitive arousal and …

Cognition, Emotion, Personality And The Conservation And Management Of Wild Ungulates, Rob Found

Animal Sentience

Increasing public understanding of the complexity of wild ungulates can improve animal welfare and advance global conservation efforts of these keystone species. Unfortunately, shaping public opinion on wild species is challenging because personal experience with wildlife is declining, popular education is still biased towards the predator instead of the prey, and scientific research is more difficult to conduct on wild ungulates compared to those on farms, in zoos, or otherwise in captivity. Nevertheless, studies of cognition, individuality, and intelligence of wild ungulates are increasing. I briefly highlight some major results from my own work on complexity in wild elk, illustrating …

To Conceive Of Consonance In Chaos: The Influence Of The Harmonic Series On The Perception Of A New Musical System, Luke Sandbank

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

A Behaviorist Approach To Sheep Cognition, Intelligence, And Welfare, Lindsay R. Mehrkam

Animal Sentience

Marino & Merskin’s review sheds light on the complexity of the mind, learning, and cognition of sheep. Readily observable behavior has value in its own right for promoting the well-being of animals. A behavior-analytic approach can add substantially to the understanding of sheep as individuals as well as their learning capacities. The findings can also be applied to arranging their environments to promote their well-being as well as behavioral change in those responsible for their care and management.

Flight Simulator Fidelity, Training Transfer, And The Role Of Instructors In Optimizing Learning, Paul L. Myers Iii, Arnold W. Starr, Kadie Mullins

Kadie Hayward Mullins

Simulators have been integrated into flight training at various levels for decades, increasing in utility as they increased in fidelity. Today, practically all levels of qualification in passenger-carrying commercial airliners can be obtained entirely in the simulator, with the first experience in the aircraft on a revenue-producing flight. Flight training in the U.S. is a tightly controlled, highly regulated process overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It is also a very successful one; commercial aviation maintains a remarkable safety record. To that end, pilot training has been studied and analyzed extensively over the years, and as to the focus …

The Conundrum Of Causal Reasoning In Elephants, Beri Brown

Master's Theses

Causal reasoning is marked by the ability to mentally reconstruct the missing part of a sequence in order to reproduce an outcome. While research on causal reasoning has been done with children, the results of the studies have been inconsistent. A standardized paradigm for comparative causal reasoning studies does not exist. Nissani (2006) investigated causal reasoning in a tool-use task with elephants and concluded that elephants were not capable of causal reasoning. The current study, a modified replication, yielded results that were not congruent with Nissani’s (2006) manuscript. Additionally, it was very unlikely that the Nissani (2006) study truly looked …

Standing And Dynamic Sitting In The University Classroom, Siobhan Smith

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Students almost exclusively sit in class, which translates to large amounts of forced sedentary behaviour and this in turn may have negative health consequences. The effect alternative postures have on classroom performance of university students remains unknown.

Using a randomized counterbalanced design, pilot study 1 (N=40) and 2 (N=20) investigated the effect of alternative postures on 3-minute and 50-minute classroom performance, respectively. In study 3, university students’ (N=1005) and faculty (N=218) acceptability to alternative workstations in the university classroom was assessed using a mixed method approach.

This thesis provides preliminary evidence that there is no difference between classic sitting, dynamic …

Flight Simulator Fidelity, Training Transfer, And The Role Of Instructors In Optimizing Learning, Paul L. Myers Iii, Arnold W. Starr, Kadie Mullins

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Simulators have been integrated into flight training at various levels for decades, increasing in utility as they increased in fidelity. Today, practically all levels of qualification in passenger-carrying commercial airliners can be obtained entirely in the simulator, with the first experience in the aircraft on a revenue-producing flight. Flight training in the U.S. is a tightly controlled, highly regulated process overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It is also a very successful one; commercial aviation maintains a remarkable safety record. To that end, pilot training has been studied and analyzed extensively over the years, and as to the focus …

Combined Mnemonic Strategy Training And High-Definition Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation For Memory Deficits In Mild Cognitive Impairment, Benjamin M. Hampstead, Krishnankutty Sathian, Marom Bikson, Anthony Y. Stringer

Publications and Research

Introduction: Memory deficits characterize Alzheimer’s dementia and the clinical precursor stage known as mild cognitive impairment. Nonpharmacologic interventions hold promise for enhancing functioning in these patients, potentially delaying functional impairment that denotes transition to dementia. Previous findings revealed that mnemonic strategy training (MST) enhances long-term retention of trained stimuli and is accompanied by increased blood oxygen level–dependent signal in the lateral frontal and parietal cortices as well as in the hippocampus. The present study was designed to enhance MST generalization, and the range of patients who benefit, via concurrent delivery of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS).

Methods: This protocol describes …

Mechanisms Responsible For The Development Of Causal Perception In Infancy., Nicholas A. Holt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The aim of the current dissertation was to investigate the mechanisms that contribute to the emergence of causal perception in infancy. Previous research suggests that the experience of self-produced causal action may be necessary to promote the development of causal perception (Rakison & Krogh, 2012). The goal of the current study was two-fold: (1) to further explore the roles of self-produced action, haptic, proprioceptive and visual information, and parental interaction on young infants’ understanding of causality. To assess the impact of these factors on infants’ causal learning, 4½-month-olds were randomly assigned to one four conditions. Three of the conditions (Active …

Visual Code: Breaking The Binary, Jacob Johannesen, Andrew Adriance

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

This project seeks to create an accessible programming language that is more visually based. Although some solutions exist, namely MIT’s Scratch, nothing has caught up to the mobile age. This proj- ect aims to reframe creating a game or app into the context of tell- ing a story, putting character creation first. By researching sto- ry-telling and how people learn, and by applying technical and user interface design knowledge, this project intends to deliver a soft- ware solution that opens introductory coding education to more people.

The Effect Of The Long Anchor Duration On Performance In The Temporal Bisection Procedure, Sho Araiba

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study investigated the determinants of the location of the bisection point (BP) in the temporal bisection procedure. Interest in the study of temporal perception emerged from the finding of the scalar property such as Weber’s law for time and the ratio rule in behavior under Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning. One method to investigate temporal perception in both non-human animals and humans is the temporal bisection procedure. The primary dependent variable of this procedure is the BP, which has been taken as the subjective midpoint between two durations. The ratio similarity rule (Gibbon, 1981) hypothesizes that the location of …

Is Your Learning Style Paranoid?, Kirby Farrell

kirby farrell

We learn—and grow—by engaging with anomalies: new things that don't fit our familiar categories. It's a gut process, not just a philosophical choice. Anxiety can make us paranoid about what's new and strange. Knowing that can spur fascination and help us to adapt.

The Formation Of Situation Models In Multimedia, Kris Gunawan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

When people read traditional text-based stories, they construct mental representations of the described state of affairs, called situation models, to connect various details of events (e.g., time, space, entity) in memory (Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). According to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2005; 2011), stories presented as pictures and text generate independent channels of mental representations that can work hand-in-hand or separately to acquire and remember the materials presented. This dissertation consisted of two experiments that were used to further explore how the two modalities affect what is being mentally represented in memory. In Experiment 1, participants were …

Musical Mood And Musical Arousal Affects Different Stages Of Learning And Memory Performance, Tram Nguyen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examined whether the effect of music on memory is attributable to musical mood, musical arousal, context, or some combination of these factors. In Experiment 1, participants performed a face-name paired-association task while music was played in the background. In Experiment 2, the perceptual context (Experiment 2A) and emotional context (Experiment 2B) of music was examined more thoroughly. Experiment 3 examined whether the context effect of musical mood and musical arousal occurs in a recall task (Experiment 3A), a recognition task (Experiment 3B), and an association task (Experiment 3C). The results showed that low arousal music enhanced memory while …

The Importance Of Gestures In Learning, Gale Stam

Gale Stam, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Modelling Biased Judgement With Weighted Updating, Jesse A. Zinn

Jesse A Zinn

The weighted updating model is a generalization of Bayesian updating that allows for biased beliefs by weighting the functions that constitute Bayes’ rule with real exponents. This paper shows that weighting a distribution affects the information entropy of the resulting distribution, suggesting that weighted updating can model biases in which individuals mistake the information content of data. The paper augments the base model in two ways, allowing it to account for additional biases. The first expansion involves discrimination between data. The second allows the weights to vary over time. The paper also presents a set of sufficient conditions for the …

Affect Identification And Interpersonal Skills: An In-Depth Evaluation Of Social Cognition In Schizophrenia, Griffin Pollock Sutton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The presence of deficits in various sub-domains of social cognition has been investigated to a degree in individuals with schizophrenia. Some of the most commonly researched and documented deficits have included impairments in the identification of affect portrayed in faces. Research has indicated that the performance of individuals with schizophrenia on such tasks is generally impaired as compared to normal controls. However, some have questioned the generalizability of such findings to real-world situations, as day-to-day interactions generally necessitate a constant, fluid assessment of the thoughts and feelings of others and are rarely, if ever, limited to still images of others. …

Interactive Effects Of Working Memory Self-Regulatory Ability And Relevance Instructions On Text Processing, Nancy Jo Hamilton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Reading is a process that requires the enactment of many cognitive processes. Each of these processes uses a certain amount of working memory resources, which are severely constrained by biology. More efficiency in the function of working memory may mediate the biological limits of same. Reading relevancy instructions may be one such method to assist readers in utilizing working memory resources more efficiently.

This study examines the relationship between perspective relevance instructions and participants' ability to regulate their working memory resources. In a 3 x 2 x 2 design the study extended the literature by utilizing a measure of fluid …

Melatonin And Its Effect On Learning And Memory, Nechama Leah Bauman (Cahn)

The Science Journal of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences

Melatonin is a neurohormone produced by the pineal gland and secreted into the body in a circadian rhythm. Melatonin is known to be involved in many vital body functions, including sleep, reproduction, and immune response. Exogenous melatonin, sold as over the counter natural supplements in drugstores, is commonly taken by many people to help cure various ailments. Melatonin also plays a role in the hippocampus. This paper investigates the effects of melatonin on long-term potentiation in the hippocampus. Long-term potentiation, described as a long-lasting strengthening of synapses between nerve cells, is thought to be responsible for long-term memory retention. It …

The Effect Of Spiritualism On The Cognitive Functions On Learning And Memory, Carla Antonieta Farcello

McNair Poster Presentations

Last summer I conducted a pilot study which researched whether better working memory would be documented among an experimental group (individuals who report being spiritual) as compared to the control group (individuals who report being non-spiritual).Total scores showed a significantly higher sense of spiritualism among the spiritual participants vs. the non spiritual participants (p < .001) along with a significant improvement in working memory for spiritual participants vs. non spiritual participants (p = .027). The results of this study documented significantly better performance on a task measuring emotional learning and memory among individuals who reported being spiritual as opposed to individuals who reported being non-spiritual. These findings build on prior studies suggesting the effect of positive emotions on broadening cognitive processes (Strauss & Allen, 2003).

My current study is building on what my prior findings have suggested and studies the effect of spiritualism on the cognitive functions of learning and memory. In addition to the Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale (DSES) used in the pilot study, I am including the Spirituality Index …

Honoring And Utilizing The Preoperational Thinkers' Artistic Processes In Art Education, J. B. Paquette

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Examines the relationship between thought processes and artmaking in preoperational learners (children from about two to seven years of age). Suggests that these children learn and communicate in the art room in a natural, revelatory, and quite ephemeral, way. Includes a sample art lesson plan for preoperational learners and investigates ways to connect with children's youthful thought processes in elementary art instruction.

Probabilistic Principles In Unsupervised Learning Of Visual Structure: Human Data And A Model, Shimon Edelman, Benjamin P. Hiles, Hwajin Yang, Nathan Intrator

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

To find out how the representations of structured visual objects depend on the co-occurrence statistics of their constituents, we exposed subjects to a set of composite images with tight control exerted over (1) the conditional probabilities of the constituent fragments, and (2) the value of Barlow's criterion of "suspicious coincidence" (the ratio of joint probability to the product of marginals). We then compared the part verification response times for various probe/target combinations before and after the exposure. For composite probes, the speedup was much larger for targets that contained pairs of fragments perfectly predictive of each other, compared to those …