Psychology Commons^™

Multilingualism And Memory: Investigating Possible Differences In The Abilities Of Monolingual And Multilingual College Students, Clara E. Barned

Honors Projects

This study investigated whether there is a difference in the memories of monolingual and multilingual undergraduate students using simple memorization tasks. There were 46 participants, 30 of which were monolingual (only knew one language) and 16 of which were multilingual (knew two or more languages). There was found to be no significant difference between the performance of the two groups, with the data generating a p-value of 0.557. This study further suggests related avenues of research and ways in which the study could be improved in the future.

Assessing The Impact Of Lipopolysaccharide On Learning And Memory In Rats, Anahat Luthra

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The immune system and the central nervous system (CNS) have a bi-direction relationship, modulating one another.⁴ Proinflammatory cytokines released from CNS immune cells have an impact on cognitive processes such as learning and memory.¹ Liposaccharide (LPS), a cell wall component of Gram-negative bacteria, which is used to activate proinflammatory cytokine release has been found to impact learning and memory processes, such as in the anticipatory nausea paradigm (ANP).² Anticipatory nausea and vomiting is that which may occur before a chemotherapy treatment session begins in a patient who has had chemotherapy before. It is caused by triggers like …

Effects Of Music Exposure On Autobiographical Memory In Alzheimer's Patients: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Gregory Vance

Honors Theses

The progression of Alzheimer’s disease is primarily characterized by a loss of memory concerning past events, as well as a lack in ability to create new memories. While this spans across many subsets of memory, such as recognition, recall, and autobiographical memory, there seems to be a lesser impact on musical memory in those with Alzheimer’s. Multiple studies have suggested that exposure to music and introduction of music therapy can even improve other aspects of memory in Alzheimer’s patients. This systematic review and meta-analysis sought to examine the relationship between music exposure and autobiographical memory specifically. A pool of electronic …

Flashbulb Memories Among College Students During Covid-19, Sabah Qureshi

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Flashbulb memories are formed through widely shared events that have affected the culture and community. The “flash” in flashbulb memories refers to the specific details that individuals have developed in their memories. The presented research focuses on the specific event of college students at the University of Central Florida (UCF) hearing about university closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This research study sought to identify the variables that have affected the accuracy of flashbulb memories formation regarding the event of college students hearing about university closure because of the pandemic. The variables of the students’ relevance to the university, location, …

Exercise, Cognition, And Cannabis Use In Adolescents, Ileana Pacheco-Colón

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heavy and/or chronic cannabis use has been associated with neurocognitive impairment and decline, often in domains such as memory and executive functioning. On the other hand, exercise has been linked to positive effects on brain and cognitive health across the lifespan, as well as to better substance use outcomes. Despite this, little is known about the ways in which exercise could help prevent or ameliorate adverse cannabis-related outcomes among adolescents.

Through three separate studies, the current dissertation examines interrelations among exercise, cognition, and cannabis use in children and adolescents in an effort to determine whether exercise can prevent or ameliorate …

An Eeg Study On Loneliness And Recognition Memory, Carmen Jia Wen Chek

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Loneliness, the perception of unmet social needs, has been shown to relate to recollection-based recognition deficits, but the relationship between loneliness and recognition memory (i.e., recollection and familiarity) has not been thoroughly examined. The current study hypothesized that more lonely individuals would have lower recognition memory performance, specifically recollection, with smaller ERP parietal old-new effects than less lonely individuals. Forty participants, grouped into less (n = 13) and more (n = 9) lonely groups based on their R-UCLA responses, completed an associative memory task. EEG was used to assess recognition memory effects. Results showed no significant difference in …

What Makes An Image Memorable? Effects Of Encoding On The Mechanism Of Recognition, Asiya Gul

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Memory is undoubtedly one of the most important processes of human cognition. A long line of research suggests that recognition relies on the assessment of two explicit memory phenomena: familiarity and recollection. Researchers who support the Dual Process Signal Detection (DPSD) model of recognition memory link the FN400 component (a negative ERP deflection peaking around 400 ms at frontal electrodes) with familiarity; however, it is currently unclear whether the FN400 reflects familiarity or implicit memory. Three event-related potentials (ERP) studies were conducted to determine whether implicit memory plays a role in setting up encoding strategies, and how these encoding strategies …

Domestication And Cognitive Complexity, David R. Brodbeck, Madeleine I. R. Brodbeck, Keeghan Rosso

Animal Sentience

Marino and Merskin (2019) list a number of tasks that sheep can perform well. As comparative psychologists, we are not surprised by these results. Indeed, many domesticated animal species show similar abilities.

The Relationship Between Cognitive And Neural Bases Of Metamemory Judgments, Alexandra M. Gaynor

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Metamemory monitoring, the process of making subjective assessments of the status of one’s own memory, is crucial to guiding behavior and effective learning. Past cognitive research has shown that subjective confidence judgments are inferential in nature, and based on cues available at the time of the judgment. When confidence is based on cues that are related to objective memory performance, metamemory accuracy is high. However, past studies have shown that metamemory monitoring tends to be inaccurate because individuals base their confidence on information that is not predictive of memory success, such as the fluency with which items were encoded during …

Assessing The Long-Term Sequelae Of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Janna Mantua

Doctoral Dissertations

A mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), also known as a concussion, is defined as an injury that results in an alteration of consciousness or mental status. Previous studies have shown mTBI populations experience a number of chronic (> 1 year) symptoms, such as sleep disturbances (e.g., sleep stage alterations), mood alterations (e.g., depressive symptoms), and cognitive alterations (e.g., poor concentration). The three chapters of this dissertation sought to explore these long-term sequelae and the possible interrelations between them. In the first experiment, sleep-dependent memory consolidation of neutral stimuli was probed in a chronic mTBI sample and a control, uninjured sample. …

The Impact Of Delay On Retrieval Success In The Parietal Memory Network, Nathan Anderson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent work has identified a Parietal Memory Network (PMN), which exhibits regular patterns of activation during memory encoding and retrieval. Among these characteristic patterns, this network displays a strong “retrieval success” effect, showing greater activation for correctlyremembered studied items (hits) compared to correctly-rejected novel items (CRs). To date, most relevant studies have used short retention intervals. Here, we ask if the retrieval success effect seen in the PMN would remain consistent over a delay. Twenty participants underwent fMRI while encoding and recognizing scenes. Greater activity for hits than for correctly-rejected lures within PMN regions was observed after a short delay …

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 …

Learning, Memory, Cognition, And The Question Of Sentience In Fish, Robert Gerlai

Animal Sentience

Evolutionarily conserved features have been demonstrated at many levels of biological organization across a variety of species. Evolutionary conservation may apply to complex behavioral phenomena too. It is thus not inconceivable that a form of sentience does exist even in the lowest order vertebrate taxon, the teleosts. How similar it is to human sentience in its level of complexity or in its multidimensional features is a difficult question, especially from an experimental standpoint, given that even the definition of human sentience is debated. Woodruff attempts a Turing-like test of fish sentience, and lists numerous neuroanatomic, neurophysiological and behavioral similarities between …

Recognition Training For Faces Across Age Gaps, William Blake Erickson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Face recognition is a problem that has theoretical and applied value. However, the fact of facial aging is rarely addressed in research and unmentioned in the major theories of face recognition. Facial aging also has ramifications for missing persons and fugitive cases, confounding attempts by law enforcement to recover these people whose last known images are years or decades out of date. This dissertation reports three studies aimed at measuring baseline age-gap recognition ability and testing various training regimens designed to increase accuracy rates for this unique kind of recognition task.

The Effects Of Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Neuroinflammation On Learning And Forgetting In Juvenile Rats, Michele Barry

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The inability to remember events experienced very early in life is referred to as Infantile Amnesia (IA) and has been observed in both humans and animals. Over the years interest in the phenomenon waned, but has recently increased with the discovery of new neurobiological methods to study brain function (e.g., Callaghan, Li & Richardson, 2014). The neurobiological mechanism behind IA has yet to be determined, but several innovative theories have been developed with these new research methods. The neurogenesis hypothesis theorizes that increased neurogenesis during early development disrupts previously established memories. The hippocampus, an area that mediates both the memory …

Effects Of 17Β-Estradiol On Learning And Memory And Strategy Use During A Hole Board Spatial Navigation Task In Aged Male Rats, Megan Berthiaume

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Treatment with 17β- estradiol has been shown to ameliorate age related deficits in spatial learning and memory as well as to promote the use of an allocentric strategy during spatial navigation. While the majority of research using 17β- estradiol has been done using females rodents, there have been studies showing an improvement in spatial learning and memory and promoted use of allocentric strategies in spatial navigation in males as well. In males testosterone (T) is metabolized into estradiol by aromatase. As circulating levels of T decline with aging there is less available T to be metabolized into estradiol. The current …

Targeted Training Of The Decision Rule Benefits Rule-Guided Behavior In Parkinson’S Disease, Shawn W. Ell

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

The impact of Parkinson’s disease (PD) on rule-guided behavior has received considerable attention in cognitive neuroscience. The majority of research has used PD as a model of dysfunction in fronto-striatal networks, but very few attempts have been made to investigate the possibility of adapting common experimental techniques in an effort to identify the conditions that are most likely to facilitate successful performance. The present study investigated a targeted training paradigm designed to facilitate rule learning and application using rule-based categorization as a model task. Participants received targeted training in which there was no selective-attention demand (i.e., stimuli varied along a …

The Effects Of Handedness And Bilateral Saccadic Eye Movements On False Alarms In Recognition Memory, Lisa Weinberg

Psychology Honors Projects

Handedness can be used as a marker for interhemispheric interaction, which can produce memory benefits. Bilateral saccadic eye movements can be used to manipulate levels of interhemispheric interaction. This study measured the effects of handedness and bilateral saccadic eye movement on memory using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. This study predicted a memory advantage for left-handers and mixed-handers without eye movements and an advantage for right-handers with the eye movements. The results do not support these predictions but do suggest that handedness is a factor in episodic memory performance. The analyses for this study were run using A’ to compare false alarm …