Psychology Commons^™

Prediction-Based Learning And Processing Of Event Knowledge., Ken Mcrae, Kevin S Brown, Jeffrey L Elman

Psychology Publications

Knowledge of common events is central to many aspects of cognition. Intuitively, it seems as though events are linear chains of the activities of which they are comprised. In line with this intuition, a number of theories of the temporal structure of event knowledge have posited mental representations (data structures) consisting of linear chains of activities. Competing theories focus on the hierarchical nature of event knowledge, with representations comprising ordered scenes, and chains of activities within those scenes. We present evidence that the temporal structure of events typically is not well-defined, but it is much richer and more variable both …

Adaptation To Conflict Frequency: Non-Conflict Learning Is Not The Whole Story, Giacomo Spinelli

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the Stroop task, smaller congruency effects (i.e., the color-naming difference between incongruent items, e.g., the word RED in the color blue, and congruent items, e.g., RED in red) are found in conditions in which incongruent items are frequent vs. infrequent. Although the traditional explanation for these “Proportion-Congruent effects” is that attention to task-relevant information is more focused in frequently-conflicting conditions (a process involving adaptation to conflict frequency), Proportion-Congruent paradigms typically have not controlled for the impact of more general learning processes, particularly 1) learning of word-response contingencies (contingency learning), 2) learning about the predictive nature of the stimuli (stimulus …

In Search Of Psychiatric Kinds: Natural Kinds And Natural Classification In Psychiatry, Nicholas Slothouber

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In recent years both philosophers and scientists have asked whether or not our current kinds of mental disorder—e.g., schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder—are natural kinds; and, moreover, whether or not the search for natural kinds of mental disorder is a realistic desideratum for psychiatry. In this dissertation I clarify the sense in which a kind can be said to be “natural” or “real” and argue that, despite a few notable exceptions, kinds of mental disorder cannot be considered natural kinds. Furthermore, I contend that psychopathological phenomena do not cluster together into kinds in the way that paradigmatic natural kinds (e.g., chemical …

How Do Humans Process Magnitudes? An Examination Of The Neural And Cognitive Underpinnings Of Symbols, Quantities, And Size In Adults And Children, Helen Moriah Sokolowski

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

A striking way that humans differ from other species is our unique ability to represent and manipulate symbols. This ability to process numerical magnitudes symbolically (e.g., ‘three’, ‘3’) is widely thought to be supported by an ancient system that evolved to process nonsymbolic numerical magnitudes (i.e., quantities). In this thesis, I present four empirical studies to uncover whether symbolic representations are indeed supported by the system that evolved to process quantities, or if symbolic representations are sub-served by a similar but ultimately distinct system.

In experiments 1 and 2, I investigate how the adult brain processes symbols and quantities using …

Cognitive, Neural, And Educational Contributions To Mathematics Performance: A Closer Look At The Roles Of Numerical And Spatial Skills, Zachary C.K. Hawes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The principal aims of this thesis were to (1) provide new insights into the cognitive and neural associations between spatial and mathematical abilities, and (2) translate and apply findings from the field of numerical cognition to the teaching and learning of early mathematics.

Study 1 investigated the structure and interrelations amongst cognitive constructs related to numerical, spatial, and executive function (EF) skills and mathematics achievement in 4- to 11-year old children (N=316). Results revealed evidence of highly related, yet separable, cognitive constructs. Together, numerical, spatial, and EF skills explained 84% of the variance in mathematics achievement (controlling for chronological age). …

Using Meditation To Improve Measures Of Attention In Older Adults, Sabrina Ford

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Age-related cognitive decline greatly impacts quality of life for older adults. Previous research has indicated that meditation may act as a neuroprotective factor to prevent age-related cognitive decline. This thesis sought to replicate previous findings and investigate if a four-week meditation intervention would improve sustained attention. Participants 60 years and older (n=27, 17 female) were recruited and assigned to a focused-attention (FA) meditation or relaxation group which met for four weeks, three times a week. Resting-state EEG was used to collect individual alpha peak frequency (iAPF) and frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA). The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) was also …

Interpreting Intentions: Evidence For Cross-Language Influences In Bilinguals, Maziyah Mohamed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In Malay, accidental actions are marked with the prefix -ter. Malay speakers typically assume a deliberate intent when the prefix is absent. I investigated whether Malay-English bilinguals are more likely than English monolinguals to interpret actions in English sentences as deliberate when they are not clearly indicated as being accidental. In Experiment 1, Malay speakers completed a recognition memory task. The results showed that Malay speakers remembered unintentionality accurately. This accuracy in remembering unintentionality suggests that Malay speakers encode the intentions of others. In Experiment 2, participants completed a cross-modal priming task. They first heard scenarios in which a …

Examining The Neural Correlates Of Vocabulary And Grammar Learning Using Fnirs, Leah Brainin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Adults struggle with learning language components involving categorical relations such as grammar while achieving higher proficiency in vocabulary. The cognitive and neural mechanisms modulating this learning difference remain unclear. The present thesis investigated behavioural and neural differences between vocabulary and grammar processing in adults using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS). Participants took part in an artificial language learning paradigm consisting of novel singular and plural words paired with images of common objects. Findings revealed higher accuracy scores and faster response times on semantic vocabulary judgement trials compared to grammar judgement trials. Singular vocabulary judgement was associated with neural activity in part …

Characterizing The Familiar-Voice Benefit To Intelligibility, Beatriz Ysabel Domingo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Everyday listening often occurs in the presence of background noise. Listeners with normal hearing can often successfully segregate competing sounds from the signal of interest. To do this, listeners exploit a variety of cues to facilitate the separation of simultaneous sounds into separate sources, and group sequential sounds into intelligible speech streams. One of the cues that has been shown to be an effective facilitator of speech intelligibility is familiarity with a talker’s voice. A recent study by Johnsrude et al. (2013) measured speech intelligibility of a naturally familiar voice (i.e., that of a long-term spouse) and showed a …

Late Positive Complex In Event-Related Potentials Tracks Memory Signals When They Are Decision Relevant., Haopei Yang, Geoffrey Laforge, Bobby Stojanoski, Emily S Nichols, Ken Mcrae, Stefan Köhler

Psychology Publications

The Late Positive Complex (LPC) is an Event-Related Potential (ERP) consistently observed in recognition-memory paradigms. In the present study, we investigated whether the LPC tracks the strength of multiple types of memory signals, and whether it does so in a decision dependent manner. For this purpose, we employed judgements of cumulative lifetime exposure to object concepts, and judgements of cumulative recent exposure (i.e., frequency judgements) in a study-test paradigm. A comparison of ERP signatures in relation to degree of prior exposure across the two memory tasks and the study phase revealed that the LPC tracks both types of memory signals, …

Cross-Linguistic Effects Of Intention Recognition In Malay Bilinguals, Maziyah Mohamed, Debra Jared

Western Research Forum

Does the language we speak influence the way we interpret intentions of others? Prior literature has shown that obligatory markers in a language may influence the way we think. In Malay texts, accidental actions are marked using a prefix. Malay speakers are, thus, quick to identify the accidental actions of others. Conversely, it may be that Malay speakers often interpret intentions as deliberate given a more ambiguous context where the prefix is absent. The goal of the current study was to determine whether this way of interpreting one’s intentions of others extends to English texts for Malay-English bilinguals. In Study …

The Effects Of Acute Aerobic Exercise And Caffeine On Working Memory And Caffeine Withdrawal, Anisa Morava

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Caffeine is one of the most widely used psychoactive substances worldwide. Although caffeine elicits cognitive benefits, there are concerns regarding caffeine’s effects on certain health domains. Acute, aerobic exercise has been shown to improve cognition. The effects of aerobic exercise in comparison to caffeine on working memory (WM) in non-caffeine and caffeine consumers remains unknown. Furthermore, the effects of aerobic exercise in reducing caffeine withdrawal symptoms has yet to be examined. In Phase I, twenty-nine non-caffeine and thirty caffeine consumers completed a WM assessment, followed by aerobic exercise and caffeine administration (counterbalanced). In Phase II, twenty-five caffeine consumers underwent a …

The Effects Of Linguistic Labels On Object Categorization And Perception, Xuan Pan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The linguistic relativity hypothesis (Whorf, 1956) claims that speakers of different languages perceive and conceptualize the world differently. Language-thought interaction is likely to be more complex in bilinguals because they have two languages that could influence their cognitive and perceptual processes.Lupyan’s (2012) Label-feedback Hypothesis proposes a mechanism underpinning language-thought interactions, arguingthat linguistic labels affect our conceptual and perceptual representations through top-down feedback.This thesis tested the Label-feedback Hypothesis by capitalizing on an interesting feature of Chinese. In English, most nouns do not provide linguistic clues to their categories (an exception issunflower), whereas in Chinese, some nouns provide explicit category …

Individual Differences In The Formation Of Cognitive Maps Based On Different Environments, Iuliia Kositcina

Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

Individual differences in the ability to build a mental cognitive map of an unfamiliar environment have been studied using both real-world environments (e.g., Ishikawa & Montello, 2006) and virtual environments (VEs) such as Silcton (Weisberg et al., 2014). The current study investigated whether the accuracy of a person’s cognitive map of their real-world, familiar environment was associated with the cognitive map they formed of an unfamiliar virtual environment in the lab. Forty-nine female undergraduate students provided frequently visited locations in their city of residence and explored the Silcton VE. They then completed direction estimation tasks that assessed the accuracy of …

Influence Of Mood On Language Use In Dyadic Social Interaction, Avery Keith

Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

This study investigated how individuals’ mood influences changes in spoken language during dyadic social interaction. Twenty-eight female undergraduate students completed mood assessments, a self-monitoring questionnaire, and viewed a short film clip that induced them into either a positive, negative, or neutral mood. Each dyad engaged in a conversation that was audio-recorded. Participants’ use of affect and positive emotional words was associated with the corresponding usage of their conversational partner, suggesting that speakers mimicked their partners’ language style. Speakers also used higher emotional tone in their first minute of speech after conversing with someone in a positive mood, suggesting participants’ mood …

Learning The Spatial Layout Of A New Real-World Environment, Delaney Spencer

Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

Cognitive maps are mental representations of the configuration of landmarks from an environment (Tolman, 1948; O’Keefe & Nadel, 1978). Broad individual differences in the accuracy of cognitive maps exist, however, it is not yet clear what underlies these differences (Weisberg et al., 2013). In the current study, participants first completed a spatial perceptive-taking task called the Spatial Orientation Test (SOT; Hegarty & Waller, 2004). They then were taken on a guided walking tour of an unfamiliar area of campus where they were asked to remember the names and locations of eight target landmarks. Participants’ ability to create a cognitive map …

Media Multitasking In University Students: Relatedness Of Video To Learning Content, Maryum Khan

Brescia Psychology Undergraduate Honours Theses

This study examines the impact of multitasking on memory. Specifically, how the relatedness of a medium affects learning. The media used for the purposes of the current study were documentaries. The study consisted of 36 students recruited from Brescia University College. Participants completed a set of questionnaires which included their demographics, academic information, computer/internet usage, and their perceived ability to multitask. They then completed a reading comprehension task while the documentary was played in the background. Although there was no significant effect, participants scored higher on the first part of the multiple-choice test which suggests that they understood the general …

Enhanced Explicit Vocabulary Learning Compared To Implicit Grammar Learning In Adults, Leah Brainin, Marc Joanisse

Western Research Forum

Compared to young children, the language learning process is much more difficult and less successful in adulthood. Little is known about how non-linguistic cognitive processes contribute to these age-dependent differences. We argue that language learning involves both explicit declarative memory processes to learn vocabulary and implicit procedural memory processes to learn grammatical patterns. In this preliminary study, we aimed to quantify the relative contribution of declarative versus procedural learning in adults via an artificial language learning task. Participants ages 18 to 29 heard novel singular and plural words associated with images of common objects. The grammar of the language consisted …

Multimodal Event Knowledge In Online Sentence Comprehension: The Influence Of Visual Context On Anticipatory Eye Movements, Valentina Benedettini, Pier Marco Bertinetto, Alessandro Lenci, Ken Mcrae

Psychology Publications

People predict incoming words during online sentence comprehension based on their knowledge of real-world events that is cued by preceding linguistic contexts. We used the visual world paradigm to investigate how event knowledge activated by an agent-verb pair is integrated with perceptual information about the referent that fits the patient role. During the verb time window participants looked significantly more at the referents that are expected given the agent-verb pair. Results are consistent with the assumption that event-based knowledge involves perceptual properties of typical participants. The knowledge activated by the agent is compositionally integrated with knowledge cued by the verb …