Psychology Commons^™

College Students' Relationship With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder And Learning Accommodations At The University Of Nebraska-Lincoln, Brianna Danehey, Kim Hansen Dr., Chelsea Witt Dr.

Honors Theses

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can provide many challenges for college students due to difficulties focusing, multi-tasking, and staying organized. Colleges are required to offer academic accommodations to students with disabilities in an attempt to provide students with an equitable learning environment. However, accommodations may be ineffective if they are highly unattainable, unused by the student once granted, or hindered by university faculty.

The objective of this study was to identify barriers to receiving effective and beneficial academic accommodations for individuals with ADHD at the University level and to provide insight into college students' knowledge and relationships relating to the …

Correlation Of The Anterior Salience Network With Attention: A Resting-State Fmri Analysis, Matthew Brooks

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Background: Some studies have broadened our understanding of attention while other studies have used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) analyses to identify brain regions that are functionally connected and may be associated with salience processing. This thesis sought to examine the relationship between the anterior salience network and attentional control. The current study hypothesized that resting-state functional connectivity between regions of the anterior salience network would be associated with attentional control ability. Methods: Forty-eight college-aged students completed the affective Stroop task to assess attentional regulation ability. Accuracy on trials of the task was examined in correlation with resting-state functional …

Effects Of Mindfulness Meditation On Selective, Sustained Attention, Brain Neural Oscillations, And Short-Term Memory, Anamaria Guzman

Honors Theses

The following extended literature review and research proposal study started initially as a complete research proposal but, due to the challenges COVID-19 has brought, it has become a stand-alone piece of work without data collection. The goal is to synthesize a broad range of literature and previous research on mindfulness meditation and its effects on attention, memory, and brain activity and thus, offering a new perspective and a proposed research path on this subject. This proposed research study, besides previous studies, indicates that mindfulness meditation is expected to improve and enhance selective and sustained attention, which results in better attentional …

Verbal Descriptions Of Cue Direction Affect Object Desirability, Jason Tipples, Mike Dodd, Jordan Grubaugh, Alan Kingstone

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Approach-avoidance behaviors are observed across a broad range of species. For humans, we tend move toward things we like, and away from things we dislike. Previous research tested whether repeatedly shifting visuo-spatial attention toward an object in response to eye gaze cues can increase liking for that object. Here, we tested whether a gaze-liking effect can occur for verbal descriptions of looking behavior without shifts of attention. Also, we tested the gaze specificity hypothesis – that the liking effect is specific to gaze cues – by comparing the effect of different types of cue (pointing gestures and arrow cues). In …

Attentional Demands Of Executive Function Tasks In Indoor And Outdoor Settings: Behavioral And Neuroelectrical Evidence, Julia C. Torquati, Anne R. Schutte, John Kiat

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

This study explored the influence of green environments on children’s cognitive functions by using an experimental, within-subjects design to compare children’s neural responses as they engaged in assessments of attention, inhibitory control, and spatial working memory in two different environments: a natural outdoor area and an indoor laboratory room. Ten children ages 6 to 11 years (M= 9.3; SD= 1.5) participated. Children performed significantly better on the spatial working memory task outdoors compared to indoors. There were no significant differences in attention or inhibitory control, but two markers of neurological activity were significantly larger indoors than outdoors, suggesting that more …

Global/Local Processing In Incidental Perception Of Hierarchical Structure, Mark S. Mills

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The goal of the current thesis is to provide a framework for investigating and understanding visual processing of hierarchical structure (i.e., local parts nested in global wholes, such as trees nested in forests) under incidental processing conditions—that is, where processing of information at global and local levels is both uninformative (cannot aid task performance) and task-irrelevant (need not be processed to perform the task). To do so, a novel method combining two widely-used paradigms (spatial cueing and compound stimulus paradigms) is used for implicitly probing observers’ perceptual representations over the course of processing. This compound arrow cueing paradigm was used …

Which Way Is Which? Examining Symbolic Control Of Attention With Compound Arrow Cues, Mark S. Mills, Michael Dodd

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Spatial symbols can generate attentional biases toward peripheral locations compatible with the symbol’s meaning. An important question concerns how one symbol is selected when competing symbols are present. Studies examining this issue for spatially distinct symbols have suggested that selection depends on the task goals. In the present study, we examined whether the influence of competing symbolic stimuli (arrows) at different levels of structure on attentional control also depends on the task goals. Participants made simple detection responses to a peripheral target preceded by a spatially uninformative compound arrow (global arrow composed of local arrows). In addition, participants were required …

Obama Cares About Visuo-Spatial Attention: Perception Of Political Figures Moves Attention And Determines Gaze Direction, Mark S. Mills, Kevin B. Smith, John R. Hibbing, Michael D. Dodd

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Processing an abstract concept such as political ideology by itself is difficult but becomes easier when a background situation contextualizes it. Political ideology within American politics, for example, is commonly processed using space metaphorically, i.e., the political “left” and “right” (referring to Democrat and Republican views, respectively), presumably to provide a common metric to which abstract features of ideology can be grounded and understood. Commonplace use of space as metaphor raises the question of whether an inherently non-spatial stimulus (e.g., picture of the political “left” leader, Barack Obama) can trigger a spatially-specific response (e.g., attentional bias toward “left” regions of …

The Effects Of Social Anxiety And State Anxiety On Visual Attention: Testing The Vigilance–Avoidance Hypothesis, J. Suzanne Singh, Michelle C. Capozzoli, Michael Dodd, Debra Hope

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

A growing theoretical and research literature suggests that trait and state social anxiety can predict attentional patterns in the presence of emotional stimuli. The current study adds to this literature by examining the effects of state anxiety on visual attention and testing the vigilance– avoidance hypothesis, using a method of continuous visual attentional assessment. Participants were 91 undergraduate college students with high or low trait fear of negative evaluation (FNE), a core aspect of social anxiety, who were randomly assigned to either a high or low state anxiety condition. Participants engaged in a free view task in which pairs of …

Impact Of Urban Nature On Executive Functioning In Early And Middle Childhood, Anne R. Schutte, Julia C. Torquati, Heidi L. Beattie

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

According to attention restoration theory, directed attention can become fatigued and then be restored by spending time in a restorative environment. This study examined the restorative effects of nature on children’s executive functioning. Sevento 8-year-olds (school aged, n = 34) and 4- to 5-year-olds (preschool, n = 33) participated in two sessions in which they completed an activity to fatigue attention, then walked along urban streets (urban walk) in one session and in a park-like area (nature walk) in another session, and finally completed assessments of working memory, inhibitory control, and attention. Children responded faster on the attention task after …

Parent Vs. Teacher Ratings Of Children’S Shyness As Predictors Of Language And Attention Skills, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Amanda Prokasky, Xiaoqing Tu, Scott R. Frohn, Kate Sirota, Victoria J. Molfese

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Shyness in childhood has been linked to multiple adjustment outcomes, including poor peer relations, internalizing problems, and clinical anxiety. However, shyness does not consistently emerge as a negative predictor of children’s success. This incongruity may stem, in part, from variations in the operationalization and measurement of shyness in different studies. Researchers often combine parent and teacher ratings of shyness, but correlations between parent and teacher reports are consistently small to medium. The purpose of this study is to examine parent and teacher ratings of shyness as they predict language and attention skills in preschool children, and explore discrepancies between parent …

Visual Search And Attention In Blue Jays (Cyanocitta Cristata): Associative Cuing And Sequential Priming, Kazuhiro Goto, Alan B. Bond, Marianna Burks, Alan C. Kamil

Alan Bond Publications

Visual search for complex natural targets requires focal attention, either cued by predictive stimulus associations or primed by a representation of the most recently detected target. Because both processes can focus visual attention, cuing and priming were compared in an operant search task to evaluate their relative impacts on performance and to determine the nature of their interaction in combined treatments. Blue jays were trained to search for pairs of alternative targets among distractors. Informative or ambiguous color cues were provided before each trial, and targets were presented either in homogeneous blocked sequences or in constrained random order. Initial task …