Psychology Commons^™

Influence Of Feedback Modality On Motor Sequence Learning, Heba Hussian

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

Throughout our lifespan we obtain and refine our motor skills with the use of sensory feedback, such as learning how to play a piano. Research has suggested visual feedback is more advantageous to improve motor learning compared to other types of feedback. However, it is unclear if these advantages stem from the feedback being more relevant to the task. We developed an experimental design that tests the influence of visual, auditory and haptic feedback when acquiring a sequence learning task. The study uses a piano-like task, and therefore we propose that learning is enhanced by auditory and haptic feedback, …

Do Visual-Olfactory Associations Strengthen The Real-Object Preference?, Carly V. Goodman

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Current knowledge of human object perception relies heavily on studies using images as proxies for real objects. However, real objects are fundamentally different from images. For example, real objects have multisensory properties while images do not. Given that research shows that people look longer at real objects than images of objects, known as the real object preference, and that people look longer at objects when they are presented along with an associated smell, the present pilot study aimed to assess whether visual-olfactory associations contribute to the real-object preference. The present study used a within-subjects design including four participants. Participants …

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation To Assess Motor System Excitability Fluctuations During Auditory Anticipation And Beat Perception, Johannes G.P Teselink

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Humans tend to spontaneously move to the regular beat of musical rhythm. Beat perception is the tendency to sense and anticipate the regular time positions (beats) that movements synchronize with. The neural motor system plays an important role in beat perception, but the dynamics of excitability in the motor system associated with beat perception have not been characterized. This project investigated motor system excitability fluctuations using transcranial magnetic stimulation and electromyography during perception of beat-based and non-beat-based rhythms. We applied single-pulse TMS over the left primary motor cortex of healthy participants as they listened to three types of rhythms that …

Where Do I Know That? A Distributed Multimodal Model Of Semantic Knowledge, Kevin M. Stubbs

Undergraduate Honors Theses

As computers have grown more and more powerful, computational modeling has become an increasingly valuable tool for evaluating real world findings. Likewise, brain imaging has become increasingly powerful as is evidenced by recent fMRI findings which support the exciting possibility that semantic memory is segregated by modality in the brain (Goldberg et al., 2006b). The present study utilizes connectionist modeling to put the distributed multi-modal framework of semantic memory to the test, and represents the next step forward in the line of sensory-functional models. This model, based around the McRae et al. (2005) feature production norms, includes individual implementations of …