Psychology Commons^™

Why Is It That Computers Still Can't Do What Our Brains Can?, Marvin Minsky

IMSA Great Minds Program ®

Why is it that computers still cannot do what our brains can? Marvin Minsky has been studying this problem for over 20 years, and he believes it is because computers are shackled by constraints we place on them. He believes, by changing the instructions we give them, computers will be able to have motivations and feelings ... and consciousness! What are these constraints, and how will removing them release the power of computers?

Superior Episodic Memory Is Associated With Interhemispheric Processing, Ruth E. Propper, Stephen D. Christman

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The dependence of episodic memories on interhemispheric processing was tested. In Experiment 1, positive familial sinistrality (FS+; e.g., the presence of left-handed relatives) was associated with superior episodic memory and inferior implicit memory in comparison with negative familial sinistrality (i.e., FS-). This reflected a greater degree of interhemispheric interaction in FS+ participants, which was hypothesized as facilitating episodic memory. In Experiment 2, the authors directly manipulated inter- versus intrahemispheric processing using tests of episodic (recognition) and semantic (lexical decision) memory in which letter strings were presented twice within trial blocks. Semantic memory was superior when the 2nd presentation went to …

The Making Of A Textbook On Behavior Analysis And Autism A Behavior Analytic Approach, Sebastien Bosch

Dissertations

After deciding that a need existed for writing a textbook on autism from a behavior analytic perspective, Dr. Malott and I developed Behavior Analysis. Autism and Related Disabilities (BAARD) for use by the students enrolled in the autism practicum at Western Michigan University. As in a circular relationship, the practicum students evaluated and guided the subsequent revisions of the manuscript, and the revisions influenced the subsequent evaluations. BAARD covers all the principles and concepts of behavior analysis that are relevant to treatments and issues in autism and related disabilities and numerous treatments and phenomena specific to developmental disabilities.

During its …

Chronic Restraint Stress Enhances Radial Arm Maze Performance In Female Rats, Rachel E. Bowman, Mark C. Zrull, Victoria N. Luine

Psychology Faculty Publications

Effects of chronic restraint stress (21 and 28 days) on physiological and behavioral parameters in female rats were examined. Total (bound and free) and free corticosterone (CORT) levels were measured at different time points during the stress period. Higher total CORT levels were observed in stressed rats during the stress period but returned to baseline at 15 days poststress. Additionally, free CORT levels decreased across the stress period. Estrous cyclicity was monitored daily in all animals. Stress had no apparent effects on estrous cyclicity, in rats with either normal length or elongated estrous cycles, but stressed females gained less weight …

Inside The Judicial Mind, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The quality of the judicial system depends upon the quality of decisions that judges make. Even the most talented and dedicated judges surely commit occasional mistakes, but the public understandably expects judges to avoid systematic errors. This expectation, however, might be unrealistic. Psychologists who study human judgment and choice have learned that people frequently fall prey to cognitive illusions that produce systematic errors in judgment. Even though judges are experienced, well-trained, and highly motivated decision makers, they might be vulnerable to cognitive illusions. We report the results of an empirical study designed to determine whether five common cognitive illusions (anchoring, …

Is Evolutionary Analysis Of Law Science Or Storytelling?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In recent years, some legal scholars have argued that legal scholarship could benefit from a greater reliance on theories of human behavior that arise from biological evolution. These scholars contend that reliance on biological evolution would successfully combine the rigor of economics with the scientific aspects of psychology. Complex legal systems, however, are uniquely human. Law has always been the product of cognitive processes that are unique to humans and that developed as a response to an environment that no longer exists. Consequently, the evolutionary development of the cognitive mechanisms upon which law depends cannot be rigorously modeled or studied …

The Impact Of Psychological Reactance And Desire For Control On Perceptions Of Common Elements Of Cognitive, Affective, And Behavioral *Change, Morgan Edward Williams

Doctoral Dissertations

The present study was designed to assess the impact of two dispositional variables, psychological reactance and desire for control, on individual perceptions of common elements of psychological change. These common elements represent cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of psychological change. The study tested whether individuals with different levels of psychological reactance and desire for control systematically differed in their perception of the importance of elements relevant to psychological change. Participants (N = 420) completed three self-report assessment instruments: (a) the Common Elements of Change Questionnaire, (b) Hong's Psychological Reactance Scale, and (c) the Desirability of Control Scale. As hypothesized, …

Do Chimpanzees Ave Expectations About Reward Presentation Following Correct Performance On Computerized Cognitive Testing?, Michael J. Beran

Language Research Center

To investigate whether 2 chimpanzees had expectations regarding the outcome of their responses on a computerized task, food reward that typically was given for correct responses was withheld on some correctly completed trials. There were two types of these probe trials: those which the chimpanzees performed correctly on their own, and those during which the chimpanzees needed the experimenter's assistance to complete the trial correctly. For both chimpanzees, reward procurement behaviors directed toward the experimenter occurred significantly more often on correctly completed probe trials than on incorrectly completed trials. This indicated increased expectation of food reward on correct trials as …

Lexical Failure And Gesture In Second Language Development, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

Second language acquisition can be defined as the acquisition of another language after the age of three or four (Klein, 1986). It involves the learning and mastery of the morphology, syntax, phonology, and lexicon of the new language. The process by which learners acquire a second language is complex, gradual, nonlinear, and dynamic (Larsen- Freeman, 1991). Depending on their stage of second language development, learners may have difficulty retrieving words, or they may not know words at all and exhibit lexical failure.

Butterworth and Hadar (1989, 1997) have proposed that iconic gestures arise when speakers have a lexical retrieval problem …

The Cognitive And Motivational Effects Of Imagery Training: A Matter Of Perspective, Jennifer L. Cumming, Diane M. Ste-Marie

Jennifer Cumming

No abstract provided.

The Relationship Between Receptive Vocabulary And Letter Recognition, James Bennett

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The West Virginia Educare Program has randomly chosen 150 children from 2 ½ to 5 years of age to participate in an academic readiness study. These children came from a 6 county pilot community program collaborative, including the counties of Cabell, Wayne, Monongalia, Roane, Upshur, Webster, and Summers. The Bracken-R, the PPVT-III, and Carolina Curriculum for Pre-Schoolers with special needs were used to assess all subjects. For this study, the letter recognition subset of the Bracken-R and the raw score of the PPVT-III were used to determine if a correlation exists between receptive vocabulary and letter recognition. This study found …

Cognitive And Emotional Variables In Childhood Anxiety, Robin L. Browning

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Research was conducted on 60 subjects from mental health agencies in order to determine that childhood anxiety and depression can be differentiated. The 60 subjects were given the CDI and the RCMAS self-report measures in order to be placed in groups. This allowed the subjects to be divided into 4 groups: Anxious, Anxious/Depressed, Depressed and Not Anxious/Not Depressed. The 4 groups were then given 2 additional self-report measures, the STAIC and FSSC -R to measure whether Anxious and the Anxious/Depressed children exhibited more fears and anxious traits than did the Depressed and Not Anxious/Not Depressed children. Analyses of variance revealed …

Playing “Sherlock Holmes”: Enhancing Students’ Understanding Of Prejudice And Stereotyping, Ellen N. Junn, L. Grier, D. Behrens

Office of the Provost Scholarship

A very simple, innovative classroom exercise designed to heighten students' understanding of stereotyping and prejudice is described. Students' evaluation of the exercise was very positive. Students reported greater awareness and understanding of their own and others’ stereotypes and prejudice and of the negative effects of prejudice, with females more than males reporting enhanced awareness of others’ stereotyping. Students also rated the exercise as very enjoyable. There was a trend among Non-White more than White students to report that the exercise helped show them how to reduce stereotypes and more Non-White than White students offered solutions for reducing prejudice that involved …

Time-Shifted Rationality And The Law Of Law's Leverage: Behavioral Economics Meets Behavioral Biology, Owen D. Jones

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

A flood of recent scholarship explores legal implications of seemingly irrational behaviors by invoking cognitive psychology and notions of bounded rationality. In this article, I argue that advances in behavioral biology have largely overtaken existing notions of bounded rationality, revealing them to be misleadingly imprecise - and rooted in outdated assumptions that are not only demonstrably wrong, but also wrong in ways that have material implications for subsequent legal conclusions. This can be remedied. Specifically, I argue that behavioral biology offers three things of immediate use. First, behavioral biology can lay a foundation for both revising bounded rationality and fashioning …

Temporal Response Of The Human Visual System To Suprathreshold Luminance And Opponent Colour Contrast Gratings, Melanie Bucking

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The goal of the present study was to characterize the temporal processing of both suprathreshold luminance and opponent-colour defined contrast in the human visual system. We used a detection task in five experiments; following a 900 Hz, 2-cycle tone, observers were presented with a sinusoidal grating stimulus. The interval separating the waming tone and the presentation of the grating was manipulated to determine the influences of attentional dwell time in a cross-modal task. This theory states that the first of two successive events will interfere with the processing of the second event. In all four luminance experiments the gratings were …

Inside The Judicial Mind, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The quality of the judicial system depends upon the quality of decisions that judges make. Even the most talented and dedicated judges surely make occasional mistakes, but the public understandably expects judges to avoid systematic errors. This expectation, however, might be unrealistic. Psychologists who study human judgment and choice have learned that people frequently fall prey to cognitive illusions that produce systematic errors in judgment. Even though judges are experienced, well-trained, and highly motivated decision makers, they might be vulnerable to cognitive illusions. We report the results of an empirical study designed to determine whether five common cognitive illusions (anchoring, …

Postural Balance And Acceleration Threshold Detection For Anterior Horizontal Translation In Diabetic And Non-Diabetic Elderly, Venkatesh Balasubramanian

Doctoral Dissertations

Slips and falls, and even the fear of failing, can represent a major medical and functional deterrent to living independently, especially among the elderly population. Various groups of elders are at known risk for falling including, but not limited to, those with vestibular dysfunction, those with low visual acuity including visual neuropathies, and those with peripheral neuropathies. The first two groups are fairly well studied, but the relationship between the level of peripheral neuropathy and extent of falling has received relatively less attention.

In this study, using sliding linear investigative platform for analyzing lower limb stability (SLIP-FALLS), the psychophysical thresholds …

Playing “Sherlock Holmes”: Enhancing Students’ Understanding Of Prejudice And Stereotyping, Ellen N. Junn, L. Grier, D. Behrens

Ellen N. Junn

A very simple, innovative classroom exercise designed to heighten students' understanding of stereotyping and prejudice is described. Students' evaluation of the exercise was very positive. Students reported greater awareness and understanding of their own and others’ stereotypes and prejudice and of the negative effects of prejudice, with females more than males reporting enhanced awareness of others’ stereotyping. Students also rated the exercise as very enjoyable. There was a trend among Non-White more than White students to report that the exercise helped show them how to reduce stereotypes and more Non-White than White students offered solutions for reducing prejudice that involved …

Unusual Patterns Of Thought As Related To Significant Past Relationships, Attachment, And Ego Defense Styles, Sharon M. Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Older Adults And Anxiety : The Role Of Natural Imagery In Anxiety Reduction, Catherine Griffiths

Theses : Honours

The present study aimed to examine whether visual contact with natural imagery would result in reduced levels of anxiety in older people, when compared with the effects of urban imagery. Thirty-three older adults between the ages of 61 and 91 participated in this study. Thirteen of the participants were male and 20 were female. In a partial replication and extension of the work of Ulrich et al. (1991), the participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups - a nature video group. urban video group or control group. All participants initially completed the state form of Spielberger’s (1983) State-Trait …

Timing Differences: The Modality Effect And Filled Interval Illusion With Rats And Pigeons, Andrew Miki

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The theoretical implications of the Scalar Timing Theory (STT) and the Mixed Memory Model were used as a paradigm to investigate the effects of stimulus properties on the psychological representation of time. Experiment 1 failed to demonstrate a Modality Effect in two sets of psychophysical tests using filled and empty intervals. Experiment 2 provided no evidence for a Filled Interval Illusion but the results from the acquisition phase and psychophysical tests indicated that, on some trials, rats forgot the presentation of the first marker of an empty interval. In Experiment 3, an Empty Interval Illusion was reliably demonstrated in three …

The Relationship Of Intrinsic Motivation, Cognitive Style And Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Creativity In Scientists, Helene Katz

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Experiences Of Relapse In Smoking Cessation, Natalie Kay D'Abrew

Theses : Honours

Relapse is regarded as a common occurrence, and it is known that smokers make an average of three to four attempts to cease smoking before maintaining smoking cessation. Thus, relapse continues to be a problem for interventions for smoking cessation. This qualitative study explored the experiences of relapse in smoking cessation. Fourteen participants, seven maintainers and seven relapsers aged between 21-80 participated in the study, which was facilitated by a semi-structured interview format. Several themes and sub-themes were generated under the categories of strategies, reasons for relapse, and reasons for cessation. The themes highlighted that there were differences between the …

The Effects Of Cognitive And Affective Persuasion On Supporting The Death Penalty, Jason Wayne Hortin

Masters Theses

This thesis examined how participants with cognitively based favorable attitudes toward the death penalty were influenced by cognitive or affective arguments that criticized the death penalty. College students' general attitudes toward the death penalty were measured using a Likert-type scale. They were then asked to write out their thoughts and/or feelings about the death penalty. Some of the participants received two cognitive arguments while others received two affective arguments against the death penalty. After reading these counterarguments, the participants' positions and thoughts/feelings were once again measured.

Only participants with cognitively based attitudes that were supportive of the death penalty were …

Errors In Pigeons' Memory For Number: Effects Of Iti And Di Illumination, Christopher W. Hope

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In Experiment 1 all pigeons were trained to discriminate 2 flashes of hopper light in 4 sec from 8 flashes in 4 sec, at a 0 sec delay. One group of pigeons experienced dark lTl’s (Group Dark) while the other experienced an illuminated lTl (Group Light). All birds were then tested with dark delays of 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 sec. Analysis showed a significant bias to respond to the comparison correct for small at extended delays, with no difference between groups. In Experiment 2 training was identical to that in Experiment l except that a 5 sec baseline …

Cerebral Substrates Of Musical Imagery, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

Musical imagery refers to the experience of "replaying" music by imagining it inside the head. Whereas visual imagery has been extensively studied, few people have investigated imagery in the auditory domain. This article reviews a program of research that has tried to characterize auditory imagery for music using both behavioral and cognitive neuroscientific tools. I begin by describing some of my behavioral studies of the mental analogues of musical tempo, pitch, and temporal extent. I then describe four studies using three techniques that examine the correspondence of brain involvement in actually perceiving vs. imagining familiar music. These involve one lesion …

Distinguishing Natural Language Processes On The Basis Of Fmri-Measured Brain Activation, Francisco Pereira, Marcel Just, Tom Mitchell

Marcel Adam Just

No abstract provided.

Mental Rotation Of Objects Retrieved From Memory: An Fmri Study Of Spatial Processing, Marcel Just, Patricia Carpenter, Mandy Maguire, Vaibhav Diwadkar, Stephanie Mcmains

Marcel Adam Just

No abstract provided.

Age And Neuropsychological Status Following Exposure To Violent Nonimpact Acceleration Forces In Mvas, James Sweeney, Andrew Johnson

Andrew M. Johnson

Performance on the Halstead-ReitanNeuropsychological Test Battery (HRB) was analyzed for 33 ind viduals, aged 20 to 69, who had been subjected to violent aceeleration forces in motor vehicle accidents . Age was considered as a continuous variable and correlated with single and compos ite HRB measures. With the one exception of the Left Neuropsychological Deficit Scale (NDS) score, agere lated de cline was consistently demonstrated by com positeHRB scores (i.e., Gen eralNDS, Right NDS, Level of Performance NDS, Pathognomonic SignNDS, Pattern NDS, Right-Left Differ enceNDS, and Halstead Impairment Index). In contrast, most single non-composite HRB measures did not refleet a …

Interdependence Of Non-Overlapping Cortical Systems In Dual Cognitive Tasks, Marcel Adam Just, Patricia A. Carpenter, Timothy A. Keller, Lisa Emery, Holly Zajac, Keith R. Thulborn

Marcel Adam Just

No abstract provided.