Psychology Commons^™

The Life Of An Unknown Assassin: Leon Czolgosz And The Death Of William Mckinley, Cary Federman

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The purpose of this essay is to examine the discourses that surrounded the life of Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of President William McKinley. The gaps in Czolgosz’s life, his peculiar silences, his poor health and the ambiguity and thinness of his confession, rather than taken as instances of mental and physical distress, have, instead, been understood as signs of a revolutionary anarchistic assassin. Czolgosz is an expression of a cultural tradition in somatic form. I argue that the discursive construction of criminality, already present in the late nineteenth century within the medical and human sciences, is what shaped Czolgosz’s life …

Learned Attention In Younger And Older Adults, Jared M. Holder

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A relatively new phenomenon in learning research called highlighting occurs when participants show a seemingly irrational preference to attribute a stronger cue-outcome association to a later presented perfect predictor when it is paired with an imperfect predictor than that of an earlier presented perfect predictor paired with the same imperfect predictor (Kruschke, 1996). Current research suggests that the highlighting effect depends on the ability to learn to shift attention away from an irrelevant cue toward a more relevant cue in order to reduce errors in causal judgment and preserve an earlier formed association (Kruschke, 2003). Much research has suggested that …

When Bad Stress Goes Good: Increased Threat Reactivity Predicts Improved Category Learning Performance, Shawn W. Ell, Brandon Cosley, Shannon L. Mccoy

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

The way in which we respond to everyday stressors can have a profound impact on cognitive functioning. Maladaptive stress responses in particular are generally associated with impaired cognitive performance. We argue, however, that the cognitive system mediating task performance is also a critical determinant of the stress-cognition relationship. Consistent with this prediction, we observed that stress reactivity consistent with a maladaptive, threat response differentially predicted performance on two categorization tasks. Increased threat reactivity predicted enhanced performance on an information-integration task (i.e., learning is thought to depend upon a procedural-based memory system), and a (nonsignificant) trend for impaired performance on a …

Toward The Scientific Study Of Autobiographical Memory Narratives In Psychotherapy (Response To Commentaries On Autobiographical Memory Narratives In Psychotherapy: A Coding System Applied To The Case Of Cynthia), Jefferson A. Singer, Laura Bonalume

Psychology Faculty Publications

In responding to Adler (2010) and Moertl, Boritz, Bryntwick, and Angus (2010), we elaborate three areas of discussion: (1) Defining the autobiographical memory narrative unit; (2) Clarifications regarding our approach to coding narrative memories; and (3) Potential future research. Our response highlights the importance of a coding system specific to long-term narrative memories, the need to distinguish clearly what is meant by narrative memory, and the value of creating a bridge between the study of narrative memory in psychotherapy and research in cognitive science and personality psychology.

Autobiographical Memory Narratives In Psychotherapy: A Coding System Applied To The Case Of Cynthia, Jefferson A. Singer, Laura Bonalume

Psychology Faculty Publications

Recent cognitive and psychodynamic oriented therapies have converged on the powerful role that narrative processing plays in psychotherapy. Although previous coding systems have examined specific aspects of memory narratives, there are no comprehensive methods for coding segments of clinical evaluations or psychotherapy sessions that zero in on the unit of a briefly recounted autobiographical memory narrative. The present single case study aims to introduce and to demonstrate the Coding System for Autobiographical Memory Narratives in Psychotherapy (CS-AMNP; Singer & Bonalume, 2008) with a young female client whom we call "Cynthia." We applied this autobiographical memory narrative approach to the diagnostic …

The Statistical Properties Of The Survivor Interaction Contrast, Joseph W. Houpt, James T. Townsend

Psychology Faculty Publications

The Survivor Interaction Contrast (SIC) is a powerful tool for assessing the architecture and stopping rule of a model of mental processes. Despite its demonstrated utility, the methodology has lacked a method for statistical testing until now. In this paper we briefly describe the SIC then develop some basic statistical properties of the measure. These developments lead to a statistical test for rejecting certain classes of models based on the SIC. We verify these tests using simulated data, then demonstrate their use on data from a simple cognitive task.

Prenatal Undernutrition And Cognitive Function In Late Adulthood, Susanne R. De Rooij, Hans Wouters, Julie E. Yonker, Rebecca C. Painter

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

At the end of World War II, a severe 5-mo famine struck the cities in the western part of The Netherlands. At its peak, the rations dropped to as low as 400 calories per day. In 1972, cognitive performance in 19-y-old male conscripts was reported not to have been affected by exposure to the famine before birth. In the present study, we show that cognitive function in later life does seem affected by prenatal undernutrition. We found that at age 56 to 59, men and women exposed to famine during the early stage of gestation performed worse on a selective …

Aiding Young Children In Taiwan's Typhoon Disaster: How An Naeyc Interest Forum Takes Action, S. C. Yen, S. Baba, Ellen N. Junn

Office of the Provost Scholarship

The article describes the strategies learned by members of the Asian Interest Forum (AIF) who collaborated with parents and early childhood teachers on how to help young children cope with natural disasters in Taiwan. Shu-Chen Jenny Yen and Yafen Lo, AIF leaders, have translated information on how to cope with natural disasters into Chinese and sent it to their colleagues in Taiwan. Yen also visited the country where she trained early childhood teachers and volunteers to help children and their families deal with the effects of the natural disaster.

Addressing Relationships Among Moral Judgment Development, Narcissism, And Electronic Media And Communication Devices, Meghan M. Saculla

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Recently, Thoma and Bebeau (2008) reported moral judgment developmental trends among various samples of undergraduates and graduates where increases in Personal Interests reasoning and decreases in Postconventional reasoning were observed. In an attempt to explain such trends, they cited recent trends in increased narcissism among college students (Twenge, Konrath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008) and also noted that certain types of technological devices (i.e. social networking websites, cell phones, etc.) may have adverse effects social decision-making and self-presentation. The current study, therefore, addresses the relationships among moral judgment development, narcissism, and electronic media and communication devices (EMCD's). Analyses support that …

Exploration Of The Relationship Between Moral Judgment Development And Attention, Lauren I. Clark

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Research in moral psychology has focused on understanding what factors assist in the development of moral action and decision making. The purpose of this study was to address whether variability in attention relates to moral judgment development. The reason for exploring moral judgment development was to further explore the research of Thoma and Bebeau (2008) who documented that the moral development scores of college and graduate students has been declining over time, with more college-aged students scoring in the lower levels of moral reasoning. Attention was chosen as a viable topic of research, based on the writings of Carr (2008a) …

A Combined Fmri And Dti Examination Of Functional Language Lateralization And Arcuate Fasciculus Structure: Effects Of Degree Versus Direction Of Hand Preference Author Links Open Overlay Panel, Ruth E. Propper, Lauren J. O'Donnell, Stephen Whalen, Yanmei Tie, Isaiah Norton, Ralph O. Suarez, Lilla Zollei, Alireza Radmanesh, Alexandra Golby

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The present study examined the relationship between hand preference degree and direction, functional language lateralization in Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, and structural measures of the arcuate fasciculus. Results revealed an effect of degree of hand preference on arcuate fasciculus structure, such that consistently-handed individuals, regardless of the direction of hand preference, demonstrated the most asymmetric arcuate fasciculus, with larger left versus right arcuate, as measured by DTI. Functional language lateralization in Wernicke’s area, measured via fMRI, was related to arcuate fasciculus volume in consistent-left-handers only, and only in people who were not right hemisphere lateralized for language; given the …

Rule-Based Categorization Deficits In Focal Basal Ganglia Lesion And Parkinson’S Disease Patients, Shawn W. Ell, Andrea Weinstein, Richard Ivry

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Patients with basal ganglia (BG) pathology are consistently found to be impaired on rule-based category learning tasks in which learning is thought to depend upon the use of an explicit, hypothesis-guided strategy. The factors that influence this impairment remain unclear. Moreover, it remains unknown if the impairments observed in patients with degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) are also observed in those with focal BG lesions. In the present study, we tested patients with either focal BG lesions or PD on two categorization tasks that varied in terms of their demands on selective attention and working memory. Individuals with …

Découvrir Le Pouvoir De Ses Mains : La Gestuelle Des Futurs Enseignants De Langue., Marion Tellier, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Emotional Content In Autobiographical Memory Through An Attachment Theory Framework, Elizabeth Tsatkin

Honors Scholar Theses

The current study investigates the relationship between individual differences in attachment style and the recall of autobiographical memories. According to attachment theory, affect regulation strategies employed by individuals high in attachment anxiety and high in attachment avoidance are likely to influence how information about the past is recalled. This study examines how attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance relate to the presence of negative emotions in autobiographical memories of upsetting events with important relationship figures (i.e., mother, father, or roommate). Participants included 248 undergraduate students ranging from ages 18-22 that attend a public university in the northeast. As hypothesized, individuals with …

Curiosity, Demand Characteristics, And The Tip-Of-The-Tongue State, Chelsea Voskuilen

Psychology Honors Projects

The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state is generally described as the feeling that one knows a target word and recall of this word is imminent, although the word is currently unrecallable. Research suggests participants’ beliefs about their own knowledge affect the level and type of curiosity experienced while in a TOT state. This study examined the interaction between demand characteristics and specific types of curiosity experienced while in a TOT state. Demand characteristics were expected to affect the type of curiosity experienced, with participants in the high-demand group experiencing more negative forms of curiosity and the low-demand group experiencing more positive forms …

The Construction Of An Elementary Music Curriculum Utilizing Backward Design And Bloom’S Taxonomy, Jessica P. Warner

Senior Honors Theses

Based on the philosophy that the development of curriculum should provide a framework for the assessment of student learning, backward design was utilized to develop a curriculum review for an elementary music program. This design worked directly with three levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (knowledge, application, and synthesis) in order to demonstrate the level of learning for three grades in a small, private mid-Atlantic elementary school. Fifteen students were assessed using the rubrics both before and after curriculum implementation, and analyses were conducted to determine what changes resulted from the focused, short-term curriculum. A plan of improvement was then developed for …

The Accuracy Of Self-Reported Intuitive And Analytical Ability, Jennifer A. Sobyra

Honors Projects

The current study aimed to establish whether individuals can accurately report their experiential (intuitive) and rational (analytical) processing abilities on the Rational-Experiential Inventory (REI) in relation to their performance on the Serial Reaction Time (SRT) and the Operation Span (Ospan) tasks. Previous research has indicated that the rational subscale may have predictive validity, but evidence of the predictive validity of the experiential subscale is mixed. To determine why previous researchers have struggled to establish this link, the current study introduced a manipulation of the knowledge of the psychological definition of intuition and its value in cognitive processing. The researcher hypothesized …

If These Men Could Still Talk, Rebecca Damphousse

Academic Symposium of Undergraduate Scholarship

For this assignment, two theorists in psychology were selected to engage in conversation. Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget were chosen and their theories of human development were researched. Erikson was asked how his experiences as a child impacted the formation of his theories. The question for Piaget was directed at the permanence, relevancy and universality of his theory into the 21st century. While a large amount of research was conducted, the questions and answers were pure conjecture.

From Blood Pressure To Physical Disability: The Role Of Cognition, Merrill F. Elias, Gregory A. Dore, Adam Davey, Michael A. Robbins, Penelope K. Elias

Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Papers

We examined the hypothesis that lowered cognitive performance plays a role in the relation between elevated blood pressure and physical disability in performing basic physical tasks. A community-based sample (N = 1025) free from stroke and dementia (mean age: 61.1 years; SD: 13.0 years; 59.8% women) was used. Using path analysis, systolic and diastolic blood pressures (predictor variable) measured over multiple longitudinal examinations were averaged and related to multiple measures of cognition (intermediate variable) and physical ability (PA; outcome variable) measured at wave 6 of the Maine-Syracuse Study. PA was indexed by time required to execute standing, walking, and turning …

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 …

Event Segmentation And Memory Retrieval In Reading Comprehension, Charles Baker Brenner

Linguistics Honors Projects

Comprehending text involves the convergence of top-down, expectation-driven processes and bottom-up, stimulus-driven processes. The precise nature of this convergence, however, is not well understood. The current study used narrative time shifts and shifts in protagonist goal, both hypothesized to encourage event-segmented memory representations, to investigate the interaction between automatic and constructive memory processes during reading. The addition of time and goal shifts was found to have no effect on the automatic retrieval of information from memory. The results are interpreted as support for the bottom-up account of retrieval of information during reading, and for the idea that the top-down account …

Locus Of Control And The Age Difference In Free Recall From Episodic Memory, Paul Amrhein, Judith K. Bond, Derek Hamilton

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The authors investigated the relation of locus of control (LOC) to age differences in free-recall memory performance. Older and younger participants completed P. C. Duttweiler's (1984) Internal Control Index (ICI) and subsequently performed free-recall memory tasks. Compared with the younger participants, the older participants exhibited poorer recall with more intrusions and uncorrected repetition errors as well as reduced categorical clustering. For the older participants with less internal LOC, recall proportion and item-pair associative recall clustering were lower than for the older participants with more internal LOC. By contrast, the younger participants did not exhibit any LOC effects in their recall …

Speech And Gesture In Language Acquisition Studies, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Psychoanalyzing Prejudice, David Moshman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The classic psychological work on prejudice is Gordon Allport’s 1954 The Nature of Prejudice. Half a century later, its definitive modern counterpart must surely be On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years after Allport (2005). Systematically reconsidering Allport’s work in light of subsequent research and theorizing, On the Nature of Prejudice provides, in one carefully edited volume, the most comprehensive statement on the psychology of prejudice currently available. The Future of Prejudice: Psychoanalysis and the Prevention of Prejudice, in contrast, is simply a collection of sixteen chapters that, although generally psychoanalytic in orientation, vary greatly in form, content, …

A Conceptual Guide To Museum Visitors’ Understanding Of Evolution, E. Margaret Evans, Amy Spiegel, Wendy Gram, Brandy N. Frazier, Sarah Cover, Medha Tare, Judy Diamond

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to profile natural history museum visitors’ reasoning about the evolution of seven organisms featured in Explore Evolution, an NSF funded exhibition. Seven current research studies on evolution were exhibited; each targeted different organisms: HIV, diatoms, ant/fungus, Hawaiian flies, Galapagos finches, humans/chimps, and fossilized whales. The exhibits illustrated a common set of evolutionary principles, variation, inheritance, selection, time, and adaptation, in diverse organisms.

Method: As part of the front-end evaluation, 32 museum visitors were interviewed and asked to explain evolutionary change in the seven organisms, though the term evolution was not mentioned. …

A Conceptual Guide To Natural History Museum Visitors’ Understanding Of Evolution, E. Margaret Evans, Amy N. Spiegel, Wendy Gram, Brandy N. Frazier, Medha Tare, Sarah Thompson, Judy Diamond

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Museum visitors are an ideal population for assessing the persistence of the conceptual barriers that make it difficult to grasp Darwinian evolutionary theory. In comparison with other members of the public, they are more likely to be interested in natural history, have higher education levels, and be exposed to the relevant content. If museum visitors do not grasp evolutionary principles, it seems unlikely that other members of the general public would do so. In the current study, 32 systematically selected visitors to three Midwest museums of natural history provided detailed open-ended explanations of biological change in seven diverse organisms. They …

Feeling Of Knowing And Retrieval Failure: Tip-Of-The-Tongue State Is Not The Only Option, Amanda C. Gingerich

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

We investigated whether individuals are able to differentiate being in a tip-of-the-tongue state from the metacognitive experience of knowing information, but being unable to recall it. Results indicate that being unable to recall known information is separate from, and more common than, experiencing a tip-of-the-tongue state.

Can An L2 Speaker's Patterns Of Thinking For Speaking Change?, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Because You Can't Teach It All And They Won't Read It All: Student Response Systems Do Improve Learning, Steven G. Luke, Sarah Grison, Aya Shigeto, Patrick D.K. Watson

Psychology Faculty

In Introductory Psychology, 30 graduate TAs/faculty teach 2700 students annually. This year we developed an assessment program to improve student learning and graduate teaching training (Shigeto et al., 2010). Part of the program studied the pedagogical value of using student response systems to answer in-class multiple choice questions. Prior research lacks scientific rigor and provides equivocal evidence that SRSs improve learning (Caldwell, 2007).

Practice Makes Perfect: Improving Learning Of At-Risk Students, Patrick D.K. Watson, Sarah Grison, Steven G. Luke, Aya Shigeto

Psychology Faculty

29 graduate TAs and 1 faculty member teach 2700 Introductory Psychology students annually. This year we developed an assessment program to improve student learning and graduate teaching training (Shigeto et al., 2010). We studied the value of pedagogical tools developed for students in the Educational Opportunities Program (EOP). EOP selects students based on demographics and academic vulnerabilities for a special intro psych section. This section has an extra day per week for content presentation and additional student development support. These interventions have been demonstrated to enhance learning in minority students (Treisman, 1992).