Psychology Commons^™

A Review Of The Effects Of Dietary Restriction, Dehydration, And Caffeine Withdrawal On Cognition: Implications For A Disabled Submarine Scenario, Sarah Chabal

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

In the event that submariners become trapped aboard a disabled submarine (DISSUB), they must perform a multitude of cognitively demanding tasks in order to maximize their likelihood of survival. During this time, submariners will also be forced to endure poor living conditions, including drastic changes to their nutrition. These nutritional changes have the potential to impair submariners’ cognitive functioning and affect operational performance, which could jeopardize survival; however, the effects of DISSUB nutrition on cognitive performance are not well understood. This review first describes the unique nutritional conditions that submariners will experience in a DISSUB scenario, including the change to …

Are Giant Pandas (Ailuropoda Melanoleuca) Averse To Inequity?, Miranda R. Trapani

Theses and Dissertations

Inequity aversion, a negative response to situations of unequal reward distribution, is a cognitive trait usually seen in social species. This capacity is thought to regulate cooperative relationships in intelligent, cognitively flexible animals. Giant pandas are a unique case in that wild populations are characterized as nonsocial, however captive populations are socially housed until sexual maturity. This allows for the study of a nonsocial species in a social context and thus the assessment of socio-cognitive flexibility across evolutionarily distant taxa. Here, we assessed whether the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) displays inequity aversion by testing ten juveniles living at …

Variation In Personality Among Semi-Wild Myanmar Timber Elephants, Sateesh Venkatesh

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines two personality traits: exploration and neophobia, which could influence human-elephant conflicts. Thirty-one semi-wild elephants were tested over two trials using a custom novel puzzle tube containing three tasks and three rewards. Our studies show that elephants do vary significantly between individuals in both exploration and neophobia.

The Effect That Testing Has On Nondeclarative Memory, David Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Testing has been shown to improve long-term memory retention by decreasing the amount of material forgotten, a phenomenon known as the testing effect. This positive impact of testing has been shown using direct tests of memory that require declarative memory, things like memorizing word-pairs and single-word lists. This dissertation is the first research to investigate how testing impacts nondeclarative memory using three experiments. The first and second experiment utilize the word fragment completion task to measure the effect that testing has on words learned via methodology thought to recruit either declarative or nondeclarative memory. The third experiment utilizes a probabilistic …

Examining The Association Between Trait Mindfulness And How Positively An Exercise Bout Is Remembered, Bree Geary

Psychology Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Remembered affect is associated with future exercise behavior. Research suggests that trait mindfulness is associated with better emotion regulation, more positive affective memory of negative stimuli, and less rumination. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relation between trait mindfulness and remembered affect of an exercise bout. Methods: Undergraduate students from Southern Methodist University (N=94) completed baseline measures of trait mindfulness and physical activity, a 15-minute vigorous-intensity exercise bout, and post-exercise measure (remembered affect at 15 minutes post exercise session, 1-2 days post, and 1-week post). Multilevel modeling was used to test the association with remembered …

Measuring Intelligence With The Sandia Matrices: Psychometric Review And Recommendations For Free Raven-Like Item Sets, Alexandra M. Harris, Jeremiah T. Mcmillan, Benjamin Listyg, Laura E. Matzen, Nathan Carter

Personnel Assessment and Decisions

The Sandia Matrices are a free alternative to the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPMs). This study offers a psychometric review of Sandia Matrices items focused on two of the most commonly investigated issues regarding the RPMs: (a) dimensionality and (b) sex differences. Model-data fit of three alternative factor structures are compared using confirmatory multidimensional item response theory (IRT) analyses, and measurement equivalence analyses are conducted to evaluate potential sex bias. Although results are somewhat inconclusive regarding factor structure, results do not show evidence of bias or mean differences by sex. Finally, although the Sandia Matrices software can generate infinite items, editing …

Person-Based Prominence In Ojibwe, Christopher Hammerly

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation develops a formal and psycholinguistic theory of person-based prominence effects, the finding that certain categories of person such as "first" and "second" (the "local" persons) are privileged by the grammar. The thesis takes on three questions: (i) What are the possible categories related to person? (ii) What are the possible prominence relationships between these categories? And (iii) how is prominence information used to parse and interpret linguistic input in real time? The empirical through-line is understanding obviation — a “spotlighting” system, found most prominently in the Algonquian family of languages, that splits the (ani- mate) third persons into …

Uncovering The Neural And Behavioral Factors That Underlie Changes In Processing Visual Orientation, Patrick Sadil

Doctoral Dissertations

From moment to moment, the visual environment appears stable; despite prolonged scrutiny, the edge of a desk is not perceived to change. But this apparent stability emerges from perceptual and decisional systems that undergo continuous modulation. In two chapters, I focus on two different kinds of modulation to the processing of visual orientation (i.e., the tilt of an edge). In both chapters, the form of modulation is latent, obscured by standard analyses. To detect those latent changes in perceptual decisions, I develop in this dissertation new statistical tools, at both behavioral and neural levels. In the first chapter, I consider …

Language Abilities As A Function Of Lateralization Of Language-Specific Brain Networks, Jacey Anderson

Honors Scholar Theses

The strength of hemispheric lateralization appears to be a good predictor of language abilities in children with developmental language impairments. Studies of healthy adults, in contrast, have generally failed to identify any association between degree of lateralization and language abilities, perhaps due to limited sensitivity to individual differences in standardized language assessments. This study used fMRI to measure the lateralization of functional task-engaged language networks in 25 healthy right-handed adults. Linear regressions examined lateralization indices (LI) of language activation in inferior temporal, superior temporal, and frontal brain networks, as a function of syntactic complexity (via story retelling), a grammaticality judgment …

Better News About Math: A Research Agenda, Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, John Voiklis, Laura Santhanam, Nsikan Akpan, Shivani Ishwar, Bennett Attaway, Patti Parson, John Fraser

Numeracy

Numeracy is not a luxury: numbers constantly factor into our daily lives. Yet adults in the United States have lower numeracy than adults in most other developed nations. While formal statistical training is effective, few adults receive it – and schools are a major contributor to the inequity we see among U.S. adults. That leaves news well-poised as a source of informal learning, given that news is a domain where adults regularly encounter quantitative content. Our transdisciplinary team of journalists and social scientists propose a research agenda for thinking about math and the news. We engage here in a dialogue …

Difficult Turned Easy: Suggestion Renders A Challenging Visual Task Simple, Mathieu Landry, Jason Da Silva Castanheira, Jérôme Sackur, Amir Raz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Suggestions can cause some individuals to miss or disregard existing visual stimuli, but can they infuse sensory input with nonexistent information? Although several prominent theories of hypnotic suggestion propose that mental imagery can change our perceptual experience, data to support this stance remain sparse. The present study addressed this lacuna, showing how suggesting the presence of physically absent, yet critical, visual information transforms an otherwise difficult task into an easy one. Here, we show how adult participants who are highly susceptible to hypnotic suggestion successfully hallucinated visual occluders on top of moving objects. Our findings support the idea that, at …

Softening Resistance Toward Diversity Initiatives: The Role Of Mindfulness In Mitigating Emotional White Fragility, Vatia P. Caldwell

Industrial-Organizational Psychology Dissertations

When examining racial equity within organizations, a common theme is the failure of many organizations to address whiteness in their organizations (i.e., White supremacy, White privilege, White dominant culture). Decentering whiteness is key in racial equity work (Grimes, 2002). However, the process of decentering whiteness often results in backlash from Whites also known as White fragility (DiAngelo, 2011). This backlash impedes the organization from moving towards racial equity by upholding the racial status quo. The purpose of the current study is to further explore the role mindfulness plays in racial-equity work within organizations. Specifically, a mindfulness intervention was tested for …

Stradling A Cultural Doctrine: Exploring Historical Trauma On Ethnic Identity Development Among The Mestizo Peoples, Esmeralda Gill

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT STRADDLING A CULTURAL DOCTRINE: EXPLORING HISTORICAL TRAUMA ON ETHNIC IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT AMONG MESTIZO PEOPLES

by Esmeralda Gill The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2020 Under the Supervision of Professor Marty Sapp, Ed.D.

The modern descendants from the territory now known as Mexico, the Mestizo, are known to primarily be an admixture of Indigenous and European ancestry. Mestizo ethnic nomenclature acknowledges the presence of Indigenous Peoples in an individual’s ethnic background. Though the Mestizo narrative is saturated in collective mass group trauma and chronic complex forms of racism, discrimination, and systemic oppressive forces that delineate from colonialism, the Mestizo are also known …

Proactive And Reactive Cognitive Control Under Threat Of Unpredictable Shock: A Combined Eye-Tracking And Eeg Study Using Multilevel Modeling, Salahadin Lotfi

Theses and Dissertations

We are constantly bombarded by environmental distractors in daily life which interfere with internal, ongoing goals, thus cognitive control processes need to be in place to adapt to maintain these goals in light of the environmental demands. These cognitive processes (generally referred to cognitive control) are thought to be adjusted reactively or proactively to deal with distractors. There is little evidence on how state anxiety dynamically interacts with these two modes of cognitive control. Taking advantage of a multimodal methodology, through two experiments, we replicated existing findings of reactive and proactive control processes via utilizing a Flanker task in a …

A Mule For The Patriarchy: Waking Up To The Harm Of Prostitution To Wives And Families, Andrea Heinz

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

I exited from commercial sexual exploitation eight years ago. Here, I share my reflections on how my actions directly impacted other women. I describe how my participation in the sex trade adversely affected the wives and girlfriends of sex buyers. I posit that sex sellers negatively impact these vicarious victims by subscribing to and endorsing “sex work” ideology. I assert that the collective good of all women is diminished by viewing sexual services as a market commodity. I stress that the collective good of all women is enhanced by assuming responsibility and compassion for one another.

Neural Correlates Of Individuation And Subordinate-Level Categorization Of Other-Race Faces In Infancy, Kelly Roth

Doctoral Dissertations

Perceptual narrowing is a domain-general process in which infants move from a broad sensitivity to a wide range of stimuli to developing expertise within often experienced native stimuli (Maurer & Werker, 2014). One outcome of this is the own-race bias, characterized by an increasing difficulty in discriminating other-race faces with age and experience for those raised in a racially homogenous environment (Anzures, Quinn, Pascalis, Slater, Tanaka, & Lee, 2013). Recent theorists have proposed that this is due to a categorization-individuation process, wherein infants begin to categorize non-native stimuli, such as other-species’ faces, but individuate native stimuli, such as often-experienced human …

Restorative Potential And Working Memory Capacity Of Exposure To Vegetation In Indoor Built Environments, Jee Heon Rhee

Theses and Dissertations

This research seeks to understand how natural elements – specifically, vegetation in the indoor environment - influence people’s ability to restore attention and working memory capacity. Previous research demonstrates the benefits of nature on human beings in various ways. For instance, numerous studies show the positive effects of nature on stress reduction (Hartig, Mang, & Evans, 1991; Ulrich et al., 1991) and attention restoration (Staats, Kieviet, & Hartig, 2003). However, most of these studies focus on the effect of nature in outdoor settings. Relatively few studies focus on the presence of natural elements indoors. This is an important gap in …

Dual Mechanisms Of Cognitive Control: An Eye Tracking Study, Kyle Mobly

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The purpose of the present study was to attempt to provide an ocular signature for the dual mechanisms of cognitive control (proactivity and reactivity) by utilizing an eye tracker to record gaze patterns while participants were administered a modified version of the AX-CPT 40. Additionally, we sought to clarify whether context updating or maintenance was responsible for the higher Total Visit Duration (TVD) on the cue location during the ISI that was found in previous studies by providing both a short (1.5 seconds) and long (3 seconds) ISI length. This allowed us to disentangle context updating from maintenance by removing …

Concept Maps As Sites Of Rhetorical Invention: Teaching The Creative Act Of Synthesis As A Cognitive Process, Amy Lee Marie Locklear

English Theses & Dissertations

Synthesis is one of the most cognitively demanding practices novice writers must undertake, and research demonstrates that first-year students’ synthesis writing practices result in more knowledge telling rather than knowledge creation and transforming. Pedagogies used to teach synthesis often focus on developing text-building strategies but lack explicit instruction on the more cognitively demanding conceptualizing behavior. To explore alternative pedagogies and heuristics, this study looks beyond composition scholarship to incorporate studies in neuroeducation and rhetoric to define synthesis as an ongoing, generative act of cognitive invention, effectively shifting pedagogical focus from text-centered product to student-centered cognitive processes that inform development of …

Emotion Regulation And N2 Amplitude During A Go/Nogo Task: An Erp Study, Emily Tolar

Psychological Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Emotion regulation is how people respond to and manage their reactions to life experiences, including resolving conflict between variable responses. Past research has associated the N2, an event-related potential associated with resolving response conflict, with both emotion regulation and negative emotion. However, to the best of our knowledge, no one has assessed if different emotion-regulation strategies are differentially associated with N2 activation. To assess this question, we conducted an EEG study with 147 participants. Participants completed the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) and then played the go/no-go game as their EEG data was collected. The relationship between N2 amplitude and …

Are Individual Differences In Media Multitasking Habits Associated With Changes In Brain Activation: An Erp Investigation Of Multitasking And Cognitive Control, Morgan Middlebrooks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the number of mobile phone users grows, understanding the impact of multiple streams of media on media multitasking and related neural correlates is especially pertinent. This research aims to understand the association between media multitasking tendencies on the neural correlates underlying cognitive control using event-related potentials (ERPs). Specifically, we were interested in the N2 and P3, ERPs that measure neural activation underlying aspects of cognitive control. Based on the literature, we predicted that participants who have high media multitasking scores would show more negative N2 activation and more positive P3 activation than their low media multitasking counterparts during an …

Data-Driven Approach To Dynamic Resting State Functional Connectivity In Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Carissa Weis

Theses and Dissertations

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a heterogenous psychological disorder that may result from exposure to a traumatic event. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), symptoms of PTSD have been associated with aberrations in brain networks that emerge in the absence of a given cognitive demand or task, called resting state networks. Most previous research in resting state networks and PTSD has focused on aberrations in the static functional connectivity among specific regions of interest (ROI) in the brain and within canonical networks constrained by a priori hypotheses. However, dynamic fMRI, an approach that examines changes in brain network characteristics over …

Effects Of Alcohol Intoxication On Hostile Attribution Bias And Relational Aggression In Women, Alita M. Mobley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol intoxication is consistently linked to physical and sexual aggression in men, but not women. The lack of evidence supporting the relationship between alcohol and aggression for women could be due to a failure to measure relational aggression (i.e., harmful social manipulation), the form of aggression more commonly employed by women. Further, alcohol intoxication may interfere with the interpretation of social cues, resulting in greater perceived provocation in ambiguous social interactions and increased aggression. The current study examined the relationship between alcohol intoxication and relational aggression in women and the extent to which interpretation of social cues (i.e., hostile attribution …

Do Sequential Lineups Impair Underlying Discriminability?, Matthew Kaesler, John C. Dunn, Keith Ransom, Carolyn Semmler

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

© 2020, The Author(s). Debate regarding the best way to test and measure eyewitness memory has dominated the eyewitness literature for more than 30 years. We argue that resolution of this debate requires the development and application of appropriate measurement models. In this study we developed models of simultaneous and sequential lineup presentations and used these to compare these procedures in terms of underlying discriminability and response bias, thereby testing a key prediction of diagnostic feature detection theory, that underlying discriminability should be greater for simultaneous than for stopping-rule sequential lineups. We fit the models to the corpus of studies …

Women Exiting Prostitution: Reports Of Coercive Control In Intimate Relationships, Tammy Schultz, Aimee A. Callender, Sally Schwer Canning, Jacey Collins

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

There is burgeoning research on intimate partner violence (IPV) experiences among women globally. However, there is a dearth of research on IPV experiences among marginalized populations in Western countries. Over the past decade, IPV research has shifted from a focus only on physical and sexual violence to include coercive control experiences. These include a continuum of nonviolent behaviors centered on maintaining dominance over one’s partner. However, the empirical literature on examining coercive control among women in prostitution within non-commercial intimate partners is lacking. In this study, we analyzed interviews with 17 women exiting prostitution and examined reported IPV sexual, physical, …

Cuban Immigrants’ Experience With Acculturation And How They Cope In The United States, Lourdes Araujo

Dissertations

Objective: This research examines how Cuban immigrants experience cope and adapt to the United States. Cuban immigration is associated with specific stressors related to the immigration experience and the necessary process of acculturation and assimilation. These major stressors can result in mental health concerns among Cuban immigrants; however, no studies have examined how acculturation may influence Cuban immigrants’ coping skills and resultant mental health concerns. This unique study is the first to examine the coping skills Cuban immigrants use during acculturation and the effects of these skills on Cuban immigrants’ mental health. Methods: Seventeen participants completed a semistructured interview and …

A Meta-Analysis Of Group Treatment Outcomes For Veterans With Substance Use Disorders, Robert “Tony” Dice

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

Group therapy is commonly used in the treatment of substance use disorders (SUD). Many studies exist related to the efficacy of group interventions for veterans with SUDs. A meta-analysis and systematic review of the literature addressing the use of group therapy, specifically psychoeducational groups, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) groups and support groups, in the treatment of SUDs with veterans was conducted. The following questions guided the research: What are viable treatment outcomes for psychoeducational, CBT, and support groups of veterans with SUDs? and What are the measures that capture outcomes related to psychoeducational, CBT, and support groups of veterans with …

The Effects Of Security Framing, Time Pressure, And Brand Familiarity On Risky Mobile Application Downloads, Cody Parker

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The current study examined the effects of security system framing, time pressure, and brand familiarity on mobile application download behaviors, with an emphasis on risk taking. According to the Prospect Theory, people tend to engage in irrational decision making, and make qualitatively different decisions when information is framed in terms of gains and losses (i.e., the framing effect). Past research has used this framing effect to guide the design of a risk display for mobile applications (apps), with the purpose of communicating the potential risks and minimizing insecure app selections. Time pressure has been shown to influence the framing effect …

التربية المثلى للفتية والفتيات وفق أبحاث الدماغ المستجدة وأثرها في تنمية المجتمع, Ruba Chaarani

Al Jinan الجنان

ترتبط إشكالية التخلف العربي إلى حد كبير بفشل مشروع صنع الانسان العربي وتربيته وبناء قدراته الابداعية، فالتربية العربية تعاني من قصور يلامس أهدافها، مناهجها، طرائقها وإداراتها ...

هدف البحث إلى إلقاء الضوء على التباين الصارخ بين دماغي الذكر والأنثى، وتلقف دماغ كل منهما للعملية التعليمية بشكل مغاير وبالتالي التوجه لاستثمار هذا التباين في العملية التربوية والتعليمية.

تم إستخدام المنهج التحليلي حيث تم تقصي المعلومات من أبحاث الدماغ المستجدة والعمل على تحليلها بهدف ترجمتها تربوياً وتعليمياً، ووضع قواعد التدريس ومبادئ التعلم وفقها.

وقد خلص البحث إلى نتائج عدة أولاها:

وجوب إعتماد الفصل بين الذكور والإناث في التعلم

تحديد قائمة تربوية توجيهية …

Response To Commentaries On ‘Hard Criteria For Empirical Theories Of Consciousness’, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Michael H. Herzog

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

In consciousness research, we have a very large number of theories, which exceeds by far the number of theories in other fields. We recently presented a set of criteria for evaluating and comparing theories of consciousness, and then applied the criteria to a number of different theories. Our publication sparked strong responses as evident by the many comments published in Cognitive Neuroscience (this issue). Overall, there seems to be consensus that a theory of consciousness (ToC) needs to have an unconscious alternative, but other criteria sparked controversy. The hottest debate is to what extent consciousness needs to work with purely …