Psychology Commons^™

Editorial: Appraisal Processes In Moral Judgment: Resolving Moral Issues Through Cognition And Emotion., Justin F. Landy, Tom R. Kupfer

Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

"I Just Want To Be Me, Authentically": Identity Shifting Among Racially And Ethnically Diverse Young Adults, Aerika Brittian Loyd, Dulce Wilkinson Westberg, Lenisha Williams, Marisha Humphries, Alan Meca, Julie Carmen Rodil

Psychology Faculty Publications

Identity shifting represents a common but complex social, behavioral, and cognitive phenomenon. However, some forms of identity shifting originate in response to structural, institutional, and interpersonal marginalization enacted on lower status groups, such as people of color in the United States. The current study investigated ways young adults from diverse ethnic/racial groups discussed shifting to fit in with White Americans (a dominant group) in the United States and their own ethnic/racial group (a minoritized group) and elucidated self-reported motivations for shifting. Participants consisted of 764 young adults (ages = 18–23) recruited from two large public universities in the Southeast and …

The Effect Of Acute Exercise On Objectively Measured Sleep And Cognition In Older Adults, Kelsey R. Sewell, Nathan D. W. Smith, Stephanie R. Rainey-Smith, Jeremiah Peiffer, Hamid R. Sohrabi, Kirk I. Erickson, Belinda M. Brown

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Background: Exercise can improve cognition in aging, however it is unclear how exercise influences cognition, and sleep may partially explain this association. The current study aimed to investigate whether objectively measured sleep mediates the effect of an acute exercise intervention on cognition in older adults. Methods: Participants were 30 cognitively unimpaired, physically active older adults (69.2 ± 4.3 years) with poor sleep (determined via self-report). After a triple baseline cognitive assessment to account for any natural fluctuation in cognitive performance, participants completed either a single bout of 20-minutes of high intensity exercise on a cycle ergometer, or a control condition, …

An Evidence Review Of Behavioural Economics In The Justice Sector, Brian Barry, Lucia Morales, Aiden Carthy

Articles

Behavioural economics combines elements of economics and psychology to better understand how and why people behave the way they do in the real world. While behavioural economics originally sought to better understand economic decision-making, it has since grown in scope and application, and it is increasingly used by governments, government departments and other organisations to shape and implement public policies in a range of policy areas. This Review considers the application of behavioural economics theories and concepts (commonly referred to as behavioural insights) to the justice sector in a range of areas of justice policy in different jurisdictions. Areas of …

Cognitive Effort Avoidance In Veterans With Suicide Attempt Histories, James M. Bjork, Chelsea S. Rooney, Lisa K. Straub, David M. N. Garavito, Andrew Westbrook

Articles

Suicide attempts (SA) are increasing in the United States, especially in veterans. Discovering individual cognitive features of the subset of suicide ideators who attempt suicide is critical. Cognitive theories attribute SA to facile schema-based negative interpretations of environmental events. Over-general autobiographical memory and facile solutions in problem solving tasks in SA survivors suggest that aversion to expending cognitive effort may be a neurobehavioral marker of SA risk. In veterans receiving care for mood disorder, we compared cognitive effort discounting and evidence-gathering in a beads task between veterans with (SAHx+; n = 26) versus without (SAHx-; n = 22) a history …

Early Life Exposure To Unpredictable Parental Sensory Signals Shapes Cognitive Development Across Three Species, Elyssia Poggi Davis, Kari Mccormack, Hina Arora, Desiree Sharpe, Annabel K. Short, Jocelyne Bachevalier, Laura M. Glynn, Curt A. Sandman, Hal S. Stern, Mar Sanchez, Tallie Z. Baram

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Exposure to early life adversity has long term consequences on cognitive function. Most research has focused on understanding components of early life adversities that contribute to later risk, including poverty, trauma, maltreatment, and neglect. Whereas these factors, in the aggregate, explain a significant proportion of emotional and cognitive problems, there are serious gaps in our ability to identify potential mechanisms by which early life adversities might promote vulnerability or resilience. Here we discuss early life exposure to unpredictable signals from the caretaker as an understudied type of adversity that is amenable to prevention and intervention. We employ a translational approach …

Understanding Across The Senses: Cross-Modal Studies Of Cognition In Cetaceans, Jason N. Bruck, Adam A. Pack

Faculty Publications

Cross-modal approaches to the study of sensory perception, social recognition, cognition, and mental representation have proved fruitful in humans as well as in a variety of other species including toothed whales in revealing equivalencies that suggest that different sensory stimuli associated with objects or individuals may effectively evoke mental representations that are, respectively, object based or individual based. Building on established findings of structural equivalence in the form of spontaneous recognition of complex shapes across the modalities of echolocation and vision and behavior favoring identity echoic–visual cross-modal relationships over associative echoic–visual cross-modal relationships, examinations of transitive inference equivalencies from initially …

Cross-Modal Perception Of Identity By Sound And Taste In Bottlenose Dolphins, Jason N. Bruck, Sam F. Walmsley, Vincent M. Janik

Faculty Publications

While studies have demonstrated concept formation in animals, only humans are known to label concepts to use them in mental simulations or predictions. To investigate whether other animals use labels comparably, we studied cross-modal, individual recognition in bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) that use signature whistles as labels for conspecifics in their own communication. First, we tested whether dolphins could use gustatory stimuli and found that they could distinguish between water and urine samples, as well as between urine from familiar and unfamiliar individuals. Then, we paired playbacks of signature whistles of known animals with urine samples from either the same …

Occupational Depression In A Spanish-Speaking Sample: Associations With Cognitive Performance And Work-Life Characteristics, Bianchi Renzo, Guadalupe Manzano García, Maria Pilar Montanes, Emily A. Schonfeld, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

This 386-participant study investigated the structural and psychometric properties of the Spanish version of the Occupational Depression Inventory (ODI). Exploratory structural equation modeling bifactor analysis revealed that the ODI meets the requirements for essential unidimensionality. Measurement invariance held across our sample and the English- and French-speaking samples used in the ODI’s initial validation study. Mokken scale analysis indicated that (a) the scalability of the instrument was strong, (b) no violations of monotonicity or local independence were present, and (c) invariant item ordering was sufficiently accurate. The ODI’s reliability was optimal. The ODI exhibited both convergent validity and discriminant validity vis-à-vis …

Parent Reports Of Executive Functions In Students With Learning Disability, Jane Roitsch, Annemarie L. Horn, Lisa Morin

Communication Disorders & Special Education Faculty Publications

This study examines the results of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF-2) (Gioia et al., 2015) reported by parents of children with Specific Learning Disability (LD) and/or other comorbid disabilities. LD is most notably associated with comorbid attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Alloway & Stein, 2014; Westby &Watson, 2004; Willcutt et al., 2013). A total of 43 parents completed the BRIEF-2 rating scale. Findings suggest children with LD and ADHD display greater challenges with inhibition, working memory, planning, along with greater challenges in organization and metacognition. Parents of children with LD reported their children have greater levels of …

Eye Movement And Pupil Measures: A Review, Bhanuka Mahanama, Yasith Jayawardana, Sundararaman Rengarajan, Gavindya Jayawardena, Leanne Chukoskie, Joseph Snider, Sampath Jayarathna

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Our subjective visual experiences involve complex interaction between our eyes, our brain, and the surrounding world. It gives us the sense of sight, color, stereopsis, distance, pattern recognition, motor coordination, and more. The increasing ubiquity of gaze-aware technology brings with it the ability to track gaze and pupil measures with varying degrees of fidelity. With this in mind, a review that considers the various gaze measures becomes increasingly relevant, especially considering our ability to make sense of these signals given different spatio-temporal sampling capacities. In this paper, we selectively review prior work on eye movements and pupil measures. We first …

The Evolution Of Quantitative Sensitivity, Margaret A H Bryer, Sarah E. Koopman, Jessica F. Cantlon, Steven T. Piantadosi, Evan L. Maclean, Joseph M. Baker, Michael J. Beran, Sarah M. Jones, Kerry E. Jordan, Salif Mahamane, Andreas Nieder, Bonnie M. Perdue, Friederike Range, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Masaki Tomonaga, Dorottya Ujfalussy, Jennifer Vonk

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

The ability to represent approximate quantities appears to be phylogenetically widespread, but the selective pressures and proximate mechanisms favouring this ability remain unknown. We analysed quantity discrimination data from 672 subjects across 33 bird and mammal species, using a novel Bayesian model that combined phylogenetic regression with a model of number psychophysics and random effect components. This allowed us to combine data from 49 studies and calculate the Weber fraction (a measure of quantity representation precision) for each species. We then examined which cognitive, socioecological and biological factors were related to variance in Weber fraction. We found contributions of phylogeny …

Cognitive Effects Of Alcohol Use And Sleep Disruption In College Students, Taylor English

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Alcohol use and sleep disruption are highly prevalent amongst college students, yet their combined effects on cognitive functioning and subsequent classroom performance have not been fully examined. Alcohol use has been shown to negatively impact cognitive functioning, especially in college students without fully matured brain regions. This has led to decreases in academic functioning and increases in college dropout. Disruptions in sleep functioning can lead to both lapses in attention and an overall decrease in attention, which can negatively impact learning in a classroom environment.

Participants were 96 undergraduate students who were invited to participate based on responses from a …

Improving The Methodology For Identifying Mild Cognitive Impairment In Intellectually High-Functioning Adults Using The Nih Toolbox Cognition Battery, Grant L. Iverson, Justin E. Karr

Psychology Faculty Publications

Objective: Low scores on neuropsychological tests are considered objective evidence of mild cognitive impairment. In clinical practice and research, it can be challenging to identify a cognitive deficit or mild cognitive impairment in high-functioning people because they are much less likely to obtain low test scores. This study was designed to improve the methodology for identifying mild cognitive impairment in adults who have above average or superior intellectual abilities.

Method: Participants completed the National Institutes of Health Toolbox for the Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function Cognition Battery (NIHTB-CB). The sample included 384 adults between the ages of 20 and …

How Long Do Mood Induction Procedure (Mip) Primes Really Last? Implications For Cognitive Vulnerability Research., Jennifer C P Gillies, David J A Dozois

Psychology Publications

BACKGROUND: Mood Induction Procedures (MIPs) are used widely in research on cognitive vulnerability to depression. Although empirical evidence supports certain MIPs as effective, little research has evaluated whether MIP-induced sad moods are sufficiently persistent. This study aimed to determine (1) how long an MIP-induced mood lasts according to commonly used operational definitions and (2) whether these findings vary according to the type of MIP used.

METHODS: Four-hundred-and-one undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of three commonly used sad MIPs (music, memory, music+memory) or to one of three matched neutral MIPs. Mood was repeatedly measured immediately prior to and following …

Driving Habits, Cognition, And Health-Related Quality Of Life In Middle-Aged And Older Adults With Hiv, Josiah J. Robinson, Tess Walker, Cierra Hopkins, Brittany Bradley, Peggy Mckie, Jennifer S. Frank, Caitlin N. Pope, Pariya L. Fazeli, David E. Vance

Graduate Center for Gerontology Faculty Publications

Cognitive impairment is known to increase with aging in people living with HIV (PLWH). Impairment in cognitive domains required for safe driving may put PLWH at risk for poor driving outcomes, decreased mobility, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This study described the driving behaviors of middle-aged and older PLWH and examined correlations between driving behaviors and cognitive functioning (Aim 1), and driving behaviors and HRQoL domains (Aim 2). A sample of 260 PLWH ages 40 and older completed a comprehensive assessment including a battery of cognitive tests, an HRQoL measure, and a measure of self-reported driving habits. Associations between …

Ugandan Adolescents’ Descriptive Gender Stereotypes About Domestic And Recreational Activities, And Attitudes About Women, Flora Farago, Natalie Eggum-Wilkens, Linlin Zhang

Faculty Publications

In Eastern Uganda, 201 adolescents aged 11- to 17-years old (48% girls; M_age = 14.62) answered close- and open-ended questions about gender stereotypes of domestic and recreational activities and gender-role attitudes about women’s behavior, rights, and roles. Adolescents answered questions such as “who is more likely to . . .?” assessing descriptive stereotypes (i.e., stereotype knowledge) and questions such as “is it ok for women to . . .?” assessing prescriptive stereotypes (i.e., stereotype endorsement) about gender roles. Data were analyzed via descriptive statistics, correlations, and thematic coding. Findings indicate that Ugandan adolescents were fairly egalitarian in some domains …

The Cerebellum's Relationship To Language Function Following Perinatal Stroke, Carolina Alexis Vias

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While recent studies have demonstrated the association between the cerebellum and higher-order cognitive functioning, it is still unclear how volumetric differences of specific regions of interests within the cerebellum across typical and atypical development are related to language function. We have done so by measuring the volume of cerebellar subregions of healthy controls, and compared the volume to behavioral measures of language function. We then followed with an analysis of the cerebellum’s relationship to language function following perinatal stroke, which provides us with a greater knowledge of the impact of a cortical injury on cerebellar development and the cognitive outcomes …

The Influence Of Mental Fatigue On Sessional Ratings Of Perceived Exertion In Elite Open And Closed Skill Sports Athletes, Joseph O. C. Coyne, Aaron J. Coutts, Robert U. Newton, G. Gregory Haff

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

ABSTRACT: Coyne, JOC, Coutts, AJ, Newton, RU, and Haff, GG. The influence of mental fatigue on sessional ratings of perceived exertion in elite open and closed skill sports athletes. J Strength Cond Res 35(4): 963-969, 2021-The main purpose of this investigation was to examine influence of mental fatigue on sessional ratings of perceived exertion (sRPE) over a training week in elite athletes in open skill (OS, i.e., more unpredictable and externally paced sports) and closed skill (CS, i.e., more predictable and internally paced) sports. Visual analogue scales for mental fatigue, sRPE (CR-10 scale), and training duration were collected from an …

Depressive Cognition On Twitter., David J A Dozois

Psychology Publications

No abstract provided.

Effect Of Environmental Enrichment On The Brain And On Learning And Cognition By Animals, Thomas R. Zentall

Psychology Faculty Publications

The humane treatment of animals suggests that they should be housed in an environment that is rich in stimulation and allows for varied activities. However, even if one’s main concern is an accurate assessment of their learning and cognitive abilities, housing them in an enriched environment can have an important effect on the assessment of those abilities. Research has found that the development of the brain of animals is significantly affected by the environment in which they live. Not surprisingly, their ability to learn both simple and complex tasks is affected by even modest time spent in an enriched environment. …

Cognitive-Emotional Processing In Alexithymia: An Integrative Review, Olivier Luminet, Kristy A. Nielson, Nathan Ridout

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Alexithymia is a multifaceted personality construct characterised by difficulties identifying one’s feelings and distinguishing them from bodily sensations, difficulties describing one’s feelings to others, and an externally oriented cognitive style. Over the past 25 years, a burgeoning body of research has examined how alexithymia moderates processing at the cognition–emotion interface. We review the findings in five domains: attention, appraisals, memory, language, and behaviours. The preponderance of studies linked alexithymia with deficits in emotion processing, which was apparent across all domains, except behaviours. All studies on behaviours and a proportion of studies in other domains demonstrated emotional over-responding. Analysis at the …

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 …

L-Theanine Prevents Long-Term Affective And Cognitive Side Effects Of Adolescent Δ-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol Exposure And Blocks Associated Molecular And Neuronal Abnormalities In The Mesocorticolimbic Circuitry, Marta De Felice, Justine Renard, Roger Hudson, Hanna J. Szkudlarek, Brian J. Pereira, Susanne Schmid, Walter J. Rushlow, Steven R. Laviolette

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Chronic adolescent exposure to Δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is linked to elevated neuropsychiatric risk and induces neuronal, molecular and behavioral abnormalities resembling neuropsychiatric endophenotypes. Previous evidence has revealed that the mesocorticolimbic circuitry, including the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and mesolimbic dopamine (DA) pathway are particularly susceptible to THC-induced pathologic alterations, including dysregulation of DAergic activity states, loss of PFC GABAergic inhibitory control and affective and cognitive abnormalities. There are currently limited pharmacological intervention strategies capable of preventing THC-induced neuropathological adaptations. L-Theanine is an amino acid analog of L-glutamate and L-glutamine derived from various plant sources, including green tea leaves. L-Theanine has previously been …

New Frontiers In Translational Research: Touchscreens, Open Science, And The Mouse Translational Research Accelerator Platform, Jacqueline A. Sullivan, Julie R. Dumont, Sara Memar, Miguel Skirzewski, Jinxia Wan, Maryam H. Mofrad, Hassam Zafar Ansari, Yulong Li, Lyle Muller, Vania F. Prado, Marco A.M. Prado, Lisa M. Saksida, Timothy J. Bussey

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2020 International Behavioural and Neural Genetics Society and John Wiley & Sons Ltd Many neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases and other brain disorders are accompanied by impairments in high-level cognitive functions including memory, attention, motivation, and decision-making. Despite several decades of extensive research, neuroscience is little closer to discovering new treatments. Key impediments include the absence of validated and robust cognitive assessment tools for facilitating translation from animal models to humans. In this review, we describe a state-of-the-art platform poised to overcome these impediments and improve the success of translational research, the Mouse Translational Research Accelerator Platform (MouseTRAP), which is …

Occupational Depression, Cognitive Performance, And Task Appreciation: A Study Based On Raven’S Advanced Progressive Matrices, Renzo Bianchi, Irvin Sam Schonfeld

Publications and Research

The Occupational Depression Inventory (ODI) was recently developed to assess depressive symptoms that individuals specifically attribute to their work. Research on the criterion validity of the instrument is still in its infancy. In this study, we examined whether the ODI predicted performance on, and appreciation of, a cognitively challenging test. In light of the link established between clinical depression and neuropsychological impairment, and considering that individuals with depressive symptoms are more likely to feel helpless under challenging circumstances, we hypothesized that occupational depression would be associated with poorer cognitive performance and a darkened appreciation of the task undertaken. We relied …

Pay For Performance, Satisfaction And Retention In Longitudinal Crowdsourced Research, Elena M. Auer, Tara S. Behrend, Andrew B. Collmus, Richard N. Landers, Ahleah F. Miles

Psychology Faculty Publications

In the social and cognitive sciences, crowdsourcing provides up to half of all research participants. Despite this popularity, researchers typically do not conceptualize participants accurately, as gig-economy worker-participants. Applying theories of employee motivation and the psychological contract between employees and employers, we hypothesized that pay and pay raises would drive worker-participant satisfaction, performance, and retention in a longitudinal study. In an experiment hiring 359 Amazon Mechanical Turk Workers, we found that initial pay, relative increase of pay over time, and overall pay did not have substantial influence on subsequent performance. However, pay significantly predicted participants' perceived choice, justice perceptions, and …

Outdoor Air Pollution Exposure And Inter-Relation Of Global Cognitive Performance And Emotional Distress In Older Women, Andrew J. Petkus, Xinhui Wang, Daniel P. Beavers, Helena C. Chui, Mark A. Espeland, Margaret Gatz, Tara Gruenewald, Joel D. Kaufman, Joann E. Manson, Susan M. Resnick, James D. Stewart, Gregory A. Wellenius, Eric A. Whitsel, Keith Widaman, Diana Younan, Jiu-Chiuan Chen

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The interrelationships among long-term ambient air pollution exposure, emotional distress and cognitive decline in older adulthood remain unclear. Long-term exposure may impact cognitive performance and subsequently impact emotional health. Conversely, exposure may initially be associated with emotional distress followed by declines in cognitive performance. Here we tested the inter-relationship between global cognitive ability, emotional distress, and exposure to PM2.5 (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter 2 (nitrogen dioxide) in 6118 older women (aged 70.6 ± 3.8 years) from the Women’s Health Initiative Memory Study. Annual exposure to PM_2.5 (interquartile range [IQR] = 3.37 μg/m³) and NO₂ (IQR …

Is Executive Function The Universal Acid?, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay responds to Hirstein, Sifferd and Fagan’s book, Responsible Brains (MIT Press, 2018), which claims that executive function is the guiding mechanism that supports both responsible agency and the necessity for some excuses. In contrast, I suggest that executive function is not the universal acid and the neuroscience at present contributes almost nothing to the necessary psychological level of explanation and analysis. To the extent neuroscience can be useful, it is virtually entirely dependent on well-validated psychology to correlate with the neuroscientific variables under investigation. The essay considers what executive function is and what the neuroscience adds to our …

S3e6: How Do Face Masks Affect First Impressions?, Ron Lisnet, Mollie Ruben

The Maine Question

There’s an adage that people don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Mollie Ruben, assistant professor of psychology, examines how face masks affect people’s first impressions of others during the COVID-19 outbreak. Do people appear more or less smart to others, depending on whether they’re wearing or not wearing a mask? More or less friendly? Learn about this research project conducted by Ruben, who directs the Emotion, Pain, and Interpersonal Communication (EPIC) Lab at the University of Maine.