Cognition and Perception Commons^™

Increases In Perspective Embedding Increase Reading Time Even With Typical Text Presentation: Implications For The Reading Of Literature, D. H. Whalen, Lisa Zunshine, Michael Holquist

Publications and Research

Reading fiction is a major component of intellectual life, yet it has proven difficult to study experimentally. One aspect of literature that has recently come to light is perspective embedding (“she thought I left” embedding her perspective on “I left”), which seems to be a defining feature of fiction. Previous work (Whalen et al., 2012) has shown that increasing levels of embedment affects the time that it takes readers to read and understand short vignettes in a moving window paradigm. With increasing levels of embedment from 1 to 5, reading times in a moving window paradigm rose almost linearly. However, …

Sweet Love: The Effects Of Sweet Taste Experience On Romantic Perceptions, Ren Dongning, Kenneth Tan, Ximena B. Arriaga, Kai Qin Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Terms of endearment such as sweetie, honey, and sugar are commonly used in the context of describing romantic partners. This article explores how a relatively subtle manipulation, namely taste sensations, might influence romantic perceptions of a nonestablished relationship. Consistent with predictions, results from Studies 1 and 2 (n = 280) showed that participants evaluated a hypothetical relationship, but not an existing relationship, more favorably when exposed to sweet taste compared to non-sweet taste control. Study 3 (n = 142) further showed that participants indicated greater interest in initiating a relationship with a potential partner when exposed to sweet taste, as …

The Effects Of Aging On Associative Learning And Memory Retrieval In Causal Judgment, Jessica Parks Arnold

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Research has shown that detecting and judging causal relationships requires associative learning and memory. Retrospective revaluation of causal cues requires associative memory (Aitken, Larkin, & Dickinson, 2001) to bind multiple cues together and use these associations to retrieve unseen cues for revaluation of their associative value. The difficulty that older adults experience with respect to retrospective revaluation could occur because of their deficit in associative binding and retrieval (Mutter, Atchley, & Plumlee, 2012). Like retrospective revaluation, blocking requires cue – outcome associative learning, but unlike retrospective revaluation, blocking does not require binding two cues together nor does it require using …

How To Go Beyond The Body: An Introduction, Guy Dove

Faculty Scholarship

Embodied cognition represents one of most important theoretical developments in contemporary cognitive science. Many cognitive processes appear to be influenced by body morphology, emotions, and sensorimotor systems. This perspective is supported by an ever increasing collection of empirical studies that fall into two broad classes: one consisting of experiments that implicate action, emotion, and perception systems in seemingly abstract cognitive tasks and the other consisting of experiments that demonstrate the contribution of bodily interaction with the external environment to the performance of such tasks.

Now that embodied cognition is fairly well established, the time seems right for assessing its further …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Electrophysiological Changes In P200 Latency And Amplitude Of Jittered Orientation Visual Integration Task In Healthy Participants: A Multi-Block Design Eeg Study, Monika M. Rozynski, Chi-Ming Chen

Honors Scholar Theses

Visual integration, the ability to fuse environmental information such as light, color, shades, and motion to form a representation of a whole cohesive higher-order visual image, is impaired in persons with schizophrenia. Little is known how the P200 component, an event-related potential (ERP) in the parieto-occipital region, is affected in persons with schizophrenia while they perform visual integration tasks, when compared to healthy persons. This study administered Gabor contours that varied in high and low degrees of orientational jitter through the Jitter Orientation Visual Integration (JOVI) task to investigate visual integration by analyzing latency and amplitude of the P200 component. …

Electrophysiological Changes Of N100 Latency And Amplitude In Healthy Participants Performing The Jitter Orientated Visual Integration Task: A Multi-Block Design Study, Fariya Naz

University Scholar Projects

The present study investigated the differences in processing during visual integration in healthy adults. The visual N100 indexes early visual discrimination and in this case, was hypothesized to show differences in both latency and amplitude depending on the level of difficulty which corresponds to orientational jitter in a visual integration task. Four blocks with pseudo-random levels of jitter were presented to participants in the Jitter Oriented Visual Integration (JOVI) task. Results looking at the Oz channel showed significant reduction in amplitude in the visual N100 during the more difficult levels condition of the task. The multi-block design, originally expected to …

Comparison Of Linear Functions In Middle Grades Textbooks From Singapore And The United States, Linda D. Fowler

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many U.S. students do not perform well on mathematics assessments with respect to algebra topics such as linear functions, a building-block for other functions. Poor achievement of U.S. middle school students in this topic is a problem.

U.S. eighth graders have had average mathematics scores on international comparison tests such as Third International Mathematics Science Study, later known as Trends in Mathematics and Science Study, (TIMSS)-1995, -99, -03, while Singapore students have had highest average scores. U.S. eighth grade average mathematics scores improved on TIMMS-2007 and held steady onTIMMS-2011. Results from national assessments, PISA 2009 and 2012 and National Assessment …

Prevalence Of Learned Grapheme-Color Pairings In A Large Online Sample Of Synesthetes, Nathan Withhoft, Jonathan Winawer, David M. Eagleman

Faculty Publications

In this paper we estimate the minimum prevalence of grapheme-color synesthetes with letter-color matches learned from an external stimulus, by analyzing a large sample of English-speaking grapheme-color synesthetes. We find that at least 6% (400/6588 participants) of the total sample learned many of their matches from a widely available colored letter toy. Among those born in the decade after the toy began to be manufactured, the proportion of synesthetes with learned letter-color pairings approaches 15% for some 5-year periods. Among those born 5 years or more before it was manufactured, none have colors learned from the toy. Analysis of the …

Lost Or Fond? Effects Of Nostalgia On Sad Mood Recovery Vary By Attachment Insecurity, Sarah R. Cavanagh, Ryan J. Glode, Philipp C. Opitz

Psychology Department Faculty Works

Nostalgia involves a fond recollection of people and events lost to time. Growing evidence indicates that nostalgia may ameliorate negative affective states such as loneliness and boredom. However, the effect of nostalgia on sadness is unknown, and there is little research on how social connectedness might impact nostalgia's effects. Grounded in a theoretical framework whereby people with lower levels of attachment insecurity benefit more from nostalgia, we exposed participants to a mortality-related sad mood and then randomly assigned them to reflect on a nostalgic or an ordinary event memory. We examined changes in mood and electrodermal activity (EDA) and found …

Why Is The Crowd Divided? Attribution For Dispersion In Online Word Of Mouth, Stephen He, Samuel Bond

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The widespread availability of online word of mouth (WOM) enables modern consumers to assess not only the opinions of others about products and services, but also the extent to which those opinions are consistent or dispersive. Despite longstanding calls for greater understanding of mixed opinions, existing evidence is inconclusive regarding effects of WOM dispersion, and theoretical accounts have relied primarily on the notion of reference dependence. Extending prior work, this research proposes an attribution-based account, in which consumer interpretation of WOM dispersion depends on the extent to which tastes in a product domain are perceived to be dissimilar, so that …

Editorial: Neural Implementation Of Expertise, Merim Bilalic, Robert Langner, Guillermo J. Campitelli, Luca Turella, Wolfgang Grodd

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

How the brain enables humans to reach an outstanding level of performance typical of expertise is of great interest to cognitive neuroscience, as demonstrated by the number and diversity of the articles in this Research Topic (RT). The RT presents a collection of 23 articles written by 80 authors on traditional expertise topics such as sport, board games, and music, but also on the expertise aspects of everyday skills, such as language and the perception of faces and objects. Just as the topics in the RT are diverse, so are the neuroimaging techniques employed and the article formats. Here we …

The Cognitive Basis Of Social Behavior: Cognitive Reflection Overrides Antisocial But Not Always Prosocial Motives, Brice Corgnet, Antonio M. Espín, Roberto Hernán-González

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Even though human social behavior has received considerable scientific attention in the last decades, its cognitive underpinnings are still poorly understood. Applying a dual-process framework to the study of social preferences, we show in two studies that individuals with a more reflective/deliberative cognitive style, as measured by scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), are more likely to make choices consistent with “mild” altruism in simple non-strategic decisions. Such choices increase social welfare by increasing the other person's payoff at very low or no cost for the individual. The choices of less reflective individuals (i.e., those who rely more heavily …

Engaging Youth In Bullying Prevention Through Community-Based Participatory Research, Jen Gibson, Paul D. Flaspohler, Vanessa Watts

Faculty Scholarship

Few studies that engage youth in community-based participatory research (CBPR) focus on issues of safety/violence, include elementary school-aged youth, or quantitatively assess outcomes of the CBPR process. This article expands understanding of CBPR with youth by describing and evaluating the outcomes of a project that engaged fifth-grade students at 3 schools in bullying-focused CBPR. Results suggest that the project was associated with decreases in fear of bullying and increases in peer and teacher intervention to stop bullying. We conclude with implications for the engagement of elementary school-aged youth in CBPR to address bullying and other youth issues.

School Mental Health Early Interventions And Academic Outcomes For At-Risk High School Students: A Review Of The Research, Aidyn L. Iachini, Elizabeth Levine Brown, Annahita Ball, Jen Gibson, Steven E. Lize

Faculty Scholarship

The current educational policy context in the United States necessitates that school-based programs prioritize students’ academic outcomes. This review examined the quantitative research on school mental health (SMH) early interventions and academic outcomes for at risk high school students. Seven articles met the inclusion criteria for this review. All articles were examined according to study design and demographics, early intervention characteristics, and outcomes. Of the studies included, most were conducted in urban settings, involved the implementation of group-based early intervention strategies, and monitored GPA as a distal academic outcome. Counselors were frequent implementers of these early interventions. A meta-analysis found …

Evaluating An Abbreviated Version Of The Paths Curriculum Implemented By School Mental Health Clinicians, Jen Gibson, Shelby Werner, Andrew Sweeny

Faculty Scholarship

When evidence-based prevention programs are implemented in schools, adaptations are common. It is important to understand which adaptations can be made while maintaining positive outcomes for students. This preliminary study evaluated an abbreviated version of the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) Curriculum implemented by school-based mental health clinicians in preschool/kindergarten classrooms. Results suggest that students (N = 80) demonstrated increases in emotional understanding and prosocial behavior. Children with low initial levels of problem behavior demonstrated large and continual increases in prosocial behavior over the entire course of the intervention, whereas children with high initial levels of problem behavior only demonstrated …

Memory Behaviour Requires Knowledge Structures, Not Memory Stores, Guillermo J. Campitelli

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Since the inception of cognitive psychology dominant theories of memory behavior have used the storage metaphor. In the multi-store models (e.g., Broadbent, 1958; Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968; Baddeley and Hitch, 1974) the memory system comprises one or more short-term memory (STM) stores and a long-term memory (LTM) store. These stores are places where information is located for varying periods of time (i.e., seconds in the STM stores, and minutes to lifetime in the LTM store) and they have varying capacity limits: large for the LTM store, very limited for the STM store—4 to 7 items, see Miller (1956), Broadbent (1958), …

The Gaze-Cueing Effect In The United States And Japan: Influence Of Cultural Differences In Cognitive Strategies On Control Of Attention, Saki Takao, Yusuke Yamani, Atsunori Ariga

Psychology Faculty Publications

The direction of seen gaze automatically and exogenously guides visual spatial attention, a phenomenon termed as the gaze-cueing effect. Although this effect arises when the duration of stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between a non-predictive gaze cue and the target is relatively long, no empirical research examined the factors underlying this extended cueing effect. Two experiments compared the gaze-cueing effect at longer SOAs (700 ms) in Japanese and American participants. Cross-cultural studies on cognition suggest that Westerners tend to use a context-independent analytical strategy to process visual environments, whereas Asians use a context-dependent holistic approach. We hypothesized that Japanese participants would …