Cognition and Perception Commons^™

Investigating The Proposed Mechanisms Guiding Negative Attentional Templates, Michael Kevin Mugno

Masters Theses

To complete goal-directed visual search, information that is gathered in working memory must be sorted by relevancy to the current task. In order to bias search, attentional templates are created within the construct of visual working memory (VWM) using both endogenous and exogenous information. While most attentional templates are built around positive information, which is directly relevant to the target of search, there are cases where negative information, which is directly relevant to the search but not necessarily the target itself, may be more efficient. However, the mechanisms behind how these negative templates direct search is debated. The goal of …

Avoiding Anthropomoralism, Julian Friedland

Between the Species

The Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation, which has been endorsed by hundreds of influential academic ethicists, calls for establishing a vegan economy by banning what it refers to as all unnecessary animal suffering, including fishing. It does so by appeal to the moral principle of equal consideration of comparable interests. I argue that this principle is misapplied by discounting morally relevant cognitive capacities of self-conscious and volitional personhood as distinguished from merely sentient non-personhood. I describe it as a kind of anthropomorphizing moralism which I call anthropomoralism, defined as the tendency to project morally relevant characteristics of personhood onto merely …

Incorporating Poi As A Therapeutic Modality For Preschool Aged Children In The Care Clinic, Danielle Zirkle

Department of Occupational Therapy Entry-Level Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Comparison Between The Effects Of Acute Physical And Psychosocial Stress On Feedback-Based Learning, Xiao Yang, Brittany Nackley, Bruce H. Friedman

Psychology Faculty Publications

Stress modulates feedback-based learning, a process that has been implicated in declining mental function in aging and mental disorders. While acute physical and psychosocial stressors have been used interchangeably in studies on feedback-based learning, the two types of stressors involve distinct physiological and psychological processes. Whether the two types of stressors differentially influence feedback processing remains unclear. The present study compared the effects of physical and psychosocial stressors on feedback-based learning. Ninety-six subjects (Mage = 19.11 years; 50 female) completed either a cold pressor task (CPT) or mental arithmetic task (MAT), as the physical or psychosocial stressor, while electrocardiography and …

Rethinking Attention Control: An Individual Differences Approach, Vincent A. Medina

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While there is extensive literature on visual spatial attention, less is known about auditory spatial attention, especially in terms of attention control. There is also a growing literature highlighting the importance of considering individual differences in attention control ability. Given these points, the purpose of this study was twofold. The first was to understand how auditory attention control is influenced by spatial location as well as vision. The second was to examine whether individual differences in attention control ability can predict task performance in that context. We utilized two tasks for these purposes. Experiment 1a consisted of a cross-modal Stroop …

Animal Communication And Sentience, Catia Correia-Caeiro, Katja Liebal

Animal Sentience

Segundo-Ortin & Calvo (S&C) argue for sentience in plants on the basis of several studies of what they describe as "cognitive abilities" in plants. As other commentaries (e.g., Brooks Pribac, 2023; Damasio & Damasio, 2023; ten Cate, 2023) have pointed out, however, there is some misuse of several concepts, and a lack of evidence for sentience. We try to clarify three questions in S&C’s discussion: (1) How is communication defined and conceptualised in animal research? (2) Is plant communication comparable to animal communication? (3) Is communication (or the process we see in plants) a good basis for inferring sentience in …

Using An Approach-Avoidance Framework To Understand The Relationship Between Non-Lethal Weapons And Performance, Andrew J. Mojica, Christopher P. Bartak, Joseph N. Mitchell, Alan Ashworth

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

It is proposed that performance degradation from exposure to non-lethal technology is mediated by impulsive and reflective approachavoidance motivation. An approach-avoidance motivational framework was used to specify a four-stage information processing model that predicts performance degradation. The first stage is Evaluation: it processes physiological, sensory, perceptual, and cognitive information. The second stage is Comparison: it processes the content of the Evaluation into avoidance and approach motivational indices. The third stage is Probability: it processes information from previous stages into a probability of choosing to continue or abandon goal-directed behavior. Finally, the fourth stage is Performance: it processes performance accuracy on …

​​The Effects Of Viewpoint, Motion, And Affordance Priming On Perceptual Learning Of Feelies​, Catherine Dowell

Dissertations

According to Gibson and Gibson (1955) perceptual learning is a process of developing the skill to differentiate previously undifferentiated but available information. The initial investigations focused on object identification, lacking a behaviorally relevant functional task. In the current study participants learned to differentiate between novel objects (feelies). To test the role of visual exploration objects were viewed from either a side or a top view and were displayed as either static pictures or rotating about a vertical axis. In Experiment 1 a simple object discrimination task was used. Perfect accuracy was achieved sooner in static conditions compared to motion conditions …

An Erp Measure Of Non-Conscious Memory Reveals Dissociable Implicit Processes In Human Recognition Using An Open-Source Automated Analytic Pipeline, Richard J. Addante, Javier Lopez-Calderon, Nathan Allen, Carter Luck, Alana Muller, Lindsey Sirianni, Cory S. Inman, Daniel L. Drake

Psychology Student Publications

Non-conscious processing of human memory has traditionally been difficult to objectively measure and thus understand. A prior study on a group of hippocampal amnesia (N = 3) patients and healthy controls (N = 6) used a novel procedure for capturing neural correlates of implicit memory using event-related potentials (ERPs): old and new items were equated for varying levels of memory awareness, with ERP differences observed from 400 to 800 ms in bilateral parietal regions that were hippocampal-dependent. The current investigation sought to address the limitations of that study by increasing the sample of healthy subjects (N = …

Destined Failure, Chengjun Pan

Masters Theses

I attempt to examine the complex structure of human communication, explaining why it is bound to fail. By reproducing experienceable phenomena, I demonstrate how they can expose communication structure and reveal the limitations of our perception and symbolization.I divide the process of communication into six stages: input, detection, symbolization, dictionary, interpretation, and output. In this thesis, I examine the flaws and challenges that arise in the first five stages. I argue that reception acts as a filter and that understanding relies on a symbolic system that is full of redundancies. Therefore, every interpretation is destined to be a deviation.

Phantom Spaces, Craytonia Williams Ii

Masters Theses

The world is built on ‘what-ifs’ and ‘I hopes.’ The more one can dream, the further development goes in design. We are told anything is possible if you put your mind to it, and as we have lived through many different eras, the limit in which we extend our mind has expanded. Research shows that emotional and mental instability has risen over 50% in the past decade in people under 30. How does the understanding of emotions and trauma impact the understanding and the feelings attached to designed spaces for rest and rehabilitation. We are constantly observing and adapting to …

The Effects Of Music Therapy On Elderly Adults With Dementia, Jeante J. Jackson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As people age, the brain is more susceptible to changes that diminish cognitive function. In recent years neuroscience has found convergent evidence between music therapy and brain architecture, as it has shown the generation of new connections in the brain or a reorganization and possible strengthening of existing connections already in the brain. However, the literature regarding music training’s effects on executive control, selective attention, and speech processing is lacking particularly when it comes to older populations.

This study investigated Verbal Working Memory, Visuospatial Attention and Task Initiation, and Auditory Selective Attention in a 91-year-old adult (B.P.) diagnosed with dementia. …

Slow Speed Rail: The Social, Psychological And Environmental Benefits Of Long-Distance Train Travel, Vincent Gragnani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Long-distance train travel in the United States is slow, inefficient and woefully underfunded. Trains are routinely delayed for freight traffic. Many major cities are served in the middle of the night, or not at all. And the cost of a sleeping compartment is far out of reach for most Americans. This is all in stark contrast to the reliable services offered across Europe and parts of Asia. But for the 3.5 million people who ride Amtrak’s long-distance trains every year, the experience can be a fulfilling one. This web-based project, slowspeedrail.com, explores these benefits, namely, an intimacy with the landscape …

Voiding The Unwanted Self: An Examination Of Racialized Violence In The United States, Benjamin Stark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is concerned with the role of the psychic defenses projection and projective identification in the processes which lead to racialized violence in the United States. The dissertation posits that projection has been less considered as a primary driver of racialized violence than other psychic processes and should be better integrated into psychological research and literature on racialized violence. The thesis begins with a detailed examination of two instances of racialized violence, the first a macro example of nation vs. nation: the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003, before which the United States fantasized Iraq was developing weapons …

Mapping The Conceptualization Of Gender In Gambling Literature, Abu Saleh Mohammad Sowad

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

This study maps the existing conceptualization of gender in peer-reviewed gambling scholarship to locate areas of future inquiry for a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between gender and gambling. In this study, we located the literature relevant to the conceptualization of gender in gambling published between 2000-2020 by searching eight academic databases using Boolean operators and various key search terms, yielding 31,533 results. After a thorough screening based on inclusion/exclusion criteria and excluding duplicates, we located 2,532 journal publications that addressed gender and gambling. Among them, 53.4% used gender as a descriptive demographic variable, 44.3% explored the comparative analysis between …

Creating Project Contrast: A Video Game Exploring Consciousness And Qualia, Pierce Papke

Honors Projects

Project Contrast is a video game that explores how the unique traits inherent to video games might engage reflective player responses to qualitative experience. Project Contrast does this through suspension of disbelief, avatar projection, presence, player agency in storytelling, visual perception, functional gameplay, and art. Considering the difficulty in researching qualitative experience due to its subjectivity and circular explanations, I created Project Contrast not to analyze qualia, though that was my original hope. I instead created Project Contrast as an avenue for player self-reflection and learning about qualitative experience. While video games might be just code and art on a …

The Benefits Of Art Therapy On Stress And Anxiety Of Oncology Patients During Treatment, Helen Shiepe

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Within the last ten years research on art therapy and its positive impact on oncology patients’ stress and anxiety during treatment has been minimal. Oncology patients whether they are children or adults when diagnosed experience similar reactions due to their diagnosis, treatment, and in some cases end of life care. The current question is whether or not art therapy does have a positive impact on decreasing the stress and anxiety with oncology patients while undergoing treatment. Deane, Fitch & Carmen (2000), discussed art therapy as a healing art that is “intended to integrate physical, emotional, and spiritual care by facilitating …

Cognitive Dissonance: Analysis Of The Theory, Marcus Crespo

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Cognitive dissonance arises as a person experiences discomfort when their belief does not align with their behavior. Cognitive dissonance can be divided into three categories: irrelevance, dissonance, and consonance; it also can viewed in terms of what it is and what effects it produces for an individual. Studies have shown the struggles and inconsistencies that arise when people experience conflict between who they want to be and who they actually are. This paper examines cognitive dissonance at length and assesses the current theoretical models that exist to describe cognitive dissonance.

Extracting Edges In Space And Time During Visual Fixations, Lynn Schmittwilken, Marianne Maertens

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

A Signal Detection Model For The Analysis Of Continuous Response Gradients And An Application To Confidence Rating Data, Fabian A. Soto

MODVIS Workshop

see attached

Modelling Pairwise Comparisons For Thurstonian Scaling And Kendall Rank Correlation, Maarten Wijntjes

MODVIS Workshop

Pairwise comparisons are a simple and effective way to measure the relative ordering of two samples. For more than two samples, a global ordering can be constructed and with sufficient data it is possible to construct a metric scale, for example by using Thurstonian scaling. We will discuss the concept of Number of Distinguishable Levels (NDLs) that emerges from a Thurstonian scaling procedure. The NDL is the attribute range in terms of Just Noticeable Differences (JNDs), for example the number of grayscale values. The NDL is either limited by the visual system or by the range of stimuli. The latter …

Evaluating Models Of Scanpath Prediction, Matthias Kümmerer, Matthias Bethge

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Modeling The Spread Of Object-Based Attention During Free Viewing, Nicolas Roth, Olga Shurygina, Flora Marleen Muscinelli, Klaus Obermayer, Martin Rolfs

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

A Dynamical Model Of Binding In Visual Cortex During Incremental Grouping And Search, Daniel Schmid, Daniel A. Braun, Heiko Neumann

MODVIS Workshop

Binding of visual information is crucial for several perceptual tasks. To incrementally group an object, elements in a space-feature neighborhood need to be bound together starting from an attended location (Roelfsema, TICS, 2005). To perform visual search, candidate locations and cued features must be evaluated conjunctively to retrieve a target (Treisman&Gormican, Psychol Rev, 1988). Despite different requirements on binding, both tasks are solved by the same neural substrate. In a model of perceptual decision-making, we give a mechanistic explanation for how this can be achieved. The architecture consists of a visual cortex module and a higher-order thalamic module. While the …

Object Rigidity: Competition And Cooperation Between Motion-Energy And Feature- Tracking Mechanisms And Shape-Based Priors, Akihito Maruya, Qasim Zaidi Dr.

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Efficient Perception Of Physical Object Properties With Visual Heuristics, Vivian C. Paulun, Florian S. Bayer, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Roland W. Fleming

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

The Psychedelic Dasein: Modelling The Effects Of Psilocybin With Heidegger’S Phenomenology, Eamon Robert Stuart Macdougall

Major Papers

This paper argues that the mystical experience induced by psilocybin (understood through the tradition of Heideggerian phenomenology) modulates the attuned understanding of oneself, the world, and how the individual relates to the world. This kind of particular experience is not accessible to the individual through ordinary consciousness, therefore psilocybin may give us access to a new kind of understanding. This understanding may offer a solution to the empirical deficiencies surrounding the short-term and long-term effects of psilocybin, such as how a meagre two to three high doses have yielded unprecedented results in the treatment of tobacco addiction, and in the …

Sleep Duration Is Associated With Caudate Volume And Executive Function, Nicole Jones

Honors Theses

The ineligible role of the caudate nucleus in sleep has been implicated throughout multiple scientific studies. Previous literature has shown that greater caudate volume is associated with longer habitual sleep duration in older adults- ranging from 55 years of age and up. However, the association between sleep duration and caudate volume remains unknown in the younger population. In this study, we examined the caudate volume in youth to older adults (10 to 85 years old) with a greater sample size (N=464) to increase statistical power. The volumetric size of the caudate nucleus showed significantly positive association with habitual sleep duration, …

Using Imagery Practice To Improve Airline Pilot Situational Awareness, Brian Christopher Sajdak

Dissertations

Pilot error remains the primary cause of airline airplane accidents (Federal Aviation Administration, n.d.). Airline pilots have relied on Crew Resource Management and Threat Error Management to reduce or eliminate errors (Helmreich & Foushee, 2019). Unfortunately, the worldwide accident rate continues to increase (International Air Transport Association, 2021), demonstrating the need for further research into improving aviation safety. Current regulations do not require imagery training for airline pilots to improve situational awareness (Federal Aviation Administration, 2017a). Athletes and other professionals, such as musicians and medical professionals, use imagery to improve performance (Munzert et al., 2009). Imagery practice may improve the …

The Last Of Us In Therapy: How Mind-Controlling Fungi And Gut Bacteria Affect Your Mental Health, Anastasia Lyon

Journal of Pharmacology & Nutritional Sciences

The "psilocybiome" represents the mutually beneficial relationship between ourselves, our bacteria, and psychedelic drugs. This short review briefly discusses the benefits and limitations surrounding the potential for psychedelic therapy to synergize with gut bacteria to help regulate and maintain proper balance in the immune system, diet, and stress levels. Psychedelic therapy is a novel treatment strategy that has the potential to improve patient mental health, and, by identifying the types of gut bacteria present in patients, it can aid in personalizing medicine by determining how well their "psilocybiome" may respond.