Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Angels And Demons: Using Behavioral Types In A Real-Effort Moral Dilemma To Identify Expert Traits, Hernan Bejerano, Ellen P. Green, Stephen Rassenti

ESI Publications

In this article, we explore how independently reported measures of subjects' cognitive capabilities, preferences, and sociodemographic characteristics relate to their behavior in a real-effort moral dilemma experiment. To do this, we use a unique dataset, the Chapman Preferences and Characteristics Instrument Set (CPCIS), which contains over 30 standardized measures of preferences and characteristics. We find that simple correlation analysis provides an incomplete picture of how individual measures relate to behavior. In contrast, clustering subjects into groups based on observed behavior in the real-effort task reveals important systematic differences in individual characteristics across groups. However, while we find more differences, these …

Ptsd From Childhood Trauma As A Precursor To Attachment Issues, Christy Owen

Fidei et Veritatis: The Liberty University Journal of Graduate Research

The past 20 years have been turbulent regarding Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), with conflicting research about its causes, effects, treatment, and prognosis. The current diagnostic criteria in the DSM-5 fails to adequately address this disorder. A number of deviant and maladaptive behaviors common amongst children with RAD are not even mentioned in the diagnostic criteria. As such, the diagnostic definition is almost unidentifiable or incompatible with real-life conduct manifestations of the disorder. Rather, this author contends that RAD is foundationally a unique and extreme form of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from Early Childhood Trauma. The child endured unspeakable neglect and/or …

Measure Athletes’ Volition—Short: Evidences For Construct Validity And Reliability, Ioannis Proios, Miltiadis Proios

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

The Measure Athletes’ Volition consists of 23 items that measure six elements of volitional competences. The purpose of the present study was to examine whether a subset of these items could form a short version of the scale; to provide evidence for the structural validity and internal consistency of the short version; and to test validity issues of the new scale. A total of 831 individuals from three different samples completed the long version of the scale. Results indicated that the short version consisted of 15 items that measured volitional competences of persistence, expediency, and purposefulness. This scale had acceptable …

The Effect Of Emotional Faces On The Attentional Blink In Younger And Older Adults, Allison M. Sklenar

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The attentional blink occurs when detection of a second target (T2) is impaired when it occurs between 180 to 450 ms after the first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). The attentional blink can be affected by relevant emotional stimuli, like emotional faces, such that an emotional T1 enhances the attentional blink, and an emotional T2 attenuates it. However, not all studies use the same type of face stimuli, and there is debate over whether schematic and photo-realistic faces are processed in the same way. Furthermore, the effect of emotion on the attentional blink should differ with …

The Effects Of Picture Prompts On The Acquisition Of Receptive Language In Children With Autism, Hanna Simons

Honors Theses

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of picture prompts in the acquisition of receptive language. Receptive language training is the ability to listen to and understand what is being communicated (Miller, Carp, Petursdottir, 2009). Receptive language training requires the acquisition of auditory-visual conditional discriminations. In receptive language training the child must attend to the auditory and comparison stimuli. This is sometimes an issue for children with autism. Previous research has shown that receptive language training can be facilitated through the use of picture prompts (Fisher, Kodak, & Moore, 2007). The participant for the study was 3 years old. He was …

Sensor-Enabled Reduction Of Stereotypy, Aaron Brzezinski

Honors Theses

The goal of this study was to create and implement an intervention to reduce stereotypic behavior in a child with Autism. The participant was chosen based on a high occurrence of target behavior and was recruited through his treatment center. The target behaviors were selected based on the subjective evaluation of his treatment provider and parents. The dependent variable in this study was hand-flapping. The independent variable was DRO training that included a buzzer and a chime noise contingent on the presence or absence of stereotypy respectively. A Microsoft Kinect© 2.0 was used to track occurrence of target behavior and …

Effects Of Multiple Exemplar Instruction On Reading Comprehension For Secondary Students With Reading Delays, Reilly Chabie

Honors Theses

This study tested the effects of multiple exemplar instruction on reading comprehension for a middle school student with a reading delay. A multiple probe design was used to evaluate and observe the changes in the number of questions the student answered correctly. Probes consisted of: (1) pre-experimental, (2) single exemplar instruction (SEI), (3) post-SEI, (4) MEI, and (5) post-MEI. The independent variable was a multiple exemplar intervention that required the student to read a passage across three topographies (silently, listening, and aloud).

Multiple exemplar instruction was shown to be effective in increasing the number of questions answered correctly during single …

Emotion Regulation And Valance Bias, Drue Marr, Catherine Brown, Maital Neta

UCARE Research Products

In this study we wanted to look at the affects of emotion regulation on individual differences in valance bias. The ability to regulate emotions brings into question how difficult/easy it is for individuals that have a more natural positive bias/disposition to them, or have a more natural negative bias/disposition to them. We would expect someone with a negative disposition to have a more difficult time regulating his or her emotions, as evidenced by the elevated EMG levels and EDA readings that we acquired. The purpose of this study was to better understand the way one perceives surprised expressions, as surprised …

Effects Of Self-Monitoring And Social Support On Exercise Adherence, Dominic Cauteruccio

Honors Projects in Applied Psychology

The purpose of this study was to look at the effects of self-monitoring and social support on minutes of exercise per week. Specifically, self-monitoring examined whether self-monitoring and self-monitoring in combination with social support would increase minutes of exercise over a four week period. The study was four weeks long, with participants randomly assigned into three groups: a control group (group 1), a self-monitoring group (group 2), and a self-monitoring plus social support group (group 3). Exercise time was measured using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), and social support was measured using the Inventory of Socially Supportive Behaviors (ISSB). …

Acute Stress Exposure And Expression Of Instrumentally Conditioned Financial Preferences: An Fmri Study, William Travis Mccuddy

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Recent research suggests acute stress exposure is associated with increased habit-based over goal-oriented decision making (e.g., Schwabe & Wolf, 2011). The current study examined whether acute stress promotes the expression of simple financial preferences “overtrained” to the point of habit in the face of a changing environment where said preferences were later rendered non-optimal. Over three days participants (N = 28) learned to discriminate between visual stimuli probabilistically associated with monetary gains or losses and made decisions between stimuli with real financial outcomes. On the fourth day after exposure to either an acute stressor or control procedure participants performed the …

“My Logic Is Undeniable”: Replicating The Brain For Ideal Artificial Intelligence, Samuel C. Adams

Senior Honors Theses

Alan Turing asked if machines can think, but intelligence is more than logic and reason. I ask if a machine can feel pain or joy, have visions and dreams, or paint a masterpiece. The human brain sets the bar high, and despite our progress, artificial intelligence has a long way to go. Studying neurology from a software engineer’s perspective reveals numerous uncanny similarities between the functionality of the brain and that of a computer. If the brain is a biological computer, then it is the embodiment of artificial intelligence beyond anything we have yet achieved, and its architecture is advanced …

The Netflix Effect And Defining Binge-Watching, Brenna C. Davis

Undergraduate Research Posters

With the accessibility of television programs provided by popular streaming platforms, like Netflix, consumers can watch episodes or seasons of their favorite programming in just one sitting. This new practice of watching television has been referred to as binge-watching, and is defined by Netflix as watching two to six episodes of the same show in one sitting. Netflix’s definition is the most widely used definition of binge-watching, but does not account for the varying lengths of episodes for the different types of programming. There is a lack of standardization in what constitutes a television binge, like the standards that exist …

The Effect Of Neighborhood Size And Morphology In The Chinese Language, Long Nguyen

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The Neighborhood Size Effect (NSE), characterized as the effect in word determination based on changing one orthographic aspect of that word. The amount of words that can be created through such manipulation is called a neighborhood size (NS). Number of other factors such as frequency, how often a word appears and morphology, the combination of meaningful word units, have been suggested to have an overriding effect on NSE. In addition, there is a lack of research on NSE with non-alphabetical languages such as Chinese, which uses characters comprising of a multitude of semantic or phonetic markers. In this experiment, participants …

Using Spiral Dynamic Theory For Adult Civic Engagement Research And Social Justice Education, Lisa R. Brown

Adult Education Research Conference

Empirical civic engagement research based in a South American context. Participants included adult learner populations engaged in revolutionary protests that opposed private for-profit education in Chile. Findings were higher order Spiral Dynamic Theory thinking at the for-profits and lower civic engagement.

Animal Welfare And Animal Rights, M.E. Rolle

Animal Sentience

This overview of Broom’s book, Sentience and Animal Welfare (2014), considers the role the book could play in the animal rights debate. In a thoroughly researched and objectively presented text, Broom lays out information that could place doubt in the minds of decision-makers. By highlighting not just the ways animals resemble humans, but also the ways humans resemble animals, Broom shines a light on a solidly grey area in the animal rights debate.

A Unified Framework Of The Shared Aesthetic Experience, Huakai Liao

CMC Senior Theses

Aesthetic expressions have been seen as the manifest of human culture. The psychology of aesthetics have proposed various models, describing the various phenomena related to aesthetic experience, such as sensory pleasure derived from aesthetic stimuli, emotional response toward aesthetic depiction, cognitive mastering over aesthetic emotion, etc. However, further examination reveals current models have theoretical limits for the explanation of society-wide aesthetic preference due to limited scope of focus. Thus, the current project proposes a new theoretical framework to describe the process through which the society comes to converge on aesthetic preference. Examination of related theories and experimental evidence shows that …

The Domain Specificity Of Intertemporal Choice In Pinyon Jays, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Bryce Kennedy, Dina Morales, Marianna Burks

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

When choosing between a piece of cake now versus a slimmer waistline in the future, many of us have difficulty with self-control. Food-caching species, however, regularly hide food for later recovery, sometimes waiting months before retrieving their caches. It remains unclear whether these long-term choices generalize outside of the caching domain. We hypothesized that the ability to save for the future is a general tendency that cuts across different situations. To test this hypothesis, we measured and experimentally manipulated caching to evaluate its relationship with operant measures of self-control in pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus). We found no correlation …

Intertemporal Similarity: Discounting As A Last Resort, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Standard models of intertemporal choice assume that individuals discount future payoffs by integrating reward amounts and time delays to generate a discounted value. Alternative models propose that, rather than integrate across them, individuals compare within attributes (amounts and delays) to determine if differences in one attribute outweigh differences in another attribute. For instance, Leland (2002) and Rubinstein (2003) propose models that 1) compare the two reward amounts to determine whether they are similar, 2) compare the similarity of the two time delays, and then 3) make a decision based on these similarity judgments. Here, I tested discounting models against attribute-based …

Getting Active With Passive Crossings: Investigating The Efficacy Of In-Vehicle Auditory Alerts For Rail Road Crossings, Steven Landry

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Train-vehicle collisions at highway-rail grade crossings continue to be a major issue in the US and across the world. Installing additional hardware at individual crossings is expensive, time consuming, and potentially ineffective. To prevent recent trends in safety improvement from plateauing, experts are turning towards novel warning devices that can be applied to all crossings with minimal cost. In-vehicle auditory alerts (IVAAs) could potentially remedy many of the human factor issues related to crossing safety in a cost effective manner.

This thesis presents a series of experiments designing and testing an IVAA system for grade level railroad (RR) crossings. Study …