Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Expressions Of Optimism Bias And "Self" Versus "Other" Perceived Controllability In The Context Of Military-Related Risks, Lauren Lachica-Muschett

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This study aimed to examine expressions of optimism bias and perceived controllability specifically regarding risks often associated with military service. Optimism bias refers to people’s tendency to believe they are less susceptible to experiencing negative life events compared to others. Previous studies show high levels of optimism bias are associated with strong perceptions of personal controllability. Optimism bias is a significant aspect of health promotion research particularly in the field of general occupational health and safety (OHS). However, optimism bias has never been investigated in the military OHS domain. Given the number of risks associated with military occupations, examination ...

What Are The Cognitive Mechanisms That Underlie Our Theory Of Mind? Potential Insights From Informationtheory, Nellie Kamkar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to infer mental states. The purpose of Study 1 was to reduce performance demands on a ToM test for forty (22 females) children (M age = 4.604; SD age = 1.128). Here, a low-uncertainty condition included a behaviour repetition manipulation, intended to increase success rate—but results did not confirm our hypothesis. Potential reasons for the results of Study 1 are discussed and tested in Study 2. The purpose of Study 2 was to determine the mechanism by which ToM operates in fifty-seven (26 females) adult participants (M age = 20.632; SD age ...

An Investigation Of Propranolol As An Agent For The Experimental Manipulation Of Interoception., Jane Evguenia Kouptsova

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Interoception has recently come under research focus as a potential influence on emotional and epistemic feelings. However, existing means to manipulate it experimentally have conceptual or logistical drawbacks. We investigated whether 20 mg of propranolol is a viable agent for experimentally manipulating interoception. Thirteen participants completed a double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study, performing two heartbeat perception tasks, control tasks and measures of anxiety and alertness. All measures were obtained at the beginning and end of both sessions. Propranolol significantly decreased heart rate and systolic blood pressure. Heartbeat detection performance numerically decreased under propranolol, although this effect failed to reach statistical significance ...

Social Media And Cognition, Ana C. Ruiz Pardo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Social media is an inescapable platform for sharing media and connecting with others. This thesis investigated how social media impacts cognition; specifically, attention. Study 1 investigated typical social media usage patterns and helped gauge which SM platform was most popular. Study 1 revealed three main platforms people used most often: Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Facebook was reported as the most popular social media platform. Study 2 investigated how a social media post impacts cognition. It was hypothesized that participants who posted, with the intention of provoking a reaction from their followers, on their social media prior to performing a cognitive ...

Popular Music-Evoked Autobiographical Memories - Developing A Database Of Songs And Studying The Role Of Cue Emotionality And Relevance On Recalled Memories, Krysten Zator

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In Study 1, undergraduate students rated popular music songs on several factors. A database of knowledge was created for popular music autobiographical memory (AM) cueing research. Study 2 examined the role of emotional experience and relevance associated with a popular music AM cue on recalled AMs. In Phase 1, undergraduate participants described AMs to short music clips or a blank computer screen (control). In Phase 2, participants answered questions about these AMs. In Phase 3, participants rated musical clips (including Phase 1 stimuli). Unexpectedly, music-cued memories were less salient and did not differ emotionally from control-cued, but contained more perceptual ...

More Than Mere Synonyms: Examining The Differences Between Criminogenic Thinking And Criminogenic Attitudes, David W. Gavel

Dissertations

More than 75% of prison inmates are arrested for a new crime within five years of being released from prison. Known as recidivism, this trend of repeated criminal activity accounts for more than half of annual prison admissions, and rehabilitative programs demonstrate varying degrees of success in reducing recidivism. Andrews, Bonta, and Hoge (1990) demonstrated that offenders are less likely to recidivate when they receive services that match their assessed level of risk factors (e.g., history of violence), intervention needs (e.g., mental health diagnosis), and responsivity (e.g., ideal learning environment). Criminogenic cognition, mental events (e.g., thoughts ...

The Impact Of Working Memory On Response Order Effects And Question Order Effects In Telephone And Web Surveys, Beth Cochran

Survey Research and Methodology program (SRAM) - Dissertations & Theses

It has been theorized that working memory plays a role in survey methodology contributing to response order and question order effects; however, there is little empirical evidence linking working memory and survey context effects. This dissertation examines whether respondents’ working memory influences response order and question order effects through incorporating working memory measures into the survey questionnaire. The subjects were randomly assigned to complete the survey via telephone or web, and respondents completed a series of working memory measures and attitudinal questions.

It was hypothesized that as working memory capacity improved there would be a decrease in the likelihood of ...

Cognitive Demand And The Outcome Density Effect, Ciara Louise Willett

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Judgments regarding the strength of a cause to produce an outcome do not always follow predictions of normative causal reasoning models (Kao & Wasserman, 1993). In the case of the outcome density effect, individuals’ ratings of the strength of a putative cause tend to be greater when the number of observed outcomes is high than when it is low (e.g. Jenkins & Ward, 1965). In the current experiment, I investigated the outcome density effect as a possible heuristic. Participants made causal judgments based on information about the prevalence of headaches in a sample of individuals who did or did not receive ...

Attentional Preference After A Brief Mindfulness Meditation Intervention, Joshua John Hatherley

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

It has been suggested that as a cognitive exercise, mindfulness meditation has the ability to significantly affect attention in its practitioners. This may help explain why mindfulness meditation has found success in clinical practices. This thesis sought to extend this line of research by investigating the influence of mindfulness meditation on attentional preference. In the context of this paper, attentional preference was seen to be the ability of the viewer to be biased to either detecting local components or the global whole. Study 1 investigated how a 10- minute breathing-oriented mindfulness intervention affects attentional preference on the Navon, Flanker and ...

What You Know Makes A Difference: Physical Activity Maintenance And Adherence Of Collegiate Students, Vista Beasley, Brooke Thompson, Patrick R. Young, Itay Basevitch

Journal of Counseling and Psychology

For decades, exercise psychology researchers dismissed health/exercise knowledge as a determinant of physical activity (PA). We sought to overturn this misconception, showing that psychological theory may serve as a basis for informing physical education curriculum. Based on social cognitive and self-determined motivation theories, we examined health/exercise knowledge as a determinant of collegiate students’ PA maintenance (i.e., ≥ 6 months of regular PA involvement); adherence to United States Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) 2008 PA guidelines; and PA types (i.e., aerobic, weight training). Collegiate students (n = 231) provided data via online survey. ANOVA analyses revealed that ...

Individual Differences In The Allocation Of Visual Attention During Navigation, Mikayla Keller

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

There are large individual differences in the ability to create an accurate mental representation (i.e., a cognitive map) of a novel environment, yet the factors underlying cognitive map accuracy remain unclear. Given the roles that landmarks and cognitive map accuracy play in successful navigation, the current study examined whether differences in the landmarks that individuals look at while navigating are related to differences in cognitive map accuracy. Participants completed a battery of spatial tests: some that assessed spatial skills prior to a navigation task, and others that tested memory for the environment following exploration of a virtual world. Results ...

Investigating The Influence Of Grammatical Aspect On Eye-Movements, Kelly A. Nisbet

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

People’s ability to understand language is influenced by numerous factors, one of which is grammatical aspect. The present study focused on whether hearing the imperfective aspect (“The man was slicing the vegetables”; ongoing action) versus the perfective aspect (“The man had sliced the vegetables”; completed action) affects the activation of the mental representation of an outcome (e.g., a sliced carrot) and of the instrument used for a specific action (e.g., a knife for slicing). We conducted a visual-world paradigm eye-tracking study to investigate moment-by-moment language understanding (Heuttig et al., 2011). Participants listened to sentences such as those ...

Learning To Think Slower: Review Of Thinking, Fast And Slow By Daniel Kahneman (2011), Samuel L. Tunstall, Patrick N. Beymer

Numeracy

Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 499 pp. ISBN 978-0374275631.

As an expansive review of Kahneman and others' work over the past half-century in understanding human decision-making, Thinking, Fast and Slow provides Numeracy readers much to consider for both pedagogy and research. In this review, we outline Kahneman's core argument—that humans use both rash (emotional) System 1 thinking and slow (logical) System 2 thinking—then discuss how such systems might be addressed in a quantitative literacy classroom.

Think Twice: Review Of Thinking, Fast And Slow By Daniel Kahneman (2011), Anne Kelly

Numeracy

Daniel Kahneman. Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 499 pp. ISBN 978-0374275631.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman significantly sharpens our understanding of human decision-making and the systems of thinking that underlie it. He offers a compelling critique of the rational-agent model, arguing that, while we can and do use reason, we often fall back on a type of thinking that operates quickly and requires less cognitive effort but is vulnerable to faulty belief.

Perspectives On Personality Assessment Of Children With Limited Cognitive Ability, Jasmine Fayeghi Schnurstein

Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

Personality assessment can be an important part of diagnosis and treatment planning with children and adolescents. Consequently, research in personality assessment with children and adolescents has received attention; however, there is still limited research in this area with children of below average cognitive capacity. In order to gain better understanding of the current practice of personality assessment of children with below average IQ, this interpretative phenomenological study explores expert psychologists' experience and recommendations for future practice. Structured interviews were conducted with four clinical psychologists with an expertise in personality assessment with children, including children with below average intelligence. Five themes ...

Data Sets For “Pubh-D-17-00335r2 Effects Of Selected Socio-Demographic Characteristics On Nutrition Knowledge And Eating Behavior Of Elementary Students In Two Provinces In China”, Ling Qian, Fan Zhang, Ian Newman, Duane F. Shell, Weijing Du

Educational Psychology Papers and Publications

The 2 attached digital files are placed in UNL Digital Commons for access by readers of open access journal BMC Public Health < https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/ >. The data set supports the analysis reported in the study “PUBH-D-17-00335R2 Effects of Selected Socio-demographic Characteristics on Nutrition Knowledge and Eating Behavior of Elementary Students in Two Provinces in China” by Ling Qian, MD PhD; Fan Zhang, MD PhD; Ian M. Newman, PhD; Duane F. Shell, PhD; Weijing Du, MD PhD.

The paper has been accepted by BMC Public Health. It is the journal’s policy that the data on which the conclusions are ...

Impact Of Expressive Intensity And Stimulus Location On Emotion Detection, Brittany Nicole Groh

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Previous research demonstrates that the age of an observer, the peripheral location of a face stimulus on a display, and the intensity of the emotion expressed by the face all play a role in emotion perception. Older individuals have more difficulty identifying emotion in faces, especially at lower expressive intensities. The purpose of the current study was to understand how younger and older adults’ abilities to detect emotion in facial stimuli presented in the periphery would be affected by the intensity of the emotional expressions and the distance that the expressions are presented away from the center of the display ...

Exploring The Prevalence Of Learning Styles In Educational Psychology And Introduction To Education Textbooks: A Content Analysis, Mary Katherine Ryle

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The implementation of learning styles models in the classroom remains a heavily debated topic in education. Notable problems with utilization of learning styles in the classroom include a lack of empirical research support and potential maladaptive effects on student learning and motivation. The primary research questions focused on the presence and quantity of learning styles discussion in the text, which definitions, models, and recommendations were presented, and which of the cited references were based on empirical data. The answers to these questions were compared between educational psychology and introduction to education textbooks. A content analysis of introduction to education (n ...

Growing Up With Porn: The Developmental And Societal Impact Of Pornography On Children, Gail Dines

Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Three Interfaces For 360-Degree Video On Spatial Cognition, Wutthigrai Boonsuk, Stephen B. Gilbert, Jonathan W. Kelly

Jonathan W. Kelly

In this paper, we describe an experiment designed to evaluate the effectiveness of three interfaces for surveillance or remote control using live 360-degree video feeds from a person or vehicle in the field. Video feeds are simulated using a game engine. While locating targets within a 3D terrain using a 2D 360-degree interface, participants indicated perceived egocentric directions to targets and later placed targets on an overhead view of the terrain. Interfaces were compared based on target finding and map placement performance. Results suggest 1) non-seamless interfaces with visual boundaries facilitate spatial understanding, 2) correct perception of self-to-object relationships is ...