Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Rule-Based Categorization Deficits In Focal Basal Ganglia Lesion And Parkinson’S Disease Patients, Shawn W. Ell, Andrea Weinstein, Richard Ivry

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Patients with basal ganglia (BG) pathology are consistently found to be impaired on rule-based category learning tasks in which learning is thought to depend upon the use of an explicit, hypothesis-guided strategy. The factors that influence this impairment remain unclear. Moreover, it remains unknown if the impairments observed in patients with degenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) are also observed in those with focal BG lesions. In the present study, we tested patients with either focal BG lesions or PD on two categorization tasks that varied in terms of their demands on selective attention and working memory. Individuals with …

Découvrir Le Pouvoir De Ses Mains : La Gestuelle Des Futurs Enseignants De Langue., Marion Tellier, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Music On The Development Of Children, Theresa Riforgiate, Christopher Chau

Psychology and Child Development

Listening to classical music, like Mozart, is wonderful way to expand one's musical taste. Contrary to popular beliefs, however, this passive engagement with music does not make your child smarter. However, research demonstrates that active participation in music and music instruction help develop memory, perception, language, vocabulary, spoken skills, and reading skills. In order to disseminate these findings, we compiled a list of different opportunities around San Luis Obispo for children's active participation in music. Our goal is to provide parents with a resource to help them facilitate their children's involvement in music.

Découvrir Le Pouvoir De Ses Mains : La Gestuelle Des Futurs Enseignants De Langue., Marion Tellier, Gale Stam

Gale Stam, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Emotional Content In Autobiographical Memory Through An Attachment Theory Framework, Elizabeth Tsatkin

Honors Scholar Theses

The current study investigates the relationship between individual differences in attachment style and the recall of autobiographical memories. According to attachment theory, affect regulation strategies employed by individuals high in attachment anxiety and high in attachment avoidance are likely to influence how information about the past is recalled. This study examines how attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance relate to the presence of negative emotions in autobiographical memories of upsetting events with important relationship figures (i.e., mother, father, or roommate). Participants included 248 undergraduate students ranging from ages 18-22 that attend a public university in the northeast. As hypothesized, individuals with …

Heroes And Villains: Cultural Narratives, Mass Opinions, And Climate Change, Michael Jones

Michael D. Jones

Global climate change is easily identified as one of the most pressing and contentious policy problems facing not only the United States, but the human race. In a democratic society such as our own, understanding the public’s capacities and tendencies in processing information and forming opinions about climate change has serious and far-reaching policy implications. Historically quite low, public knowledge about climate change is now on the rise, as is the importance of the issue on the public agenda (Leiserowitz, 2005). Consequently, it is not unreasonable to expect the public, for better or worse, to play a larger role in …

Curiosity, Demand Characteristics, And The Tip-Of-The-Tongue State, Chelsea Voskuilen

Psychology Honors Projects

The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state is generally described as the feeling that one knows a target word and recall of this word is imminent, although the word is currently unrecallable. Research suggests participants’ beliefs about their own knowledge affect the level and type of curiosity experienced while in a TOT state. This study examined the interaction between demand characteristics and specific types of curiosity experienced while in a TOT state. Demand characteristics were expected to affect the type of curiosity experienced, with participants in the high-demand group experiencing more negative forms of curiosity and the low-demand group experiencing more positive forms …

The Effect Of Interface Consistency And Cognitive Load On User Performance In An Information Search Task, Jeremy Mendel

All Theses

Although interface consistency is theorized to increase performance and user satisfaction, previous research has found mixed and often non-significant results. The source of this discrepancy may be due to varying levels of task difficulty employed in these past studies. This study attempted to control the task difficulty using cognitive load theory. Interface consistency was manipulated along with intrinsic cognitive load and extraneous cognitive load. Interface consistency was manipulated along three dimensions: physical, communicational and conceptual. Intrinsic cognitive load was manipulated by asking participants finance (high load) questions and travel (low load) questions. Unnecessary and irrelevant extra hyperlinks were used to …

Narrative Comprehension For Functional Survival Spatial Relations, Paul James Schroeder Iii

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Spatial situation models are mental representations of the relationship between characters and objects in the narrative environment. Functional spatial relationships describe an interaction (or potential interaction) between characters and objects in the narrative environment. Although functional relations tend to produce stronger representations as compared with nonfunctional ones (Radvansky & Copeland, 2000), recent data also suggest that specification of causal information, specifically, survival-based scenarios in which characters are described as in immediate danger, may contribute to the construction and maintenance of spatial situation models (Jahn, 2004). For the current study, this idea was tested by comparing reading times and comprehension for …

Second Language Inner Voice And Identity, Brandon Kenji Shigematsu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study investigates the phenomena of second language (L2, hereafter) inner voice for three Japanese-American English bilinguals who had long-term exposure to the L2 in naturalistic contexts, that is, by living and/or working or studying in the U.S. American English learners of L2 Japanese were included in the study as well, although only one of them had naturalistic exposure, the other having traveled to Japan in addition to being married to a Japanese national. Data for the study reveals how and when L2 inner voice is utilized, how it appears to develop, how it leads to shifts in identity toward …

State Effects Of Major Depression On The Assessment Of Personality And Personality Disorder, Leslie C. Morey, M. Tracie Shea, John C. Markowitz, Robert L. Stout, Christopher J. Hopwood, John G. Gunderson, Carlos M. Grilo, Thomas H. Mcglashan, Shirley Yen, Charles A. Sanislow, Andrew E. Skodol

Charles A. Sanislow, Ph.D.

OBJECTIVE: The authors sought to determine whether personality disorders diagnosed during a depressive episode have long-term outcomes more typical of those of other patients with personality disorders or those of patients with noncomorbid major depression.

METHOD: The authors used 6-year outcome data collected from the multisite Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (CLPS). Diagnoses and personality measures gathered from the study cohort at the index assessment using interview and self-report methods were associated with symptomatic, functional, and personality measures at 6-year follow-up. Of 668 patients initially recruited to the CLPS, 522 were followed for 6 years. All participants had either a …

The Construction Of An Elementary Music Curriculum Utilizing Backward Design And Bloom’S Taxonomy, Jessica P. Warner

Senior Honors Theses

Based on the philosophy that the development of curriculum should provide a framework for the assessment of student learning, backward design was utilized to develop a curriculum review for an elementary music program. This design worked directly with three levels of Bloom’s taxonomy (knowledge, application, and synthesis) in order to demonstrate the level of learning for three grades in a small, private mid-Atlantic elementary school. Fifteen students were assessed using the rubrics both before and after curriculum implementation, and analyses were conducted to determine what changes resulted from the focused, short-term curriculum. A plan of improvement was then developed for …

The Accuracy Of Self-Reported Intuitive And Analytical Ability, Jennifer A. Sobyra

Honors Projects

The current study aimed to establish whether individuals can accurately report their experiential (intuitive) and rational (analytical) processing abilities on the Rational-Experiential Inventory (REI) in relation to their performance on the Serial Reaction Time (SRT) and the Operation Span (Ospan) tasks. Previous research has indicated that the rational subscale may have predictive validity, but evidence of the predictive validity of the experiential subscale is mixed. To determine why previous researchers have struggled to establish this link, the current study introduced a manipulation of the knowledge of the psychological definition of intuition and its value in cognitive processing. The researcher hypothesized …

If These Men Could Still Talk, Rebecca Damphousse

Academic Symposium of Undergraduate Scholarship

For this assignment, two theorists in psychology were selected to engage in conversation. Erik Erikson and Jean Piaget were chosen and their theories of human development were researched. Erikson was asked how his experiences as a child impacted the formation of his theories. The question for Piaget was directed at the permanence, relevancy and universality of his theory into the 21st century. While a large amount of research was conducted, the questions and answers were pure conjecture.

From Blood Pressure To Physical Disability: The Role Of Cognition, Merrill F. Elias, Gregory A. Dore, Adam Davey, Michael A. Robbins, Penelope K. Elias

Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Papers

We examined the hypothesis that lowered cognitive performance plays a role in the relation between elevated blood pressure and physical disability in performing basic physical tasks. A community-based sample (N = 1025) free from stroke and dementia (mean age: 61.1 years; SD: 13.0 years; 59.8% women) was used. Using path analysis, systolic and diastolic blood pressures (predictor variable) measured over multiple longitudinal examinations were averaged and related to multiple measures of cognition (intermediate variable) and physical ability (PA; outcome variable) measured at wave 6 of the Maine-Syracuse Study. PA was indexed by time required to execute standing, walking, and turning …

Event Segmentation And Memory Retrieval In Reading Comprehension, Charles Baker Brenner

Linguistics Honors Projects

Comprehending text involves the convergence of top-down, expectation-driven processes and bottom-up, stimulus-driven processes. The precise nature of this convergence, however, is not well understood. The current study used narrative time shifts and shifts in protagonist goal, both hypothesized to encourage event-segmented memory representations, to investigate the interaction between automatic and constructive memory processes during reading. The addition of time and goal shifts was found to have no effect on the automatic retrieval of information from memory. The results are interpreted as support for the bottom-up account of retrieval of information during reading, and for the idea that the top-down account …

The Effects Of Handedness And Bilateral Saccadic Eye Movements On False Alarms In Recognition Memory, Lisa Weinberg

Psychology Honors Projects

Handedness can be used as a marker for interhemispheric interaction, which can produce memory benefits. Bilateral saccadic eye movements can be used to manipulate levels of interhemispheric interaction. This study measured the effects of handedness and bilateral saccadic eye movement on memory using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. This study predicted a memory advantage for left-handers and mixed-handers without eye movements and an advantage for right-handers with the eye movements. The results do not support these predictions but do suggest that handedness is a factor in episodic memory performance. The analyses for this study were run using A’ to compare false alarm …

Trust Judgments And The Hindsight Bias Effect, Martin Daniel Smith-Rodden

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

A decision to trust or not to trust can be examined within a broader category of cognition research concerning decisions under uncertainty. The purpose of this research was to investigate trust decisions through the lens of the hindsight bias effect. The hindsight bias effect (sometimes known as the "I knew it all along" effect) is a consequence that often follows judgments under uncertainty. Two experiments examined participants' evaluations of trust outcomes to determine if and how judgments of trust might be susceptible to hindsight biases. Experiment 1 exposed participants to vignettes depicting a third-party trust transaction between friends, with outcomes …

Neural Dedifferentiation In Relation To Risk For Alzheimer's Disease, Nathan C. Hantke

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research indicates that as an individual's age increases, the task-related spatial extent of neural activation increases. This decrease in neural specificity, or dedifferentiation, is often demonstrated by older adults during challenging cognitive tasks. Cognitively intact individuals at-risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD), as deemed by having an apolipoprotein-E ε4 allele or a family history of AD, demonstrate increased fMRI activation as compared to individuals at lower risk. Using a low effort, high accuracy event-related semantic memory task involving the presentation of famous and non-famous names, we examined spatial neural specificity through a measure of dedifferentiation using …

Locus Of Control And The Age Difference In Free Recall From Episodic Memory, Paul Amrhein, Judith K. Bond, Derek Hamilton

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The authors investigated the relation of locus of control (LOC) to age differences in free-recall memory performance. Older and younger participants completed P. C. Duttweiler's (1984) Internal Control Index (ICI) and subsequently performed free-recall memory tasks. Compared with the younger participants, the older participants exhibited poorer recall with more intrusions and uncorrected repetition errors as well as reduced categorical clustering. For the older participants with less internal LOC, recall proportion and item-pair associative recall clustering were lower than for the older participants with more internal LOC. By contrast, the younger participants did not exhibit any LOC effects in their recall …