Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Cognition and Perception

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

2013

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Cognitive Activity Support Tools: Design Of The Visual Interface, Paul Parsons Sep 2013

Cognitive Activity Support Tools: Design Of The Visual Interface, Paul Parsons

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation is broadly concerned with interactive computational tools that support the performance of complex cognitive activities, examples of which are analytical reasoning, decision making, problem solving, sense making, forecasting, and learning. Examples of tools that support such activities are visualization-based tools in the areas of: education, information visualization, personal information management, statistics, and health informatics. Such tools enable access to information and data and, through interaction, enable a human-information discourse. In a more specific sense, this dissertation is concerned with the design of the visual interface of these tools. This dissertation presents a large and comprehensive theoretical framework to …

Go to article

Organization Of Human Auditory Cortex: Responses To Frequency Modulated Sounds, Diedre D. Desouza Sep 2013

Organization Of Human Auditory Cortex: Responses To Frequency Modulated Sounds, Diedre D. Desouza

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the extent, magnitude and patterns of brain activity in response to frequency-modulated sounds. We examined this by manipulating the direction (rise vs. fall) and the rate (fast vs. slow) of a series of iterated rippled noise (IRN) bursts. Participants were presented with auditory stimuli while functional images of the cortex were obtained. Univariate analyses revealed more widespread activation within auditory cortex in response to frequency-modulated sweeps compared to steady-state sounds. Furthermore, multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) was used to determine whether regions within auditory cortex were involved in feature-specific encoding. The pattern …

Go to article

The Role Of Probe-Trial Distractors In The Production/Removal Of The Spatial Negative Priming Effect, Peter D. Haworth Aug 2013

The Role Of Probe-Trial Distractors In The Production/Removal Of The Spatial Negative Priming Effect, Peter D. Haworth

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In spatial negative priming (SNP) tasks, trials are presented in pairs; first the ‘prime’, and then the ‘probe’. Target and/or distractor events appear on both trials and probe target reaction time is significantly lengthened when it arises at a former distractor-occupied location (ignored-repetition [IR] trial), relative to when it appears at a new location (control [CO] trial). This latency inequality, which is not inevitable, defines the SNP effect. Here, we examined the influence of prime and probe trial distractor identity similarity on restoring the SNP effect when its prevention was successfully motivated by the use of a .25 (distractor present)/.75 …

Go to article

Are Visual Texture-Selective Areas Recruited During Haptic Texture Discrimination?, Samantha K. Podrebarac Aug 2013

Are Visual Texture-Selective Areas Recruited During Haptic Texture Discrimination?, Samantha K. Podrebarac

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Shape and texture provide cues to object identity, both when objects are explored using vision and via touch (haptics). Visual shape information is processed within the lateral occipital complex (LOC), while texture is processed in medial regions of the collateral sulcus (CoS). Evidence indicates that the LOC is consistently recruited during both visual and haptic shape processing. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine whether 'visual' texture-selective areas are similarly recruited when observers discriminate texture via touch. We used a blocked design in which participants attended to either the texture or shape of a number of 3-dimensional (3D) …

Go to article

Understanding The Relationship Between Perception And Production Of The Beat, Taylor W. Parrott Aug 2013

Understanding The Relationship Between Perception And Production Of The Beat, Taylor W. Parrott

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Impaired discrimination of sequences with a ‘beat’ in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) suggests the basal ganglia are responsible for the perception, or ‘internal generation’ of the beat in addition to motor timing. As a first step, we examined how young healthy participants performed on tests assessing perception, internal generation, and motor production of the beat to determine if a common mechanism guides all three processes and how this mechanism affects timing. The results suggest that perception, internal generation and production are controlled by a common timing mechanism. In general, a strong perception of the beat was associated with good …

Go to article

Musical Mood And Musical Arousal Affects Different Stages Of Learning And Memory Performance, Tram Nguyen Jul 2013

Musical Mood And Musical Arousal Affects Different Stages Of Learning And Memory Performance, Tram Nguyen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis examined whether the effect of music on memory is attributable to musical mood, musical arousal, context, or some combination of these factors. In Experiment 1, participants performed a face-name paired-association task while music was played in the background. In Experiment 2, the perceptual context (Experiment 2A) and emotional context (Experiment 2B) of music was examined more thoroughly. Experiment 3 examined whether the context effect of musical mood and musical arousal occurs in a recall task (Experiment 3A), a recognition task (Experiment 3B), and an association task (Experiment 3C). The results showed that low arousal music enhanced memory while …

Go to article

The Influence Of Proficiency And Age Of Acquisition On Second Language Processing: An Fmri Study Of Mandarin-English Bilinguals, Emily S. Nichols Jul 2013

The Influence Of Proficiency And Age Of Acquisition On Second Language Processing: An Fmri Study Of Mandarin-English Bilinguals, Emily S. Nichols

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Research investigating the neural correlates of second language (L2) processing has usually studied age of acquisition (AoA) and proficiency separately. Presently, we examined both in parallel, treated as continuous variables. We used fMRI to study neural activity for L2 processing in adult native Mandarin speakers who are L2 English speakers. Behavioral measures of language proficiency and AoA were obtained from subjects prior to performing a picture-word matching task during an fMRI scan. Brain activity during L2 English processing was shown to be independently affected by AoA and proficiency; activity in left superior temporal gyrus and right parahippocampal gyrus was modulated …

Go to article

Information Seeking In Rats On The Radial Maze, Chelsea R. Kirk Jul 2013

Information Seeking In Rats On The Radial Maze, Chelsea R. Kirk

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Metacognition is awareness of what one does and does not know. Students given a choice between studying material they have learned well and material they have learned poorly prefer to study the less mastered material (Metcalfe, 2009). Recent studies suggest that primates also know about the state of their own knowledge and will seek unknown information to complete a task (Call & Carpenter, 2001; Hampton et al., 2004). Two experimental paradigms can be used to test for the presence of metacognition within a species: uncertainty tasks and information seeking tasks. Uncertainty tasks ask animals to judge their confidence in the …

Go to article