Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Does State Of Mind Predict Prototype-Based Category Learning In Older Adults?, Kana Kimura

Theses and Dissertations

Category learning plays an important role in day-to-day lives across all ages, allowing us to organize related experiences, develop expectations, and determine how we behave given those expectations. Despite its importance, the current body of literature on category learning in older adults is much smaller than that of other memory domains. Thus, little is known about how well older adults learn new concepts and what factors best promote learning novel categories. One factor that may affect category learning abilities is an individual’s state of mind. A number of studies demonstrate the effects of sleep, stress, affect, and motivation on cognition, …

Effects Of Life History And Brain Size On Cognition And Behavior: Studies On Prey-Searching In The Spider Pholcus Phalangioides, Joseph Kilmer

Theses and Dissertations

There is tremendous diversity in body size across animals, including many examples of derived miniaturization. A reduction in body size is accompanied by a reduction in brain size, which is predicted to lead to limitations in cognition, but we have yet to find empirical evidence indicating what these limitations might be. I used a behavioral assay common in web spiders to explore this topic. I observed spiders as they searched for prey that they recently captured and lost. This assay has the advantage of being easily quantifiable while reflecting a spider’s evaluation and memory of lost prey. I conducted a …

Motivating Healthy Diet Behaviors: The Self-As-Doer Identity, Amanda Brouwer

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Self-identity predicts healthy eating behaviors and intentions above and beyond Theory of Planned Behavior components (TPB; i.e., attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norms), but interventions exploring the relationship between self-identity and motivation are limited. Self-as-doer identity may be an important point of intervention for healthy eating behaviors (Houser-Marko & Sheldon, 2006). Therefore, I investigated whether the experimental manipulation of a self-as-doer identity predicted improved healthy food consumption, intentions, and increased self-identity as a healthy eater compared to women who received nutritional education or no intervention directly following the intervention and one month post-intervention.

Method: Participants were 79 women …