Psychology Commons^™

The Heart Wants What It Wants: Effects Of Desirability And Body Part Salience On Distance Perceptions (Dewitt), Caroline C. Dewitt

Student Publications

Previous research has shown that the desirability of an object influences perceived distance from the object, such that desirable objects are perceived as closer than objects that are not desirable (Balcetis & Dunning, 2010). It has also been suggested that metaphors reflect how our knowledge is represented; so, for example, making the head or heart more salient produces characteristics commonly associated with those body parts (i.e., emotionality for the heart and rationality for the head) (Fetterman & Robinson, 2013). The current study examined the effects of head or heart salience and desirability on distance perception. We hypothesized that since common …

The Heart Wants What It Wants: Effects Of Desirability And Body Part Salience On Distance Perceptions (Heath), Jason B. Heath

Student Publications

Previous research has shown that the desirability of an object influences perceived distance from the object, such that desirable objects are perceived as closer than objects that are not desirable (Balcetis & Dunning, 2010). It has also been suggested that metaphors reflect how our knowledge is represented; so, for example, making the head or heart more salient produces characteristics commonly associated with those body parts (i.e., emotionality for the heart, rationality for the head) (Fetterman & Robinson, 2013). The current study examined the effects of head or heart salience and object desirability on distance perception. We hypothesized that, since common …

Investigating The Effects Of Sensory Learning In Rats Using Intra And Extra Stimulus Modalities, Ariel M. Kershner

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

The purpose of this study was to see what rats learn about the elements of a compound stimulus (a stimulus composed of two different stimuli), and whether their learning differs if the compound is from the same modality (intra-modal), i.e. both visual, or from different modalities (inter-modal), i.e. visual and auditory. We hypothesized that the rats would respond more to the compound stimuli than to the single stimuli (Pearce and Wilson, 1990), more to the compound modality of inter-modal elements than to the compound modality of intra-modal elements (Miller, 1971 and Gingras, 2009), equally to the intra-modal elements (Rescorla, 1972), …

Evaluation Of The Effectiveness Of A Gaze-Based Training Intervention On Latent Hazard Anticipation Skills For Young Drivers: A Driving Simulator Study, Yusuke Yamani, Pinar Biçaksiz, Dakota B. Palmer, Nathan Hatfield, Siby Samuel

Psychology Faculty Publications

A PC-based training program (Road Awareness and Perception Training or RAPT; Pradhan et al., 2009), proven effective for improving young novice drivers' hazard anticipation skills, did not fully maximize the hazard anticipation performance of young drivers despite the use of similar anticipation scenarios in both, the training and the evaluation drives. The current driving simulator experiment examined the additive effects of expert eye movement videos following RAPT training on young drivers' hazard anticipation performance compared to video-only and RAPT-only conditions. The study employed a between-subject design in which 36 young participants (aged 18-21) were equally and randomly assigned to one …

Comparing The Distraction Of Cell Phone Conversations To In-Person Conversations On A Simulated Commercial Flight, Tianhua Li, Andrew R. Dattel

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The purpose of the study was to determine the difference in participants’ attention to announcements and compliance with safety behaviors when talking on a cell phone and when talking face-to-face in a simulated commercial flight. Currently, passengers are forbidden from making cell phone calls during flights in the United States due to electronic interference. However, any possible interference can be eliminated with the help of new technology. Although talking on the cell phone does not cause electronic interference, the distraction of a passenger caused by a cell phone may negatively impact safety. This study compared the extent of safety compliance …

The Effects Of Rhythm For Social Emotional Learning Skills Development, Jonathan O. Mande

Lesley University Community of Scholars Day

Many people talk about the importance of music in school and learning, we all know about its effects on cognitive development for children and adults. Though despite these universally known facts, music education programs are increasingly underfunded in schools, private lessons are not accessible to most people, while our country is simultaneously suffering from an increase in academic retention and destructive societal conflicts. Music brings all people together and at its core is rhythm. It makes available a space for joy; to fully express love, build bonds and strengthen our individual spirits. When used intentionally, music heals and is a …

Multisensory Integration And Autistic Traits Using Non-Sociolinguistic Information, Sébastien A. Lauzon, Samantha E. Schulz, Zack I. Cohen, Ryan A. Stevenson

Western Research Forum

Background: Sensory processing issues are one of the most common complaints in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One area of sensory difficulties in ASD that has been the focus of intense research in recent years is multisensory integration (MSI), or the ability to bind auditory and visual information into a single, unified percept. While integration of social or linguistic information is consistently shown to be an area of difficulty in ASD, results are less clear with simple, non-sociolinguistic stimuli. This study aims to address this ambiguity by determining whether MSI of non-sociolinguistic sensory information is related to traits and symptomatology …

Trust Building Tools For Talking With Youth During Times Of Conflict, Bonnie C. Springer, Andrea Crist

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

This presentation will provide tools and strategies for turning crisis into opportunity. The skills of Life Space Crisis Intervention provide helping adults faced with the extreme behavior of youth during times of crisis strategies which build trust and connections in meaningful and healing ways; turning crisis into opportunity for at risk youth to develop social responsibility and grow emotionally

Flight Simulator Fidelity, Training Transfer, And The Role Of Instructors In Optimizing Learning, Paul L. Myers Iii, Arnold W. Starr, Kadie Mullins

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Simulators have been integrated into flight training at various levels for decades, increasing in utility as they increased in fidelity. Today, practically all levels of qualification in passenger-carrying commercial airliners can be obtained entirely in the simulator, with the first experience in the aircraft on a revenue-producing flight. Flight training in the U.S. is a tightly controlled, highly regulated process overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It is also a very successful one; commercial aviation maintains a remarkable safety record. To that end, pilot training has been studied and analyzed extensively over the years, and as to the focus …

Social Influences On Songbird Behavior: From Song Learning To Motion Coordination, Iva Ljubičić

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Social animals learn during development how to integrate successfully into their group. How do social interactions combine to maintain group cohesion? We first review how social environments can influence the development of vocal learners, such as songbirds and humans (Chapter 1). To bypass the complexity of natural social interactions and gain experimental control, we developed Virtual Social Environments, surrounding the bird with videos of manipulated playbacks. This way we were able to design sensory and social scenarios and test how social zebra finches adjust their behavior (Chapters 2 & 3). A serious challenge is that the color output of a …

Exploring Cognitive Dissonance Between College Students' Religious And Spiritual Beliefs And Their Higher Education, Shawn Gaulden

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

With perceptions of conflict between religion and science often appearing in popular discussions and academic writings, cognitive dissonance may result if college students find their epistemological beliefs challenged during their undergraduate education. The purpose of this study is to explore whether students experience cognitive dissonance between their religious and spiritual identity and their college education and experiences, as well as whether certain factors in college life lead to cognitive dissonance. College students (N = 272) from the Central Florida area were surveyed with measures exploring the dimensions of college life that affect the likelihood of students experiencing tension between their …

The Empathy Mitigation: Empathy And Its Impact On Pain Perception And Altruistic Motivation, Amanda Daly

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Empathy and its impact on pain perception has been studied narrowly with the focus being on participants receiving empathy during a pain procedure. This study reversed the focus and ran a standard cold pressor test (CPT) in the context of an empathy frame structured to elicit an empathic response for others from participants. It was hypothesized that the group receiving the empathic frame would have longer CPT times due to alterations in pain perception from empathy activation and these subjects’ self-reported state-trait empathy level would positively correlate with the increased times. 85 subjects participated with a control group of 43 …

Do Clothing Style And Color Affect Our Perceptions Of Others?, Ariel M. Kershner

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Prior research has shown that women who wear red clothing or suggestive clothing are perceived as more attractive, having greater sexual intent, and having more negative qualities than women dressed in different colors or less suggestive clothing. This bias towards perceiving sexual intent may be evolutionary or may be due to people projecting their emotions onto others. The current study builds from this research by performing a 2 (color: white or red) x 2 (clothing type: suggestive or non-suggestive) between-subjects experiment. We hypothesized that women would be perceived as more attractive and as having greater sexual intent while wearing red …

Measuring Perceptual Consciousness, Marjan Persuh

Publications and Research

Conscious perception is typically assessed with either objective or subjective measures (Seth et al.,2008). Measures are considered objective if conscious perception is estimated from performancein a discrimination task; inability to discriminate between stimuli is taken as evidence thatparticipants had no conscious perception (Hannula et al., 2005). Measures are considered subjectiveif participants report their visual experience on each trial (Sergent and Dehaene, 2004; Del Culet al., 2007). One type of subjective measures consists of metacognitivejudgments; the relationshipbetween metacognition and perceptual awareness is a matter ofdebate (Fleming and Lau, 2014;Jachs et al., 2015) and I will not discuss these measures further. Likewise, …

Do Gender Differences In Perceived Prototypical Computer Scientists And Engineers Contribute To Gender Gaps In Computer Science And Engineering?, Joyce Ehrlinger, E. Ashby Plant, Marissa K. Hartwig, Jordan J. Vossen, Corey J. Columb, Lauren E. Brewer

Faculty Publications

Women are vastly underrepresented in the fields of computer science and engineering (CS&E). We examined whether women might view the intellectual characteristics of prototypical individuals in CS&E in more stereotype-consistent ways than men might and, consequently, show less interest in CS&E. We asked 269 U.S. college students (187, 69.5% women) to describe the prototypical computer scientist (Study 1) or engineer (Study 2) through open-ended descriptions as well as through a set of trait ratings. Participants also rated themselves on the same set of traits and rated their similarity to the prototype. Finally, participants in both studies were asked to describe …

Tasseography From Jung's Perspective, Avetisian, Elizabeth

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Approaching from Jung’s perspective this paper aims to understand how the unconscious communicates through symbolism that may be the basis for synchronicity arising from mantic procedures. A particular ritual of divination called tasseography will be studied whereby the seer interprets patterns in coffee grounds intuitively and by following a standard system of symbolism to foretell the seeker’s future life events or provide answers to seeker’s pressing life questions. The paper will examine various processes involved in the experience of tasseography and its ritual that enable the reader to predict the seeker’s future or bring light to the present or past …

Psychometric Properties Of The Difficulties In Emotion Regulation Scale (Ders) And Its Short Forms In Adults With Emotional Disorders, Lauren S. Hallion, Shari A. Steinmann, David F. Tolin, Gretchen J. Diefenbach

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Objective: The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) is a widely used self- report measure of subjective emotion ability, as defined by a prominent clinically derived model of emotion regulation (Gratz and Roemer, 2004). Although the DERS is often used in treatment and research settings for adults with emotional (i.e., anxiety, mood, obsessive-compulsive, or trauma-related) disorders, its psychometric properties are not well-characterized in this population.

Method: We examined the psychometric properties of the DERS and three popular short forms (DERS-16; DERS-18; and DERS-SF) in a large (N = 427) sample of treatment-seeking adults with one or more DSM-5 emotional disorders. …

Time Delay And Investment Decisions: Evidence From An Experiment In Tanzania, Plamen Nikolov

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Attitudes toward risk underlie virtually every important economic decision an individual makes. In this experimental study, I examine how introducing a time delay into the execution of an investment plan influences individuals’ risk preferences. The field experiment proceeded in three stages: a decision stage, an execution stage and a payout stage. At the outset, in the Decision Stage (Stage 1), each subject was asked to make an investment plan by splitting a monetary investment amount between a risky asset and a safe asset. Subjects were informed that the investment plans they made in the Decision Stage are binding and will …

Chickens Play To The Crowd, Cinzia Chiandetti

Animal Sentience

The time was ripe for Marino’s review of chickens’ cognitive capacities. The research community, apart from expressing gratitude for Marino’s work, should now use it to increase public awareness of chickens’ abilities. People’s views on many animals are ill-informed. Scientists need to communicate and engage with the public about the relevance and societal implications of their findings.

Post-Darwin Skepticism And Run-Of-The-Mill Suicide, John Hadley

Animal Sentience

Peña-Guzmán’s depiction of the opponent of animal suicide as a conservative is a straw man. It is possible to accept that animals are self-conscious and reflexive yet still reject the view that they have the mental wherewithal to commit run-of-the-mill suicide. That animal behaviour can be positioned on a continuum of self-destructive behaviour does not establish that animals can intentionally kill themselves.

An Adaptationist Perspective On Animal Suicide, Timothy P. Racine

Animal Sentience

Peña-Guzmán’s discussion of suicide in nonhuman animals has broad implications. In this commentary, I focus on the logical relation between suicide and intention. Proximate cause must be distinguished from ultimate function in explanations of suicide. I briefly discuss two adaptationist accounts of suicidal behavior.

Lessons From Chimpanzee Sign Language Studies, Mary Lee Jensvold

Animal Sentience

Claims are often made about behaviors being unique to humans; the evidence usually shows they are not. Sign language studies on chimpanzees may provide a useful model for comparative studies of suicide. A productive approach to comparative studies is to focus on observable behaviors rather than getting lost in the pitfalls of vague definitions and changing measures.

Can Nondolphins Commit Suicide?, David M. Peña-Guzmán

Animal Sentience

This Response addresses the scientific and philosophical criticisms of my 2017 target article “Can nonhuman animals commit suicide?” It defends my key claims and explores topics (such as animal judgment, animal theory of mind, and the evolution of suicide) that did not appear in the original article. It also points out areas in which further research is needed and concludes that we should be wary of accusations of “anthropomorphism” in debates about animal suicide.

Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation To Imaginal Symbolics, Schwartz, Michael

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Critical theorists and social commentators agree that modernity and postmodernity suffer from historical pathologies of world disenchantment. What might be done? Drawing on John Sallis’ phenomenology of the elemental and Tibetan Buddhist teachings on elemental practices, this paper investigates the imagination in its doubling as imaginal in generating a symbolics of the self, world, and other that is always already enchanted; an aesthetics of existence where the world itself shows forth like a work of art replete with exorbitant logics.

Animal Suicide: Evolutionary Continuity Or Anthropomorphism?, Antonio Preti

Animal Sentience

Evolutionary processes are characterized by both continuity and discontinuity. Evidence on suicide in nonhuman animals is faint and often rests on the metaphorical or anthropomorphic use of the term. Suicidal behavior might be an evolutionary jump relatively recent in our species: a byproduct of living in groups of people who are not as closely related genetically as in social groups of nonhuman mammals.

Animal Suicide And "Anthropodenial", Ryan Hediger

Animal Sentience

Increasing understanding of the impressive cognitive and social capacities of nonhuman animals suggests the possibility that they may sometimes commit suicide. Such notions tend to be dismissed as “anthropomorphism.” That interpretive hazard, I argue, must be weighed against the opposite hazard of “anthropodenial” — “the a priori rejection of shared characteristics between humans and animals” (de Waal 2006). If animals do commit suicide, how often is it motivated precisely by the impact of humans on animal life?

Continuum And Temporality, Gerard Kuperus

Animal Sentience

I fully support the continuum proposed in the target article and argue along the same lines that we should be suspicious of drawing any strict borders between human and non-human animals. Since we can say very little with absolute certainty about human intentions regarding suicide, we have no certainty about the intentions of non-human animals. Although I am very sympathetic to Peña-Guzmán’s overall argument, I suggest that time could be taken into consideration as well.

Thinking About Thinking Chickens, Lori Marino

Animal Sentience

This response focuses on three major conceptual threads that run through the peer commentary on my target article: (1) how the use of chickens influences our views of them, (2) whether education is effective, and (3) what components of chicken psychology are most relevant to understanding who chickens are.

The Signature Of Undetected Change: An Exploratory Electrotomographic Investigation Of Gradual Change Blindness, John E. Kiat, Michael D. Dodd, Robert F. Belli, Jacob E. Cheadle

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Neuroimaging-based investigations of change blindness, a phenomenon in which seemingly obvious changes in visual scenes fail to be detected, have significantly advanced our understanding of visual awareness. The vast majority of prior investigations, however, utilize paradigms involving visual disruptions (e.g., intervening blank screens, saccadic movements, “mudsplashes”), making it difficult to isolate neural responses toward visual changes cleanly. To address this issue in this present study, high-density EEG data (256 channel) were collected from 25 participants using a paradigm in which visual changes were progressively introduced into detailed real-world scenes without the use of visual disruption. Oscillatory activity associated with undetected …

Towards A Physio-Cognitive Model Of Slow-Breathing, Chris Dancy

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

How may controlled breathing be beneficial, or detrimental to behavior? Computational process models are useful to specify the potential mechanisms that lead to behavioral adaptation during different breathing exercises. We present a physio-cognitive model of slow breathing implemented within a hybrid cognitive architecture, ACT-R/Φ. Comparisons to data from an experiment indicate that the physiological mechanisms are operating in a manner that is consistent with actual human function. The presented computational model provides predictions of ways that controlled breathing interacts with mechanisms of arousal to mediate cognitive behavior. The increasing use of breathing techniques to counteract effects of stressors makes it …