Psychology Commons^™

The Effect Of Priming, Christian Orthodox Beliefs, And Training On Critical Thinking, Cheryl Norry

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study investigated the extent to which pro and antireligious individuals responded objectively and critically to religious and nonreligious material. Proreligious (n=72) and antireligious (n=72) individuals, as determined by Fullerton and Hunsberger’s (1982) Christian Orthodoxy Scale, were selected from 507 introductory psychology students. They judged the logical soundness of 30 syllogisms (10 proreligious, 10 antireligious, and 10 neutral) following a priming task (critical, religious, or neutral). Prior to the analysis of the syllogisms, half of the subjects were given logic training, while the other half did not receive any instruction in logic. Dependent variables included critical ability (i.e., the number …

The Linguistic Relativity Of Person Cognition: An English-Chinese Comparison, Curt Hoffman, Ivy Yee-Man Lau, David R. Johnson

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Examined the possibility that distinct languages are capable of exerting language-specific effects on people's impressions of and memory for other individuals. Parallel English- and Chinese-language descriptions were created of 2 characters exemplifying personality schemas with economical labels in English but not in Chinese, and 2 characters exemplifying personality schemas with economical labels in Chinese but not in English. Three groups of 12 undergraduates participated as Ss-English monolinguals, Chinese-English bilinguals who read and responded in English, and Chinese-English bilinguals who read and responded in Chinese. It was predicted that Ss processing the target descriptions in English would show greater evidence of …

An Information Processing Approach To The Study Of Map Interpretation, Susan Vaughan Felton

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Three variables involved in map interpretation (rotation, planar angle, and scale) were examined from an information processing perspective to determine whether they were characterized by serial, parallel, or a combination of serial and parallel processing. Sex differences in these processes were also examined. Participants viewed a series of pairs of slides depicting various combinations of rotations, planar angles, and scales, and were asked to determine whether the pair represented the same array viewed from a different viewpoint. Accuracy and response time were the dependent variables of interest. Results indicated that the number of manipulations that were involved in a problem …

Landmark Selection And Temporal-Spatial Integration: Macrospatial Abilities In Young Adults And Elderly Adults, Deans Haggerty

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Groups of young adults and elderly adults participated in a study examining age-related changes in macrospatial cognitive abilities. Perceptual differentiation/selection abilities were tested using a Landmark Selection task, while temporal-spatial integration abilities were explored through the use of a Scrambled Route task. In the Landmark Selection task, subjects viewed a slide presentation of a walk and then chose the landmarks which best represented the walk. For the Scrambled Route task, after viewing a slide presentation of a scrambled walk, subjects made distance estimations involving pairs of selected landmarks. Also included were self-assessment scales of spatial abilities and two psychometric tests …

The Development Of A Paper-And-Pencil Measure Of Complex Cognitive-Perceptual Aptitude, Don Michael Mcanulty

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The primary purpose of the present research was a develop a complex aptitude test to assess individual differences in multiple cognitive and perceptual abilities that are required for helicopter pilot training. The paper-and-pencil test was designed to provide measures of both static and dynamic (i.e., learning) ability under different levels of complexity. The secondary research purpose was to develop a battery of eight psychometric tests to assess other abilities that are required for helicopter pilot training. Test prototypes were produced and administered to small samples of subjects. The tests were then revised into an experimental battery that required approximately 7 …

The Effects Of Training On The Quantification Of Uncertainty, Stephen P. Claxton-Oldfield

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The use of intuitive heuristics has been put forward as an explanation for people’s assessment of probabilities (Kahneman & Tversky, 1972, 1973; Tversky & Kahneman, 1971, 1974). This phenomenon is seen as robust since “experts” (professional psychologists) make use of the same heuristics as “novices” (laypeople), despite having “had extensive training in statistics” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974, p. 1130). However, replacing probability calculus with heuristics can lead to systematic errors and biases in probabilistic judgments. This study was designed to investigate the effects of statistical training on how people think about probabilistic judgments. Subjects’ knowledge base of probabilistic concepts, as …

The Relationship Between Long-Term Psychiatric Clients’ Psychological Well-Being And Their Perceptions Of Housing And Social Support, Mary E. Earls

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The present research examined whether quality of housing and quality/quantity of social support were related to long-term psychiatric clients’ perceptions of psychological well-being. The participants were 89 persons between the ages of 18 to 65, who had been hospitalized for psychiatric problems at least twice and who had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, chronic depressive, or manic-depressive. A structured interview schedule was used which incorporated measures of each of the variables. Results indicated that quality of housing was inversely correlated with Negative Affect, but unrelated to Positive Affect. Support satisfaction was negatively correlated with Negative Affect, and frequency of support was …

The Effect Of Intuition On Creativity As Discussed By Several Individuals Of Creative Genius, Mary Jean Campbell

Institute for the Humanities Theses

When the term intuition came into psychological parlance less than a century ago, the argument began over whether intuition could affect creativity, and whether it, in fact, existed at all as part of cognitive process. This paper will begin with a discussion of the meaning of intuition and some of the implications of that term, address the difficulties inherent in relying on self-report for information, and then turn to the statements of several well-known creative individuals about the role of intuition or intuition-related phenomena in their work.

The selection of creative individuals will be limited to those who have attained …

Reinforcement-Based Response Elimination: The Effects Of Response-Reinforcement Interval And Response Specificity, Stuart Vyse, Thomas S. Rieg, Nelson F. Smith

Psychology Faculty Publications

Compared extinction and 4 reinforcement-based procedures for eliminating a response in 5 groups of 10 male Sprague-Dawley rats. Two procedures provided for reinforcement of a specific alternative behavior (ALT-R), while 2 others were differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) contingencies. The effect of 10-sec and 1-sec response-reinforcment intervals was examined with each of the ALT-R and DRO groups in (a) a training phase, in which an original response was established; (b) a response elimination phase; (c) an extinction phase; and (d) a reacquisition phase. The fastest response elimination occurred in the ALT-R group, and the slowest occurred in the DRO …

The Effect Of Interpolated Continuous Reinforcement Following Fixed Ratio Reinforcement On Resistance To Extinction, Earlene Mccullough Muse

Graduate Theses

This study investigated the effect of seven continuous reinforcement sessions interpolated after varying numbers of FR-25 sessions on extinction responses during extinction of three groups of rats. Rats received 7, 14, or 21 sessions of FR-25 followed by 7 sessions of continuous reinforcement and 7 days of extinction. There were three rats in each group. All sessions were 25 minutes long. Results showed rats that received FR-25 for 21 sessions were more resistant to extinction than any other group, measured by the cumulative number of responses during extinction. Cumulative rates of extinction responses for Groups 1 and 2 were not …

Eye Contact Perception At Distances Up To Six Meters, Daniel L. Scarl

Dissertations and Theses

Common experience suggests that most people can tell whether they are being looked at by another person who is about 8 m away. However, the results of past experiments, which used distances of no more than about 3 m, have implied that this cannot be done if the person looked at (Receiver) judges only by the iris-sclera configuration of the person looking (Sender). This is true even if eye contact is defined simply as identifying on-face gazes (FGs). It has been suggested that in everyday experience eye contact is accompanied by cues other than iris position, and that these non-iris-position …

The Ecology Of Foraging Behavior: Implications For Animal Learning And Memory, Alan Kamil, Herbert L. Roitblat

Avian Cognition Papers

In his recent Annual Review of Psychology article, Snowdon (1983) discussed the synthesis of ethology and comparative psychology. A similar synthesis of behavioral ecology and animal learning is beginning to take place. This article reviews developments in the behavioral ecology and ethology of foraging behavior relevant to psychological research on animal learning. The psychological literature shows that animals possess a wide range of learning abilities, including “simple” classical and operant conditioning; they acquire spatial, nonspatial, and temporal discriminations; they exhibit various forms of rule learning (e.g. matching-to-sample and learning set), and may even in certain senses learn language. Why does …

Scotopic And Photopic Thresholds : A Dependent Variable For The Mccollough Effect, Marilyn Murphy

Dissertations and Theses

Previous attempts to adequately evaluate orientation-specific colored aftereffects (Mccollough Effects) have thus far been unsuccessful in yielding quantitative measures of relative strengths of the effects. Similarly, little success has been shown in previous attempts to establish what level of illumination is necessary in order to evoke the aftereffects. The present study sought to determine (a) whether threshold measurements could serve as adequate, quantitative dependent variables of the Mccollough Effects, (b) whether photopic illumination was necessary in order to evoke the aftereffect. It was predicted that the greater the number of inspection trials, the dimmer the illumination level could be in …

Memory Observed: Remembering In Natural Contexts: By U. Neisser (Book Review), Steven S. Braddon

Psychology Faculty Publications

Book review by Steven S. Braddon.

Neisser, Ulric, selector. Memory Observed: Remembering in Natural Contexts. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1982. ISBN 9780716713715; 9780716713722 (pbk.)

Perception Of The Ames Distorted Room As A Function Of Active Vs. Passive Training, Antoinette B. Dyer

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the School of Education Morehead at State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Psychology by Antoinette B. Dyer in March of 1984.

The Relationship Of Self-Concept, Sex, Age, Major, Anxiety, Mathematics Background, And Mathematics Ability To The Level Of Mathematics And Statistical Anxiety Among College Juniors, David John Maysick

Dissertations

Problem. One's choice of career has significant effect upon one's future life in terms of earning potential and social interaction. Mathematics/statistical anxiety and the mathematics avoidance often accompanying such anxiety, can influence career choice, causing otherwise talented people to limit their future. The purpose of this study was to determine from selected variables--particularly self-concept--which, if any, were related to the problem of mathematics and/or statistical anxiety.

Method. The statistical sample used was 350 juniors. Stratification was by degree of mathematics content in subject's major field of study. For the study, subjects had to be in the same major category as …

The Effect Of Interpolated Continuous Reinforcement Following Fixed Ratio Reinforcement On Resistance To Extinction, Christine Miara

Graduate Theses

This study investigated the effect of seven continuous reinforcement sessions interpolated after varying numbers of FR-25 sessions on extinction responses during extinction of three groups of rats. Rats received 7, 14, or 21 sessions of FR-25 followed by 7 sessions of continuous reinforcement and 7 days of extinction. There were three rats in each group. All sessions were 25 minutes long. Results showed rats that received FR-25 for 21 sessions were more resistant to extinction than any other group, measured by the cumulative number of responses during extinction. Cumulative rates of extinction responses for Groups 1 and 2 were not …

Psyche And Time: The Phenomenology Of Time Consciousness, Sharon Fleet Hartman

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Time in its inward form may be able to provide a significance which sustains the human spirit. If this is true, it becomes unnecessary to seek an enduring significance for life in the transcendent.

Western man's attitudes toward time are a composite of religious, historical, and cultural assumptions. The Christian model of time supported man by its emphasis on God's interventions in the world. The scientific model of time left man adrift in an objective world. The ascendancy of the scientific model brought a devaluation of both time and human life.

Bergson, Husserl, and Merleau-Ponty all describe a type of …

A Computerized Procedure To Test Stereotypic Stimulus-Response Patterns And The Role Of Stimulus Location Uncertainty In Two Spatial Dimensions, Marisa Brewster

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Relationship Of Field Dependence/Independence To Personality For Younger And Older Adults, Thomas T. Lambirth

Masters Theses

The cognitive style of field dependence/independence is a perceptual construct that relates degree of reliance on the visual field to a variety of personality variables. Among the relationships found are that the field independent individuals are less involved with other people, independent in judgment, and cold and distant in interpersonal relationships. In contrast, field dependent subjects are seen as seeking close involvement with others, conforming in judgment, and warm and accepting in interpersonal relationships. Although field dependence/independence has received much attention in the literature over the years, little interest has been shown in the relationship between field dependence/independence and personality …

Optimal Foraging Theory And The Psychology Of Learning, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

The development of optimization theory has made important contributions to the study of animal behavior. But the optimization approach needs to be integrated with other methods of ethology and psychology. For example, the ability to learn is an important component of efficient foraging behavior in many species, and the psychology of animal learning could contribute substantially to testing and extending the predictions of optimal foraging theory.

Parameters Of Mental Rehearsal, Timothy K. Kelly

Dissertations and Theses

An extensive review of the literature of the phenomenon of mental rehearsal (MR), or the act of imagining oneself performing a behavior in anticipation of eventually doing so, indicated that MR could facilitate improved performance on varied motor skills. An experiment which drew from previous studies in MR, incorporated suggestions from.the literature, and used a novel measurement task was conducted. The present study compared MR to physical practice (PP), no practice (NP), mental rehearsal/physical practice combined (MR/PP), and interference mental rehearsal (I). Five groups of twenty subjects (N=100) played a hand-held video computer game in a pre- and post-test design. …

One-Third Octave Band Augmented Speech Discrimination Testing For Cochlear Impaired Listeners, Dianne Heath

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a 500 Hz and 3,150 Hz one-third octave band augmentation on the speech discrimination ability of listeners with cochlear hearing impairments. The results were analyzed both within the experimental group of subjects included in the present study and in comparison with data collected on a control group of normal hearing subjects reported earlier.

The Effect Of Causal Attribution And Self-Evaluation On Mood, William N. Werner

Dissertations and Theses

The present study was designed to test the causal locus hypothesis, and to develop and explore the self-evaluational hypothesis. The causal locus hypothesis is based on attribution, which is a person's perception of cause. The hypothesis holds that persons making internal attributions (self-caused) for failure end external attributions (not self-caused) for success experience more negative postoutcome mood than persons making external attributions for failure and internal attributions for success. The hypothesis was derived from major theories or attribution, but was not experimentally tested until recently (Wollert et al., 1981).

Hemisphere Side Of Damage And Encoding Capacity, Margaret Ellen Davis

Dissertations and Theses

This study was designed to examine whether normal information processing does engage both hemispheres of the brain regardless of sensory channel (i.e., auditory or visual), and whether an opportunity for dual encoding (verbal and visual) was advantageous for patients with unilateral brain damage. It compared memory for verbal material presented in the visual and auditory modalities among three groups: right hemisphere brain damaged stroke patients (RBD), left hemisphere brain damaged stroke patients (LBD), and neurologically intact control subjects.

Only control and LBD subjects benefited from the visual presentation compared with auditory. Controls did generally better on both modes than either …

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale For Children-Revised And The Woodcock-Johnson Tests Of Cognitive Ability: Performance Comparisons Of Elementary Students Being Referred For Special Education Services, Priscilla Mazza Hardiman

STEMPS Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of students being referred for special education services on the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability (WJTCA), Part One from the Woodcock-Johnson Psycho­ Educational Battery and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (WISC-R). A sample of 54 elementary students in grades one through six was randomly selected from a referral population for special education identification and services. The subjects were administered all subtests in the Woodcock-Johnson Tests of Cognitive Ability and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children­ Revised within a three month period of time. The results indicated a significant relationship …

Spatial Learning As An Adaptation In Hummingbirds, Susan Cole, F. Reed Hainsworth, Alan Kamil, Terre Mercier, Larry L. Wolf

Avian Cognition Papers

An ecological approach based on food distribution suggests that hummingbirds should more easily learn to visit a flower in a new location than to learn to return to a flower in a position just visited, for a food reward. Experimental results support this hypothesis as well as the general view that differences in learning within and among species represent adaptations.

Perspectives On Speechlessness : A Case Study, Michelle Alexander Carlson

Dissertations and Theses

This study addresses a problem of speech disruption as an individual abruptly and without explanation stops speaking to those around her. The matter for investigation involves the meaning this event has for those who are closely involved with this individual either in a practical day to day way or in a continuing relationship.

A Study Of Age And Sex-Related Differences In The Perception Of Emotional Stimuli, Nancy Mellor Canizio

Dissertations and Theses

In a tachistoscopic perception task, adult males in the Fels Research Institute's longitudinal population (Kagan and Moss, 1960) were found to have a higher recognition threshold for pictures depicting dependency scenes than adult females. The female subjects had a higher recognition threshold for aggressive scenes than the males.

The present study was designed to further compare male and female perception of dependent and aggressive stimuli by including a developmental component to test if the perceptual differences vary with age. A benign or neutral stimulus category was added to aid in determining direction of any resulting differences: i.e., heightened perception or …

Towards A Measure Of Superior-Subordinate Perceptual Correspondence And Its Relationship To The Performance Appraisal, Elizabeth Duane Vergeer Crist

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of the present study was to determine what, if any, relationship existed between the correspondence of perceptions between superior-subordinate work dyads and the superior's rating of the subordinate's work performance.