Psychology Commons^™

A Rat Model Of Mild Blast-Induced Head Trauma With Structural And Biochemical Abnormalities In The Absence Of Motor Deficits, Michael Kelso Walls

Open Access Theses

Blast injury has been coined the "signature injury of the Iraq war" resulting in a surge of interest in understanding and addressing the corresponding pathological sequelae. As modern warfare develops into a distinctly guerrilla style combat by smaller terrorist groups against larger, regimented forces, tactics like suicide bombing and roadside bombing with Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) become more prevalent. 1,2 This increased use of IEDs countered with improved body armor and protective technologies has significantly increased the survival rate of such attacks. 1.2 However, as survival rates have improved with body armor and other protective technologies, the incidence of reported …

Course Syllabus (Sp14) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "The Sublime, The Uncanny, And The Imagination", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

In a world in which what counts as knowledge is predominantly restricted to the measurable and the calculable, those elements of human experience which elude and exceed these parameters are often ignored and discounted. In this course, we will examine questions of the sublime, the uncanny, and the speculative as treated in literature, psychoanalysis, and philosophy in order to think and write critically about them. Here, we will consider the possible extent to which an openness to such experiences can enrich our lives.

The Relationship Between Phonological Awareness And Executive Attention Among Chinese-English Bilingual Children, Hwajin Yang, Sujin Yang, Carissa Kang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

We examined the relationship between phonological awareness (PA) and executive attention among Chinese-English bilingual children in the process of learning to read. Seventy-four bilingual children (mean age 67.5 months) completed phonological tasks assessing onset and rime awareness and the Attention Network Test (ANT), a nonverbal measure of executive attention (Rueda et al., 2004). Hierarchical analyses revealed bidirectional relations between PA and executive attention, with PA predicting executive attention and vice versa. The predictive relation of PA to executive attention was more pronounced for English onset and Chinese rime awareness. Evidence of cross-linguistic transfer of PA skills suggests concurrent contributions of …

Pathology And Motivation In Players Of Grand Theft Auto Iv, Christopher Michael Via

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Intrinsically motivated behavior is defined as a behavior that is performed for pure enjoyment (Ryan, Rigby & Przybylski, 2006). Video game playing is a form of intrinsically motivated behavior (Frederick & Ryan, 1995). Popular media commonly claims the act of playing video games leads individuals to behave in deviant and antisocial ways outside the confines of the gaming environment (Grossman & Christensen, 2008). Psychopathy is a primary feature of Antisocial Personality Disorder, according to the American Psychiatric Association (2013), and psychopathic criminals commit the greatest variety of crimes and more crimes of any type than the average criminal (Lynam, Whiteside …

Comparing Two Perspectives For Understanding Decisions From Description And Experience, Sandra S. Kauffman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When trying to make sense of uncertain situations, we might rely on summary information from a description, or information gathered from our personal experience. There are two approaches that both attempt to explain how we make risky decisions using descriptive or experiential information—the cognitive-based explanation from the description-experience gap, and the emotion-based explanation from the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH). This dissertation brings together these two approaches to better understand how we make risky decisions.

Four options were presented, with options differing in terms of advantageousness and riskiness. How easy or difficult it was to consciously comprehend the reward structure, or …

Attachment And Adolescent Offending: An Examination Of The Links Between Sexually Abusive Behavior And The Level Of Attachment To Parents And Peers, Lee Anna Knox

Dissertations and Theses

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is recognized as a public health problem with consequences affecting all levels of the ecological model. In recent years it has been recognized that up to 40% of reported sexual offenses occur at the hands of adolescent offenders (Burton, 2000), who are defined as children aged 12-18 years. In recent years, research has suggested that attachment deficits contribute to sexual offending behavior in adolescence. The current study augments the sparse research with adolescent offenders and by exploring of the participant's perceived attachment to important others (mother/mother figures, father/father figures, and peers/friends). Participants included 101 Juvenile sex …

The Student Augustinian Values Institute: Assessing Its Impact Of Enhancing The Understanding And Experience Of The Augustinian Core Values Of Veritas, Unitas, And Caritas Upon Students In Augustinian Secondary Schools, Stephen M. Curry

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Educational leadership understands the importance of teaching values in its schools and incorporates this philosophy into the school’s symbolic and structural systems. Roman Catholic Church leaders have always endorsed the teaching of values in its schools and this position was sanctioned at its Second Vatican Council (Vatican Council II, 1962-65). One aspect of the Council emphasized the importance of Catholic education as an essential vehicle for proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. Catholic schools founded and sponsored by religious communities were challenged to reappropriate their founders’ charisms in their educational ministries. The Order of St. Augustine is an example …

Business Psychology: Building An Interdisciplinary Bridge From The Ground Up, Raymond L. Forbes, Brenda Jones, Kristan Jones

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

This paper describes the building of an innovative multi-disciplinary, outcomes-based, master’s degree program that integrates the fields of Business and Psychology. Historically, Business and Psychology have ranked among the top five majors chosen by undergraduate students. The program is theory-to-practice oriented and teaches the traditional disciplines of business including: economics, finance, marketing, human resources, strategy, and management from a human perspective. The Business Psychology program primarily emphasizes qualitative versus quantitative-oriented teaching methods. Students of the program analyze individual, group, and organizational level business issues through the application of both traditional and new brain-based tools. Individual and professional developments are also …

Detecting Deception Via Eyeblink Frequency Modulation, Brandon S. Perelman

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

To assess the efficacy of using eyeblink frequency modulation to detect deception about a third party, 32 participants were sent on a mission to deliver a package to an interviewer. 17 of the participants lied to the interviewer about the details of their mock mission and 15 responded truthfully. During the interview, eyeblink frequency data were collected via electromyography and recorded video. Liars displayed eye- blink frequency suppression while lying, while truth tellers exhibited an increase in eyeblink frequency during the mission relevant questioning period. The compen- satory flurry of eyeblinks following deception observed in previous studies was ab- sent …

Direct And Relational Representation During Transitive List Linking In Pinyon Jays (Gymnorhinus Cyanocephalus), Cynthia Wei, Alan Kamil, Alan B. Bond

Alan Bond Publications

The authors used the list-linking procedure (Treichler & Van Tilburg, 1996) to explore the processes by which animals assemble cognitive structures from fragmentary and often contradictory data. Pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) were trained to a high level of accuracy on two implicit transitive lists. They were then given linkage training on the single pair that linked the two lists into a composite, 10-item hierarchy. Following linkage training, the birds were tested on nonadjacent probe pairs drawn both from within (B-D and 2–4) and between (D-1, E-2, B-2, C-3) each original list. Linkage training resulted in a significant transitory disruption in …

On The Role Of Neuronal Oscillations In Auditory Cortical Processing, Monica Noelle O'Connell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although it has been over 100 years since William James stated that "everyone knows what attention is", its underlying neural mechanisms are still being debated today. The goal of this research was to describe the physiological mechanisms of auditory attention using direct electrophysiological recordings in macaque primary auditory cortex (A1). A major focus of my research was on the role ongoing neuronal oscillations play in attentional modulation of auditory responses in A1.

For all studies, laminar profiles of synaptic activity, (indexed by current source density analysis) and concomitant firing patterns in local neurons (multiunit activity) were acquired simultaneously via linear …

Conformist Opinion Shift As An Accommodation-Motivated Cognitive Experience In Strong And Weak Situations, Angela K. Y. Leung, Evelyn Wing-Mun Au, Chi-Yue Chiu

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The authors introduce accommodation motivation as an individual difference construct that predicts personal preference to display conformist opinion shift, or the tendency to align opinion of the self with that of the group. The authors hypothesize that the relationship between accommodation motivation and conformist opinion shift will be stronger when the situational press for conformity is weak. Having clarified the conceptual meaning of accommodation motivation, the authors present evidence from two experiments that accommodation-motivated individuals readily display conformist opinion shift in anticipation of discussing with disagreeing others when conformity demand is weak (vs. strong). The second experiment offers initial support …

Direct Control Of Visual Perception With Phase-Specific Modulation Of Posterior Parietal Cortex, Andrew Jaegle, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

We examined the causal relationship between the phase of alpha oscillations (9–12 Hz) and conscious visual perception using rhythmic TMS (rTMS) while simultaneously recording EEG activity. rTMS of posterior parietal cortex at an alpha frequency (10 Hz), but not occipital or sham rTMS, both entrained the phase of subsequent alpha oscillatory activity and produced a phase-dependent change on subsequent visual perception, with lower discrimination accuracy for targets presented at one phase of the alpha oscillatory waveform than for targets presented at the opposite phase. By extrinsically manipulating the phase of alpha before stimulus presentation, we provide direct evidence that the …

Why Gesture!, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

An editorial on the importance of gesture in understanding second language acquisition and in teaching language.

Evidence-Based Teaching And Learning: From Theory To Practice, Sarah Grison

Psychology Faculty

Teachers and educational institutions are currently experiencing a perfect storm: We must teach more students in a wider variety of course formats, appropriately support student learning, and also document student progress towards reaching learning objectives. But often, we must achieve these goals with fewer resources, less support and little training. Importantly, a practical approach called Evidence-Based Teaching and Learning can help us address these new challenges. First, this session will provide information about several evidence-based pedagogical techniques shown to improve student learning, including low-stakes repeated testing. Then we will move beyond theoretical ideas to provide examples of how an Introductory …

Evidence-Based Teaching And Learning: From Theory To Practice, Sarah Grison

Psychology Faculty

Evidence-based teaching and learning provides theoretical and practical ways for teachers to use research-supported pedagogies to augment student educational experiences. This presentation provides guidelines and suggestions about how to implement evidence-based teaching techniques, conduct classroom research, and help improve teaching skills and student educational experience. Methods to support text reading, and multiple ways to learn material (student response systems, online homework tools and quizzes, etc.) are suggested.

Being Shy At School, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Irina Kalutskaya

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

In our commentary on “Bashful boys and coy girls: A review of gender differences in childhood shyness” by Doey et al. (2013) we provide an analysis of limitations to the study of shyness in children as well as future avenues of research that may be fruitful for better understanding implications of shyness in school. Our focus is primarily on shyness in the classroom context, but we first discuss persistent difficulties in the measurement of shyness in childhood. Like Doey et al., our commentary reflects research in samples from the United States and Canada, unless otherwise noted. We then delve into …

Recovered Memories And Accusations Of Sexual Abuse: A Review Of Scientific Research Relevant To Missionary Contexts, David R. Dunaetz

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Childhood sexual abuse of missionary children is a tragedy that mission organizations are seeking to prevent. A second tragedy concerns missionaries falsely accused of sexual abuse. Psychotherapy that generated false memories of sexual abuse was common in the 1980s and 1990s and still continues to some degree today in Christian circles. This chapter reviews scientific evidence that such false memories exist and provides guidelines that Christian organizations may use to help sort true memories of childhood sexual abuse from false memories of childhood sexual abuse.

Accumulation Of Subcortical Iron As A Modifier Of Volumetric And Cognitive Decline In Healthy Aging: Two Longitudinal Studies, Ana Marie Daugherty

Wayne State University Dissertations

Accumulation of non-heme iron in the brain has been theorized as a cellular mechanism underlying global neural and cognitive decline in normal aging and neurodegenerative disease. Relatively few studies of brain iron in normal aging exist and extant studies are almost exclusively cross-sectional. Here, I estimated iron content via T2* and measured volumes in several brain regions in two independent samples of healthy adults. The first sample (N = 89) was measured twice with a two-year delay; and the second sample (N = 32) was assessed four times over a span of 7 years. Latent models estimated change in iron …

The Empathetic Human: The Story Of How Story Increases Cognitive And Social Ability, Olivia C. Flores 14

Honor Scholar Theses

This thesis all started from my reflections on being an English Literature major. I mention this not because it is rare or unique, but rather because realizing my interest in literature and considering the cognitive effect it has on humans initiated my current academic endeavor: writing a very, very long paper. Even though the skills English majors exercise seem like the mundane activities of introverted bookworms, these experiences with language are spectacular phenomenons that prove to be, in fact, universal. Many argue that literature has an adaptive function that not only demonstrates why we gravitate toward story and how we …

Changes In Cerebral White Matter, Vascular Risk And Cognition Across The Adult Lifespan, Andrew Robert Bender

Wayne State University Dissertations

Numerous studies over the past decade have used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine associations between age, diffusion and anisotropy measures of cerebral white matter (WM), and cognitive performance. However, few have examined relationships between intra-individual change in DTI measures of WM and cognitive function. It is possible that the extant cross-sectional findings are a poor representation of age-related change in WM and cognition. The present study used latent difference-score modeling (LDM) to assess change over two years in DTI indices fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusivity (DR), axial diffusivity (DA) and mean diffusivity (MD). In addition, we examined the effects …

Longitudinal Change In Regional Cortices And Fluid Intelligence, Peng Yuan

Wayne State University Dissertations

Fluid intelligence (Gf) and crystalized intelligence (Gc) are two factors of the general intelligence. They have distinct age-related trajectories of change. Jung and Haier proposed Parieto-Frontal Integration Theory (P-FIT, 2007) to account for the inter-person variance in reasoning intelligence. Some brain regions such as prefrontal, parietal, temporal and anterior cingulate cortices were included in the P-FIT model and were hypothesized to be involved in fluid reasoning task. Therefore, in the current study, we examined latent growth curves (LGC) of longitudinal change in Gf, Gc, prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, anterior cingulate, temporal cortex and primary visual cortex. Forty-six healthy middle-aged and …

Are Individuals Fickle-Minded?, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner

Faculty Scholarship

Game theory has been used to model large-scale social events — such as constitutional law, democratic stability, standard setting, gender roles, social movements, communication, markets, the selection of officials by means of elections, coalition formation, resource allocation, distribution of goods, and war — as the aggregate result of individual choices in interdependent decision-making. Game theory in this way assumes methodological individualism. The widespread observation that game theory predictions do not in general match observation has led to many attempts to repair game theory by creating behavioral game theory, which adds corrective terms to the game theoretic predictions in the hope …

The Costs Of Changing Our Minds, Nita A. Farahany

Faculty Scholarship

This isn’t quite a draft yet – it’s a concept paper. You’ll see after the first 10 pages a good bit of text in brackets, which are primarily notes for me, but it’ll give you a sense of the content of those sections. I’d like to talk through the concept – the “duty” to mitigate emotional distress damages and how courts have struggled with it, as a foray into a broader dichotomy that I see in a number of areas of law that suggest an implicit value in “cognitive liberty.” This is a smaller version of a broader book project …

The Effect Of Appalachian Regional Dialect On Performance Appraisal And Leadership Perceptions, Amie Sparks Ball

Online Theses and Dissertations

Speakers of Appalachian English face unique difficulties in the workplace. Long-held stereotypes of Appalachian English speakers can lead to unfair presumptions about a person's competence and professionalism. Previous research has shown stereotyping on the basis of non-standard dialect can affect recruitment and hiring decisions made by employers. The present study addresses the possibility that these biases extend beyond the hiring process by investigating the impact of Appalachian regional dialect on performance appraisal, perceptions of leadership potential, promotion potential, status perceptions, and solidarity perceptions.

Ethical Decision-Making In Moral Dilemmas, Tyler Pendleton

Honors Projects

Humans are constantly making decisions. Often times, the rules or “heuristics” that guide our decisions are not explicitly known to us simply because their formation within our mental processes is ambiguous. These heuristics can be multiply activated when concerning moral issues. Although our decisions are evident in such cases, the origins of justifying such decisions are not. It is essential to parse out the sociocultural variations that may contribute to moral decision-making. This project aims to present the findings of participants who reacted to the morally-challenging Trolley Problem. Participants were tested on one of eight conditions that examined aspects of …

Social Defense: An Evolutionary-Developmental Model Of Children’S Strategies For Coping With Threat In The Peer Group, Meredith J. Martin, Patrick T. Davies, Leigha A. Macneill

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Navigating the ubiquitous conflict, competition, and complex group dynamics of the peer group is a pivotal developmental task of childhood. Difficulty negotiating these challenges represents a substantial source of risk for psychopathology. Evolutionary developmental psychology offers a unique perspective with the potential to reorganize the way we think about the role of peer relationships in shaping how children cope with the everyday challenges of establishing a social niche. To address this gap, we utilize the ethological reformulation of the emotional security theory as a guide to developing an evolutionary framework for advancing an understanding of the defense strategies children use …

Gaining Control: Changing Relations Between Executive Control And Processing Speed And Their Relevance For Mathematics Achievement Over Course Of The Preschool Period, Caron A. C. Clark, Jennifer Mize Nelson, John Garza, Tiffany D. Sheffield, Sandra A. Wiebe, Kimberly Andrews Espy

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Early executive control (EC) predicts a range of academic out comes and shows particularly strong associations with children’s mathematics achievement. Nonetheless, a major challenge for EC research lies in distinguishing EC from related cognitive constructs that also are linked to achievement outcomes. Developmental cascade models suggest that children’s information processing speed is a driving mechanism in cognitive development that supports gains in working memory, inhibitory control and associated cognitive abilities. Accordingly, individual differences in early executive task performance and the irrelation to mathematics may reflect, at least in part, underlying variation in children’s processing speed. The aims of this study …

Match-To-Sample Stroop Task: A Systematic Manipulation Of Sample And Response Option Onset, Marshall Lee Green

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

The Stroop task, in which participants identify the font color of a word which names an incongruent color, has long been used to investigate attentional processes; however, there is still debate concerning the source of the effects produced by the task. The semantic competition hypothesis posits that interference results from competing semantic processes associated with the word and color dimensions of the stimulus prior to response selection. The response competition hypothesis posits that interference results from competing responses for articulating the word versus the color dimension at the time of response execution. Sturz, Green, Locker, and Boyer (2013) designed …

Adult Attachment And Emotion Identification: A Cognitive Evaluation, Jennifer F. Barron

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Whether adult or infant, attachment bonds aid in the development of beliefs about oneself and others (Collins & Read, 1990; Hazen & Shaver, 1987). Additionally, attachment seems to play a vital role in human development, communication, emotion recognition and comprehension, and the development of appropriate mental representations of emotional experiences (Denham et al., 2002; Greg & Howe, 2001; Raikes & Thompson, 2006). Because attachment is considered a somewhat stable trait, it seems logical that the importance of emotional experiences would not be limited to childhood, and would be important in establishing and maintaining healthy adult relationships (Kerr, Melley, Travea, & …