Psychology Commons^™

The Role Of World Knowledge And Episodic Memory In Scripted Narratives, Micah L. Mumper

Psychology Honors Projects

Readers recruit information from both general world knowledge and episodic memory during reading comprehension. The present experiment used eye tracking to investigate the time-course of how these two sources of memory interact. Participants read passages describing scenarios in which an actor performs a role that was either scriptually appropriate or inappropriate. Half the passages containing the inappropriate role-filler were preceded by an episodic justification for this scriptural violation. Using the same paradigm, Cook and Myers (2004) found context had an early influence on the integration of the role-filler, but world knowledge showed a later effect in the post-target region. The …

An Examination Of The Young Schema Model: Permissive Parenting, Early Maladaptive Schemas, And Procrastination, Wade Lee Kidner

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this study was to test specific hypotheses based on the Young Schema Model (YSM). In this model, poor parenting and traumatic events early in life result in maladaptive behaviors in adulthood. The present study tests the specific prediction that permissive parenting will have an indirect effect to increase procrastination by way of the intervening variables of entitlement/grandiosity and insufficient self-control/self-discipline cognitive schemas.

The Babies, The Representations, And The Nativist–Empiricist Bathwater. Commentary On “Stepping Off The Pendulum: Why Only An Action-Based Approach Can Transcend The Nativist–Empiricist Debate” By J. Allen & M. Bickhard, David S. Moore

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

White Matter Integrity And Age Related Differences In Reaction Time Components, Yiqin Yang

Wayne State University Dissertations

Reduced speed in information processing is a well-documented phenomenon associated with advanced aging. Age-related deterioration in white matter integrity might play a role in age-related increase in reaction time (RT). However, the association between microstructural differences in particular white matter regions or tracts with RT is unclear. Decomposing RT into parts might be a better way to understand the relationship due to multiple processes involved in RT. In a lifespan sample of 90 healthy normotensive participants, this study examined the association between RT components derived from the Ratcliff diffusion model with age related difference in DTI indices of a wide …

The Influence Of Widowed Status And Task Complexity On Decision Making, Courtney L. Ortz

Theses and Dissertations--Gerontology

Widowhood is a stressful life event that can impact an individual’s everyday life, including her decision making abilities. The complexity of the decision is also likely to influence the decision making abilities of these widows. The purpose of this dissertation was to better understand widows’ decision making processes, their preferences for collaboration when making decisions, and their satisfaction with the decision outcomes. Data analysis consisted of a series of 3 (widowed status) x 2 (task complexity) ANOVAS and ANCOVAS which found that both complexity and widowed status influence decision making processes. Higher complexity led to less overall satisfaction, but none …

Can We Build Behavioral Game Theory?, Gale M. Lucas, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Mark Turner

Faculty Scholarship

The way economists and other social scientists model how people make interdependent decisions is through the theory of games. Psychologists and behavioral economists, however, have established many deviations from the predictions of game theory. In response to these findings, a broad movement has arisen to salvage the core of game theory. Extant models of interdependent decision-making try to improve their explanatory domain by adding some corrective terms or limits. We will make the argument that this approach is misguided. For this approach to work, the deviations would have to be consistent. Drawing in part on our experimental results, we will …

The Effect Of Emotionally Arousing Negative Images On Judgments About News Stories, Martin Daniel Smith-Rodden

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Two experiments investigated the effects of the presentations of photographic images (highly emotionally arousing/low arousal/no image) on people's attitudes after reading a news story. Experiment 1 presented a story and images about U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan War. Experiment 2 replicated the design with a story and images about African famine relief efforts. Consistent with predictions of the affect heuristic model of judgment formation, the addition of emotionally arousing pictures had an effect on people's support for the war in Afghanistan and their support for famine aid. Additionally, effects were observed in broader attitudes concerning participant's support of a militaristic …

Experiences Of The Process And Outcomes Of Group Dream Work, Penny Makris

Counseling & Human Services Theses & Dissertations

Clients often wish to discuss their dreams in counseling sessions in order to make sense of their waking experiences. Although the efficacy of dream work has been indicated in numerous studies, other studies indicate that a majority of therapists report a lack of knowledge in working with dreams. The purpose of this qualitative heuristic design study was to explore the experiences of individuals participating in dream work groups that use the Ullman method as a foundation for exploring and finding meaning and waking life relevance from dreams. The Ullman method features a series of structured steps in which all group …

Exploring The Relationship Between Physical Activity And Everyday Cognitive Function In Older Adults: Within- And Between- Person Variability, Christine Haley

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research suggests that physical activity may play a role in preserving cognitive function in older adulthood. However, the exact nature, direction, and magnitude of observed associations remain unclear. The current study utilized a microlongitudinal design to repeatedly assess cognitive function and physical activity across five days. Two studies examined relationships between physical activity, physical fitness, and cognitive function among community-dwelling older adults. The first study examined associations between baseline performance in a measure of everyday cognition and multiple measures of physical activity and physical fitness. Bivariate analyses revealed that objectively measured physical activity of moderate-to-vigorous intensity, repeated chair stand time …

The Automaticity Of Emotion V. Emotion-Laden Word Processing : Findings From Unmasked And Masked Priming Approaches, Stephanie Ann Kazanas

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

A lexical decision task (LDT) was used to determine if there are differences between emotion word types when they are processed, both explicitly (Experiment 1) and implicitly (Experiment 2). For example, prime-target word pairs contained either emotion (e.g., love, fear, anxious) or emotion-laden (e.g., puppy, chocolate, hospital) words. Previous experiments within this area of research have investigated how emotionality, concreteness, and abstractness affect word processing (Altarriba & Bauer, 2004; Altarriba, Bauer, & Benvenuto, 1999). As Bleasdale (1987) first argued, abstract words were, in many ways, different from concrete words. Research has continued along this vein, confirming that emotion words are …

Target Uncertainty Does Not Lead To Greater Singleton Distractor Interference When Target Shapes Are Not Interchangeable With Nontarget Shapes, Jacquelyn Berry

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Visual search research investigates whether attentional capture is driven by topdown processes, that is, experimental goals and directives, or by bottom-up processes, that is, the properties of the items within a search display. Some research has demonstrated that participants cannot avoid attending to a task-irrelevant salient item,such as a singleton distractor, even when the identity of the target item is known.Research has also shown that repeating the target feature across successive search displays will prime the visual pop out effect for a unique target (Priming of Pop Out). However, other research has shown that participants can strategically guide their attention …

Semantic Effects In Word Recognition And Picture Naming Are Moderated By Body-Object Interaction, Lisa Ruth Van Havermaet

Wayne State University Dissertations

A potential embodied influence in the semantic effects of Danger and Usefulness is investigated using Body-Object Interaction (BOI). Lexical decision times are influenced by ratings of Danger and Usefulness. In a frequently-found interaction, thought to be produced by activated approach-withdraw motor responses, increasing Danger ratings produce faster responses for items with lower Usefulness ratings while producing slower responses for items with higher Usefulness ratings. BOI is used to test the embodied explanation of this interaction. The same 102 words were presented in two lexical decision experiments. In both auditory and visual lexical decision, the effects of Danger and Usefulness were …

Effective Co-Viewing: Preschoolers’ Learning From Video After A Dialogic Questioning Intervention, Gabrielle Strouse, Katherine O'Doherty, Georgene Troseth

School of Education Faculty Publications

Young preschoolers rapidly acquire new information from social partners but do not learn efficiently from people on video. We trained parents to use Whitehurst’s dialogic reading questioning techniques while watching educational television with their children. Eighty-one parents coviewed storybook videos with their 3-year-old children in 1 of 4 conditions: dialogic questioning (pause, ask questions, and encourage children to tell parts of the story), directed attention (pause and comment but do not ask questions), dialogic actress (show the videos with dialogic questioning by an on-screen actress embedded in them), or no intervention (show the videos as usual). After 4 weeks, children …

Strengthening Cognitive Development In Minority Populations: A Study Of The Beneficial Effects Of Bilingualism, Marisela Gutierrez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The long-term goal of this research is to better understand and characterize the "bilingual advantage" so that educational and child care institutions begin to recognize and encourage the active use of two languages to strengthen cognitive development in minority populations. The present study is one of the first one to include a very large sample of well-defined "active bilinguals" who, by objective measures, were determined to be bilingual and determined to engage in language switching on a daily basis. Another goal was to manipulate and activate in the laboratory what might be referred to as the "switching benefit." One hundred …

Applying Cognitive Principles To The Delivery Of Engineering Information By Different Mediums, Gabriel B. Dadi

Theses and Dissertations--Civil Engineering

Construction project performance and worker productivity are often tied to the availability and effective presentation of information, tools, materials, and equipment. While advancements in technology have improved much of the processes on a construction project, the medium of information dissemination at the construction work face has consistently relied on the use of two dimensional drawings and specifications.

Industry initiatives are driving increased collaboration through three dimensional BIM (Building Information Modeling) models. However, the added dimension partially loses its effect when presented on a two dimensional computer monitor. Other computer forms of presentation intended for mobility (PDAs, laptops, and tablets) can …

Emotion, Community Development, And The Physical Environment: An Experimental Investigation Of Measurements, George E. Boone

Theses and Dissertations--Community & Leadership Development

A wide range of research fields have studied how emotions and behavior are affected by the physical environment. This gestalt theorist approach of experimental research as well seeks to measure emotion (using the valence-arousal scale) and micro-scale community development interactions when weighted physical environment factors are adjusted. Community development (CD) interactions at the micro-scale have received but slight attention from scholars in the CD research field and this study aims partially to investigate developing objective measures from social observations. CD interactions from recordings along with self-reported emotion through surveys in four quasi-experimental groups (where the environments were constructed based on …

Metaphor And Analogy: The Sun And Moon Of Legal Persuasion, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

Drawing on recent studies of social cognition, decision making, and analogical processing, this article recommends that lawyers turn to novel characterizations and metaphors to solve a particular kind of persuasion problem that is created by the way judges and juries think and decide. According to social cognition researchers, we perceive and interpret new information by following a process of schematic cognition, analogizing the new data we encounter to the knowledge structures embedded in our memories. Decision-making researchers differentiate between intuitive and reflective processes (System 1 and System 2), and they agree that in System 1 decision making, only the most …

Using A Prediction And Option Generation Paradigm To Understand Decision Making, Joel Suss

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

In many complex and dynamic domains, the ability to generate and then select the appropriate course of action is based on the decision maker's "reading" of the situation--in other words, their ability to assess the situation and predict how it will evolve over the next few seconds. Current theories regarding option generation during the situation assessment and response phases of decision making offer contrasting views on the cognitive mechanisms that support superior performance. The Recognition-Primed Decision-making model (RPD; Klein, 1989) and Take-The-First heuristic (TTF; Johnson & Raab, 2003) suggest that superior decisions are made by generating few options, and then …

Assessing Decision Making Skill In Complex And Dynamic Environments Using Representative And Simulated Tasks, Patrick Karl Belling

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Traditional decision making research has often focused on one's ability to choose from a set of prefixed options, ignoring the process by which decision makers generate courses of action (i.e., options) in-situ (Klein, 1993). In complex and dynamic domains, this option generation process is particularly critical to understanding how successful decisions are made (Zsambok & Klein, 1997). When generating response options for oneself to pursue (i.e., during the intervention-phase of decision making) previous research has supported quick and intuitive heuristics, such as the Take-The-First heuristic (TTF; Johnson & Raab, 2003). When generating predictive options for others in the environment (i.e., …

Collaborative Memory For Serial Order, Elizabeth Lauren Foreman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although the encoding, storage, and retrieval of information between groups has been examined in both recall and recognition memory; surprisingly, there is no existing data regarding collaborative memory outcomes using a reconstruction task. In an attempt to fill this gap in the literature, participants assigned to one of four retrieval conditions were asked to study the order of unrelated word-lists in preparation for a memory test. Some reconstructed the lists by alternating turns with their group members (turn-taking). Others were forced to reconstruct the lists from the first item-position to the last item-position in addition to taking turns with group …

The Interface Between Morphology And Action Planning: A Comparison Of Two Species Of New World Monkeys, Stacey L. Zander, Dan J. Weiss, Peter G. Judge

Faculty Journal Articles

Recent research with several species of nonhuman primates suggests sophisticated motor-planning abilities observed in human adults may be ubiquitous among primates. However, there is considerable variability in the extent to which these abilities are expressed across primate species. In the present experiment, we explore whether the variability in the expression of anticipatory motor-planning abilities may be attributed to cognitive differences (such as tool use abilities) or whether they may be due to the consequences of morphological differences (such as being able to deploy a precision grasp). We compared two species of New World monkeys that differ in their tool use …

Motivation In Athletes With And Without Autism Spectrum Disorder: Sq, Eq And Aq Relationships To Preferred Feedback, Julia C. Harreschou

Scripps Senior Theses

All athletes are driven by motivation, sources or reasons to push their bodies to their limits and continue to do so regularly. There have been several studies concerning motivation in typical athletes, and many regarding social motivation in people with High Functioning Autism (HFA), however most have been limited to children, and there have been no investigations into HFA athletes’ motivation. The current study looks into the role of social dimensions in athletics, and tests how one’s gender and placement on the Empathy Questionnaire (EQ), Systemizing Questionnaire (SQ), and on the Autism Questionnaire (AQ) affect intrinsic motivation in athletics. It …

Achieving Integration In Mixed Methods Designs—Principles And Practices, Michael D. Fetters, Leslie A. Curry, John W. Creswell

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Mixed methods research offers powerful tools for investigating complex processes and systems in health and health care. This article describes integration principles and practices at three levels in mixed methods research and provides illustrative examples. Integration at the study design level occurs through three basic mixed method designs—exploratory sequential, explanatory sequential, and convergent—and through four advanced frameworks—multistage, intervention, case study, and participatory. Integration at the methods level occurs through four approaches. In connecting, one database links to the other through sampling. With building, one database informs the data collection approach of the other. When merging, the two databases are brought …

Guilty By Association: Time-Dependent Memory Consolidation And The Generalization Of Person-Specific Traits To Other Group Members, Luke R. Enge

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The following study investigated the extent to which time-dependent memory consolidation facilities the generalization of person-specific traits (individuated targets) to other, familiar social group members (familiar targets) Sixty-Nine (N = 69) participants learned to distinguish between two arbitrary groups, one positive and one negative. Participants learned the negative or positive information about a subset of the group members (individuated targets) and no individuating information about the familiar targets. Participants returned either without a time-delay containing sleep (2-6 hours after learning) or a time-delay with sleep (48 hours after learning). Results demonstrated that only after a time-delay containing sleep, negative information …

Assessing Naturalistic Decision Making By Experienced And Inexperienced Interrogators In High Stakes Interviews, Amy Bethany Ross

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The current thesis aimed to improve the ecological validity of human intelligence interrogation research. Although field practitioners and researchers have worked together to improve the scientific validity and practical execution of interrogation techniques, research has yet to understand how, when and why interrogators implement such techniques. This thesis investigated the active decision making processes of interrogators that occur during high value interrogations. The theory of Naturalistic Decision Making was used to capture the naturalistic characteristics of high value interrogations- ambiguity, time pressure and high stakes. To capture the decision-making processes that are associated with skilled performance, this research conducted in-depth …

From College Student To Change Agent: A Triadic Model Of Self-Efficacy, Attribution, And Appraisal, Joshua M. Garrin

Journal of Sustainable Social Impact

Beyond their newfound emancipation and opportunities for self-discovery, college students in the young adult stage of development are expected to achieve balance between their autonomous new world and the impending pressures of postgraduation life. The college student must not only reconcile issues related to identity formation, goal pursuits, and career exploration, but is expected to begin the process of identifying and developing the skills required to address salient social themes. How students establish competency beliefs, negotiate controllability over future outcomes, and appraise challenges have deep implications in their capacity to discover their social change “voice.” The following discussion proposes a …

The Lives Of Others: Social Rationality In Animals, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Andrew J. King

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Darwin (1871) boldly claimed that humans and other animals differ very little in their cognition; a statement that has raised the ire of many scientists (Bolhuis & Wynne, 2009; Penn, Holyoak, & Povinelli, 2008). Rather than stating this continuity as a fact, we will explore the similarities and differences between humans and animals in the social rationality of their decision making. We find this a fruitful exercise because it can profit researchers of both humans and animals. Our purpose here is to provide an evolutionary background of social rationality: Why do animals attend to the lives of others? To this …

Capuchin Monkeys Exercise Self-Control By Choosing Token Exchange Over An Immediate Reward, Peter G. Judge, Jennifer L. Essler

Faculty Journal Articles

Self-control is a prerequisite for complex cognitive processes such as cooperation and planning. As such, comparative studies of self-control may help elucidate the evolutionary origin of these capacities. A variety of methods have been developed to test for self-control in non-human primates that include some variation of foregoing an immediate reward in order to gain a more favorable reward. We used a token exchange paradigm to test for self-control in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Animals were trained that particular tokens could be exchanged for food items worth different values. To test for self-control, a monkey was provided with …

Ego Depletion And Boredom: Does Boredom Compromise Future Acts Of Self-Control?, John Lemay

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This study explored how boredom might influence self-control when participants believed that willpower is unlimited or limited. After completing one of two questionnaires, which induced the belief that willpower is either unlimited or limited, participants then completed one of three tasks. The tasks consisted of a non-ego depleting self-control task, an ego-depleting self-control task, and a task shown to induce boredom, with the nondepleting and depleting conditions having been replicated from research by Job, Dweck, and Walton (2010). In the non-depleting condition, participants completed a task that involved crossing out all occasions of the letter “e” found on two pages …

Googling To Forget: The Cognitive Processing Of Internet Search, Elizabeth T. Friede

CMC Senior Theses

Technology is currently extremely integrated with everyday life. Popular media has made bold claims that the internet is making us “dumber” and people struggle to remember information more now than they ever have in the past. Scientific research on the effect of internet search on cognition and memory is still in its infancy. This research will analyze the literature and theories discussing memory and the internet. Based on an original experiment by Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner. 20 participants (10 young adults and 10 older adults) performed a typing task with twenty trivia statements, followed by a recall and recognition memory …