Psychology Commons^™

Psychologically Realistic Cognitive Agents: Taking Human Cognition Seriously, Ron Sun, Sebastien Helie

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Cognitive architectures may serve as a good basis for building mind/brain-inspired, psychologically realistic cognitive agents for various applications that require or prefer human-like behavior and performance. This article explores a well-established cognitive architecture CLARION and shows how its behavior and performance capture human psychology at a detailed level. The model captures many psychological quasi-laws concerning categorization, induction, uncertain reasoning, decision-making, and so on, which indicates human-like characteristics beyond what other models have been shown capable of. Thus, CLARION constitutes an advance in developing more psychologically realistic cognitive agents.

Emergent Identity Matching After Successive Matching Training Ii: Reflexivity Or Transitivity?, Peter J. Urcuioli, Melissa Swisher

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Three experiments evaluated whether the apparent reflexivity effect reported by Sweeney and Urcuioli (2010) for pigeons might, in fact, be transitivity. In Experiment 1, pigeons learned symmetrically reinforced hue-form (A-B) and form-hue (B-A) successive matching. Those also trained on form-form (B-B) matching responded more to hue comparisons that matched their preceding samples on subsequent hue-hue (A-A) probe trials. By contrast, most pigeons trained on just A-B and B-A matching did not show this effect; but some did – a finding consistent with transitivity. Experiment 2 showed that the latter pigeons also responded more to form comparisons that matched their preceding …

Early Postnatal Overnutrition: Potential Roles Of Gastrointestinal Vagal Afferents And Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor, Edward A. Fox, Jessica E. Biddinger

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Early postnatal overnutrition: Potential roles of gastrointestinal vagal afferents and brain-derived neurotrophic factor. PHYSIOL BEHAV 00(0) 000-000, 2012. Abnormal perinatal nutrition (APN) results in a predisposition to develop obesity and the metabolic syndrome and thus may contribute to the prevalence of these disorders. Obesity, including that which develops in organisms exposed to APN, has been associated with increased meal size. Vagal afferents of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract contribute to regulation of meal size by transmitting satiation signals from gut-to-brain. Consequently, APN could increase meal size by altering this signaling, possibly through changes in expression of factors that control vagal afferent …

Treating Diet - Induced Obesity: A New Role For Vagal Afferents?, Edward A. Fox

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Identifying Dysfunction In Persistent Social Deviance: Perspective Taking As A Mediator Of The Relationship Between Psychopathy And Social Aggression, Olga Vadymovna Berkout

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Psychopathy has been associated with social aggression in a number of studies. Perspective taking (e.g. theory of mind and empathy) has been inversely associated with both psychopathy and social aggression, suggesting that it may serve as a potential mediator of this relationship. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess perspective taking as a potential partial mediator of the relationship between psychopathy and social aggression in a sample of 439 undergraduates. Although bivariate correlations produced the expected negative relationships between perspective taking and psychopathy and social aggression, perspective taking did not function as a mediator in the SEM analysis. Implications …

Assessing Change In Socially Inhibited Interpersonal Subtype Through Focused Brief Group Therapy, David A. Yutrzenka

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

An outcome study of effectiveness was completed for the Focused Brief Group Therapy (FBGT) at a college counseling wellness service center concerning individuals who endorsed distress due to a specific interpersonal type, social inhibition. Pre-existing data from the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-32 (IIP-32) and the Counseling Center Assessment of Psychological Symptoms (CCAPS) was analyzed for these individuals prior to and after completion of FBGT. This researcher hypothesized that through the process of the groups, statistically significant decrease in scores of Social Inhibition, Total Interpersonal Distress, Depression, Social Anxiety, Generalized Anxiety and Academic Distress as a function of the group process …

A Five-Factor Measure Of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Traits., Douglas B. Samuel, Ashley D.B. Riddell, Donald R. Lynam, Joshua D. Miller, Thomas A. Widiger

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

The current study provides convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity data for the Five-Factor Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (FFOCI), a newly-developed measure of traits relevant to obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) from the perspective of the five-factor model (FFM). Twelve scales were constructed as maladaptive variants of specific FFM facets (e.g., Perfectionism as a maladaptive variant of FFM competence). On the basis of data from 407 undergraduates (oversampled for OCPD symptoms) these 12 scales demonstrated convergent correlations with established measures of OCPD and the FFM. Further, they obtained strong discriminant validity with respect to facets from other FFM domains. Most importantly, the individual scales …

Efficient Coding And Statistically Optimal Weighting Of Covariance Among Acoustic Attributes In Novel Sounds, Keith Kluender R., Christian E. Stilp

Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences Faculty Publications

To the extent that sensorineural systems are efficient, redundancy should be extracted to optimize transmission of information, but perceptual evidence for this has been limited. Stilp and colleagues recently reported efficient coding of robust correlation (r =. 97) among complex acoustic attributes (attack/decay, spectral shape) in novel sounds. Discrimination of sounds orthogonal to the correlation was initially inferior but later comparable to that of sounds obeying the correlation. These effects were attenuated for less-correlated stimuli (r =. 54) for reasons that are unclear. Here, statistical properties of correlation among acoustic attributes essential for perceptual organization are investigated. Overall, simple strength …

Conceptual Changes To The Definition Of Borderline Personality Disorder Proposed For Dsm-5, Douglas B. Samuel, Joshua D. Miller, Thomas A. Widiger, Donald R. Lynam, Paul A. Pilkonis, Samuel A. Ball

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

The DSM-5 Personality and Personality Disorders Work Group proposed the elimination of diagnostic criterion sets in favor of a prototype matching system that defines personality disorders using narrative descriptions. Although some research supports this general approach, no empirical studies have yet examined the specific definitions proposed for DSM-5. Given the wide interest in borderline personality disorder (BPD), it is crucial to determine how this methodological shift might affect the content and conceptualization of the diagnosis. Eighty-two experts on BPD provided ratings of the DSM-IV-TR or DSM-5 version of BPD in terms of 37 traits proposed for DSM-5. Analyses revealed significant …

Simulating The Effect Of Dopamine Imbalance On Cognition: From Positive Affect To Parkinson's Disease, Sebastien Helie, Erick J. Paul, F Gregory Ashby

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Cools (2006) suggested that prefrontal dopamine levels are related to cognitive stability whereas striatal dopamine levels are related to cognitive plasticity. With such a wide ranging role, almost all cognitive activities should be affected by dopamine levels in the brain. Not surprisingly, factors influencing brain dopamine levels have been shown to improve/worsen performance in many behavioral experiments. On the one hand, Nadler and his colleagues (2010) showed that positive affect (which is thought to increase cortical dopamine levels) improves a type of categorization that depends on explicit reasoning (rule-based) but not a type that depends on procedural learning (informationintegration). On …

Learning And Transfer Of Category Knowledge In An Indirect Categorization Task, Sebastien Helie, F Gregory Ashby

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Knowledge representations acquired during category learning experiments are ‘tuned’ to the task goal. A useful paradigm to study category representations is indirect category learning. In the present article, we propose a new indirect categorization task called the “Same” – “Different” categorization task. The same-different categorization task is a regular same-different task, but the question asked to the participants is about the stimulus category membership instead of stimulus identity. Experiment 1 explores the possibility of indirectly learning rule-based and information-integration category structures using the new paradigm. The results suggest that there is little learning about the category structures resulting from an …

A Replication And Extension Of The Anti-Symmetry Effect In Pigeons, Peter J. Urcuioli, Melissa Swisher

Department of Psychological Sciences Faculty Publications

Pigeons trained on successive AB symbolic matching show emergent BA anti-symmetry if they are also trained on successive AA oddity and BB identity (Urcuioli, 2008, Experiment 4). In other words, when tested on BA probe trials following training, they respond more to the comparisons on the reverse of the non-reinforced AB baseline trials than on the reverse of the reinforced AB baseline trials (the opposite of an associative symmetry pattern). The present experiment replicated this finding. In addition, it showed that anti-symmetry also emerged after baseline training on successive AB symbolic matching, AA identity, and BB oddity, consistent with the …

The Impact Of Spirituality On The Self-Reported Recovery Of Adults Who Experienced Childhood Trauma, Chijioke Alphonsus Chigbo

Wayne State University Dissertations

Objective: To examine whether adults who had experienced childhood trauma, and who had a higher sense of personal meaning or spirituality, would have improved mental health and lower trauma symptoms such as depression, lower self-esteem, anxiety, dissociative disabilities, PTSD, and the like.

Method: 115 participants were randomly selected from five mental health centers in the southeast of the State of Michigan of the United States. Each participant had an experience of one or multiple childhood abuses, namely: physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal/emotional abuse, child neglect or cumulative trauma. They had also been to treatment, and were between 18 and 60 …

The Effects Of Two Group Counseling Interventions On Arab-American High School Students' Perceptions Of Their Primary Relationships (Parent, Teacher, Peer), Nuzmeya Bader Elder

Wayne State University Dissertations

This study specifically investigated the effects of two group counseling interventions on Arab-American high school students' perceptions of the strength of their primary relationships (parent, teachers, and peers). It was designed to help high school students increase their acceptance of the culture of their host society and develop a sense of comfort so they can retain some of their own culture and Arab identity without feeling they will totally lose them. One approach was Choice group theory grounded in the reality of making choices concerning thoughts and behaviors. Choice Theory is described as the idea that people have mental images …

Faith And (Un)Certainty In The Writing Of Stowe, Hawthorne, And Dickinson: The Intersecting Language Of Theology And Feminism, Denise Yezbick

Wayne State University Dissertations

This research considers how Hawthorne's, Dickinson's, and Stowe's writing express the prevailing culture's attitudes toward the operation of meaning in religion. It poses the question: Is a crisis of meaning threatening to the religious sensibility? Looking at Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and specific poems of Dickinson, I show how their writing gestures to a kind of religious sensibility that is not threatened by such a crisis, but suggests, rather, that it is essential to a genuine openness to otherness, and ultimately to the Divine. The fiction and poetry of these two authors express this both negatively, as an attack on …

Robustness Of The Achievable Benchmark Of Care Method, Jeff Arthur Capobianco

Wayne State University Dissertations

The Achievable Benchmark of Care Method is a process of care performance improvement measurement approach for identifying top performing healthcare providers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the robustness of the method. This was achieved by comparing the robustness of the standard ABC method, which uses the mean to calculate the benchmark, to versions of the ABC method where the mean was replaced with either a 5%, 10%, or 20% trimmed mean, a 15% Winsorized mean or the one-step Huber ø1.28 calculation. Monte Carlo simulations where conducted using publically available, Medicare process of care data. The mean was …

The Effect Of Musical Training On Verbal And Tonal Working Memory, Ching-I Lu

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation explored the translation from print to sound of the tonal language Mandarin versus English versus musical notation in healthy volunteers. The performance of musicians and non-musicians was compared across a variety of reading tasks in an attempt to examine whether musical training can facilitate Mandarin tone or phonological processing. The effects of increasing working memory load on reading performance across tasks were also examined. Results showed that increasing demands on working memory in visual recognition tasks significantly decreased performance accuracy for both musicians and non-musicians across tasks. Significant differences in accuracy rates were observed between musicians and non-musicians. …

The Dependent Samples T And Wilcoxon Sign Rank Maximum Test, Saverpierre Maggio

Wayne State University Dissertations

A maximum test using the parametric dependent samples t-test and the non-parametric Wilcoxon sign rank test was created using a FORTRAN program and various subroutines of the International Mathematical and Statistical Libraries (IMSL, 1980). Two tailed critical values were derived from a mixed normal distribution. Critical values obtained were at the 0.05, 0.025, 0.01 and 0.005 alpha levels via sample sizes (n) 8 through 30, 45, 60, 90 and 120. Critical values were compared to values obtained through the application of the Bonferroni correction method. It was concluded that the Bonferroni is an unnecessary method. Findings of the study are …

The Effect Of Grief And Loss Training For Student Counselors On Grief Counseling Comfort Level In Two Educational Settings, Selin Sertgoz

Wayne State University Dissertations

Loss, whether death or non-death related, is a life-changing experience. When people grieve over their significant loss, they go through a multitude of emotional, behavioral, physiological, and cognitive changes that can be disruptive at times. Counselors report encountering various loss-related issues with their clients, yet novice counselors in particular do not feel comfortable dealing with these issues. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop a grief and loss training program from a Rational Emotive Behavioral Theory perspective for counselors to improve their comfort level in grief counseling.

The literature highlights the increasing trend of online training in higher …

The Life Purpose Questionnaire: A Factor-Analytic Investigation, Stephanie Wood Campbell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Meaning in life has been a popular topic of philosophy and study, and the perceived presence of meaning in one's life has been associated with many positive psychological variables (e.g., life satisfaction), while the perceived absence of meaning has been associated with negative variables (e.g., depression). The Purpose in Life test (PIL) was developed in order to assess the amount of perceived meaning in a person's life. Despite good psychometric support, there have been questions about the structural validity of the measure (i.e., only one model has been replicated, consisting of two factors that reflect exciting life and purpose in …

The Applicability Of Video Self-Modeling For Adults With Developmental And Intellectual Disabilities, Lauren Elizabeth Cox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Video Self-Modeling (VSM) has shown to be an effective intervention in modifying maladaptive behaviors in children, particularly those with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities (ID/DD). Although the effectiveness of VSM with children with ID/DD has been well established in the extant literature, considerably fewer studies have addressed the applicability of VSM with adults of the same population. Thus, the goal of the current study was to examine the utility of VSM with three adults with ID/DD, specifically targeting table manners as the behavior of interest for the intervention. Two aspects of table manners were measured utilizing a multiple baseline design: food …

The Effects Of Adding Values To An Acceptance Intervention On Willingness To Engage In A Difficult Task, Maureen Kathleen Flynn

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is a relatively large body of evidence supporting acceptance as a treatment component. According to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) proponents, acceptance is done in the service of values (Hayes et al., 2011). This study aimed to examine the effects of adding a values component to an acceptance intervention on persistence in a frustrating task. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: acceptance, acceptance plus values, and suppression. Following a mood induction, participants listened to a recording of their assigned coping strategy and were then asked to use this strategy during a frustrating computer task. No group …

A Factor-Analytic Study Of The Learning And Study Strategies Inventory, Second Edition (Lassi-2) In A Sample Of University Students, Kwoneathia Hill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present study sought to provide a better understanding of the factor structure of the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory, Second Edition (LASSI-2) at the item to scale level (via confirmatory factor analysis) and to expand the LASSI-2's psychometric properties (i.e., means, standard deviations, alpha coefficients, and correlations of the LASSI-2's scale scores) as well as examine for potential sex differences in the LASSI-2 scale scores (via t tests with Cohen's d also being calculated) with a sample of 420 university students. The means, standard deviations, and alpha coefficients of the 10 LASSI-2 scales for the current data appeared comparable …

Assessing Metacognitive Skills In Waking And Sleep: A Psychometric Analysis Of The Metacognitive, Affective, Cognitive Experience (Mace) Questionnaire, Tracey L. Kahan, Kieran T. Sullivan

Psychology

The Metacognition, Affective, Cognitive Experience (MACE) questionnaire was designed to assess metacognition across sleep and waking (Kahan & LaBerge, 1996). The present research evaluates the psychometric properties of the MACE. Data from two recent studies (N = 185) were used to assess the inter-item consistency, test-retest reliability, and factorial, convergent, and discriminant validity of the MACE. Results show that the MACE is a reliable measure with good construct validity. Exploratory factor analyses revealed one self-regulation and two monitoring factors. One monitoring factor emphasized monitoring internal conditions; the other emphasized monitoring external conditions. This factor structure is consistent with the Metacognitive …

Fruit Of Faith, Fruit Of The Spirit, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

As contemporary behavioral scientists living and working within an often secular, scientific, and empirically focused world as well as being affiliated with rigorous academic institutions and research programs, we wonder if the fruits of the spirit have any empirical and scientific basis. Does engagement with religion and spirituality make us better people or make us worse?

Goodness, Thomas G. Plante

Psychology

And what does the Lord require of me? To love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with God. -Micah 6:8

This quote from the Hebrew Bible has been one of my favorite quotes from sacred scripture in the Judea-Christian tradition for a very long time. It well summarizes how we should live. It well articulates how to live a good life. In this brief and simple statement in response to what God wants of us, it makes clear that there are three things that we should do throughout our lives if we want to follow the dictates of the God …

The Effects Of Stress-Reducing Interventions On Perceived Test Anxiety And Achievement Of Nursing Students, Julie Mcdaniel

Summer Community of Scholars Posters (RCEU and HCR Combined Programs)

No abstract provided.

Cognitive Decision-Making Among Residents During An Extended Natural Disaster, Michael Shreeves

Summer Community of Scholars Posters (RCEU and HCR Combined Programs)

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Point Values And Time Constraints On Self-Regulated Learning, Barbara J. Wright

Summer Community of Scholars Posters (RCEU and HCR Combined Programs)

No abstract provided.

Social Cognitive Functioning And Social Competence In Children And Adolescents With Spina Bifida And Hydrocephalus: Social Cognitive Neuroscience As A Model, Caitlin Reid Roache

Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to examine social cognition in children with spina bifida and congenital hydrocephalus (SBH) and to determine whether deficits in these domains are associated with poor social competence, utilizing concepts from social cognitive neuroscience. To build upon extant literature, multi-method assessments, multi-informant data, and a developmental, biopsychosocial perspective were utilized. Distinct aspects of social competence, as defined by social performance, social skills, and social adjustment, were considered.

The current study was designed to investigate: (1) differences in social cognition between children and adolescents with SBH and the general population, (2) potential neuroanatomical predictors of …