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Full-Text Articles in Cognition and Perception

Detecting Structure In Glass Patterns: An Interocular Transfer Study, Dawn Vreven, Jarrod Berge Dec 2012

Detecting Structure In Glass Patterns: An Interocular Transfer Study, Dawn Vreven, Jarrod Berge

Dawn L Vreven

Glass patterns are visual stimuli used here to study how local orientation signals are spatially integrated into global pattern perception. We measured a form aftereffect from adaptation to both static and dynamic Glass patterns and calculated the amount of interocular transfer to determine the binocularity of the detectors responsible for the perception of global structure. Both static and dynamic adaptation produced significant form aftereffects and showed a very high degree of interocular transfer, suggesting that Glass-pattern perception involves cortical processing beyond primary visual cortex. Surprisingly, dynamic adaptation produced significantly greater interocular transfer than static adaptation. Our results suggest a functional …


Capacity Coefficient Variations, Joseph W. Houpt, Andrew Heathcote, Ami Eidels, Nathan Medeiros-Ward, Jason Watson, David Strayer Nov 2012

Capacity Coefficient Variations, Joseph W. Houpt, Andrew Heathcote, Ami Eidels, Nathan Medeiros-Ward, Jason Watson, David Strayer

Joseph W. Houpt

The capacity coefficient has become an increasingly popular measure of efficiency under changes in workload. It has been used in applications ranging from psychophysical detection tasks to complex cognitive tasks, as well as in addressing questions in social and clinical psychology. The basic formulation compares response times to each stimulus property (or task) in isolation to response times with all stimulus properties (or tasks) at the same time. A number of variations on the basic capacity coefficient have been used, both in the experimental design and in the calculations, and many more are possible. Here we outline the theoretical reasons …


General Recognition Theory Extended To Include Response Times: Predictions For A Class Of Parallel Systems, Joseph W. Houpt, James T. Townsend, Noah H. Silbert Nov 2012

General Recognition Theory Extended To Include Response Times: Predictions For A Class Of Parallel Systems, Joseph W. Houpt, James T. Townsend, Noah H. Silbert

Joseph W. Houpt

No abstract provided.


Motivational Inequality: Prevention Goals Induce More Effort Than Promotion Goals, Jennifer Marie Pattershall-Geide Aug 2012

Motivational Inequality: Prevention Goals Induce More Effort Than Promotion Goals, Jennifer Marie Pattershall-Geide

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Regulatory focus theory describes two motivational strategies--promotion and prevention focus--that may be employed during goal directed action. Although a theory of motivation, there is no research examining differences in effort between promotion and prevention focus. Two studies are presented which test the hypothesis that goals pursued with a prevention focus, with its emphasis on duties, responsibilities, and avoidance of negative outcomes, will induce more effort than goals pursued with a promotion focus, which emphasizes hopes, ideals, and achieving positive outcomes. In addition, several potential mediators and moderators of this effect were examined. In Study 1, students who completed an essay …


Bayesian Approaches To Assessing Architecture And Stopping Rule, Joseph W. Houpt, A. Heathcote, A. Eidels, J. T. Townsend Jul 2012

Bayesian Approaches To Assessing Architecture And Stopping Rule, Joseph W. Houpt, A. Heathcote, A. Eidels, J. T. Townsend

Joseph W. Houpt

Much of scientific psychology and cognitive science can be viewed as a search to understand the mechanisms and dynamics of perception, thought and action. Two processing attributes of particular interest to psychologists are the architecture, or temporal relationships between sub-processes of the system, and the stopping rule, which dictates how many of the sub-processes must be completed for the system to finish. The Survivor Interaction Contrast (SIC) is a powerful tool for assessing the architecture and stopping rule of a mental process model. Thus far, statistical analysis of the SIC has been limited to null-hypothesis- significance tests. In this talk …


Temporal Shifts In Weapon Focus: Comparing Retrograde And Anterograde Effects, William Blake Erickson May 2012

Temporal Shifts In Weapon Focus: Comparing Retrograde And Anterograde Effects, William Blake Erickson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When an eyewitness suffers an impairment of memory for a criminal's face because the criminal used a weapon during the commission of the crime, this impairment is called the weapon focus effect. Literature provides two explanations for how this effect arises: some implicate the narrowing of attentional cues to the weapon during the commission of a crime because arousal of the victim increases, while others claim that the weapon is merely a novel object in most everyday contexts, and novel objects demand more attention than contextually appropriate ones. The current study employed a simulated crime paradigm taking place in a …


Fighting The Current: Recalling Specific Self-Relevant Memories, John Walden Ransom May 2012

Fighting The Current: Recalling Specific Self-Relevant Memories, John Walden Ransom

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study was designed to address whether recalling specific autobiographical memories is more difficult when they are self-relevant compared to non-relevant. In recent years, a number of experimental studies have indicated that self-relevant memories are more likely to be recalled without a specific time frame or very much detail. Unfortunately, these findings have not been integrated into the popular executive resources theory of autobiographical memory recall or theories of independent semantic and episodic memory stores. This study tested the hypothesis that self-relevant memories will be accessed in the semantic store and therefore will require more executive resources to generate …


Creation Of False Memories And Beliefs: Expectancy Consistent Errors Based On Gender Stereotypes, Arianna Stelling Apr 2012

Creation Of False Memories And Beliefs: Expectancy Consistent Errors Based On Gender Stereotypes, Arianna Stelling

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This study was a series of three experiments which examined the effects of gender stereotypes on the creation of false-memories. Participants were undergraduate students who viewed a short one-scene video depicting a couple on a date. The video featured a man and a woman displaying a mixture of typical, atypical, or a combination of both gender stereotypical behaviors. Following the video, participants completed a quiz to determine whether they created false memories consistent with gender stereotypes. Participants completed an attitudinal scale to gauge their views on gender stereotypes. It was hypothesized that participants would create stereotype- consistent false memories and …


Biased Visual Attention To Out-Group Members' Skin Tone Does Not Lead To Discriminatory Behavior, Sathiarith Chau Apr 2012

Biased Visual Attention To Out-Group Members' Skin Tone Does Not Lead To Discriminatory Behavior, Sathiarith Chau

Honors Projects

According to the racial phenotype theory, the extent to which members resemble or depart from the physical prototype of a particular race will determine how strongly the perceiver associates them with preconceived racial stereotypes. For Blacks, skin color was predicted to be a primary feature attended to and those with dark skin were more negatively stereotyped. The current study aimed to explicitly measure visual attention during judgment of faces through the use of eye-tracking. Past methodologies measuring the attention to skin tone and its relationship to stereotype judgment were not directly measured. The study used a mixed model design: Label …


The Cognitive Representation Of Fantasy Versus Pretense, Colleen Mcinnis Apr 2012

The Cognitive Representation Of Fantasy Versus Pretense, Colleen Mcinnis

Psychology Student Scholarship

Do our minds process fantasy, pretense, and reality differently? Participants read fantastical (Snow White eating an apple), pretend (a girl pretending to be Snow White), or realistic (a girl eating an apple) vignettes. Participants’ reaction to a property of each vignette’s realistic context (apple as ‘delicious’) or its unrealistic context (apple as ‘poisonous’) was measured by a computer program. Differences in study 1 reaction time indicate that fantasy may require different mental representation than pretense and reality. Differences in study 2 fail to duplicate results from the fantasy condition in study 1, instead finding differences in mental representation after reading …


Stereological Assessment Of The Thalamus In A Rat Model Of Periventricular Nodular Heterotopia, Jason Lennox Apr 2012

Stereological Assessment Of The Thalamus In A Rat Model Of Periventricular Nodular Heterotopia, Jason Lennox

Honors Projects

Malformations of neocortical development such as microgyria (MG) and periventricular nodular heterotopia (PNH) have been observed in the brains of language learning impaired (LLI) humans. Rats with MG have shown rapid auditory processing (RAP) deficits similar to acoustic deficits observed in some human LLI populations. Threlkeld et al., (2009) previously reported RAP and other learning impairments in rats with PNH resulting from disruption to embryonic neuronal cell division by way of Methylazoxymethanol (MAM) treatment on embryonic day 15 (E15). The thalamus and its subnuclei may be vulnerable to neurodevelopmental disruptions. Studies of MG rats have shown changes in cell size …


Explicit Weight Biases Are Curvilinear: Testing Pathogen Avoidance, Intergroup Relations And Socialization Theories., Lauren Chaunt Apr 2012

Explicit Weight Biases Are Curvilinear: Testing Pathogen Avoidance, Intergroup Relations And Socialization Theories., Lauren Chaunt

Honors Projects

The present study builds on research (Malloy et al. 2011) that weight bias is best fit by a curvilinear function, that is; trait judgments should vary significantly as a function of weight. More weight bias should be elicited by those body types at extreme weights (i.e., skeletally thin and morbidly obese). Targets at such extreme weights were included to adequately test a new theoretical model of weight bias termed the Pathogen Avoidance Theory. Other theories of weight bias were also considered; Socialization and Intergroup Relations. Participants were presented with six female body types varying in weight and were then asked …


A Closer Look At The Relationship Between Superstitious Behaviors And Trait Anxiety, Brandy Futrell Mar 2012

A Closer Look At The Relationship Between Superstitious Behaviors And Trait Anxiety, Brandy Futrell

Brandy Futrell

This study examines the relationship between superstitious behaviors and trait anxiety. Researchers randomly selected participants from college campuses for a 28-question survey measuring superstitiousness and the 20-question State-Trait-Anxiety-Inventory (STAI) to measure symptoms of anxiety. Results show a positive correlation between superstitious behaviors and an increase in anxiety symptoms. Significant gender differences were found; women scored higher on superstitiousness survey and the STAI-X2 test. Superstitious behaviors were a significant indicator for developing trait anxiety.


Looking At China’S Great Leap Forward From A Systems Perspective, Brandy Futrell Mar 2012

Looking At China’S Great Leap Forward From A Systems Perspective, Brandy Futrell

Brandy Futrell

China’s Great Leap Forward (GLF) campaign of 1958-1961 led by Mao Tse-Tung resulted in a horrendous famine that cost millions of lives. This paper examines the campaign from a systems perspective across the individual, group/societal, and regulatory levels. Looking at each level illustrates errors that explain how the GLF failed.


General Recognition Theory Extended To Include Response Times: Predictions For A Class Of Parallel Systems, James T. Townsend, Joseph W. Houpt, Noah H. Silbert Jan 2012

General Recognition Theory Extended To Include Response Times: Predictions For A Class Of Parallel Systems, James T. Townsend, Joseph W. Houpt, Noah H. Silbert

Joseph W. Houpt

General Recognition Theory (GRT; Ashby & Townsend, 1986) is a multidimensional theory of classification. Originally developed to study various types of perceptual independence, it has also been widely employed in diverse cognitive venues, such as categorization. The initial theory and applications have been static, that is, lacking a time variable and focusing on patterns of responses, such as confusion matrices. Ashby proposed a parallel, dynamic stochastic version of GRT with application to perceptual independence based on discrete linear systems theory with imposed noise \citep{Ash89}. The current study again focuses on cognitive/perceptual independence within an identification classification paradigm. We extend stochastic …