Cognition and Perception Commons^™

How Can We Build A Moral Robot?, Kristen E. Clark

Capstones

Artificial intelligence is already starting to drive our cars and make choices that affect the world economy. One day soon, we’ll have robots that can take care of our sick and elderly, and even rescue us in rescue us in emergencies. But as robots start to make decisions that matter—it’s raising questions that go far beyond engineering. We’re stating to think about ethics.

Bertram Malle and Matthias Scheutz are part of a team funded by the department of defense. It's their job to answer a question that seems straight out of a sci-fi novel: How can we build a moral …

Detecting Changes In Auditory Events, Rachael B. Peck

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Change deafness is defined as the failure to detect the source of an above-threshold change in an auditory scene. A new paradigm recently demonstrated the phenomenon under analogous conditions to its visual counterpart, change blindness (Hall, Peck, Gaston, & Dickerson, 2015). This investigation examined the use of the paradigm through two experiments which involved the same four simultaneously presented events. Experiment 1 distributed events across a virtual 120º on the azimuth while the target event oscillated across a 60º space throughout each trial. Listeners were instructed to identify the target as soon as possible. Target rate of change was manipulated …

The Impact Of Globalization On Access For Individuals With Disabilities, Katherine Williamson

Honors Theses

This comparative ethnomethodology study is focused on the global context elements that help explain public policies and its consequences on types of access available to individuals with disabilities in the United States Midwest and West Africa. The goal of this study is to identify the role of individuals with disabilities in a global society by answering two research questions. First, what are the public policies in place for physical, social, and educational access in the United States Midwest and West Africa? Second, how is physical, social, and educational access being provided in the United States Midwest and West Africa? The …

The Effects Of Mindfulness On Verbal Distress Disclosure, Sara Fleming

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a mindfulness induction on participants’ verbal distress disclosure (as measured by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count and State Disclosure Questionnaire). Participants were 86 undergraduate students enrolled in an Introduction to Psychology course and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a mindfulness condition or a control condition. Participants in the mindfulness condition engaged in a 15-minute mindfulness induction prior to disclosing about a stressful experience, while participants in the control condition listened to a neutrally valenced audio excerpt from a podcast about emotions before speaking about a …

Aesthetics And Performance Evaluation Of Post-Industrial Public Parks, Adel C. Vaughn

Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Post-Industrial sites are often un-utilized and deserted places that are an aesthetic, social, ecological, and physical hindrance to the realm of the cities in which they lie, however they possess enormous potential. With respectful and transformative design, these new public parks gain a variety of benefits that extend well beyond the typical benefits exhibited by public parks due to their rich history, fascinating existing structures, high levels of visual and sensorial stimulation, one-of-a-kind traits, and opportunity for impactful change. By evaluating these post-industrial public parks, knowledge can be gained about what specific elements in the landscape contribute to their overall …

Olfactory Enrichment In California Sea Lions (Zalophus Californianus), Mystera M. Samuelson

Dissertations

In the wild, California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) are exposed to a wide array of sensory information at all times. However, it is impossible for captive environments to provide this level of complexity. Therefore unique procedures and practices are necessary for the maintenance of physiological and psychological health in captive animals (Wells, 2009). This project aims to explore the behavioral effect of scent added to the environment, with the goal of improving the welfare of captive sea lions by introducing two scent types: 1.) Natural scents, found in their native environment, and 2.) Non-natural scents, not found in …

Nurses’ Perceptions Of Self As Role Models Of Health, Shelia Hurley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Given the sad state of obesity and lifestyle-related illnesses in the US, nurses, as the largest and most trusted health profession, must take the cause of health promotion seriously and personally. This study seeks to close the gap in knowledge of nurses’ perception of self as a role model of health and personal healthy lifestyle behaviors. This study focuses on four specific behaviors that lead to a healthy lifestyle: limit alcohol, avoid tobacco, improve nutrition, and engage in physical activity. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between nurses’ health practices and their perceptions of self as …

Physiological Response To Dissonance In Musicians And Nonmusicians, Angela Beth Biehl

Masters Theses

Knowing the human response to musical dissonance could have important therapeutic implications in the music therapy setting. The listener’s musical experience could significantly impact their response and subsequently its effect in a therapeutic setting. Thus, this study aimed to examine both the psychophysiological and subjective responses to dissonance and the difference in these responses between those with high experience and those with low experience. Participating groups, categorized as high experience (HE) and low experience (LE) in terms of musical knowledge, listened to consonant and dissonant musical excerpts, and rated each excerpt on its pleasantness; their physiologic responses were measured to …

Increases In Perspective Embedding Increase Reading Time Even With Typical Text Presentation: Implications For The Reading Of Literature, D. H. Whalen, Lisa Zunshine, Michael Holquist

Publications and Research

Reading fiction is a major component of intellectual life, yet it has proven difficult to study experimentally. One aspect of literature that has recently come to light is perspective embedding (“she thought I left” embedding her perspective on “I left”), which seems to be a defining feature of fiction. Previous work (Whalen et al., 2012) has shown that increasing levels of embedment affects the time that it takes readers to read and understand short vignettes in a moving window paradigm. With increasing levels of embedment from 1 to 5, reading times in a moving window paradigm rose almost linearly. However, …

Perceptions Of Tornadoes, Tornado Warnings, Safety Actions, And Risk: Effects On Warning Response Among Undergraduates In Nebraska, Sabrina T. Jauernic

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Few studies show how university students perceive and respond to tornado warnings, or how they gain tornado-related knowledge. Lacking in the literature are investigations of how perceptions of tornado risk may influence actions. Using two separate surveys and two large samples of undergraduates enrolled in the University of Nebraska, the author determined significant relationships between student demographics, perceptions, and response actions. Incorrect perceptions were found, such as overpasses and southwest corners of buildings being safe, and cities being invulnerable to tornadoes. International students, especially, assumed cities were safe from tornadoes. Students had a tendency to confirm their risk instead of …

Perceptions, Stereotypes And Cognitive Resources Of Female Businesspersons: A Social Identity Approach, Amy J. Y. Lim

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

According to the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), female businesspersons are often stereotyped and labeled either as a Career Women, competent but cold, or as a Traditional Women, warm but incompetent. This suggests that female businesspersons are generally perceived to be either competent or warm individuals, but not both. However, this may not reflect female businesspersons’ own perceptions of their competence and warmth in the workplace. Contrary to the stereotypes, evidence has demonstrated that some female businesspersons display behaviors that signal both competence and warmth. Employing a social identity approach, I propose that gender-professional identity integration (G-PII), an individual difference that …

Sweet Love: The Effects Of Sweet Taste Experience On Romantic Perceptions, Ren Dongning, Kenneth Tan, Ximena B. Arriaga, Kai Qin Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Terms of endearment such as sweetie, honey, and sugar are commonly used in the context of describing romantic partners. This article explores how a relatively subtle manipulation, namely taste sensations, might influence romantic perceptions of a nonestablished relationship. Consistent with predictions, results from Studies 1 and 2 (n = 280) showed that participants evaluated a hypothetical relationship, but not an existing relationship, more favorably when exposed to sweet taste compared to non-sweet taste control. Study 3 (n = 142) further showed that participants indicated greater interest in initiating a relationship with a potential partner when exposed to sweet taste, as …

The Effects Of Aging On Associative Learning And Memory Retrieval In Causal Judgment, Jessica Parks Arnold

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Research has shown that detecting and judging causal relationships requires associative learning and memory. Retrospective revaluation of causal cues requires associative memory (Aitken, Larkin, & Dickinson, 2001) to bind multiple cues together and use these associations to retrieve unseen cues for revaluation of their associative value. The difficulty that older adults experience with respect to retrospective revaluation could occur because of their deficit in associative binding and retrieval (Mutter, Atchley, & Plumlee, 2012). Like retrospective revaluation, blocking requires cue – outcome associative learning, but unlike retrospective revaluation, blocking does not require binding two cues together nor does it require using …

Age And Context Dependency In Causal Learning, Katherine Danielle Lowry

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The ability to make associations between causal cues and outcomes is an important adaptive trait that allows us to properly prepare for an upcoming event. Encoding context is a type of associative processing; thus, context is also an important aspect of acquiring causal relationships. Context gives us additional information about how two events are related and allows us to be flexible in how we respond to causal cues. Research indicates that older adults exhibit an associative deficit as well as a deficit in contextual processing; therefore, it seems likely that these deficits are responsible for the deficit in older adults’ …

Investigating The Ichthus (Fish) Christianity Symbol On Perceived Source Credibility Of Service Providers Under Different Service Evaluation Contexts, Jeri L. Jones, Mahmood T. Shandiz

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Combining religious practices with commercial pursuits for profit is neither a novel nor an insignificant trend (Belk, Wallendorf, and Sherry 1989; McDannell 1995). Today, marketplace use of Christian symbols in secular advertising is becoming more common, especially in certain geographic locations within the United States. Christian religion-based messages and symbols regularly appear in a wide range of advertisements. The Christian elements in these ads often include Bible verses, crosses, doves, and often, the Christian fish symbol (Ichthus). Similar Christian messages are often observed in outdoor advertising, retail store signage, product packaging, and even the daily newspaper. These examples illustrate that …

Music Listening As Therapy, David M. Rosenblatt

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Music is a universal phenomenon and is a real, physical thing. It is processed in neural circuits that overlap with language circuits, and it exerts cognitive, emotional, and physiological effects on humans. Many of those effects are therapeutic, such as reduced symptoms of physical and mental ailments. Music is the result of the elements rhythm, melody, harmony, timbre, dynamics, and form. Rhythm is the focus of pop music, and melody is the focus of classical music. The mind perceives and organizes music in learned, consistent ways in order to generate predictions and extract meaning. There are perceptual laws and information …

Locke, Judgment, And Figure: A Consistent Answer To The Molyneux Problem, Jamale Nagi

Anthós

John Locke has been famously credited with resurrecting the distinction between common and proper sensibles, better known in the Essay as primary and secondary qualities. Although some argue that Locke’s adherence to the doctrine of the common sensibles is in conflict with his empiricist sensibilities, I will show this is not likely to be the case. In order to achieve this I will argue that Locke held there to be cross-modal connections in the mind for the representational content of ideas of primary quality, through the relation of resemblance, but that these representations need to be empirically verified to …

Spatial Estimation: A Non-Bayesian Alternative, Hilary Barth, Ellen Lesser, Jessica Taggart, Emily Slusser

Faculty Publications

A large collection of estimation phenomena (e.g. biases arising when adults or children estimate remembered locations of objects in bounded spaces; Huttenlocher, Newcombe & Sandberg, 1994) are commonly explained in terms of complex Bayesian models. We provide evidence that some of these phenomena may be modeled instead by a simpler non-Bayesian alternative. Undergraduates and 9- to 10-year-olds completed a speeded linear position estimation task. Bias in both groups’ estimates could be explained in terms of a simple psychophysical model of proportion estimation. Moreover, some individual data were not compatible with the requirements of the more complex Bayesian model.

Toward A Two-Stage Model Of Free Categorization, Gregory J. Smith

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research examines how comparison of objects underlies free categorization, an essential component of human cognition. Previous results using our binomial labeling task have shown that classification probabilities are affected in a graded manner as a function of similarity, i.e., the number of features shared by two objects. In a similarity rating task, people also rated objects sharing more features as more similar. However, the effect of matching features was approximately linear in the similarity task, but superadditive (exponential) in the labeling task. We hypothesize that this difference is due to the fact that people must select specific objects to …

Culture And Cognition: The Role Culture Plays In Cognitive Development In Rural Tanzania, Eileen Seissen

Capstone Collection

This capstone paper examines the perceived difference of cognition in a Tanzanian classroom. It also examines the effects culture has on cognition. It aims to answer the questions: What role does Tanzanian culture play in shaping the cognitive skills of its children? And, from an American trainers perspective, within an experiential learning environment, what cognitive differences are perceived in abstract thinking, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving? Nine American trainers, one Tanzanian trainer, and one Tanzanian student participated in my study. Each participant filled out a questionnaire geared toward understanding their training methods and perceptions of participant's skills and abilities. After …

Adult Attachment Styles And Psychopathic Traits: A Relationship Mediated By Empathy And Emotional Regulation?, Chelsea Heim

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Psychopathic personality traits encompass an array of characteristics that emerge early in life and are influenced by insecure attachments between children and their parents. Disruptions in parent-child interactions also affect the development of empathy (Panfile & Laible, 2010) and emotion regulation (Waters, S. F., Virmani, E. A., Thompson, R. A., Meyer, S., Raikes, H. A. & Jochem, R., 2010), which contributes to lasting impairments in interpersonal working models about the self and others (Mack, Hackney & Pile, 2010). The interactions between psychopathy and insecure attachment, low levels of empathy, and the ability to regulate one’s emotions have been separately investigated …

Phase Change Lines, Scale Breaks And Trend Lines Using Excel 2013Tm, Neil Deochand

Masters Theses

The development of graphing skills for the behavior analyst is an ongoing process. Specialized graphing software is often expensive, not widely disseminated, and may require specific training. Dixon, et al. (2009) provided an updated task analysis (Carr & Burkholder, 1998) in the widely used platform Excel 2007. Vanselow and Bourret (2012) provided online tutorials outlining some alternate methods also using Office 2007. This article serves as an update to those task analyses with alternative and under-utilized methods in Excel 2013. To examine the utility of our recommendations twelve psychology graduate students were presented with the task analyses and the experimenters …

How Do Depression Medications Taken By Pilots Affect Passengers' Willingness To Fly? A Mediation Analysis, Stephen Rice, Scott R. Winter, Keegan Kraemer, Rian Mehta, Korhan Oyman

Publications

The mental health of airline pilots has been a concern for decades. In 2010, the United States Federal Aviation Administration began allowing four types of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to be used by pilots suffering from depression. After a procedural wait period, pilots may be awarded a special issuance of their medical certificates to maintain flight currency. Missing from the literature was any research on consumer’s perceptions of pilots taking antidepressants, along with some other approved medications. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to examine consumer’s willingness to fly once told that the pilot of their hypothetical …

How Does “Collaboration” Occur At All? Remarks On Epistemological Issues Related To Understanding / Working With ‘The Other’, Don Faust, Judith Puncochar

Conference Presentations

Collaboration, if to occur successfully at all, needs to be based on careful representation and communication of each stakeholder’s knowledge. In this paper, we investigate, from a foundational logical and epistemological point of view, how such representation and communication can be accomplished. What we tentatively conclude, based on a careful delineation of the logical technicalities necessarily involved in such representation and communication, is that a complete representation is not possible. This inference, if correct, is of course rather discouraging with regard to what we can hope to achieve in the knowledge representations that we bring to our collaborations. We suggest …

How Does “Collaboration” Occur At All? Remarks On Epistemological Issues Related To Understanding / Working With ‘The Other’, Don Faust, Judith Puncochar

Conference Presentations

Collaboration, if to occur successfully at all, needs to be based on careful representation and communication of each stakeholder’s knowledge. In this paper, we investigate, from a foundational logical and epistemological point of view, how such representation and communication can be accomplished. What we tentatively conclude, based on a careful delineation of the logical technicalities necessarily involved in such representation and communication, is that a complete representation is not possible. This inference, if correct, is of course rather discouraging with regard to what we can hope to achieve in the knowledge representations that we bring to our collaborations. We suggest …

The Electrophysiology Of Written Informal Language, Taylor S. Blaetz

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Language is an essential component of human behavior. It is ubiquitous, but more importantly, it is malleable and it is constantly changing. Part of the dynamic nature of informal communication is the introduction and adoption of new linguistic elements. Online communication provides a window into this informal public discourse; therefore, it may be useful for testing hypotheses about the processes underlying the acquisition and use of new words. The comprehension of informal language may lead to an understanding of how these new informal words are integrated into our mental lexicon. The current study was an electroencephalographic (EEG) investigation of the …

Dynamic Tactile Information Is Sufficient For Precise Curvature Discrimination, Jacob R. Cheeseman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Our tactile perceptual experiences occur when we interact, actively and passively, with environmental objects and surfaces. Previous research has demonstrated that active manual exploration enhances the tactile perception of object shape. Nevertheless, the factors that contribute to this enhancement are not well understood. The present study evaluated the ability of 14 older adults to discriminate curved surfaces by actively feeling objects with a single index finger and by passively feeling objects that moved relative to a restrained finger. The curvature discrimination thresholds obtained for passive-dynamic touch were significantly lower than those that occurred during active-dynamic touch. This result demonstrates that …

Development Of A Psychological Assessment Battery To Measure Client Beliefs About The Effectiveness Of Psychotherapy, Christopher Peavey

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

The author attempted to develop a brief scale to measure clients' beliefs about the effectiveness of psychotherapy. The study is an early pilot study to determine if the scale can predict therapy outcomes. While the scale did differ significantly between clients who were active in therapy and those who were not, higher scores on the instrument were not indicative of greater involvement. Possibilities for future research to refine the instrument are discussed.

The Clinical Utility Of The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System: A Clinician's Perspective, Ashley Gunterman

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

The Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) is the first performance-based measure of adult attachment to be developed. The purpose of the measure is to provide a clinical understanding of an adult client's attachment status and associated coping mechanisms. The AAP is a relatively new measure that has yet to be examined from a utility perspective. In the current study, seven psychologists completed a structured survey in order to identify their perspectives of the AAP and its utility as a clinical instrument. A phenomenological qualitative analysis of the data was conducted to derive themes about the AAP and its clinical …

The Relationship Between Self-Determination And Client Outcomes Among The Homeless, Samuel M. Hanna

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This paper has attempted to determine if there is a significant relationship between self-determination and client outcomes among the homeless. The study has been based upon the conceptual framework set forth in Self-Determination Theory. The purpose of the study was to explore the relationship between self-determination and client outcomes among the homeless. Using a data collection instrument, based on empirically validated instrumentation, clients from several homeless service providers in the City of San Bernardino were assessed for the level of self-determination and autonomy support they experience within these agencies. Outcome measures included such things as whether the client was going …