Cognition and Perception Commons^™

The Effects Of Interview Length On Gender And Personality Related Bias In Job Interviews, Emily Condon

Scripps Senior Theses

The proposed study explores the cognitive miser approach to perception formation in job interviews, as well as factors that may motivate people to not act as cognitive misers. Personality type (introverted and extraverted) and gender are characteristics of people that are associated with many stereotypes (Heilman, 2001; Andersen & Klatzky, 1987), and can have a large influence on an employer’s perception of an applicant, particularly when the employer is acting as a cognitive miser. It is hypothesized that in longer interviews, employers will be motivated to not act as cognitive misers, because they have more information about the applicant, have …

Inventory Of Cognitive Distortions: Validation Of A Measure Of Cognitive Distortions Using A Community Sample, Michael B. Roberts

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine and evaluate further the psychometric properties of a self-report inventory of cognitive distortions using a nonclinical, community sample. A group of 474 individuals were contacted via the social networking site, Facebook, and through a college list-serve and were asked to complete multiple measures and also to send the link to other individuals, thus utilizing a snowball sample. The measures used included the Inventory of Cognitive Distortions (ICD), Dysfunctional Attitude Scale (DAS), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), and a brief questionnaire to collect demographic information on each participant. Results revealed positive psychometric properties for …

Construct Validity Of The Developmental Test Of Visual-Perception Third Edition (Dtvp-3) In Western Australian Primary School Children, Kirsten Clarke

Theses : Honours

Visual perception is the ability to identify, organise, make meaning of and provide sense to what is seen in the world in which we live. Visual perceptual skills continuously develop in primary school children as seen in academic performance. If visual perceptual difficulties are unaddressed, the cumulative academic result can be detrimental throughout life. Thus, visual perceptual difficulties must be identified using tests that possess sound measurement properties to allow for early intervention. The purpose of the research was to determine the construct validity of the Developmental Test of Visual Perception Third Edition (DTVP-3). The DTVP-3 was designed and standardised …

Developing Executive Functions Through Mindfulness Training In School-Aged Children, Ashley Black Adams

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

Well-developed executive functions are necessary for successful classroom functioning. Students with executive function deficits can fall behind academically as well as socially and emotionally, relative to their same-aged peers. Effective interventions for developing executive functions within the school environment are essential for addressing this issue. This study examines changes in students’ executive functions as a result of their participation in a mindfulness training intervention. Participants included four ten-year old elementary school boys who took part in a ten-week mindfulness training intervention. The data were generated through pre and post assessments with an executive function teacher rating scale and a Goal-Attainment …

Violence Against Women Through The Lens Of Objectification Theory, M. Meghan Davidson, Sarah Gervais

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The purpose of this research was to examine the effects of violence on body image variables for college women. Undergraduate women participated in an online study assessing sexual violence (SV), intimate partner violence (IPV), self-objectification, body surveillance, and body shame experiences. Findings suggest that both SV and IPV contribute to women’s body shame. In addition, the associations between IPV and body shame appear to be explained through self-objectification processes, but not the associations between SV and body shame. Thus, important differences between IPV and SV regarding self-objectification processes emerged. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as directions for future research, …

From Sex Objects To Human Beings: Masking Sexual Body Parts And Humanization As Moderators To Women’S Objectification, Philippe Bernard, Sarah Gervais, Jill Allen, Alice Delmée, Olivier Klein

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Recent studies have shown that sexualized female bodies are objectified at a cognitive level. Research using the body-inversion recognition task, a robust indicator of configural (vs. analytic processing) within cognitive psychology, shows that for sexualized female bodies, people recognize upright and inverted bodies similarly rather than recognizing upright bodies better than inverted bodies (i.e., an inversion effect). This finding suggests that sexualized female bodies, like objects, are recognized analytically (rather than configurally). Nonetheless, it remains unclear when and why sexualized female bodies are objectified at a basic cognitive level. Grounded in objectification theory, the present experiments examine moderating factors that …

Impact Of Urban Nature On Executive Functioning In Early And Middle Childhood, Anne R. Schutte, Julia C. Torquati, Heidi L. Beattie

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

According to attention restoration theory, directed attention can become fatigued and then be restored by spending time in a restorative environment. This study examined the restorative effects of nature on children’s executive functioning. Sevento 8-year-olds (school aged, n = 34) and 4- to 5-year-olds (preschool, n = 33) participated in two sessions in which they completed an activity to fatigue attention, then walked along urban streets (urban walk) in one session and in a park-like area (nature walk) in another session, and finally completed assessments of working memory, inhibitory control, and attention. Children responded faster on the attention task after …

Electrophysiological And Behavioral Working Memory Differences Between Musicians And Non-Musicians, Benjamin P. Richardson

All Master's Theses

The current study examines the P300 brainwave and working memory differences between musicians and non-musicians. Differences in aspects of recorded electrical brain activity have been used to quantify differences in updating processes of working memory possibly related to differences in amount of music experience. The current study is designed to partially replicate and enhance a method previously implemented in research describing how music experience may be associated with differences in visual processing as well auditory working memory and executive function. Behavioral data were collected using six standardized subtest measures of the TOMAL – II, followed by ERP recordings during a …

The Effects Of Feedback Sequence On Cognitive Performance, Travis W. Pyle

All Master's Theses

The current study tested the effects of feedback sequence on performance on a visual-spatial task. Twenty-three female participants were randomly assigned to one of five feedback sequence conditions which occurred after two consecutive trials of a hole-punch task. The five feedback sequence conditions consisted of positive-positive (i.e., positive feedback followed by positive feedback), positive-negative, negative-positive, negative-negative, and a no-feedback control group. Positive feedback was presented as a 80%-90% accuracy range whereas negative feedback was a 30%-40% accuracy range. Third trial accuracy and completion time were measured as was locus of control via the Internal Control Index (ICI) survey. Analyses revealed …

Reducing Subjectivity: Meditation And Implicit Bias, Diana M. Ciuca

CMC Senior Theses

Implicit association of racial stereotypes is brought about by social conditioning (Greenwald & Krieger, 2006). This conditioning can be explained by attractor networks (Sharp, 2011). Reducing implicit bias through meditation can show the effectiveness of reducing the rigidity of attractor networks, thereby reducing subjectivity. Mindfulness meditation has shown to reduce bias from the use of one single guided session conducted before performing an Implicit Association Test (Lueke & Gibson, 2015). Attachment to socially conditioned racial bias should become less prevalent through practicing meditation over time. An experimental model is proposed to test this claim along with a reconceptualization of consciousness …

Descriptions Of Psycho-Social And Academic Support Systems In Schools For Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, And Questioning Middle School And High School Students, Michael Appelgren

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

This research explored the understanding of coming out, using qualitative methods. Through a semi-structured interview, the present study explored: individuals’ unique experiences of coming out in middle or high school, the challenges of coming out, supports available while in school, as well as ideas of how schools can support students who decide to come out. A central theme of the study was to uncover opportunities for schools to support GLBTQQ students who self-disclose a homosexual identity. The results of the current study suggest that schools are providing no supports to limited support systems for sexual minority youth. In reference to …

A Mechanism For Sensorimotor Translation In Singing: The Multi-Modal Imagery Association (Mmia) Model, Peter Q. Pfordresher, Andrea R. Halpern, Emma B. Greenspon

Faculty Journal Articles

WE PROPOSE A NEW FRAMEWORK TO UNDERSTAND singing accuracy, based on multi-modal imagery associations: the MMIA model. This model is based on recent data suggesting a link between auditory imagery and singing accuracy, evidence for a link between imagery and the functioning of internal models for sensorimotor associations, and the use of imagery in singing pedagogy. By this account, imagery involves automatic associations between different modalities, which in the present context comprise associations between pitch height and the regulation of vocal fold tension. Importantly, these associations are based on probabilistic relationships that may vary with respect to their precision and …

The Speed Of Our Mental Soundtracks: Tracking The Tempo Of Involuntary Musical Imagery In Everyday Life, Kelly Jakubowski, Nicolas Farrugia, Andrea R. Halpern, Sathish K. Sankarpandi, Lauren Stewart

Faculty Journal Articles

The study of spontaneous and everyday cognitions is an area of rapidly growing interest. One of the most ubiquitous forms of spontaneous cognition is involuntary musical imagery (INMI), the involuntarily retrieved and repetitive mental replay of music. The present study introduced a novel method for capturing temporal features of INMI within a naturalistic setting. This method allowed for the investigation of two questions of interest to INMI researchers in a more objective way than previously possible, concerning (1) the precision of memory representations within INMI and (2) the interactions between INMI and concurrent affective state. Over the course of 4 …

A Study On The Personality Characteristics Of Dreamers, Joshua Lambert

Masters Theses

Nightmares are frightening dreams that cause the dreamer to wake, with the events that occur within the nightmare well remembered after awakening. There are those who experience nightmares frequently (at least one nightmare a week). While studying nightmares, Hartmann (1989, 1991) theorized a distinct personality trait he referred to as boundaries of the mind, and conceptualized a boundary continuum ranging from thin boundaries to thick boundaries. Those with thin boundaries were hypothesized to express permeability between cognitive processes, whereas those with thick boundaries are thought to better separate cognitive processes. Those who experience frequent nightmares are typically shown to report …

Using Robots As Therapeutic Agents To Teach Children With Autism Recognize Facial Expression, Seyedmohammad Mavadati, Huanghao Feng, Peyten B. Sanger, S. Silver, Anibal Gutierrez, Mohammad H. Mahoor

Electrical and Computer Engineering: Graduate Student Scholarship

Background: Recognizing and mimicking facial expressions are important cues for building great rapport and relationship in human-human communication. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have often deficits in recognizing and mimicking social cues, such as facial expressions. In the last decade several studies have shown that individuals with ASD have superior engagement toward objects and particularly robots (i.e. humanoid and non-humanoid). However, majority of the studies have focused on investigating robot’s appearances and the engineering design concepts and very few research have been done on the effectiveness of robots in therapeutic and treatment applications. In fact, the critical question that …

The Gaze-Cueing Effect In The United States And Japan: Influence Of Cultural Differences In Cognitive Strategies On Control Of Attention, Saki Takao, Yusuke Yamani, Atsunori Ariga

Psychology Faculty Publications

The direction of seen gaze automatically and exogenously guides visual spatial attention, a phenomenon termed as the gaze-cueing effect. Although this effect arises when the duration of stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) between a non-predictive gaze cue and the target is relatively long, no empirical research examined the factors underlying this extended cueing effect. Two experiments compared the gaze-cueing effect at longer SOAs (700 ms) in Japanese and American participants. Cross-cultural studies on cognition suggest that Westerners tend to use a context-independent analytical strategy to process visual environments, whereas Asians use a context-dependent holistic approach. We hypothesized that Japanese participants would …

Factors That Influence Perceptions Of Others: An Emphasis On Down Syndrome, Briana J. Walls

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

The current study examined how physical characteristics influence perceptions others have of people with Down syndrome (DS). Participants were shown one of four pictures, which were an adult male with Down syndrome facial characteristics, an adult male without Down syndrome facial characteristic, a male child with Down syndrome facial characteristic and a male child without Down syndrome facial characteristics. After viewing one of the four pictures with a description of likes and dislikes of the person in the picture, the participants completed a questionnaire examining perceptions of cognitive-behavioral competence, emotional distance- discomfort, and occupational ability. The hypothesis of this study …

Judging Dread: A Quantitative Investigation Of Affect, Psychometric Dread And Risk Consequence, Melvyn Griffiths

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Risk is generally understood as a product of the likelihood and consequence of an event. However, the way in which estimations of consequences are formed is unclear due to the complexities of human perception. In particular, the influence of Affect, defined as positive or negative qualities subjectively assigned to stimuli, may skew risk consequence judgements. Thus a clearer understanding of the role of Affect in risk consequence estimations has significant implications for risk management, risk communication and policy formulation.

In the Psychometric tradition of risk perception, Affect has become almost synonymous with the concept of Dread, despite Dread being measured …

Cognitive Fatigue: Exploring The Relationship Between The Fatigue Effect And Action Video-Game Experience, James Brooks

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

the effects of cognitive fatigue. Despite this, there remain advantages to regularly playing action video games. In Study 1, VGPs were significantly better at multitasking on the MATB-II compared to the NVGPs. Further, VGPs also demonstrated superior multitasking when driving, as they made significantly fewer traffic violations compared to NVGPs when not fatigued. VGPs demonstrated eye-movements similar to those of expert drivers; however, this did not result in any difference in performance between the two groups. There was also some evidence of a positive effect of video game training, although there was no advantage of one training technique over the …

Compassion Fatigue And Coping In Mental Health Professionals Working In Residential Treatment With Traumatized Youth, Michael J. Baniewicz

PCOM Psychology Dissertations

This study utilized a prospective cross-sectional design to examine if a coping profile can be identified, indicating whether or not a professional is able to cope effectively with exposure to trauma symptoms while working in a residential treatment setting. The participants in this study were employees at a residential treatment facility in the suburbs of a major metropolitan area. Results indicated that individuals who utilized an emotion-focused or problem-focused coping style were less likely to experience symptoms of burnout. Participants who worked directly with those individuals who had experienced trauma experienced levels of burnout similar to those who had not, …

Memory Behaviour Requires Knowledge Structures, Not Memory Stores, Guillermo J. Campitelli

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Since the inception of cognitive psychology dominant theories of memory behavior have used the storage metaphor. In the multi-store models (e.g., Broadbent, 1958; Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968; Baddeley and Hitch, 1974) the memory system comprises one or more short-term memory (STM) stores and a long-term memory (LTM) store. These stores are places where information is located for varying periods of time (i.e., seconds in the STM stores, and minutes to lifetime in the LTM store) and they have varying capacity limits: large for the LTM store, very limited for the STM store—4 to 7 items, see Miller (1956), Broadbent (1958), …

Editorial: Neural Implementation Of Expertise, Merim Bilalic, Robert Langner, Guillermo J. Campitelli, Luca Turella, Wolfgang Grodd

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

How the brain enables humans to reach an outstanding level of performance typical of expertise is of great interest to cognitive neuroscience, as demonstrated by the number and diversity of the articles in this Research Topic (RT). The RT presents a collection of 23 articles written by 80 authors on traditional expertise topics such as sport, board games, and music, but also on the expertise aspects of everyday skills, such as language and the perception of faces and objects. Just as the topics in the RT are diverse, so are the neuroimaging techniques employed and the article formats. Here we …

Investigating The Role Of Objective And Subjective Task Complexity On Retirement Investment Plan Earnings Judgments, Natasha Hardy

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This research addressed the effect of retirement plan task complexity on retirement plan earnings estimates. Past research has shown that increased task complexity results in more decision-making errors as well increased use of heuristics, or rules of thumb, which can result in non-optimal outcomes such as under-saving or disproportionate equity/income balances (Benartzi & Thaler, 2001, 2007; Maynard & Hakel, 1997). This research used two experiments to test whether individuals would judge a retirement investment plan with high task complexity to be more profitable than a plan with low task complexity - a non-normative and potentially costly bias. Experiment 1 used …

An Investigation Of The Increased Reliance On Familiarity In Associative Recognition Of Unitized Compound Word Pairs, Fahad Naveed Ahmad

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Unitization refers to when two components are integrated or combined into a single unit. So the whole is more familiar than the parts (Graf & Schacter, 1989). Previous researchers have shown unitization of unrelated word pairs can occur by the use of compound definition. As support, they have found unitization to increase reliance on familiarity in associative recognition. The purpose of this PhD dissertation was to examine the effects of unitization of preexperimental associations on associative recognition. The effects of associative recognition of unitized compound word (CW) pairs can serve as a useful benchmark to compare to that of other …

Javan Gibbon (Hylobates Moloch) Non-Vocal Social Communication And Gesture Use With Conspecifics, Melanie Bell

All Master's Theses

I explored gestures used by captive Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) at the Gibbon Conservation Center (Santa Clarita, CA). I hypothesized that a sender gibbon’s gesture modality would vary with the recipient gibbon’s attentional state and the sender would be equally likely to use all modalities (tactile, visual, actions, and facial expressions) when the recipient was attending (facing the sender), but would use more tactile gestures and actions when the recipient was non-attending (oriented away from the sender). I collected data from 10 individuals using all-occurrences sampling and an ethogram to score behaviors from video recordings. In 1,143 interactions, …

Individuals Who Self Identify As Artists But Work In A Different Career: A Cross Case Analysis, Kelly Lee Price

Online Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine, from their individual perspective, the identity of individuals who self-identify as an artist but work in other careers. The research objectives of this study included: exploring the possible sense of occupational imbalance in an individual’s self-identity, exploring the personal identity of individuals who perceive themselves as artists but work at a different career, and explaining the relationships between art and self-identity including life balance, work ethic, and education. This research was based in an occupational science viewpoint, in that it looked at how occupations help to define life meaning, purpose, and identity. …

An Examination Between High And Low Optimistic Ncaa Division I Student-Athletes' Perceptions Of Preferred Leadership Behavior In Sport: A Qualitative Investigation, Alexander C. Roorda

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Numerous researchers have examined preferred sport leadership behaviors from both the coach and athlete perspectives (Beam, Serwatka, & Wilson, 2004; Chelladurai, & Carron, 1983; Freakley, Czech, Harris, & Burdette, 2012; Turman, 2013; Weinburg, & Gould, 2010). However, there is limited research in student-athlete personality dispositions and how those might influence student-athlete perceptions of preferred leadership behaviors. The purpose of the present study was to examine views of leadership in light of certain personality dispositions. This research examined the potential influence of optimism (Abramson, et al, 2000) on qualitative descriptions of preferred leadership behaviors using the Revised Leadership Scale for Sport …

Tornado Trouble: How Can Current Tornado Warnings Be Improved?, Jonathan P. Evans

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

There are many unnecessary deaths from tornadoes every year (NOAA.org, 2013). Although there have been great advancements in tornado warning systems (Coleman, Knupp, Spann, Elliot, & Peters, 2010), more changes to systems could be made to motivate people to take action in preparation for tornadoes (Brotzge & Donner, 2013). Protection motivation theory outlines the process by which we assess threats and decide whether or not preventative actions are worth performing. If the threat is perceived as severe enough and the preventative actions are seen as capable of mitigating the threat, the individual is motivated to act (Rogers, 2000). One means …