Cognition and Perception Commons^™

Assessing Workload In The Classroom Using Interactive Presentation Software, Connor Mackenzie

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

Perceived workload assessments in children have been administered individually in laboratory settings. This study assessed workload in a classroom using the interactive presentation tool Mentimeter to administer the NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX). Children assessed workload following two cognitive tasks. In addition, the children completed a self-report of executive function. Findings revealed that children’s perceived workload matched the objective demands of the task indicating that workload assessments may be a useful tool in the classroom. Although executive function predicted objective performance, it did not predict perceived workload.

The Origins Beliefs Of Christian College Students, Emily Wilkinson

Senior Honors Theses

Many studies have focused on creation and evolution in academia, origins beliefs and biblical interpretation, and how students respond to origins challenges. The author then conducted a phenomenology of Christian college students’ origins beliefs, factors that influence those beliefs, and impacts that the beliefs have on students’ lives. Methods included a 44-Item Big Five Inventory and semi-structured interviews. Participants were eight residential undergraduate students at a Christian university who were currently or previously in a creation studies course. Results indicated that all participants held to young-earth creationism, and that family, Christian faith, education, personality, and academic major influenced the development …

Perceptions Of Physical Disabilities Using Eye-Tracking Technology, Ashton Prestage

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Fluency And Memory Beliefs' Influence On Self-Regulated Learning Behaviors Of Visually-Impaired And Unimpaired Participants, Payne Winston, M. Tjarks, M. Mullins, K. Tucker, A. Klemm, C. Hilton, K Davis, K. Meador

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Red Pen Survey: Understanding How Students Perceive Their Professors Based On The Color Pen They Grade With, Elizabeth Ratliff, Hannah Powell

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Beliefs About Font Size And Visual Impairment's Influence On Recall, Payne Winston, Ariel Debardelaben, E. Cullars, H. Jones, K. Hall, K. White, Hannah Hilton

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Using Mental Imagery To Increase Intentions To Seek Psychological Help, Savannah L. Carpenter

Honors Projects

Individuals living with mental health conditions may run into myriad cognitive barriers increasing hesitations in seeking professional psychological help. The current research explores the potential for mental imagery to be utilized as a cognitive tool to enhance intentions towards seeking psychological help via shifts in imagined visual perspective. Participants (N = 129) were randomly assigned to either a first- or third-person visual perspective before engaging in a guided mental imagery task. Participants were asked to imagine having an emotional or personal issue that they could not solve on their own and walking into the Counselling Center on campus to …

Leveling The Viewing Field: The Impact Of Target Prevalence On Searcher's Functional Viewing Field, Juan D. Guevara Pinto

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

It is well known that target prevalence impacts various cognitive processes. In visual search, rare search targets are more difficult to detect than common targets. The present research investigated novel questions about target prevalence, focusing on observers’ functional viewing field (FVF) during passive search tasks. The FVF is the area in a display where attention is focused and item processing is enhanced. According the FVF framework (Hulleman & Olivers, 2017), the size of the FVF is modulated by the ease of target detections, such that visual search involving difficult target detection reduces the FVF. Although this would suggest that low …

Adversity: Its Affect On The Resilience Of Female Pilots, Linda M. Pittenger D.Mgt., Stephanie Douglas Ph.D.

National Training Aircraft Symposium (NTAS)

Women are one of the solutions to alleviating the pending pilot shortage. Becoming a pilot needs to appeal to women. Resilience plays an important role in determining whether women in male-dominated career fields will pursue or abandon their careers. The pilot profession is dominated by masculine beliefs, values and perceptions creating an organizational culture adverse and challenging to women.

The study objective was to explore the influence of adversity on female pilots and its effect on resiliency. In our sample of 1,499 female pilots, we found lower resiliency levels as compared to a general U.S. sample. Additionally, statistically significant differences …

Context-Dependent Neural Responses To Minor Notes In Frontal And Temporal Regions Distinguish Musicians From Nonmusicians, Tracy M. Centanni, Andrea R. Halpern, Andrea R. Seisler, Michael Wenger

Faculty Journal Articles

Musical training is required for individuals to correctly label musical modes using the terms “major” and “minor,” whereas no training is required to label these modes as “happy” or “sad.” Despite the high accuracy of nonmusicians in happy/sad labeling,previous research suggests that these individuals may exhibit differences in the neural response to the critical note—the note (the third of the relevant key) that defines a melody as major or minor. The current study replicates the presence of a late positive component (LPC) to the minor melody in musicians only. Importantly, we also extend this finding to examine additional neural correlates …

The Project Talent Twin And Sibling Study: Zygosity And New Data Collection, Carol A. Prescott, Ellen E. Walters, Thalida Em Arpawong, Catalina Zavala, Tara L. Gruenewald, Margaret Gatz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The Project Talent Twin and Sibling (PTTS) study includes 4481 multiples and their 522 nontwin siblings from 2233 families. The sample was drawn from Project Talent, a U.S. national longitudinal study of 377,000 individuals born 1942–1946, first assessed in 1960 and representative of U.S. students in secondary school (Grades 9–12). In addition to the twins and triplets, the 1960 dataset includes 84,000 siblings from 40,000 other families. This design is both genetically informative and unique in facilitating separation of the ‘common’ environment into three sources of variation: shared by all siblings within a family, specific to twin-pairs, and associated with …

Mapping The Spatial And Temporal Dynamics Of Visual Percepts Elicited By A Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation Technique, Kelly Webster

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While many of us rely on vision to interact with and experience the world, for people with damage or disease to the eye or visual cortex, experience through this modality is extremely limited. Brain and retinal stimulation devices show exciting promise for restoring vision, but little is understood about where and when vision percepts can be induced through stimulation. Using a non-invasive brain stimulation technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), we characterized the spatial and temporal dynamics of perception induced through brain stimulation. In the first set of experiments, we explore the importance of higher visual and non-visual areas vs. …

Effects Of Quantitative Literacy On Healthcare Decision-Making: An Aural Context, Robert G. Root, Sonia Bhala

Numeracy

We propose a relationship between sensory modality, numerical formatting, and performance on a survey simulating healthcare decision-making. We examine the current literature on aural health literacy, and specifically aural literacy coupled with health numeracy. We then create a survey instrument called the Bhala test for this purpose and demonstrate that it is moderately internally consistent and provides results that correlate with the NUMi assessment, a widely accepted measure of health numeracy. The quantitative information provided in the Bhala test has two treatments, percentage and natural frequency formats, in an effort to determine which format is easier for subjects to use …

The Effect Of Physical Interaction On Evolving Attention Relating To Advertisements And Visual Information, Margaret S. Davey

Psychology Honors Papers

As more technology is used on a daily basis around the world, the platforms of advertisements and learning have also changed. However, little is known about the effects of image and video interaction type on information retention. The current research examines the effect of different types of interaction such as swiping, tapping or viewing on memory of an image both with and without using the same interaction when the participants were asked if they remembered the image or not. In experiment one, the participants from the Connecticut College subject pool used a hand tracker system to swipe and tap images …

The Impact Of The Social Media Influencer Power On Consumer Attitudes Toward The Brand: The Mediating/Moderating Role Of Social Media Influencer Source Credibility, Lubna Nafees, Christy M. Cook, James E. Stoddard

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This paper presents a conceptual model of the impact of social media influencer power on consumer attitudes toward a brand. The research uses naïve theories of social influence, consumer socialization theory and market signaling theory to support the contention that social media influencer power will impact consumer brand attitudes. However, the impact of the social media influencer power on consumer brand attitudes is posited to be mediated and/or moderated by the social media influencer source credibility. In turn, the social media influencer source credibility is modeled as being positively related to the social media influencer’s expertise/competence with respect to the …

Invertebrates Should Be Given Ethical Consideration, Marie-Claire Cammaerts

Animal Sentience

Invertebrates are far more numerous than vertebrates. Most of them are essential to the survival of humanity. Their physiology, behavior, know-how, and cognitive abilities are often as complex as those of vertebrates. Invertebrates should be considered and studied as are vertebrates, i.e., ethically, and cautiously.

Ecological And Evolutionary Dynamics Of Elephant Rewilding, Lysanne Snijders

Animal Sentience

Baker & Winkler make a thought-provoking contribution to the discussion of what role captive animals could play in nature conservation and how we could get there through rewilding. There certainly is potential for captive Asian elephants, Elephas maximus, to become targets of conservation efforts, but there are also many questions: (1) How much do (behavioral) traits of captive-origin animals differ from their free conspecifics? (2) What predicts the likelihood and strength of social reintegration of captive animals into free populations? (3) How much of an Asian elephant’s functional role in the environment can captive animals still fulfill and how …

Credit The Parents? The Impact Of Racial Socialization On African American Students’ Stress-Related Coping And College Adjustment, Briana Bouldin

Theses and Dissertations

Many new stressors emerge in college and have a significant impact on college adjustment. However, little is known about common stressors, their causes, and impact on college adjustment for students attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). This project investigated the extent to which different college stressors impact sleep-related college adjustment, and whether racial socialization and emotion regulation strategies serve as coping strategies that moderate this relationship for HBCU students. The theoretical framework for the study was an adapted version of the Integrative Conceptual Model of Adaptive Socialization (ICMAS; Dunbar et al., 2017). Data were collected via an online survey …

The Effects Of Virtual Reality In The Treatment Of Stroke Patients, Melissa Schoettle

Capstone Showcase

The Effects of Virtual Reality in the Treatment of Stroke Patients

Stroke patients face many challenges on their road to recovery. Patients may lose motor function, speech abilities, and other important cognitive functions. They go through various forms of therapy to help rehabilitate them and improve their cognition, including physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Physical therapy helps improve motor function and muscle control, occupational therapy improves those skills needed for success in work and life, and speech therapy helps patients recover the ability to speak and the cognitive processes to think and form words and sentences. While these therapies are …

The Value Of Patient-Provider Interactions In Orthopedic Settings: An Evidence-To-Practice Review, Matthew S. Panetta, Carly J. Wilson, Zachary Winkelmann

Clinical Practice in Athletic Training

Clinical outcomes are influenced by specific physical therapy interventions and several nonspecific factors associated with the healthcare professional, patient, and setting. The relationship built between patients and providers is based on treatment outcomes is referred to as the patient-provider interaction, which is a nonspecific factor. The purpose of this review was to investigate patients’ and clinicians’ perceptions of factors that influence patient-provider interactions. Eleven different databases were accessed as potential research sources. Thirteen qualitative studies were selected that examined the perceptions of non-specific factors which impact the patient-clinician relationship as well as the perceptions that healthcare providers and patients in …

Drawing The Boundaries Of Animal Sentience, Walter Veit, Bryce Huebner

Animal Sentience

We welcome Mikhalevich & Powell’s (2020) (M&P) call for a more “‘inclusive”’ animal ethics, but we think their proposed shift toward a moral framework that privileges false positives over false negatives will require radically revising the paradigm assumption in animal research: that there is a clear line to be drawn between sentient beings that are part of our moral community and nonsentient beings that are not.

Asian Elephant Rescue, Rehabilitation And Rewilding, Liv Baker, Rebecca Winkler

Animal Sentience

Thailand has fewer than 10,000 elephants left. More of them are living in captivity to serve the tourist industry under grim conditions than are living free in what is left of their wild habitat. Conservation efforts need to be focused on all surviving members of the species, captive and free, but they need to take into account the inextricable entanglement of human and nonhuman animal lives in Thailand today. There is an opportunity for rescuing, rehabilitating and reintroducing captive elephants to the wild with the help of the traditional expertise of a mahout culture that has been elephant-keeping for centuries. …

Covid-19, Evolution, Brains And Psychology, Frederick Toates

Animal Sentience

Attention needs to be directed to the processes that control behavior in humans and the adaptive problems that they solved in our early evolutionary environment. The evolutionary mismatch between the current environment and the human brain can yield important insights into the problems that beset us in the context of environmental degradation and nonhuman animal welfare.

Mood Effects And Individual Differences On Reappraisal And Distraction: An Erp Study Of The Sensitivity Of Emotion Regulation Strategies, Elsa Mastico

All Master's Theses

The present research evaluated the effect of mood and individual differences on the regulatory process of emotions by using a regulation task with negative and neutral images to assess reappraisal and distraction ability. Specifically, this research evaluated the average amplitude of the latent positive potential (latent positivity, LPP) brainwave linked to distraction and reappraisal using an ERP analysis. In addition, the current study compared the modulation of the LPP to the self-reported mood of the participants and their individual differences in regulation ability through scores of a self-report emotion regulation questionnaire. The latent positive potentials from an emotion regulation task …

Post-Supernatural Cultures: There And Back Again, Wesley J. Wildman, F. Leron Shults, Saikou Y. Diallo, Ross Gore, Justin Lane

VMASC Publications

The abandonment of supernatural religious beliefs and rituals seems to occur quite easily in some contexts, but post-supernaturalist cultures require a specific set of conditions that are difficult to produce and sustain on a large scale and thus are historically rare. Despite the worldwide resurgence of supernaturalist religion, some subcultures reliably produce people who deny the existence of supernatural entities. This social phenomenon has evoked competing explanations, many of which enjoy empirical support. We synthesize six of the most influential social-science explanations, demonstrating that they provide complementary perspectives on a complex causal architecture. We incorporate this theoretical synthesis into a …

Appealing To Human Intuitions To Reduce Animal Abuse, Yzar S. Wehbe, Todd K. Shackelford

Animal Sentience

Social scientists may be able to find ways to positively affect people’s evolved moral compasses, thereby doing the planet and its inhabitants a great kindness. They could help to shape a constituency that is increasingly opposed to animal abuse in its largest-scale manifestations, factory farming and wet markets. This would, in turn, motivate people to elect ethical leaders who view inaction with regard to animal abuse as a serious moral and medical mistake, if only indirectly due to factory farming’s exacerbation of the threats zoonoses pose to humans.

Sentience In All Organisms With Centralized Nervous Systems, Lori Marino

Animal Sentience

Mikhalevich & Powell (2020) argue for considering the welfare of invertebrates, especially insects, by asking whether invertebrates have the cognitive and neural characteristics necessary for sentience. This approach assumes that human neural and cognitive complexity is the basis of sentience. But insight might also be gained by turning this approach on its head and examining the notion that sentience may be a fundamental biological property, appearing very early in the evolution of life in all organisms with centralized nervous systems.

Inhibition Of Pain Or Response To Injury In Invertebrates And Vertebrates, Matilda Gibbons, Sajedeh Sarlak

Animal Sentience

In certain situations, insects appear to lack a response to noxious stimuli that would cause pain in humans. For example, from the fact that male mantids continue to mate while being eaten by their partner it does not follow that insects do not feel pain; it could be the result of modulation of nociceptive inputs or behavioural outputs. When we try to infer the underlying mental state of an insect from its behaviour, it is important to consider the behavioural effects of the associated physiological and neurobiological mechanisms.

No Room For Speciesism In Welfare Considerations, Jennifer Vonk

Animal Sentience

Speciesism should play no role in determining welfare outcomes. Cognition may vary within species as well as between species, but broad classifications such as invertebrates are functionally meaningless in this context. Cognition should relate to welfare only to the extent that it relates to the capacity to suffer or to experience pleasure.

Zoonotic Realism, Computational Cognitive Science And Pandemic Prevention, Tyler Davis, Molly E. Ireland, Jason Van Allen, Darrell A. Worthy

Animal Sentience

Using animals in food and food production systems is one of many drivers of novel zoonoses. Moving toward less dependence on animal proteins is a possible avenue for reducing pandemic risk, but we think that Wiebers & Feigin’s proposed change to food policy (phasing out animal meat production) is unrealistic in its political achievability and its current capacity to feed the world in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. We suggest that improvements in communication strategies, precipitated by developments in computational cognitive neuroscience, can lead the way to a safer future and are feasible now.