Cognition and Perception Commons^™

A Study Of The Relationship Of School Disciplinary Procedures And The High School Dropout At Odessa High School, James K. Adian

Graduate Theses

The document presents a review of relevant literature providing research findings relevant to problems concerning dropouts. Data for the document was obtained by sending a questionnaire to selected drop out students at Odessa High School. The results of the survey were organized into statistical data and reported in the document in tables and diagrams. The results of the survey imply a significant number of dropouts have a negative attitude about the treatment they received from school personnel, but school is generally regarded as a needed and good experience. Further implications are for a controlled study to determine the cause of …

Developmental Study Of The Mueller-Lyer Illusion Under Conditions Of Restricted Exposure Time & Task Interference, Jerald Clampitt

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The present study brought together two lines of research in an attempt to explain some issues in perceptual development. The first pertained to the Mueller-Lyer illusion which tends to decrease with age. Piaaet attributed this change to increased perceptual activities, such as eye movements in the older subjects. Pollack related it to changes in the physical structure of the eye. Grice attributed the charge partially to cognitive processes, and partially to perceptual activities. Second, the concept of iconic memory was reviewed. Grice had employed the concept of iconic memory in an attempt to relate the age related changes in illusions …

Visual Detection Of Cryptic Prey By Blue Jays (Cyanocitta Cristata), Alexandra T. Pietrewicz, Alan Kamil

Avian Cognition Papers

Blue jays learned to respond differentially to the presence or absence of Catocala moths in slides. This detection of the moths by the jays was affected by the background upon which the moth was placed and its body orientation, thus providing an objective measure of crypticity. These procedures are useful for the study of visual detection of prey.

The Development Of The Self-Death Awareness Scale, Thomas Francis Ryan Jr.

Masters Theses

The purpose of the study was the development of the Self-Death Awareness Scale (SDAS), an instrument that is intended to measure the awareness of the fact that a person is mortal and is going to eventually die. The experimental instrument was administered to 100 persons equally divided into four age groups (ages 17-83). It was hypothesized that age and the SDAS were correlated with older persons being more aware of their own mortality than younger subjects. Also investigated were the variables of sex, occupation, education, church membership, number of children, marital status, and loss of family and friends through death. …

A Study Of The Relationship Between Failure To Be Promoted And Self-Concept Of Ninth Grade Students, Joan C. Cobb

Graduate Theses

No abstract is provided.

Effects Of Verbal And Pantomime Stimulus Input On The Short Term Sequential Recall Of Aphasic Adults, Lauryl Suzanne Ivers Grotting

Dissertations and Theses

The question posed in this investigation was: Which stimulus input mode, verbal, pantomime, or combined verbal and pantomime, is more effective in facilitating short term sequential recall of language material with aphasic adults?

Preferred And Nonpreferred Color As Irrelevent Background In Paired Associate Learning, Margaret Ann Kenner

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the School of Education at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Psychology by Margaret Ann Kenner in January of 1976.

Coding, Perceptual Grouping And Part-To-Whole Transfer In Recognition Memory And Recall, Frederick J. Parente

Psychology ETDs

Three experiments examined the effects of part-to-whole transfer of organization in recall and recognition memory. The experiments modified the traditional part-to-whole transfer procedures in that subjects initially learned a list of perceptually grouped letter sequences and certain aspects of those sequences (letter elements and/or group structure) were part of larger sequences presented for second-list recall and recognition. The results of the first experiment provided clear support for an organizational interpretation of transfer effects in part-to-whole learning. Subjects in this experiment exhibited a facilitation in second-­list learning which was the result of prior exposure to perceptual groupings that were common to …

Effect Of Stressful And "Neutral" Moving Images And Still Images On Dreaming, Elizabeth Anne Anderson

Dissertations and Theses

A controlled presleep experience was used in an attempt to trace waking experience in dreams. Dream reports were collected in the laboratory from 12 dreamers (half men, half women; half recallers, half nonrecallers), using the electrophysiological method of Dement and Kleitman. Following a baseline night, each dreamer was awakened on three consecutive nights during every REM period (rapid eye movement and Stage 1-ascending EEG pattern). Immediately prior to sleep on Night 3, four of the dreamers viewed an emotionally arousing film, four others viewed a slide sequence having the same content as the stressful film, and four others viewed an …

Increased Retention Due To Category Shift : A Perceptual-Attentive Phenomenon?, Leonard J. Bianchi

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

A stimulus that is qualitatively distinct from other stimuli tends to show higher retention in Free Recall (FR) and short-term memory distraction (STM) tasks. This finding applies equally well to an isolated stimulus which belongs to a taxonomic category different from other stimuli.

Meaning Formation, Gail F. Czukar

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

An attempt was made to demonstrate laboratory conditions in which experiential components of meaning (i.e. perceptual and emotional correlates of observable stimuli and responses) pattern to form a gestalt. Semantic differential scales were used to measure the meaning of simple visual figures in two phases of the experiment. The first phase consisted of a pre- and post-exposure measurement of meaning with an intervening exposure to a compound visual display. In the second phase, subjects were exposed to an altered visual display and then rated the stimuli again.

Results do not support the predictions that (1) the meaning of the central …

Structure Vs. Meaning In Subliminal Perception, Margaret Anne Callan Hoisington

Dissertations and Theses

Subliminal perception is defined as a process whereby a subject reports no awareness of a visual stimulus, and yet his/her verbal behavior, subjectively experienced as “guesses”, is influenced by the stimulation. Various studies have found evidence for and against subliminal perception using discrimination tasks and subjective judgments. Explanations of subliminal perception include the partial cue hypothesis, the theory of perception of structural differences, and the theory that responses to subliminal stimuli are of a semantic nature.

This study was conducted to determine whether subliminal perception involves a discrimination of structural characteristics or a discrimination of the semantic quality of words …

The Correlation Between Specific Curiosity And Intelligence In Adults, Charles R. Schwenk

Dissertations and Theses

Previous studies done on the correlation between specific curiosity and intelligence have been inconclusive. In the present study, a test of state specific curiosity and a test of intelligence were administered to 76 Ss from two introductory psychology courses. Three hypotheses were tested. These were, (a) that a significant specific curiosity-intelligence correlation would exist, (b) that the specific curiosity-verbal subscale correlation would be higher than the specific curiosity-abstraction sub-scale correlation, and (c) that there would be a sex difference in the specific curiosity-intelligence correlations. The data did not support hypothesis (a) or (b). However, they did support hypothesis (c). …

Impact Of College Speech Classes On Listening Skills Of Students, Candice Piazza

Dissertations and Theses

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of college speech classes upon developing improved listening skills. More specifically it sought to determine the extent to which the students who took Speech 100 or 111 have acquired listening skills.

There has been considerable theorizing concerning listening and auding with only a scattering of experimentation. According to existing data, listening would appear to be a complex human behavior that is only partially understood. There are, however definite listener functions, listening conditions and variables that affect listening. Aspects of attention are also important when considering the occurrence or unoccurrence of …

A Study On The Simultaneous Transmission Of Incongruent Information, Dennis Keith Smeltzer

Masters Theses

No abstract provided by author.

The Application Of Information Theory To A Single Visual Search Task, Charles F. Gidcumb

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Age, I.Q. And Achievement On Children's Ability To Reverse The Necker Cube, Johnny Lee Matson

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Field Dependence And Field Independence On A Series Of Inverted Field Tasks, David R. Murphy

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Study Into The Effects Of Knowledge Of Peer Group Evaluation Upon Self-Concept Change, Janice Marie Beyer

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

A Cross-Class Survey Of Synaesthesia In High School Students And Its Biocultural Implications, Ina Jane Wundram

Dissertations and Theses

It has been suggested in the literature that Synaesthesia, as an expression of syncretic thought, would be more common in non-Western than in Western cultures. Given the lack of availability of widely divergent cultural groups and the general lack of knowledge about the phenomenon, it was decided to study the possibility that synaesthesia in our society might be related to socio-economic class. A group of high school students from a broad range of socio-economic backgrounds was studied, and the results suggest that the occurrence of synaesthesia is not related to class. In addition, it was found that 50% of the …

An Examination Of Sampling Strategies In Concept Identification, Gary B. Gentry

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Adult humans make choices in concept identification problems which are determined by the particular strategies which they adopt at the time. In such problems, every presentation of a rnultidimensional concept, such as a stimulus which varies in form, color and shape, is referred to as an "instance". Described two general approaches which Ss take in learning a concept. The wholist strategy involves using all of the attributes of a concept as a working hypothesis. As successive instances are presented, the S gradually eliminates the irrelevant attributes. Another approach to discrimination learning may be referred to as the partist strategy. In …

The Relationship Between Self Concept And The Draw-A-Person Test, William Maurice Schaefer

Masters Theses

This study sought to expand a study by Kamano (1960) to a normal population. In that work, Kamano used the D.A.P. in conjunction with the Semantic Differential. He concluded that the Ss (schizophrenics) analyzed their drawings consistent with their own self concepts. In the present study the relation between Ss ratings of the D.A.P., their self concept, and judges ratings of the drawings were sought. It was predicted that the Ss would rate themselves and the Drawings similarly. This prediction was upheld for the Potency factor. There was interjudge reliability for this factor, but the prediction that there would be …

Attitudes Toward The War In Viet Nam: A Population Study, Ralph George O'Sullivan

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Experimenter Bias Effect At Varying Levels Of Motivation, Leslie Marie Slade Gray

All Master's Theses

This study examined the effects of experimenter motivation upon the experimenter bias effect on a person perception task. It was hypothesized that the experimenter bias effect would decrease as reward and threat of punishment increased.

Thirty-five experimenters were randomly assigned to five treatment groups including a control group, two reward groups, and two punishment conditions. Each experimenter administered the photo task to two subjects. The results failed to support the experimental hypotheses.

False Physiological Feedback And Acceptance Of A High Fear Message, Michael T. Gray

All Master's Theses

This paper presents an attempt to differentiate between the drive reduction and parallel response theories as explanations of results obtained in fear communication research.

Forty-eight subjects were divided into four equal groups and while listening to a high fear message, three groups received false GSR feedback. The fourth group (control) received no feedback. The results failed to differentiate between the two theoretical models and also failed to support findings of an earlier study which used similar feedback techniques.

It was concluded that further research using false feedback techniques needs to be done.

A Comparison Of Verbal And Geometric Stimuli In Concept Learning, Robert William Greenway

All Master's Theses

Subjects classified stimulus patterns into positive or negative instances of the concept according to either an attribute identification (AI) problem or a rule learning (RL) problem. Four types of stimulus materials were used: verbal stimuli (V), geometric stimuli (G), or two combinations of these modes, verbal geometric (VG) or verbal colored (VC). The only main effects that were significant were the Type of rule and Type of problem. Some interactions were obtained between these factors and the stimulus mode employed.

Intradimensional Variability With Numbers And Alphabetical Letters In Conceptual Rules, Thomas Henry Clayton

All Master's Theses

Subjects were assigned to bidimensional rule problems that contained either 5, 10, or 15 levels of intradimensional variability. The stimuli consisted of numbers and alphabetical letters. There were no performance differences by either males or females when the number of levels within each rule was increased. There was a significant difference in performance among the three rules (disjunctive, conditional, and biconditional), however, the conditional was more difficult than the biconditional which is inconsistent with earlier research.

The Effects Of Truth Table Pretraining And Intradimensional Variability On Rule Learning And Attribute Identification Tasks, Eric S. Gebelein

All Master's Theses

Ss were required to sort geometrical patterns into positive or negative instances. According to (a) an attribute identification problem (wherein one of three conceptual rules was given: Disjunctive, Conditional, or Biconditional) or (b) Rule learning problem (wherein the two relevant attributes were given: either yellow, triangle or blue, circle). Intradimensional variability for each condition was either five, seven, or nine levels. The Rule effect was the only significant source of variance even though performance did worsen as intradimensional variability was increased.

Ames Trapezoid Illusion: A New Model, Daniel Robert Kelly

Dissertations and Theses

Current explanations for the Ames Trapezoid Illusion are based upon the the absence of cues: the illusion is said to occur at chance. A review of recent literature showed that: (a) the illusion varies in frequency as a function of target shape (b) that the dominant cue to reduce the frequency of the illusion is the variant in retinal height. Based upon the dominance of this cue a new model was presented. Following this model it was hypothesized that observers viewing partial rotation when the target produces the greatest difference in the retinal height of the ends would determine the …

A Comparison Of The Perceptual And Motor Abilities Of Learning Disabled And Normal Students At Ages Eleven And Twelve, Rachel Adams Thompson

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Theses & Dissertations

No abstract.