Cognition and Perception Commons^™

From We To Me: Moving Towards An Examination Of Self Identity In An Online, Global, Collaborative, Learning Environment, Danielle P. Espino, Eric Hamilton, Kristina Lux, Seung B. Lee

Education Division Scholarship

This paper reflects on previous work using QE to examine patterns of discourse of adolescent learners in a virtual, global, collaborative informal learning setting. The collective impact of involvement in the project on participants’ experiences was observed in various reflective interviews over the last five years. The deep reflection of this work resulted in a research shift from the general impact on the participants to a shift towards examining how such experiences shape self-identity, such as recognizing identity congruence, relational self, and overcoming negative identity fostered by master narrative frameworks. An initial examination of pre-assessment interviews indicates that younger students …

What You See Is Not What You Know: Studying Deception In Deepfake Video Manipulation, Cathryn Allen, Bryson R. Payne, Tamirat Abegaz, Chuck Robertson

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

Research indicates that deceitful videos tend to spread rapidly online and influence people’s opinions and ideas. Because of this, video misinformation via deepfake video manipulation poses a significant online threat. This study aims to discover what factors can influence viewers’ capability to distinguish deepfake videos from genuine video footage. This work focuses on exploring deepfake videos’ potential use for deception and misinformation by exploring people’s ability to determine whether videos are deepfakes in a survey consisting of deepfake videos and original unedited videos. The participants viewed a set of four videos and were asked to judge whether the videos shown …

Mind, Body And Race: A Look Into How Implicit Biases Influence The Perception Of Emotion, Faiza Ahmad, Adam Anderson, James Dalton Rounds, Christina Chick, Alize Hill

Research Symposium

Background: Most research examining the effects of implicit race-based biases in emotion perception has focused on the perception of Black faces as being angry. Limited work has been done examining the perception of “approach” emotions such as fear. Furthermore, most studies have predominantly used White subjects. Our study examined the role of implicit racial biases in shaping the perception of both anger and fear in White, Black and Asian participants.

Methods: 78 participants completed a Go/NoGo task in which they were asked to categorize different race faces as portraying either anger or fear. Participants would be asked to press the …

Exploring Students’ Epistemological Understanding Of Atomic Structure Models, Claire V. Ward, Morgan Balabanoff

The Cardinal Edge

Developing a robust understanding of atomic structure and the nature of matter is foundational across chemistry and STEM courses. The development of this concept is challenging because it relies on models to illustrate something not directly observable. Scientific models are important tools used to explain phenomena, particularly phenomena that are not directly observable. In general chemistry, students are typically asked to consider four different models: (1) the particle model, (2) the nuclear model, (3) the Bohr model, and (4) the Quantum model. Each depiction has its own advantages and limitations, where instructors introduce each model to explain specific parts of …

White Men In White Coats: Children’S Attributions Of Scientific Knowledge Based On Race And Gender, Lillian C. Holm, Mariel R. Cox, Khushboo S. Patel, Judith H. Danovitch

The Cardinal Edge

Children use others’ characteristics (e.g., intelligence and niceness) to evaluate how much a person knows (Landrum et al., 2016). However, little is known about how gender and race influence children's perception of adults' scientific knowledge. The current study examined how children ages 5-8 (N = 25; 11 girls, 14 boys) perceive adults’ scientific knowledge. In the first task, children saw 8 different adults of varying race and gender (White man, White woman, Black man, Black woman) and rated their knowledge using a five-point scale. Children then chose one person out of two adults who they thought knew more about a …

The Science Of Learning: Understanding The Learning Process And Its Implementation Into The Classroom, Robert Hawkins

The Cardinal Edge

College and higher education is often seen as the next step for many students pursuing a particular career or field. These institutions strive to facilitate learning and maintain a rewarding academic environment. However, students often face various challenges when first attending college which is reflected by high levels of dropout and withdrawal from general education courses, especially for first-time students. In fact, according to the education data initiation, “at 4-year institutions, 18.4% of first-time, full-time college freshmen dropped out between 2019 and 2020” (Hansen & Checked, 2022). One of these challenges is understanding the process of learning on a fundamental …

Theories Of Consciousness And A Life Worth Living, Liad Mudrik, Myrto Mylopoulos, Niccolo Negro, Aaron Schurger

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

What is it that makes a life valuable? A popular view is that life’s moral worth depends in some way on its relationship to consciousness or subjective experience. But a practical application of this view requires the ability to test for consciousness, which is currently lacking. Here, we examine how theories of consciousness (ToCs) can help do so, focusing especially on difficult cases where the answer is not clear (e.g. fetuses, nonhuman animals, unresponsive brain-injured patients, and advanced artificial systems). We consider five major ToCs and what predictions they offer: Integrated information theory, Higher-Order Thought Theory, Recurrent Processing Theory, Global …

The Joy Of Watching The Film Arrival With Whitehead And O’Donohue, Tricia Mayer

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper offers a discussion of the film Arrival that is situated in the perspective of philosophers Alfred North Whitehead and John O’Donohue. The themes discussed include language, communication, context, time, and reality and includes a speculative perspective that the philosophers may have contributed to interpretation of the film’s meaning. It concludes with a view of the relevance of the film in light of current technology advances in artificial intelligence and with the authors own reflection on how this film is relevant to her current research inquiry on the topic of joy

The Neural Correlates Of Bodily Self-Consciousness In Virtual Worlds, Evan A. Owens

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bodily Self-Consciousness (BSC) is the cumulative integration of multiple sensory modalities that contribute to our sense of self. Sensory modalities, which include proprioception, vestibulation, vision, and touch are updated dynamically to map the specific, local representation of ourselves in space. BSC is closely associated with bottom-up and top-down aspects of consciousness. Recently, virtual- and augmented-reality technology have been used to explore perceptions of BSC. These recent achievements are partly attributed to advances in modern technology, and partly due to the rise of virtual and augmented reality markets. Virtual reality head-mounted displays can alter aspects of perception and consciousness unlike ever …

A Polygenic Risk Score For Alzheimer’S Disease Constructed Using Apoe-Region Variants Has Stronger Association Than Apoe Alleles With Mild Cognitive Impairment In Hispanic/Latino Adults In The Us, Wassim Tarraf, Martha Daviglus, Melissa Lamar, Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, Jianwen Cai, Charles S Decarli, Hector M Gonzalez, Myriam Fornage

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

INTRODUCTION: Polygenic Risk Scores (PRSs) are summaries of genetic risk alleles for an outcome.

METHODS: We used summary statistics from five GWASs of AD to construct PRSs in 4,189 diverse Hispanics/Latinos (mean age 63 years) from the Study of Latinos-Investigation of Neurocognitive Aging (SOL-INCA). We assessed the PRS associations with MCI in the combined set of people and in diverse subgroups, and when including and excluding the APOE gene region. We also assessed PRS associations with MCI in an independent dataset from the Mass General Brigham Biobank.

RESULTS: A simple sum of 5 PRSs ("PRSsum"), each constructed based on a …

New Perspectives: How A Dancefloor Of Paradigms Can Save The World, Gill R. Hall

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This paper explores how the consciousness of Indigenous peoples can facilitate the development of new paradigms to address global issues like climate change and adaptation to global warming. It explores how Indigenous and Western notions of consciousness differ and cannot be reconciled in contemporary models of consciousness without colonising Indigenous ways of knowing. It differentiates maternal and patriarchal consciousnesses and contrasts the body/heart pathway found in many Indigenous cultures with the mental field activity of the Western psyche. Using the concept of a multi-paradigmatic dancefloor, I propose a new model for developing global thinking on complex problems, inviting academics and …

Measurement Invariance And The Influence Of Psychosocial Factors In Reporting Subjective Cognition Across Race/Ethnicity, Erika A. Pugh

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The detection of cognitive decline is crucial for early intervention and management. However, there is a lack of research on detecting early cognitive decline and measuring bias in instruments among African Americans (AAs), who are at a heightened risk for dementia development. Additionally, the impact of psychosocial factors on perceived cognitive efficacy in this population is not well understood. Therefore, this study aimed to assess measurement bias in a measure of subjective memory concerns (SMC) among older AA adults, examine ethnoracial differences in the relationship between mood-related factors and SMC, and explore the impact of psychosocial variables on the report …

Mediumship And Mental Health: Investigating Spirit Communication And The Importance Of Integration, Daniel A. Seda Ph.D.

Journal of Conscious Evolution

Sensitivity to paranormal phenomena can be a source of emotional, mental and psychospiritual stress for individuals demonstrating verified mediumistic abilities, yet integrating these anomalous experiences in a healthy, affirming manner can reduce distress and potentially deflect egodystonic diagnoses of pathology. Because mediums can relay information which appear to be otherworldly from meditation, during trance, or by automatic writing and painting, health professionals have diagnosed mediums with mental disorders such as dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia. This overreliance on pathology to explain anomalous experiences is troublesome and can cause severe distress to individuals demonstrating extrasensory capabilities. This paper was written to …

Evolution Of Women’S Consciousness: Toward Integral Consciousness, Katherine T. Ziemke

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article presents research materials which demonstrate historical consciousness for women of ancient European descent, the cultural heritage of the author. Awareness is examined from various historical angles in a transdisciplinary approach to the work. I explore the possibility that women’s historical and continued oppression may be a sign of the disintegration of the mental and a re-emergence of the integral structure of consciousness. A broad examination of women’s historical roles and corresponding thought shows how ancient consciousness may be used to accelerate a path toward integral consciousness today. Finally, this essay proposes that women’s historical consciousness and primordial memories …

All Hands On Deck: Choosing Virtual End Effector Representations To Improve Near Field Object Manipulation Interactions In Extended Reality, Roshan Venkatakrishnan

All Dissertations

Extended reality, or "XR", is the adopted umbrella term that is heavily gaining traction to collectively describe Virtual reality (VR), Augmented reality (AR), and Mixed reality (MR) technologies. Together, these technologies extend the reality that we experience either by creating a fully immersive experience like in VR or by blending in the virtual and "real" worlds like in AR and MR.

The sustained success of XR in the workplace largely hinges on its ability to facilitate efficient user interactions. Similar to interacting with objects in the real world, users in XR typically interact with virtual integrants like objects, menus, windows, …

The Influence Of Premium Finished Paper Packaging On Consumer Behavior, Sahil Bhayani

All Theses

Companies face the challenge of determining the return on investment of premium paper packaging features, such as substrate thickness and finishing options. If companies can better understand how consumers perceive “premium,” they could channel their focus on specific design elements and maximize their returns (Dwivedi & Nayeem, 2018). Touch is a critical factor in driving consumer behavior and purchase decisions and influencing trust between brands and consumers (Krishna et al. 2017). While previous studies have explored the impact of design elements like size, shape, color, and font on consumer behavior, this research investigates the influence of touch, substrate, print finishes …

The Effects Of Primary And Secondary Task Workloads On Cybersickness In Immersive Virtual Active Exploration Experiences, Rohith Venkatakrishnan

All Dissertations

Virtual reality (VR) technology promises to transform humanity. The technology enables users to explore and interact with computer-generated environments that can be simulated to approximate or deviate from reality. This creates an endless number of ways to propitiously apply the technology in our lives. It follows that large technological conglomerates are pushing for the widespread adoption of VR, financing the creation of the Metaverse - a hypothetical representation of the next iteration of the internet.

Even with VR technology's continuous growth, its widespread adoption remains long overdue. This can largely be attributed to an affliction called cybersickness, an analog to …

Reflections On Panpsychism, Pantheism, Panentheism And The Hard Problem Of Consciousness, Barbara Engelhardt

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article discusses the concepts of panpsychism, pantheism, and panentheism with the intention of formulating a theory and response to what is referred to as the Hard Problem of Consciousness, the question put forth in the latter 20th century by the philosopher David Chalmers (and by many others historically) concerning why and how we have phenomenal experiences. Panpsychism is the view that the ubiquitous presence of consciousness is an elemental principium of the natural world. Pantheism is defined as a philosophy which equates divinity with all reality. Panentheism asserts that God is intrinsic in all things in the known universe, …

(A Lack Of) Effects Of Acute Social Stress On Attentional Bias To Threat, Colton L. Hunter, Grant Shields

Psychological Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Attentional biases toward or away from emotionally evocative stimuli have been well documented and are known to be clinically relevant, making it important to understand how various factors contribute to them. Some work has suggested that acute stress modulates attentional biases, but this work has produced inconsistent results. For example, many studies have found that stress enhances attentional bias, others that stress decreases attentional bias, and others still that there is no effect of stress at all. Methodological differences may explain these inconsistencies. For example, discrepancies exist between studies in participant sex (e.g., mixed sample vs. all men) and in …

On The Topology Of The Noosphere, Julie A. Yusupova

Journal of Conscious Evolution

As a young child I had a certain set of dreams, the enigma of which remained mysteriously hovering in my memories to this day. In one of these earliest dreams of my life, I am playing hide-and-seek with my friends, but am observing myself from an external third-person perspective, just as all my dreams had regularly been until then. I remember that the next morning, my waking conscious mind had noticed this split between self and observer and judged it unusual, and so in the following night’s dream, I somehow willed my observer self to merge into the body of …

Avoiding Anthropomoralism, Julian Friedland

Between the Species

The Montreal Declaration on Animal Exploitation, which has been endorsed by hundreds of influential academic ethicists, calls for establishing a vegan economy by banning what it refers to as all unnecessary animal suffering, including fishing. It does so by appeal to the moral principle of equal consideration of comparable interests. I argue that this principle is misapplied by discounting morally relevant cognitive capacities of self-conscious and volitional personhood as distinguished from merely sentient non-personhood. I describe it as a kind of anthropomorphizing moralism which I call anthropomoralism, defined as the tendency to project morally relevant characteristics of personhood onto merely …

The Processing Of Task-Relevant And Task-Irrelevant Information In Working Memory, Stephanie M. Saltzmann

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Researchers have aimed to better understand the capacity limits and boundaries of working memory (WM) for decades. With a growing body of literature, researchers have started to direct their focus to identifying and understanding specific processes of WM. Information enters WM and is processed differently based on bottom-up (i.e., feature-driven) and top-down (i.e., task-driven) processes. Specifically, the current dissertation aimed to better understand how task-relevant and irrelevant information is maintained, selection, and prioritized in WM. In Chapter 1, we explored how the maintenance of task-relevant information in WM impacts the maintenance of task-irrelevant information. During a hybrid search task, participants …

Incorporating Poi As A Therapeutic Modality For Preschool Aged Children In The Care Clinic, Danielle Zirkle

Department of Occupational Therapy Entry-Level Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

Women's Interracial Friendships: Cultivating Coalitional Possibilities Across Difference Through Dialogue, Akie Fukushige Wenk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, I thread through the macro-structure as well as micro-operations of hegemonic ideologies, namely white-supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy (hooks, 1995, Valdes, 1996), that has historically plagued the United States, eventually gaining a global reach over time. I center interracial friendship between Black and White cis-women, where I locate coalitional possibilities that begin at the grassroots level. I situate this interracial relationship within the socio-ecological system where the personal meets the social (including racialized backgrounds). I use a series of analogies to equate these ideologies as toxins in the air, water, and soil. Soil is where we can work …

Comparison Between The Effects Of Acute Physical And Psychosocial Stress On Feedback-Based Learning, Xiao Yang, Brittany Nackley, Bruce H. Friedman

Psychology Faculty Publications

Stress modulates feedback-based learning, a process that has been implicated in declining mental function in aging and mental disorders. While acute physical and psychosocial stressors have been used interchangeably in studies on feedback-based learning, the two types of stressors involve distinct physiological and psychological processes. Whether the two types of stressors differentially influence feedback processing remains unclear. The present study compared the effects of physical and psychosocial stressors on feedback-based learning. Ninety-six subjects (Mage = 19.11 years; 50 female) completed either a cold pressor task (CPT) or mental arithmetic task (MAT), as the physical or psychosocial stressor, while electrocardiography and …

Rethinking Attention Control: An Individual Differences Approach, Vincent A. Medina

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

While there is extensive literature on visual spatial attention, less is known about auditory spatial attention, especially in terms of attention control. There is also a growing literature highlighting the importance of considering individual differences in attention control ability. Given these points, the purpose of this study was twofold. The first was to understand how auditory attention control is influenced by spatial location as well as vision. The second was to examine whether individual differences in attention control ability can predict task performance in that context. We utilized two tasks for these purposes. Experiment 1a consisted of a cross-modal Stroop …

Animal Communication And Sentience, Catia Correia-Caeiro, Katja Liebal

Animal Sentience

Segundo-Ortin & Calvo (S&C) argue for sentience in plants on the basis of several studies of what they describe as "cognitive abilities" in plants. As other commentaries (e.g., Brooks Pribac, 2023; Damasio & Damasio, 2023; ten Cate, 2023) have pointed out, however, there is some misuse of several concepts, and a lack of evidence for sentience. We try to clarify three questions in S&C’s discussion: (1) How is communication defined and conceptualised in animal research? (2) Is plant communication comparable to animal communication? (3) Is communication (or the process we see in plants) a good basis for inferring sentience in …

Using An Approach-Avoidance Framework To Understand The Relationship Between Non-Lethal Weapons And Performance, Andrew J. Mojica, Christopher P. Bartak, Joseph N. Mitchell, Alan Ashworth

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

It is proposed that performance degradation from exposure to non-lethal technology is mediated by impulsive and reflective approachavoidance motivation. An approach-avoidance motivational framework was used to specify a four-stage information processing model that predicts performance degradation. The first stage is Evaluation: it processes physiological, sensory, perceptual, and cognitive information. The second stage is Comparison: it processes the content of the Evaluation into avoidance and approach motivational indices. The third stage is Probability: it processes information from previous stages into a probability of choosing to continue or abandon goal-directed behavior. Finally, the fourth stage is Performance: it processes performance accuracy on …

An Erp Measure Of Non-Conscious Memory Reveals Dissociable Implicit Processes In Human Recognition Using An Open-Source Automated Analytic Pipeline, Richard J. Addante, Javier Lopez-Calderon, Nathan Allen, Carter Luck, Alana Muller, Lindsey Sirianni, Cory S. Inman, Daniel L. Drake

Psychology Student Publications

Non-conscious processing of human memory has traditionally been difficult to objectively measure and thus understand. A prior study on a group of hippocampal amnesia (N = 3) patients and healthy controls (N = 6) used a novel procedure for capturing neural correlates of implicit memory using event-related potentials (ERPs): old and new items were equated for varying levels of memory awareness, with ERP differences observed from 400 to 800 ms in bilateral parietal regions that were hippocampal-dependent. The current investigation sought to address the limitations of that study by increasing the sample of healthy subjects (N = …

Destined Failure, Chengjun Pan

Masters Theses

I attempt to examine the complex structure of human communication, explaining why it is bound to fail. By reproducing experienceable phenomena, I demonstrate how they can expose communication structure and reveal the limitations of our perception and symbolization.I divide the process of communication into six stages: input, detection, symbolization, dictionary, interpretation, and output. In this thesis, I examine the flaws and challenges that arise in the first five stages. I argue that reception acts as a filter and that understanding relies on a symbolic system that is full of redundancies. Therefore, every interpretation is destined to be a deviation.