Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Medulla: A 2d Sidescrolling Platformer Game That Teaches Basic Brain Structure And Function, Joey R. Fanfarelli, Stephanie Vie

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article explores the design and instructional effectiveness of Medulla, an educational game meant to teach brain structure and function to undergraduate psychology students. Developed in the retro-style platformer genre, Medulla uses two-dimensional gameplay with pixel-based graphics to engage students in learning content related to the brain, information which is often pre-requisite to more rigorous psychological study. A pretest posttest design was used in an experiment assessing Medulla’s ability to teach psychology content. Results indicated content knowledge was significantly higher on the posttest than the pretest, with a large effect size. Medulla appears to be an effective learning tool. These …

How To Go Beyond The Body: An Introduction, Guy Dove

Faculty Scholarship

Embodied cognition represents one of most important theoretical developments in contemporary cognitive science. Many cognitive processes appear to be influenced by body morphology, emotions, and sensorimotor systems. This perspective is supported by an ever increasing collection of empirical studies that fall into two broad classes: one consisting of experiments that implicate action, emotion, and perception systems in seemingly abstract cognitive tasks and the other consisting of experiments that demonstrate the contribution of bodily interaction with the external environment to the performance of such tasks.

Now that embodied cognition is fairly well established, the time seems right for assessing its further …

Design, Programming, And User-Experience, Kaila G. Manca

Honors Scholar Theses

This thesis is a culmination of my individualized major in Human-Computer Interaction. As such, it showcases my knowledge of design, computer engineering, user-experience research, and puts into practice my background in psychology, com- munications, and neuroscience.

I provided full-service design and development for a web application to be used by the Digital Media and Design Department and their students.This process involved several iterations of user-experience research, testing, concepting, branding and strategy, ideation, and design. It lead to two products.

The first product is full-scale development and optimization of the web appli- cation.The web application adheres to best practices. It was …

Central Auditory Processing And The Link To Reading Ability In Adults, Lisa M. Brody

Honors Scholar Theses

What makes someone a good reader? What makes someone a poor reader? The root biological marker of reading ability has yet to be determined. Many scientists agree that phonological awareness, the understanding of speech sounds, and phonological decoding are key components of reading ability (Melby-Lervag, Lyster, & Hulme, 2012). In addition to this, new research suggests that the auditory system, specifically the timing of auditory processing in the brain, provides a crucial platform that supports the development of reading ability (Banai et al., 2009). This thesis provides empirical data to support the link between reading skill …

Research Brief: "Examining The Lived Experience And Factors Influencing Education Of Two Student Veterans Using Photovoice Methodology", Institute For Veterans And Military Families At Syracuse University

Institute for Veterans and Military Families

This brief is about how student veterans' military experiences impact their social and higher education experiences. In policy and practice, student veterans should seek help from faculty and staff, and universities should be available to address the needs of student veterans; the VA should increase its partnerships with universities to allow for additional access to resources for student veterans, and policymakers should support universities in creating student veteran centers. Suggestions for future research include expanding the size and diversity of the sample, reducing constraints on participants, and allowing for group-sharing experiences within the study.

The Ripple Effects Of Stranger Harassment On Objectification Of Self And Others, Meghan Davidson, Sarah Gervais, Lindsey W. Sherd

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Despite the frequency and negative consequences of stranger harassment, only a scant number of studies have explicitly examined stranger harassment and its consequences through the lens of objectification theory. The current study introduced and tested a mediation model in which women’s experiences of stranger harassment may lead to self-objectification, which in turn may lead to objectification of other people. To examine this model, undergraduate women (N = 501) completed measures of stranger harassment (including the verbal harassment and sexual pressure subscales of the Stranger Harassment Index), body surveillance, and objectification of other women and men. Consistent with hypotheses, significant positive …

Absolute Pitch In Naturalistic Singing: A Commentary On Olthof Et Al., Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

The parent article looks at pitch stability in an archive of folksongs recorded over several decades. Some evidence for pitch stability was found. Here, I consider some additional aspects of the archive that could be examined, offer some extensions to relevant laboratory studies, and consider some inherent strengths and limitations of the naturalistic, archival approach.

Music, Andrea R. Halpern, Robert J. Zatorre

Faculty Contributions to Books

Neuroimaging has contributed greatly to our understanding of the sensory, motor, and cognitive systems involved in musical processing. Cortical loops connecting auditory with parietal, premotor, and prefrontal cortices are important for encoding pitch and temporal relationships from which music is built and for generating musical expectancies. These circuits are also important for holding information in working memory and for interfacing perceptual and motor representations. Musical imagery recruits auditory areas together with frontal and supplementary motor regions. Musical emotion emerges from the interaction of these systems with the reward circuit. All of these systems are modifiable functionally and structurally following training.

Differences In Auditory Imagery Self-Report Predict Neural And Behavioral Outcomes, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

Mental imagery abilities vary among individuals, as shown both by objective measures and by self-report. Few imagery studies consider auditory imagery, however. The Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale is a short self-report measure encompassing both Vividness and Control subscales for musical, verbal, and environmental sounds. It has high internal reliability, no relation to social desirability, and only a modest relation to musical training. High scores on Vividness predict fewer source memory errors in distinguishing heard from imagined tunes on a recognition test, and better performance on pitch imitation tasks. Furthermore, higher scores are related to hemodynamic response and gray matter volume …