Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

A Derivation Of The Tonal Hierarchy From Basic Perceptual Processes, David Smey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades music psychologists have explained the functioning of tonal music in terms of the tonal hierarchy, a stable schema of relative structural importance that helps us interpret the events in a passage of tonal music. This idea has been most influentially disseminated by Carol Krumhansl in her 1990 monograph Cognitive Foundations of Musical Pitch. Krumhansl hypothesized that this sense of the importance or centrality of certain tones of a key is learned through exposure to tonal music, in particular by learning the relative frequency of appearance of the various pitch classes in tonal passages. The correlation of pitch-class …

Factlessness & Faultlessness: Individual Differences & Dimensions Of Philosophical Dispute, Geoffrey Scott Holtzman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project addresses the question of why philosophical disputes persist, and tackles the problem of how we might better approach them. I demonstrate empirically several ways in which personality, gender, and other factors are associated with specific philosophical beliefs. Typically, one might assume that these individual difference factors are irrelevant to philosophy, and can only serve to bias philosophical disputants. Against this view, I present four case studies, which collectively highlight the different ways in which individual differences in lived experience may be inseparable from philosophical concepts themselves.

Effects Of Popular Music On Memorization Tasks, Kristin Sandberg, Sarah Harmon

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This study investigated the effects that popular music has on memory performance. It was proposed that popular music would adversely affect both studying and memory recall. Forty introductory psychology students participated in the study. Subjects were given a list of fifty words to study in 6 ½ minutes, with music either being present or absent. This was termed the learning stage. In this study, four conditions were tested. In all 4 conditions, subjects were assigned to either a “music” pre-period or a “non-music” pre-period and a “music” post-period or a “non-music” post-period. After they had studied the words, subjects were …

The Adversity Pop Culture Has Posed, Darel Joseph

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I am a collage artist working with multiple mediums such as paint, photography, video, audio, and performance. As a New Orleans’ native, I have a unique history that is unflattering, for my history echoes that of America’s historical misdeeds. I make sociopolitical art because I am of a historically oppressed people. I make art that celebrates my diverse culture that is a collage of Native American, African, and New Orleans’ French Creole.

Looking At The Multiple Meanings Of Numeracy, Quantitative Literacy, And Quantitative Reasoning, H. L. Vacher

Numeracy

The subject of this journal goes by a variety of names: numeracy, quantitative literacy, and quantitative reasoning. Some authors use the terms interchangeably. Others see distinctions between them. Study of psycholinguistic and ontological concepts laid out in the literature of WordNet and familiarity with the papers in this journal suggests a vocabulary matrix consisting of four rows (word senses) and three columns (word forms, namely numeracy, QL, and QR). The four word senses correspond to four sets of synonyms: {numeracy}, {numeracy, QL}, {QL, QR}, and {numeracy, QL, QR}. Each of the word forms is polysemous: “numeracy” points to the first, …

Effects Of Phonological Neighborhood Density On Lexical Access In Adults And Children With And Without Specific Language Impairment, Diana Almodovar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The present study was designed to examine how adults, children with typical language development (TLD), and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) process words from sparse and dense phonological neighborhoods, using the Cross Modal Picture-Word Interference Paradigm. The participants were asked to label a picture presented on a computer screen, while ignoring auditory distractors (interfering words or IWs) presented over headphones. The target items were manipulated according to neighborhood density (high and low density words), and the auditory distractors were either identical to the target, a neutral distractor (good), phonologically related (by rhyme), or unrelated to the target item. The …

A Girl Power Study: Looking And Listening To The Role Of Emotions And Relationality In Developing Critical Consciousness, Jennifer Wallin-Ruschman

Dissertations and Theses

The concept of critical consciousness centers on the capacity for involvement in social change efforts. Its development has been the aim of many recent social movements (e.g., the consciousness raising groups of the women's movement). In this work, critical consciousness is defined as the highest level of socio-political-cultural (SPC) consciousness development. SPC consciousness is characterized by the linking of the personal and the political so that structures and discourses of oppression are not only understood but also lead to critical action and transforming relations of domination. Additionally, critical consciousness includes the ability to tolerate ambivalence and conflict as well as …

Implicit Prejudice And Its Implications For How Communities Should Respond To Racial Injustices, Harry Kainen

Undergraduate Theses—Unrestricted

In the spring of 2013, a racially controversial incident occurred on the Washington University Campus. The incident raised questions about the racial tolerance of the university community as well as exactly who should be held responsible for the injustice. Most importantly, the community’s response to the incident exemplified how a community with the potential for substantial collective action can fail to mobilize and improve when they are called upon to do so. This paper examines recent psychological research that studies the existence of subconscious racial prejudices in order to examine its implications in community responses to racial injustices. Results show …

Recording The Learning Curve During The Mastery Of Glassblowing, Katie L. Corticelli

Senior Honors Projects

Fire and inspiration melted glass art’s enchanting ways into the center of my passions. Lampworking is a small-scale method of glass blowing, which is the term to refer to an art form where one shapes molten glass into a variety of items. To create glass art, propane and oxygen supply a flame torch which melts the glass. Gravity and rhythmic hands work symbiotically to shape glass rods and tubes. The result is unique three-dimensional visual art.

After years of aspiring to work with borosilicate glass, the opportunity to incorporate the endeavor with academia presented itself. Through months of time and …

Course Syllabus (Sp14) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "The Sublime, The Uncanny, And The Imagination", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty and Student Scholarship

Course Description:

In a world in which what counts as knowledge is predominantly restricted to the measurable and the calculable, those elements of human experience which elude and exceed these parameters are often ignored and discounted. In this course, we will examine questions of the sublime, the uncanny, and the speculative as treated in literature, psychoanalysis, and philosophy in order to think and write critically about them. Here, we will consider the possible extent to which an openness to such experiences can enrich our lives.

The Student Augustinian Values Institute: Assessing Its Impact Of Enhancing The Understanding And Experience Of The Augustinian Core Values Of Veritas, Unitas, And Caritas Upon Students In Augustinian Secondary Schools, Stephen M. Curry

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Educational leadership understands the importance of teaching values in its schools and incorporates this philosophy into the school’s symbolic and structural systems. Roman Catholic Church leaders have always endorsed the teaching of values in its schools and this position was sanctioned at its Second Vatican Council (Vatican Council II, 1962-65). One aspect of the Council emphasized the importance of Catholic education as an essential vehicle for proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ. Catholic schools founded and sponsored by religious communities were challenged to reappropriate their founders’ charisms in their educational ministries. The Order of St. Augustine is an example …

Recovered Memories And Accusations Of Sexual Abuse: A Review Of Scientific Research Relevant To Missionary Contexts, David R. Dunaetz

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Childhood sexual abuse of missionary children is a tragedy that mission organizations are seeking to prevent. A second tragedy concerns missionaries falsely accused of sexual abuse. Psychotherapy that generated false memories of sexual abuse was common in the 1980s and 1990s and still continues to some degree today in Christian circles. This chapter reviews scientific evidence that such false memories exist and provides guidelines that Christian organizations may use to help sort true memories of childhood sexual abuse from false memories of childhood sexual abuse.

A Heart-Based Sufi Mindfulness Spiritual Practice Employing Self-Journeying, Faruk Arslan

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Spiritual Psychology is the study and practice of the art and science of the human evolution of consciousness. The heart occupies an important place in Sufism and is considered to contain the divine spark that leads to spiritual realization. Fethullah Gülen’s action-oriented Sufi methods described in his book series “The Emerald Hills of the Heart” provides the basis for a heart-based therapeutic intervention through self-journeying, which is the objective of this thesis. These self-purification and mindfulness-related transpersonal methods generate a form of treatment that is culturally sensitive. Through my reflections in this research, I transformed my personal experiences into …

The Empathetic Human: The Story Of How Story Increases Cognitive And Social Ability, Olivia C. Flores 14

Honor Scholar Theses

This thesis all started from my reflections on being an English Literature major. I mention this not because it is rare or unique, but rather because realizing my interest in literature and considering the cognitive effect it has on humans initiated my current academic endeavor: writing a very, very long paper. Even though the skills English majors exercise seem like the mundane activities of introverted bookworms, these experiences with language are spectacular phenomenons that prove to be, in fact, universal. Many argue that literature has an adaptive function that not only demonstrates why we gravitate toward story and how we …

Testing A Structural Equation Model Of Language-Based Cognitive Fitness, Elizabeth Ann Moxley-Paquette

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The normative development of language is often taken for granted, yet problems with language development can result in stress for the individual and family. A challenge with these language development problems lies within the contemporary education system, which assumes that children have appropriate skills when they begin school. The purpose of the study was to test a theoretical model of language readiness known as language-based cognitive fitness, which includes measures associated with structural concepts of language involving receptive language, expressive language, spontaneous narrative speech, and writing fluency. The sample included children from a private school who received an extensive battery …

The Effects Of Alternate-Line Shading On Visual Search In Grid-Based Graphic Designs, Michael P. Lee

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Objective: The goal of this research was to determine whether alternate-line shading (zebra-striping) of grid-based displays affects the strategy (i.e., “visual flow”) and efficiency of serial search. Background: Grids, matrices, and tables are commonly used to organize information. A number of design techniques and psychological principles are relevant to how viewers’ eyes can be guided through such visual works. One common technique for grids, “zebra-striping,” is intended to guide eyes through the design, or “create visual flow” by alternating shaded and unshaded rows or columns. Method: 13 participants completed a visual serial search task. The target was embedded in a …

The Functions Of Literature And The Evolution Of Extended Mind, Nancy Easterlin

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Music And Movement Share A Dynamic Structure That Supports Universal Expressions Of Emotion, Beau Sievers, Larry Polansky, Michael Casey, Thalia Wheatley

Dartmouth Scholarship

Music moves us. Its kinetic power is the foundation of human behaviors as diverse as dance, romance, lullabies, and the military march. Despite its significance, the music-movement relationship is poorly understood. We present an empirical method for testing whether music and movement share a common structure that affords equivalent and universal emotional expressions. Our method uses a computer program that can generate matching examples of music and movement from a single set of features: rate, jitter (regularity of rate), direction, step size, and dissonance/visual spikiness. We applied our method in two experiments, one in the United States and another in …

Metaphor And Analogy: The Sun And Moon Of Legal Persuasion, Linda L. Berger

Scholarly Works

Drawing on recent studies of social cognition, decision making, and analogical processing, this article recommends that lawyers turn to novel characterizations and metaphors to solve a particular kind of persuasion problem that is created by the way judges and juries think and decide. According to social cognition researchers, we perceive and interpret new information by following a process of schematic cognition, analogizing the new data we encounter to the knowledge structures embedded in our memories. Decision-making researchers differentiate between intuitive and reflective processes (System 1 and System 2), and they agree that in System 1 decision making, only the most …

Embodying Social Practice: Dynamically Co-Constituting Social Agency, Brian W. Dunst

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Theories of cognition and theories of social practices and institutions have often each separately acknowledged the relevance of the other; but seldom have there been consistent and sustained attempts to synthesize these two areas within one explanatory framework. This is precisely what my dissertation aims to remedy. I propose that certain recent developments and themes in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, when understood in the right way, can explain the emergence and dynamics of social practices and institutions. Likewise, the view I construct explains how social practices and institutions shape the character of cognition of their constituent agents. Moreover, …

Essays On Mental Accounting And Consumers' Decision Making, Ali Besharat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is structured in the form of two empirical essays, each investigating one type of irrational decision caused by mental accounting. The first essay, titled "Managing the Cost of Multiple Debt Accounts: A Behavioral Perspective", explores why many people pay off credit cards' with the lowest rate first when rationally speaking they should repay the debt with the highest rate most quickly. This essay suggests that irrationality emerges when people seek to close `mental accounts' associated with their credit cards and reduce the total number of outstanding loans rather than decrease the amount of total debt among all credit …

Conversion Theory Through The Cognitive Science Of Religion Lense In A Christian-Muslim Context, Jennifer A. Garcia

Scripps Senior Theses

The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) in recent years is beginning to become more popular. This project evolves around the development of the field as well as critiques of the field. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of CSR, it lends an interesting way to understand religion as well as religious experiences. One of those religious experiences, conversion, is examined and explored through the use of conversion narratives from western women who were formally Christian but converted to Islam. Many themes arise out of this research that paves the way for trying to understand religious experiences. Overall, the project focuses on …

Designing An "Information-Experience" Using Creativity Science Theory And Tools, Stephanie Belhomme

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

An “information-experience” encapsulated by a technological/digital audio-visual tool presents data and potentially meaningful information to prompt actionable knowledge concerning: “unspoken creative process elements;” their profound impacts on both how well our “physiology of creativity” functions; but also on how well foundational creative thinking and behavioral prerequisites (energy, motivation, imagination, and ownership) are leveraged.

The product: 1) introduces the user to one component of the CPS (Creative Problem Solving) Facilitation Process - Exploring the Challenge; 2) features a content specific component which prompts exploration of the many correlations between societal, organizational / community, human physiological / behavioral data, and the direct …

Choice, Management, & Modification: Situational Context In Risky Choice, Nathaniel K. Decker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

We sought to examine the potential differences between different types of risky decisions. While some decisions are easily represented as choices between future alternatives, other decisions may be better represented as the management of a personally owned situation. Schneider (2003) created the risk management task, which manifested these situated improvement decisions, and identified a unique pattern of risk preferences when compared to the standard gambling paradigm. To determine what cognitive processes might be differentially activated for each type of decisions so as to yield these risk preference differences, we incrementally manipulated the gambling paradigm to parse potentially influential elements of …

Dynamic Aspects Of Musical Imagery, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

Auditory imagery can represent many aspects of music, such as the starting pitches of a tune or the instrument that typically plays it. In this paper, I concentrate on more dynamic, or time-sensitive aspects of musical imagery, as demonstrated in two recently published studies. The first was a behavioral study that examined the ability to make emotional judgments about both heard and imagined music in real time. The second was a neuroimaging study on the neural correlates of anticipating an upcoming tune, after hearing a cue tune. That study found activation of several sequence-learning brain areas, some of which varied …

Introduction To The Neurosciences And Music Iv: Learning And Memory, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

The conference entitled "The Neurosciences and Music-IV: Learning and Memory" was held at the University of Edinburgh from June 9-12, 2011, jointly hosted by the Mariani Foundation and the Institute for Music in Human and Social Development, and involving nearly 500 international delegates. Two opening workshops, three large and vibrant poster sessions, and nine invited symposia introduced a diverse range of recent research findings and discussed current research directions. Here, the proceedings are introduced by the workshop and symposia leaders on topics including working with children, rhythm perception, language processing, cultural learning, memory, musical imagery, neural plasticity, stroke rehabilitation, autism, …

Semantic Priming Of Familiar Songs, Sarah K. Johnson, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

We explored the functional organization of semantic memory for music by comparing priming across familiar songs both within modalities (Experiment 1, tune to tune; Experiment 3, category label to lyrics) and across modalities (Experiment 2, category label to tune; Experiment 4, tune to lyrics). Participants judged whether or not the target tune or lyrics were real (akin to lexical decision tasks). We found significant priming, analogous to linguistic associative-priming effects, in reaction times for related primes as compared to unrelated primes, but primarily for within-modality comparisons. Reaction times to tunes (e.g., "Silent Night") were faster following related tunes ("Deck the …

Social Cognition And The Allure Of The Second-Person Perspective: In Defense Of Empathy And Simulation, Karsten R. Stueber

Philosophy Department Faculty Scholarship

This essay serves as an evaluation of challenges to the orthodox way of conceiving "mindreading" abilities by defending a 2006 claim by the author that those abilities involve basic and reenactive empathy .

Introduction To Special Issue: Dementia And Music, Andrea R. Halpern, Isabelle Peretz, Lola L. Cuddy

Faculty Journal Articles

This special issue follows two previous special issues on music and neurological disorders (April 2008, Volume 23/Issue 4 and April 2010, Volume 25/Issue 4). Like its predecessors, the issue presents studies employing a patient-based approach to music perception, cognition, and emotion. Whereas the earlier issues dealt with acquired and congenital disorders and impairments, the present issue focuses on dementia, primarily on its most common form, Alzheimer's disease (AD).

Animal Cognition, The Importance Of Touch, And The Cit, Deirdre Yeater

Presidential Seminar on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition

A presentation of Professor Yeater's incorporation in her class PSCC103 of 5 in- class discussions comparing human and non-human species, particularly dolphins, with an emphasis on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and the importance of touch. PSCC-103, The Human Community: The Individual and Society, is a 3 credit course which engages students in a study of the relationship between psychology – the science of human behavior and mental processes, and the Catholic intellectual tradition – which is characterized by rigorous intellectual inquiry and an openness to scientific ideas. This course aims to help us understand ourselves as human persons, as well …