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Full-Text Articles in Cognitive Psychology

How Specific Is Domain-Specific Slowing? Evidence For A General Form Of A Domain-Specific Mechanism, Cynthia C. Flores Aug 2019

How Specific Is Domain-Specific Slowing? Evidence For A General Form Of A Domain-Specific Mechanism, Cynthia C. Flores

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Faces are special not just because our ability to quickly and accurately process faces is integral for social functioning throughout our lives, but also because faces are considered a unique class of visual stimuli (i.e., faces rely more on holistic processing than objects and there exist specialized, face-specific regions in the brain). Behavioral and neuropsychological research point to face processing as dissociable from other kinds of visuospatial processing. Although there is evidence that neural specificity for faces is retained in older adults, there is also evidence that age-related impairments are greater in face processing, relative to object processing. Using a …


Dissociable Effects Of Monetary, Liquid, And Social Incentives On Motivation Across The Adult Life Span, Jennifer Crawford Aug 2019

Dissociable Effects Of Monetary, Liquid, And Social Incentives On Motivation Across The Adult Life Span, Jennifer Crawford

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Humans are social creatures and, as such, can be motivated by aspects of social life, like approval from others, to guide decision-making in everyday life. Indeed, a common view in the aging literature is that older adults have a stronger orientation towards socioemotional goals or incentives, relative to other incentive modalities, like money, because of changing motivational priorities in older adulthood. In prior work, however, we found that older adults actually showed greater effects of monetary relative to primary (liquid) incentives, suggesting alternative interpretations of impaired motivational integration and/or slower adaptation to incentive conditions. The current study tested these alternatives, …


Home-Based Cognitive Monitoring: The Role Of Personality And Predictors Of Adherence And Satisfaction, Nasreen A. Sadeq Jul 2019

Home-Based Cognitive Monitoring: The Role Of Personality And Predictors Of Adherence And Satisfaction, Nasreen A. Sadeq

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the last several decades, a growing awareness of the benefits of regular screening for common health conditions, such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases, has paved the way for preventative screenings to become routine in medical settings. Given that cognitive impairment is frequently reported as the number one worry of older adults, home-based cognitive monitoring may be an innovative solution that allows middle aged and older adults to take an active role in monitoring an important aspect of their health. Although several home-based cognitive monitoring programs have been validated for use in clinical and home-based settings, the Cogstate Brief Battery …


The Revelation Effect In Autobiographical Memory, Vincent A. Medina May 2019

The Revelation Effect In Autobiographical Memory, Vincent A. Medina

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The revelation effect is a memory illusion in recognition memory where items are more likely to be considered old if they are immediately preceded by a cognitive task (for a review, see Abfalg, Bernstein, & Hockley, 2017). Recent research has shown that the revelation effect appears in past and future episodic judgments so long as the tasks are autobiographical in nature (Westerman, Miller, & Lloyd, 2017). Aging is a factor that has not yet been studied in the revelation effect literature in terms of autobiographical memory. It has implications because of aging’s significant impact on mental time travel. During this …


Exploring Age-Related Metamemory Differences Using Modified Brier Scores And Hierarchical Clustering, Chelsea Parlett May 2019

Exploring Age-Related Metamemory Differences Using Modified Brier Scores And Hierarchical Clustering, Chelsea Parlett

Computational and Data Sciences (MS) Theses

Older adults (OAs) typically experience memory failures as they age. However, with some exceptions, studies of OAs’ ability to assess their own memory functions– Metamemory (MM)– find little evidence that this function is susceptible to age-related decline. Our study examines OAs’ and young adults’ (YAs) MM performance and strategy use. Groups of YAs (N = 138) and OAs (N = 79) performed a MM task that required participants to place bets on how likely they were to remember words in a list. Our analytical approach includes hierarchical clustering, and we introduce a new measure of MM—the modified Brier—in order to …


Manipulating Belief Bias Across The Lifespan, William D. Carney Jan 2019

Manipulating Belief Bias Across The Lifespan, William D. Carney

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

In today’s political climate, when basic facts and reasoning are seemingly up for debate, it is increasingly important to be able to identify well-reasoned arguments, regardless of one’s political leanings, and to retain this skill throughout the lifespan. Research has shown, however, a persistent belief bias—a tendency to judge an argument’s validity based on its conclusion’s agreement with one’s beliefs, rather than its logical quality. Other findings suggest that belief bias can be reduced by instruction to avoid belief bias. The current project seeks to explore whether older adults, believed to be more prone to biased reasoning, respond differently to …