Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Examining Different Reasons Why People Accept Or Reject Scientific Claims, Emilio J. C. Lobato

Theses and Dissertations

The current project was designed to examine how cognitive style, cultural worldview, and conspiracy ideation correspond to various levels of agreement with scientific claims. Additionally, the kinds of justifications people provide for their position on scientific issues and the kinds of possible refutations of their scientific beliefs people are able to generate were qualitatively coded and analyzed. Participants were presented with a short survey asking about their level of agreement with scientific claims about biological evolution, anthropogenic climate change, pediatric vaccines, and genetically modified foods. Participants were asked two open-ended questions about each topic, one prompting participants to justify their …

Pathways Linking Clinician Demographics To Mental Health Diagnostic Accuracy: An International Perspective, Julia Brechbiel

Theses and Dissertations

Significant research efforts have focused on examining the effect of patient factors on providing diagnoses across clinical settings; however, the influence of clinician demographics have received less attention. This study aimed to understand the impact of nonclinical factors such as clinician characteristics and response time on diagnostic accuracy. The study used data from a WHO field study of the ICD-11 development (n = 1822) that required clinicians to diagnose two case vignettes. Clinicians’ slower response times had a significant positive impact on their rates of diagnostic accuracy. However, there was no evidence that clinicians’ demographic features were directly related to …

Recovery From Design, Cassandra J. Ellison

Theses and Dissertations

Through research, inquiry, and an evaluation of Recovery By Design, a ‘design therapy’ program that serves people with mental illness, substance use disorders, and developmental disabilities, it is my assertion that the practice of design has therapeutic potential and can aid in the process of recovery. To the novice, the practices of conception, shaping form, and praxis have empowering benefit especially when guided by Conditional and Transformation Design methods together with an emphasis on materiality and vernacular form.

The Effects Of Time Of Day And Circadian Rhythm On Performance During Variable Levels Of Cognitive Workload, Kathryn A. Feltman

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examined the effects of time of day of testing on a simulated aviation task. The tasks required the participants to engage in multitasking while electroencephalogram (EEG) data was collected to objectively measure participants’ workload. Task demands were altered throughout the testing period to expose participants to both high and low workload conditions. Additionally, individual differences in circadian rhythm were explored by assessing participants’ circadian typology. No significant differences in performance were found resulting from time of day differences. However, performance and EEG differences were found based on phase of testing and workload manipulations. Subjective workload measures were …

Cognitive Bias And Adolescent Risk-Taking, Mayuko Nakamura

Theses and Dissertations

Although the framing effect (i.e., the tendency of people to react differently to a particular choice depending on whether the choice is presented as a loss or as a gain) is a well-established cognitive bias among the adult population, there have been a limited number of studies with adolescent samples. In the current study, adolescents (14-18) and adults (18-26) will be asked to make choices in several decision problems including the classic Asian Disease Problem (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981) and modified “adolescent-relevant” versions that are applicable to the real-world experiences of adolescents. Individual difference measures, such as Individuals’ thinking-style (i.e., …

Examining The Role Of Executive Functions In Focal Processing Of Event-Based Prospective Memory, Tatsuya T. Shigeta

Theses and Dissertations

Prospective Memory (PM) refers to remembering an intention to be acted upon in the future. Such a memory may be triggered by an event (i.e., Event-based PM) where a specific cue reminds one of the previously encoded intention. PM can be assessed in a lab-setting by having subjects learn a baseline task, subsequently receiving a PM instruction, completing a distractor task, and then going through a test phase where the PM task (i.e., responding to PM cues) is embedded within the ongoing task. The multiprocess view (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000) posits that PM can be retrieved primarily using two different …

Ensemble Coding Of Semantic Information: Are Numerical Averages Generated In Parallel?, Kassandra R. Lee

Theses and Dissertations

Previous research has shown evidence for the activation of ensemble coding mechanisms at multiple levels of processing complexity (Ariely, 2001; Haberman & Whitney, 2009). Here we investigated the use of ensemble mechanisms for semantic information, as well as the role of serial and parallel processing and automaticity in generating semantic ensemble representations. Twenty-seven undergraduate students completed tasks in which they reported the average value of an entire digit display or only a subset of digits, or searched for individual digits within the display. Results show that participants could average sets of numbers following only a short presentation, and that reaction …

Attention Deficits And Perception Of Emotion In Groups, Agnes Renee Strojewska

Theses and Dissertations

The present study investigated the relationship between attention deficits and the recognition of emotions of either individuals or groups (ensembles). Previous research has suggested that individuals with ADHD may have deficits in social cognition, specifically in recognizing the internal (emotional) states of others, though it remains unclear whether these deficits are a discrete component of ADHD or merely the byproduct of the inattention characteristic of the disorder. Perception of ensemble characteristics, or ensemble coding, has recently been the target of increased interest in perception research, and appears to represent a powerful mechanism for processing sensory information, particularly in situations when …

An Analysis Of Canine Processing Of Stimulus Compounds Varying In Light And Sound Intensity, Katherine O. Compitus

Theses and Dissertations

A dog was trained to respond deferentially to two light-sound compounds. The dog was then tested with combinations of additional light and sound intensities. The dog appeared to use the information provided by both stimulus dimensions. This research is relevant to the understanding of information processing, specifically categorization and generalization.

Effectiveness Of A Smartphone App As An Adjunct To Therapy For Depression, Caitlin Massop

Theses and Dissertations

Over the years, depression and treatments for depression have been extensively researched. However, as times have changed and technology has become an integrated aspect into many indivdiual’s lives, including those with depression, researched mental health treatments have been slow to appreciate technological advances such as the smartphone app. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a smartphone app in addition to CBT as compared to CBT with paper homework when treating depression. Using a single-case design, as described by Kazdin (2011), with two participants this study found that both participants experienced a decrease in depression scores …

Investigating The Social And Cognitive Factors Influencing Risky Sexual Behaviors In Emerging Adults, Anthony W. Surace

Theses and Dissertations

The present investigation tested a regression model predicting sexual risk behavior among emerging adults using social and cognitive factors. Participants were 301 sexually active young adults living in New York City. Social and cognitive factors predicted sexual behavior individually, but did not interact with one another in the regression model.

From Intra- To Inter-Personal: Effects Of Mindfulness Training On Emotion Regulation In Social Contexts, Jordan T. Quaglia

Theses and Dissertations

The social and emotional lives of people are highly interdependent. Incipient evidence suggests that attention may also play an essential role in determining one’s social and emotional well-being. Mindfulness, as a manner of attending, entails greater moment-to-moment awareness to internal and external events, and is thought to have both intra- and inter-personal benefits. Here a study of mindfulness training (MT) examined whether training mindful attention would improve emotion regulation in social contexts as indexed by neural, behavioral, and experience sampling measures. More specifically, 60 participants in romantic relationships were randomly assigned to either four brief (20 min.) MT sessions or …

Examining Possible Perceptual Proxies Of Flow State, Devin Michael Gill

Theses and Dissertations

Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi (2002) define flow as an individual's deep engagement in an intrinsically rewarding activity. McGonigal (2011) suggests that video games are flow elicitors. If video games are flow elicitors, then spatial, agentic, and temporal perception required for game play may relate to flow in predictable manners. Over two experiments, a simple video game with contextual (i.e., implied friction) and conceptual (i.e., ambiguous stimulus labeled either bullet-train or house) manipulations was used to elicit flow. Effects of the manipulations were assessed trial-by-trial on two dimensions of flow (i.e., agency and temporal perception) and spatial planning, as well as an …

Developing & Describing The Use & Learning Of Conceptual Models For Integer Addition And Subtraction Of Grade 5 Students, Nicole Marie Wessman-Enzinger

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reports the results of a teaching experiment, which explored student thinking about integer addition and subtraction. Through the lens of commognitive theory (Sfard, 2008), interpreting negative integers as secondary intuitions (Fischbein, 1987), and employing teaching experiment methodology (Steffe & Thompson, 2000), this study was a first step in developing more robust descriptions of students' conceptual models for integer addition and subtraction. I investigated: (a) the conceptual models that students exhibited, (b) the various ways that students utilized conceptual models while learning about the addition and subtraction of integers, and (c), the ways that students' conceptions evolved over the …

Task-Switching In Bilinguals: Further Investigation Of The Bilingual Advantage, Jennifer M. Brown

Theses and Dissertations

Recent research has suggested that speaking more than one language may lead to benefits across a variety of different cognitive tasks (Bialystok, Craik, Green, & Gollan, 2009). This effect has been dubbed the Bilingual Advantage. It has been suggested that this advantage relates to more the development of greater efficiency with processes involved in task-switching. The current study used a task-switching task to investigate three of these processes: reconfiguration, monitoring, and inhibitory control processes.

Monolingual and bilingual participants were presented blocks of trials in which they had to either categorize words as either abstract or concrete, or pictures as human-made …

Influence Of Seductive Details, Belief-Congruence, And Repeated Testing On Memory For Controversial Information, Daniel Adam Nuccio

Theses and Dissertations

People often encounter conflicting information on a wide array of topics. How they evaluate this information in relation to their current beliefs, and the effects of other influences, such as the weight given to superficial aspects of the information (e.g. pictures, anecdotes, or jargon that are at most minimally related to an author's argument), has been of interest to researchers for many years. One component of their processing

and evaluation of this information is their memory for the information. This study set out to examine the following questions: (1) Is belief-congruent in

formation remembered better or worse than belief incongruent …

Investigating Children's Intuitive And Analytical Thinking About Path Length As A Developmental Phenomenon, Cheryl Lynn Eames

Theses and Dissertations

Children's conceptions of length measurement has been the focus of research that has built on the work of Piaget and his colleagues to produce developmental accounts for the acquisition of conceptual and procedural knowledge. Prior research focused on children's developing conceptions of length measurement for straight or rectilinear paths; however, little is known about how these conceptions grow beyond the elementary grades. The present study increased the scope of this research beyond elementary grades to include middle and secondary level students, exploring the development of students' intuitive and analytical thinking for determining the length of a curved path across a …

Student Perceptions Of Streaming-Media Effectiveness, Sara Floyd Baber

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to investigate cognitive-load theory as applied to the design of streaming media. In this study, student learning preferences and cognitive style were measured on a visualizer-verbalizer scale to determine the perceived importance of visual and audio components of streaming media used to supplement classroom instruction. Additionally, this study investigated cognitive-load theory by assessing attitudes regarding the importance of learner control when accessing streaming media files. The writer used 4 existing visualizer-verbalizer instruments in combination with 1 original survey that was designed to gather student perceptions and attitudes regarding the effectiveness of streaming media …