Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

The Relationship Between Eating Disorder Symptomology, Critical Body Comments, And Memory Recall, Morgan Littrell

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Previous research done in the area of eating disorders suggests many different variables, such as cognitive, biological, and social, that are thought to influence eating disorder development and maintenance. The present study attempts to combine cognitive and sociocultural research findings, memory recall and critical body comments, in an effort to see how, if at all, these two variables affect eating disorder symptomology. Participants for this study were 120 female students that were recruited via Study Board. Participants completed the demographics form, the Eating Disorder Inventory-3 RF, and the Social Hassles Questionnaire. The participants then watched an E-prime presentation of different …

Age Differences In Reward Anticipation And Memory, Kristen L. Cushman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Aging research on item- and associative-recognition memory has demonstrated that older adults are deficient in forming associations between two unrelated stimuli. Although older adult performance on tests of item-recognition is similar to younger adult performance, older adults perform worse than younger adults on tests of associative memory (Naveh-Benjamin, Hussain, Guez, & Bar-On, 2003). In addition to the idea that younger adult performance on associative-recognition tests is superior to that of older adults, research has shown that reward cues can enhance motivated learning and item memory performance of younger adults. In an fMRI study that examined the influence of reward anticipation …

Teleological Reasoning In Adults: Believing In The Purpose Of Events, Carrie Jeanette Guggenmos

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Teleological reasoning reflects the general tendency to view objects, behaviors and events in terms of their “purpose.” Although healthy educated adults tend to refrain from committing errors in teleological reasoning about objects, our knowledge regarding how adults reason about events is limited. It has been suggested that teleological reasoning biases our interpretations of emotionally significant and unexpected life events of which a physical or social cause is absent or unsatisfactory. The current investigation seeks to better understand the types of events that evoke a teleological perspective and the conditions and individual difference factors that facilitate it. The results revealed that …

Asymmetry In Resting Alpha Activity: Effects Of Handedness, Ruth E. Propper, Jenna Pierce, Mark W. Geisler, Stephen D. Christman, Nathan Bellorado

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) alpha band power during rest shows increased right, and/or decreased left, hemisphere activity under conditions of state or trait withdrawal-associated effect. Non-right-handers (NRH) are more likely to have mental illnesses and dispositions that involve such withdrawal-related effect. The aim of the study was to examine whether NRH might be characterized by increased right, relative to left, hemisphere activity during rest. Methods: The present research investigated that hypothesis by examining resting EEG alpha power in consistently-right-handed (CRH) and NRH individuals. Results: In support of the hypothesis, NRH demonstrated decreased right hemisphere alpha power, and therefore increased right hemisphere …

Randomized Clinical Trial Of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Cbt) Versus Acceptance And Commitment Therapy (Act) For Mixed Anxiety Disorders, Joanna Arch, Georg Eifert, Carolyn Davies, Jennifer C. Plumb Vilardaga, Raphael D. Rose, Michael G. Craske

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Objective—Randomized comparisons of acceptance-based treatments with traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders are lacking. To address this research gap, we compared acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to CBT for heterogeneous anxiety disorders.

Method—One hundred twenty eight individuals (52% female, mean age = 38, 33% minority) with one or more DSM-IV anxiety disorders began treatment following randomization to 12 sessions of CBT or ACT; both treatments included behavioral exposure. Assessments at pre-treatment, post-treatment, 6-month, and 12-month follow-up measured anxiety specific (principal disorder Clinical Severity Ratings [CSR], Anxiety Sensitivity Index, Penn State Worry Questionnaire, Fear Questionnaire avoidance) and …

The Impact Of Distractor Duration On Spatial Working Memory In Early Childhood, Brian Keiser

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Spatial attention appears to act as a rehearsal mechanism in spatial working memory (Awh, 1999; Awh & Jonides, 2001) as adults have trouble maintaining spatial information in their mind when required to shift their attention to locations unrelated to the to-be-retained location. Futhermore, adults increase intentional directed attention to the to-be remembered location when warned ahead of time that distractors will be present during the memory delay (Awh, 2003). Our initial study looked at the presence of a distractor and its impacts on spatial working memory in children. We found that the distractor did impact three and six year old …

Bayesian Approaches To Assessing Architecture And Stopping Rule, Joseph W. Houpt, Andrew Heathcote, Ami Eidels, J. T. Townsend

Psychology Faculty Publications

Much of scientific psychology and cognitive science can be viewed as a search to understand the mechanisms and dynamics of perception, thought and action. Two processing attributes of particular interest to psychologists are the architecture, or temporal relationships between sub-processes of the system, and the stopping rule, which dictates how many of the sub-processes must be completed for the system to finish. The Survivor Interaction Contrast (SIC) is a powerful tool for assessing the architecture and stopping rule of a mental process model. Thus far, statistical analysis of the SIC has been limited to null-hypothesis- significance tests. In this talk …

Hypertension And Cognitive Functioning: A Perspective In Historical Context, Merrill F. Elias, Amanda L. Goodell, Gregory A. Dore

Maine-Syracuse Longitudinal Papers

Our objective is to characterize the development of the literature on hypertension and cognitive functioning from a historical perspective. This goal was stimulated by the review on “Historical Trends and Milestones in Hypertension Research” in the October 2012 issue of Hypertension. Our specific aims are threefold: (1) to trace and describe the history of this area of research; (2) to identify milestones in knowledge and methods; and (3) to discuss briefly how this literature translates into patient care. The topic is of major relevance to research and practice because hypertension is a well-known risk factor for decline in cognitive performance …

Review Of Marianne Gullberg And Kees De Bot (Eds): Gestures In Language Development., Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Effort-Related Choice Behavior Is Affected By Pharmacological Manipulations Associated With Depression: The Effects Of Tetrabenazine, Megan Huizenga

Honors Scholar Theses

In humans, psychiatric symptoms such as anergia and psychomotor retardation reflect pathologies in behavioral activation. These motivational symptoms are fundamental aspects of depression and other disorders. Drugs such as reserpine and tetrabenazine deplete monoamines, including dopamine, and induce depressive like behaviors in humans. Our results indicate that administration of low doses of tetrabenazine can alter effort-related choice behavior, biasing animals towards low effort alternatives. These findings may be related to the ability of monoamine depleting agents such as tetrabenazine to blunt behavioral activation and induce psychomotor retardation, anergia and fatigue in humans, and this research could be useful for the …

Habituation Effect In Attention Modification Training For Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Olivia E. Bogucki

Honors Scholar Theses

Attention biases influence the type of information that captures an individual’s attention. Cognitive theories of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) state that attention biases cause an increased amount of attention to personally relevant threatening information. Previous studies support this connection, and have examined attention modification training (AMT) as a means to direct attention away from threatening information for various anxiety disorders, including OCD. Results show that attention biases toward threatening information decrease during a single training session of AMT, which may be a result of habituation to threat. However, there is a lack of longitudinal data investigating the number of AMT sessions …

Longitudinal Changes In Pronoun Reversals In Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder And Typically Developing Children, Michelle Cheng

Honors Scholar Theses

Pronoun reversals occur when a pronoun is incorrectly mapped to the wrong referent. For example, when a child says, “You eat the cookie!” and intended to state that he is eating a cookie. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD, are known to be frequent reversers, but their development of these reversals; for example, incidence rate and endpoint, is still unknown. In this study, children interacted with their mothers in a 30-minute play session and their spontaneous pronoun usage were coded for the perspective of the pronoun, type of reversal, and case errors. Children with ASD to their typically developing (TD) …

What Is The Optimal Subsidy For Exercise? Informing Health Insurance Companies' Fitness Reimbursement Programs, Molly E. Frean

Economics Honors Projects

Health care costs account for 17% of US GDP and many programs and policies seek to reduce these costs. This paper focuses on exercise as preventive care due to its immense physiological benefits. I model the profit-maximizing choice of health insurance companies to subsidize exercise and the utility-maximizing choice of individuals to engage in exercise using a traditional principal-agent framework. I then use principles from behavioral economics and psychology to critique these models and provide further insight into understanding our underconsumption of such preventive services. I end with an evaluation of current programs and suggestions for improvement using empirical findings.

Embodied Metaphors And Creative "Acts", Angela K.-Y. Leung, Suntae Kim, Evan Polman, Lay See Ong, Lin Qiu, Jack A. Goncola, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Creativity is a highly sought after skill. To inspire people’s creativity, prescriptive advice in the form of metaphors abound: We are encouraged to think outside the box, to consider the problem on one hand, then on the other hand, and to put two and two together to achieve creative breakthroughs. These metaphors suggest a connection between concrete bodily experiences and creative cognition. Inspired by recent advances on body-mind linkages under the emerging vernacular of embodied cognition, we explored for the first time whether enacting metaphors for creativity enhances creative problem-solving. In five studies, findings revealed that both physically and psychologically …

Facial Expression Processing Is Holistic Or Feature-Based Depending On Stimulus Format: Evidence From The Composite Face Illusion And Gaze-Contingent Stimulus Presentations, Emily R. Prazak

Psychology Honors Projects

Controversy exists over whether facial expression recognition is a holistic or feature-based process. The present research explored whether stimulus format (photographic vs. schematic) affects the type of processing used. In a composite/noncomposite expression recognition task, holistic processing was observed for photographic stimuli and feature-based processing was observed for schematic stimuli. Moreover, holistic processing in the photographic condition increased when more than one individual was presented. Results suggest that facial expression processing is holistic under natural viewing conditions and provide a potential resolution to the previous controversy. Such findings may be corroborated by an ongoing follow-up study using gaze-contingent stimulus presentations.

Unsupervised Category Learning With Integral-Dimension Stimuli, Shawn W. Ell, Gregory F. Ashby, Steven B. Hutchinson

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Despite the recent surge in research on unsupervised category learning, the majority of studies have focused on unconstrained tasks in which no instructions are provided about the underlying category structure. Relatively little research has focused on constrained tasks in which the goal is to learn pre-defined stimulus clusters in the absence of feedback. The few studies that have addressed this issue have focused almost exclusively on stimuli for which it is relatively easy to attend selectively to the component dimensions (i.e., separable dimensions). In the present study, we investigated the ability of participants to learn categories constructed from stimuli for …

Stereological Assessment Of The Thalamus In A Rat Model Of Periventricular Nodular Heterotopia, Jason Lennox

Honors Projects

Malformations of neocortical development such as microgyria (MG) and periventricular nodular heterotopia (PNH) have been observed in the brains of language learning impaired (LLI) humans. Rats with MG have shown rapid auditory processing (RAP) deficits similar to acoustic deficits observed in some human LLI populations. Threlkeld et al., (2009) previously reported RAP and other learning impairments in rats with PNH resulting from disruption to embryonic neuronal cell division by way of Methylazoxymethanol (MAM) treatment on embryonic day 15 (E15). The thalamus and its subnuclei may be vulnerable to neurodevelopmental disruptions. Studies of MG rats have shown changes in cell size …

Handling Language: The Gestures Of Future Foreign Language Teachers, Gale Stam, Marion Tellier, Brigitte Bigi

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Racial Disparity In The Diagnosis Of Conduct Disorder, Cortney R. Vanhook

Undergraduate Research Awards

African American youth are exposed to considerably more risk factors than their Caucasian counterparts, yet they are being diagnosed at comparably lower rates for Conduct Disorder (CD) in epidemiological studies. Empirical data supports the claim that African Americans are at greater risk of developing CD. However, the internal dysfunction benchmark of the Diagnostic Statistic Manual (DSM) discourages clinicians from diagnosing youth who display environmentally caused CD. The racial disparity in the diagnosis of CD is problematic for two reasons. First, African American youth who display antisocial personality are more likely to be referred to the justice system than to therapeutic …

Some Assembly Required: How Scientific Explanations Are Constructed During Clinical Interviews, Bruce L. Sherin, Moshe Krakowski, Victor R. Lee

Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications

This article is concerned with commonsense science knowledge, the informally-gained knowledge of the natural world that students possess prior to formal instruction in a scientific discipline. Although commonsense science has been the focus of substantial study for more than two decades, there are still profound disagreements about its nature and origin, and its role in science learning. What is the reason that it has been so difficult to reach consensus? We believe that the problems run deep; there are difficulties both with how the field has framed questions and the way that it has gone about seeking answers. In order …

Medial Pfc Damage Abolishes The Self-Reference Effect, Carissa Philippi, Melissa Duff, Natalie Denburg, Daniel Tranel, David Rudrauf

Psychology Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Predators And Propensity: The Proper Approach For Determining The Admissibility Of Prior Bad Acts Evidence In Child Sexual Abuse Prosecutions, Basyle Tchividjian

Faculty Publications and Presentations

PREDATORS AND PROPENSITY: THE PROPER APPROACH FOR DETERMINING THE ADMISSIBILITY OF PRIOR BAD ACTS EVIDENCE IN CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE PROSECUTIONS

Basyle J. Tchividjian†

Abstract

The admissibility of prior bad act evidence in child sexual abuse prosecutions oftentimes makes the difference between a guilty and not guilty verdict. Recently, jurisdictions have growingly embraced the admission of such evidence for the purpose of establishing the defendant’s propensity to sexually victimize children. Due to the potentially high prejudicial effect of admitting propensity evidence, it is more critical than ever that courts carefully apply the decisive evidentiary gatekeeper, the probative value balancing test …

Neonatal White Matter Abnormalities An Important Predictor Of Neurocognitive Outcome For Very Preterm Children, Lianne J. Woodward, Caron A. C. Clark, Samudragupta Bora, Terrie E. Inder

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Background: Cerebral white matter abnormalities on term MRI are a strong predictor of motor disability in children born very preterm. However, their contribution to cognitive impairment is less certain. Objective: Examine relationships between the presence and severity of cerebral white matter abnormalities on neonatal MRI and a range of neurocognitive outcomes assessed at ages 4 and 6 years. Design/Methods: The study sample consisted of a regionally representative cohort of 104 very preterm (≤32 weeks gestation) infants born from 1998–2000 and a comparison group of 107 full-term infants. At term equivalent, all preterm infants underwent a structural MRI scan that was …

Reducing Overweight And Obesity Among Elementary Students In Wuhan, China, Ling Qian, Ian Newman, Duane F. Shell, Cheng Maojin Cheng

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Obesity and overweight among children in China is a growing concern. The curriculum and organization of Chinese schools focuses on academic achievement leaving little time for other programs. This pilot program illustrated that it is possible to involve schools and parents in a program to reduce obesity and overweight. Teachers, school staff, parents and elementary students were involved in an all-school educational initiative based on WHO’s Health Promoting School Model. The program was evaluated with a mixed modal ANOVA using a 3-level within subjects repeated factor (baseline, 1st follow-up, 2nd follow-up) and a 2-level between subjects factor (gender: boys and …

A Longitudinal Study Of School Connectedness And Academic Outcomes Across Sixth Grade, Kate Niehaus, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Christopher R. Rakes

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The current longitudinal study examines the extent to which school connectedness (i.e., students' perceptions of school support and the number of adults with whom they have a positive relationship) is associated with academic outcomes across sixth grade for students from high poverty neighborhoods. Data were collected from 330 sixth-grade students attending two middle schools in a large public school district. Specifically, students completed a survey to assess their perceived connection to the school environment, and academic information regarding students' grades, attendance, and discipline referrals was obtained from school records. Results fromlatent growth curve modeling showed that, on average, students' perceptions …

Changing Museum Visitors’ Conceptions Of Evolution, Amy N. Spiegel, E Margaret Evans, Brandy Frazier, Ashley Hazel, Medha Tare, Wendy Gram, Judy Diamond

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

We examined whether a single visit to an evolution exhibition contributed to conceptual change in adult (n030), youth, and child (n034) museum visitors’ reasoning about evolution. The exhibition included seven current research projects in evolutionary science, each focused on a different organism. To frame this study, we integrated a developmental model of visitors’ understanding of evolution, which incorporates visitors’ intuitive beliefs, with a model of free-choice learning that includes personal, sociocultural, and contextual variables. Using pre- and postmeasures, we assessed how visitors’ causal explanations about biological change, drawn from three reasoning patterns (evolutionary, intuitive, and creationist), were modified as a …

Book Review: The Morality Of Social Identity, David Moshman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Morality tells us how to treat each other. Social identity connects us to each other. But all is not well. Social identity connects us to a group and thus to its members. Morality requires justice for everyone, regardless of group. Thus considerations of morality and social identity often pull in different directions (Appiah, 2005; Moshman, 2007; Sen, 2006).

Two excellent and complementary new books, Children and Social Exclusion and Narrative and the Politics of Identity, address the developmental roots and implications of these issues. The first reviews and integrates multiple programs of research on children’s developing judgments about dilemmas …

The Effects Of Distraction And A Brief Intervention On Auditory And Visual-Spatial Working Memory In College Students With Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Tara T. Lineweaver, Suneeta Kercood, Nicole B. O'Keeffe, Kathleen M. O'Brien, Eric J. Massey, Samantha J. Campbell, Jenna M. Pierce

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Two studies addressed how young adult college students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (n = 44) compare to their nonaffected peers (n = 42) on tests of auditory and visual–spatial working memory (WM), are vulnerable to auditory and visual distractions, and are affected by a simple intervention. Students with ADHD demonstrated worse auditory WM than did controls. A near significant trend indicated that auditory distractions interfered with the visual WM of both groups and that, whereas controls were also vulnerable to visual distractions, visual distractions improved visualWM in the ADHD group. The intervention was ineffective. Limited correlations emerged between …

Stratégies Verbales Et Gestuelles Dans L’Explication Lexical D’Un Verbe D’Action, Gale Stam, Marion Tellier

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Gestes Et Recherche Lexicale En Langue Seconde, Gale Stam

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.