Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

The Temporal Nature Of The Acute Stress Response And Its Impact On Explicit Learning, Steven B. Hutchinson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Acute stress is commonly experienced by many throughout their lives. Given the demanding lifestyle of many career paths, it's important to gauge the influence of these stressors upon cognitive performance. The present dissertation focus' upon explicit learning in attempts to explore one avenue of the stress-cognition relationship. The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was used as a lab stressor for Experiments 1 and 2, in which participants are asked to give a speech and complete a difficult math task in front of 2 evaluators trained to monitor non-verbal behavior. Experiment 1 investigates the dynamic stress response during the minutes following …

Humans Integrate Monetary And Liquid Incentives To Motivate Cognitive Task Performance, Debbie Yee

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

It is unequivocal that a wide variety of incentives can motivate behavior. However, few studies have explicitly examined whether and how different incentives are integrated in terms of their motivational influence. The current study examines the combined effects of monetary and liquid incentives on cognitive processing, and whether appetitive and aversive incentives have distinct influences. We introduce a novel task paradigm, in which participants perform cued task-switching for monetary rewards that vary parametrically across trials, with liquid incentives serving as post-trial performance feedback. Critically, the symbolic meaning of the liquid was held constant (indicating successful reward attainment), while liquid valence …

Mathematical Modeling Of Stress Management Via Decisional Control, Matthew J. Shanahan

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Engaging the environment through reason, humankind evaluates information, compares it to a standard of desirability, and selects the best option available. Stress is theorized to arise from the perception of survival-related demands on an organism. Cognitive efforts are no mere intellectual exercise when ontologically backed by survival-relevant reward or punishment. This dissertation examines the stressful impact, and countervailing peaceful impact, of environmental demands on cognitive efforts and of successful cognitive efforts on a person’s day-to-day environment, through mathematical modeling of ‘decisional control’. A modeling approach to clinical considerations is introduced in the first paper, “Clinical Mathematical Psychology”. A general exposition …

Editors’ Introduction, Michael Glanzberg, Jurģis Šķilters

Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication

Spatial cognition can be considered as a set of foundational and central cognitive abilities that enable a variety of conceptual processes, both non-verbal and verbal. Further, according to recent research, spatial thinking seems to be critical in the development of abstract knowledge and in the processes of abstraction. Although there is a consensus regarding the role and impact of spatial cognition, there are a number of different, divergent, and sometimes even discrepant theoretical and methodological perspectives in the study of spatial cognition.

The Embodied Causal Learner, Vanja Vlajnic

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Traditionally, cognitive psychology has assumed a disembodied learner and thinker. However, an emerging approach known as embodiment posits that seemingly irrelevant motor or perceptual aspects of a task can affect higher-level cognition. The findings from such embodiment studies have also been shown to extend into real-world settings. For example, children who were taught mathematical concepts while required to make gestures consistent with the problem’s solution were more likely, on average, to apply the mathematical concepts correctly in the future (Cook, Mitchell, & Goldin-Meadow, 2008). For this specific study, the area of causal learning was examined.

The primary goal of this …

The Effects Of Size And Principal Axis Difference Ratio On The Use Of Featural And Geometric Cues, Spencer J. Price

Honors College Theses

Enclosure size has been shown to affect an animal’s reliance on featural and geometric cues when reorienting in space. Previous research has shown that humans and animals rely primarily on geometric cues in smaller enclosures, and on featural cues in larger enclosures. The multiple-bearings hypothesis predicts that directional information is more discriminable than distance information when landmarks are father away from a goal. As the size of the environment increased, the distance information was less discernible than featural information. In the current study, we tested to see if the reliance on geometry changes across enclosure size. Three different Principal Axis …

Mindful Mustangs: A Mindful Meditation App For Cal Poly Slo, Neha Jagannath

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

This report discusses the creation and research behind a new mindfulness meditation application called Mindful Mustangs, which is created for the students of Cal Poly SLO. The goal of this mobile website is to use the various techniques used in mindful meditation to reduce the stress and anxiety that college students regularly face. With the onset of iOS and Android applications, similar health and behavioral applications are on the rise. The increase of these applications calls for a certain type of design and a robust analysis must be done to ensure the psychological health of the user. Mindfulness applications such …

Olfactory Enrichment In California Sea Lions (Zalophus Californianus), Mystera M. Samuelson

Dissertations

In the wild, California sea lions (Zalophus californianus) are exposed to a wide array of sensory information at all times. However, it is impossible for captive environments to provide this level of complexity. Therefore unique procedures and practices are necessary for the maintenance of physiological and psychological health in captive animals (Wells, 2009). This project aims to explore the behavioral effect of scent added to the environment, with the goal of improving the welfare of captive sea lions by introducing two scent types: 1.) Natural scents, found in their native environment, and 2.) Non-natural scents, not found in …

Skidmore Clips Of Neutral And Expressive Scenarios (Scenes): Novel Dynamic Stimuli For Social Cognition Research, Casey Schofield, Justin Weeks, Lea Taylor, Colten Karnedy

Psychology

Social cognition research has relied primarily on photographic emotional stimuli. Such stimuli likely have limited ecological validity in terms of representing real world social interactions. The current study presents evidence for the validity of a new stimuli set of dynamic social SCENES (Skidmore Clips of Emotional and Neutral Expressive Scenarios). To develop these stimuli, ten undergraduate theater students were recruited to portray members of an audience. This audience was configured to display (seven) varying configurations of social feedback, ranging from unequivocally approving to unequivocally disapproving (including three different versions of balanced/neutral scenes). Validity data were obtained from 383 adult participants …

Transitioning Into Adulthood: Exploring The Educational Trajectories Among Undocumented Latinos, Michelle G. Parisot

Theses and Dissertations

The following qualitative study used semi-structured qualitative interviews to investigate the educational trajectories of five undocumented Latinos who were either in the process of transitioning into a college program or had recently enrolled in a college program. An initial interview was conducted with each of the participants followed by a follow-up interview about 3-months after the initial interview was conducted. A Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach was used to carry out this research study. Therefore, collaboration with participants and key community members was essential throughout the entire research process. A research team was created to perform thorough data analysis and …

The Effects Of Mindfulness On Verbal Distress Disclosure, Sara Fleming

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a mindfulness induction on participants’ verbal distress disclosure (as measured by the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count and State Disclosure Questionnaire). Participants were 86 undergraduate students enrolled in an Introduction to Psychology course and were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: a mindfulness condition or a control condition. Participants in the mindfulness condition engaged in a 15-minute mindfulness induction prior to disclosing about a stressful experience, while participants in the control condition listened to a neutrally valenced audio excerpt from a podcast about emotions before speaking about a …

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Psychological Distress And Risky Sexual Behaviors Among A Treatment-Seeking Opioid-Dependent Population, Hayley M. Smith

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Substance abusing populations are at an increased risk for disease transmission and have higher rates of psychological comorbidity compared to the general population (e.g., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2012a; Chaudhury & Singh, 2009; Des Jarlais, Semaan, & Arasteh, 2011; Goodwin & Stein, 2013). Numerous studies have implicated the interaction of psychological distress and risky sexual behaviors in the increased risk of disease transmission, however, several studies have not found this association. It has been suggested that there may be curvilinear relationship between psychological distress and risky sexual behaviors but this theory has yet to be tested. The …

Memory Deficits In Older Adults: Evaluating Spaced Retrieval With Multiple Probe Techniques, Christopher Walmsley

Dissertations

Difficulties in recognizing and remembering the names of individuals are a common behavioral symptom of major neurocognitive disorder. A number of behavioral strategies have been proposed to improve memory deficits, including spaced retrieval, an intervention that emphasizes delayed recall of target information. Unfortunately, many of the studies that report beneficial effects of spaced retrieval use a very limited range of outcome measures, thus calling into question the magnitude and generality of any reported memory improvement. This study reports on the impact of spaced retrieval using four older adults with cognitive impairment living in an assisted living facility. All participants demonstrated …

On The Evolutionary Origins Of Religious Belief, Robert Duane Howard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Religious belief is a byproduct of evolutionarily designed cognitive mechanisms. The ubiquity of religious belief and experience across human cultures is explained by our common human psychology; our domain-specific cognitive mechanisms give rise, collectively, to the phenomenon of byproduct religious belief/experience. In this thesis, I will examine what I call religion-generating cognitive mechanisms, and I will argue that byproduct raw god-beliefs are developed by cultures into refined god-beliefs. These refined god-beliefs are co-opted by evolutionary processes and are cultural adaptations. My conception of “religious belief” in terms of raw and refined god-beliefs allows a disambiguation of the term “religion,” and …

The Role Of Sharing And Information Type In Children's Categorization Of Privileged And Conventional Information, Helana Girgis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Categorization is an essential part of our daily lives and an integral part of humans’ ability to function and interact within society. There are large bodies of research that document children’s categorization in domains such as natural kinds, artifacts and human kinds. One domain that has not been investigated is children’s ability to categorize different types of information; specifically conventional information, shareable to others with no restrictions, and privileged information, shareable to only a few. Study 1 investigated 4- and 5-year-olds and adults’ ability to categorize conventional and privileged information. All participants correctly categorized both types of information equally well …

Interrupting The Conspiracy Of Silence: Historical Trauma And The Experiences Of Hmong American Women, Ia Xiong

Theses and Dissertations

The Hmong have endured a history of oppressive and traumatic experiences. The Secret War was particularly significant as it resulted in genocide, dislocation, and oppression for the Hmong. In addition, the Hmong experience and their involvement as U.S. allies remained largely a secret for several decades. Current research suggests that Hmong Americans experience a high prevalence of mental health issues including depression, anxiety, and substance abuse as well as other health disparities. The purpose of this project was to explore how a history of massive group trauma and secrecy maintained about the Hmong may contribute to the current conditions of …

Increases In Perspective Embedding Increase Reading Time Even With Typical Text Presentation: Implications For The Reading Of Literature, D. H. Whalen, Lisa Zunshine, Michael Holquist

Publications and Research

Reading fiction is a major component of intellectual life, yet it has proven difficult to study experimentally. One aspect of literature that has recently come to light is perspective embedding (“she thought I left” embedding her perspective on “I left”), which seems to be a defining feature of fiction. Previous work (Whalen et al., 2012) has shown that increasing levels of embedment affects the time that it takes readers to read and understand short vignettes in a moving window paradigm. With increasing levels of embedment from 1 to 5, reading times in a moving window paradigm rose almost linearly. However, …

Contemplating Mindfulness At Work: An Integrative Review, Christopher Lyddy, Darren J. Good, Theresa M. Glomb, Joyce E. Bono, Kirk W. Brown, Michelle K. Duffy, Ruth A. Baer, Judson A. Brewer, Sara W. Lazar

School of Business Faculty Publications

Mindfulness research activity is surging within organizational science. Emerging evidence across multiple fields suggests that mindfulness is fundamentally connected to many aspects of workplace functioning, but this knowledge base has not been systematically integrated to date. This review coalesces the burgeoning body of mindfulness scholarship into a framework to guide mainstream management research investigating a broad range of constructs. The framework identifies how mindfulness influences attention, with downstream effects on functional domains of cognition, emotion, behavior, and physiology. Ultimately, these domains impact key workplace outcomes, including performance, relationships, and well-being. Consideration of the evidence on mindfulness at work stimulates important …

Strategies And Resources To Enhance Test Evaluation And Selection, Janet F. Carlson, Nancy Anderson

Buros Center: Professional Staff Publications

Testing serves an important function for SLPs in offering an evidence base that is useful in screening, diagnosing, monitoring progress, and documenting outcomes. Tests are used to measure diverse constructs such as communication, literacy, oral and written language, receptive and expressive vocabulary, articulation, phonological awareness and processing, and auditory perception and processing. In addition, specific impairments may require specialized measures to evaluate conditions such as stuttering and orthographic competence.

When using tests to diagnose language impairments, Betz, Eickhoff, and Sullivan (2013) suggest that SLPs consider carefully a test’s psychometric properties, particularly because of the “increasing emphasis on evidence-based practice, specifically, …

Eyewitness Choosing Behavior: The Role Of Ecphoric Experience And Non-Memorial Cues, Brian S. Cahill

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Researchers’ attempts at understanding the processes underlying witness choosing behavior have focused on applying models that predict that identifications will be primarily driven by memorial factors. However, research has shown that several non-memorial variables affect witness choosing behavior (e.g., administrator influence, clothing bias, co-witness information); thus a full understanding of the processes underlying witness choosing behavior needs to account for these effects. While the memory-based models do attempt to provide explanations for the effects of non-memorial based variables on choosing behavior they all do so within a memorial context. However, I will argue a lineup task is not simply a …

Audible Voice In Context, Airlie S. Rose

Doctoral Dissertations

The term audible voice refers to the sound of the text experienced by the reader during silent reading. It was coined by Elbow in his Landmark Essays to help the field of composition wrestle more productively with the concept of voice in writing. In this dissertation, voice is not a metaphor. Drawing on contemporary work in psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and consciousness studies, it examines the phenomenon of audible voice as a form of inner speech[1]. The premise of this study is that the experience of audible voice by the reader is a unique intersection of the individual's inner landscape …

Traditional Grain Alcohol (Bai Jiu, 白酒) Production And Use In Rural Central China: Implications For Public Health, Ling Qian, Ian M. Newman, Wen Xiong, Yanyu Feng

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Background: An estimated 25 % of the alcohol consumed in China is traditional unrecorded alcohol produced and distributed informally. Consequently there is concern about its safety and its contribution to public health risk. Little has been written about this type of alcohol in China.

Methods: Researchers observed the manufacture of traditional bai jiu in a rural area of Hubei Province, Central China. Two hundred fifty-nine individuals were interviewed, either individually or in small groups, about their use of and attitudes toward bai jiu. Individuals who made or sold bai jiu were interviewed about local production, distribution, and sale. Key community …

Perceptions, Stereotypes And Cognitive Resources Of Female Businesspersons: A Social Identity Approach, Amy J. Y. Lim

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

According to the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), female businesspersons are often stereotyped and labeled either as a Career Women, competent but cold, or as a Traditional Women, warm but incompetent. This suggests that female businesspersons are generally perceived to be either competent or warm individuals, but not both. However, this may not reflect female businesspersons’ own perceptions of their competence and warmth in the workplace. Contrary to the stereotypes, evidence has demonstrated that some female businesspersons display behaviors that signal both competence and warmth. Employing a social identity approach, I propose that gender-professional identity integration (G-PII), an individual difference that …

Sweet Love: The Effects Of Sweet Taste Experience On Romantic Perceptions, Ren Dongning, Kenneth Tan, Ximena B. Arriaga, Kai Qin Chan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Terms of endearment such as sweetie, honey, and sugar are commonly used in the context of describing romantic partners. This article explores how a relatively subtle manipulation, namely taste sensations, might influence romantic perceptions of a nonestablished relationship. Consistent with predictions, results from Studies 1 and 2 (n = 280) showed that participants evaluated a hypothetical relationship, but not an existing relationship, more favorably when exposed to sweet taste compared to non-sweet taste control. Study 3 (n = 142) further showed that participants indicated greater interest in initiating a relationship with a potential partner when exposed to sweet taste, as …

Happy Halloween Song For My Grandchildren, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

No abstract provided.

Happy Halloween Poem For My Grandchildren, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

Halloween poem written for children about 10 years old. This poem was set to a simple tune, but music does not open on SelectedWorks, so this is just the verse without the music.

The Effects Of Aging On Associative Learning And Memory Retrieval In Causal Judgment, Jessica Parks Arnold

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Research has shown that detecting and judging causal relationships requires associative learning and memory. Retrospective revaluation of causal cues requires associative memory (Aitken, Larkin, & Dickinson, 2001) to bind multiple cues together and use these associations to retrieve unseen cues for revaluation of their associative value. The difficulty that older adults experience with respect to retrospective revaluation could occur because of their deficit in associative binding and retrieval (Mutter, Atchley, & Plumlee, 2012). Like retrospective revaluation, blocking requires cue – outcome associative learning, but unlike retrospective revaluation, blocking does not require binding two cues together nor does it require using …

Support For Gestalt Versus Business-As-Usual Theories Of Insight Depends On Operational Definition Of Insight, Kimberly D. Lee

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Some theories propose that insight involves automatic processes that are responsible for restructuring. Other theories postulate that the mechanisms surrounding restructuring are controlled and effortful. The current study tested these theories by comparing different methodology and operational definitions that have been used in previous research to investigate the nature of “Aha!” experiences and impasse in insightful problem solving. One hundred two undergraduate psychology students from Old Dominion University completed working memory tasks, six classic insight problems, and gave initial problem representation ratings for the insight problems before solution attempt. Using a think-aloud protocol, we assessed the occurrence of impasse during …

Variability, Stability, And Flexibility In The Speech Kinematics And Acoustics Of Adults Who Do And Do Not Stutter, Eric S. Jackson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

It is well known that people who do and do not stutter produce speech differently, at least some of the time, even when perceived as fluent. One way that investigators have assessed these differences is by measuring variability, or the inconsistency of repeated speech movements. Variability in speech has typically been quantified using linear analysis techniques (e.g., measures of central tendency), and results have indicated that people who stutter produce speech that is (sometimes) characterized by increased variability. However, variability is a complex phenomenon, one that cannot be assessed by linear methods alone. This dissertation employs linear and nonlinear analysis …

Art As Communication: Employing Gricean Principles Of Communication As A Model For Art Appreciation, Melissa June Dolese

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Abstract

How and why artworks elicit varied preferences and judgments among different individuals remains a topic with many unresolved issues. For instance, individuals with little artistic experience tend to show little appreciation for abstract art, even though such works often show a highly skilled organization of visual elements. A key aspect of a positive aesthetic experience concerns the ability of viewers to construct meaning. I propose that viewers attempt to make meaning of artworks due to a sense that art is a communicative process. Here I attempt an application of one intentionalist model of communication, the Gricean framework, to visual …