Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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, …

A Signal Detection Experiment With Limited Number Of Trials, Tadamasa Sawada

MODVIS Workshop

Signal detection theory has been well accepted in vision science to measure human sensitivity to stimuli in a Psychophysical experiment. The theory is formulated so that the measured sensitivity is independent from a response bias (criterion). The formulation is based on an assumption that number of trials in the experiment is infinite but this assumption cannot be satisfied in practice. The assumption came from two normal distributions used in the formulation. The distributions respectively represent a set of signal trial and that of noise trials in the experiment. In this study, I will show how the violation of the assumption …

The Relationship Between Demands And Resources And Teacher Burnout: A Fifteen-Year Meta-Analysis, Tammy Marie Stewart

Doctoral Dissertations

This meta-analysis explored the phenomenon of teacher burnout— the biggest contributor to teacher attrition (Owens, 2013; Unterbrink, 2014; Yu, 2015). The focus of this study was to use meta-analytical procedures to explore the relationship between burnout dimensions (i.e., emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of personal accomplishment) and specific demand and resource correlates. Demand correlates included work overload, role conflict, role ambiguity, and student misbehavior. Resource correlates included peer support, supervisory support, and decision-making. This meta-analytical research method encompassed fifteen years of published and unpublished studies from January 2000 through January 2015. A total of 116 studies met the following inclusion …

Rebecca Saxe: Investigating Theory Of Mind Using Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis In Autistic Adults, Olivia G. Cadwell

Sound Neuroscience: An Undergraduate Neuroscience Journal

Rebecca Saxe is a neuroscientist in the field of cognitive science and research. Saxe uses multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) in her research to study spatial neural responses in the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ) of the human brain and studies neural differences in the brain that allow non-autism spectrum disorder (neurotypical) adults to ascribe intentionality behind the actions of other individuals. While taking in consideration many prior studies, the current results from her research advocates that ASD effects the organization and voxel pattern of information in the ToM brain areas. Thus, the result of Saxe's research suggests that individuals with ASD …

Faster Than The Speed Of Rejection: Object Identification Processes During Visual Search For Multiple Targets, Hayward J. Godwin, Stephen Walenchok, Joseph W. Houpt, Michael C. Hout, Stephen D. Goldinger

Joseph W. Houpt

When engaged in a visual search for two targets, participants are slower and less accurate in their responses, relative to their performance when searching for singular targets. Previous work on this “dual-target cost” has primarily focused on the breakdown of attention guidance when looking for two items. Here, we investigated how object identification processes are affected by dual-target search. Our goal was to chart the speed at which distractors could be rejected, in order to assess whether dual-target search impairs object identification. To do so, we examined the capacity coefficient, which measures the speed at which decisions can be made, …

Can Two Dots Form A Gestalt? Measuring Emergent Features With The Capacity Coefficient, Robert X.D. Hawkins, Joseph W. Houpt, Ami Eidels, James T. Townsend

Joseph W. Houpt

While there is widespread agreement among vision researchers on the importance of some local aspects of visual stimuli, such as hue and intensity, there is no general consensus on a full set of basic sources of information used in perceptual tasks. Gestalt theories place particular value on emergent features, which are based on the higher-order relationships among elements of a stimulus rather than local properties. Thus, arbitrating between different accounts of features is an important step in arbitrating between local and Gestalt theories of perception in general. In this paper, we present the capacity coefficient from Systems Factorial Technology (SFT) …

Working Memory’S Workload Capacity, Andrew Heathcote, James R. Coleman, Ami Eidels, Jason M. Watson, Joseph W. Houpt, David L. Strayer

Joseph W. Houpt

We examined the role of dual-task interference in working memory using a novel dual 2-back task that requires a redundant-target response (i.e., that neither the auditory nor visual stimulus occurred two back vs. one or both occurred two back) on every trial. Comparisons with performance on single 2 back trials (i.e., with only auditory or only visual stimuli) showed dual-task demands reduced both speed and accuracy. Our task design enabled a novel application of Townsend and Nozawa’s (1995) workload capacity measure, which revealed that the decrement in dual 2-back performance was mediated by sharing of a limited amount of processing …

Influence Of Planning Resources On Gait Control In Parkinson’S Disease, Frederico P. Faria

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Movement disturbances in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) have been associated with difficulties to plan complex actions. Performance of simple and complex actions overloads resources for individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, it is unclear if central resources required to plan gait adjustments while walking exacerbate gait disturbances of patients with PD. More specifically, it is unclear how gait impairments, sensory processing, and the dopaminergic system influence the load on processing resources (e.g. cognitive load) during the planning of step modifications. In order to investigate the relative influence of these factors on cognitive load and its impact on gait control, …

Engaging Youth In Bullying Prevention Through Community-Based Participatory Research, Jen Gibson, Paul D. Flaspohler, Vanessa Watts

Faculty Scholarship

Few studies that engage youth in community-based participatory research (CBPR) focus on issues of safety/violence, include elementary school-aged youth, or quantitatively assess outcomes of the CBPR process. This article expands understanding of CBPR with youth by describing and evaluating the outcomes of a project that engaged fifth-grade students at 3 schools in bullying-focused CBPR. Results suggest that the project was associated with decreases in fear of bullying and increases in peer and teacher intervention to stop bullying. We conclude with implications for the engagement of elementary school-aged youth in CBPR to address bullying and other youth issues.

School Mental Health Early Interventions And Academic Outcomes For At-Risk High School Students: A Review Of The Research, Aidyn L. Iachini, Elizabeth Levine Brown, Annahita Ball, Jen Gibson, Steven E. Lize

Faculty Scholarship

The current educational policy context in the United States necessitates that school-based programs prioritize students’ academic outcomes. This review examined the quantitative research on school mental health (SMH) early interventions and academic outcomes for at risk high school students. Seven articles met the inclusion criteria for this review. All articles were examined according to study design and demographics, early intervention characteristics, and outcomes. Of the studies included, most were conducted in urban settings, involved the implementation of group-based early intervention strategies, and monitored GPA as a distal academic outcome. Counselors were frequent implementers of these early interventions. A meta-analysis found …

Evaluating An Abbreviated Version Of The Paths Curriculum Implemented By School Mental Health Clinicians, Jen Gibson, Shelby Werner, Andrew Sweeny

Faculty Scholarship

When evidence-based prevention programs are implemented in schools, adaptations are common. It is important to understand which adaptations can be made while maintaining positive outcomes for students. This preliminary study evaluated an abbreviated version of the Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) Curriculum implemented by school-based mental health clinicians in preschool/kindergarten classrooms. Results suggest that students (N = 80) demonstrated increases in emotional understanding and prosocial behavior. Children with low initial levels of problem behavior demonstrated large and continual increases in prosocial behavior over the entire course of the intervention, whereas children with high initial levels of problem behavior only demonstrated …