Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

The Role Of Posterior Parietal Cortex In Episodic Memory Retrieval: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Studies (Tdcs), Denise Pergolizzi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Neuroimaging studies of recognition memory have shown that greater activity in the lateral posterior parietal cortex (PPC) correlates with successful recognition in a variety of paradigms, but experimental techniques that manipulate brain activity are necessary to determine the specific contribution of the PPC in episodic memory retrieval. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive technique that can be used to manipulate cortical excitability. The collection of experiments that comprise this dissertation use tDCS to determine: 1) whether or not the lateral PPC is causally involved in episodic retrieval, and 2) whether the lateral PPC has a direct role in …

Effects Of Nicotine On A Translational Model Of Working Memory, David Alderson Macqueen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cognitive research with human non-smokers has demonstrated that nicotine generally enhances performance on tasks of attention but, working memory does not appear to be affected. In contrast, nicotine has been shown to produce robust enhancements of working memory in non-human animals. To address this disparity, the present study investigated the effects of nicotine (2mg, 4mg nicotine gum, and placebo) on the performance of 30 non-smokers (15 male) completing a working memory task developed for rodents (the odor span task, OST). Nicotine has been reported to enhance OST performance in rodents and the present study sought to determine whether the effect …

One Giant Leap For Categorizers: One Small Step For Categorization Theory, David J. Smith, Shawn W. Ell

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We explore humans’ rule-based category learning using analytic approaches that highlight their psychological transitions during learning. These approaches confirm that humans show qualitatively sudden psychological transitions during rule learning. These transitions contribute to the theoretical literature contrasting single vs. multiple category-learning systems, because they seem to reveal a distinctive learning process of explicit rule discovery. A complete psychology of categorization must describe this learning process, too. Yet extensive formal-modeling analyses confirm that a wide range of current (gradient-descent) models cannot reproduce these transitions, including influential rule-based models (e.g., COVIS) and exemplar models (e.g., ALCOVE). It is an important theoretical conclusion …

Toward A Two-Stage Model Of Free Categorization, Gregory J. Smith

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research examines how comparison of objects underlies free categorization, an essential component of human cognition. Previous results using our binomial labeling task have shown that classification probabilities are affected in a graded manner as a function of similarity, i.e., the number of features shared by two objects. In a similarity rating task, people also rated objects sharing more features as more similar. However, the effect of matching features was approximately linear in the similarity task, but superadditive (exponential) in the labeling task. We hypothesize that this difference is due to the fact that people must select specific objects to …

Partner's Understanding Of Affective-Cognitive Meta-Bases Predicts Relationship Quality, Kenneth Tan, Ya Hui Michelle See, Christopher R. Agnew

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Knowledge that partners have about each other's attitudes are consequential for relationship quality. This article extends prior research and examines whether knowledge regarding a partner's meta-attitudinal bases, or subjective perceptions of how one's attitudes are driven, can influence relationship quality. Given how meta-bases are reflective of information-processing goals, we hypothesized that partner understanding of meta-attitudinal bases would positively predict relationship quality. Self and partner ratings of how relationally relevant attitudes were driven, as well as perceptions of relationship quality, were assessed. Results revealed that a partner's knowledge of one's meta-bases positively predicts one's own reported relationship quality. Results remained significant …

Modeling Sources Of Teaching Self-Efficacy For Science, Technology, Engineering, And Mathematics Graduate Teaching Assistants, Sue Ellen Dechenne, Natalie A. Koziol, Mark Needham, Larry Enochs

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) have a large impact on undergraduate instruction but are often poorly prepared to teach. Teaching self-efficacy, an instructor’s belief in his or her ability to teach specific student populations a specific subject, is an important predictor of teaching skill and student achievement. A model of sources of teaching self-efficacy is developed from the GTA literature. This model indicates that teaching experience, departmental teaching climate (including peer and supervisor relationships), and GTA professional development (PD) can act as sources of teaching self-efficacy. The model is pilot tested with 128 GTAs …

Medulla: A 2d Sidescrolling Platformer Game That Teaches Basic Brain Structure And Function, Joey R. Fanfarelli, Stephanie Vie

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This article explores the design and instructional effectiveness of Medulla, an educational game meant to teach brain structure and function to undergraduate psychology students. Developed in the retro-style platformer genre, Medulla uses two-dimensional gameplay with pixel-based graphics to engage students in learning content related to the brain, information which is often pre-requisite to more rigorous psychological study. A pretest posttest design was used in an experiment assessing Medulla’s ability to teach psychology content. Results indicated content knowledge was significantly higher on the posttest than the pretest, with a large effect size. Medulla appears to be an effective learning tool. These …

Distance Effects In Similarity Based Free Categorization, Benjamin Alan Miller

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This experiment investigated the processes underlying similarity-based free categorization. Of particular interest was how temporal distance between similar objects affects the likelihood that people will put them into the same novel category. Participants engaged in a free categorization task referred to as binomial labeling. This task required participants to generate a two-part label (A1, B1, C1, etc.) indicating family (superordinate) and species (subordinate) levels of categorization for each object in a visual display. Participants were shown the objects one at a time in a sequential presentation; after labeling each object, they were asked to describe the similarity between that …

Prosody: An Important Cue To Word Learning, Monica Dasilva

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Infants rely on cues from their environment during language acquisition. Prosodic features of words are one such cue and involve changes in stress and rhythmic patterns within speech. Studies have examined prosody’s influence on word segmentation and have found it to be a useful cue for detecting word boundaries (Johnson & Seidl, 2009). What is less understood is how prosody helps infants form associations between novel labels and their referents during word learning. The present thesis investigated the influence of prosodic cues on word learning. The looking times were recorded of 13 infants (19-25 months) exposed to object-label pairings that …

Estrogen-Sensitive Learning Is Not Affected By Combination Ethinyl Estradiol And Levonorgestrel Oral Contraceptive Use, Darlene F. Ficco

Doctoral Dissertations

Two studies were conducted to explore the cognitive effects of combination ethinyl estradiol and levonorgestrel contraceptive use during late adolescence and young adulthood. Three groups of females, naturally cycling, active pill phase, and hormone-free interval phase, were tested on a battery of estrogen-sensitive, i.e., place learning and word generation, and estrogen-insensitive, i.e., map drawing, mental rotation, digit span, story recall, and object recall, tasks. Study 2 was conducted as a means to replicate the findings observed in Study 1 and to manipulate task difficulty and sensitivity. Two measures of mood were administered, and salivary estradiol levels at time of testing …

The Coffee Shop Effect: Investigating The Relationship Between Ambient Noise And Cognitive Flexibility, Emily G. Nielsen

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Cognitive flexibility is the ability to think diversely in order to solve problems and learn concepts. It has also been suggested that cognitive flexibility supports creativity. Research has demonstrated that creativity is enhanced by moderate volumes of ambient noise. This thesis sought to replicate and extend this line of research by investigating how noise affects cognitive flexibility. Study 1 assessed the effects of noise on three creativity tasks. Performance was found to be enhanced by ambient noise, particularly among those who listen to music while they study/work. Study 2 examined how noise affects performance on a category learning task designed …

Building Metamemorial Knowledge Over Time: Insights From Eye Tracking About The Bases Of Feeling-Of-Knowing And Confidence Judgements, Elizabeth F. Chua, Lisa A. Solinger

Publications and Research

Metamemory processes depend on different factors across the learning and memory time-scale. In the laboratory, subjects are often asked to make prospective feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments about target retrievability, or are asked to make retrospective confidence judgments (RCJs) about the retrieved target. We examined distinct and shared contributors to metamemory judgments, and how they were built over time. Eye movements were monitored during a face-scene associative memory task. At test, participants viewed a studied scene, then rated their FOK that they would remember the associated face. This was followed by a forced choice recognition test and RCJs. FOK judgments were less …

Breaking Apart The Reinforcement Learning Deficit In Schizophrenia, Adam Culbreth

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Reinforcement learning deficits have long been associated with schizophrenia. However, tasks traditionally used to assess these deficits often rely on multiple processing streams leaving the etiology of these task deficits unclear. In the current study, we borrowed a recent framework from computational neuroscience, which separates reinforcement-learning into two distinct systems, model-based and model-free. Under this framework, the model-free system learns about the value of actions in the immediate context, while the model-based system learns about the value of actions in both immediate and subsequent states that may be encountered as a result of their actions. Using a decision task that …

Culture And Cognition: The Role Culture Plays In Cognitive Development In Rural Tanzania, Eileen Seissen

Capstone Collection

This capstone paper examines the perceived difference of cognition in a Tanzanian classroom. It also examines the effects culture has on cognition. It aims to answer the questions: What role does Tanzanian culture play in shaping the cognitive skills of its children? And, from an American trainers perspective, within an experiential learning environment, what cognitive differences are perceived in abstract thinking, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving? Nine American trainers, one Tanzanian trainer, and one Tanzanian student participated in my study. Each participant filled out a questionnaire geared toward understanding their training methods and perceptions of participant's skills and abilities. After …

A Descriptive Analysis Of The Appropriate Use Of Cognitive Bias Terminology In Forensic Science Literature, Courtney A. Winters, Evelyn M. Buday, Trevor I. Stamper

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Cognitive bias occurs without a person’s awareness and can affect decision-making abilities. In forensic science, bias can be especially detrimental to making accurate decisions about the evidence in a criminal investigation. There are many academic studies in identifying, describing, and suggesting ways to mitigate cognitive biases in forensic science. Many authors will give a known cognitive science concept a new name or create their own bias. This is a problem in the literature because nobody knows for sure how many published studies are referring to or testing the same phenomena since authors are using different definitions or terminology to describe …

The Compensatory Role Of Implementation Intentions For Young Adults With Low Working Memory Capacity, J Thadeus Meeks, Margarida Pitães, Gene A. Brewer

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Many factors improve prospective memory performance both inside and outside of the laboratory, including the detailed planning of the situational cue and intended action (i.e., implementation intentions). In the current study, we obtained measures of working memory capacity and laboratory event-based prospective memory performance in college-aged adults. Half of our participants formed an implementation intention in the prospective memory task. Due to evidence that implementation intentions increase the encoding/retrieval efficiency of the prospective memory, it was predicted that forming an implementation intention would serve as a compensatory strategy for those with low working memory ability. Our results supported this hypothesis …

Adult Attachment Styles And Psychopathic Traits: A Relationship Mediated By Empathy And Emotional Regulation?, Chelsea Heim

USC Aiken Psychology Theses

Psychopathic personality traits encompass an array of characteristics that emerge early in life and are influenced by insecure attachments between children and their parents. Disruptions in parent-child interactions also affect the development of empathy (Panfile & Laible, 2010) and emotion regulation (Waters, S. F., Virmani, E. A., Thompson, R. A., Meyer, S., Raikes, H. A. & Jochem, R., 2010), which contributes to lasting impairments in interpersonal working models about the self and others (Mack, Hackney & Pile, 2010). The interactions between psychopathy and insecure attachment, low levels of empathy, and the ability to regulate one’s emotions have been separately investigated …

Facilitating Visual Selective Attention Via Monetary Reward: The Influence Of Feedback, Hedonic Capacity, And Lifetime Major Depressive Disorder, Lauren Elizabeth Taubitz

Theses and Dissertations

Recently, several researchers have demonstrated that reward enhances visual selective attention; however, no one has evaluated how individual differences in reward sensitivity or psychopathology involving disturbances in hedonic capacity (e.g., Major Depressive Disorder (MDD)) affect this process. In this investigation, a novel incentivized visual search task was developed to unite the literatures on reward facilitation of attention with the studies of individual differences in hedonic capacity and remitted MDD (rMDD). 161 undergraduates responded to self-report measures and completed standard and incentivized visual search tasks. In the standard task, subjects had to indicate if a letter F (target) was present or …

Phase Change Lines, Scale Breaks And Trend Lines Using Excel 2013Tm, Neil Deochand

Masters Theses

The development of graphing skills for the behavior analyst is an ongoing process. Specialized graphing software is often expensive, not widely disseminated, and may require specific training. Dixon, et al. (2009) provided an updated task analysis (Carr & Burkholder, 1998) in the widely used platform Excel 2007. Vanselow and Bourret (2012) provided online tutorials outlining some alternate methods also using Office 2007. This article serves as an update to those task analyses with alternative and under-utilized methods in Excel 2013. To examine the utility of our recommendations twelve psychology graduate students were presented with the task analyses and the experimenters …

Retroactive Interference In Recognition Memory: The Effects Of Mental Effort And Similarity On Recollection And Familiarity, Caleb Jordan Picker

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Learning new material may retroactively interfere with memory for older material. Retroactive interference research has typically focused on how similarity between old and new material affects recall of old material, which predicts greatest interference when similar material is presented just before test. However, mental effort may be another source of retroactive interference that could disrupt consolidation: Mental effort could cause the most retroactive interference when presented just after study. In Experiment 1, participants engaged in tasks designed to induce mental effort (e.g., solving easy or difficult math problems) at various times between the study and test of an associative recognition …

The Effect Of Sleep On Perceptual Learning And Memory Consolidation, Vanessa Claire Irsik

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An ability to segregate speech accurately is essential given that most auditory environments contain other overlapping conversations or environmental noise. While perceiving speech among background noise can be difficult in and of itself, those with hearing impairments can experience considerable difficulty. While training has been shown to benefit perceptual segregation of trained sounds, it is unclear how such training transfers to sounds not included in a training regimen. The current study aimed to address this question by training listeners on a portion of sounds during a vowel segregation task, and subsequently testing on both the trained sounds and untrained sounds. …

Altering The Movement: Learning Effects In Beginning And Well-Practiced Flute Players, Andrea Savord

All NMU Master's Theses

This project looks at the extent to which musicians at varying stages of expertise are able to adapt to changes in motor movement (specifically the kinesthetic sense) while playing an instrument. Eight well-practiced and five beginning flute players were tested on playing a major scale on both a modified flute and a traditional flute. The modified flute had altered key positions so that the participants’ right hands were on the same side of the instrument as their left hands. The two modified conditions involved either playing the modified flute with the same fingers as one would play on a traditional …

Prefrontal Cortex Activity During Attentional Bias Conditioning With Fearful Faces: A Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Analysis, Robert D. Torrence

All NMU Master's Theses

Observing a fearful facial expression elicits an automatic orienting of attention. Past research focusing on fear conditioning has used an unconditioned stimulus that the participant directly experiences (e.g. shock). Other research has focused on observational fear learning where the participant watches another individual receive the stimulus. The aim of this study was to condition a colored square with a fearful face in the dot-probe task. Orienting toward and disengagement from fearful faces was also examined using the dot-probe task. In addition, hemodynamic responses in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) were measured using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). It was hypothesized that after pairing …

Spatial Proximity As A Determinant Of Cognitive Control Context, Nathaniel T. Diede

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The speed and flexibility of cognitive control is exemplified by the context-specific proportion congruency (CSPC) effect. Two locations on a computer screen may be biased to present either mostly congruent (MC) stimuli or mostly incongruent (MI) stimuli, necessitating rapid shifts of cognitive control in order to maximize speed and accuracy of responding. The episodic retrieval account has posited that the speed and flexibility of control can be explained by attentional settings being bound with contextual cues (e.g. the location at which a stimulus appears) into an episodic representation—allowing for settings to be retrieved automatically. However, what determines which setting is …

Impaired Executive Function In Concussed Athletes, Marisa Gretz

Neuroscience Summer Fellows

Concussions are classified as mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI). An individual that has sustained a concussion will experience symptoms such as nausea, possible memory loss, blurry vision, or loss of balance. Most symptoms subside within a few days, but a large pool of research raises concern for the recovery of executive function, specifically impulse control. Executive function relates to all tasks that require deliberate attention. Past research has shown adolescents record the highest number of sports concussions when compared to collegiate and professional athletes. The frontal lobe, which controls executive function, is not fully developed during the time of adolescence. …

Event-Related Potential Markers Of Perceptual And Conceptual Speech Processes In Patients With Disorders Of Consciousness., Stephen T. Beukema

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Vegetative state (VS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) patients behaviorally demonstrate absent or fluctuating levels of awareness. Functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence of covert perceptual and semantic speech processing provides prognostic value for these patients. In this thesis, I examined the utility of high-density electroencephalography (EEG) in this regard. A contrast between event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by primed and unprimed word pairs was used to isolate conceptual (semantic) processes, while ERPs elicited by signal-correlated noise were contrasted with those elicited by speech to isolate pre-semantic, perceptual aspects of speech processing. These ERP effects were found to be both temporally and …

The Relationship Between Arousal, Personality, And Perception Of Control In A Gambling Task, Guillaume J. Pagnier

Masters Theses

The somatic marker hypothesis posits that physiological arousal is partially responsible for decision-making behavior. Arousal, measured by skin conductance responses (SCR), increases before deck choice in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). These markers co-vary with performance -- pathological gamblers lack these markers and perform poorly. Personality also modulates IGT behavior – high-novelty-seeking (NS) individuals tend to perform worse. In the IGT, participants decide which deck to select, creating a potential confound between personality, performance, and arousal. For example, high-NS individuals select the bad decks more often, potentially causing habituation and a muted SCR. The first goal of this research was …

Assessment Of Validity And Response Bias In Neuropsychiatric Evaluations, Dustin Wygant, Robert Phillip Granacher

Psychology Faculty and Staff Research

BACKGROUND: Forensic neuropsychiatric assessment requires thorough consideration of malingering and response bias. Neuropsychiatric evaluations are complicated due to the multiple domains in which symptoms and impairment present. Moreover, symptom exaggeration in these evaluations can also present along various symptom domains (e.g., psychological, neurocognitive, somatic). Consequently, steps must be taken to ensure adequate coverage of response bias across all three domains of function.

PURPOSE: The following article reviews the conceptualization of malingering in neuropsychiatric settings, as well as various approaches and measures that can be helpful in the assessment of malingering and response bias.

CONCLUSIONS: Forensic neuropsychiatric assessment requires thorough consideration …

Explicit And Inferred Motives For Nonsuicidal Self-Injurious Acts And Urges In Borderline And Avoidant Personality Disorders, Avigal Snir, Eshkol Rafaeli, Reuma Gadassi, Kathy R. Berenson, Geraldine Downey

Psychology Faculty Publications

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a perplexing phenomenon that may have differing motives. The present study used experience sampling methods (ESM) which inquired explicitly about the motives for NSSI, but also enabled a temporal examination of the antecedents/consequences of NSSI; these allow us to infer other motives which were not explicitly endorsed. Adults (n = 152, aged 18–65) with borderline personality disorder (BPD), avoidant personality disorder (APD), or no psychopathology participated in a 3-week computerized diary study. We examined 5 classes of explicit motives for engaging in NSSI, finding support primarily for internally directed rather than interpersonally directed ones. We then …

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 …