Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Visual Modulation Of Resting State Α Oscillations, Kelly Webster, Tony Ro

Publications and Research

Once thought to simply reflect passive cortical idling, recent studies have demonstrated that α oscillations play a causal role in cognition and perception. However, whether and how cognitive or sensory processes modulate various components of the α rhythm is poorly understood. Sensory input and resting states were manipulated in human subjects while electroencephalography (EEG) activity was recorded in three conditions: eyes-open fixating on a visual stimulus, eyes-open without visual input (darkness), and eyes-closed without visual input (darkness). We show that α power and peak frequency increase when visual input is reduced compared to the eyes open, fixating condition. These results …

You’Re The Boss: The Stereotype Content Model As A Predictive Behavioral Tool In Résumé Evaluation Processes, Caylin M. Faria

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Extensive literature has confirmed that hiring discrimination is a persistent problem; less research has focused on the social cognitive mechanisms of prejudicial hiring and its effects on résumé evaluations. The present study evaluated how stereotyped evaluations of minority candidates could be predicted with the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) dimensions of warmth and competence. No published research has demonstrated how SCM group ratings may predict evaluations of individuals and their qualifications for employment. Participants evaluated two résumés for each of five listed job positions and completed a survey packet. One résumé in each pair suggested membership in a minority group: Muslim, …

Influences Of Reasoning And Achievement Motivation On Complex Problem Solving In A New Microworld Operationalization, Stephan Bartholdy, Ulrike Kipman

Journal of Global Education and Research

Complex Problem Solving (CPS) can be defined as those psychological processes that enable a person to achieve goals under complex conditions, which are characterized by their complexity, connectivity, dynamics, lack of transparency, and polytely. Although many hypothesized influences have previously been tested concerning their relevance for the process of solving complex problems (e.g., general intelligence), results were often found to be rather heterogeneous. As this was found to be partially caused by fundamental differences between measurements of CPS, a new operationalization was used in the present study: Following the Microworld approach, CPS was assessed in the simulation game Cities: Skylines …

Components Of Mindfulness Training: Impacts On Attention And Affect, Maximilian Fey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The literature on mindfulness supports a distinction between two components of non-judgmental acceptance and directed attention. The present research analyzed whether there are distinct differences in attentional capabilities or affect between mindfulness inductions which differed in either including only directed attention or directed attention and non-judgmental acceptance. I hypothesized that the acceptance component of mindfulness would increase participants sustained attentional capabilities relative to a control condition; furthermore, I hypothesized that the non-judgmental acceptance component of mindfulness would lead to significant increases in positive affect and decreases in negative affect relative to control. Lastly, I hypothesized that an individual difference measure …

知的生産性を飛躍させる録音システム, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

This article explains the benefits of using a recording system, what it is, and why it works. Our intelligence has many unexplored potentials, and by using this recording system, such latent abilities can be utilized for intellectual productivity.

Recording System That Dramatically Increases Intellectual Productivity, Yoshihiko Ariizumi

Learning, Teaching, & Researching Optimization

この記事は、録音システムを使う利点、それが具体的にはどのような活動であり、なぜそのような効果が出るのかについて説明されている。私たちの知性にはまだ多くの研究されていない潜在的な能力があり、この録音システムを使うことによって、そのように眠っている能力を知的生産性のために利用することができる。

Visual Illusion Susceptibility In Dogs Using The Ebbinghaus-Titchener Illusion In A Spontaneous Choice Task, Nicolette Becker

Theses and Dissertations

In recent years, dogs have been a popular test subject when studying visual illusion susceptibility. Multiple studies have investigated whether animals perceive illusions as humans do, but few studies have evaluated dogs’ perception of illusory stimuli. In this thesis, we studied if dogs are visually susceptible to the Ebbinghaus-Titchener illusion when presented in a spontaneous choice task. Subjects were presented two visual images on a board, which had bologna pieces embedded in the stimuli. In control trials, two different sized bologna pieces were placed in the center of the images. In these control conditions, dogs were expected to choose the …

Relationships Between Personality Type And Cognitive Ability In Marmoset Monkeys (Callithrix Jacchus), Zachary Marciano

Masters Theses

Personality refers to multiple traits that are thought to be stable over time and across situations. It is recognized that personality has a neural basis and is associated with health outcomes. Whether personality is also associated with cognitive ability, however, is still a matter of intense debate. One way to examine these potential relationships is to use a nonhuman primate model for which complexities present in humans can be minimized. Recent research into the varying personality types of marmoset monkeys suggests that there are predominantly three to five core primary domains that most marmosets and other primates can be categorized …

Self-Concept Clarity And The Bodily Self: Malleability Across Modalities, Sonia A. Krol, Rémi Thériault, Jay A. Olson, Amir Raz, Jennifer A. Bartz

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

The self has fascinated scholars for centuries. Although theory suggests that the self-concept (cognitive self-understanding) and bodily self (pre-reflective awareness of one’s body) are related, little work has examined this notion. To this end, in Study 1, participants reported on self-concept clarity (SCC) and completed the rubber hand illusion (RHI), a paradigm in which synchronous (vs. asynchronous) stimulation between a prosthetic hand and one’s own hand leads one to “embody” the prosthetic hand. Whereas participants were equally susceptible to the RHI during synchronous stroking, low-SCC individuals were more vulnerable to the illusion during asynchronous stroking, when the effect is unwarranted. …

Texas, The Death Penalty, And Intellectual Disability, Megan Green

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

Visual Entrainment Of Perception-Related Neural Oscillations As A Mechanism For Maintaining Rhythmic Temporal Expectations Across A Wide Range Of Frequencies, Michael James Gray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Visual sensitivity fluctuates rhythmically, in-synch with ongoing, EEG-recorded neural oscillations across a wide range of frequencies (~1-25hz). Some recent work has suggested that these perception-related neural oscillations can be entrained by rhythmic visual stimulation. Evidence is also emerging that the entrainment of ongoing oscillations in visual and auditory cortices is involved in rhythmic temporal expectations. In the introduction chapter, I attempt to bridge these bodies of literature and hypothesize that rhythmic visual stimuli automatically entrain ongoing, perception-related neural oscillations and that this mechanism supports the maintenance of rhythmic temporal expectations. Chapters 2 and 3 address this hypothesis from different angles. …

The Use Of Infographics To Assess Context Processing, Beliz Hazan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Among high-order cognitive functions is the use of context to enhance comprehension of language or visual scenes. Although use of context is known to be impaired in certain clinical populations (e.g., schizophrenia), no existing test adequately assesses this construct. To fill this gap, we developed and attempted to validate a test of context use that employed Infographics (information graphics), which requires the use of context to interpret visual displays. The primary hypothesis was that interpreting Infographics would be sensitive to context processing. We further hypothesized that different levels of cognitive processing (requiring basic perceptual, real-world application, or verbal reasoning), as …

Interpreting Intentions: Evidence For Cross-Language Influences In Bilinguals, Maziyah Mohamed

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In Malay, accidental actions are marked with the prefix -ter. Malay speakers typically assume a deliberate intent when the prefix is absent. I investigated whether Malay-English bilinguals are more likely than English monolinguals to interpret actions in English sentences as deliberate when they are not clearly indicated as being accidental. In Experiment 1, Malay speakers completed a recognition memory task. The results showed that Malay speakers remembered unintentionality accurately. This accuracy in remembering unintentionality suggests that Malay speakers encode the intentions of others. In Experiment 2, participants completed a cross-modal priming task. They first heard scenarios in which a …

Exploring Innovation And Behavioral Flexibility In African Lions (Panthera Leo) And Snow Leopards (Panthera Uncia), Victoria L. O'Connor

Theses and Dissertations

Intelligence may have evolved to help animals problem-solve in their physical and/or social environments, which enables them to cope with changes in their environments. Humans can reduce wildlife conflict by understanding how species that face harsh environments assess a situation and alter their behavior. Tests for cognitive behavior aim to formulate clear behavioral criteria for inferring an animal’s mental processes. We designed a custom multi-access puzzle box (MAB) to present a simple and effective behavioral test for exploring innovation in two species, African lions (Panthera leo) and snow leopards (Panthera uncia). Despite being vastly underrepresented in …

Behavioral Hypervigilance In A Normative Population, Karly Weinreb

Theses and Dissertations

Hypervigilance is conceptualized as a symptom of trauma-related disorders, however it can also occur in a normative population. To distinguish normative hypervigilance from trauma-related hypervigilance, 372 participants (123 trauma-exposed and 249 non-trauma-exposed) completed a questionnaire assessing hypervigilance in contexts. Trauma-exposed participants reported greater levels of hypervigilance in 3 contexts.

Characterizing The Familiar-Voice Benefit To Intelligibility, Beatriz Ysabel Domingo

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Everyday listening often occurs in the presence of background noise. Listeners with normal hearing can often successfully segregate competing sounds from the signal of interest. To do this, listeners exploit a variety of cues to facilitate the separation of simultaneous sounds into separate sources, and group sequential sounds into intelligible speech streams. One of the cues that has been shown to be an effective facilitator of speech intelligibility is familiarity with a talker’s voice. A recent study by Johnsrude et al. (2013) measured speech intelligibility of a naturally familiar voice (i.e., that of a long-term spouse) and showed a …

Language Access In Early And Late Spanish-English Bilinguals: An Erp Study, Lissete Gimenez-Arce

Student Theses

Research suggests that code-switching between two languages is possible because there is nonselective access to both languages, i.e., both languages are interdependent and stored in a shared lexicon. In this study, we used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to measure the neural processes associated with language access, in particular, the ERP components: N200 and N400. Although previous studies have utilized these ERPs to investigate language access using interlingual homographs, i.e., words that look the same in two languages but have different meanings, these have focused on comparisons of monolingual and bilinguals. In contrast, we used a design that looked at Spanish …

Like Me, Do What I Say, & Think About My Influence: The Effects On Witness Choosing And Metacognition, Brittany Race

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Confidence can be a strong predictor of accuracy if circumstances are ideal (Wixted & Wells, 2017), but ideal circumstances are not always present. As such it is important to understand ways to ameliorate potentially negative effects on eyewitness metacognition. Rapport building, though seen as an important element of police/witness interaction (Vallano et al., 2015), can lead to some potentially negative memory effects (Wright et al., 2015). Additionally steering, or the process of directing a witness toward a particular suspect, can increase false identifications. Recently the researcher has developed a paradigm meant to better calibrate confidence by reinstating the context of …

How Does Alcohol Intoxication Impair Risk Detection Of Sexual Assault? Testing An Integration Of Alcohol Myopia And Social Information Processing Theories, Alexander James Melkonian

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sexual assault among young adults is a highly prevalent public health concern. Alcohol is often implicated as a risk factor for sexual assault through its impairing effects on an individual’s ability to process and respond to social cues in the environment. The effect of alcohol myopia can result in greater focus of attention on salient environmental cues. The relationship between alcohol intoxication and resulting behavior may depend on what type of information is most salient. The current study examined the effects of alcohol on social information processing as it relates to sexual assault risk detection. Method: Participants were 48 young …

Across Continents And Demographics, Unpredictable Maternal Signals Are Associated With Children's Cognitive Function, Elyssia Poggi Davis, Riikka Korja, Linnea Karlsson, Laura Glynn, Curt A. Sandman, Brian Vegetabile, Eeva-Leena Kataja, Saara Nolvi, Eija Sinervä, Juho Pelto, Hasse Karlsson, Hal S. Stern, Tallie Z. Baram

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Background

Early life experiences have persisting influence on brain function throughout life. Maternal signals constitute a primary source of early life experiences, and their quantity and quality during sensitive developmental periods exert enduring effects on cognitive function and emotional and social behaviors. Here we examined if, in addition to established qualitative dimensions of maternal behavior during her interactions with her infant and child, patterns of maternal signals may contribute to the maturation of children's executive functions. We focused primarily on effortful control, a potent predictor of mental health outcomes later in life.

Methods

In two independent prospective cohorts in Turku, …

The Influence Of Tropical Climate On Cognitive Task Performance And Aiming Accuracy In Young International Fencers, Nicolas Robin, Aurelie Collado, Stephane Sinnapah, Elisabeth Rosnet, Olivier Hue, Guillaume R. Coudevylle

Journal of Human Performance in Extreme Environments

This study examined how a tropical climate (TC) influences the cognitive and aiming task performances of young international fencers. The participants performed the tasks in TC and an air-conditioned room. In each session, they completed questionnaires evaluating affective states, fatigue, and comfort and thermal sensations. They also carried out cognitive tasks (simple and choice reaction time, attention, and vigilance tasks) and a motor task testing aiming accuracy with a sword while wearing protective clothing and a mask. TC, which was observed to decrease thermal discomfort, was revealed to decrease aiming accuracy and positive affective states. There was no deleterious effect …

Attention As A Mechanism For Object-Object Binding In Complex Scenes, Kacie Mennie

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The current study attempted to determine whether direct binding between objects in complex scenes occurs as a function of directed attention at encoding. In Experiment 1, participants viewed objects in one of these different types contexts: unique scenes, similar scenes, or arrays with no contextual information. Critically, only half of the objects were attended for each encoding trial. Participants then completed an associative recognition task on pairs of items created from the previously studied scenes. Test pairs consisted of two attended or unattended objects, and were associated with a unique scene, a similar scene, or an array. Evidence of binding …

Changes In Color Guidance Over The Course Of A Complex Visual Search, Ryan Papargiris

Masters Theses

When searching for an object, we store a mental representation of the target, which guides our search through the use of attention. The effectiveness of this search guidance varies depending on the task and the relationship between target and distractors. With a better understanding of how search guidance changes over time within a trial, we can better compare the differences between experimental conditions. Eye tracking data from a variety of search tasks were analyzed to determine how color guidance varied over the course of the trial. Color guidance for a given fixation was evaluated based on the distance in color …

Cross-Linguistic Effects Of Intention Recognition In Malay Bilinguals, Maziyah Mohamed, Debra Jared

Western Research Forum

Does the language we speak influence the way we interpret intentions of others? Prior literature has shown that obligatory markers in a language may influence the way we think. In Malay texts, accidental actions are marked using a prefix. Malay speakers are, thus, quick to identify the accidental actions of others. Conversely, it may be that Malay speakers often interpret intentions as deliberate given a more ambiguous context where the prefix is absent. The goal of the current study was to determine whether this way of interpreting one’s intentions of others extends to English texts for Malay-English bilinguals. In Study …

The Effects Of Cognitive Bias, Examiner Experience, And Stimulus Material On Forensic Evidence Analysis, Michelle M. Pena

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Forensic examiners have come under scrutiny in recent years because of high profile exoneration cases that have highlighted the negative impact contextual bias can have on investigations including forensic evidence analyses. This has led to several proposed solutions to reduce the effects of bias including blind testing and redacting task-irrelevant information. However, practitioners have not been receptive to such recommendations because of the limitations found in past research, such as the use of untrained undergraduate students to examine complex pieces of forensic evidence (e.g., fingerprints). The current study thus had the following aims: (a) examine the effect of contextual bias …

“A” For Effort: Rewarding Effortful Retrieval Attempts Improves Learning From General Knowledge Errors In Women, Damon Abraham, Kateri Mcrae, Jennifer A. Mangels

Psychology: Faculty Scholarship

Previous research has shown that the prospect of attaining a reward can promote task-engagement, up-regulate attention toward reward-relevant information, and facilitate enhanced encoding of new information into declarative memory. However, past research on reward-based enhancement of declarative memory has focused primarily on paradigms in which rewards are contingent upon accurate responses. Yet, findings from test-enhanced learning show that making errors can also be useful for learning if those errors represent effortful retrieval attempts and are followed by corrective feedback. Here, we used a challenging general knowledge task to examine the effects of explicitly rewarding retrieval effort, defined as a semantically …

Modeling Melodic Dictation, David John Baker

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Melodic dictation is a cognitively demanding process that requires students to hear a melody, then without any access to an external reference, transcribe the melody within a limited time frame. Despite its ubiquity in curricula within School of Music settings, exactly how an individual learns a melody is not well understood. This dissertation aims to fill the gap in the literature between aural skills practitioners and music psychologists in order to reach conclusions that can be applied systematically in pedagogical contexts. In order to do this, I synthesize literature from music theory, music psychology, and music education in order to …

The Effects Of Working Memory Capacity And Trait Anxiety On Visual Short-Term Memory Performance, Celene Gonzalez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Anxiety is of importance within the field of cognition because it is often associated with adverse effects on attention, information processing, learning and memory (Eysenck, 1992, 2007). In existing literature, it has been reported that trait anxiety hinders cognitive performance (i.e., working memory capacity WMC). However, the relationship between trait anxiety and cognitive performance might be moderated by working memory capacity (WMC). For example, Owens (2014) reported that trait anxiety was negatively correlated with cognitive performance in the low WMC group and positively correlated to cognitive performance in the high WMC group. Although, past research on the working memory system …

Neurological Correlates Of The Dunning-Kruger Effect, Alana Lauren Muller

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a metacognitive phenomenon in which individuals who perform poorly on a task believe they performed well, whereas individuals who performed very well believe their performance was only average. To date, this effect has only been investigated in the context of performance on mathematical, logical, or lexical tasks, but has yet to be explored for its generalizability in episodic memory task performance. We used a novel method to elicit the Dunning-Kruger Effect via a memory test of item and source recognition confidence. Participants studied 4 lists of words and were asked to make a simple decision about …

Blending Inductive And Deductive Processes In The English/Language Arts Classroom, Joseph M. Lynch

The Advocate

This article attempts to demonstrate how the inductive and deductive processing modes function together. Educational models associated with an inductive learning process provide a great opportunity for students to assess their accountability in the learning process. However, the lessons gleaned from such an inductive approach can be more insight-provoking when a synthesis of (or at least access to) deductive processing occurs. The topic is presented in two parts: The first part constitutes a review of the inductive/deductive dynamic through research, study, and theory across multiple learning contexts. The second part presents a qualitative study and data examples for the purposes …