Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Differences In Sustained Attentional Engagement With Emotional Targets In Individuals Reporting High And Low Worry, Jinu J. Mathew

Clinical Psychology Dissertations

Attention bias towards emotionally salient or threatening information has been well documented across various populations, and it has been thought to contribute to the development and maintenance of anxiety. While previous research has identified early-stage attentional differences in individuals reporting elevated anxiety symptoms, less is known about how worry might impact later-stage processes involving sustained attentional engagement and visual working memory. The present study examined behavioral and electrophysiological indices of attentional processing during a modified visual search task in individuals reporting high compared to low levels of worry. Sixty-eight participants were recruited and classified into high and low worry groups …

Obsessive-Compulsive Subtraits And Self-Agency, Jacob Nelson, Cody Barton, Carissa Phillipi Phd

Undergraduate Research Symposium

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is categorized by persistent, unwanted thoughts, called obsessions. and repetitive behaviors, called compulsions. The Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R) is a valid measure of OCD, and breaks the condition into six subtraits: Checking, Hoarding, Obsessing, Ordering, Neutralizing, & Washing. Prior research has suggested that one’s sense of agency, measured through the Sense of Agency Scale (SoAS), is lower in those with higher overall OCI-R scores compared to those with lower scores and controls. Additionally, sub-clinical checking has been negatively correlated with sense of agency, and sub-clinical hoarding and ordering have been positively correlated with sense of agency. However, there …

Hybrid Deep (Cnn-Bilstm) Intrusion Detection For Defense And Mission-Critical Networks, Corey A Cheng, Jermaine Anim-Addo, Asma Jakir Hussain, Zion O Smith-Fox, Sanjay Goel, Yuksel Celik

Military Cyber Affairs

This article examines how hybrid deep learning can strengthen intrusion detection for military and defense networks. Using the CSE-CIC-IDS2018 dataset, the study evaluates a CNN-BiLSTM model designed to detect benign traffic and multiple attack categories, including DDoS, DoS, botnet, brute-force, web attack, and infiltration activity. The model achieved strong multi-class detection performance, with 0.9893 accuracy and 0.9979 ROC-AUC. The findings suggest that AI-supported intrusion detection can improve cyber defense operations, analyst triage, and protection of mission-critical networks.

Foreward, Todd Arnold

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Director: Mastery In Practice, Joseph Schafer

Military Cyber Affairs

No abstract provided.

Refereed Research - Indispensable Yet Not Fully Legitimate: Street Markets As Invisible Subsistence Infrastructure, Raji Srinivasan, Maria C. Merino

Subsistence Marketplaces

Street markets are key provisioning systems across the Global South, supplying fresh food, employment, and retail access absent formal infrastructure. Yet despite street markets’ functional indispensability to millions of low-income consumers, their legitimacy is chronically contested, affirmed by vendors and communities yet challenged by planners, developers, and state authorities who apply formal-economy criteria in evaluating them. We theorize this as a legitimacy paradox and ask what structural mechanisms sustain it? Using composite vignettes grounded in fieldwork, we theorize three mechanisms. First, visibility without recognition: street markets are hyper-visible yet excluded from cognitive templates of legitimate, formal retail. Second, asymmetric essentiality: …

The Hypnagogic State And Hypnagogic Constraint Modulation In Ocd, Ari Rad

Academic Leadership Journal in Student Research

The past few decades of scholarly inquiries on the topic of the hypnagogic state and N1 sleep onset have introduced a new understanding of human general mentation. The underlying phenomenological, psychological, and neurological aspects of the hypnagogic state have been explored in depth by researchers. Hypnagogia and N1 sleep onset have been associated with creativity, spontaneous access to insights, symbolic representation of cognitive processes, and visual and auditory perceptions. The default mode network (DMN) has been largely associated with creativity and spontaneous thinking during N1 sleep onset. This paper reviews the basics of the neurology and phenomenology of N1 and …

Retrieval Information From Working Memory: The Output Gating Framework Perspective And Its Underlying Processes, Chen Tiferet-Dweck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Working memory (WM) keeps information accessible and available for further processing. However, not all the information we maintain in WM is behaviorally relevant at any given moment. To act effectively, we must dynamically control which memory representations are accessed to support ongoing goal-directed behavior. While the mechanisms underlying the selection of single items from WM access are comparatively well-studied, less is known about the principles governing multi-item access. Existing models of WM access imply that selecting multiple items should take longer and be more error-prone than single-item access. Yet, paradoxically, prior studies have shown that retrieving all items in WM …

Motivation, Empowerment, And Entrepreneurial Intentions: A Pls-Sem Analysis Of Female Students In Algeria, Lotfi Mekhzoumi, Salima Ben Omar, Abderrazak Laouid, Sabrina Chikh-Amnache

Journal of Global Business Insights

This paper investigates the multidimensional nature of women’s empowerment and its impact on entrepreneurial intentions among female students at the University of El Oued, Algeria. It aims to clarify how motivational factors and perceived barriers interact with psychological, social, political, and economic empowerment to shape entrepreneurial aspirations in a developing economy context. A stratified sample of 353 female university students was used for quantitative research. A validated online questionnaire assessed entrepreneurial intention, motivation, empowerment, and barriers. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to test direct, indirect, and mediating effects between constructs, along with rigorous reliability and validity …

Psychological Adaptation In Colorectal Cancer Survivors: Pilot Study Findings, Anuja L. Sarode, Emily M. Su, Amber Kerstetter-Fogle, Steve Paciorek, Erica L. Laipply

HCA Healthcare Journal of Medicine

Background

In this pilot study, we examined psychological impacts of colorectal cancer (CRC), focusing on cancer-related posttraumatic stress disorder (CR-PTSD) symptoms, posttraumatic growth (PTG), and their relationship with coping strategies in surgically treated CRC patients.

Methods

This prospective pre- and postoperative pilot study assessed CRC patients at 2 time points, pre- and postoperative. Psychological symptoms were evaluated using the PTSD Checklist for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (PCL-5) and the PTG Inventory Short Form (PTGI-SF). Coping strategies were assessed using the Brief Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced (COPE) instrument. Changes in CR-PTSD, PTG, and coping …

Breaking The Cycle: From Victimization To Offending Through The Lens Of Human Services, Colette R. Penalosa

Master of Arts in Human Services

The victim-offender overlap challenges the common view that victims and offenders are separately labeled by recognizing that both groups have experienced significant childhood trauma, physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, neglect, and other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Current research implies these experiences can increase the risk of offending as they all influence cognitive and behavioral development while leaving criminal behavior undetermined. The purpose of this capstone is to analyze the relationship between childhood victimization and offending from a human service perspective; analyzing the pathways a victim takes on the road to offending. Research conducted will focus on exploring the victim-offender overlap, …

How Do Dual Tasks Affect Id Verification? A Mobile Eye-Tracking Analysis, Nathan Wieters

Masters Theses (Archived)

ID screening is a two-part process — the card and identity must be authenticated. Psychological research has typically focused on identity verification without considering card verification. To fill this gap, the present study had participants complete an ID verification task while wearing eye-tracking glasses to record gaze behavior during face-matching decisions. After 2 practice trials, a research assistant presented 48 physical ID cards with embedded facial images, one at a time, beside a computer monitor that presented a facial videos and calendar date. Participants were asked to decide if the ID card was valid on a 6-option scale from Definitely …

Artificial Intelligence (Ai) In Mental Health: Perceptions Of Ai Therapists, Ulker Yusupova

Discovery Day - Daytona Beach

This study explores how people perceive Artificial Intelligence (AI) therapists compared to human therapists, focusing on differences in empathy, effectiveness, and competence. As AI tools like ChatGPT and mental health chatbots become more commonly used for emotional support, it is important to understand how users evaluate them in comparison to human professionals. To begin addressing this, in the first part of the study, participants reviewed therapist-client conversation transcripts and identified whether they believed the therapist was human or AI-generated, helping us validate the materials for the main study. Notably, initial findings suggest that participants frequently relied more on surface-level language …

Understanding And Responding To Childhood Trauma In The Classroom, Kara L. Ganzer

Master of Arts in Human Services

This capstone explored childhood trauma as a significant public health and educational issue because of its widespread impact on children’s development, learning, behavior, and educational experiences. A review of the current literature was conducted to examine adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), the neurobiological and developmental effects of childhood trauma, its impact within educational settings, and the trauma-informed approaches for supporting students who have experienced adversity. The literature suggested that childhood trauma can disrupt brain development, executive functioning, emotional regulation, attention, memory, and stress-response systems, contributing to academic, behavioral, and social-emotional challenges within the classroom. Findings also highlighted the important role schools …

Repairing Workplace Trust: A Process-Based Classroom Exercise For Management Education, Luke A. Langlinais Ph.D.

Posters

Trust is essential in every workplace, but conflicts, mistakes, and broken promises are inevitable. This project develops an experiential classroom exercise in which students diagnose workplace trust violations, examine the perspectives and emotions of both parties, and practice selecting and communicating evidence-based reparative actions. The exercise translates organizational behavior research into a practical learning experience that develops not only managerial competence but also the character, empathy, and relational wisdom needed to build healthy organizations and promote human flourishing.

I gratefully acknowledge peer review feedback on this project, and I am accountable for writing of this product without generative AI and …

The Consequences Of Using Human Behavior To Train Ai, Lauren Treiman

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now an integral part of everyday decision making. These systems not only help us make choices but also learn from our behavior. Therefore, it is important to understand how our interactions with AI influence these systems. Current approaches often assume that the behavior used to train AI accurately reflects how people would naturally behave. However, people are often informed that their choices will be used for AI training, and as a result, may change how they would normally act. In this dissertation, we combine psychological and computer science perspectives to investigate the consequences of this awareness. …

How Philip K. Dick Used The Unreliable Narrator To Transport Unwitting Acolytes, Michael Barros, Jordi Smith

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay examines the use of the unreliable narrator to transport the reader into narrative worlds, specifically in Philip K. Dick's fiction. By exploring the phenomenon of narrative transportation and the role of emotions in engagement with fiction, we argue that Dick's use of the unreliable narrator significantly engages and transports readers into his narrative worlds. Subsequently, we contend that his belief in the fundamental reality of those worlds is effectively positioning himself as a gatekeeper and mediator between the narrative world and the real world, which sets him, in his mind, as a prophet, using fiction as a tool …

A Poetic Call For And A Reflection And Commentary On Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, And Compassion, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Finding a published poem I had written as a teenager, titled “The Heavens Weep.” this article uses that poem as the basis for a commentary that reflects on the state of the world today (2026),  As a commentary, the article uses the poetic and metaphoric words in the poem as a relevant "reality check" for what is still going on today.  In essence, the commentary is about a call for Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, and Compassion, or what I call Archetypal Energies, Higher Vibrational Energies that operate deep within our individual and collective psyches to creatively urge us to "see" …

Explaining The Relationship Between Trust And Dependence: The Unexplored Interactive Effect Of Workload And Individual Differences In Cognitive Abilities, Connie Ku

All Dissertations

Trust is often treated as a key driver of automation use, with the assumption that higher trust leads to greater dependence. Yet findings have been inconsistent, with trust-dependence correlations ranging from negative to positive, and some studies finding no relationship at all. One factor that may explain this inconsistency is mental workload, which has received little attention as a moderator. This research examined whether workload moderates the trust-dependence relationship, and whether attention control, working memory, and fluid intelligence further shape this moderation.

Study 1 used a web-based AI chatbot quiz to test whether workload moderated the trust-dependence relationship. Trust was …

The Joint Effect Of Bilingualism And Sleep On Executive Functions Among Children And Adolescents With Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (Adhd), Yirou Jiang

Doctoral Dissertations

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that significantly impacts cognitive and behavioral functions, leading challenges for individuals across the lifespan. While extensive research has been conducted to understand the connection between executive functioning (EF) and ADHD, research findings related to the contributing factors of bilingualism and sleep still remains inconsistent (Bialystok et al., 2017). Investigating the joint effect between bilingualism and sleep on EF among children and adolescents with ADHD may help further clarify the connection between EF, language, and sleep, and facilitate the development of interventions from the perspective of these protective factors. EF encompasses cognitive processes …

The Relationship Between Depression And Cognitive Proficiency Index Across Biological Sex, Angela N. Ferdinardo

Dissertations

Depression is a widely studied mood disorder, and understanding its effect on cognitive functioning has become an important area of research. While research has examined relationships among depression, working memory, and cognitive deficits, limited research has explored depressive symptoms and cognitive proficiency across biological sex. Depression manifests similarly in men and women, though men are more likely to experience irritability, impulsivity, and anger, while women tend to experience sadness, stress, and sleep disturbances (Johns Hopkins Medicine, 2023). Women are also more likely to seek treatment and cope differently than men. This study examined the relationship between depression and cognitive proficiency …

The Effects Of Sexual Orientation Stereotype Information And Prejudice On False Memories, Source Monitoring Errors, And Social Categorization Judgments, Julia Belen Strickland Nunez

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Minoritized groups, such as the LGBTQ+ community, receive many harmful and destructive stereotypes from others. These negative views affect minorities because when people are recalling a memory, they fill in the gaps with general information that they know. When the schematic information is not accurate, people tend to remember information that was not originally presented; this is known as a false memory. When people accurately recall a memory, but not the source of the memory, it is known as a source monitoring error.

The current study investigated whether stereotype-consistent information leads to more false memories and source monitoring errors as …

Comparing Online Versus In-Person Administration Of Cognitive Tasks And Evaluating Their Predictive Utility Of Inattention Symptoms And Related Behaviors, Cameron Pothoven

Master's Theses

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with less developed working memory (WM) processes, theorized to be a core contributing factor in the development of ADHD and a predictor of ADHD symptom severity (Alderson et al., 2013; Rapport et al., 2008). Objective measures inclusive of working memory tasks, when used in conjunction with self-report measures, have been previously shown to increase the accuracy of diagnosing ADHD (Marshal et al., 2021. However, given that WM is typically assessed by a trained clinician, it is unclear how accurate and comparable online administration of adapted WM tasks are to their in-person counterparts. …

Testing P300-Based Biometric Authentication Paradigms, Jordan Razzak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bench research suggests that P300 amplitude is greater in response to self-relevant stimuli compared to familiar stimuli. This effect could enable a novel method of biometric authentication based on the self-relevant P300. This dissertation aims to: (1) determine the optimal presentation paradigm for leveraging self-relevance in P300-based biometric authentication, and (2) investigate P300 responses from self-relevant stimuli versus stimuli learned over the course of a week.

Two presentation paradigms were compared – rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) and matrix presentation (MP). Participant-specific RSVP and MP classifiers were trained by applying stepwise linear discriminant analysis to data collected during presentations of …

The Influence Of Shape Complexity And Exploratory Behavior On Grasping, Mckenzie Gunter

Dissertations

People can orient and configure their hands in many ways in order to grasp objects. The current study investigates how object shape and hand placement influence graspability of objects, and how experimentally imposed constraints on grasping type alter grasping behavior. In a recent study, Gunter and Hajnal (under review) found that the ratio of object curvature and maximal handspan is the variable that defines the affordance of graspability. The current study aims to extend these findings by employing a more precise measurement of finger placement in two experiments using 3D printed objects as stimuli. To capture varying complexities of object …

What Makes A Cozy Game Cozy? Looking Through The Lens Of Feminism And 4e Cognition, Mary Catherine M. Wilcox

All Theses

Why do some games feel cozy, and others miss the mark, even if they are tricked out in bright colors and festooned with bows? This thesis examines the emerging genre of “cozy games” to better understand why some titles successfully evoke comfort and relaxation while others fail, despite relying on conventionally cute aesthetics or farming-sim mechanics. Although cozy games have grown rapidly in popularity over the past decade, the genre remains under-studied and is often dismissed as frivolous, reflecting the broader historical devaluation of media associated with women. Accordingly, this study argues that understanding cozy games requires examining women’s relationship …

Cbd's Impact On Learning, Memory, And Anxiety: A Dose Response, Audrey Camacho

Psychology ETDs

Cannabidiol (CBD) is widely utilized for its therapeutic properties, yet its impact on an unmanipulated model at baseline behavior remains poorly understood. This study investigates CBD’s dose-dependent behavioral profile on spatial learning, memory, and anxiety using Long-Evans rats. Subjects received a vehicle, 20 mg/kg, or 40 mg/kg CBD dose prior to assessment in the Morris Water Task (MWT) and Elevated Plus Maze (EPM). MWT results indicated consistent Day 1 learning, but the 40 mg/kg dose induced a temporary disruption 24 hours post-treatment. Performance returned to baseline by day 6. On the EPM, traditional anxiety markers remained unchanged. While CBD did …

Assessment And Classification Of Idiosyncratic Behavioral Sequences In Rodent Navigation, Max G. Segal

Psychology ETDs

The Morris Water Task (MWT) has been the gold standard assessment of place learning and memory for over four decades, yet the processes that contribute to successful navigation are not completely understood. It is generally posited that rats learn to navigate directly to a place; however, navigation is not perfectly direct but contains variation in swim speed and trajectory resulting in efficient, yet suboptimal paths. Gonçalves-Garcia et al. (2024) demonstrated that path topography is quantitatively similar across trials within individual rats for a given start location, and dissimilar between rats and different start locations within rat. This suggests rats may …

Stop Blaming My Users: Illumination Of The Technocentric Mythos Bias, Ervin H. Frenzel, Richard Lightcap

Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research and Practice

 Abstract -This conceptual essay addresses the need for systemic and systematic transdisciplinary analytical techniques within cybersecurity and technical security. This conceptual essay is contingent upon recognition that cybersecurity is not simply technical in nature, it does not need an adversary, and more importantly it is based upon systems engineering and systems thinking.  The essay contributes a socio-technical attribution chain and field-specific ontology/taxonomy which distinguish user-triggered events from root causes, latent conditions, technical debt, validation failures, governance failures, and attribution bias before assigning responsibility to end users. It systematically defines an ontology inclusive of developer technical debt, organizational debt arising from …

Sleep Restriction And Its Affects On Mood, April M. Rummery Lamb

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

Sleep plays a fundamental role in the human body being able to function effectively, in particular it plays an essential role in mood regulation. Previous research on sleep and mood has found that there is a correlation between receiving an inadequate amount of sleep and having a negative mood. However, the current field has mostly looked at the relationship between disordered sleep and mood disorders as opposed to everyday sleep patterns and daily mood. The present study aims to look at how sleep restrictions which occur naturally (not caused by sleep disorders such as insomnia) effect daily mood. To conduct …