Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Exploring Primary Care Providers’ Compassionate Care And Their Evidence-Based Practice With Death, Grief, And Loss: Patient Experience And Perspective, Kathryn Krzykala

Dissertations

Research on primary care providers’ (PCPs) education regarding Death, Grief, and Loss (DGL) remains limited. Specifically, data is lacking regarding patients' perceptions and opinions on what they need and expect from their PCPs regarding grief and loss. This exploratory mixed-method study comprised 146 participants who had experienced death and non-death loss. It examined participants' perceptions of 1) PCP compassion, 2) PCP utilization of evidence-based grief and loss practices, 3) their own level of comfort discussing DGL with their PCPs during medical visits, and 4) their personal grief and loss experiences. The findings revealed that PCPs' grief-informed evidence-based treatment, as reflected …

The Relationship Between Cognitive Control And Individual Differences In Working Memory Capacity: A High-Density Eeg Study, Conghao Gao

All NMU Master's Theses

Empirical evidence has suggested a close relationship between human working memory capacity and cognitive control approaches. Proactive control refers to the anticipatory, sustainable maintenance of cognitive control process. However, the relationship between higher working memory capacity and the use of proactive cognitive control has been inconsistent. Understanding the neural bases would substantially expand our current understanding of cognitive control and working memory models. Specifically, the examination of P3b amplitude, part of the event-related potential, evoked by a cue would provide further understanding in neural mechanisms of cognitive control. The current study examined participants’ cognitive control approaches and their electrocortical activity …

Animal Assisted Interventions For Older Adults Experiencing Cognitive Impairment, Preeti Bachu

Psychology

As individuals age, they often experience gradual declines in cognitive abilities that ultimately affect their quality of life and independence. Severe cognitive decline is not necessarily a natural or universal part of the aging process and tends to be exacerbated by various neurodegenerative diseases, most notably Alzheimer's disease (Colita et al., 2024). There have been promising outcomes of animal assisted interventions in improving the conditions of several populations and spaces, including educational, rehabilitative, and therapeutic settings. Animal assisted therapy specifically is delivered by a qualified or licensed health professional. Previous research has shown a large benefit in long-term memory, verbal …

From Pathology To Ecology: Rethinking Student Well-Being Through Consciousness-Centered Education, Molly Beauregard

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article revisits a five-year mixed-methods study conducted from 2012 to 2018, involving 207 student participants (n = 207), of an undergraduate sociology course—Consciousness, Creativity, and Identity—that integrated group meditation and mindfulness into a standard curriculum. Earlier analyses interpreted positive outcomes primarily as reductions in stress and improvements in attention among students. This paper reconsiders that interpretation, arguing that such a framing risks locating dysfunction within students rather than the social and cultural environments they inhabit.

Drawing on an ecological perspective, the study reexamines survey, reflection, and interview data documenting changes, not only in affect and attention, …

The Nature Of Physical Bravery: A Principal Component Analysis Of Bravery Using Personality Attributes, Trauma History, And Resilience In A Mixed Military And Civilian Sample, Colin Simsarian, Daniel Baldini, Brenda E. Hammond, Julianna Christofi, Sana F. Usmani, Holly M. Mcgrath, Carolina Rader, Erik Wendel Rice, James Moses, Bruce Bongar

Heroism Science

Heroism is a complex phenomenon shaped by psychological constructs such as bravery and courage, yet empirical research on physical bravery remains limited. This study examined the relationships among physical bravery, personality traits, trauma history, and resilience in a sample of military servicemembers and civilians (N = 197; M age = 27.69). Participants completed the Physical Bravery Survey, and data were analyzed using principal component analysis. Results identified four components explaining 70.52% of the variance in responses. Findings suggest that physically brave individuals tend to be adventurous, cognitively flexible, self-confident, humorous, resilient, and more likely to report a history of trauma. …

Determinants Of Corporal Punishment And Severe Physical Punishment In Egypt: A Mixed-Methods Analysis For Child Protection Policy, Marwa Moustafa Nassef

Theses and Dissertations

Corporal punishment (CP) and severe physical punishment (SPP) remain a major public health, child rights, and child protection policy concern. In Egypt, despite legislative reforms, survey-weighted analysis of the 2021 Egypt Family Health Survey (EFHS) 2021 (CAPMAS, 2022) reveals prevalence rates of 60.5% for CP and 27.4% for SPP among children aged 1–14 (author’s calculations using EFHS-2021, n=7623), yet evidence distinguishing the determinants of routine corporal punishment from escalation to severe physical punishment remains limited in low- and middle-income contexts. Guided by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework, this mixed-methods study identifies key drivers of CP and its escalation to SPP among Egyptian …

Racism In The Science And Practice Of Psychotherapy, Richard E. Redding, Craig L. Frisby

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

We discuss a recent controversy that occurred in The Cognitive Behavioural Therapist over whether Lilienfeld’s critical views on microaggressions theory and research reflect racist beliefs, as alleged by some. This is one of many recent examples of a profoundly antiscientific practice whereby racism allegations chill scientific debate and open inquiry on important research issues. This produces an overtly politicized science that has a corrosive effect on scientific progress and ultimately the useful application of research in clinical practice. The microaggressions controversy provides an especially useful vehicle for challenging this state of affairs given the widespread application of microaggressions theory, including …

An Inferential Analysis Of Lexical Networks, Christopher D. Gravelle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lexical networks are graphs where words are treated as nodes, and relations between words are treated as edges. The adoption of lexical networks in psycholinguistics is impeded by a lack of readily available inferential methods, which limits work to purely descriptive analyses with little ability to make inferences about what variables account for lexical network structure. The current research explores the use of latent space network models as a method for analyzing lexical networks. Latent space network models are latent variable regression models, which model the presence or strength of edges by estimating pairwise distances between nodes in a latent …

Understanding And Enhancing Suicide Prevention Strategies In The Military: The Roles Of Culture, Leadership, And Command Climate, Kelly Johanna Pires

Dissertations

Military service members are shaped and molded to fit a military culture that emphasizes mission readiness and continuous preparedness. Countless hours are spent training for various situations that can arise. Many trainings are geared toward worst-case scenarios that can cause an increase in stressors and traumatic events. They are expected to demonstrate resilience and overcome adversity to remain mission-ready. This expectation to be mission-ready creates the space for mental health difficulties as well as stigma and avoidance of help-seeking behaviors. In many cases, the desire to stay mission-ready creates a barrier for conversations around mental health. The military emphasizes qualities …

Reducing The Complexity Of The Experimental Design Attenuates Trait-Level Effects In Threat Safety Discrimination Learning, Justin M. Lazzarino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Trait measures of negative emotionality have sometimes been shown to play a role in shaping threat learning, but findings are mixed. For example, Johnson et al (2023) showed that the inhibitory and prospective subscales of the Intolerance for Uncertainty Scale (IUS) were associated with diminished and enhanced threat-safety discrimination, respectively, during the acquisition phase of a Pavlovian fear conditioning task. This finding was subsequently replicated in an independent sample (Kinney-Petrucha, 2024, unpublished). However, these findings and other trait-level fear acquisition effects have not been consistently observed in the broader fear learning literature. Variation in the complexity of or uncertainty inherent …

Lessons Learned: Helping Researchers Help The Intelligence Community, Sydney Rose Rothstein, Kristen Patel, Arthur Paul Pedersen

Public Administration - All Scholarship

The present paper argues that decades of debate have not established whether Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) works in intelligence analysis. Reviewing more than fifty English-language studies and commentaries from 2025 – 2026, it identifies only eight empirical, direct tests of ACH relevant to intelligence work, none of which demonstrates success or failure at improving analytic decision-making. It traces a conceptual error in these otherwise methodologically sound experiments to Richards J. Heuer Jr.’s 1999 Psychology of Intelligence Analysis: researchers conflated Heuer’s account of satisficing with confirmation bias and evaluated individual accuracy, belief change, or hypothesis ranking rather than whether …

Long-Covid And Cognition, Mychael Bruce

Dissertations

COVID-19 is an evolving virus that can harm the body’s respiratory and cardiovascular systems. Directly related to COVID-19 are individuals who do not recover from their initial infection, making them long haulers. Long-COVID is transitioning from a range of isolated phenomena to higher prevalence rates in patients who contracted COVID-19. Many individuals report issues with cognitive function, referred to as ‘brain fog’, that affect memory, attention, and even language skills. This literature review addresses the available research on Long-COVID and how persistent infection correlates with cognitive difficulties. It aims to explain the neurobiology of Long-COVID and how Long-COVID interacts within …

Temporal Integration In Music And Aesthetic Judgments: Assessing Musical Taste Through A Transformer-Based Approach, Sophia M. Senderak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Music unfolds over time, requiring listeners to integrate information moment by moment to make aesthetic judgments. Although we know that music is likely processed on multiple timescales, it is not known which musical features contribute to short versus long timeframes. This study examined whether a computational measure of temporal integration could help explain aesthetic responses to music. Participants (N = 28) listened to 32 sixty-second clips of classical and electronic music, and continuously rated their enjoyment with a dial. After listening, they then gave an overall liking judgment for each clip. To quantify temporal integration, we derived an integration measure …

Neural Correlates Of Recognition Memory And Metamemory In Breast Cancer Survivors: An Event-Related Potential Study, Dishari Zaman Azad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Breast cancer survivors (BCS) often report noticeable cognitive difficulties despite showing limited impairment on standardized neuropsychological tests. Some have theorized that this is simply an insensitivity of standardized testing to subtle cognitive changes (test-insensitivity hypothesis), whereas others have suggested there are early neural changes that are detected by patients but precede detection by these tests (early signal hypothesis) or that when they achieve normal performance, it is through saliently effortful compensatory processes (compensation hypothesis). The present study tested these theories by assessing metamemory and recognition memory retrieval in BCS and non-cancer controls (NCC) using both behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) …

Designing Visible Thinking: A Developmental Approach To Metacognitive Teaching Practices, Peggy-Sue Westphal

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

This synthesis paper examines how metacognitive thinking develops through intentional, sequenced teaching practices that deepen students’ cognitive engagement. Drawing on research, personal inquiry, and instructional design, it demonstrates how early and sustained metacognitive instruction strengthens learners’ reasoning, self-regulation, and awareness of their own cognitive process. The analysis centers on Opportunities to Respond (OTR), a metacognitive strategy highlighted in the institute of Educational Sciences’ Teacher-Delivered Behavioral Interventions, and compares this model the Know, Want to Know, Learned (KWL) framework and the Habits of Mind behaviors. Together, these approaches illustrate a developmental progression in which learners first notice their thinking, then organize …

From Process Retrieval To Understanding: A Look Into Curiosity And Metacognition In My Physics Classrooms, Nahuel Acosta Burroso

Critical and Creative Thinking Capstones Collection

In the modern high school physics classroom, the rapid proliferation of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has created a unique educational challenge. While these tools can solve complex problems quickly, they often lead to cognitive offloading, where students bypass the internal dialogue and deep thinking needed for true understanding. This project follows an action research journey that shifts the focus from restricting technology to cultivating curiosity and metacognition. I define curiosity as the gap identifier that appears when a student realizes they do not know something, while metacognition acts as the navigator that helps them decide what to do next. By …

A Symbolic Model Of Proof Acquisition In Act-R, Beckett Morris, Kerstin Haring

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Learning to construct mathematical proofs—formal arguments demonstrating the truth of a mathematical statement using logical deductions and previously established facts—is one of the most challenging skills in STEM education. This research aims to build the foundations for a symbolic cognitive model, using the ACT-R cognitive architecture and implementing in Python with the pyactr package, to explore how different proof strategies can be thought through with only symbols and rules. The model observes simple proofs, and its abilities are assessed based on its generalization capabilities, efficiency, and error patterns. By developing and analyzing such a model, this research provides new insights …

Du Undergraduate Showcase Abstracts: Research, Scholarship, And Creative Works, Sophia Wismar, Henry Staats, Allison Metzler, Chloe Puckett, Rachel Levine, Christa Kilpatrick, Scott Wolf, Joe Walsh, Grace Doolittle, John Engebreston, Zoe Lopez, Christopher Aaby, Audrey Duff, Timothy Sisk, Katelyn Lamberton, Angela Narayan, Gilkah Argueta, Habiba Samir, Girena Tesfazghi, Genet Kenore, Sinit Tesfamariam, Effley Brooks, Abi Newell, Megan Doherty, Natalie Baer, Lexi Blood, Talya Riciputi, Jessica Jimenez, Devin Hernandez, Lynn Clark, Taj Kumar, Sunil Kumar, Allen Rutman, Mira Pronobis, Tess Carson, Anna Sher, Frankie Stroud, Tamra Pearson D'Estree, Alyssa Wilson, Emily Melnick, Jenalee Doom, Yihang Gao, Gwendolyn Geiger, Noah Gettle, Scott Nichols, Clare Ayoub, Cara Dienno, Sunny Walker, Zoe Hansen, Maya Wheeler, Addison Rice, Patrick Martin, Sanjana Acharya, Daniel Mcintosh, Amanda Mckellips, Calli Cain, Justin Blake, Peter Sokol-Hessner, Natalie Miller, Max Weisbuch, Sophia Dellota, John Macikas, Charlotte Snow, Mark Siemens, Zoe Lynch, Alex Huffman, Prachi Shah, Jason Roney, Halcyon Levi, Nicole Herzog, Andrea Koly, Daniel Linseman, Annie London, Xi Yang, Avery Zwisler, Jane Smith, Chaz Contag, Michael Kerwin, Lucy Rand, Grace Schroeder, Michelle Rozenman, Nissa Tapper, Guiming Zhang, Mateo Mazariego-Halpern, Keith Meyer, Julie Do, Dakota Park-Ozee, Travis Herink, Kara Neu, Jonathan Plomin, Eve-Odine Duchaufour, Debbie Gale Mitchell, Tennyson Anderson-Stricklin, Lily Treitz, Samantha Rosenberger, Sierra Griffith, Finley Joseph, Daniel Sampson, Emmy Davis, Skyler Kasnoff, Evon Lopez, Vivian Nguyen, Cassy Young, Franklin Sellner, Martin Tobon, Ila Graham, Zach Billings, Holden Hedit, Decatur Boland, Paul Kosempel, Cory Chandler, Jay Mahoney, Sam Dragan, Susan Dagget, Yarrow Ator, Heidi Vuletich, Owen Weber, Andrew Kloeppel, Petersen Gray, Mandi Schaeffer-Fry, Razleen Bassra, Bryanna Rodriguez, Christina Blue, Taubie Sanders, Rachel Epstein, Luke Milburn, Camryn Evans, Ezra Martinez, Mary Westwood, Gabri Notov, Robin Tinghitella, Lilou Cabrol, Eli Barbour, Juliet Mendik, Selma Myers, Zac Wise, Noah Fahlin, Michelle Knowles, Abigail Hopper, Michael Greenberger, Romi Laclair, Sarah Watamura, Sabrina Efroymson, Casey Barker, Sydney Seltzer, Bryn Yehle, Jennifer Hoffman, Sara Garcia, Ryuka Nagamine, Trevor Briggs, Remy Le Boeuf, Elena Krone, Eileen Farrell, Regan O'Rourke, Elena Roel, Greg Mortimer, Ali Ayoub, Stefani Langehennig, Caitlin Turk, Logan Scmid, Stefan Chavez-Norgaard, Karen Kim, Tatiana Peccedi, Courtney Cassidy, John Sebesta, Rhianna Lewis, Janice Bening-Lacek, Vivian Lawless, Mckenna Hanson, Jeffrey Amidon, Riya Joshi, Ram Ambre, Brady Worrell, Perrin Schneider, Ali Azadani, Brooke Agulnek, Lyndsie Salvagio, Elise Siemanowki, Yan Qin, Andre Allen, Melodie Nguyen, Megan Livengood, Abby Reams, Saffron Hartreeve, Bri Wylie, Sarah Brookman, Mariah Loiacono, Green Russo, Abhia Lodhi, Gabrielle Welsh, Nika Spehar, Shahked Levin, Evrim Baykal, Kimberly Chiew, Jocelyn Torres, Kailey Hicks, Mykaela Tanino-Springsteen, Audrey Bellows, Akam Chahal, Madeline Tepper, Shannon Murphy, Alexa Fonseca, Deborah Han, Cassandra Perez, Oluwatoyin Alaba, Julia Roncoroni, Vy Nguyen, Nana Burn, Sarah Sasse, Rubin Tuder, Anthony Gerber, Nancy Lorenzon, Christine Vohwinkel, Camryn Gunter, Tristan Weber, Sam Rommel, Brian Michel, Muskan Fatima, Alannah Oleson, Kira Frey, Edward Garrido, Beckett Morris, Kerstin Haring, Drew Middleton, Abigail Walpert, Liam Dee, Gabby Ishaw, Cole Carnes, Maddie Weiser, Claire Fox, Valeriia Vlasenko, Kateri Mcrae, Riley Smith, Abigail Templin, Kushani Rajapaksha

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Abstracts from the DU Undergraduate Research Showcase.

Heroism As Emotional Integration: A Process Model Of Emotion-Driven Heroic Action, Scott T. Allison

Heroism Science

Heroism is often framed as the expression of prosocial motivation fueled by positive emotions such as empathy, compassion, and moral elevation. This perspective, however, overlooks the complex emotional dynamics that characterize high‑risk, morally consequential action. This article advances a process model of heroism as emotional integration, involving the dynamic coordination of multiple and often competing emotions—including fear, anger, compassion, and moral concern—under conditions of uncertainty and threat. Drawing on research in heroism studies, positive psychology, and affective science, the model distinguishes heroism from ordinary helping by emphasizing emotional conflict, regulatory processes, and identity‑based commitment. It further differentiates rapid, intuitive …

Domestic Travelers: Transparent Machines, Hollow Bodies, Hanyi Wang

Masters Theses

Digitization is not a modern invention. Derived from the concept of fingers, this mindset of packing information into quantifiable, interchangeable units sounds mechanical, yet eerily physical. Try to imagine: a ghostly hand with millions of fingers with the same length, likeness, and function. Under the worldview of Digital Narrative, we live in a digital simulation: everything is representable with quantifiable units, fluid across media. Yet under this spectacle of convenient abundance, something is missing. The Unknowables are replaced with arbitrary symbols, while the Uncategorizables are omitted. This is a framework that cannot accommodate human subtleties and complexities. One needs to …

Reading Exercise (You Are The Hero): Dedicated To The Providence River Under The Mall, 02.17.2026, Deborah Fischer

Masters Theses

This play uses the performative potential of guilt, forgiveness, and self-help techniques as a catalyst for a new dynamic, one in which the pursuit of a false narrative, along with the structures it generates, becomes more real than reality itself. It employs “bad acting” and the practice of cold reading to stage a series of acts that function as an entry point into one’s own psyche, leveraging the peripheral space around familiar actions to allow chance, free will, and the experience of “real time” to temporarily come into effect. PLAYER 1: The bad actor is the most utopian one. CLOWN: …

Rehabilitation Belief And Engagement Transformation (Rbet) Model: A Grounded Theory Approach, Jade Ibhar V. Cuambot, Marc Eric S. Reyes, Karen Katrina V. Trinidad

Makara Human Behavior Studies in Asia

Competitive sports injuries have significant physiological and psychological consequences for athletes. While rehabilitation medicine effectively addresses the physical aspects of injury recovery, the psychological and emotional journey of injured athletes remains neglected. Thus, the current study addresses this gap by examining athletes’ transforming belief systems and emotional experiences during injury rehabilitation. A qualitative research design grounded in grounded theory principles was conducted with professional athletes to understand how their beliefs toward rehabilitation evolved over time. Findings revealed a dynamic process of belief transformation consisting of seven interconnected stages, captured in the Rehabilitation Belief and Engagement Transformation (RBET) Model: (1) Pre-rehabilitation …

Tiktok And The Brain: Neuropsychological Correlates Of Short-Form Video Consumption, Caty Enders

Psychology ETDs

Short-form video platforms like TikTok have quickly become the fastest growing segment of social media, thanks to powerful algorithms serving up personalized content driven by large quantities of user data. This study investigates the neuropsychological correlates of digital media use, with a particular focus on TikTok and smartphone screen time among young adults. Combining correlational analyses and an experimental design (n = 49; n = 44 included in final sample), we examined the relationship between digital media use and cognitive and emotional functioning across multiple domains. Objective measures of digital media consumption (daily average screen time and time on TikTok) …

Clarifying The Illusory Truth Effect: The Role Of Truth Status And Source Memory, Kamille Koger

Psychology ETDs

The present study investigated whether repetition increases perceived truth even for information explicitly known to be false and how repetition effects interact with source memory. Participants (N = 102) completed two sessions (exposure and test) one week apart. During exposure, they rated the truth of trivia statements presented three times each. Half were explicitly labeled as "true" or "false" (known condition) and half were unlabeled (ambiguous condition). In the test phase, participants judged the truth of all previously seen statements and an equal number of new statements, followed by source memory judgments. Results showed a classic illusory truth effect (ITE) …

Exploring Ai-Driven Scaffolding For Critical Questioning In Argument Evaluation, Ebenezer A. Belete

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The fast-paced changes caused by generative AI (GenAI) innovations call for exploring the potential benefits of GenAI in empowering 21st-century pedagogical strategies. Previous studies in the field of argumentation have shown how students can benefit from using critical questions. However, scaffolding argument evaluation through custom GenAI using critical questions has not been systematically investigated. This study involved two components: (1) designing and determining the usability of a GPT-powered conversational assistant (CQMAA Conversational Assistant) and (2) testing its impact on participants' efficacy for argument evaluation and their acceptance of GenAI as a learning tool through a pretest–posttest experiment. A convergent mixed-methods …

Perception Of Emotions In Autism With Controlled Elicitation, Rachel E. Dewald

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Research on emotion recognition in autism has traditionally relied on stimuli developed and validated exclusively with allistic populations. Whether these stimuli function equivalently for autistic individuals remains unclear, limiting the field’s ability to draw conclusions about cross-neurotype differences in emotional processing. Grounded in double empathy theory and cross-cultural research demonstrating in-group advantages in emotion recognition, this thesis investigated whether the Database of Emotional Videos from Ottawa (DEVO), a dynamic emotional elicitation database validated with allistic participants, elicits comparable emotional responses in autistic individuals. Participants (N = 116) viewed DEVO video clips and rated their emotional responses using the Multidimensional Visual …

Organizing The Life Story: The Structure, Retrieval, And Flexibility Of Autobiographical Memories, Erin Murphy

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation focused on the characteristics and flexibility of autobiographical memories within the life story, based on Conway and Pleydell-Pearce’s (2000) self-memory system and McAdams’s (2001) narrative identity theory. In two experiments, the research examined how retrieval goals and hierarchical organization influence the recall of different autobiographical memories (i.e., specific events that occur within one day, and chapters that are longer) and the flexibility of the temporal boundaries and duration of these memories. In Experiment 1, task instructions about recalling life story memories were manipulated to examine whether subtle shifts in retrieval goals influenced the type of memories recalled. Experiment …

Is Forgetting Independent Of Learning? An Examination Of Initial Learning Across Alternative Forgetting Analyses, Rhiannon Nicole Soriano Smith

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A long-standing debate has reappeared regarding whether the rate of forgetting is independent or dependent upon the initial degree of learning. Interestingly, both conclusions have been supported. These diverging conclusions could be due to the analytical method and operational definition of forgetting employed: Researchers supporting independence typically measure forgetting as the number of items forgotten at a given retention interval, while those in favor of dependence typically measure forgetting as the number of items forgotten between test intervals. The current study tested whether the degree of learning affects the rate of forgetting for recognition accuracy (da) and other memory processes …

Exploring Non-Native English Learners’ Attitudes Towards Ai And Online Multimedia Persuasive Opinions And The Role Of Sentiment, Zvetomira N. Svetleff

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study and various other studies use quantitative models to identify which persuasive features predict persuasiveness. Most studies in the field do not explain why participants responded as they did nor do they focus on studying adult non-native English learners also referred to as second language (L2) English learners. Despite seemingly remarkable progress on research related to how to convey persuasive messages, there has been little work related to persuasive messaging targeted at second language learners or non-native speakers. In addition, despite the increasing reliance on AI technologies and tools in language learning within educational and work settings, there has …

How Does Age Affect Our Memory? Semantic Relatedness In Proper Name Recall, Art Beqiraj

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Proper names belong to a distinct class of lexical items that pose challenges for encoding and retrieval across people of all ages. Unlike common nouns, and the exception of nicknames, proper names are arbitrary relative to their referent. Forgetting someone’s name is not only seen as a social faux pas but may be particularly concerning for older adults due to its interpretation as a cognitive decline indicator. Prior research has shown that when names are physically descriptive of their referent (e.g., a giraffe called ‘Lengthy’), they are better learned and recalled; however, the extent to which descriptiveness without a visual …