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Full-Text Articles in Cognitive Psychology

Understanding The Role Of The Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex In Emotional Memory Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation And Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, R. Rachel Weintraub-Brevda Sep 2017

Understanding The Role Of The Ventrolateral Prefrontal Cortex In Emotional Memory Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation And Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, R. Rachel Weintraub-Brevda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Emotional stimuli can have both beneficial and detrimental effects on memory, such that emotional stimuli can be distracting from current neutral working memory goals, while also leading to enhanced episodic memory for the distracting emotional stimuli. Recent evidence suggests that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) has multiple roles in the enhancing effects of emotion on memory through top-down/controlled processes, including 1) coping with negative distraction and 2) elaborative encoding of negative information. Additionally, previous research has alluded to hemispheric differences in the VLPFC (Chapter 1). However, previous research has been correlational, with no strong laterality tests of the VLPFC. Two …


The Role Of Attention And Memory In Prospective Person Memory, Kara Nicole Moore Aug 2017

The Role Of Attention And Memory In Prospective Person Memory, Kara Nicole Moore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I examined the role of memory and attention in prospective person memory. Prospective person memory involves being on the lookout for a person with the goal of completing some task (i.e., contacting the authorities) upon encountering the person. Success at prospective person memory tasks in lab and field based studies is rather low (i.e., less than 10% of people report encountering the person). In the current study the prospective person memory task involved a simulated search for a missing person. I manipulated attention to the missing person and strategic monitoring, which involves being in retrieval mode and searching for cues. …


Modeling Distribution Learning In Visual Search, Andrey Chetverikov May 2017

Modeling Distribution Learning In Visual Search, Andrey Chetverikov

MODVIS Workshop

Chetverikov, Campana, and Kristjansson (2017) used visual search to demonstrate that human observers are able to extract statistical distributions of visual features. Observers searched for an odd-one-out target with distractors randomly drawn from the same distribution over the course of several “prime” trials. Then, on test trials parameters of the target and distractors changed and response times (RT) were analyzed as a function of the distance between the target position in feature space and the mean of distractor features during prime trials. The resulting RT curves followed the probability density of prime distractor distributions. This approach provides a detailed estimation …


Modeling The Neural Circuitry Underlying The Behavioral And Eeg Correlates Of Attentional Capture, Chloe Callahan-Flintoft, Brad Wyble May 2017

Modeling The Neural Circuitry Underlying The Behavioral And Eeg Correlates Of Attentional Capture, Chloe Callahan-Flintoft, Brad Wyble

MODVIS Workshop

The Reactive-Convergent Gradient Field model (R-CGF) is a unique approach to modeling spatial attention in that it links neural mechanisms to event related potentials (ERPs) from scalp EEG. This model was developed with the aim of explaining different, sometimes conflicting, findings in the attention literature. Specifically, this model address conflicting findings showing both simultaneous and serial deployment of attention. Another argument addressed by the model is whether attention to a location invokes a suppression of the spatial surround, or the selective inhibition of distractors. With the R-CGF, we have found that these results are not as incompatible as they appear …


The Effects Of Pointing Gestures On Visual Attention, Samaria J. Hamilton May 2017

The Effects Of Pointing Gestures On Visual Attention, Samaria J. Hamilton

Honors College Theses

Visual attention is a process that involves concentrating on select features, such as sensory cues, within the complex environment. Sensory cues within the visual field capture and redirect our attention. Previous research on eye gaze revealed that direct gaze captures attention. In the present study, pointing gestures and motion cues were tested together in a visual search task to examine their effects on attention. Participants were instructed to identify a target letter presented on one of four hands. Initially, two hands displayed a pointing gesture while the other two displayed an open gesture. Next, a target letter appeared, one open …


The Effects Of Meditation On Brain Organization And The Implications For Treating Adhd, Talia Gibson May 2017

The Effects Of Meditation On Brain Organization And The Implications For Treating Adhd, Talia Gibson

Honors Projects

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has recently become increasingly diagnosed for children and adolescents. As of now, the most common treatment method is medication, with the purpose of changing brain organization. Recently, however, there has been increasing interest in the use of mindfulness meditation to treat the symptoms associated with ADHD. In this paper, eleven different studies, which have introduced mindfulness meditation as a treatment method for ADHD, are analyzed. The studies measure the degree to which mindfulness meditation improves common symptoms associated with ADHD. These symptoms include attentional problems, reduced mindful awareness, externalizing and internalizing problems, reduced self-control, impaired social behavior, …


Restoration Of Attentional Deficits After Concussion, Katharine B. Earle Jan 2017

Restoration Of Attentional Deficits After Concussion, Katharine B. Earle

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Difficulties with concentration and attention are among the most prevalent symptoms experienced after concussion. Rest has been the most common form of recovery from concussion; however, new research is suggesting mild mental exertion to be an effective aid in recovery. Drawing from Attention Restoration Theory, this study evaluated the idea that cognitive engagement with natural environments can mitigate post-concussion directed-attention deficits. A between subjects repeated measures design was used to test directed-attention after video exposure to restorative/nature and nonrestorative/city environments. Measures of mood, connectedness to environment, and symptomology scores were also collected. No meaningful difference between exposure type was found …


Are You Feeling Me?: The Role Of Attention In Physiological Empathetic Responses, Gabriela Paganini Jan 2017

Are You Feeling Me?: The Role Of Attention In Physiological Empathetic Responses, Gabriela Paganini

Scripps Senior Theses

This study examined the role of attention and trait empathy within the production of neural facial mimicry responses that have been previously found to be associated with the experience of empathy. More specifically, do people who have high trait empathy levels require less attention to emotional information in order to still exhibit these physiological responses than people who have lower trait empathy levels? It has previously been demonstrated that responses in the zygomaticus and corrugator muscles have been associated with the experience of empathy. College aged participants were shown series of happy, angry, and neutral faces with the amount of …


Task Manipulation Effects On The Relationship Between Working Memory Capacity And Go/No-Go Performance, Elizabeth A. Wiemers Dec 2016

Task Manipulation Effects On The Relationship Between Working Memory Capacity And Go/No-Go Performance, Elizabeth A. Wiemers

Open Access Theses

Seemingly minor task manipulations can have large and sometimes unpredicted effects on task performance. Despite this, single tasks are typical in both research and assessment applications. This series of experiments aims to systematically investigate the differences between various perceptual and semantic versions of go/no-go tasks and their relationships with working memory capacity (WMC) with the goal of determining the cause of inconsistencies in the literature. Because these versions of the go/no-go have not previously been systematically studied, the first experiment does so. After determining which performance differences exist based on versions of both task and decision, and noting that these …


Hands, And Numbers, And Dots Oh My! Examining The Effect Of Nearby-Hands On Counting And Subitizing, Gabriel Allred Dec 2016

Hands, And Numbers, And Dots Oh My! Examining The Effect Of Nearby-Hands On Counting And Subitizing, Gabriel Allred

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The “nearby-hand” effect (Tseng, Bridgeman, & Juan 2012), an alteration of performance caused by the presence of our hands in the visuospatial area, has been found in learning, attention, and working memory tasks (Brockmole, Davoli, Abrams, & Witt, 2013a). However, no work to date has been published demonstrating a relationship between the nearby-hand effect and judgments of magnitude, including subitizing and counting. It is suggested by Tseng, Bridgeman, and Juan (2012) that nearby-hands affect attentional disengagement, yet little experimental evidence is available to support this notion. Given the serialized nature of counting, which requires attentional disengagement from item to item …


The Relationship Between P300 Evoked Potentials And Prefrontal Cortex Oxygen Use: A Combined Eeg And Nirs Study, Will S. Rizer Dec 2016

The Relationship Between P300 Evoked Potentials And Prefrontal Cortex Oxygen Use: A Combined Eeg And Nirs Study, Will S. Rizer

All NMU Master's Theses

The P300 subcomponent, P3b, is an event related potential detected at the scalp surface when a working memory comparison results in differences between the contents of working memory and incoming stimulus information. Previous research has indicated that as infrequent targets become more difficult to detect (morphologically similar to a frequent non-target stimulus) the P300 becomes attenuated. fMRI research has also indicated increased prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity during P300 generation. To examine the relationship between P3b amplitude and PFC activity participants performed an easy and difficult target detection task in both EEG and NIRS called the oddball. The EEG and behavioral …


The Impact Of Balance Disturbance On Cognition, Erin Quasney Oct 2016

The Impact Of Balance Disturbance On Cognition, Erin Quasney

Dissertations (1934 -)

There have been remarkable gains within the scientific literature over the last few decades contributing to our understanding of the sequelae, recovery, and treatment of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), yet our knowledge of relationships among symptoms remains elementary in comparison. Cognitive and balance deficits are two of the most prevalent consequence of mTBI. There is some indication that a challenge to one or both of these functions can result in cognitive detriments due to constraints on attentional capacity. However, the evidence remains both conflicting and sparse. This study examined the impact of increasing balance challenge on attention and working …


Global/Local Processing In Incidental Perception Of Hierarchical Structure, Mark S. Mills Aug 2016

Global/Local Processing In Incidental Perception Of Hierarchical Structure, Mark S. Mills

Department of Psychology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The goal of the current thesis is to provide a framework for investigating and understanding visual processing of hierarchical structure (i.e., local parts nested in global wholes, such as trees nested in forests) under incidental processing conditions—that is, where processing of information at global and local levels is both uninformative (cannot aid task performance) and task-irrelevant (need not be processed to perform the task). To do so, a novel method combining two widely-used paradigms (spatial cueing and compound stimulus paradigms) is used for implicitly probing observers’ perceptual representations over the course of processing. This compound arrow cueing paradigm was used …


Attentional Window And Global/Local Processing, Steven Peter Schultz Jun 2016

Attentional Window And Global/Local Processing, Steven Peter Schultz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How does the focus of attention influence the encoding of information? Research has shown that size and allocation of the attentional window has an influence on what information is attended to or missed. The size-scale of features also effects processing of visual information. Previous research involving hierarchical stimuli suggests precedence for global features. In the present experiment, I investigated the influence of attentional window size on accuracy of encoding hierarchical stimuli at the global and local level. Here I introduce a new method for manipulating the size of the attentional window and for collecting unconstrained responses. At the start of …


The Cost Of Getting Lost: Measuring The Slot Machine ‘Zone’ With Attentional Dual Tasks, W. Spencer Murch Jun 2016

The Cost Of Getting Lost: Measuring The Slot Machine ‘Zone’ With Attentional Dual Tasks, W. Spencer Murch

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

A contemporary stance on regular and problematic electronic gaming machine (EGM) gamblers argues that these individuals use machine gambling as a means of escaping aversive feelings rather than as a means of seeking out excitement. Often called “The Slot Machine Zone,” this hypothesis currently rests on qualitative and anecdotal data suggesting that machine gamblers are somehow lost in the game (Schüll, 2012). Conceptually similar to work on flow and dissociation, the zone hypothesis predicts that problematic EGM play is associated with 1) increased self-reported dissociation / immersion, 2) attenuated peripheral attention, and 3) a positive physiological state as a result. …


Attention Strongly Modulates Reliability Of Neural Responses To Naturalistic Narrative Stimuli, Jason J. Ki, Simon P. Kelly, Lucas C. Parra Mar 2016

Attention Strongly Modulates Reliability Of Neural Responses To Naturalistic Narrative Stimuli, Jason J. Ki, Simon P. Kelly, Lucas C. Parra

Publications and Research

Attentional engagement is a major determinant of how effectively we gather information through our senses. Alongside the sheer growth in the amount and variety of information content that we are presented with through modern media, there is increased variability in the degree to which we “absorb” that information. Traditional research on attention has illuminated the basic principles of sensory selection to isolated features or locations, but it provides little insight into the neural underpinnings of our attentional engagement with modern naturalistic content. Here, we show inhumansubjects that the reliability of an individual’s neural responses with respect to a larger group …


Finding The Right Fit: A Comparison Of Process Assumptions Underlying Popular Drift-Diffusion Models, Nathaniel J. S. Ashby, Marc Jekel, Stephan Dickert, Andreas Glockner Jan 2016

Finding The Right Fit: A Comparison Of Process Assumptions Underlying Popular Drift-Diffusion Models, Nathaniel J. S. Ashby, Marc Jekel, Stephan Dickert, Andreas Glockner

Faculty Works

Recent research makes increasing use of eye-tracking methodologies to generate and test process models. Overall, such research suggests that attention, generally indexed by fixations (gaze duration), plays a critical role in the construction of preference, although the methods employed to support this supposition differ substantially. In two studies we empirically test prototypical versions of prominent processing assumptions against one another and several base models. We find that general evidence accumulation processes provide a good fit to the data. An accumulation process that assumes leakage and temporal variability in evidence weighting (i.e. a primacy effect) fits the aggregate data, both in …


Contemplating Mindfulness At Work: An Integrative Review, Darren J. Good, Christopher Lyddy, Theresa M. Glomb, Joyce E. Bono, Kirk W. Brown, Michelle K. Duffy, Ruth A. Baer, Judson A. Brewer, Sara W. Lazar Jan 2016

Contemplating Mindfulness At Work: An Integrative Review, Darren J. Good, Christopher Lyddy, Theresa M. Glomb, Joyce E. Bono, Kirk W. Brown, Michelle K. Duffy, Ruth A. Baer, Judson A. Brewer, Sara W. Lazar

School of Business Faculty Publications

Mindfulness research activity is surging within organizational science. Emerging evidence across multiple fields suggests that mindfulness is fundamentally connected to many aspects of workplace functioning, but this knowledge base has not been systematically integrated to date. This review coalesces the burgeoning body of mindfulness scholarship into a framework to guide mainstream management research investigating a broad range of constructs. The framework identifies how mindfulness influences attention, with downstream effects on functional domains of cognition, emotion, behavior, and physiology. Ultimately, these domains impact key workplace outcomes, including performance, relationships, and well-being. Consideration of the evidence on mindfulness at work stimulates important …


When "Nothing" Captures Attention : Automatic Visuospatial Attentional Capture By A Gap In A Circle, Matthew Aaron Thomas Jan 2016

When "Nothing" Captures Attention : Automatic Visuospatial Attentional Capture By A Gap In A Circle, Matthew Aaron Thomas

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Abstract


Emotional Factors Affecting Face-Name Memory : The Role Of Valence And Arousal During Encoding, Stephanie Ann Kazanas Jan 2016

Emotional Factors Affecting Face-Name Memory : The Role Of Valence And Arousal During Encoding, Stephanie Ann Kazanas

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The emotion literature has maintained that emotional stimuli are prioritized over neutral stimuli: Emotional words and images are detected faster, processed more automatically, and remembered better. However, the benefit from processing emotional stimuli can also be affected by valence, wherein some emotion advantages are driven by positive emotion and others by negative emotion. This is particularly evident in the face memory literature, in which researchers have investigated the role of expressed emotion in learning new faces. For example, some have found that happy faces are more memorable than angry and neutral faces. However, when comparing memory for happy faces with …


Designing Better Symbols: An Attentional Approach To Match Symbols To Performance Goals, Hannah North Jan 2016

Designing Better Symbols: An Attentional Approach To Match Symbols To Performance Goals, Hannah North

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Effective displays require symbol sets that are customized to specific tasks and performance goals. In order to create such sets, designers must account for the effects of top-down and bottom-up attention. The current work presents a pair of experiments that examined the effects of salience and cueing in a change detection tasks within the flicker paradigm (Rensink, O’Regan and Clark, 1997). Each trial, participants either received no cue or a cue indicating which symbol would be the target. This cueing manipulation isolated top-down effects to the cued condition. Consistent with previous studies (Orchard, 2012; Steelman, Orchard, Fletcher, Cockshell, Williamson & …


Practical Implications Of Learning From Unsuccessful Retrieval Attempts, Ann C. Rossmiller, James R. Houston Jan 2016

Practical Implications Of Learning From Unsuccessful Retrieval Attempts, Ann C. Rossmiller, James R. Houston

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Recent findings suggest that retesting oneself facilitates better learning than studying alone. Building off previous experiments where correcting participants has significantly increased correctness, the current study furthers our understanding about learning from unsuccessful retrieval attempts by manipulating the frequency of correction. Using a set of 42 associated word pairings, each participant was exposed to two blocks where they would memorize the word pairs. This was followed by two quizzing blocks and a final exam block where participants were asked to write down the associate to the stimulus presented on screen. Frequency of correction was manipulated during the quizzing blocks where …


Effect Of Mindfulness Training On Interpretation Exam Performance In Graduate Students In Interpreting, Julie E. Johnson Jan 2016

Effect Of Mindfulness Training On Interpretation Exam Performance In Graduate Students In Interpreting, Julie E. Johnson

Doctoral Dissertations

Many graduate interpreting students struggle because the real-time, interactive nature of interpreting dictates that they be able to regulate their attention across different parallel cognitive activities and manage the inherent stress and unpredictability of the task. Within the framework of Cognitive Load Theory, this mixed-methods study explored the effect of short-term mindfulness training on consecutive interpreting exam performance using a quasi-experimental repeated-measures design. It also examined the relationships among mindfulness, stress, aspects of attention, and interpreting exam performance. The sample included 67 students (age M = 26.9 years; 82% female) across seven language programs (Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, …


Effects Of Nicotine On A Translational Model Of Working Memory, David Alderson Macqueen Sep 2015

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 …


Belief About Nicotine Selectively Modulates Value And Reward Prediction Error Signals In Smokers, Xiaosi Gu, Terry Lohrenz, Ramiro Salas, Philip R. Baldwin, Alireza Soltani Feb 2015

Belief About Nicotine Selectively Modulates Value And Reward Prediction Error Signals In Smokers, Xiaosi Gu, Terry Lohrenz, Ramiro Salas, Philip R. Baldwin, Alireza Soltani

Dartmouth Scholarship

Little is known about how prior beliefs impact biophysically described processes in the presence of neuroactive drugs, which presents a profound challenge to the understanding of the mechanisms and treatments of addiction. We engineered smokers' prior beliefs about the presence of nicotine in a cigarette smoked before a functional magnetic resonance imaging session where subjects carried out a sequential choice task. Using a model-based approach, we show that smokers' beliefs about nicotine specifically modulated learning signals (value and reward prediction error) defined by a computational model of mesolimbic dopamine systems. Belief of "no nicotine in cigarette" (compared with "nicotine in …


I Can See What You Are Saying : Auditory Labels Reduce Visual Search Times, Kit Wing Cho Jan 2015

I Can See What You Are Saying : Auditory Labels Reduce Visual Search Times, Kit Wing Cho

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The present study explored the mechanisms underlying the self-directed speech effect, the finding that relative to silent reading of a label (e.g., “DOG”), saying it aloud reduces visual search reaction times (RTs) for locating a target picture among distractors. Experiment 1 examined whether this effect is due to a confound in the differences in the number of cues in self-directed speech (two) vs. silent reading (one) and tested whether speech, per se, is required for the effect. Self-directed speech did not reduce search RTs more than hearing only a pre-recorded auditory presentation of a label, both of which reduced RTs …


The Effects Of Social Anxiety And State Anxiety On Visual Attention: Testing The Vigilance–Avoidance Hypothesis, J. Suzanne Singh, Michelle C. Capozzoli, Michael Dodd, Debra Hope Jan 2015

The Effects Of Social Anxiety And State Anxiety On Visual Attention: Testing The Vigilance–Avoidance Hypothesis, J. Suzanne Singh, Michelle C. Capozzoli, Michael Dodd, Debra Hope

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

A growing theoretical and research literature suggests that trait and state social anxiety can predict attentional patterns in the presence of emotional stimuli. The current study adds to this literature by examining the effects of state anxiety on visual attention and testing the vigilance– avoidance hypothesis, using a method of continuous visual attentional assessment. Participants were 91 undergraduate college students with high or low trait fear of negative evaluation (FNE), a core aspect of social anxiety, who were randomly assigned to either a high or low state anxiety condition. Participants engaged in a free view task in which pairs of …


Activating The Biological And Behavioral Immune Systems, Julia Christensen Jan 2015

Activating The Biological And Behavioral Immune Systems, Julia Christensen

Departmental Honors Projects

Psychology recognizes two distinct facets of the immune system: the biological immune system (BIO), covering all processes of the typical immune system, and the behavioral immune system (BEH), a set of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses to environmental stimuli. Research on this dual immune system indicates that each is capable of influencing the other (Schaller & Park, 2011). For example, perception of illness in others can activate the sympathetic nervous system (Schaller, Miller, Gervais, Yager, & Chen, 2010). Furthermore, evidence suggests that these two systems are capable of influencing moral judgment (Inbar, Pizarro, & Bloom, 2008). This study aims to …


Cognitive Fatigue: Exploring The Relationship Between The Fatigue Effect And Action Video-Game Experience, James Brooks Jan 2015

Cognitive Fatigue: Exploring The Relationship Between The Fatigue Effect And Action Video-Game Experience, James Brooks

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

the effects of cognitive fatigue. Despite this, there remain advantages to regularly playing action video games. In Study 1, VGPs were significantly better at multitasking on the MATB-II compared to the NVGPs. Further, VGPs also demonstrated superior multitasking when driving, as they made significantly fewer traffic violations compared to NVGPs when not fatigued. VGPs demonstrated eye-movements similar to those of expert drivers; however, this did not result in any difference in performance between the two groups. There was also some evidence of a positive effect of video game training, although there was no advantage of one training technique over the …


Dual Task Interference In Low-Level Abilities: The Role Of Working Memory And Effects Of Mathematics Anxiety, Alex Michael Moore Aug 2014

Dual Task Interference In Low-Level Abilities: The Role Of Working Memory And Effects Of Mathematics Anxiety, Alex Michael Moore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Mathematics anxiety is a negative affective reaction to situations involving mathematical thought and is commonly believed to reduce cognitive functioning by impairing the efficient use of working memory resources. The conventional theory describes that the processing disadvantage associated with high levels of math anxiety increasingly impairs performance as working memory demands increase in a math task. Despite this convention, recent reports demonstrate that the high math anxious disadvantage can be measured in tasks that are relatively free of working memory assistance (Maloney, Ansari, & Fugelang, 2011; Maloney, Risko, Ansari, & Fugelsang, 2010). The present study examines these relatively low level …