Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

On The Role Of Neuronal Oscillations In Auditory Cortical Processing, Monica Noelle O'Connell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Although it has been over 100 years since William James stated that "everyone knows what attention is", its underlying neural mechanisms are still being debated today. The goal of this research was to describe the physiological mechanisms of auditory attention using direct electrophysiological recordings in macaque primary auditory cortex (A1). A major focus of my research was on the role ongoing neuronal oscillations play in attentional modulation of auditory responses in A1.

For all studies, laminar profiles of synaptic activity, (indexed by current source density analysis) and concomitant firing patterns in local neurons (multiunit activity) were acquired simultaneously via linear …

Attention And Criminal Charge, Profile And Description: The Effect On Prospective Person Memory, Lindsey Nicole Sweeney

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Prospective person memory is the ability to recognize and react to a missing or wanted individual that one has been asked to be on the lookout for in the future. Prospective person memory relies on several processes including face recognition, event-based prospective memory, and attention. Only recently has research on the role of visual attention on prospective person memory been examined. In this dissertation, the gap between prospective person memory and attention is addressed. Although research on prospective person memory is steadily increasing, the research in this area is still in its infancy and the exact memory mechanisms that affect …

Attentional Processes Associated With Victimization History And Posttraumatic Symptomatology In Women Exposed To Intimate Partner Violence, Ryan B. Matlow

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) puts women at risk for severe and chronic physical and mental health consequences, including elevations in IPV-related psychopathology and increased risk for future victimization. Previous research has examined attention as one of the key information processing mechanisms associated with elevated psychopathology and risk for victimization; however, the nature of attentional processing in response to IPV-related information in women exposed to IPV is poorly understood. Therefore, the current study aimed to further understanding of associations between attentional processing, IPV exposure, and related distress using measures of eye movement and subjective interpretations of IPV-related information. A …

Skill Acquisition And The Influence Of Attentional Focus And Practice, Alison Beth Regal

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Attentional focus and practice schedules are important components in learning a new skill. For attention this includes focusing inward or outward, for practice this includes interference between tasks. Little is known about how the two interact. Four groups; blocked/extraneous (BE); blocked/skill-focused (BS); random/extraneous (RE); and random/skill-focused (RS), practiced 100 trials of golf putting and 64 trials of a key-pressing task in addition to responding to a random tone distracting attention towards or away from skill movement. Participants performed immediate and delayed retention tests. Results demonstrated the BE group had decreased RTE scores compared to the BS group. Immediate retention demonstrated …

The Neuropsychological Functioning Of Older Adults Pre- And Post-Cognitive Training With A Brain Plasticity-Based Computerized Training Program, Shannon M. Sorenson

Graduate Masters Theses

The present study evaluates the effectiveness of Posit Science Cortex™ with Insight Drive Sharp™ as a tool for improving neuropsychological functioning in a normal aging sample. The purpose of the DriveSharp™ training program is to help an individual improve his or her visual attention and useful field of view. Each exercise continually adapts to the individual’s performance so that the training is always at an appropriate level for that specific person. Thirty-two healthy older adult participants were randomly assigned to either the active intervention group (DriveSharp™) or a waitlist control group. Participants in the intervention group were required to engage …

Mood And Creativity: The Mediating Role Of Attention, Viktoria Tidikis

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Within literature there are two opposing views regarding the role of emotions in the creative process. The most commonly held view contends that positive emotions enhance creativity, while negative emotions stifle it; yet, some studies show an opposite trend. To help resolve this conundrum, this research examined the mediating effect of attention on the relationship between mood and creativity. The results showed that positive deactivating and negative activating emotions led to broader attention, while positive activating and negative deactivating emotions caused narrowing of attention. Furthermore, the creative process is not uniform in its requirements of attentional breadth; some creative tasks …

Does Crowding Obscure The Presence Of Attentional Guidance In Contextual Cueing?, Steven William Fiske

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The contextual cueing effect was initially thought to be the product of memory guiding attention to the target location. However, the steep search slopes obtained in contextual cueing indicate an absence of attentional guidance. We hypothesized that crowding could be obscuring the presence of attentional guidance and investigated this possibility in 2 experiments. Crowding was manipulated by varying the density of items in the local target region in a contextual cueing task. We observed a significant reduction in search slopes between the novel and repeated conditions when crowding was reduced. Enhancing crowding eliminated the contextual cueing effect. These findings suggest …

Levels-Of-Processing Effects On "Remember" Responses In Recognition For Familiar And Unfamiliar Tunes, Esra Mungan, Zehra F. Peynircioğlu, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

We investigated the effect of level-of-processing manipulations on "remember" and "know" responses in episodic melody recognition (Experiments 1 and 2) and how this effect is modulated by item familiarity (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, participants performed 2 conceptual and 2 perceptual orienting tasks while listening to familiar melodies: judging the mood, continuing the tune, tracing the pitch contour, and counting long notes. The conceptual mood task led to higher d' rates for "remember" but not "know" responses. In Experiment 2, participants either judged the mood or counted long notes of tunes with high and low familiarity. A level-of-processing effect emerged …

The Influence Of Emotion On Attention : Examining The Processing Of Negative And Positive Emotion Words In The Dot Probe Task, Tina Sutton

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The influence of emotion on attention has been examined more closely in recent years using a variety of paradigms. Öhman (1993) suggested that participants more readily pay attention to negative information than neutral information. The current work was designed to expand upon these findings by examining both negative and positive emotion word processing in a non-clinical population using the dot probe task. Experiments 1a and 1b examined the supraliminal and subliminal processing of negative and positive emotion words presented in separate blocks. The results revealed that participants responded faster to the probe when it appeared in the same location as …

Effects Of Concurrent Task Performance On Object Processing, Gabriela Durán

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Most research on visual object identification focus on the bottom-up processes of the visual what? and where? pathways. However, such research has not been able to fully account for many visual abilities (e.g., identifying an object among many other objects and across changing conditions). Neurological evidence has shown that feedback from high-level areas (i.e., top-down processing) makes object processing more efficient. However, there are no behavioral studies that have tested this. Thus, four experiments used a concurrent n-back task to occupy higher-level areas and tested its effects on visual object processing relative to a number-repetition control task.

Experiment 1 examined …

Attention Allocation And The Variability Of The Stereotype Priming Effect, Katherine R. White

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The stereotype priming effect is assumed to be a rather uniform and robust effect. However, a closer look at the existing literature suggests that the `standard' stereotype priming effect may be more susceptible to variability than originally believed. In the present study, we sought to demonstrate that the stereotype priming effect displays significant variability in strength depending upon the level of attention allocated to the stereotype feature of interest. Participants were assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: a lexical decision task (LDT) condition, a pre-primed LDT condition, and a gender categorization condition. It was predicted that the stereotype priming effect …