Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Key Generalization Of Recognition Memory For Melodies, Abigail Lincoln Kleinsmith

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

People easily recognize a melody in a previously unheard key, but they also retain some key-specific information. I tested the hypothesis that individuals compare novel melodies to a memory “prototype” representing the central tendency of experienced exemplars. Participants were familiarized with a monotonic eight-note melody in two closely separated keys and tested for discrimination of that melody from others. Test and foil melodies included ones that were the “average” of pitch heights and ones that were more distant in pitch height. Hit rates and discriminability (d') were better for physically closer keys than for harmonically related keys. In follow-up experiments, …

Neural Correlates Of Episodic Memory Formation In Children And Adults, Lingfei Tang

Wayne State University Theses

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) and prefrontal cortex (PFC) are two key brain regions that support episodic memory formation in both children and adults, but the functional developmental of these regions remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the development of neural correlates of episodic memory formation using functional MRI with a subsequent memory paradigm, administered to a cross-sectional sample of 83 children and adults. We found that MTL subregions showed an age-related increase in activation supporting memory formation of complex scenes. In addition, a functionally defined scene-sensitive region in the posterior MTL also showed similar increase and predicted better …

Cortisol Levels And Voltage Conditions Of College Students, Adriana Steffens

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

There is a limited research base on low voltage brain conditions, which are characterized by electrical activity being measured at below 20 microvolts. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between saliva cortisol levels and voltage using an EGG in a college student population. Illuminating this relationship is important to inform how low voltage conditions can affect daily memory and cognitive functioning of undergraduate college students that may be a result of stress. The college student population may be vulnerable to the low voltage condition because of stress from the transition between teenage and adult life and …

The Effect Of Emotion On Associative And Item Memory, Priyanga Jeyarathnarajah

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Numerous studies to date have demonstrated superior memory for emotional compared to neutral stimuli (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Bennion et al., 2013). This finding, although relatively stable across the item memory literature, becomes less consistent when examined in tasks measuring memory for associative or source information (Chiu et al., 2013). For this reason, the present study set out to examine how emotional content (negative, positive and neutral word pairs) influences memory in two distinct associative and item recognition tasks: associative identification (AI), associative reinstatement (AR), paired-item recognition, and single-item recognition. In measuring the influence of emotion on associations using an …

Hemispheric Bases For Emotion And Memory, Tad T. Brunyé, Sarah R. Cavanagh, Ruth E. Propper

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The goal of this Research Topic was to bring together diverse scientific perspectives on lateralized brain mechanisms underlying emotion, motivation, and memory. The Topic resulted in eight articles, three of which report original research and five of which review and synthesize past research with the aim of developing new hypotheses and theory. A range of international experts with diverse backgrounds, theoretical perspectives, and experimental methods contributed to the Topic. Contributions strongly reflect this diversity, ranging from examining pupil dilation in response to viewing Rembrandt portraits to understanding how caffeine supplementation influences levels of spatial processing. In all cases, the authors …

Performance Or Processing? Effects Of Levels Of Processing And Divided Attention On Memory-Related Eye Movements, Wei An

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Human memories are expressed either with or without consciousness, termed as explicit and implicit memories, respectively. Different encoding manipulations like levels of processing and divided attention have been shown to affect explicit memories but not implicit memories. These dissociations, however, were only found between explicit and implicit item memories. Whether explicit and implicit relational memories will exhibit similar dissociations is still unknown. In order to determine whether explicit and implicit relational memories dissociated in a similar way as explicit and implicit item memories, the levels of processing and divided attention were manipulated in the present study and participants' relational memories …

Influence Of Seductive Details, Belief-Congruence, And Repeated Testing On Memory For Controversial Information, Daniel Adam Nuccio

Theses and Dissertations

People often encounter conflicting information on a wide array of topics. How they evaluate this information in relation to their current beliefs, and the effects of other influences, such as the weight given to superficial aspects of the information (e.g. pictures, anecdotes, or jargon that are at most minimally related to an author's argument), has been of interest to researchers for many years. One component of their processing

and evaluation of this information is their memory for the information. This study set out to examine the following questions: (1) Is belief-congruent in

formation remembered better or worse than belief incongruent …

Effects Of Popular Music On Memorization Tasks, Kristin Sandberg, Sarah Harmon

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This study investigated the effects that popular music has on memory performance. It was proposed that popular music would adversely affect both studying and memory recall. Forty introductory psychology students participated in the study. Subjects were given a list of fifty words to study in 6 ½ minutes, with music either being present or absent. This was termed the learning stage. In this study, four conditions were tested. In all 4 conditions, subjects were assigned to either a “music” pre-period or a “non-music” pre-period and a “music” post-period or a “non-music” post-period. After they had studied the words, subjects were …

Examining The Effects Of Saccade Execution And Handedness On Proactive Interference., Montgomery A. Kroger

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Proactive interference is the phenomenon by which previously-learned information impairs recall of more recently-learned information. The present experiment was conducted to investigate two factors that may affect the occurrence of proactive interference. The first of these factors is saccade execution. Saccade execution has been shown in numerous studies to improve performance on a wide range of memory tasks. The second factor was people’s consistency of handedness, a term referring to the strength of people’s tendency to use one hand (right or left) over the other. Although the results of the primary analyses were inconclusive, further exploration of the data led …

Chronic, Lethal Versus Acute, Non-Lethal Threats: A Look Inside The Memories Of Cancer Patients At The Time Of Their Diagnosis, Angeline M. Modesti

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Consequentiality, affect, and rehearsal are also important components that help contribute to the recall of autobiographical memories. Traditionally, these features have been assessed in public dramatic events in the past such as the Challenger explosion and the 9/11 terrorist attack. In opposition to these traditionally studied events, the present study examined the effects of these features on five different private events. An analysis of these different experiences was assessed to determine the role of consequentiality, affect, and rehearsal play on memory recall. These three components were assessed in five different events during different points of the lifetime. Adults diagnosed with …

The Formation Of Situation Models In Multimedia, Kris Gunawan

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

When people read traditional text-based stories, they construct mental representations of the described state of affairs, called situation models, to connect various details of events (e.g., time, space, entity) in memory (Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). According to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2005; 2011), stories presented as pictures and text generate independent channels of mental representations that can work hand-in-hand or separately to acquire and remember the materials presented. This dissertation consisted of two experiments that were used to further explore how the two modalities affect what is being mentally represented in memory. In Experiment 1, participants were …

Detecting Deception Via Eyeblink Frequency Modulation, Brandon S. Perelman

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

To assess the efficacy of using eyeblink frequency modulation to detect deception about a third party, 32 participants were sent on a mission to deliver a package to an interviewer. 17 of the participants lied to the interviewer about the details of their mock mission and 15 responded truthfully. During the interview, eyeblink frequency data were collected via electromyography and recorded video. Liars displayed eye- blink frequency suppression while lying, while truth tellers exhibited an increase in eyeblink frequency during the mission relevant questioning period. The compen- satory flurry of eyeblinks following deception observed in previous studies was ab- sent …

Changes In Cerebral White Matter, Vascular Risk And Cognition Across The Adult Lifespan, Andrew Robert Bender

Wayne State University Dissertations

Numerous studies over the past decade have used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine associations between age, diffusion and anisotropy measures of cerebral white matter (WM), and cognitive performance. However, few have examined relationships between intra-individual change in DTI measures of WM and cognitive function. It is possible that the extant cross-sectional findings are a poor representation of age-related change in WM and cognition. The present study used latent difference-score modeling (LDM) to assess change over two years in DTI indices fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusivity (DR), axial diffusivity (DA) and mean diffusivity (MD). In addition, we examined the effects …

The Role Of Relational And Item Specific Processing In The Survival Advantage Across English And Spanish, Crystal J. Robinson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The current paper examines the effects of survival processing relative to item specific and relational processing on recall for both English monolinguals and Spanish-English bilinguals. It has been suggested that both item specific and relational processing play an important role in the survival advantage (Burns, Hart, Griffith, & Burns, 2012; Burns, Hwang, & Burns, 2011). However, to date, the generalizability of this advantage has yet to be examined cross-linguistically. In two studies, participants were asked to make survival relevance ratings, pleasantness ratings, and to categorize a set of words from either common taxonomic or ad hoc categories. Spanish-English bilinguals performed …

What You See Is What You Forget : Alcohol Cue Exposure, Affect, And The Misinformation Effect, Camille Crocken Barnes

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Previous research has suggested that both alcohol cues and positive affect increase the tendency to incorporate false information into memory. This series of studies sought to determine if affect mediates the influence of alcohol cues on incorporation of false information into memory. Initially, a pilot study was completed to determine the individual differences that predict which individuals experience a heightening of positive affect following visualization exercises involving alcoholic beverages. Next, a study was conducted to determine if this affect increase from exposure to alcohol cues leads to increased acceptance of misinformation into memory. Participants' memories were tested while they were …

Goal Commitments And The Content Of Thoughts And Dreams: Basic Principles, Eric Klinger

Psychology Publications

A few empirically supported principles can account for much of the thematic content of waking thought, including rumination, and dreams. (1) An individual’s commitments to particular goals sensitize the individual to respond to cues associated with those goals. The cues may be external or internal in the person’s own mental activity. The responses may take the form of noticing the cues, storing them in memory, having thoughts or dream segments related to them, and/or taking action. Noticing may be conscious or not. Goals may be any desired endpoint of a behavioral sequence, including finding out more about something, i.e., exploring …

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 …

Self-Defining Memories, Scripts, And The Life Story: Narrative Identity In Personality And Psychotherapy, Jefferson A. Singer, Pavel Blagov, Meredith Berry, Kathryn M. Oost

Psychology Faculty Publications

An integrative model of narrative identity builds on a dual memory system that draws on episodic memory and a long-term self to generate autobiographical memories. Autobiographical memories related to critical goals in a lifetime period lead to life-story memories, which in turn become self-defining memories when linked to an individual's enduring concerns. Self-defining memories that share repetitive emotion-outcome sequences yield narrative scripts, abstracted templates that filter cognitive-affective processing. The life story is the individual's overarching narrative that provides unity and purpose over the life course. Healthy narrative identity combines memory specificity with adaptive meaning-making to achieve insight and well-being, as …

The Role Of World Knowledge And Episodic Memory In Scripted Narratives, Micah L. Mumper

Psychology Honors Projects

Readers recruit information from both general world knowledge and episodic memory during reading comprehension. The present experiment used eye tracking to investigate the time-course of how these two sources of memory interact. Participants read passages describing scenarios in which an actor performs a role that was either scriptually appropriate or inappropriate. Half the passages containing the inappropriate role-filler were preceded by an episodic justification for this scriptural violation. Using the same paradigm, Cook and Myers (2004) found context had an early influence on the integration of the role-filler, but world knowledge showed a later effect in the post-target region. The …

Googling To Forget: The Cognitive Processing Of Internet Search, Elizabeth T. Friede

CMC Senior Theses

Technology is currently extremely integrated with everyday life. Popular media has made bold claims that the internet is making us “dumber” and people struggle to remember information more now than they ever have in the past. Scientific research on the effect of internet search on cognition and memory is still in its infancy. This research will analyze the literature and theories discussing memory and the internet. Based on an original experiment by Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner. 20 participants (10 young adults and 10 older adults) performed a typing task with twenty trivia statements, followed by a recall and recognition memory …

Temporal Shifts In Weapon Focus: Comparing Retrograde And Anterograde Effects, William Blake Erickson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

When an eyewitness suffers an impairment of memory for a criminal's face because the criminal used a weapon during the commission of the crime, this impairment is called the weapon focus effect. Literature provides two explanations for how this effect arises: some implicate the narrowing of attentional cues to the weapon during the commission of a crime because arousal of the victim increases, while others claim that the weapon is merely a novel object in most everyday contexts, and novel objects demand more attention than contextually appropriate ones. The current study employed a simulated crime paradigm taking place in a …

Responses To Domestic Violence Public Service Ads: Memory, Attitudes, Affect, And Individual Differences, Courtney Elizabeth Welton-Mitchell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Public service ads (PSAs) are an increasingly visible part of efforts to decrease the occurrence and consequences of domestic violence. Like other advertising, domestic violence PSAs are designed to grab attention, influence attitudes, and enhance memory for ad content. Over the years, images in domestic violence PSAs have changed substantially; agencies have started using pictures that generate emotions - either vivid negative images (bruised faces or body parts), or positive images (smiling faces) that contrast with the negative text. It is not clear, however, how different types of ad images influence memory for the message and attitudes about domestic violence, …

Dynamic Aspects Of Musical Imagery, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

Auditory imagery can represent many aspects of music, such as the starting pitches of a tune or the instrument that typically plays it. In this paper, I concentrate on more dynamic, or time-sensitive aspects of musical imagery, as demonstrated in two recently published studies. The first was a behavioral study that examined the ability to make emotional judgments about both heard and imagined music in real time. The second was a neuroimaging study on the neural correlates of anticipating an upcoming tune, after hearing a cue tune. That study found activation of several sequence-learning brain areas, some of which varied …

Semantic Priming Of Familiar Songs, Sarah K. Johnson, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Journal Articles

We explored the functional organization of semantic memory for music by comparing priming across familiar songs both within modalities (Experiment 1, tune to tune; Experiment 3, category label to lyrics) and across modalities (Experiment 2, category label to tune; Experiment 4, tune to lyrics). Participants judged whether or not the target tune or lyrics were real (akin to lexical decision tasks). We found significant priming, analogous to linguistic associative-priming effects, in reaction times for related primes as compared to unrelated primes, but primarily for within-modality comparisons. Reaction times to tunes (e.g., "Silent Night") were faster following related tunes ("Deck the …

The Reversed Testing Effect : Unraveling The Benefits Of Practiced Recall, Katherine Mary Weber

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Eyewitness memory for events has been shown to be malleable and susceptible to intrusions of misinformation (Loftus & Palmer, 1974). It has been demonstrated that practicing retrieval of studied material can lead to improved recall, known as the testing effect (Karpicke & Roediger, 2008; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006). However, practiced recall may also lead to the increased incorporation of misinformation into memory, known as the reversed testing effect (Chan, Thomas, & Bulevich, 2009). While Karpicke and Roediger (2008) used Swahili-English word pairs to demonstrate the testing effect, Chan et al. used video materials. In two out of three of the …

Introduction To The Neurosciences And Music Iv: Learning And Memory, Andrea R. Halpern

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

The conference entitled "The Neurosciences and Music-IV: Learning and Memory" was held at the University of Edinburgh from June 9-12, 2011, jointly hosted by the Mariani Foundation and the Institute for Music in Human and Social Development, and involving nearly 500 international delegates. Two opening workshops, three large and vibrant poster sessions, and nine invited symposia introduced a diverse range of recent research findings and discussed current research directions. Here, the proceedings are introduced by the workshop and symposia leaders on topics including working with children, rhythm perception, language processing, cultural learning, memory, musical imagery, neural plasticity, stroke rehabilitation, autism, …

Trauma Severity And Defensive Emotion-Regulation Reactions As Predictors Of Forgetting Childhood Trauma, Bette L. Bottoms, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Michelle A. Epstein, Matthew J. Badanek

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Using a retrospective survey, we studied a sample of 1679 college women to determine whether reports of prior forgetting of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other traumas could be explained by trauma severity and individual differences in the use of defensive emotion-regulation reactions (i.e., repressive coping, dissociation, and fantasy proneness). Among victims of physical abuse (but not sexual abuse or other types of trauma), those who experienced severe abuse and used defensive reactions were sometimes more likely to report temporary forgetting of abuse, but other times less likely to report forgetting. We also found unanticipated main effects of trauma severity …

Improving Memory Using N-Back Training, Paul Beavon

Theses : Honours

Investigations into n-back training and near transfer to short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) have realised inconsistent results. A significant transfer to STM was reported using dual n-back training (Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, & Perrig, 2008). However, the majority of studies have found no significant transfer to WM as operationalised by complex span tasks using either single or dual n-back training. The current study examined the single n-back task and near transfer to STM and WM as operationalised by the Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities (Mather & Woodcock-Johnson, 2001). Forty-seven participants were divided into experimental treatment (n = 26) …

Age Differences In Revision Of Causal Belief, Kristi M. Simmons

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Inductive reasoning (IR) requires efficient working memory (WM). Research shows that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is involved during WM tasks and that PFC functioning declines with age. The ability to comprehend and update text-based information requires an intact PFC and efficient WM and IR. The current study presented a series of messages about the investigation of a warehouse fire to 48 young and 48 older adults. One message contained a piece of misinformation which another message corrected later. It was hypothesized that a memory cue to the misinformation with the correction statement should benefit older adults the most during the …

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 …