Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety, Rebecca Schroeder

Honors Projects

Seeking Solace: Regret, Grief, Anxiety is a triptych video and artifact piece inspired by the abstract analysis of my dreams. It recognizes worries held within my subconscious and brings them to life through graphic design, photography, and video. The process of creating provides a new perspective of looking at both art and occupational therapy as methods of solving emotional distress.

I have recorded over 80 of my dreams in the past year. In these dreams, regret, grief, and anxiety are common themes. These themes are represented in three triptychs that cycle through past, present, and future problems. The cycling of …

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 …

Relationship Of Optimism And Suicidal Ideation In Three Groups Of Patients At Varying Levels Of Suicide Risk, Jeff C. Huffman, Julia K. Boehm, Scott R. Beach, Eleanor E. Beale, Christina M. Dubois, Brian C. Healy

Psychology Faculty Articles and Research

Optimism has been associated with reduced suicidal ideation, but there have been few studies in patients at high suicide risk. We analyzed data from three study populations (total N=319) with elevated risk of suicide: (1) patients with a recent acute cardiovascular event, (2) patients hospitalized for heart disease who had depression or an anxiety disorder, and (3) patients psychiatrically hospitalized for suicidal ideation or following a suicide attempt. For each study we analyzed the association between optimism (measured by the Life-Orientation Test-Revised) and suicidal ideation, and then completed an exploratory random effects meta-analysis of the findings to synthesize this data. …

Learning The Language Of Academic Engineering: Sociocognitive Writing In Graduate Students, Catherine G. P. Berdanier

Open Access Dissertations

Although engineering graduate programs rarely require academic writing courses, the indicators of merit in academic engineering, such as journal publications, successful grants, and doctoral milestones (e.g. theses, dissertations) are based in effective written argumentation and disciplinary discourse. Further, graduate student attrition averages 57% across all disciplines, with some studies classifying up to 50% of these students as “ABD” (All But Dissertation.) In engineering disciplines specifically, graduate attrition rates across the U.S. average 36% (both Master’s and PhD students), according to the Council of Graduate Schools. The lack of socialization is generally noted as a main reason for graduate attrition, one …

Naïve Physics And Quantum Mechanics: The Cognitive Bias Of Everett’S Many-Worlds Interpretation, Andrew Lang

College of Science and Engineering Faculty Research and Scholarship

We discuss the role that intuitive theories of physics play in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. We compare and contrast naïve physics with quantum mechanics and argue that quantum mechanics is not just hard to understand but that it is difficult to believe, often appearing magical in nature. Quantum mechanics is often discussed in the context of "quantum weirdness" and quantum entanglement is known as "spooky action at a distance." This spookiness is more than just because quantum mechanics doesn't match everyday experience; it ruffles the feathers of our naïve physics cognitive module. In Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, …

A Mendelian Randomization Study Of Testosterone And Cognition In Men, Jie Zhao, Tai Hing Lam, Chaoqiang Jiang, Stacey S. Cherny, Bin Liu, Kar Keung Cheng, Weisen Zhang, Gabriel M. Leung, C Mary Schooling

Publications and Research

Testosterone replacement for older men is increasingly common, with some observations suggesting a protective effect on cognitive function. We examined the association of endogenous testosterone with cognitive function among older men in a Mendelian randomization study using a separate-sample instrumental variable (SSIV) analysis estimator to minimize confounding and reverse causality. A genetic score predicting testosterone was developed in 289 young Chinese men from Hong Kong, based on selected testosterone-related single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs10046, rs1008805 and rs1256031). The association of genetically predicted testosterone with delayed 10-word recall score and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score was assessed at baseline and follow-up using …

Computerized Cognitive Intervention In Cognitively Normal Very Elderly Individuals, Rebecca K. West

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Background: The elderly population, and especially the oldest-old (those aged 85 and older) and old-old (those aged 75 and older), are the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population, increasing the need for disease-modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other age-related forms of cognitive decline. There is significant evidence that modifiable, nonpharmaceutical factors and interventions like cognitive activity and cognitive training may slow the course of AD and cognitive decline. However, little is understood about how cognitive training may translate into improved cognitive functioning, as a potential strategy for preventing decline. To the best our knowledge, this has never …

The Effect Of Cognitive Load On Liars And Truth Tellers: Exploring The Moderating Impact Of Working Memory Capacity, Sarah Jordan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Two studies are presented. The purpose of the first study is to examine the moderating impact of working memory capacity (WMC) on the cognitive load produced by both the type of statement a person is making and the manner in which the person is interviewed in a mock crime scenario. The moderating impact of suspects’ WMC (measured using the automated operation span task) on this process was also assessed. Suspects were instructed to tell the truth, a relatively easy lie, or a more difficult lie. Suspects were then interviewed in a relatively easy manner, a moderately more difficult manner, or …

Stress And Suicidal Behavior: A Cognitive, Behavioral, And Biological Integrative Approach, Jorge Valderrama

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in young adults in the United States. Previous research has established distal and proximal life stress as a strong risk factor for suicidal behavior. However, how stress impacts suicidal behavior via interactive cognitive and biological mechanisms has not been thoroughly examined. The present research sought to better understand the relationship between stress and suicidal behavior via altered neurobiological functioning, maladaptive cognitions, and deficits in executive functioning. The first study found a relationship between the brooding subtype of rumination and trait impulsivity in the forms of negative urgency, lack of premeditation, and …

Enhancing Travel Experience With The Combination Of Information Visualization, Situation Awareness, And Distributed Cognition, Weiran Lei

Open Access Theses

With the new forms of travel introduced by new technologies of transportation and communication, a satisfied travel experience could be affected by various factors before and during a trip. Especially for road trips, traveling by car provides freedom on time control while leading to more possibilities of rescheduling initial plans made under time constraints. When overwhelmed with the need for changed travel context to avoid unexpected events that will require a serious change of initial plans, travelers need to find and access helpful contextual information quickly. This is a context-related decision making process that requires amplifying human situation awareness and …

Wandering In Contemporary Literature: A Narrative Theory Of Cognition, Hillel E. Broder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study offers a theory of wandering cognition as an animating feature of western literature, in general, and of contemporary literature, in particular. Unlike existing theories of peripatetic bodies and minds in fiction that focus primarily on political critiques, cultural practices, or pleasures of digression, this theory of wandering offers an aesthetic philosophy and ethical critique of representing cognition, memory, and narrative identity that finds affinities in the political, phenomenological, and ethical thought of Walter Benjamin, Emmanuel Levinas, and Giorgio Agamben.

Unlike existing cognitive theories of literature that apply cognitive theory to literary study (or vice versa), this study develops …

Re-Examining The Bilingual Advantage On Interference-Control And Task-Switching Tasks: A Meta-Analysis, Seamus Donnelly

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A much-debated topic in psycholinguistics is whether lifelong bilingualism enhances executive functions (EF), the set of higher-order cognitive processes involved in the control of thought and action. Several researchers have predicted bilingual advantages on various EF tasks, especially interference-control and task-switching tasks. Many studies have tested these predictions, but results have proven unreliable. As a complementary approach to recent quantitative syntheses on this topic, the present dissertation tests whether the bilingual advantage is moderated by a number of theoretically significant variables: dependent variable (DV), task, age, age of L2 acquisition and lab.

Two meta-analyses were conducted. Study 1 considered interference-control …

The Importance Of Bilingual Experience In Assessing Bilingual Advantages In Executive Functions, Hwajin Yang, Andree Hartanto, Sujin Yang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Paap, Johnson, and Sawi (2015) contend that bilingual advantages in executive functions (EF) do not exist, and that there is no compelling evidence that a certain bilingual experience hones a specific component of EF (p. 272). We believe that this conclusion is premature, because Paap et al.'s approach was not sufficiently refined to effectively capture the real-world complexity of bilingualism. In this commentary, we draw on the adaptive control hypothesis (Green & Abutalebi, 2013) and argue that studies of bilingualism should consider specific bilingual experiences that potentially moderate bilingual advantages through substantial demand for language control (for similar commentaries, see …

What’S Next For Research On Young Children’S Interactive Media?, Georgene Troseth, Colleen Russo, Gabrielle Strouse

School of Education Faculty Publications

ince early in the development of children’s television, research has informed policy and practice involving young children’s media use. To increase the likelihood that new media support children’s development, research in the coming decade must stay current with advancing technology. With the advent of various forms of interactive digital media, key research questions involve social and physical interactivity. How should adults appropriately support children’s use of different kinds of media to promote children’s creativity, learning, and development? How does co-viewing (social interaction) overlap with and differ from contingency built into the medium itself? When a device interacts, does that change …

Investigating The Social And Cognitive Factors Influencing Risky Sexual Behaviors In Emerging Adults, Anthony W. Surace

Theses and Dissertations

The present investigation tested a regression model predicting sexual risk behavior among emerging adults using social and cognitive factors. Participants were 301 sexually active young adults living in New York City. Social and cognitive factors predicted sexual behavior individually, but did not interact with one another in the regression model.

Parents And Teachers’ Perceptions And Clinical Diagnosis Of Autism Among White And Non-White Groups, Margaret Gopaul

School of Psychology Publications

The pervasiveness of autism has significantly increased over the past 2 decades with the 2014 Center for Disease Control and Prevention report indicating 1 in 68 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Early intervention is recommended as the most effective treatment approach. Nevertheless, previous research has indicated that White children are diagnosed with ASD about 1.5 years earlier than are Non-White children. A current gap remains in literature regarding ASD and different racial groups, and evidence has been inconclusive regarding disparities in identifying and diagnosing ASD. To fill this gap, this study investigated the relationship between child race, …

The Enculturation Experience Of Three Chinese American Adolescents: A Multiple Case Study, Sherry C. Wang, Vicki Plano-Clark, Michael J. Scheel

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The authors designed a qualitative, multiple case study that employed the photovoice method to explore how enculturation is experienced by three Chinese adolescents living with their families in a nonethnically dense cultural community. A total of 18 one-on-one interviews were conducted with three youth and their parents. Photos were also used as elicitation tools to understand the meaning of enculturation for each individual. Case descriptions of each adolescent are presented, followed by five cross-case themes: (a) Self- Identifying as Chinese, (b) Parental Strictness, (c) Multiple Groups of Comparison, (d) (Not) Having a Chinese Community, and (e) Messages to Excel. The …

The Effects Of Cerebrovascular Aging On Sleep Quality In A Sample Of Aging Adults, Chelsea Tia Mapp

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Cerebrovascular burden (CVB) is a significant factor among the aging population. Age-related cognitive decline is an important social and economic issue, and understanding the mechanisms has clinical implications, both in selecting potential therapies and in choosing specific modifiers for their evaluation. In summary, past work suggests that high CVB is one source of variance in neurovascular functioning among older adults. High CVB and associated brain-changes have been identified as causes of age-related changes and it may be that high CVB is a correlate of age-related changes in sleep quality. The primary hypothesis to be tested is that cerebrovascular burden measured …

Competitive Mothers: Comparing Competitiveness In Spheres That Matter, Alessandra Cassar, F Wordofa, Y J. Zhang

Economics Faculty Publications

Recent advances have highlighted the evolutionary significance of female competition, with the sexes pursuing different competitive strategies and females reserving their most intense competitive behaviors for the benefit of offspring (1-3). Influential economic experiments using cash incentives, however, have found evidence suggesting that women have a lower desire to compete than men (4-7). We hypothesize that the estimated gender differences critically depend on how we elicit them, especially on the incentives used. We test this hypothesis through an experiment with adults in China (n=358). Data show that, once the incentives are switched from monetary to childbenefitting, gender differences disappear. This …

Rhetoric In The Mass Media: Terrorism Or Freedom Of Speech?, Carolyn Rhoades

Bridges: A Journal of Student Research

Terrorism is a widely debated topic on social media networks such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. This is due to the fact that a high percentage of users rely on sites such as Twitter and Facebook as a news source for developing stories and information. In a study conducted in 2015 by Pew Research Center, in association with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, research found that 63 percent of Facebook users and 63 percent Twitter users depend on these social networks for their news, which is a substantial increase from 2013. This paper presents a rhetorical analysis …

Parents And Teachers’ Perceptions And Clinical Diagnosis Of Autism Among White And Non-White Groups, Margaret Gopaul

Walden Faculty and Staff Publications

The pervasiveness of autism has significantly increased over the past 2 decades with the 2014 Center for Disease Control and Prevention report indicating 1 in 68 children are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Early intervention is recommended as the most effective treatment approach. Nevertheless, previous research has indicated that White children are diagnosed with ASD about 1.5 years earlier than are Non-White children. A current gap remains in literature regarding ASD and different racial groups, and evidence has been inconclusive regarding disparities in identifying and diagnosing ASD. To fill this gap, this study investigated the relationship between child race, …

The Role Of Self-Focused Cognition In Emotion Regulation, Ana Maria Draghici

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The present dissertation reports a set of three studies that sought to characterize the effects of self-focused cognition on emotion regulation, specifically, cognitive reappraisal. Across the three studies, I investigated the effects of self-distancing, disengagement of self-focused thought, and changing the content of self-focused thought on multiple measures of emotion regulation success and emotion regulation difficulty. Results broadly suggested that disengaging self-focused cognition provides distinct advantages for emotion regulation, which are independent of effects on emotional reactivity. Specifically, I observed that other-focused cognition resulted in equally successful, but less difficult emotion regulation, the ability to more quickly disengage from self-focused …

The Semantic Memory Imaging In Late Life Pilot Study, Michael Adam Sugarman

Wayne State University Dissertations

Introduction: Several functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have analyzed the famous name discrimination task (FNDT), an uncontrolled semantic memory probe requiring discrimination between famous and unfamiliar individuals. Completion of this simple task recruits a semantic memory network that has shown utility in determining risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Specific semantic memory probes using biographical information associated with famous individuals may build on previous findings and yield superior information regarding risk for AD.

Method: Sixteen cognitively intact elders completed the FNDT and two novel tasks during fMRI: Categories (matching famous individuals to occupational categories) and Attributes (matching famous individuals to …

The Effect Of Mixed Font Items On Lexical Decision Performance, Arielle B. Cenin

ETD Archive

The multistream model of word perception (Allen, Smith, Lien, Kaut, & Canfield, 2009) suggests that word identification generally involves whole-word information, but that when the orthographic form of a letter string is not standard, processing occurs analytically and is slower. For example, within-item case transitions slow responses in lexical decision experiments, in which participants are required to decide if a letter string is or is not a word; a within-item font transition may have a similar effect. Letters within a font are distinct yet related, and are constrained on several parameters to facilitate processing (Sanocki & Dyson, 2012). Font tuning …

Exploring The Relationship Between Ego Development And Mental Health, Heather R. Bonnett

ETD Archive

The goal of this study was to examine the relationship between ego identity in adults (ego development), symptoms of psychological distress, and self-esteem. Ego identity was operationalized using Loevinger’s (1976) stage theory of ego development, further modified by Cook-Greuter (1994; 2010). The test used to measure ego development was the Sentence Completion Test Integral (SCTi). Symptoms of mental disorders or psychological distress were measured using Derogatis’ (1994) Symptom Checklist 90 Revised (SCL-90-Revised). Self-esteem was measured using the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (RSES). It has been thought there would be noticeable differences in the relationship between ego development and the types …

Intertemporal Similarity: Discounting As A Last Resort, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Standard models of intertemporal choice assume that individuals discount future payoffs by integrating reward amounts and time delays to generate a discounted value. Alternative models propose that, rather than integrate across them, individuals compare within attributes (amounts and delays) to determine if differences in one attribute outweigh differences in another attribute. For instance, Leland (2002) and Rubinstein (2003) propose models that 1) compare the two reward amounts to determine whether they are similar, 2) compare the similarity of the two time delays, and then 3) make a decision based on these similarity judgments. Here, I tested discounting models against attribute-based …

Voluntary Food Sharing In Pinyon Jays: The Role Of Reciprocity And Dominance, Juan F. Duque, Jeffrey R. Stevens

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

Food sharing offers a clear example of prosocial behavior, in which one individual’s actions benefit another. Researchers have proposed a range of hypotheses that explain why food sharing may occur among unrelated individuals. Two such hypotheses, reciprocity and dominance, have been tested in many species, including fish, corvids, rats, bats, and primates, showing that (1) recipients sometimes reciprocate sharing back to previous donors and (2) dominant individuals share more than subordinates. Although primates dominate the study of prosocial behavior, active donation of food is actually quite rare in primates. In contrast, several corvid species spontaneously share food much more frequently. …

Statistical Analyses Of The Resilience Function, Joseph W. Houpt, Daniel R. Little

Psychology Faculty Publications

The extent to which distracting information influences decisions can be informative about the nature of the underlying cognitive and perceptual processes. In a recent paper, a response time-based measure for quantifying the degree of interference (or facilitation) from distracting information termed resilience was introduced. Despite using a statistical measure, the analysis was limited to qualitative comparisons between different model predictions. In this paper, we demonstrate how statistical procedures from workload capacity analysis can be applied to the new resilience functions. In particular, we present an approach to null-hypothesis testing of resilience functions and a method based on functional principal components …

A High-P/Low-P Procedure To Improve Recall Memory In Elderly Patients With Mild To Moderate Cognitive Impairment, Dawn Amber Seefeldt, Daniel Houlihan, Jeffrey Buchanan

Psychology Department Publications

The objective of this study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of implementing two types of high-probability of naming/low-probability of naming procedures to improve object recall memory in elderly individuals with cognitive impairment. The procedures involved the use of directives for recall compliance with a demonstrated high rate of compliance followed by embedded directives with a demonstrated low rate of recall. Two elderly subjects in states of cognitive decline were used in this demonstration. Results indicated positive outcomes with both procedures. Recall-based interventions were more effective than recognition-based procedures.

The Domain Specificity Of Intertemporal Choice In Pinyon Jays, Jeffrey R. Stevens, Bryce Kennedy, Dina Morales, Marianna Burks

Jeffrey Stevens Publications

When choosing between a piece of cake now versus a slimmer waistline in the future, many of us have difficulty with self-control. Food-caching species, however, regularly hide food for later recovery, sometimes waiting months before retrieving their caches. It remains unclear whether these long-term choices generalize outside of the caching domain. We hypothesized that the ability to save for the future is a general tendency that cuts across different situations. To test this hypothesis, we measured and experimentally manipulated caching to evaluate its relationship with operant measures of self-control in pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus). We found no correlation …