Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Self-Monitoring And Partner Knowledge Structures, Ronald Lee Gainey

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A connection between self-monitoring, which is an individual difference in concern about self-presentation, and partner knowledge structures, which is how people organize thoughts about their current romantic partner, is explored in this study. There were two competing hypotheses. If people structure thoughts about their partner in a way similar to how they structure their social worlds, then low self-monitors would have integrated partner knowledge structures and high self-monitors would have compartmentalized partner knowledge structures. If people structure thoughts about their partner in a way that reflects their relationship motivations and needs then we would find the opposite pattern of results. …

Does Need For Cognition Moderate The Relationship Between Eyewitness Age And Perceived Credibility?, Anna E. Pittman

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The relationship between age and perceived credibility was examined, particularly whether or not middle-aged witnesses were perceived as more credible than older eyewitnesses. Additionally, I was interested in whether or not the relationship between age and credibility was moderated by need for cognition. Participants read a trial transcript about a child pedestrian-car accident wherein a defendant was charged with manslaughter. The sole eyewitness, either a 49 or 79 year-old male, testified that the child hit his head on a rock upon stepping off the curb before being struck by the defendant’s vehicle. Transcripts included direct and cross-examination with half accompanied …

General Recognition Theory Extended To Include Response Times: Predictions For A Class Of Parallel Systems, James T. Townsend, Joseph W. Houpt, Noah H. Silbert

Psychology Faculty Publications

General Recognition Theory (GRT; Ashby & Townsend, 1986) is a multidimensional theory of classification. Originally developed to study various types of perceptual independence, it has also been widely employed in diverse cognitive venues, such as categorization. The initial theory and applications have been static, that is, lacking a time variable and focusing on patterns of responses, such as confusion matrices. Ashby proposed a parallel, dynamic stochastic version of GRT with application to perceptual independence based on discrete linear systems theory with imposed noise (Ashby, 1989). The current study again focuses on cognitive/perceptual independence within an identification classification paradigm. We extend …

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) …

The Effect Of Musical Training On Verbal And Tonal Working Memory, Ching-I Lu

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation explored the translation from print to sound of the tonal language Mandarin versus English versus musical notation in healthy volunteers. The performance of musicians and non-musicians was compared across a variety of reading tasks in an attempt to examine whether musical training can facilitate Mandarin tone or phonological processing. The effects of increasing working memory load on reading performance across tasks were also examined. Results showed that increasing demands on working memory in visual recognition tasks significantly decreased performance accuracy for both musicians and non-musicians across tasks. Significant differences in accuracy rates were observed between musicians and non-musicians. …

Cognitive Decision-Making Among Residents During An Extended Natural Disaster, Michael Shreeves

Summer Community of Scholars Posters (RCEU and HCR Combined Programs)

No abstract provided.

Self-Efficacy, Intrinsic Motivation, And Academic Outcomes Among Latino Middle School Students Participating In An After-School Program, Kate Niehaus, Kathleen Moritz Rudasill, Jill L. Adelson

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

This longitudinal study examined how academic self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and participation in an after-school program contributed to the academic achievement of Latino middle school students over the course of one school year. Participants were 47 Latino students in sixth through eighth grades who attended two public middle schools in which an after-school program was held that was specifically for Latino students. Results from ordinary least squares regression revealed that intrinsic motivation was positively associated with students GPAs, self-efficacy was a positive predictor of students’ school attendance and standardized math achievement scores, and attendance at the after-school program also contributed positively …

Neonatal White Matter Abnormalities An Important Predictor Of Neurocognitive Outcome For Very Preterm Children, Lianne J. Woodward, Caron A. C. Clark, Samudragupta Bora, Terrie E. Inder

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Background: Cerebral white matter abnormalities on term MRI are a strong predictor of motor disability in children born very preterm. However, their contribution to cognitive impairment is less certain. Objective: Examine relationships between the presence and severity of cerebral white matter abnormalities on neonatal MRI and a range of neurocognitive outcomes assessed at ages 4 and 6 years. Design/Methods: The study sample consisted of a regionally representative cohort of 104 very preterm (≤32 weeks gestation) infants born from 1998–2000 and a comparison group of 107 full-term infants. At term equivalent, all preterm infants underwent a structural MRI scan that was …

Book Review: The Morality Of Social Identity, David Moshman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Morality tells us how to treat each other. Social identity connects us to each other. But all is not well. Social identity connects us to a group and thus to its members. Morality requires justice for everyone, regardless of group. Thus considerations of morality and social identity often pull in different directions (Appiah, 2005; Moshman, 2007; Sen, 2006).

Two excellent and complementary new books, Children and Social Exclusion and Narrative and the Politics of Identity, address the developmental roots and implications of these issues. The first reviews and integrates multiple programs of research on children’s developing judgments about dilemmas …

Evaluating The Convergent Validity Of The Measure Of Emotional Connotations, Daniel N. Erosa

McNair Poster Presentations

The Measure of Emotional Connotations (MEC; Barchard, Kirsch, Anderson, Grob, & Anderson, 2012) is a new test that has been developed to measure the ability to perceive the emotional connotations of written language. To examine its convergent validity, the MEC will be correlated with the two emotion perception tasks on the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT; Mayer, Salovey, Caruso, & Sitarenious, 2003). These MSCEIT tasks are valid tests of emotion perception; thus, strong correlations would provide support for the MEC as a valid test of emotion perception.

Feeling At Home: Learning, Law, Cognitive Science, And Narrative, Lea B. Vaughn

Articles

What is the "how and why" of law's affinity for narrative? In order to explain why the use of stories is such an effective teaching and presentation strategy in the law, this paper will consider theories and accounts from cognitive as well as evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and, briefly, cultural anthropology. This account seeks to address "how" narrative helps us learn and use the law as well as "why" we are so compelled to use stories in teaching and in practice.

Brain science, simplified here, suggests that the first task is to grab someone's attention. Emotionally charged events are more likely …

Amygdalar Stimulation Produces Alterations On Firing Properties Of Hippocampal Place Cells, Eun Joo Kim, Earnest S. Kim, Mijeong Park, Jeiwon Cho, Jeansok J. Kim

Faculty Publications - Psychology Department

Stress is a biologically ubiquitous factor that, when perceived uncontrollable by humans and animals, can have lingering adverse effects on brain and cognitive functions. We have previously reported that rats that experienced inescapable-unpredictable stress subsequently exhibited decreased stability of firing rates of place cells in the CA1 hippocampus, accompanied by impairments in CA1 long-term synaptic potentiation and spatial memory consolidation. Because the elevated level of glucocorticoid hormones and the heightened amygdalar activity have been implicated in the emergence of stress effects on the hippocampus, we investigated whether administration of corticosterone and electrical stimulation of the amygdala can produce stress-like alterations …

Implicit Attitudes Of Ethnicity And Language: Evaluative And Associative Priming, Eva Margarita De La Riva Lopez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Most members of minority groups belong to both an ethnic and a linguistic minority. The interplay between these two related yet independent constructs has not been explored. For this reason, this study examined language attitudes following the theoretical model of social categorization by using implicit measures. This study also investigated the implicit association between language and ethnicity. In this manner, the relationship that exists between attitudes towards minority groups and attitudes towards minority languages can be disentangled. A simultaneous study of implicit attitudes of ethnicity and language, and the association between ethnicity and language, may elucidate possible mechanisms involved in …

Adding Within-Utterance Emotion Decay For More Human-Like Dialog, Michael Hans Durcholz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

While spoken dialog systems have been used for commercial applications for several decades, most commercial spoken dialog systems provide only simple information exchange capabilities. Emotion synthesis in spoken dialog systems has become an active research area recently, and use of emotion-adaptive dialog systems has demonstrated improvements in user experience and rapport. This thesis seeks to improve how emotions are conveyed in dialog systems to enable robust emotional support that improves user experiences with dialog systems and models human speech characteristics more accurately than current dialog systems.

Prior work with Gracie (GRAduate Coordinator with Immediate response Emotions), an emotion-adaptive dialog system, …

The Wounded Healer: Finding Meaning In Suffering, Garret B. Wyner

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

In modern history, no event has more profoundly symbolized suffering than the Holocaust. This novel “Husserlian-realist” phenomenological dissertation elucidates the meaning of existential trauma through an interdisciplinary and psychologically integrative vantage point. I use the testimony of a select group of Holocaust witnesses who committed suicide decades after that event as a lens to examine what their despair may reveal about an unprecedented existential, moral, and spiritual crisis of humanity that threatens to undermine our faith in human history and reality itself. By distinguishing what they actually saw about our condition from what they merely believed about reality, I show …

Motivation, Need Support And Need Satisfaction In Youth Soccer Players, Erica Lippitt

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Author's abstract: Physical activity levels and obesity rates vary greatly across ethnic groups in the United States (CDC, 2011). One popular way to increase physical activity levels in youth is through youth sport participation, which may be influenced by athlete motivation. Numerous studies have determined motivation levels in youth sport participants, but very little done in comparing levels across different ethnic groups. Identifying differences in motivation levels based on ethnicity can allow coaches and sport administrators to adjust practices and program setups to increase participation and meet needs of player competence. The purpose of the study was to determine if …

Predictors Of Bullying In An Adolescent School Sample, Schell Hufstetler

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Author's abstract: Bullying is a pervasive problem in our society. Contributing to this problem is the fact that bullying is not well understood. This makes it difficult to design successful interventions. The current study aims to create a complete picture of bullying in order to increase understanding of this behavior. For this study, 59 adolescents completed a survey packet including measures of bullying behaviors and other variables expected to relate to bullying. The results revealed that bullying is a problem for both genders. Multivariate analyses revealed males to be more directly and indirectly aggressive, but there were no significant gender …

"...Bless Her Little Heart!": The Culture Of Honor And Emotion Recognition, Forrest J. Rackham

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Author's abstract: Some researchers assert that cultural display rules may explain differences in perceiving emotions (Matsumoto, Yoo, & Chung, 2010). The current study examined the display rule of masking within the Southern culture of honor. It was hypothesized that masking within the culture of honor negatively affects emotion perception sensitivity, particularly in the speed and accuracy of recognizing anger. Southern undergraduate students were primed with the culture of honor and then presented with the Emotional Expression Multimorph Task. Participants chose one of the six emotions (i.e., sad, happy, surprise, fear, disgust, or anger). It was hypothesized participants in the masking …

The Comparative Effects Of Visual-Only Instruction Versus Modality Principle Instruction On Algebraic Problem Accuracy And Perceived Mental Effort At Varying Levels Of Task Complexity For Undergraduate Nursing Students, Kristina V. Mattis

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of two instructional formats on math accuracy and perceived mental effort during a series of math problems that varied in levels of complexity. The multimedia instruction results were compared against a traditional form of instruction using visual-only teaching materials.

Few studies examine the impact of instructional design on learning outcomes math instruction within nursing with a lack of research describing how math is taught to nursing students other than traditional lecture or textbook. Nursing students demonstrate low performance rates on math problems that involve mixed numbers that also tend to …

Abused Women Who Kill: Juror Perspectives On Self-Defense Theories, Shahrzad Nikoo

CMC Senior Theses

In self-defense cases of battered women who kill their abusive husbands, defendants have used Battered Woman Syndrome (BWS) expert testimony to help justify their acts of self-defense. However, past research demonstrates that BWS is ineffective in persuading jurors because it pathologizes the defendant rather than rationalizing her behavior. Additionally, BWS highlights passive (i.e., stereotypical) features of a battered woman, and such testimony may not apply to a defendant with active (i.e., atypical) features of a battered women. The current study hypothesized that another type of expert testimony, Social-Agency Framework (SAF), will persuade jurors to render more lenient verdicts, and that …

Semantic Feature Distinctiveness And Frequency, Katherine Marie Lamb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Lexical access is the process in which basic components of meaning in language, the lexical entries (words) are activated. This activation is based on the organization and representational structure of the lexical entries. Semantic features of words, which are the prominent semantic characteristics of a word concept, provide important information because they mediate semantic access to words. An experiment was conducted to examine the importance of semantic feature distinctiveness and feature frequency in accessing the lexical representations of young and older adults in an off-line task using features of animals. The McRae, Cree, Seidenberg, and McNorgan (2005) feature norm corpus …

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 …

When Cognitive Bias Masquerades As Intervention Efficacy: Drinking Norms As Anchors And Norm Interventions As Anchoring Effects, Matthew R. Pearson

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Problematic drinking is a serious public health concern on college campuses in the United States. College students most frequently report drinking for social reasons, and perceptions of peers' drinking, or perceived drinking norms, are among the most consistent, robust predictors of college student drinking. Therefore, norm-based interventions have risen to prominence in the attempt to reduce the harm caused by college student alcohol use. However, the efficacy of these interventions may be obscured by cognitive bias. Specifically, providing information regarding the drinking norm may "anchor" individuals' estimates of their own behavior. Using samples of college student drinkers, two studies were …

From Nixon’S War On Drugs To Obama’S Drug Policies Today: Presidential Progress In Addressing Racial Injustices And Disparities, Cigdem Sirin

Selected Works Temporary Series

This study investigates presidential progress in addressing racial injustices and disparities within the context of the war on drugs. I argue that racial inequalities emanating from the war on drugs have been largely overlooked and at times aggravated by previous administrations. Although there have been some improvements in this regard since President Obama took office, more extensive policy reforms are needed to better remedy such inequalities. I also argue that the viability of a progressive presidency for racial justice vis-à-vis U.S. drug policies depends not only on the personal agenda of the president but also on a supportive public as …

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 …

From Nixon’S War On Drugs To Obama’S Drug Policies Today: Presidential Progress In Addressing Racial Injustices And Disparities, Cigdem Sirin

Departmental Papers (PS)

This study investigates presidential progress in addressing racial injustices and disparities within the context of the war on drugs. I argue that racial inequalities emanating from the war on drugs have been largely overlooked and at times aggravated by previous administrations. Although there have been some improvements in this regard since President Obama took office, more extensive policy reforms are needed to better remedy such inequalities. I also argue that the viability of a progressive presidency for racial justice vis-à-vis U.S. drug policies depends not only on the personal agenda of the president but also on a supportive public as …

The Role Of Verbal Working Memory In New Word Learning In Toddlers 24 To 30 Months Old, France Weill

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

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Examining Experience In Depressed And Nondepressed Individuals, Jedidiah D. Gunter

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The inner experience of nine depressed and nine nondepressed individuals was explored using Descriptive Experience Sampling. Each participant completed four days of descriptive experience sampling, exploring about six moments of their inner experience on each sampling day. Although the Depressed participants self-reported substantially higher levels of depressive symptomatology on the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale (CES-D) on each day of sampling, the differences in the frequency of depressive symptomatology in the inner experiences of these two groups were not statistically significant. Despite the group differences not reaching statistical significance, the Depressed group experienced somewhat more frequent moments of depression, …

Perceptions Of Sexual Dangerousness: Accurate Identification Of Sexual Offenders From Static Photographs, Amber Jean Culbertson-Faegre

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present research expands understanding of the phenomenon of accurate identification of sexually dangerous men. Study 1 was designed to examine the influence of experience on accuracy of perceptions of sexual dangerousness. Receiving feedback about test trials increased accuracy on future trials at a marginally significant level. Study 2 was designed to determine the importance of specific facial features on these judgments. This study, however, failed to replicate the findings from the first study. Implications for Study 1, as well as possible explanations for Study 2 are discussed.

Configuration As A Source Of Information, Joseph W. Houpt, Robert D. Hawkins, Ami Eidels, James T. Townsend, Michael J. Wenger

Psychology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.