Cognitive Science Commons^™

Differences In Performance In Mental Rotation And Short-Term Free Recall In Gender Minorities, Katheryne Renee Wood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The study examined mental rotation, short-term free recall, state anxiety, and gender expression through masculinity and femininity. This study addressed gaps in literature examining gender differences in gender minority groups by investigating gender differences in two tasks: mental rotation and short-term recall. Participants are categorized into four gender groups: cisgender men, cisgender women, non-binary, and binary transgender. In accordance with previous literature, it was hypothesized that men would outperform women in mental rotation, women would outperform men in short-term free recall performance, and that non-binary individuals would operate separately from other groups. Anxiety was recorded as a possible covariate, but …

The Role Of Platform Design In Excessive Short Form Video Use And The Resulting Impacts On Cognitive Processes, Katherine Levey

Senior Theses

Short form video (SFV) platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels have rapidly reshaped global media consumption. This thesis investigates how the defining technological elements of SFV platforms contribute to prolonged viewing behavior by inducing flow, a psychological state characterized by deep immersion and diminished self-awareness. Through a review of nineteen scholarly articles, this study examines how features like infinite scroll, auto-play, and algorithmic personalization create a low-effort, high-reward user experience that sustains attention and facilitates continuous engagement. Once immersed, users often fall into a cycle of passive, prolonged scrolling, consuming more content and spending more time than intended. Findings …

On The Provenance Of Software Systems: Automating Software Traceability With Knowledge Graph And Large Language Model Synergy, Tyler Procko

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The present dissertation delineates a system that enables those engaged in software development to automatically generate and maintain project life cycle provenance. All projects are implemented and made manifest with the development of artifacts, e.g., papers, code files, etc. Tools exist to accelerate artifact creation, but little focus is paid to the processes that produce them. In terms of Ontology, or, from Ancient Greek, the study of being, the two most basic entities in reality are Continuant and Occurrent, or, roughly, “Artifact” and “Process”. This dissertation posits that for any created artifact, its process of creation, i.e., its life …

Selected Social And Lifestyle Correlates Of Brain Health Markers: The Cross-Cohort Collaboration Consortium, Leslie Grasset, Joshua C Bis, Stefan Frenzel, Daniel Kojis, Jeannette Simino, Amber Yaqub, Alexa Beiser, Claudine Berr, Jan Bressler, Robin Bülow, Charles S Decarli, Alison E Fohner, Laura B Harrington, Catherine Helmer, M Arfan Ikram, Rozenn N Lemaitre, Oscar L Lopez, W T Longstreth, Julia Neitzel, Michelle C Odden, Priya Palta, Carsten O Schmidt, Rajesh Talluri, Meike W Vernooij, Henry Völzke, Trudy Voortman, Quest Whalen, Katharina Wittfeld, Hans J Grabe, Thomas H Mosley, Bruce M Psaty, Frank J Wolters, Sudha Seshadri, Carole Dufouil

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: To investigate the associations of education level, marital status, and physical activity with dementia risk and brain MRI markers.

Methods: Data from six community-based samples from the Cross-Cohort Collaboration Consortium were analyzed. Self-reported education level, marital status, and physical activity at age 60 to 75 years were harmonized. Subsamples of participants with brain MRI markers at time of exposure were selected. Associations with dementia risk and cross-sectional MRI markers were meta-analyzed.

Results: Higher education level was associated with lower dementia risk (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.65, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.59; 0.72 vs low level) but not significantly …

Developing Humanistic Clinicians: A Review Of Literature, Andrew Taylor, Willie Capers

The Journal of the Research Association of Minority Professors

Humanistic clinicians possess scientific and technical competence and demonstrate essential virtues like empathy, compassion, patience, love, and courage. Humanistic clinicians are trained with an emphasis on the sciences and the humanities. The humanistic clinician is therefore better equipped to care for patients, the patient’s family members, other clinicians, and themselves. Defining empathy can be problematic due to a lack of consistent definition. Relevant literature regarding empathy was reviewed before settling on a working definition. Several pedagogical approaches encourage the moral development of clinicians. The methods and purpose of those approaches are explained. Illness narratives or pathography is a particular type …

Neurocriminology: A Beginner’S Guide, Jerrod Brown

Forensic Scholars Today

No abstract provided.

Neurocriminology: Revolutionizing Specialized Training For Criminal Justice System Professionals, Janina Cich

Forensic Scholars Today

No abstract provided.

How The Common Cold Impacts Learning, Catherine Mastroly

CAFE Symposium 2025

When someone gets the common cold, their ability to learn declines. As we know, symptoms such as coughing, congestion, and tiredness are present. However, many people may not know the extent of the effects of having a cold. In this paper, we look at how brain inflammation causes cognitive decline. Taking the functions of the brain while learning happens and linking it to the impact of immune response to the common cold in the brain, we are able to understand why and to what extent learning is impaired. As a college student, having this information is important in order to …

Investigating The Risk And Protective Factors Of Internet Addiction Among Adolescents Through The Lens Of Cognitive Behavioral Theory: A Cross-Sectional Study, Noura Shaltout

Theses and Dissertations

—Introduction: The Internet has become a central part of modern life, enhancing education, providing means of global communication, and facilitating access to information and entertainment. However, an attendant risk of excessive Internet use is becoming unconsciously addicted to virtual online activities, especially when large tech companies design their products in a way that makes them addictive to users. These companies have the tools and knowledge that allow them to manipulate and transform the behavior of their target audience. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the potential risk and protective factors for Internet addiction among adolescents. Methodology: This cross-sectional study employed …

Category Learning Reorganizes Internal Representations Of Visual Artworks, Aishwarya Gurung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

How are categories of art internally represented, and how can we capture those representations systematically? Investigating category learning in the context of complex, multidimensional stimuli like visual artworks presents unique challenges due to their inherent variability and perceptual complexity. Artworks engage multiple cognitive processes and are shaped by both sensory-driven mechanisms and top-down influences like prior knowledge, making them uniquely suited for studying how structured categorical knowledge interacts with perceptual and aesthetic judgments. The present study addresses these questions by utilizing machine-learning tools to construct and implement a two-dimensional similarity space of 400 existing artworks painted by two artists from …

Constructing A Parameterized Stimuli Space Suitable To Induce Controlled Changes In Human And Machine Perceptual Systems, Andrew Frankel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Traditional computer vision applications focus on objective tasks, such as object detection, classification, or segmentation. Much of human experience is inherently subjective, such as our personal response to artwork. Individualized experiences are challenging to replicate in a controlled laboratory environment, as those experiences depend on the unique history and internal models of the observer. This work presents a technique to construct a 2-dimensional parameterized stimuli space suitable to induce controlled changes in the perceptual systems of both human and machine observers. Our contributions are threefold:

1. Using a balanced dataset of 8,800 fine art images spanning 11 art movements and 88 …

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Soul Surfers Forced Into A Fragmented Exteriority, Siti Balkish Roslan, Nor Atiah Ismail, Sumarni Ismail

Interiority

This study explores the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on soul surfers, individuals for whom surfing transcends mere sport to embody a spiritual, psychological, and physical communion with the sea and ocean. The pandemic’s restrictions, which limited access to the sea, challenged the core of soul surfing practices, prompting surfers to seek alternative means to sustain their connection with the sea and ocean. Through qualitative research, employing phenomenological analysis, theories of affordance, symbolic interactionism, and interpretive interviews, the study examines the transition from a natural exterior to a built interior, adapting their living spaces to maintain their surfing identity, …

Ahp's Tribute To Dr. Stan Charnofsky, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

The Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP) mourns the “transition” of a very dear soul, Dr. Stan Charnofsky. And, while his transition is a tremendous loss to his family, friends, and colleagues, we also want to honor and celebrate a life well-lived. As a former AHP president, Stan provided outstanding leadership. Upon his passing, he also held the distinction of being the longest-serving AHP board member. He was very much cherished and highly respected by all board members throughout his long, dedicated and remarkable service to AHP and its members.

Detection Of Elder Abuse Through Emergency Care Technicians Screening Tool Revision For Home-Based Primary Care (Detect-Rpc): A Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial Study Protocol, Brad Cannell, Nicholas Sevey, Melvin D Livingston, Jason Burnett, Kristin Lees Haggerty, Carolyn Pickering

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: The annual prevalence of elder mistreatment (EM) in cognitively intact older adults is estimated to be 11%, yet the annual prevalence in older adults with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD) is estimated to be as high as 75%. Associated with a decrease in quality of life and increase in risk of mortality, EM represents a significant public health burden. Home-based primary care (HBPC) providers are uniquely positioned to address the critical need for robust EM screening and reporting, especially among individuals with AD/ADRD. This protocol seeks to adapt the Detection of Elder mistreatment Through Emergency Care Technicians (DETECT) …

Learning In Nonleafcutting Fungus-Gardening Ants, Elizabeth D. Boshers

Biology Theses

Social complexity influences learning and other cognitive behaviors, but for insects, this influence is not well understood. Delayed rejection is an aversive learning behavior previously studied exclusively in leafcutting ant species, the most socially complex of the fungus-gardening ants. Fungus-gardening ants are unique in that they do not directly consume the material they forage, using it instead as substrate to cultivate a symbiotic fungus on which the ants are obligately dependent. Here, I attempt to induce delayed rejection in several fungus-gardening ant species that exhibit a range of social complexity, then compare the characteristics of delayed rejection behavior among species. …

Machine Learning-Driven Music Genre Recognition, Redeate Kidanue

All Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Music is a tool that has been integrated into society for thousands of years; it has influenced social aspects of life and has also aided in communication. Today we have various uses for music that go past our traditional uses for entertainment and self-expression. For example, music therapy has been seen to show improvements in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, depression, and PTSD. Additionally, music has played a role in political movements, demonstrating its emotional power. Social media relies heavily on the music industry as many social media posts include music either in the background, or as the forefront of posts. …

Modeling Trust And Deception In Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Using The Werewolf Game, Pathikkumar Dharmeshbhai Patel

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

This thesis explores the emergence of trust, deception, and adaptive strategy in multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) environments using the social deduction game Werewolf as a simulation framework. In this environment, agents operate with hidden roles, incomplete information, and the need to reason about others’ intentions- mirroring the complexities of real-world social interactions. We present and evaluate two agent architectures: Agent vA, a symbolic, heuristic-based agent with probabilistic trust modeling and scalable memory structures; and Agent vB, a modular Q-learning agent that learns phase-specific policies through reinforcement. Agent vA relies on symbolic reasoning, bounded belief updates, and generalizable heuristics, while Agent …

Exploring Instruction Generation For Uavs: Dataset Adaptation, Model Behavior, And Diagnostic Insights, Seyedarman Vaziri Bozorg

Computer Science and Engineering Theses - Archive

This thesis explores the development of an answering agent capable of generating natural language instructions for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), grounded in a limited, real-world dialogue dataset. The objective is to adapt a static dataset into a training pipeline that can support instruction generation and serve as a foundation for future interactive systems involving question-asking agents and internal dialogue. A hybrid architecture is implemented using a semantic teacher model (MPNet) and a T5-base encoder-decoder trained with contrastive and supervised objectives. The adapted training process yields statistically acceptable performance across standard evaluation metrics. However, qualitative analysis reveals a mismatch between metric …

Quantity Over Quality? What Pupil Dilations Tell Us About Cognitive Effort At Learning., Durna Alakbarova

Psychology Dissertations - Archive

The current study examined whether pupil dilations at encoding reflect cognitive effort participants engage in a task. According to the cognitive effort hypothesis of pupil dilations, increases in cognitive effort cause activation of the locus coeruleus–norepinephrine (LC-NE) system, which is reflected in larger pupil dilations. While task-evoked pupillary responses (TEPRs) have been used as a marker of cognitive effort, it remains unclear whether changes in pupil size reflect encoding success. We proposed that the reason for conflicting findings on the topic is a lack of nuance in examining cognitive effort. Specifically, we suggested that cognitive effort consists of two separate …

Behavioral Finance: The Influence Cognitive Dissonance Has On Investors, Noah A. Adams

A with Honors Projects

The aim of this literature review is to understand the relation between the Cognitive Dissonance Theory and investor decision-making. Under the Investor Rationality Theory, investors are perceived to act in their best interest financially after gathering all available information on their investment. Behavioral Finance on the other hand is the study of psychological biases and emotions and how they influence investors, causing them to act rather irrationally and consequentially creating an irrational market.