Cognition and Perception Commons^™

The Effect Of Gender And Implicit Theories Of Math Ability On Math Interest And Achievement, Jillian Hendricks

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The current study examined whether males and females differed in math achievement and held different beliefs regarding the malleability of math ability at the elementary level. The study also explored the relationships between students’ implicit theories of math ability, math interest, and math achievement. Potential grade level differences in math trait beliefs were also investigated. Study participants consisted of a total of 1802 students from six elementary schools that participate in the Gifted Education in Math and Science (GEMS) Project. Project GEMS is a federal grant project seeking to encourage science and math interest and achievement in children from lowincome …

Reactions To A Near Fatal Accident: An Investigation Of Emotion And Coping Responses, Devin Matthew Pauly

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A 12-month longitudinal study assessed the emotional reactions of an intercollegiate athletic team to a near fatal bus incident. PANAS-X and the Brief COPE, administered on five occasions, indicated NA declined over time. Most coping strategies showed significant changes in trajectory. Acceptance and Positive Reframing were high across waves.

In October 2010, an intercollegiate athletic team and coaching staff were traveling by sleeper bus to an out-of-state match. The team members and coaches were in the back of the bus when they felt the bus swaying and heard the tires hit the rumble strips. The head coach went forward to …

Palliative Commitments, Leo Buser

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

This project is a speculative fiction novel. The focus of my project is a futuristic palliative care treatment. The intended use if for terminal patients, and it can also be considered an alternative to terminal sedation. The theme of this project mainly came from Biomedical Ethics. This project is also influenced by economics and dreaming supplements. A section explaining the academic influences to the story is provided.

Designing An "Information-Experience" Using Creativity Science Theory And Tools, Stephanie Belhomme

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

An “information-experience” encapsulated by a technological/digital audio-visual tool presents data and potentially meaningful information to prompt actionable knowledge concerning: “unspoken creative process elements;” their profound impacts on both how well our “physiology of creativity” functions; but also on how well foundational creative thinking and behavioral prerequisites (energy, motivation, imagination, and ownership) are leveraged.

The product: 1) introduces the user to one component of the CPS (Creative Problem Solving) Facilitation Process - Exploring the Challenge; 2) features a content specific component which prompts exploration of the many correlations between societal, organizational / community, human physiological / behavioral data, and the direct …

Interactive Effects Of Working Memory Self-Regulatory Ability And Relevance Instructions On Text Processing, Nancy Jo Hamilton

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Reading is a process that requires the enactment of many cognitive processes. Each of these processes uses a certain amount of working memory resources, which are severely constrained by biology. More efficiency in the function of working memory may mediate the biological limits of same. Reading relevancy instructions may be one such method to assist readers in utilizing working memory resources more efficiently.

This study examines the relationship between perspective relevance instructions and participants' ability to regulate their working memory resources. In a 3 x 2 x 2 design the study extended the literature by utilizing a measure of fluid …

Fighting The Current: Recalling Specific Self-Relevant Memories, John Walden Ransom

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study was designed to address whether recalling specific autobiographical memories is more difficult when they are self-relevant compared to non-relevant. In recent years, a number of experimental studies have indicated that self-relevant memories are more likely to be recalled without a specific time frame or very much detail. Unfortunately, these findings have not been integrated into the popular executive resources theory of autobiographical memory recall or theories of independent semantic and episodic memory stores. This study tested the hypothesis that self-relevant memories will be accessed in the semantic store and therefore will require more executive resources to generate …

Daily Experiences And Well-Being: Do Memories Of Events Matter?, William Tov

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Retrospective subjective well-being (SWB) refers to self-reported satisfaction and emotional experience over the past few weeks or months. Two studies investigated the mechanisms linking daily experiences to retrospective SWB. Participants reported events each day for 21 days (Study 1) or twice a week for two months (Study 2). The emotional intensity of each event was rated: (1) when it had recently occurred (proximal intensity); and (2) at the end of the event-reporting period (distal intensity). Both sets of ratings were then aggregated across events and used to predict retrospective SWB at the end of the study. Path analyses showed that …

Modality-Specific And Modality-General Encoding Of Auditory And Visual Rhythms, Amanda Pasinski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The perception of timing information plays a large role in our everyday activities, yet we still do not accurately understand the mechanisms underlying these perceptions. Both modality-general and modality specific mechanisms have been suggested to account for perceptual timing. The use of a new auditory tempo perception paradigm can be used to examine various brain responses - measured via electroencephalography (EEG) - thought to index timing perception. This study applied this paradigm to both auditory and visual rhythms, and compared event-related potentials (ERPs) to task performance. Auditory and visual contingent negative variation (CNV) components showed two distinct voltage patterns across …

A Comparison Of Bias In Four Measures Of Monitoring Accuracy, Fred Kuch

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Typically in calibration research, subjects perform a task and make a judgment about the success of the task. Accurate findings help subjects improve self-calibration. In addition, researchers rely on the accuracy of findings to make inferences about underlying metacognitive processes. Consequently, it is important that the measures used to assess monitoring accuracy are as free of bias as possible. Bias indicates whether an observed value of monitoring accuracy over- or underestimates the true value.

This study examined gamma and three other viable statistics, d', C, and the G Index, currently used to measure monitoring accuracy. Using Monte Carlo simulation techniques, …

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 …

Facial Expression Processing Is Holistic Or Feature-Based Depending On Stimulus Format: Evidence From The Composite Face Illusion And Gaze-Contingent Stimulus Presentations, Emily R. Prazak

Psychology Honors Projects

Controversy exists over whether facial expression recognition is a holistic or feature-based process. The present research explored whether stimulus format (photographic vs. schematic) affects the type of processing used. In a composite/noncomposite expression recognition task, holistic processing was observed for photographic stimuli and feature-based processing was observed for schematic stimuli. Moreover, holistic processing in the photographic condition increased when more than one individual was presented. Results suggest that facial expression processing is holistic under natural viewing conditions and provide a potential resolution to the previous controversy. Such findings may be corroborated by an ongoing follow-up study using gaze-contingent stimulus presentations.

Public Support For Military Interventions Across Levels Of Political Information And Stages Of Intervention: The Case Of The Iraq War, Cigdem Sirin

Selected Works Temporary Series

This study examines the effect of political information levels and intervention stages on the formation and continuity of public support for military interventions by analyzing survey data pertaining to the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. The results show that before and immediately after the launch of the intervention, politically uninformed individuals expressed higher support for the war compared to politically informed ones. However, as the intervention proceeded and casualties were incurred, higher rates of decrease in support were observed among the politically uninformed. Politically informed individuals, on the other hand, demonstrated more stable levels of support throughout the course of …

Creation Of False Memories And Beliefs: Expectancy Consistent Errors Based On Gender Stereotypes, Arianna Stelling

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

This study was a series of three experiments which examined the effects of gender stereotypes on the creation of false-memories. Participants were undergraduate students who viewed a short one-scene video depicting a couple on a date. The video featured a man and a woman displaying a mixture of typical, atypical, or a combination of both gender stereotypical behaviors. Following the video, participants completed a quiz to determine whether they created false memories consistent with gender stereotypes. Participants completed an attitudinal scale to gauge their views on gender stereotypes. It was hypothesized that participants would create stereotype- consistent false memories and …

The Cognitive Representation Of Fantasy Versus Pretense, Colleen Mcinnis

Psychology Student Scholarship

Do our minds process fantasy, pretense, and reality differently? Participants read fantastical (Snow White eating an apple), pretend (a girl pretending to be Snow White), or realistic (a girl eating an apple) vignettes. Participants’ reaction to a property of each vignette’s realistic context (apple as ‘delicious’) or its unrealistic context (apple as ‘poisonous’) was measured by a computer program. Differences in study 1 reaction time indicate that fantasy may require different mental representation than pretense and reality. Differences in study 2 fail to duplicate results from the fantasy condition in study 1, instead finding differences in mental representation after reading …

Public Support For Military Interventions Across Levels Of Political Information And Stages Of Intervention: The Case Of The Iraq War, Cigdem Sirin

Departmental Papers (PS)

This study examines the effect of political information levels and intervention stages on the formation and continuity of public support for military interventions by analyzing survey data pertaining to the 2003 military intervention in Iraq. The results show that before and immediately after the launch of the intervention, politically uninformed individuals expressed higher support for the war compared to politically informed ones. However, as the intervention proceeded and casualties were incurred, higher rates of decrease in support were observed among the politically uninformed. Politically informed individuals, on the other hand, demonstrated more stable levels of support throughout the course of …

Useful Field Of View Predicts Driving In The Presence Of Distracters, Joanne M. Wood, Alex Chaparro, Philippe Lacherez, Louise Hickson

Publications

Purpose. The Useful Field of View (UFOV®) test has been shown to be highly effective in predicting crash risk among older adults. An important question which we examined in this study is whether this association is due to the ability of the UFOV to predict difficulties in attention-demanding driving situations that involve either visual or auditory distracters.

Methods. Participants included 92 community-living adults (mean age 73.6 +- 5.4 years; range 65– 88 years) who completed all three subtests of the UFOV involving assessment of visual processing speed (subtest 1), divided attention (subtest 2), and selective attention (subtest 3); driving safety …

An Erp Study Of Responses To Emotional Facial Expressions: Morphing Effects On Early-Latency Valence Processing, Zoe Ravich

Scripps Senior Theses

Early-latency theories of emotional processing state that at least coarse monitoring of the emotional valence (a pleasure-displeasure continuum) of facial expressions should be both rapid and highly automated (LeDoux, 1995; Russell, 1980). Research has largely substantiated early-latency differential processing of emotional versus non-emotional facial expressions; however, the effect of valence on early-latency processing of emotional facial expression remains unclear. In an effort to delineate the effects of valence on early-latency emotional facial expression processing, the current investigation compared ERP responses to positive (happy and surprise), neutral, and negative (afraid and sad) basic facial expression photographs as well as to positive …

Agenda Setting From The Oval Office: An Experimental Examination Of Presidential Influence Over The Public Agenda, José Villalobos, Cigdem Sirin

Selected Works Temporary Series

This study employs an experimental approach to isolate and directly test the extent to which presidents can affect public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action, taking into consideration key factors that condition such effects. Our findings provide new empirical evidence that presidents can, in fact, positively influence public opinion through agenda setting, particularly by increasing the perceptual importance of low salience foreign policy issues. However, the results also indicate that such positive effects do not translate into public support for policy action; instead, presidential appeals actually decrease support. Last, our study offers new evidence that employing bipartisan …

Agenda Setting From The Oval Office: An Experimental Examination Of Presidential Influence Over The Public Agenda, José Villalobos, Cigdem Sirin

Departmental Papers (PS)

This study employs an experimental approach to isolate and directly test the extent to which presidents can affect public perceptions of issue importance and support for policy action, taking into consideration key factors that condition such effects. Our findings provide new empirical evidence that presidents can, in fact, positively influence public opinion through agenda setting, particularly by increasing the perceptual importance of low salience foreign policy issues. However, the results also indicate that such positive effects do not translate into public support for policy action; instead, presidential appeals actually decrease support. Last, our study offers new evidence that employing bipartisan …

Fostering Children’S Literacy And Language Development Through Play: A Look At The Role Of Early Childhood Educators In Preschool And Kindergarten Classrooms, Kelly D. Russell

Psychology and Child Development

No abstract provided.