Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

More Schooling Can Delay The Onset Of Dementia Later In Life, Vikesh Amin, Jere R. Behrman, Jason M. Fletcher, Carlos A. Flores, Alfonso Flores-Lagunes, Iliana Kohler, Hans-Peter Kohler, Shana D. Stites

Upjohn Institute Policy and Research Briefs

No abstract provided.

Using Computerized Instruction To Increase Professional Competence With Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Cbt) Modifications, Paige Lee Sherlund-Pelfrey

Masters Theses

One in thirty-six children receive an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis, and an estimated 5.4 million adults in the United States have previously received an ASD diagnosis (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2022). At least seventy percent of individuals with ASD have one comorbid disorder (Valderas et al., 2009). Some common comorbid disorders for individuals with ASD include depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an evidence-based therapy that can support depressive, anxiety and OCD symptoms, and has empirically supported modifications that can be used with the ASD population. However, research reports that clinicians are not …

Diagnosis By Algorithm: The Transformative Impact Of Social Media–Driven Adhd Self-Diagnosis For Women Over 30 And The Proposal Of Neurotype Strain Theory, Rebecca Lynn Sevin

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the phenomenon of adult women who self-diagnosed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) through content encountered on social media platforms. Drawing on interpretive phenomenological analysis of ten in-depth interviews, the study investigates the emotional, cognitive, and institutional dimensions of this self-diagnosis process. Participants, all over the age of 30, reported that social media played a transformative role in helping them recognize ADHD traits in themselves. Rather than being misinformed or seeking shortcuts, participants engaged thoughtfully with ADHD-related content, valuing lived experience itself as a meaningful source of recognition and reflection. Their engagement was not primarily with educational materials …

The Impact Of Nicu Death On Bereaved Mothers, Jennie Terranova

University Honors Theses

Infant loss in the United States occurs 5.6 per 1,000 live births. This paper examines risk factors that contribute to neonatal death. Prematurity is a risk factor for NICU admission. A portion of premature babies receiving care in the NICU will die. The stressful nature of the NICU has been studied widely in journals. The impact of NICU death on hospital staff and bereaved parents has been studied less. Mortality studies suggest that bereaved mothers are at a high risk of dying within the first 5 years after their child has died. Despite the frequency of maternal death post-child loss, …

Echoes Of Longing, Mahalexmi Mohan

Masters Theses

Loss lingers like a shadow, a weight no time can lift. Longing becomes a silent scream, echoing within, unanswered. Internal pain festers in the quiet, where unhealed wounds weave themselves into the fabric of being. Each breath is both survival and surrender, a fragile balance between hope and the hollow ache of what was, what will never be, yet could be.

Abstract

My work is deeply influenced by my experiences within a dysfunctional family structure and is explored through the relationship of emotional vulnerability and its effect on self-worth. Layered into the work is a confrontation with the scars, conflict …

Impact Of Social Motivation And Communication On Friendship And Loneliness In Autism, Rachael Roizer

Honors Scholar Theses

Friendships and loneliness are both major contributors to happiness and life satisfaction. This study probes group differences in friendship and loneliness in autism, and their links to social motivation and social communication skills. This study includes participants with autism (n = 28), loss of autism diagnosis (n = 29), and neurotypical developmental histories (n = 36). Participants completed an online survey including measures of social motivation, social communication, friendship, and loneliness. Findings indicated group differences in social communication, friendship, and loneliness, but not social motivation. There were significant associations between social motivation and friendship, social communication and …

The Red Thread: Objects As Medium, Hsin-Ning Alin Yang

Masters Theses

There are moments when people hesitate to speak their emotions or needs
—whether it’s love that feels too shy to articulate, needs that risk sounding too forceful, or feelings too vague to verbalize. By shifting the priority of emotion and communication factor ahead of pure functionality, this thesis posits that objects can serve as an alternative medium of communication.

This thesis begins by examining the root causes of communication difficulties and the coping strategies people use, ultimately identifying five situations in which objects can effectively substitute for verbal interaction. Building on these categories, the thesis explores how an object’s features, …

Neuroanatomical And Morphometric Differences In Children Who Stutter, Mohammad A. Khan

Honors Scholar Theses

Childhood-Onset Fluency Disorder commonly known as stuttering is a neurodevelopmental speech disorder characterized by disruptions in speech fluency. While genetic and neurobiological factors are implicated, the structural brain differences underlying stuttering remain unclear. This study investigated neuroanatomical alterations in children who stutter (CWS) compared to typically fluent children (TFC), focusing on gray matter volume, cortical thickness, and surface area in speech-related regions; the Inferior Frontal Gyrus, Middle Temporal Gyrus, and Pre-motor Operculum. High-resolution MRI data from 100 children (48 CWS, 52 TFC) aged 3–12 years were analyzed using FreeSurfer. Group comparisons revealed no statistically significant differences in cortical thickness, surface …

Fear And Oxytocin: Effects Of Intraperitoneal Pretreatment In Rats, Daniel Yeromenko, Kelsie German, Eros Fuentes, Jenna Meade, Ben Bustos

2025 Symposium

INTRODUCTION: Oxytocin is a neuropeptide widely known for its role in social bonding and emotional regulation. Recent studies have suggested its involvement in modulating fear, stress, and anxiety responses, potentially offering therapeutic applications for trauma-related disorders such as PTSD. This study investigated whether pretreatment with oxytocin reduces behavioral and physiological fear responses in male and female Sprague-Dawley rats using a classical fear conditioning model. METHODS : Twenty-four Sprague-Dawley rats (12 males, 12 females) were assigned to one of four groups: control (no shock, no oxytocin), shock only, shock + low-dose oxytocin (0.5 mg/kg), and shock + high-dose oxytocin (1.0 mg/kg). …

Comparing Gains And Losses: Examining The Effects Of Incentives On Working Memory Capacity And Motivational Processes In Older Adults, Julie Q. Pham

Psychology Theses and Dissertations

Working memory is critical for the storage and maintenance of information but is susceptible to age-related changes. Prior studies have shown that incentives can be used to successfully modulate cognition in older age. However, research has largely focused on the use of reward incentives. Less is understood about the motivational processes of avoiding losses and whether this can also improve working memory capacity. Given that an aversion to losses may become more salient with age, it is important to determine whether these motivational shifts are reflected in how older adults attend to and store information. The current study compared how …

Looking Forward To It: Investigating The Role Of Anhedonia In Episodic Future Thinking, Sarah Corner, Alicia E. Meuret

Psychology Theses and Dissertations

Episodic future thinking, or our ability to simulate personal future events, is implicated in a range of important functioning from problem solving to emotion regulation. However, individuals with clinical diagnoses like depression and schizophrenia struggle to produce future thinking that is vivid and detailed. While these deficits mirror well-document autobiographical memory deficits, they remain poorly understood. The current study aimed to examine the role of anhedonia in episodic future thinking vividness using a within-subjects dimensional approach. A mixed sample of sixty-five undergraduate students and community adults completed two future thinking tasks and one autobiographical memory across two study visits, during …

Reason And All My Senses: Surveying The Post Enlightenment Frame Of Reason Through Contemporary Philosophy, Cognitive Psychology, And Cognitive Linguistics, Joshua T. Lowe Rev. Dr.

Doctor of Philosophy Dissertation

This dissertation argues that Christian theology and practice are aided and enriched by a more complete understanding of reason by surveying recent studies and views in theology, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and cognitive linguistics. Since the Enlightenment, Christian theology has assumed widely the Enlightenment model of human reason as ideally acontextual, that is, free from constraints of contexts, and therefore universal, that is, applicable in all contexts. Recent developments from a variety of perspectives challenge this model of rationality. Some challenge the acontextualism of the Enlightenment understanding by showing how it arose from and depends on a context, and that context …

Diverse Minds: Exploring Individual Differences In Visual Imagery And Special Cases, Kay Dekock

The Confluence

Mental imagery, or more specifically, visual imagery, plays a significant role in human life. For this reason, this paper aims to examine the many aspects of visual imagery with a special focus on inherent differences between individuals. This paper explores the idea of what visual imagery is and how it is represented, from the in-between of the spectrum of visual imagery, to the extreme ends, where lies the conditions of aphantasia and hyperphantasia. This paper covers the core cognitive processes involved in visual imagery and the parts of the brain responsible for them. The idea of measurement and assessment is …

Early Adolescent Intervention: A Therapy Group For Girls, Madelyn A. Ohm

Educational Specialist, 2020-current

As mental health concerns are on the rise, especially among adolescents, it is important to consider promoting early intervention. Paying attention to the nuances surrounding personal identity and interpersonal relationships during adolescence is crucial. Dialectical-Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills encompass just what is needed to address said nuances, including interpersonal effectiveness skills, emotion regulation skills, distress tolerance, and mindfulness. Thus, the proposed DBT group and therapeutic manual designated for adolescent girls summarizes and explores suggestions for early intervention of mental health services. This, alongside the careful attention to the population’s specific needs and noted modules, allows for the exploration of mental …

The Role Of Prediction Error In Episodic Memory, Kevin D. Mohawk

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Predictions play an important role in our everyday lives. We make predictions (whether conscious or unconscious) about what we will encounter. However, we will also experience discrepancies between predictions and observed outcomes (i.e., prediction error; PE). There are inconsistencies in the literature regarding how PE affects memory. Several studies find that PE facilitates memory (e.g., Greve et al., 2019), while others find that it harms memory (Kim et al., 2013). The aim of the present study was to determine which conditions may lead to PE facilitating memory and which conditions may lead to worse memory. We tested two PE models, …

Stronger Together: A Mixed-Methods Examination Of Identity, Efficacy, And Emotions In Young Adults’ Collective Action, Kindy Insouvanh

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Young adults are increasingly engaging in collective action for social change, yet we lack a clear understanding of the factors driving their participation in social movements. This mixed-methods study uses a social psychological framework to examine key quantitative factors related to young adults’ intentions to engage in collective action for racial justice, as well as their reasoning around their involvement. A survey of 373 racially and ethnically diverse young adults (18-35 years old) assessed the impact of racial justice ally identity, emotions (anger and contempt), and dimensions of efficacy on action intentions. Path analysis revealed that young adults’ identification as …

Bayesian Model Predicts Confidence In Perceptual Decision, Xinyi Yuan, Ralf M. Haefner

MODVIS Workshop

No abstract provided.

Foraging Connections: Exploring The Relationship Between Optimal Foraging And Phonological Fluency Performance, Kimberly Savika Arjune

Theses - ALL

The semantic fluency task is a timed listing of as many words as possible within a certain category (Bousfield & Sedgewick, 1944). Optimal search requires traversing resource-rich clusters (groups of consecutive responses with shared characteristics) and weighing the benefit of staying in the current cluster, decreasing the rate of return, or switching to a new cluster with more easily accessible resources, but with the cost of search time (Charnov, 1976). According to the marginal value theorem, a switch to a new cluster should occur when the rate of finding words in the current cluster drops below the average rate for …

Decisions From Experience: Beyond The Gap, Nicholas Ryan Pappas

Dissertations - ALL

Across the risk and uncertainty literature, a particular focus has been made on the description-experience gap (DE Gap). The DE Gap creates figurative and literal gaps between description and experience-based choices. Researchers claim that these DE Gaps are problematic for classic models in decision-making research, such as Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT; Kahneman & Tversky, 1992). This has led to a focus on experience-based models instead. However, following a literature review on CPT and the DE Gap, I aimed to test these claims. In fact, throughout three experiments, I demonstrate that the description-based theories need not be tossed away wholly. Instead, …

Identifying Strategies In Moral Decision Making, Ilaria Siriner

Theses - ALL

This study explored the strategies used in moral decision-making, within the context of selfdriving car scenarios. Our goal was to uncover the strategies people use when faced with moral dilemmas, using methodological approaches previously applied to the study of decision-making. The strategies that we were interested in were those that align with the ethical frameworks of utilitarianism, deontology or a blend of the two. In this study, participants were confronted with a series of moral dilemmas involving self-driving cars. Their choices and decision-making processes were analyzed using Machine Learning Strategy Identification (MLSI), which incorporated features related to the information participants …