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. …

The Relationship Between Positive Beliefs About Post-Event Processing And Social Phobia Symptoms, Amanda N. Hammond

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Meta-cognitive models have been utilized to explore the relations between worry and generalized anxiety disorder, as well as, the associations between rumination and depression. However, relatively few studies have focused on the role of meta-cognitive variables and social phobia symptoms. It is possible that individuals with social phobia follow a pattern of thinking similar to that of those who experience depressive rumination and worry. Specifically, it may be that individuals with social phobia hold positive beliefs about their highly negative prolonged post-event evaluations of social interactions. The primary goal of this study was the development and assessment of the Positive …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

Fundamental Properties Of Simple Emergent Feature Processing, Robert D. Hawkins, Joseph W. Houpt, Ami Eidels, James T. Townsend, Michael J. Wenger

Psychology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Caffeine And Expectancy On Short Term Memory, Sara J. O'Brien

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Although caffeine is the most widely used drug in the world, research on the effects of caffeine on mental performance tasks (especially short term memory tasks) is inconclusive. One possible explanation for this limited understanding is the lack of studies accounting for participant expectancy surrounding caffeine. This study examined the effects of caffeine dosage (0mg, 200mg, and 400mg) and expectancy related to past caffeine use (positive, negative) on short term memory span task. A two-way Analysis of Variance showed that the two independent variables (caffeine dose and expectancy), did not significantly influence the short term memory span score. However, the …

Picture Recognition Of Food By Macaques (Macaca Silenus), Peter G. Judge

Faculty Journal Articles

Pictorial representations of three-dimensional objects are often used to investigate animal cognitive abilities; however, investigators rarely evaluate whether the animals conceptualize the two-dimensional image as the object it is intended to represent. We tested for picture recognition in lion-tailed macaques by presenting five monkeys with digitized images of familiar foods on a touch screen. Monkeys viewed images of two different foods and learned that they would receive a piece of the one they touched first. After demonstrating that they would reliably select images of their preferred foods on one set of foods, animals were transferred to images of a second …

A Kinder, Gentler Nativism?: Review Of Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby, David Moshman

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Review of Alison Gopnik, The philosophical baby: What children's minds tell us about truth, love, and the meaning of life.

In its historic philosophical and psychological formulations, nativism highlighted innateness. Development was deemed nothingmore than a genetically driven process ofmaturation; learning, in turn, was nothing more than the filling in of superficial content. In this determinist view, neither development nor learning could be deemed active, creative, or constructive processes, and nothing genuinely new could result.

The nativists who have increasingly populated the literature of developmental psychology since the 1980s, however, are neonativists. Neonativists fully accept modern views of immature organisms …

Examining The Effects Of Political Information And Intervention Stages On Public Support For Military Interventions: A Panel Experiment, Cigdem Sirin

Selected Works Temporary Series

This study examines the formation and continuity of public support for military interventions as a function of political information levels and intervention stages using a panel experiment. The results demonstrate that politically informed individuals express less support for a military intervention at the beginning of that intervention compared to uninformed ones. However, as the intervention proceeds and casualties are incurred, the support of politically uninformed people decreases at a higher rate than does the support of the politically informed. As such, politically informed individuals demonstrate more stable levels of support across intervention stages. In addition, success or failure of an …