Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Put Yourself In Their Shoes: Empathy And Thinking Patterns, Tyler Robinson

Scholars Week

Fewer social maxims are repeated more than to “put yourself in someone else’s shoes.” This sentiment encourages empathy by prompting one to change their entrenched thinking patterns. Empathy can be thought of as an active attempt to understand another’s perspective or the visceral sensation of identifying with another's emotions (i.e., cognitive or affective empathy; Davis, 1983). Recently, research has identified a relationship between empathy and self-serving cognitive distortions (Grieve & Panebianco, 2013). Cognitive distortions refer to predictable and inaccurate patterns of thinking. Self-serving cognitive distortions are a form of distorted thinking patterns that are steeped in self-centered attitudes, thoughts, and …

Predictors Of Cognitive Failure In Everyday Life Among American Adults, Jared A. Holman

Honors Scholars & Undergraduate Research Poster Symposium Programs

Cognitive failures are a sometimes costly everyday experience—problematic use of mobile devices is related to higher cognitive failure in students. Is there a strong relationship between problematic mobile device use and cognitive failure in adults? If so, does that relationship remain when controlling for psychological well-being? In two samples of American adults, psychological well-being and distress accounted for over 70% of variance in everyday cognitive failures, as did problematic mobile device use. However, when controlling for psychological well-being, problematic mobile device use accounted for an additional 2% of variance. Well-being and device use overlap in relationship to cognitive failures.

“I Don’T See It That Way Anymore”: A Qualitative Study Of Significant Changes Of Mind, Austin C. Archer

The Qualitative Report

The specific aim of the study is to explore the cognitive and emotional phenomena which accompany profound changes of perspective that people have. I would like to understand the change in a person’s thinking and in what way the person experiences these changes, whether it is a change in belief or a worldview. I would also like to understand whether external factors such as that facilitate these profound changes. Using a phenomenological approach, I interviewed eight adult participants in depth regarding changes to their worldview. I examined three phases of change, namely pre-change phase, the change phase, and the post-change …

Mystical Experience And The Evolution Of Consciousness: A Twenty-First Century Gnosis, Gary Lachman

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This article addresses three ideas: mystical experience, the evolution of consciousness, and gnosis. There are different interpretations of these ideas, so I begin by saying how I intend to understand them. Mystical experience I see as a wider, broader, deeper perception of things and their relations than our usual limited view allows. It provides an ‘unitive’ and ‘participatory’ form of consciousness, in which the usual ‘subject/object’ divide has dissolved. The evolution of consciousness is the notion that our present consciousness is not consciousness per se, but has been arrived at over time. This suggests that there have been other forms …

Lawrence Leshan’S Clairvoyant Reality As William James’ Revelation Of Veridical Reality, Jonathan Bricklin

Journal of Conscious Evolution

The “Clairvoyant Reality” of pioneering psychologist Lawrence LeShan and medium Eileen Garrett, reprinted here in honor of LeShan’s recent passing at age 100, may well be the understanding of “veridical reality” that James proclaimed would not be found “in this generation or the next”.

The Journey Back To Wholeness That Already Is, Jenna Dishy Wes

Journal of Conscious Evolution

If we are born into this world with in an already heightened state of consciousness, at what point in human development do we begin to disconnect? Is the human experience innately traumatic? Through the exploration of Piaget’s stages of development, and in coherence with the concept of transgenerational trauma, I explore moments and modes of intervention, with the intention of building on what is already whole instead of waiting until it is broken. Rather than spending another generation spending our lives trying to heal, reaching for enlightenment and soul connection, what if our end point was actually our beginning one?

Decomorose: The Somatic Flowering Of The Living Quality, Shaun J. Martin

Journal of Conscious Evolution

This essay is an exploration of the human maturation process from a transpersonal point of view. The main premise of the essay is the notion that our maturation on the level of consciousness (the living quality) is not synonymous with our bodily maturation or the ongoing construction of our social personality (the identity project). It suggests that transpersonality is a fundamental component in human development, but has been overlooked and left out in most areas of modern culture. The recent rise of mental illnesses and the overall frustration or discontent within our society is a direct result of infrastructures that …

Creatine And Cognitive Functioning: What Is The Role Of Exercise Frequency?, Jonathan B. Banks, Jose Antonio, Amanda S. Holtzman, Mykola Marang, Catherine Weber, Alexsandra Alvarez-Beaton, Aysha Patel, Jaime Tartar

Journal for Sports Neuroscience

Creatine consumption appears to have a positive impact on cognitive function in different populations but the effects of creatine in a young, healthy population are mixed. Additionally, exercise appears to benefit cognitive processes in young and older adults. The present study explored the ways in which exercise frequency may moderate the effect of creatine consumption on working memory, sustained attention, mind wandering, and speed of processing, in a young, healthy, adult population. Forty-two individuals were randomly assigned to a creatine condition (n = 20) or a control condition (n = 22). For each session, participants completed the Symmetry …

Neurocognitive Interactions Between Anticipatory Anxiety And Memory Encoding, Felicia M. Chaisson

LSU Master's Theses

Although acute anxiety has been shown to improve encoding of threat-relevant information, its effects on threat-neutral information are less understood. Recent research suggests that anxiety can impair subsequent recall for neutral words, particularly following practice with the recall task. Here we use event-related potentials (ERPs) to test the notion that anxiety specifically disrupts the implementation of encoding strategies—such as elaborative encoding—that tend to develop with practice. ERPs were recorded as participants studied two sets of neutral words, one of which was presented in a stressful context using the threat-of-shock paradigm (threat block), and the other in a non-threatening context (safe …

Strategies For Change: Behavior Change Using Self Talk, Kaitlyn Chamberlain

Diet, Food, Exercise, and Nutrition (D-FEND)

Speaker shares how self-talk can help improve our ability to meet our goals.

How Multidimensional Is Emotional Intelligence? Bifactor Modeling Of Global And Broad Emotional Abilities Of The Geneva Emotional Competence Test, Daniel Simonet, Katherine E. Miller, Kevin Askew, Kenneth Sumner, Marcello Mortillaro, Katja Schlegel

Department of Psychology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Drawing upon multidimensional theories of intelligence, the current paper evaluates if the Geneva Emotional Competence Test (GECo) fits within a higher-order intelligence space and if emotional intelligence (EI) branches predict distinct criteria related to adjustment and motivation. Using a combination of classical and S-1 bifactor models, we find that (a) a first-order oblique and bifactor model provide excellent and comparably fitting representation of an EI structure with self-regulatory skills operating independent of general ability, (b) residualized EI abilities uniquely predict criteria over general cognitive ability as referenced by fluid intelligence, and (c) emotion recognition and regulation incrementally predict grade point …

Automaticity Of Lexical Access In Deaf And Hearing Bilinguals: Cross-Linguistic Evidence From The Color Stroop Task Across Five Languages, Rain G. Bosworth, Sarah C. Tyler, Eli M. Binder, Jill P. Morford

Articles

The well-known Stroop interference effect has been instrumental in revealing the highly automated nature of lexical processing as well as providing new insights to the underlying lexical organization of first and second languages within proficient bilinguals. The present cross-linguistic study had two goals: 1) to examine Stroop interference for dynamic signs and printed words in deaf ASL-English bilinguals who report no reliance on speech or audiological aids; 2) to compare Stroop interference effects in several groups of bilinguals whose two languages range from very distinct to very similar in their shared orthographic patterns: ASL-English bilinguals (very distinct), Chinese-English bilinguals (low …

Is There Evidence For Cross-Domain Congruency Sequence Effect? A Replication Of Kan Et Al. (2013), Balazs Aczel, Marton Kovacs, Miklos Bognar, Bence Palfi, Andree Hartanto, Sandersan Onie, Lucas E. Tiong, Thomas Rhys Evans

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Exploring the mechanisms of cognitive control is central to understanding how we control our behaviour. These mechanisms can be studied in conflict paradigms, which require the inhibition of irrelevant responses to perform the task. It has been suggested that in these tasks, the detection of conflict enhances cognitive control resulting in improved conflict resolution of subsequent trials. If this is the case, then this so-called congruency sequence effect can be expected to occur in cross-domain tasks. Previous research on the domaingenerality of the effect presented inconsistent results. In this study, we provide a multi-site replication of three previous experiments of …

The Rac-Gef Tiam1 Promotes Dendrite And Synapse Stabilization Of Dentate Granule Cells And Restricts Hippocampal-Dependent Memory Functions, Jinxuan Cheng, Federico Scala, Francisco A Blanco, Sanyong Niu, Karen Firozi, Laura Keehan, Shalaka Mulherkar, Emmanouil Froudarakis, Lingyong Li, Joseph G Duman, Xiaolong Jiang, Kimberley F Tolias

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The dentate gyrus (DG) controls information flow into the hippocampus and is critical for learning, memory, pattern separation, and spatial coding, while DG dysfunction is associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. Despite its importance, the molecular mechanisms regulating DG neural circuit assembly and function remain unclear. Here, we identify the Rac-GEF Tiam1 as an important regulator of DG development and associated memory processes. In the hippocampus, Tiam1 is predominantly expressed in the DG throughout life. Global deletion of Tiam1 in male mice results in DG granule cells with simplified dendritic arbors, reduced dendritic spine density, and diminished excitatory synaptic transmission. Notably, DG …

Phenomenological Study On The Lived Experience Of Black Women In Positions Of Leadership In California State Government, Tonia Burgess

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of Black women in their roles as leaders in the California state government with respect to support received and barriers encountered.

Methodology: The phenomenological qualitative study involved exploring the lived experiences of 12 Black women in positions of leadership in northern California state government with regard to the supports they received and the barriers they encountered during their careers in California state government. Patton (2015) asserted that phenomenology's philosophical interpretation occurs when individuals only know what they experience. Additionally, "to fully understand the phenomenon, it must be …

Anger, Internet Memes And Belief, Rick Stevens

Contemporary Southern Psychology

The relationship of anger, the tendency to believe in conspiracies, and the tendency to believe a short statement accompanied by a related image was investigated. The Generic Conspiracist Belief (GCB) scale and the Spielberger State-Trait Anger Scale (STAS) were presented to 154 participants, including 125 females and 28 males, before the presentation of 12 statements of fact which were each accompanied by images related to the statements. The belief in conspiracy scores and the trait anger scores significantly predicted the tendency to believe the statements accompanied by images, explaining 55% of the variance (R²=.553, F(2,151)=95.77, p<.01). These findings suggest that a tendency to react with anger and a tendency to believe conspiracy theories are strong predictors of how a person will respond to dramatic combinations of statements of fact and images.

Cd38 Is Associated With Bonding-Relevant Cognitions And Relationship Satisfaction Over The First 3 Years Of Marriage, Anastasia Makhanova, James K. Mcnulty, Lisa A. Eckel, Larissa Nikonova, Jennifer A. Bartz, Elizabeth A.D. Hammock

Psychological Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although there are numerous benefits to having a satisfying romantic relationship, maintaining high levels of relationship satisfaction is difficult. Many couples experience declines in relationship satisfaction in the early years of marriage, and such declines predict not only relationship dissolution but also poor mental and physical health. Several recent studies indicate that genetic variation on the CD38 gene (CD38), at the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs3796863, is associated with cognitions and behaviors related to pair bonding; we thus leveraged longitudinal data from a sample of newlywed couples (N = 139 genotyped individuals; 71 couples) to examine whether …

Effects Of Television Content On Children’S Development Of Traditional Gender Role Schemata: A Literature Review, Molly Shilo

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

Despite the progress television has made since its creation, the medium unfortunately still portrays subtle, and not so subtle, gender stereotypes, especially in children’s television shows. Content analyses have documented the pervasive stereotypes set forth on TV that not only portray strict behaviors for both males and females, but that also often depict the female behaviors and characters as inferior (Calvert, 1999). In a wave of advocacy and regulation, parents, teachers, and children have demanded shows that better promote inclusivity and appropriate, family-friendly values. The Children’s Television Act of 1990 required broadcasters to provide educational children’s programming that would teach …

Examining The Repeatable Battery For The Assessment Of Neuropsychological Status Validity Indices In People With Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders, Rune Raudeberg, Justin E. Karr, Grant L. Iverson, Åsa Hammar

Psychology Faculty Publications

Objective: We examined the frequency of possible invalid test scores on the Repeatable Battery for the Assessment of Neuropsychological Status (RBANS) in patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and whether there was an association between scores on the embedded RBANS performance validity tests (PVTs) and self-reported symptoms of apathy as measured by the Initiate Scale of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function-Adult Version (BRIEF-A). Methods: Participants included 250 patients (M = 24.4 years-old, SD = 5.7) with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Base rates of RBANS Effort Index (EI), Effort Scale (ES), and Performance Validity Index (PVI) test scores were computed. …

Effects Of Mindfulness Meditation On Selective, Sustained Attention, Brain Neural Oscillations, And Short-Term Memory, Anamaria Guzman

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The following extended literature review and research proposal study started initially as a complete research proposal but, due to the challenges COVID-19 has brought, it has become a stand-alone piece of work without data collection. The goal is to synthesize a broad range of literature and previous research on mindfulness meditation and its effects on attention, memory, and brain activity and thus, offering a new perspective and a proposed research path on this subject. This proposed research study, besides previous studies, indicates that mindfulness meditation is expected to improve and enhance selective and sustained attention, which results in better attentional …