Cognitive Psychology Commons^™

Do Distractor Suppression And Learning Intentionality Contribute To The Attentional Boost Effect?, Stephanie C. Crocco

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In the Attentional Boost Effect (ABE), a target-detection response enhances memory for simultaneously presented unrelated stimuli (Swallow & Jiang, 2010; see Swallow & Jiang, 2013 for a review). In two experiments, participants read aloud words simultaneously presented with a dot. Trials were presented every 1150 ms (Experiment 1) or every 2200 ms (Experiment 2). In a divided attention (DA) task, participants made a key-press to dots of a specific color. In a full attention (FA) task, they only read the words aloud while ignoring all dots. Under either intentional or incidental learning instructions, the DA task included Target words, and …

Does Testing Enhance Mediation In Paired-Associate Learning?, Deana Vitrano

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The testing effect (TE) is the robust finding that testing on previously studied material leads to better long-term retention as compared to restudying that material (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b). Pyc and Rawson (2010) proposed the Mediator Effectiveness Hypothesis (MEH) as an explanation for the TE in paired-associate learning, The MEH states that review testing on cue-target word pairs strengthens semantic/associative mediators, which helps participants recall targets to their cues on a later test. Pyc and Rawson found support for the MEH with Swahili-English word pairs and explicit mediation instructions, using the most rigorous test of the MEH. Other researchers have …

The Effects Of Parental Factors And Personal Attributes On Birth Control Use Under The Genetic Influences Of 5-Httlpr Among Adolescents, Hyun-Jin Cho

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this study was (a) to examine relationships between parental influences and personal attributes on birth control use and (b) to identify genetic influences on such relationships by comparing the frequencies of common genetic variants—short allele vs. long allele—in 5-HTTLPR among adolescents (N = 5,852). Data from the Wave 1 and Wave 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were used to examine the birth control use of adolescents who were in 7th through 12th grade in 1994–1995. Multi-group Structural Equation Modeling analyses were used to identify the relationship among factors. Results did not find significant …

The Effects Of Virtual Reality In The Treatment Of Stroke Patients, Melissa Schoettle

Capstone Showcase

The Effects of Virtual Reality in the Treatment of Stroke Patients

Stroke patients face many challenges on their road to recovery. Patients may lose motor function, speech abilities, and other important cognitive functions. They go through various forms of therapy to help rehabilitate them and improve their cognition, including physical, occupational, and speech therapy. Physical therapy helps improve motor function and muscle control, occupational therapy improves those skills needed for success in work and life, and speech therapy helps patients recover the ability to speak and the cognitive processes to think and form words and sentences. While these therapies are …

An Enhanced Ebook Facilitates Parent-Child Talk During Shared Reading By Families Of Low Socioeconomic Status, Georgene Troseth, Gabrielle Strouse, Israel Flores, Zachary Stuckelman, Colleen Russo Johnson

School of Education Faculty Publications

Language input plays a key role in children’s language development, but children from families of low socioeconomic status often get much less input compared to more advantaged peers. In “dialogic reading” (Whitehurst et al., 1988), parents are trained to ask children open-ended questions while reading, which effectively builds expressive vocabulary in at-risk children. In the research reported here, a dialogic questioning character in a narrated eBook provided effortless support for parents to ask questions while reading. Parents of lower socioeconomic status talked more than three times as much with their children using significantly more utterances and unique words when using …

Bilingual Versus Monolingual Performance Within Memory Suppression, Santiago David

CMC Senior Theses

Bilingual participants have been argued to have a cognitive inhibitory advantage over monolinguals resulting in a faster ability to inhibit information. However, the advantage has not been studied using the item-method within the Directed Forgetting (DF) paradigm, which is suggested to cause inhibition through remember and forget instructions. As the DF paradigm uses a recall and then recognition task format, the current study also investigated the possibility of retrieval-practice effects of the recall task on recognition. By utilizing the item-method with recall and no-recall conditions, the possible bilingual cognitive advantage, role of inhibition in DF, and potential retrieval-practice effects were …

The Future Self: Promoting Prosocial Decision-Making Through Motivated Episodic Simulation, Su Young (Kevin) Choi

CMC Senior Theses

Vividly imagining the future self can help inform our present decisions. Given that most attempts aimed at understanding the prosocial effect of imagining future episodes have focused on sensory properties, little is known about how prosocial motivations can explain the link between episodic simulation and helping intentions. Here, the current research investigated whether altruistically and reputationally motivated simulation of helping behavior promote a willingness to help a person in need. The study found that imagining helping episodes increased willingness to help relative to a control manipulation, especially when reputational concerns were made salient. Path modeling analyses revealed that the prosocial …

Remember To Color: How Coloring Impacts Elderly Mental Health And Working Memory, Griselda Alaves

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the study of gerontology, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has received much attention as it is the progressive stage before Alzheimer’s disease (AD). According to lifespan studies, people with MCI advance to AD at a much-accelerated pace than people without MCI. In this study, I am investigating whether art activities (coloring versus drawing) has any influence on the elderly’s levels of stress and anxiety. More specifically, current research in art therapy points to a significant reduction in participant’s stress and anxiety levels after being involved in coloring and drawing activities. In addition to mental health, I am also investigating how …

Investigating Metacognitive Fluency As A Judgment Cue In Choice Overload, Michael R. Ho

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Choice overload describes the finding that individuals report being less satisfied and defer choice more often when choosing from larger rather than smaller choice sets. Researchers have proposed various theoretical models to account for this phenomenon; however, these models have yielded conflicting results. Critically, little research has sought to identify the cognitive mechanism underlying choice overload. The present study reviews models of choice overload and offers a more parsimonious account of choice overload. More specifically, metacognitive fluency, or the subjective interpretation of choice difficulty, plays a critical role during choice and may account for conflicting results in current choice overload …

Counterfactuals And Prefactuals In Shakespeare: Understanding The Human Mind And Human Behavior Through The Literary Analysis Of Conditional Mental Simulation Thoughts In The Narratives Of Plays, Cierra R. Cowan

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Spatial Perspective Taking, Princess Lane, Anna Cavallo, Arrion Wilson

Student Research Symposium

Perspective taking is broadly described as having the ability to gain an understanding of a different individual’s point of view. Previous studies have shown that perspective taking can be improved by the presentation of human-like characters relative to inanimate objects (Clements-Stephens, Vasiljevic, Murray, & Shelton, 2013). Additionally, there is an increase in spontaneous perspective taking for participants, when the actor’s action (i.e., reaching) does not match his/her gaze (Furlanetto et al., 2013). The current study explores how the agent’s gaze and action impact perspective taking. Different from previous studies, we included two types of action: grasping and reaching. Seventy college …

Forgive Them, Forgive Them Not: The Role Of Remorse And Empathy In Interpersonal Forgiveness, Molly Mortensen

All Master's Theses

Forgiveness research has suggested that the reduction of negative thoughts and emotions between a victim and perceived transgressor (forgiveness) may be beneficial for close, personal relationships. The current study aimed to examine the influence of perceived remorse and elicited empathy on forgiveness following the occurrence of a hypothetical transgression. It was hypothesized that (a) participants would demonstrate the greatest levels of Forgiveness in the condition of Remorse and Empathy compared to all other conditions, (b) Empathy would increase Forgiveness only when combined with Remorse, and (c) Remorse would be more critically to increasing Forgiveness than Empathy. Participants from Central Washington …

Smartphones, Stress, And The Reduction Of Cognitive Resources, Jenay R. Stone

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Smartphones are a ubiquitous part of daily life for most Americans. They offer an abundance of information, connectivity, and entertainment. Previous research suggests that smartphones are also responsible for cognitive costs in educational, public, private and professional settings when in use or audibly creating stimuli in the environment. Smartphones are also linked to an automatic attenuation of cognitive resources even when not in use and merely salient (Ward, Duke, Gneezy and Bos; Journal of the Association for Consumer Research; 2, 141, 154, 2017). The purpose of the present study was to experimentally test the effect of cell phone salience …

Mood Effects And Individual Differences On Reappraisal And Distraction: An Erp Study Of The Sensitivity Of Emotion Regulation Strategies, Elsa Mastico

All Master's Theses

The present research evaluated the effect of mood and individual differences on the regulatory process of emotions by using a regulation task with negative and neutral images to assess reappraisal and distraction ability. Specifically, this research evaluated the average amplitude of the latent positive potential (latent positivity, LPP) brainwave linked to distraction and reappraisal using an ERP analysis. In addition, the current study compared the modulation of the LPP to the self-reported mood of the participants and their individual differences in regulation ability through scores of a self-report emotion regulation questionnaire. The latent positive potentials from an emotion regulation task …

Therapist Self-Disclosure And Recall Of Therapy Content, Shivani Mansharamani, Steven Robbins

Capstone Showcase

SHIVANI MANSHARAMANI

Therapist Self-Disclosure and Recall of Therapy Content

Research Mentor: Dr. Steven Robbins

Patients’ faulty memory of what they learned in therapy is often associated with poor outcomes. One way to improve therapeutic outcome is to improve patients’ memory of therapy content. Therapist Self-Disclosure (TSD) refers to a therapist’s disclosure of personal information to facilitate the client-therapist relationship. It has been employed as a tool to improve alliance and overall treatment outcome, and has often been used to prime more client disclosure. Past research on a memory support system has been unsuccessful at significantly improving client memory. In this …

Colombian Retrospective Study Of The Association Between Breastfeeding Duration And Eating Behaviors, Elsa Lucia Escalante-Barrios, Sonia Suarez Enciso, Jesús Estrada, Marilyn Anturi Linero, Alejandra Hérdenez

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The current retrospective cross-sectional study included 175 Colombian caregivers of children ranging between 24 and 59 months old (M=47.08, SD=7.08) enrolled in childcare centers located in the Caribbean region. 58% of the children are male, and all of them belong to low-income families. Breastfeeding duration ranged between children’s 0 to 37 months old (M=10.84, SD=8.48); 64 of them had exclusive breastfeeding for during their first 6 months (i.e., no fed with bottle). Results showed that the variance of Food Responsiveness explained by the model was 2% (R2=.02, F(3,161)=1.081, p=.359). Breastfeeding duration did not significantly predict Food Responsiveness (β=-.004, p=.219), as …

Simulating A Computational Biological Model, Rather Than Reading, Elicits Changes In Brain Activity During Biological Reasoning, Caron Clark, Tomáš Helikar, Joseph T. Dauer

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

The creation and analysis of models is integral to all scientific disciplines, and modeling is considered a core competency in undergraduate biology education. There remains a gap in understanding how modeling activities may support changes in students’ neural representations. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of simulating a model on undergraduates’ behavioral accuracy and neural response patterns when reasoning about biological systems. During brief tutorials, students (n = 30) either simulated a computer model or read expert analysis of a gene regulatory system. Subsequently, students underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while responding to system-specific questions and …

Anti-Atheist Discrimination, Outness, And Psychological Distress Among Atheists Of Color, Dena M. Abbott, Michael Ternes, Caitlin Mercier, Chris Monceaux

Department of Educational Psychology: Faculty Publications

Using a Concealable Stigmatized Identity (CSI) framework, the present study explored disclosure and concealment of atheist identity, anti-atheist discrimination, and psychological distress among participants (N = 87) identified as both atheists and people of color residing in the United States (US). Path analysis was utilized to examine the relationships among variables. Consistent with past CSI and outness research, the final model suggested small, significant associations between higher disclosure of atheist identity and more experiences of anti-atheist discrimination as well as between higher concealment and higher psychological distress. Unexpectedly, higher concealment of atheist identity was associated with higher anti-atheist discrimination …

The Relationship Between Cognitive And Linguistic Abilities In Bilingual Children, Ines Elena Martin

Online Theses and Dissertations

We examined the relationship between cognitive and linguistic abilities in bilingual children (English – Spanish). In particular, we measured the effect of attentional control (the ability to maintain an operative goal, and goal-relevant information, in the face of distraction) and educational experience (amount of time reading) on reading ability (the ability to recognize words and discard misspelled non-words). The sample included 82 developing bilingual children from an immersion school in the United States. Participants were presented with two tasks: the Flanker task as the measure of attentional control (resistance to distractor interference) and the Lexical decision task as the measure …

Play's Role In The Development Of Antisocial Behavior, Cheyenne Vazquez

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper is a literature review which examines the relationship between play and prosocial behavior. More specifically, it examines its inverse, questioning whether a lack of play in early childhood may be correlated to the development of antisocial behavior later in life. Comparing research from an abundance of psychologists, criminologists, and sociologists, this paper answers various questions pertaining to play and prosocial behavior: What happens if play is inhibited in childhood? Would different reasons for play to be inhibited result in different results (i.e. abusive childhoods, desperate situations such as homelessness and poverty, chronic illness, etc.)? Is a lack of …