ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes most of the ASU Theses and Dissertations from 2011 to present. ASU Theses and Dissertations are available in downloadable PDF format; however, a small percentage of items are under embargo. Information about the dissertations/theses includes degree information, committee members, an abstract, supporting data or media.
In addition to the electronic theses found in the ASU Digital Repository, ASU Theses and Dissertations can be found in the ASU Library Catalog.
Dissertations and Theses granted by Arizona State University are archived and made available through a joint effort of the ASU Graduate College and the ASU Libraries. For more information or questions about this collection contact or visit the Digital Repository ETD Library Guide or contact the ASU Graduate College at gradformat@asu.edu.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 239
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Cognitive Psychology
- All Subjects: Archaeology
Description
It is commonly known that the left hemisphere of the brain is more efficient in the processing of verbal information, compared to the right hemisphere. One proposal suggests that hemispheric asymmetries in verbal processing are due in part to the efficient use of top-down mechanisms by the left hemisphere. Most evidence for this comes from hemispheric semantic priming, though fewer studies have investigated verbal memory in the cerebral hemispheres. The goal of the current investigations is to examine how top-down mechanisms influence hemispheric asymmetries in verbal memory, and determine the specific nature of hypothesized top-down mechanisms. Five experiments were conducted to explore the influence of top-down mechanisms on hemispheric asymmetries in verbal memory. Experiments 1 and 2 used item-method directed forgetting to examine maintenance and inhibition mechanisms. In Experiment 1, participants were cued to remember or forget certain words, and cues were presented simultaneously or after the presentation of target words. In Experiment 2, participants were cued again to remember or forget words, but each word was repeated once or four times. Experiments 3 and 4 examined the influence of cognitive load on hemispheric asymmetries in true and false memory. In Experiment 3, cognitive load was imposed during memory encoding, while in Experiment 4, cognitive load was imposed during memory retrieval. Finally, Experiment 5 investigated the association between controlled processing in hemispheric semantic priming, and top-down mechanisms used for hemispheric verbal memory. Across all experiments, divided visual field presentation was used to probe verbal memory in the cerebral hemispheres. Results from all experiments revealed several important findings. First, top-down mechanisms used by the LH primarily used to facilitate verbal processing, but also operate in a domain general manner in the face of increasing processing demands. Second, evidence indicates that the RH uses top-down mechanisms minimally, and processes verbal information in a more bottom-up manner. These data help clarify the nature of top-down mechanisms used in hemispheric memory and language processing, and build upon current theories that attempt to explain hemispheric asymmetries in language processing.
ContributorsTat, Michael J (Author) / Azuma, Tamiko (Thesis advisor) / Goldinger, Stephen D (Committee member) / Liss, Julie M (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation investigates the long-term consequences of human land-use practices in general, and in early agricultural villages in specific. This pioneering case study investigates the "collapse" of the Early (Pre-Pottery) Neolithic lifeway, which was a major transformational event marked by significant changes in settlement patterns, material culture, and social markers. To move beyond traditional narratives of cultural collapse, I employ a Complex Adaptive Systems approach to this research, and combine agent-based computer simulations of Neolithic land-use with dynamic and spatially-explicit GIS-based environmental models to conduct experiments into long-term trajectories of different potential Neolithic socio-environmental systems. My analysis outlines how the Early Neolithic "collapse" was likely instigated by a non-linear sequence of events, and that it would have been impossible for Neolithic peoples to recognize the long-term outcome of their actions. The experiment-based simulation approach shows that, starting from the same initial conditions, complex combinations of feedback amplification, stochasticity, responses to internal and external stimuli, and the accumulation of incremental changes to the socio-natural landscape, can lead to widely divergent outcomes over time. Thus, rather than being an inevitable consequence of specific Neolithic land-use choices, the "catastrophic" transformation at the end of the Early Neolithic was an emergent property of the Early Neolithic socio-natural system itself, and thus likely not an easily predictable event. In this way, my work uses the technique of simulation modeling to connect CAS theory with the archaeological and geoarchaeological record to help better understand the causes and consequences of socio-ecological transformation at a regional scale. The research is broadly applicable to other archaeological cases of resilience and collapse, and is truly interdisciplinary in that it draws on fields such as geomorphology, computer science, and agronomy in addition to archaeology.
ContributorsUllah, Isaac (Author) / Barton, C. Michael (Thesis advisor) / Banning, Edward B. (Committee member) / Clark, Geoffrey (Committee member) / Arrowsmith, J. Ramon (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The causes and consequences of stylistic change have been a concern of archaeologists over the past several decades. The actual process of stylistic innovation, however, has received less attention. This project explores the relationship between the process of stylistic innovation on decorated pottery and the social context in which it occurred in the Hohokam area of south-central Arizona between A.D. 800 and 1300. This interval was punctuated by three episodes of reorganization, each of which was characterized to varying degrees by significant shifts in ideology, economics, and politics. Each reorganization episode was also accompanied by a rapid profusion of stylistic innovation on buff ware pottery. The goal of this study was to build a framework to understand the variation in the process of innovation as a response to different incentives and opportunities perceived in the changing social environment. By bringing stylistic analyses and provenance data together for the first time in Hohokam red-on-buff studies, I investigated how the process of innovation was variously influenced by social reorganizations at three different periods of time: the 9th, 11th, and 12th centuries A.D. Four variables were used to evaluate the process of innovation at each temporal period: 1) The origin of a stylistic invention, 2) the rate of its adoption, 3) the pattern of its adoption, and 4) the uniformity of its adoption among all buff ware potting communities. To accomplish the task, stylistic innovations and provenance were recorded on over 3,700 red-on-buff sherds were analyzed from 20 sites in the Phoenix Basin. The innovation process was found to vary with each reorganization episode, but often in different ways than expected. The results revealed the complexity and unpredictability of the process of stylistic innovation among the Hohokam. They also challenged some assumptions archaeologists have made regarding the scale and extent of the changes associated with some of the reorganization episodes. The variables utilized to measure the innovation process were found to be effective at providing a composite picture of that process, and thus warrant broader application to other archaeological contexts.
ContributorsLack, Andrew D (Author) / Abbott, David R. (Thesis advisor) / Hegmon, Michelle (Committee member) / Spielmann, Katherine A. (Committee member) / Nelson, Ben A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Perceptual learning by means of coherent motion training paradigms has been shown to produce plasticity in lower and higher-level visual systems within the human occipital lobe both supra- and subliminally. However, efficiency of training methods that produce consolidation in the visual system via coherent motion has yet to be experimentally determined. Furthermore, the effects of coherent motion training on reading comprehension, in clinical and normal populations, are still nascent. In the present study, 20 participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions. Two conditions had a participation requirement of four days while two conditions required eight days of participation. These conditions were further divided into 500 or 1000 trials per day (4 x 500, 4 x 1000, 8 x 500, 8 x 1000). Additional pre-test and post-test days were used to attain timed pre- and post-tests on the Wide Range Achievement Test IV (WRAT IV) reading comprehension battery. Furthermore, a critical flicker fusion threshold (CFFT) score was taken on a macular pigment densitometer on the pre-test and post-test day. Participants showed significant improvement in CFFT levels, WRAT IV reading comprehension, and speed of completion between pre-test and post-test; however, degree of improvement did not vary as a function of training condition. An interaction between training condition and degree of improvement was evident in coherent dot motion contrast scores, with significant training plasticity occurring in the 4 x 1000 and 8 x 500 conditions.
ContributorsGroth, Anthony (Author) / Náñez, José E. (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Risko, Evan F. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Frequency effects favoring high print-frequency words have been observed in frequency judgment memory tasks. Healthy young adults performed frequency judgment tasks; one group performed a single task while another group did the same task while alternating their attention to a secondary task (mathematical equations). Performance was assessed by correct and error responses, reaction times, and accuracy. Accuracy and reaction times were analyzed in terms of memory load (task condition), number of repetitions, effect of high vs. low print-frequency, and correlations with working memory span. Multinomial tree analyses were also completed to investigate source vs. item memory and revealed a mirror effect in episodic memory experiments (source memory), but a frequency advantage in span tasks (item memory). Interestingly enough, we did not observe an advantage for high working memory span individuals in frequency judgments, even when participants split their attention during the dual task (similar to a complex span task). However, we concluded that both the amount of attentional resources allocated and prior experience with an item affect how it is stored in memory.
ContributorsPeterson, Megan Paige (Author) / Azuma, Tamiko (Thesis advisor) / Gray, Shelley (Committee member) / Liss, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Irrigation agriculture has been heralded as the solution to feeding the world's growing population. To this end, irrigation agriculture is both extensifying and intensifying in arid regions across the world in an effort to create highly productive agricultural systems. Over one third of modern irrigated fields, however, show signs of serious soil degradation, including salinization and waterlogging, which threaten the productivity of these fields and the world's food supply. Surprisingly, little ecological data on agricultural soils have been collected to understand and address these problems. How, then, can expanding and intensifying modern irrigation systems remain agriculturally productive for the long-term? Archaeological case studies can provide critical insight into how irrigated agricultural systems may be sustainable for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Irrigation systems in Mesopotamia, for example, have been cited consistently as a cautionary tale of the relationship between mismanaged irrigation systems and the collapse of civilizations, but little data expressly link how and why irrigation failed in the past. This dissertation presents much needed ecological data from two different regions of the world - the Phoenix Basin in southern Arizona and the Pampa de Chaparrí on the north coast of Peru - to explore how agricultural soils were affected by long-term irrigation in a variety of social and economic contexts, including the longevity and intensification of irrigation agriculture. Data from soils in prehispanic and historic agricultural fields indicate that despite long-lived and intensive irrigation farming, farmers in both regions created strategies to sustain large populations with irrigation agriculture for hundreds of years. In the Phoenix Basin, Hohokam and O'odham farmers relied on sedimentation from irrigation water to add necessary fine sediments and nutrients to otherwise poor desert soils. Similarly, on the Pampa, farmers relied on sedimentation in localized contexts, but also constructed fields with ridges and furrows to draw detrimental salts away from planting surfaces in the furrows on onto the ridges. These case studies are then compared to failing modern and ancient irrigated systems across the world to understand how the centralization of management may affect the long-term sustainability of irrigation agriculture.
ContributorsStrawhacker, Colleen (Author) / Spielmann, Katherine A. (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Sharon J (Committee member) / Nelson, Margaret C. (Committee member) / Sandor, Jonathan A (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation research investigates both spatial and temporal aspects of Bronze Age land use and land cover in the Eastern Mediterranean using botanical macrofossils of charcoal and charred seeds as sources of proxy data. Comparisons through time and over space using seed and charcoal densities, seed to charcoal ratios, and seed and charcoal identifications provide a comprehensive view of island vs. mainland vegetative trajectories through the critical 1000 year time period from 2500 BC to 1500 BC of both climatic fluctuation and significant anthropogenic forces. This research focuses particularly on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus during this crucial interface of climatic and human impacts on the landscape. Macrobotanical data often are interpreted locally in reference to a specific site, whereas this research draws spatial comparisons between contemporaneous archaeological sites as well as temporal comparisons between non-contemporaneous sites. This larger perspective is particularly crucial on Cyprus, where field scientists commonly assume that botanical macrofossils are poorly preserved, thus unnecessarily limiting their use as an interpretive proxy. These data reveal very minor anthropogenic landscape changes on the island of Cyprus compared to those associated with contemporaneous mainland sites. These data also reveal that climatic forces influenced land use decisions on the mainland sites, and provides crucial evidence pertaining to the rise of early anthropogenic landscapes and urbanized civilization.
ContributorsKlinge, JoAnna M (Author) / Fall, Patricia L. (Thesis advisor) / Falconer, Steven E. (Committee member) / Brazel, Anthony J. (Committee member) / Pigg, Kathleen B (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This project examines the social and economic factors that contributed to the development of a specialist-based economy among the Phoenix Basin Hohokam. In the Hohokam case, widespread dependence on the products of a few concentrated pottery producers developed in the absence of political centralization or hierarchical social arrangements. The factors that promoted intensified pottery production, therefore, are the keys to addressing how economic systems can expand in small-scale and middle-range societies. This dissertation constructs a multi-factor model that explores changes to the organization of decorated pottery production during a substantial portion of the pre-Classic period (AD 700 - AD 1020). The analysis is designed to examine simultaneously several variables that may have encouraged demand for ceramic vessels made by specialists. This study evaluates the role of four factors in the development of supply and demand for specialist produced red-on-buff pottery in Hohokam settlements. The factors include 1) agricultural intensification in the form of irrigation agriculture, 2) increases in population density, 3) ritual or social obligations that require the production of particular craft items, and 4) reduced transport costs. Supply and demand for specialist-produced pottery is estimated through a sourcing analysis of non-local pottery at 13 Phoenix Basin settlements. Through a series of statistical analyses, the study measures changes in the influence of each factor on demand for specialist-produced pottery through four temporal phases of the Hohokam pre-Classic period. The analysis results indicate that specialized red-on-buff production was initially spurred by demand for light-colored, shiny, decorated pottery, but then by comparative advantages to specialized production in particular areas of the Phoenix Basin. Specialists concentrated on the Snaketown canal system were able to generate light-colored, mica-dense wares that Phoenix Basin consumers desired while lowering transport costs in the distribution of red-on-buff pottery. The circulation of decorated wares was accompanied by the production of plainware pottery in other areas of the Phoenix Basin. Economic growth in the region was based on complementary and coordinated economic activities between the Salt and the Gila River valleys.
ContributorsKelly, Sophia E (Author) / Abbott, David R. (Thesis advisor) / Darling, J. Andrew (Committee member) / Moore, Gordon (Committee member) / Spielmann, Katherine A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
When a rolling ball exits a spiral tube, it typically maintains its final inertial state and travels along straight line in concordance with Newton's first law of motion. Yet, most people predict that the ball will curve, a "naive physics" misconception called the curvilinear impetus (CI) bias. In the current paper, we explore the ecological hypothesis that the CI bias arises from overgeneralization of correct motion of biological agents. Previous research has established that humans curve when exiting a spiral maze, and college students believe this motion is the same for balls and humans. The current paper consists of two follow up experiments. The first experiment tested the exiting behavior of rodents from a spiral rat maze. Though there were weaknesses in design and procedures of the maze, the findings support that rats do not behave like humans who exhibit the CI bias when exiting a spiral maze. These results are consistent with the CI bias being an overgeneralization of human motion, rather than generic biological motion. The second experiment tested physics teachers on their conception of how a humans and balls behave when exiting a spiral tube. Teachers demonstrated correct knowledge of the straight trajectory of a ball, but generalized the ball's behavior to human motion. Thus physics teachers exhibit the opposite bias from college students and presume that all motion is like inanimate motion. This evidence supports that this type of naive physics inertial bias is at least partly due to participants overgeneralizing both inanimate and animate motion to be the same, perhaps in an effort to minimize cognitive reference memory load. In short, physics training appears not to eliminate the bias, but rather to simply shift it from the presumption of stereotypical animate to stereotypical inanimate behavior.
ContributorsDye, Rosaline (Author) / Mcbeath, Michael K (Thesis advisor) / Sanabria, Federico (Committee member) / Megowan, Colleen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Magicians are informal cognitive scientists who regularly test their hypotheses in the real world. As such, they can provide scientists with novel hypotheses for formal psychological research as well as a real-world context in which to study them. One domain where magic can directly inform science is the deployment of attention in time and across modalities. Both magicians and scientists have an incomplete understanding of how attention operates in time, rather than in space. However, magicians have highlighted a set of variables that can create moments of visual attentional suppression, which they call "off-beats," and these variables can speak to modern models of temporal attention. The current research examines two of these variables under conditions ranging from artificial laboratory tasks to the (almost) natural viewing of magic tricks. Across three experiments, I show that the detection of subtle dot probes in a noisy visual display and pieces of sleight of hand in magic tricks can be influenced by the seemingly irrelevant rhythmic qualities of auditory stimuli (cross-modal attentional entrainment) and processes of working memory updating (akin to the attentional blink).
ContributorsBarnhart, Anthony S (Author) / Goldinger, Stephen D. (Thesis advisor) / Glenberg, Arthur M. (Committee member) / Homa, Donald (Committee member) / Simons, Daniel J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013