Theses and Dissertations
This collection includes both ASU Theses and Dissertations, submitted by graduate students, and the Barrett, Honors College theses submitted by undergraduate students.
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- All Subjects: development
- All Subjects: Socioemotional Development
- Creators: Glenberg, Arthur
Description
Introspective awareness refers to direct access to one’s own internal and subjective thoughts and feelings (Wimmer & Hartl, 1991). Two theories, simulation theory and theory-theory, have been used to understand our access to our mental states. Simulation theory (Harris, 1991) involves imagining yourself in another person’s situation, reading off of your mental state, and attributing that state to the other person. Theory-theory (Gopnik, 1993) involves an interrelated body of knowledge, based on core mental-state constructs, including beliefs and desires, that may be applied to everyone—self and others (Gopnik & Wellman, 1994). Introspection is taken for granted by simulation theory, and explicitly denied by theory-theory. This study is designed to test for evidence of introspection in young children using simple perception and knowledge task. The current evidence is against introspective awareness in children because the data suggest that children cannot report their own false beliefs and they cannot report their on-going thoughts (Flavell, Green & Flavell, 1993; Gopnik & Astington, 1988). The hypothesis in this study states that children will perform better on Self tasks compared to Other tasks, which will be evidence for introspection. The Other-Perception tasks require children to calculate the other’s line of sight and determine if there is something obscuring his or her vision. The Other-Knowledge tasks require children to reason that the other’s previous looking inside a box means that he or she will know what is inside the box when it is closed. The corresponding Self tasks could be answered either by using the same reasoning for the self or by introspection to determine what it is they see and do not see, and know and do not know. Children performing better on Self tasks compared to Other tasks will be an indication of introspection. Tests included Yes/No and Forced Choice questions, which was initially to ensure that the results will not be caused by a feature of a single method of questioning. I realized belatedly, however, that Forced Choice was not a valid measure of introspection as children could introspect in both the Self and Other conditions. I also expect to replicate previous findings that reasoning about Perception is easier for children than reasoning about Knowledge.
ContributorsAamed, Mati (Author) / Fabricius, William (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
Embodiment refers to the interactions between the brain, the body, one’s behavior, and the surrounding physical and social worlds (Glenberg, 2010). Embodied cognition can be utilized to teach various aspects of human behavior, especially life skills. Psychologists have defined self-regulation as managing one’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviors to achieve goals (Rosanbalm & Murray, 2017; Dettmer et al., 2020). In this study, researchers examined the interaction of these concepts to determine whether embodied cognitive tasks could facilitate self-regulation skills in a sample of preschoolers and kindergarteners. Researchers recruited twenty-six participants aged three to six from ASU’s Child Study Lab. Researchers matched participants on PPVT scores, and one from each pair was randomly assigned to the traditional (control) group while the other was assigned to the embodied (experimental) group. In phase one, the embodied group received four sequential thought lesson plans based on physical manipulation of materials. The traditional group received four sequential thought lesson plans in a traditional, two-dimensional format. In phase two, all participants received four traditional-style impulse control lesson plans. Researchers used a factorial ANOVA to analyze both groups’ pre and post-test data in each phase. In phase one, the children in the embodied group displayed greater improvements in sequential thought skills than their counterparts in the traditional group, who only slightly improved overall. In phase two, the previously-embodied group ended with a higher average post-test score than the traditional group. This interaction effect could be attributed to the differences in training methods received in the sequential thought phase. This study would need to be replicated with a larger, more representative sample to determine a statistically significant effect.
ContributorsMcKinney, Keagan (Author) / Conway, Bryn (Co-author) / Glenberg, Arthur (Thesis director) / Kupfer, Anne (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2022-05