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: Learning, Psychology of
- Creators: Glenberg, Arthur
- Creators: Roscoe, Rod D.
Description
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of partial exemplar experience on category formation and use. Participants had either complete or limited access to the three dimensions that defined categories by dimensions within different modalities. The concept of "crucial dimension" was introduced and the role it plays in category definition was explained. It was hypothesized that the effects of partial experience are not explained by a shifting of attention between dimensions (Taylor & Ross, 2009) but rather by an increased reliance on prototypical values used to fill in missing information during incomplete experiences. Results indicated that participants (1) do not fill in missing information with prototypical values, (2) integrate information less efficiently between different modalities than within a single modality, and (3) have difficulty learning only when partial experience prevents access to diagnostic information.
ContributorsCrawford, Thomas (Author) / Homa, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Mcbeath, Micheal (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Learning and transfer were investigated for a categorical structure in which relevant stimulus information could be mapped without loss from one modality to another. The category space was composed of three non-overlapping, linearly-separable categories. Each stimulus was composed of a sequence of on-off events that varied in duration and number of sub-events (complexity). Categories were learned visually, haptically, or auditorily, and transferred to the same or an alternate modality. The transfer set contained old, new, and prototype stimuli, and subjects made both classification and recognition judgments. The results showed an early learning advantage in the visual modality, with transfer performance varying among the conditions in both classification and recognition. In general, classification accuracy was highest for the category prototype, with false recognition of the category prototype higher in the cross-modality conditions. The results are discussed in terms of current theories in modality transfer, and shed preliminary light on categorical transfer of temporal stimuli.
ContributorsFerguson, Ryan (Author) / Homa, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Learners' attitudes and beliefs during the initial stages of learning have a profound impact on their future decisions, practice habits, and persistence. In music education, however, surprisingly little research has explored how physical equipment design might influence novices' attitudes and beliefs. The current study addresses this gap by examining how novices' motivation and perception differ based on the physical design of the musical instrument they interact with while learning. Fifty-two adult participants completed an online survey measuring their expectancies (e.g., confidence), value beliefs (e.g., enjoyment, interest, and social merit), and anticipated persistence while attempting to learn the electric guitar. Afterward, participants attempted to learn and perform several beginner-level tasks while using a conventionally designed or ergonomically designed guitar. The conventionally designed guitar was a commercially available model marketed toward beginner and intermediate-level guitarists. In contrast, the ergonomic guitar was a custom model based on expert design recommendations to improve ease of use, comfort, and user experience. Participant learning expectations and values were assessed before and after a one-hour practice session. Results revealed that novices who used the ergonomic guitar reported significant gains in anticipated learning enjoyment. Alternatively, novices who used the conventional guitar exhibited no such change. Beyond this relationship however, the ergonomic guitar was not found to meaningfully affect participants' confidence, interest, physical discomfort, and task difficulty perceptions. Additionally, the ergonomic guitar did not have a statistically significant influence on learning persistence ratings. One important implication extracted from this study is that a single practice session may not provide enough time or experience to affect a novices' attitudes and beliefs toward learning. Future studies may seek to remedy this study limitation by using a longitudinal design or longer practice task trials. Despite this limitation however, this exploratory study highlights the need for researchers, music educators, and instrument manufacturers to carefully consider how the physical design of a musical instrument may impact learning attitudes, choices, and persistence over time. Additionally, this study offers the first attempt at extending the equipment design literature to music education and Expectancy-Value Theory.
ContributorsO'Brian, Joseph (Author) / Roscoe, Rod D. (Thesis advisor) / Branaghan, Russell J (Committee member) / Craig, Scotty (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Emergent processes can roughly be defined as processes that self-arise from interactions without a centralized control. People have many robust misconceptions in explaining emergent process concepts such as natural selection and diffusion. This is because they lack a proper categorical representation of emergent processes and often misclassify these processes into the sequential processes category that they are more familiar with. The two kinds of processes can be distinguished by their second-order features that describe how one interaction relates to another interaction. This study investigated if teaching emergent second-order features can help people more correctly categorize new processes, it also compared different instructional methods in teaching emergent second-order features. The prediction was that learning emergent features should help more than learning sequential features because what most people lack is the representation of emergent processes. Results confirmed this by showing participants who generated emergent features and got correct features as feedback were better at distinguishing two kinds of processes compared to participants who rewrote second-order sequential features. Another finding was that participants who generated emergent features followed by reading correct features as feedback did better in distinguishing the processes than participants who only attempted to generate the emergent features without feedback. Finally, switching the order of instruction by teaching emergent features and then asking participants to explain the difference between emergent and sequential features resulted in equivalent learning gain as the experimental group that received feedback. These results proved teaching emergent second-order features helps people categorize processes and demonstrated the most efficient way to teach them.
ContributorsXu, Dongchen (Author) / Chi, Michelene (Thesis advisor) / Homa, Donald (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015