Matching Items (30)
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- All Subjects: psychology
- All Subjects: Machine Learning
- Creators: Duran, Nicholas
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Description
Students' ability to regulate and control their behaviors during learning has been shown to be a critical skill for academic success. However, researchers often struggle with ways to capture the nuances of this ability, often solely relying on self-report measures. This thesis proposal employs a novel approach to investigating variations in students' ability to self-regulate by using process data from the game-based Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) iSTART-ME. This approach affords a nuanced examination of how students' regulate their interactions with game-based features at both a coarse-grained and fine-grain levels and the ultimate impact that those behaviors have on in-system performance and learning outcomes (i.e., self-explanation quality). This thesis is comprised of two submitted manuscripts that examined how a group of 40 high school students chose to engage with game-based features and how those interactions influenced their target skill performance. Findings suggest that in-system log data has the potential to provide stealth assessments of students' self-regulation while learning.
ContributorsSnow, Erica L (Author) / McNamara, Danielle S. (Thesis advisor) / Glenburg, Arthur M (Committee member) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Magnocellular-Dorsal pathway’s function had been related to reading ability, and visual perceptual learning can effectively increase the function of this neural pathway. Previous researches training people with a traditional dot motion paradigm and an integrated visual perceptual training “video game” called Ultimeyes pro, all showed improvement with regard to people’s reading performance. This research used 2 paradigms in 2 groups in order to compare the 2 paradigms’ effect on improving people’s reading ability. We also measured participants’ critical flicker fusion threshold (CFFT), which is related to word decoding ability. The result did not show significant improvement of reading performance in each group, but overall the reading speed improved significantly. The result for CFFT in each group only showed significant improvement among people who trained with Ultimeyes pro. This result supports that the beneficial effect of visual perceptual learning training on people’s reading ability, and it suggests that Ultimeyes pro is more efficient than the traditional dot motion paradigm, and might have more application value.
ContributorsZhou, Tianyou (Author) / Nanez, Jose E (Thesis advisor) / Robles-Sotelo, Elias (Committee member) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation examined how anxiety levels and social competence change across the course of early elementary school, as well as how individual differences at the transition to kindergarten may influence these trajectories. Previous research has supported unidirectional relations among anxiety and social competence, but few studies explore how inter- and intra-individual changes in social competence and anxiety may be related across time. From a developmental perspective, studying these trajectories following the transition to kindergarten is important, as cognitive and emotion regulation capacities increase markedly across kindergarten, and the relative success with which children navigate this transition can have a bearing on future social and emotional functioning across elementary school. In addition, given gender differences in anxiety manifestation and social competence development broadly, gender differences were also examined in an exploratory manner. Data from parent and teacher reports of a community sample of 291 children across kindergarten, 1st, and 2nd grades were analyzed. Results from bivariate growth models revealed steeper increases in anxiety, relative to peers in the sample, were associated with steeper decreases in social competence across time. This finding held after controlling for externalizing behavior problems at each time point, which suggests that relations among anxiety and social competence may be independent of other behavior problems commonly associated with poor social adjustment. Temperament variables were associated with changes in social competence, such that purportedly "risky" temperament traits of higher negative emotionality and lower attention control were associated with concurrently lower social competence in kindergarten, but with relatively steeper increases in social competence across time. Temperament variables in kindergarten were unrelated with changes in anxiety across time. Gender differences in relations among anxiety in kindergarten and growth in social competence also were revealed. Findings for teacher and parent reports of child behavior varied. Results are discussed with respect to contexts that may drive differences between parent and teacher reports of child behavior, as well as key developmental considerations that may help to explain why kindergarten temperament variables examined herein appear to predict changes in social competence but not changes in anxiety levels.
ContributorsParker, Julia Humphrey (Author) / Pina, Armando A. (Thesis advisor) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Doane, Leah D. (Committee member) / Valiente, Carlos (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Literature was reviewed about how synchrony occurs in infant-parent dyads, in emotion, and physiologically in couple dyads. Social baseline theory suggests that both conversation and interpersonal touch confer benefits by reducing burden on the participants through coregulatory processes. The current study examined how affectionate touch and positive conversation influenced physiological synchrony, a potential mechanism of physiological coregulation, in couples. Because synchrony is believed to occur within the autonomic nervous system, in the present study, physiological synchrony was measured using cardiac interbeat interval (IBI) as an indicator of autonomic nervous system activation. Couples were assigned to one of four conditions: interpersonal touch with positive conversation, interpersonal touch without conversation, positive conversation with no interpersonal touch, and neither interpersonal touch nor conversation. We hypothesized that 1) IBI synchrony between spouses within the real data would be significantly higher than within a phase-shuffled version of the data; and 2) synchrony would be strongest in the touch-talk condition, followed by the touch-no talk condition, followed by the talk-no touch- condition, and finally by the no touch-no talk condition. We also investigated whether there was a tendency for husbands or wives to serve as leader or follower in the four conditions. Using windowed lagged cross-correlations, we found that synchrony within the real data was stronger than synchrony within the shuffled data, suggesting that it reflects an ongoing interpersonal process. Next, we found that there was significantly greater synchrony in the touch-talk than in the touch-no talk condition, marginally greater synchrony in the touch-no talk condition than in the no touch-talk condition, and significantly greater synchrony in the no touch-talk than in the no touch-no talk conditions, suggesting that talk, rather than touch, was driving these synchrony levels. We also found that the only condition with a significant level of leading-following pattern was the no touch-talk condition. More husbands than wives led the covariation in IBI when couples were conversing but not touching. When touch was included this effect did not occur. Future research should include potential moderators such as marital satisfaction and investigate whether seeing one’s partner influences synchrony.
ContributorsMcAfee, Ashley Nicole (Author) / Burleson, Mary (Thesis advisor) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Roberts, Nicole (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Delay discounting is the decline in the present value of a reward with delay to its receipt. (Mazur,1987). The delay discounting task is used to measure delay discounting rate, which requires the participants to choose between two options: one involves immediate delivery of a reward, and other involves delivery after a delay, and the immediate rewards are adjusted in value until the subject feels there is no difference between the immediate and the delayed reward. Some previous studies (Robles and Vargas, 2007; 2008; Robles et al., 2009) found that the order of presentation of the immediate rewards (ascending or descending) significantly influenced the estimated delay discounting rate, which is known as the order effect. Uncertainty about the future and impulsivity could explain delay discounting behavior. The purpose of this study was to explore the order effect in delay discounting assessment. The current study found that the order effect in the delay discounting task can be explained by risk aversion, loss aversion and impulsivity. In the current study, the two kinds of fixed procedure (ascending and descending), and the titrating delay discounting task were used to estimate the degree of delay discounting. Also, two gambling tasks were applied to measure risk and loss aversion indices. The BIS-11 scale was used to assess the level of trait impulsivity. The results indicated that impulsivity biases individuals to choose the immediate small reward rather than the large delayed reward, resulting in lower area under the discounting curve (AUC) when estimated with the ascending-sequence delay discounting task. Also, impulsivity moderated the relationship between loss aversion and AUC estimated with the descending-sequence delay discounting task.
ContributorsLi, Yaqi (Author) / Robles, Elías (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Attitudes play a fundamental role when making critical judgments and the extremity of people’s attitudes can be influenced by one’s emotions, beliefs, or past experiences and behaviors. Human attitudes and preferences are susceptible to social influence and attempts to influence or change another person’s attitudes are pervasive in all societies. Given the importance of attitudes and attitude change, the current project investigated linguistic aspects of conversations that lead to attitude change by analyzing a dataset mined from Reddit’s Change My View (Priniski & Horne, 2018). Analysis of the data was done using Natural Language Processing (NLP), specifically information density, to predict attitude change. Top posts from Reddit’s (N = 510,149) were imported and processed in Python and information density measures were computed. The results indicate that comments with higher information density are more likely to be awarded a delta and are perceived to be more persuasive.
ContributorsLobo, Nicole Simone (Author) / Horne, Zachary S (Thesis advisor) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
In a trial, jurors are asked to set aside their emotions and make judgments based solely on evidence. Research suggests jurors are not always capable of this, particularly when exposed to gruesome photographic evidence. However, previous research has not looked at the potentially moderating effect of when and for how long jurors are exposed to emotionally disturbing photographs, nor how many photographs they see. In two experiments I tested the impact of the timing of and extent of exposure to gruesome photographs on jurors’ emotions, verdicts, and punishment recommendations. In Study 1, I investigated the effect of timing and exposure duration to a single gruesome photograph of a victim in a murder case (no exposure, brief early exposure, brief late exposure, and prolonged exposure) on mock jurors’ emotions and case judgments. Prolonged exposure (relative to no or brief exposure, regardless of timing) increased disgust, which in turn was associated with harsher punishment. Contrary to previous research, the photograph manipulation did not influence verdicts. The results were mixed and inconclusive regarding brief early versus late exposure. In Study 2, I compared repeatedly viewing a single gruesome photograph to viewing a set of four similar, but unique gruesome photographs—holding the exposure time constant—to assess the impact of quantity of photos on jurors’ emotions and case judgments. Viewing multiple gruesome photos (relative to no photos) led to increase in guilty verdicts through increased disgust, replicating previous research. Viewing a single gruesome photo (relative to no photo) led to increase in guilty verdicts through disgust, differing from Study 1 findings. Viewing multiple gruesome photos and a single gruesome photo led to more disgust, compared to viewing no photo. However, differing from Study 1, gruesome photographs did not lead to an increase in punishment recommendations. There were no significant differences between exposure to a single or multiple gruesome photos on disgust, verdicts, or punishments. Overall, greater exposure to gruesome evidence led to increased disgust and punitiveness, relative to those with less exposure. However, jurors with greater exposure to the same or different photographs did not differ in reported emotions, verdicts, or punitiveness.
ContributorsBean, Samantha Rae (Author) / Salerno, Jessica M (Thesis advisor) / Schweitzer, Nicholas (Committee member) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Science education faces a distinct challenge in the transition to active learning: how can teachers ensure students reach accurate understandings during the exploration and self-discovery phase of a lesson? Research in hypothesis generation demonstrates human's vulnerabilities to specific biases based on prior knowledge, selective memory retrieval, and failure to consider alternative explanations. This is further complicated in science education, where content standards are abstract. As such, it is imperative to implement a proactive intervention to curb misconceptions from forming during active learning in science lessons. In this work, a new a model of instruction, Question-Based Learning (QBL) is designed and tested against current learning paradigms. The study aims to investigate whether providing constraint-seeking questions is an effective intervention leading to improved mastery of learning targets during active learning. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions to learn a scientific concept: a blended learning condition, a guided-inquiry condition, or a QBL condition. Mastery was measured at the end of the task using a 12-question assessment. The same measure was also administered one week after subjects completed the study to see whether delayed recall significantly differs between condition groups. Results indicate the QBL model is at least as effective two existing forms of pedagogy at teaching a scientific principle, increasing depth of knowledge regarding that scientific principle, and sustaining knowledge over time.
ContributorsWallace, Grace Kathleen (Author) / Duran, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Lucca, Kelsey (Committee member) / Horne, Zachary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The experience of language can, as any other experience, change the way that the human brain is organized and connected. Fluency in more than one language should, in turn, change the brain in the same way. Recent research has focused on the differences in processing between bilinguals and monolinguals, and has even ventured into using different neuroimaging techniques to study why these differences exist. What previous research has failed to identify is the mechanism that is responsible for the difference in processing. In an attempt to gather information about these effects, this study explores the possibility that bilingual individuals utilize lower signal strength (and by comparison less biological energy) to complete the same tasks that monolingual individuals do. Using an electroencephalograph (EEG), signal strength is retrieved during two perceptual tasks, the Landolt C and the critical flicker fusion threshold, as well as one executive task (the Stroop task). Most likely due to small sample size, bilingual participants did not perform better than monolingual participants on any of the tasks they were given, but they did show a lower EEG signal strength during the Landolt C task than monolingual participants. Monolingual participants showed a lower EEG signal strength during the Stroop task, which stands to support the idea that a linguistic processing task adds complexity to the bilingual brain. Likewise, analysis revealed a significantly lower signal strength during the critical flicker fusion task for monolingual participants than for bilingual participants. Monolingual participants also had a significantly different variability during the critical flicker fusion threshold task, suggesting that becoming bilingual creates an entirely separate population of individuals. Future research should perform analysis with the addition of a prefrontal cortex electrode to determine if less collaboration during processing is present for bilinguals, and if signal complexity in the prefrontal cortex is lower than other electrodes.
ContributorsMcLees, Sallie (Author) / Náñez Sr., José E (Thesis advisor) / Holloway, Steven (Committee member) / Duran, Nicholas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) causes immense global burden and has a significant impact on economic and societal functioning. Efficacious treatments for AUDs have been well-established within the literature, however the most commonly accessed treatments for AUD are alcohol-related services, such as self-help groups, outpatient clinics, and detoxification centers. Though studies suggest these services are effective at treating AUDs, there are numerous differences between individuals who receive alcohol-related services and individuals who do not, causing selection bias. Furthermore, current studies of alcohol-related services frequently define recovery outcomes as abstinence, which reduces variability in viable recovery outcomes, such as reduction of drinking behaviors. In addition, reduction in drinking and alcohol-related problems should theoretically have an impact on broader aspects of functioning, such as familial functioning. Improved familial context may reduce risk to family members, who are otherwise at heightened risk for emotional and behavioral problems when living with a family member with AUD. The current study investigated the effect of alcohol-related services on binary and continuous drinking outcomes after eliminating selection bias using multiple propensity score approaches, to identify the best methodology for a high-risk community sample of individuals with AUD. Propensity scores were created using logistic regression approaches and boosted regression trees. Matching, weighting, and subclassification were used, and matching was performed both using greedy and global approaches. Results suggested subclassification was the most successful method for real world alcohol-related services samples with moderate sample size. Moreover, findings demonstrated that boosted regression approaches were less successful than logistic regression approaches at minimizing the effects of selection bias on known confounding variables that are highly related to group selection. In addition, after removing the effects of selection bias, there were no significant difference between participants who received alcohol-related services and the comparison control group on drinking or family functioning, though both groups reduced drinking from pre- to post-alcohol-related services receipt. Findings suggest careful selection of quasi-experimental methods is warranted in real-world samples, to ensure optimal removal of selection bias. Moreover, future studies should continue to clarify the profile of individual that benefits from alcohol-related services to inform intervention efforts.
ContributorsSternberg, Ariel (Author) / Chassin, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Corbin, William (Committee member) / Meier, Madeline (Committee member) / Grimm, Kevin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021