Matching Items (8)
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- All Subjects: Cognitive Psychology
- All Subjects: decision-making
- Creators: McClure, Samuel
Description
Poor executive cognitive functioning (ECF) is associated with a variety of alcohol-related problems, however, it is not known whether poor ECF precedes the onset of heavy drinking. Establishing the temporal precedence of poor ECF may have implications for our understanding of the development of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). The present study tests associations between early-adolescent ECF and young-adult risky drinking and alcohol-related problems in a prospective study of youth followed to young adulthood. Participants completed three ECF tasks at ages 11-14 and reported on their risky drinking and alcohol-related problems at ages 18-24. A latent ECF factor was created to determine whether early-adolescent ECF was associated with drinking outcomes after controlling for relevant covariates (e.g., age, sex, family history of AUD). Early-adolescent ECF, as measured by a latent factor, was unrelated to young-adult alcohol misuse and alcohol-related problems. However, sensitivity analyses revealed that an individual ECF task tapping response inhibition predicted young-adult peak drinks in a day. Present findings suggest that ECF is not a robust predictor of risky drinking or alcohol-related problems, and that this relation may be specific to the ECF component of response inhibition.
ContributorsJones, Connor Brian (Author) / Meier, Madeline (Thesis advisor) / Chassin, Laurie (Committee member) / McClure, Samuel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Properly deciding to engage in or to withhold an action is a critical ability for goal-oriented movement control. Such decision may be driven by expected value from the choice of action but associating physical effort may discount such value. A novel anticipatory stopping task was developed to investigate effort discounted decision process potentially present in proactive inhibitory control. Subjects performed or abstained from target reach if they believed it was a Go or Stop trial respectively. Reward was awarded to a reach, correctly timed to hit a target at the same time as the moving bar in Go trials. During the Stop trials, correctly judging to not engage in a reach from the color of the moving bar that linked to the bar’s probability of stopping before the target resulted in gaining a reward. Resistive force field incurred additional physical effort for choosing to reach. Introducing effort expectedly decreased the tendency to respond at trials with higher stop probability. Surprisingly, tendency to respond increased and corresponding reaction time decreased in the trials with lower stop probability. Such asymmetric effect suggests that the value of context ineffective response is discounted, and the value of context effective response is flexibly enhanced by its associated effort cost to drive decision-process in goal-oriented manner. Medial frontal event related potential (ERP) locked to the onset of moving bar appearance reflected such effort discounted decision process. Theta band observed in Stop trials accounted for evaluation of effort and context possibly reinforcing such decision-making.
ContributorsTsuchiya, Toshiki (Author) / Santello, Marco (Thesis advisor) / Fine, Justin (Committee member) / McClure, Samuel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
There are two common cognitive distortions present in risky decision-making behavior. The gambler's fallacy is the notion that a random game of chance is potentially biased by previous outcomes, and the near-miss effect is the overestimation of the probability of winning immediately after barely missing a win. This study replicated a portion of the methods of Clark et al. (2014) in an attempt to support the presence of these two fallacies in online simulated risky decision-making tasks. One hundred individuals were recruited and asked to perform one of two classic gambling tasks, either predict the outcome of a dichromatic roulette wheel or spin a simplified, two-reel slot machine. An analysis of color predictions as a function of run length revealed a classic gambler's fallacy effect in the roulette wheel task. A heightened motivation to continue playing after a win, but not a near or full miss, was seen in the slot machine task. How pleased an individual was with the results of the previous round directly affected his or her interest in continuing to play in both experiments. These findings indicate that the gambler's fallacy is present in online decision-making simulations involving risk, but that the near-miss effect is not.
ContributorsCatinchi, Alexis Leigh (Author) / McClure, Samuel (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Gatewood, Kira (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Temporal discounting refers to our tendency to discount the value of future rewards. At the extreme, temporal discounting can give rise to detrimental myopic decision-making. Most studies examining the neural basis of temporal discounting in people have been performed using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). However, fMRI has relatively poor temporal resolution compared with the speed at which people make choices, so understanding choice dynamics using fMRI is difficult. We address the issue utilizing electroencephalography (EEG) to study cortical processes related to temporal discounting. The fMRI literature has found that a network of fronto-parietal brain regions plays an important role during the decision-making process. We aim to explore activity in these regions during the decision process and determine how cortical activity relates to choice parameters. Based on prior fMRI studies, we hypothesized that dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) may act as a regulator of dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and there will be an increase in dlPFC activity for more difficult decisions. We also hypothesized that neural activity may be directly related to the temporal discount rate we estimate behaviorally. We utilized regression analysis to determine the relationship. The results found supported our hypotheses. This study may open the door to a better understanding of the dynamic of brain regions while performing a temporal discounting task.
ContributorsTanwisuth, Koranis (Author) / McClure, Samuel (Thesis director) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
By providing vignettes with manipulated scientific evidence, this research examined if including more or less scientific detail affected decision-making in regards to the death penalty. Participants were randomly assigned one of the two manipulations (less science and more science) after reading a short scenario introducing the mock capital trial and their role as jury members. Survey respondents were told that a jury had previously found the defendant guilty and they would now deliberate the appropriate punishment. Before being exposed to the manipulation, respondents answered questions pertaining to their prior belief in the death penalty, as well as their level of support of procedural justice and science. These questions provided a baseline to compare to their sentencing decision. Participants were then asked what sentence they would impose \u2014 life in prison or death \u2014 and how the fMRI evidence presented by an expert witness for the defense affected their decision. Both quantitative and qualitative measures were used to identify how the level of scientific detail affected their decision. Our intended predictor variable (level of scientific detail) did not affect juror decision-making. In fact, the qualitative results revealed a variety of interpretations of the scientific evidence used both in favor of death and in favor of life. When looking at what did predict juror decision-making, gender, prior belief in the death penalty, and political ideology all were significant predictors. As in previous literature, the fMRI evidence in our study had mixed results with regards to implementation of the death penalty. This held true in both of our manipulations, showing that despite the level of detail in evidence intended for mitigation, jurors with preconceived notions may still disregard the evidence, and some jurors may even view it is aggravating and thus increase the likelihood of a death sentence for a defendant with such brain abnormalities.
ContributorsBerry, Megan Cheyenne (Author) / Fradella, Hank (Thesis director) / Pardini, Dustin (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
The ability to preferentially encode and later retrieve valuable information amidst a plethora of miscellaneous information is an essential aspect of human memory. Several hypotheses have been suggested to explain the enhanced ability to successfully encode high value items. These include the hypothesis that the prefrontal executive control processes are engaged for valuable information, producing elaborative rehearsal strategy. Another hypothesis is that greater attentional resources are allocated to higher value items via the reward driven mid-brain dopamine systems interacting with hippocampal and cortical areas to produce enhanced memory. To further understand the neural mechanisms of value on memory, electroencephalogram data under a value-directed remembering paradigm (VDR) was analyzed for oscillatory activity. During the task, participants encoded words assigned a different point value with the instruction to maximize the point value of recognized words during test. To analyze frequency activity during encoding, conditions of subsequent memory as subjective responses of either recollection (i.e., “remember”) and familiarity (i.e., “know”) were assessed. A possible way to observe the allocation of attention resources in the brain are alpha oscillations (8-15 Hz) which are thought to underlie this process. Participants demonstrated superior memory for high versus low value point items. Following the hypothesis that there is a greater recruitment of attentional resources for high value information, alpha oscillatory power in the occipital/temporal cortex displayed significantly more desynchronization for high value compared to low value conditions during encoding. As well, successful retrieval compared with unsuccessful retrieval and subsequent “remember” or “know” conditions resulted in a qualitatively different, more sustained desynchronization of alpha and other unanticipated frequency band oscillations during encoding that are discussed. Taken together, these findings support previous research for alpha-band desynchronization during encoding items of value into memory and potentially open paths to decouple value and memory driven processes.
ContributorsWilliams, Cole (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis advisor) / McClure, Samuel (Committee member) / Blais, Chris (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are important predictors of performance in educational settings. Thus, understanding the processes underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence is important. Three large scale individual differences experiments were conducted to determine the mechanisms underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. Experiments 1 and 2 were designed to assess whether individual differences in strategic behavior contribute to the variance shared between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. In Experiment 3, competing theories for describing the underlying processes (cognitive vs. strategy) were evaluated in a comprehensive examination of potential underlying mechanisms. These data help inform existing theories about the mechanisms underlying the relation between WMC and gF. However, these data also indicate that the current theoretical model of the shared variance between WMC and gF would need to be revised to account for the data in Experiment 3. Possible sources of misfit are considered in the discussion along with a consideration of the theoretical implications of observing those relations in the Experiment 3 data.
ContributorsWingert, Kimberly Marie (Author) / Brewer, Gene A. (Thesis advisor) / McNamara, Danielle (Thesis advisor) / McClure, Samuel (Committee member) / Redick, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Dopamine neurons are essential for several aspects of cognition. Several decades of Parkinson’s Disease (PD) research have revealed that the deterioration of these neurons is associated with a wide range of cognitive deficits such as attention, motor coordination, and memory. The diversity of these deficits is a demonstration of the structural and functional heterogeneity within the dopaminergic system; projections from the substantia nigra and the ventral tegmental area to striatum have targets in the frontal and medial temporal cortices. It is known that prospective memory is negatively affected by PD, but whether the deficits originate from pathways that support attention, retrospective memory, working memory, and/or motor control has not yet been determined. For the current study, the goal is to estimate the structural integrity of these pathways by using diffusion-imaging analysis to then correlate these estimates with prospective memory performance within a standard event-based task. Two participant data sets were reported in the current study and compared with the global and target fractional anisotropy as well as seed connectivity. All the results reported here are preliminary.
ContributorsTerry, Jade (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis advisor) / Ofori, Edward (Thesis advisor) / McClure, Samuel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022