Matching Items (9)
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- All Subjects: Memory
- All Subjects: Learning
- Creators: Brewer, Gene
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Description
Although it has recently been demonstrated that source monitoring (SM) processes may mediate the relationship between working memory (WM) and false memories, little research has investigated whether the quality of monitoring processes can account for this reduction. In the current study, participants performed multiple false memory, WM, and SM tasks. Consistent with previous research, SM abilities mediated the relationship between WM and false memories (regardless of whether or not participants were warned of the illusions at encoding). High SM individuals were better able to recall contextual information from study to correctly reject lures, whereas low SM individuals were more likely to rely on the quality of retrieved details to reject lures. These results suggest that individuals low and high in SM abilities rely on qualitatively different monitoring processes to reduce errors, and that individual differences in diagnostic monitoring strategies may account for previous relationships found between WM and false memories.
ContributorsCoulson, Allison Rose (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis director) / Ellis, Derek (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Brain-computer interface technology establishes communication between the brain and a computer, allowing users to control devices, machines, or virtual objects using their thoughts. This study investigates optimal conditions to facilitate learning to operate this interface. It compares two biofeedback methods, which dictate the relationship between brain activity and the movement of a virtual ball in a target-hitting task. Preliminary results indicate that a method in which the position of the virtual object directly relates to the amplitude of brain signals is most conducive to success. In addition, this research explores learning in the context of neural signals during training with a BCI task. Specifically, it investigates whether subjects can adapt to parameters of the interface without guidance. This experiment prompts subjects to modulate brain signals spectrally, spatially, and temporally, as well differentially to discriminate between two different targets. However, subjects are not given knowledge regarding these desired changes, nor are they given instruction on how to move the virtual ball. Preliminary analysis of signal trends suggests that some successful participants are able to adapt brain wave activity in certain pre-specified locations and frequency bands over time in order to achieve control. Future studies will further explore these phenomena, and future BCI projects will be advised by these methods, which will give insight into the creation of more intuitive and reliable BCI technology.
ContributorsLancaster, Jenessa Mae (Co-author) / Appavu, Brian (Co-author) / Wahnoun, Remy (Co-author, Committee member) / Helms Tillery, Stephen (Thesis director) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
It is a well-established finding in memory research that spacing or distributing information, as opposed to blocking all the information together, results in an enhanced memory of the learned material. Recently, researchers have decided to investigate if this spacing effect is also beneficial in category learning. In a set of experiments, Carvalho & Goldstone (2013), demonstrated that a blocked presentation showed an advantage during learning, but that ultimately, the distributed presentation yielded better performance during a post-learning transfer test. However, we have identified a major methodological issue in this study that we believe contaminates the results in a way that leads to an inflation and misrepresentation of learning levels. The present study aimed to correct this issue and re-examine whether a blocked or distributed presentation enhances the learning and subsequent generalization of categories. We also introduced two shaping variables, category size and distortion level at transfer, in addition to the mode of presentation (blocked versus distributed). Results showed no significant differences of mode of presentation at either the learning or transfer phases, thus supporting our concern about the previous study. Additional findings showed benefits in learning categories with a greater category size, as well as higher classification accuracy of novel stimuli at lower-distortion levels.
ContributorsJacoby, Victoria Leigh (Author) / Homa, Donald (Thesis director) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Davis, Mary (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Working memory is the cognitive system responsible for storing and maintaining information in short-term memory and retrieving cues from long-term memory. Working memory capacity (WMC) is needed for goal maintenance and to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli (Engle & Kane, 2003). Emotions are one type of task-irrelevant stimuli that could distract an individual from a task (Smallwood, Fitzgerald, Miles, & Phillips, 2009). There are studies that show there is a relation between emotions and working memory capacity. The direction of this relationship, though, is unclear (Kensinger, 2009). In this study, emotions served as a distractor and task performance was examined for differences in the effect of emotion depending on participants' working memory capacity. The participants watched a mood induction video, then were told to complete a complex-span working memory task. The mood induction was successful- participants watching the negative emotional video were in a less positive mood after watching the video than the participants that watched a neutral video. However, the results of the complex-span working memory task showed no significant difference in the results between participants in the negative versus neutral mood. These results may provide support to an alternative hypothesis: cognitive tasks can diminish the effects of emotions (Dillen, Heslenfeld, & Koole, 2009).
ContributorsAhmed, Sania (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis director) / Wingert, Kimberly (Committee member) / Blais, Chris (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Prospective memory is defined as remembering to carry out specified actions in the future. Research has suggested that prospective memory retrieval is reliant on multiple cognitive processes to function, and the ways in which these different processes are used is dependent on a variety of variables relating to the prospective memory task at hand. The current study focuses on the strength of the association between the prospective
memory cue and the prospective memory intention. Based on literature suggesting that aspects of prospective memory are reliant on executive control functioning, the current study examined the possibility that executive control depletion would affect prospective memory ability on subsequent tasks. Results showed that depletion of executive control resources, measured objectively, did not impair prospective memory in either a low or
high cue-association condition. However, participants‟ subjective assessment of their own fatigue correlated significantly with their subsequent prospective memory performance, regardless of association condition. The results of the study indicate that depletion studies that fail to account for both objective and subjective measures suffer from an unclear interpretation of effects, and that recognition of perceived expectancies
of cognitive resource limitation can assist in improving prospective memory ability.
memory cue and the prospective memory intention. Based on literature suggesting that aspects of prospective memory are reliant on executive control functioning, the current study examined the possibility that executive control depletion would affect prospective memory ability on subsequent tasks. Results showed that depletion of executive control resources, measured objectively, did not impair prospective memory in either a low or
high cue-association condition. However, participants‟ subjective assessment of their own fatigue correlated significantly with their subsequent prospective memory performance, regardless of association condition. The results of the study indicate that depletion studies that fail to account for both objective and subjective measures suffer from an unclear interpretation of effects, and that recognition of perceived expectancies
of cognitive resource limitation can assist in improving prospective memory ability.
ContributorsCook, Carson (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Homa, Donald (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
This study was conducted in order to create a brief task that more efficiently studies the memory of young and old dogs compared to previous dog radial arm mazes. The hypotheses were older dogs would perform worse than younger dogs, brief tasks with longer delays and the presence of an occluder would produce worse results, and the brief task with the longest delay period without an occluder would be most correlated to the radial arm maze. 45 dogs were tested from a previous sample that had participated in a radial arm maze experiment. The dogs were tested in their owner's homes and watched the researcher place a treat behind one of two boxes. Dogs then waited during different delay periods, of 15, 30, or 45 seconds, and with or without an occluder, which was a curtain. Then, the dog was released to see if it could still remember which box the treat was behind. The results supported all the hypotheses, except the 45-second brief task with an occluder was most correlated the radial arm maze. Additionally, the dogs that had to be excluded from the radial arm maze still had a similar range of results on the brief tasks as dogs that were able to complete the radial arm maze. These results confirm the radial arm maze is very difficult and strenuous on dogs, but the brief task is correlated and probably much more effective at studying memory without these issues. This study can help researchers perfect this simple task in order to study many dogs much quicker and collect more information on dogs' memory. Future studies could overcome limitations including dogs that were not motivated by treats or that were too old to stand up. Specific breeds could be tested or longitudinal studies could be conducted to find differences in memory over time. In the future, this can hopefully relate to human cognitive decline knowledge, as dogs show similar cognitive decline to humans, and help find treatments for cognitive diseases.
ContributorsGlomski, Marissa (Author) / Wynne, Clive (Thesis director) / Presson, Clive (Committee member) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-12
Description
After answering a test question, feedback of the correct answer provided after a brief delay can be more beneficial to learning than feedback provided immediately (Brackbill & Kappy, 1962; Kulhavy & Anderson, 1972). Several theoretical models have been proposed to explain this delay-of-feedback benefit, with the most well supported being that delaying feedback promotes anticipation of the correct answer, which has been examined using curiosity as a measure of answer anticipation (Mullaney et al. 2014). The present study tested this model across two task designs, one designed to elicit epistemic curiosity, and one designed to elicit perceptual curiosity, to determine if the relationship between curiosity and feedback delay is type-dependent. In Task 1, participants answered trivia questions, reported their subjective level of curiosity to know the answer, and then received correct answer feedback after a variable delay (0s, 4s, or 8s). Task 2 was identical to Task 1, except that participants learned and were tested on the identities of blurred pictures, rather than trivia question answers. A subsequent learning retention test demonstrated a significant effect of curiosity, but not feedback delay, on performance in the trivia task, and no significant effect of curiosity, but a negative effect of feedback delay, on performance in the blurred pictures task. Neither task found a significant interaction effect between curiosity and delay group, which fails to support the answer anticipation model of the delay-of-feedback benefit.
ContributorsMcDaniel, Layla (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis director) / Pages, Erika (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Music and emotions have been studied frequently in the past as well as music and memory. However, these three items don’t have as much research grouped together. Further, this research does not also encompass culture. In my research, the aim was to examine the relationship between music, memory, emotion, and culture of gender. The hypothesis was that women had more emotions linked to music than men. We gave 416 students an animal fluency task, a letter fluency task, six cultural fluency tasks, and a cultural identity survey. We used a t-test and created a graph to analyze my data. After administering my tasks, we found that women had recalled more adjectives linked to music than men. However, there was not a statistically significant difference between the number of adjectives with emotional valence between men and women, indicating that there was no relationship between gender and emotion in regards to music. The limitations on this study included the descriptions on how to complete the task, the cultural norms of the participants, and the disparity between the number of female and male participants. In a future study, it is necessary to be more specific in what is desired from the participants and to pay close attention to shifting gender norms. Further, we would also like to see how the results from future research can impact music therapy for memory-related mood disorders.
ContributorsLevin, Allison (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis director) / Cohen, Adam (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The purpose of this project was to extend Whitehead 2016 to determine what neural substrates supported conflict-mediated learning. Unfortunately, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic we were unable to address this. To repurpose the collected data, an analysis of which features of the Flanker task subjects were learning was conducted. Specifically, we wanted to know if subjects were learning by using the flanking stimuli to predict the central target or vice versa. Over 14 blocks comprised of 120 trials, we found that subjects made more stroop errors than flanker and target errors, indicating subjects were responding to stimuli in context of the flanker rather than the stroop effect.
ContributorsSobelman, Reanna Hayley (Author) / Blais, Chris (Thesis director) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-12