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- Creators: Department of Psychology
- Status: Published
Description
Often learning new skills, such as how to throw a basketball or how to play the piano, are better accomplished practicing with another than from self-practice. Why? We propose that during joint action, partners learn to adjust their behavior to each other. For example, when dancing with a partner, we must adjust the timing, the force, and the spatial locations of movements to those of the partner. We call these adjustments a joint body schema (JBS). That is, the locations of our own effectors and our own movements are adapted by interaction with the partner. Furthermore, we propose that after a JBS is established, learning new motor skills can be enhanced by the learner's attunement to the specifics of the partner's actions. We test this proposal by having partners engage in a motor task requiring cooperation (to develop the JBS). Then we determined whether a) the JBS enhances the coordination on an unrelated task, and b) whether the JBS enhances the learning of a new motor skill. In fact, participants who established a JBS showed stronger coordination with a partner and better motor learning from the partner than did control participants. Several applications of this finding are discussed.
ContributorsMunion, Amanda Kathleen (Author) / Glenberg, Arthur (Thesis director) / Knight, George (Committee member) / McBeath, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The author examined the relationship between social intelligence and attachment style, specifically how attachment style affects how individuals respond to social intelligence training. Students at the Herberger Young Scholars Academy, a school for the highly gifted, completed an online social intelligence training program through the Social Intelligence Institute and were assessed on a number of items. These items include the Tromso Social Intelligence Scale (TSIS), the Attachment Questionnaire for Children (AQ-C), and a daily diary measure in which they recorded and rated their social interactions day to day. All participants were found to be either securely or insecurely attached, and those that were insecurely attached were further divided into insecure anxious attachment style and insecure avoidant attachment style. It was hypothesized that those with a secure attachment style would have higher initial TSIS scores than those with an insecure attachment style. It was also hypothesized that insecurely attached individuals would benefit more from the social intelligence training program than securely attached individuals indicated by "In tune" scores from the daily diaries, and insecure avoidant individuals would benefit more from the program than insecure anxious individuals indicated by "In tune" scores from the daily diaries. None of these hypotheses were supported by the data, as there was no significant difference between the initial social intelligence scores of the three attachment styles, and none of the variables measured were found to be significant predictors of "In tune" scores. Key Words: social intelligence, social intelligence training, attachment, attachment style, children, adolescents, gifted, IQ, high IQ
ContributorsPrice, Christina Nicole (Author) / Zautra, Alex (Thesis director) / Knight, George (Committee member) / Mickelson, Kristin (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Research indicates that adolescents with low quality relationships with parents are susceptible to risk of depression. There is little known about how other relationships relate to depression. This study examined adolescent's relationship with parents, romantic partners, and best friends as a predictor of depressive symptoms. A primarily Dutch population of 80 adolescent couples in the age group of 13 to 18 years old (M = 15.48 SD: 1.16) completed the Epidemiological Depression Scale, Investment Scale of Rusbult, along with an Emotional Warmth scale at Time one and then a year later (Time two). Depressive symptoms at Time two was negatively related with adolescent's emotional warmth with parents. There is also a positive correlation between depressive symptoms at Time one and Time two. However, no significant data was found for an association between satisfaction with romantic partner or best friend and depressive symptoms at Time two. These findings indicate that the type of relationship formed with parents might contribute to the depression adolescent's face.
ContributorsShaikh, Mohammad Usama (Author) / Fabes, Richard (Thesis director) / Ha, Phuong Thao (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
The purpose of this thesis study was to examine whether the "war on cancer" metaphor influences cancer perception and treatment decision. A total of 249 undergraduates (152 females) from a large southwestern university participated in an online survey experiment and were either randomly assigned to the control condition (N=123) or to the war prime condition (N=126). Participants in the control condition did not receive the metaphor manipulation while participants in the war prime condition received the subtle "war on cancer" metaphor prime. After the prime was given, participants read a scenario, answered questions related to the situation, and responded to demographic questions. The results suggested that, compared to participants in the no-prime condition, participants exposed to the war metaphor were more likely to (a) view melanoma as an acute disease, (b) choose chemotherapy over molecular tests, and (c) prefer more aggressive treatment. These findings illustrated the unintended consequences of the "war on cancer" slogan. The results were encouraging and in the predicted direction, but the effect size was small. The discussion section described possible future directions for research.
ContributorsShangraw, Ann Mariah (Author) / Kwan, Virginia (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Cavanaugh Toft, Carolyn (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Previously we found that subjects ate less from a four-piece bagel than from the same bagel served whole. Here, we determined if subjects differed in their perception of the amount of food based on the number of pieces of food served and measured the effects of these judgments on the amount of food consumed. A total of 213 (140 male, 73 female) undergraduate students with a mean age of 19 years participated in this study. Subjects were shown a whole food and the same food cut into pieces and asked which they perceived to be larger either before or after consuming that food, or not asked at all. We found that subjects ate less from a whole bagel than from a four-piece bagel. Furthermore, significantly more subjects perceived the whole bagel to be more food when asked this question after consumption of the bagel than before. People may be more familiar with the amount of satiation expected from a whole bagel than the four-piece bagel and this perceptual bias may be influenced by recent exposure to food, which ultimately may affect food intake.
ContributorsTurro, Cameron Nicholas (Author) / Capaldi-Phillips, Betty (Thesis director) / Bajaj, Devina (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
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
The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of two modes of exercise on depression in adolescents with Down syndrome (DS). Twelve participants randomly completed one of two exercise interventions. The interventions were: 1) Voluntary Cycling (VC), in which participants cycled at their self-selected pedaling rate 2) Assisted Cycling (AC), in which the participants' voluntary pedaling rates were augmented with a motor to ensure the maintenance of 80 rpms. In each intervention, the participant completed three cycling sessions each week for a total of eight weeks. Depression scores did decrease or improved after both AC and VC, but not significantly. There was a greater mean improvement for participants in the AC group than VC when analyzing total score and t-score. Future research will include a greater sample size and control group to reach significant results as well as try and reveal the mechanisms involved in these mental health improvements found after an acute bout of assisted cycling in adolescents with DS.
ContributorsTeslevich, Jennifer Lynn (Author) / Ringenbach, Shannon (Thesis director) / Kulinna, Pamela (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
In recent years, the number of applications for admission to graduate education programs has increased. Researchers attempted to gain insight into this increase by examining student perception of the costs and benefits of pursuing graduate-level education. In order to gauge this perception, researchers administered an online survey to 151 subjects from Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. Student perception was then compared to data released by ASU detailing actual costs and benefits of obtaining graduate-level education. Researchers' prediction that increased levels of parental education would be associated with more accurate estimates of the benefits of graduate-level education was correct at a statistically significant level. Further, being male was statistically significantly associated with an increase in starting salary overestimation.
ContributorsCunningham, Shelly Kathryn (Author) / DeSerpa, Allan (Thesis director) / Baldwin, Marjorie (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Tempo control is a crucial part of musicianship that can provide an obstacle for novice musicians. The current study examines why novice percussionists increase their playing tempo when they increase their loudness (in music, loudness is referred to as dynamics). This study tested five hypotheses: 1) As actual tempo changes, listeners perceive that the tempo is changing; 2) There is a perceptual bias to perceive increases in acoustic intensity as also increasing in tempo; 3) All individuals, regardless of percussion experience, display the bias described in hypothesis 2; 4) Unskilled or non-percussionists increase or decrease produced tempo as they respectively increase or decrease loudness; and 5) Skilled percussionist produce less change in tempo due to changes in loudness than non-percussionists. In Experiment 1, percussionists and non-percussionists listened to metronome samples that gradually change in intensity and/or tempo. Participants identified the direction and size of their perceived tempo change using a computer mouse. In Experiment 2, both groups of participants produced various tempo and dynamic changes on a drum pad. Our findings support that both percussionists and non-percussionists, to some extent, display a perceptual bias to perceive tempo changes as a function of intensity changes. We also found that non-percussionists altered their tempo as a function of changing dynamic levels, whereas percussionists did not. Overall, our findings support that listeners tend to experience some integrality between perceptual dimensions of perceived tempo and loudness. Dimensional integration also persists when playing percussion instruments though experience with percussion instruments reduces this effect.
ContributorsJohnson, Adam Gregory (Author) / McBeath, Michael (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Yost, William (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Human perceptual dimensions of sound are not necessarily simple representations of the actual physical dimensions that make up sensory input. In particular, research on the perception of interactions between acoustic frequency and intensity has shown that people exhibit a bias to expect the perception of pitch and loudness to change together. Researchers have proposed that this perceptual bias occurs because sound sources tend to follow a natural regularity of a correlation between changes in intensity and frequency of sound. They postulate that the auditory system has adapted to expect this naturally occurring relationship to facilitate auditory scene analysis, the tracking and parsing sources of sound as listeners analyze their auditory environments. However, this correlation has only been tested with human speech and musical sounds. The current study explores if animal sounds also exhibit the same natural correlation between intensity and frequency and tests if people exhibit a perceptual bias to assume this correlation when listening to animal calls. Our principal hypotheses are that animal sounds will tend to exhibit a positive correlation between intensity and frequency and that, when hearing such sounds change in intensity, listeners will perceive them to also change in frequency and vice versa. Our tests with 21 animal calls and 8 control stimuli along with our experiment with participants responding to these stimuli supported these hypotheses. This research provides a further example of coupling of perceptual biases with natural regularities in the auditory domain, and provides a framework for understanding perceptual biases as functional adaptations that help perceivers more accurately anticipate and utilize reliable natural patterns to enhance scene analyses in real world environments.
ContributorsWilkinson, Zachary David (Author) / McBeath, Michael (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Rutowski, Ronald (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2014-05