Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: Cognitive Psychology
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Hall, Deborah
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
Perceptual learning by means of coherent motion training paradigms has been shown to produce plasticity in lower and higher-level visual systems within the human occipital lobe both supra- and subliminally. However, efficiency of training methods that produce consolidation in the visual system via coherent motion has yet to be experimentally determined. Furthermore, the effects of coherent motion training on reading comprehension, in clinical and normal populations, are still nascent. In the present study, 20 participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions. Two conditions had a participation requirement of four days while two conditions required eight days of participation. These conditions were further divided into 500 or 1000 trials per day (4 x 500, 4 x 1000, 8 x 500, 8 x 1000). Additional pre-test and post-test days were used to attain timed pre- and post-tests on the Wide Range Achievement Test IV (WRAT IV) reading comprehension battery. Furthermore, a critical flicker fusion threshold (CFFT) score was taken on a macular pigment densitometer on the pre-test and post-test day. Participants showed significant improvement in CFFT levels, WRAT IV reading comprehension, and speed of completion between pre-test and post-test; however, degree of improvement did not vary as a function of training condition. An interaction between training condition and degree of improvement was evident in coherent dot motion contrast scores, with significant training plasticity occurring in the 4 x 1000 and 8 x 500 conditions.
ContributorsGroth, Anthony (Author) / Náñez, José E. (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Risko, Evan F. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The long-term impacts of bullying, stress, sexual prejudice and stigma against members of the LGBTQ population are both worrisome and expansive. Bullying among adolescents is one of the clearest and most well documented risks to adolescent health(Nansel et al., 2004; Wilkins-Shurmer et al., 2003; Wolke, Woods, Bloomfield, & Karstadt, 2001) The present study examined the influence of sexual orientation to severity of bullying experience, coping strategies, emotion regulation and the interaction of gender role endorsements in relation to coping and emotion regulation strategy prediction. Extensive research exists to support high victimization experiences in LGBT individuals (Birkett et al., 2009; Robert H DuRant et al., n.d.; Kimmel & Mahler, 2003; Mishna et al., 2009) and separately, research also indicates support of gender role non conformity, social stress and long term coping skills (Galambos et al., 1990; Sánchez et al., 2010; Tolman, Striepe, & Harmon, 2003b). The goal of this study was to extend previous finding to find a relationship between the three variables: sexual orientation, victimization history, and non-traditional gender role endorse and utilizing those traits as predictors of future emotion regulation and coping strategies. The data suggests that as a whole LGBT identified individuals experience bullying at a significantly higher rate than their heterosexual counterparts. By utilizing gender role endorsement the relationship can be expanded to predict maladaptive emotion regulation skills, higher rates of perceived stress and increased fear of negative evaluation in lesbian women and gay men. The data was consistent for all hypotheses in the model: sexual identity significantly predicts higher bully score and atypical gender role endorsement is a moderator of victimization in LGBT individuals. The findings indicate high masculine endorsement in lesbians and high feminine endorsement in gay males can significantly predict victimization and maladaptive coping skills, emotion dysregulation, increased stress, and lack of emotional awareness.
ContributorsPuckett, Yesmina N (Author) / Newman, Matthew L. (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Risko, Evan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
While there is a good amount of research focused on sex offenders as a whole, only a limited number of studies examine variations within these offenders, how people view the variations, and why their opinions may differ. This study focuses on the interconnections among gender norms, rape myth acceptance, and the perception of sex offenders by administering an online student survey. The survey measured rape myth acceptance and adherence to traditional gender roles to see how they affected perceptions of sex offenders. Perceptions were measured using vignettes that were varied by gender and the situation described. Results showed that higher rape myth acceptance would decrease the blameworthiness of the offender, that the offender was seen as more blameworthy when the offender was a male, and that women tended to see the offender as more blameworthy than men did. The type of sexual situation did not have an impact on blameworthiness, nor did adherence to gender roles. The findings support past research that suggests that rape myth acceptance can impact people’s opinions about offenders in sexual situations and specifically that these opinions differ depending on the gender of the offender. With some offenders being viewed as more blameworthy than others, it is necessary to examine sex offense laws to see how they may disproportionately affect some offenders and implement harsher punishments than the public may deem necessary.
ContributorsArenas, Lauren (Author) / Spohn, Cassia (Thesis advisor) / Fradella, Henry F. (Committee member) / Stolzenberg Roosevelt, Stacia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Political party identification has an immense influence on shaping individual attitudes and processes of reasoning to the point where otherwise knowledgeable people endorse political conspiracies that support one's political in-group and simultaneously disparage an out-group. Although recent research has explored this tendency among partisans, less is known about how Independents respond in comparison. Previous research fails to identify the Independent as a unique type of voter, but rather categorizes this group as ostensibly partisan, not a separate phenomenon to investigate. However, most Independents purport neutrality and, by recent polls, are becoming a substantial body worthy of concerted focus. Many questions arise about who Independents really are. For example, do all who identify as Independent behave in a similar manner? Are Independents ideologically different than what is represented by a partisan label? Is the Independent category a broad term for something entirely misunderstood? A thorough investigation into the greater dynamics of the political environment in the United States is an enormous undertaking, requiring a robust interdisciplinary approach beyond the focus and intent of this study. Therefore, this study begins the journey toward understanding these phenomena; do Independents, as a whole, uniformly respond to statements about political conspiracy theories? To explore these possibilities, explicit responses are bypassed to evaluate the implicit appeal of political conspiracy theories. An action dynamics (mouse-tracking) approach, a data rich method that records the response process, demonstrates Independents are not in fact a homogeneous group, but rather seem to fall into two groups: non-partisan leaning and partisan leaning. The analysis exposes that relative to the baseline and control stimuli: (1) Non-leaning Independents reveal an increased susceptibility to implicitly endorse bi-partisan directed conspiracy theories when compared to leaners. (2) Republican-leaners demonstrate a stronger susceptibility to endorse right-wing aligned conspiracy theories (against Barack Obama), similar to Republican partisans. (3) Democrat-leaners, unlike Democrat partisans, do not demonstrate any particular susceptibility to implicitly endorse either right/left-wing aligned conspiracy theories (against Barack Obama or George W. Bush). Drawing from major theories from social, political, and cognitive psychology will contribute to an understanding of these phenomena. Concluding remarks include study limitations and future directions.
ContributorsJohnson, Chelsea (Author) / Duran, Nicholas D (Thesis advisor) / Robles-Sotelo, Elias (Committee member) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
To reveal opinions people may not explicitly portray, researchers have implemented a methodology called the Implicit Associations Test (IAT). While this test saw widespread use after its inception, recent problems have undermined the reliability of the measure. Researchers have begun to address these limitations by evaluating different approaches, such as the Action Dynamics paradigm. Like the IAT, the aim of action dynamics is to assess underlying activation and competition amongst beliefs as they unfold in real-time, while adding a number of more sensitive measures, in addition to those used in an IAT. The trajectories of participants’ computer mouse cursors are tracked as they move from a stimulus statement to a response, providing data of the real-time decisions people are making across a number of variables. For this thesis study, the aim was to use an action dynamics paradigm to explore whether implicit biases exist toward transgender people from a larger cisgender population, even if they explicitly support or oppose others with transgender identities. These potential biases were assessed by evaluating the statements people were asked to confirm or disconfirm. There were also a number of analyses conducted in order to investigate whether such predictors such as
participants’ gender or political ideology predicted differences in responses. Although differences were seen in the reaction time to statements of a certain category, the other trajectory measures showed that participants’ implicit and explicit attitudes toward transgender people were aligned. Implications, limitations, and future directions of this
work are then discussed.
ContributorsHamlett, Mara Carol (Author) / Duran, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Mickelson, Kristin (Committee member) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Retrieving an item from memory can cause subsequent suppression of related items. This phenomenon, involving a procedure where participants retrieve category-exemplar pairs (e.g. FRUIT-orange), is known as Retrieval Induced Forgetting (RIF). Individuals who demonstrate greater amounts of RIF also exhibit greater working memory capacity (WMC). Reasoning ability is highly related to WMC, which may suggest that a similar relation exists between RIF and Reasoning ability. The goal of the present investigation was to examine this possibility. Rotation Span and a Letter Number task were used as indicators of WMC and a Cognitive Reflection Test was used to measure Reasoning ability. A significant RIF effect was found, but it did not significantly correlate with WMC or Reasoning ability. These results demonstrate the importance of designing a RIF task appropriately, selecting measures of Reasoning ability, and the theoretical accounts of the RIF effect. One possibility is that by not controlling for output interference, the obtained RIF effect cannot be reasoned to come from the executive control process as suggested by the inhibition account. Although this account is the chief explanation of the RIF effect, it has been challenged by alternative accounts and it remains unclear how the underlying mechanism of RIF is related to higher cognitive abilities.
ContributorsMaxwell, Joshua (Author) / Duran, Nicholas (Thesis advisor) / Hall, Deborah (Committee member) / Robles-Sotelo, Elias (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016