Matching Items (5)
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- All Subjects: Cognitive Psychology
- All Subjects: Fluid Intelligence
- Genre: Doctoral Dissertation
- Creators: Amazeen, Eric L
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Description
Auditory scene analysis (ASA) is the process through which listeners parse and organize their acoustic environment into relevant auditory objects. ASA functions by exploiting natural regularities in the structure of auditory information. The current study investigates spectral envelope and its contribution to the perception of changes in pitch and loudness. Experiment 1 constructs a perceptual continuum of twelve f0- and intensity-matched vowel phonemes (i.e. a pure timbre manipulation) and reveals spectral envelope as a primary organizational dimension. The extremes of this dimension are i (as in “bee”) and Ʌ (“bun”). Experiment 2 measures the strength of the relationship between produced f0 and the previously observed phonetic-pitch continuum at three different levels of phonemic constraint. Scat performances and, to a lesser extent, recorded interviews were found to exhibit changes in accordance with the natural regularity; specifically, f0 changes were correlated with the phoneme pitch-height continuum. The more constrained case of lyrical singing did not exhibit the natural regularity. Experiment 3 investigates participant ratings of pitch and loudness as stimuli vary in f0, intensity, and the phonetic-pitch continuum. Psychophysical functions derived from the results reveal that moving from i to Ʌ is equivalent to a .38 semitone decrease in f0 and a .75 dB decrease in intensity. Experiment 4 examines the potentially functional aspect of the pitch, loudness, and spectral envelope relationship. Detection thresholds of stimuli in which all three dimensions change congruently (f0 increase, intensity increase, Ʌ to i) or incongruently (no f0 change, intensity increase, i to Ʌ) are compared using an objective version of the method of limits. Congruent changes did not provide a detection benefit over incongruent changes; however, when the contribution of phoneme change was removed, congruent changes did offer a slight detection benefit, as in previous research. While this relationship does not offer a detection benefit at threshold, there is a natural regularity for humans to produce phonemes at higher f0s according to their relative position on the pitch height continuum. Likewise, humans have a bias to detect pitch and loudness changes in phoneme sweeps in accordance with the natural regularity.
ContributorsPatten, K. Jakob (Author) / Mcbeath, Michael K (Thesis advisor) / Amazeen, Eric L (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur W (Committee member) / Zhou, Yi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
For many years now, researchers have documented evidence of fractal scaling in psychological time series. Explanations of fractal scaling have come from many sources but those that have gained the most traction in the literature are theories that suggest fractal scaling originates from the interactions among the multiple scales that make up behavior. Those theories, originating in the study of dynamical systems, suffer from the limitation that fractal analysis reveals only indirect evidence of multiscale interactions. Multiscale interactions must be demonstrated directly because there are many means to generate fractal properties. In two experiments, participants performed a pursuit tracking task while I recorded multiple behavioral and physiological time series. A new analytical technique, multiscale lagged regression, was introduced to capture how those many psychological time series coordinate across multiple scales and time. The results were surprising in that coordination among psychological time series tends to be oscillatory in nature, even when the series are not oscillatory themselves. Those and other results demonstrate the existence of multiscale interactions in psychological systems.
ContributorsLikens, Aaron D (Author) / Amazeen, Polemnia G (Thesis advisor) / Amazeen, Eric L (Committee member) / Cooke, Nancy L (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur M. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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
Maintaining upright balance and postural control is a task that most individuals perform everyday with ease and without much thought. Although it may be a relatively easy task to perform, research has shown that changes in cognitive (or “attentional”) processes are reflected in the movements of sway. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the relationship between attention and posture when attention is directly or indirectly shifted away from posture. Using a dual-task paradigm, attention was shifted directly by instructing participants to prioritize the balance task (minimize sway in a unipedal stance) or prioritize the cognitive task (minimize errors in an auditory n-back task) and indirectly by changing the difficulty level of the cognitive task (0-back vs. 2-back task). Postural sway was assessed using sample entropy (SampEn), standard deviation, (SD) and sway path (SP) of trunk movements to measure the regularity, variability, and overall distance of sway travelled, respectively. Dual-task behavior was examined when participants were in a controlled (i.e., non-fatigued) state (Experiment 1), in a state of physical fatigue (Experiment 2), and in a state of mental fatigue (Experiment 3). Across all three experiments, indirectly shifting attention away from posture in the more difficult 2-back task induced less regularity (higher SampEn) and variability (smaller SD) in postural sway. Directly shifting attention away from posture, by prioritizing the cognitive task, induced less regularity (higher SampEn) and a longer path length (higher SP) in Experiment 1, however this effect was not significant for the fatigued participants in Experiments 2 and 3. Neither physical fatigue (Experiment 2) or mental fatigue (Experiment 3) negatively affected postural sway or cognitive performance. Overall, the findings from this dissertation contribute to the relationship between movement regularity and attention in posture, and that the postural behavior that emerges is sensitive to methods in which attention is manipulated (direct, indirect) and fatigue (physical, mental).
ContributorsGibbons, Cameron Todd (Author) / Amazeen, Polemnia G (Thesis advisor) / Amazeen, Eric L (Committee member) / Gray, Rob (Committee member) / Brewer, Gene A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
In order to perceive the heaviness of an object, one must wield it. This requires muscle activity and its resulting movements. Research has shown that muscle activity and movement combine for this perception in a manner inspired by Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion. Research in this area has relied on specific movement and muscle activity measures that often capture one moment of a lift. The current set of experiments set out to determine which measures best capture the underlying phenomena that lead to heaviness perception during a lift. In the first experiment, participants lifted stimuli with an elbow flexion lift while their muscle activity and movement were recorded. Participants reported their perceived heaviness of the stimuli as soon as they reached it, which resulted in an average decision angle of around 30-degrees. In the second and third experiments, participants the same stimuli with the same elbow flexion lift in four perturbation conditions – they experienced perturbations at 15-degrees of the lift, 30-degrees, 45-degrees, and with no perturbation. In the second experiment, participants experienced a physical perturbation and a cognitive perturbation in the third experiment. Across Experiments 2 and 3, the pattern of results suggested that the more time participants have in a lift, the more proportion correct, muscle activity, and movement measures appears like they do in the no perturbation condition. Additionally, a logistic least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression was used to determine which measures best predicted perception. Results show that the integrated electromyogram of the biceps brachii that occurs after peak acceleration (iEMG BB after pACC) and Average Acceleration, which are both measures that capture more than one point of a lift, predicted heaviness perception. A new model of heaviness perception was then developed, using these new measures. Comparing this New Model to an Original Model from Waddell et al., 2016 resulted in better prediction from the New Model – suggesting that measure that capture more of a lift better predict heaviness perception, meaning that an entire ongoing action event is important for perception.
ContributorsWaddell, Morgan Leigh (Author) / Amazeen, Eric L (Thesis advisor) / Amazeen, Polemnia G (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur M (Committee member) / Gray, Rob (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021