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- Creators: Arizona State University
- Creators: Amazeen, Eric
- Creators: Corbin, William
- Resource Type: Text
Description
Although there are many forms of organization on the Web, one of the most prominent ways to organize web content and websites are tags. Tags are keywords or terms that are assigned to a specific piece of content in order to help users understand the common relationships between pieces of content. Tags can either be assigned by an algorithm, the author, or the community. These tags can also be organized into tag clouds, which are visual representations of the structure and organization contained implicitly within these tags. Importantly, little is known on how we use these different tagging structures to understand the content and structure of a given site. This project examines 2 different characteristics of tagging structures: font size and spatial orientation. In order to examine how these different characteristics might interact with individual differences in attentional control, a measure of working memory capacity (WMC) was included. The results showed that spatial relationships affect how well users understand the structure of a website. WMC was not shown to have any significant effect; neither was varying the font size. These results should better inform how tags and tag clouds are used on the Web, and also provide an estimation of what properties to include when designing and implementing a tag cloud on a website.
ContributorsBanas, Steven (Author) / Sanchez, Christopher A (Thesis advisor) / Branaghan, Russell (Committee member) / Cooke, Nancy J. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Frequency effects favoring high print-frequency words have been observed in frequency judgment memory tasks. Healthy young adults performed frequency judgment tasks; one group performed a single task while another group did the same task while alternating their attention to a secondary task (mathematical equations). Performance was assessed by correct and error responses, reaction times, and accuracy. Accuracy and reaction times were analyzed in terms of memory load (task condition), number of repetitions, effect of high vs. low print-frequency, and correlations with working memory span. Multinomial tree analyses were also completed to investigate source vs. item memory and revealed a mirror effect in episodic memory experiments (source memory), but a frequency advantage in span tasks (item memory). Interestingly enough, we did not observe an advantage for high working memory span individuals in frequency judgments, even when participants split their attention during the dual task (similar to a complex span task). However, we concluded that both the amount of attentional resources allocated and prior experience with an item affect how it is stored in memory.
ContributorsPeterson, Megan Paige (Author) / Azuma, Tamiko (Thesis advisor) / Gray, Shelley (Committee member) / Liss, Julie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Working memory (WM) and attention deficits have been well documented in individuals with aphasia (IWA) (e.g. Caspari et al., 1998; Erickson et al., 1996; Tseng et al., 1993; Wright et al., 2003). Research into these cognitive domains has spurred a theoretical shift in how aphasia is conceptualized - from a purely linguistic disorder to a cognitive-information processing account. Language deficits experienced by IWA may result from WM impairments or from an inability to allocate cognitive effort to the tasks. However, how language impacts performance on these tasks has not been readily investigated. Further, there is a need for a more direct measure of effort invested to language tasks. Heart rate variability (HRV) is a physiological measure of cognitive workload that has been used to measure effort in neurologically intact participants. Objectives of the study included: (1) determining the feasibility of using HRV as a measure of effort IWA invest into verbal compared with spatial WM tasks, (2) Comparing participants' performance on verbal and spatial WM tasks; and (3) determining the relationship among performance, perceived task difficulty, and HRV across verbal and spatial tasks. Eleven IWA and 21 age- and education-matched controls completed verbal and spatial n-back tasks at three difficulty levels. Difficulty ratings were obtained before and after each task. Results indicated spatial WM was relatively preserved compared with verbal WM for the aphasia group. Additionally, the aphasia group was better at rating task difficulty after completing the tasks than they were at estimating task difficulty prior to completing the tasks. Significant baseline-task differences in HRV were found for both groups. Relationships between HRV and performance, and HRV and task difficulty were non-significant. Results suggest WM performance deficits in aphasia may be primarily driven by their language deficit. Baseline-task differences in HRV indicate effort is being allocated to the tasks. Difficulty ratings indicate IWA may underestimate task demands for both verbal and spatial stimuli. However, the extent to which difficulty ratings reflect effort allocated remains unclear. Additional research is necessary to further quantify the amount of effort IWA allocate to verbal and non-verbal tasks.
ContributorsChristensen, Stephanie Cotton (Author) / Wright, Heather H. (Thesis advisor) / Ross, Katherine B. (Committee member) / Allen, John J. B. (Committee member) / Katz, Richard C. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
There have been conflicting accounts of animation's facilitation in learning from instructional media, being at best no different if not hindering performance. Procedural motor learning represents one of the few the areas in which animations have shown to be facilitative. These studies examine the effects of instructional media (animation vs. static), rotation (facing vs. over the shoulder) and spatial abilities (low vs. high spatial abilities) on two procedural motor tasks, knot tying and endoscope reprocessing. Results indicate that for all conditions observed in which participants engaged in procedural motor learning tasks, performance was significantly improved with animations over static images. Further, performance was greater for rotations of instructional media that did not require participants to perform a mental rotation under some circumstances. Interactions between Media x Rotation suggest that media that was animated and did not require a participant to mentally rotate led to improved performance. Individual spatial abilities were found to influence total steps correct and total number of errors made in the knot tying task, but this was not observed in the endoscope task. These findings have implications for the design of instructional media for procedural motor tasks and provide strong support for the usage of animations in this context.
ContributorsGarland, T. B (Author) / Sanchez, Chris A (Thesis advisor) / Cooke, Nancy J. (Committee member) / Branaghan, Russel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Effects of Assisted Cycle Therapy on Short Term and Working Memory in Adolescents with Down Syndrome
Description
To examine the effect of an 8-week cycling intervention on short term and working memory in adolescents with Down syndrome (DS), participants were divided into Assisted Cycling Therapy (ACT), Voluntary Cycling (VC), or No Cycling (NC) groups. Forward and backward digit span assessments were administered prior to and after the intervention to evaluate short term and working memory respectively. 8 weeks of exercise via ACT showed a trend toward conventional levels of significance in the number of levels completed in the backward direction.
ContributorsSandoval-Menendez, Amber Melanie (Author) / Ringenbach, Shannon (Thesis director) / Amazeen, Eric (Committee member) / Blais, Chris (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The action of running is difficult to measure, but well worth it to receive valuable information about one of our most basic evolutionary functions. In the context of modern day, recreational runners typically listen to music while running, and so the purpose of this experiment is to analyze the influence of music on running from a more dynamical approach. The first experiment was a running task involving running without a metronome and running with one while setting one's own preferred running tempo. The second experiment sought to manipulate the participant's preferred running tempo by having them listen to the metronome set at their preferred tempo, 20% above their preferred tempo, or 20% below. The purpose of this study is to analyze whether or not rhythmic perturbations different to one's preferred running tempo would interfere with one's preferred running tempo and cause a change in the variability of one's running patterns as well as a change in one's running performance along the measures of step rate, stride length, and stride pace. The evidence suggests that participants naturally entrained to the metronome tempo which influenced them to run faster or slower as a function of metronome tempo. However, this change was also accompanied by a shift in the variability of one's step rate and stride length.
ContributorsZavala, Andrew Geovanni (Author) / Amazeen, Eric (Thesis director) / Amazeen, Polemnia (Committee member) / Vedeler, Dankert (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / W. P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Statistical word learning (SWL) has been proposed and tested as a powerful mechanism for word learning under referential ambiguity. Learners are adept at resolving word-referent ambiguity by calculating the co-occurrences between words and referents across ambiguous scenes. Despite the generalizability of such capacity, it is less clear which underlying factors may play a role in SWL, such as learners’ language experience and individual differences of working memory. The current study therefore asked two questions: 1) How do learners of different language experience (monolinguals and bilinguals) approach SWL of different mapping types–when each referent has one name (1:1 mapping) or two names (2:1 mapping)? and 2) How do working memory capacities (spatial and phonological) play a role in SWL by mapping type? In this pre-registered study (OSF: https://osf.io/mte8s/), 69 English monolinguals and 88 bilinguals completed two SWL tasks (1:1 and 2:1 mapping), a symmetry span task indexing spatial working memory, and a listening span task indexing phonological working memory. Results showed no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in SWL of both mapping types. However, spatial and phonological working memory positively predicted SWL regardless of language experience, but only in 1:1 mapping. The findings show a dissociation of working memory’s role in SWL of different mapping types. The study proposes a novel insight into a theoretical debate underlying statistical learning mechanisms: learners may adopt more explicit processes (i.e. hypothesis-testing) during 1:1 mapping but implicit processes (i.e. associative learning) during 2:1 mapping. Future studies can locate memory-related brain areas during SWL to test out the proposal.
ContributorsLi, Ye (Author) / Benitez, Viridiana (Thesis advisor) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with a high rate of comorbidity with anxiety disorders (25-34%). Children with ADHD experience serious adverse outcomes secondary to impairment in executive function, particularly within the domain of working memory (WM), behavioral inhibition (BI), and sustained attention (SA). While executive function deficits in ADHD are well documented, whether and how comorbid anxiety affects cognitive performance are equivocal. One potential explanation is that most studies examine linear relations, yet evidence suggests that anxiety affects performance in a non-linear (quadratic) manner, consistent with the the Yerkes-Dodson Law. The aim of this study was to investigate whether 1) children with ADHD show deficits in WM, BI, and SA relative to typically developing children, 2) comorbid anxiety displays a linear or nonlinear relationship with WM, BI, and SA performance among children with ADHD and 3) between group differences in cognitive performance vary based on levels of anxiety. Linear and non-linear relations between anxiety and cognitive performance were assessed in a sample of 54 boys diagnosed with ADHD and 50 typically developing boys. Anxiety was assessed across dimensions and raters. Results indicate rater and domain-specific effects of comorbid anxiety on cognitive performance. Non-linear relations between children’s self-rated physiological anxiety and Phonological working memory (PHWM), Visuospatial working memory (VSWM), and the Central Executive (CE) were found. Non-linear relations between parent-rated anxiety and PHWM and the CE were also found. However, no significant linear or non-linear effects of anxiety on BI and SA were found. The results indicate that children with moderate self-rated and parent-rated anxiety performed better on WM measures relative to those with low and high levels of self-rated and parent-rated anxiety. The present study was the first to examine and document non-linear effects of anxiety on cognitive performance among children diagnosed with ADHD. Given the results, clinicians should continue to assess anxiety during diagnostic screening in ADHD samples. Treatments should focus on compensating for CE abilities and mitigating high levels of anxiety as it may further impair WM.
ContributorsRivard, Ashley (Author) / Friedman, Lauren (Thesis director) / Corbin, William (Committee member) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
Memory as whole is impacted by changes associated with aging and menopause. Different memory types are often tested preclinically utilizing rats in different task paradigms. Most studies have focused on understanding social recognition or working memory, however these memory types have yet to be studied together. This thesis focuses on the process of creating and testing a new social recognition task that incorporates a working memory load. We tested different types of previously used social recognition paradigms with an increasing load and through qualitative and quantitative observations the task was modified until a final task was developed for a social working memory study. Young female rats were tested in this task in progressive, meaning a chronologically increasing load and nonprogressive, meaning non-chronological increase in load cognitions. It was found that young female rats had the ability to distinguish between the familiar and novel conspecifics before memory load exceeded four familiar and one novel conspecifics. Once validated through future studies, this task may be utilized to understand the impact of different types of menopause on social working memory.
ContributorsAsadifar, Sadaf (Author) / Bimonte-Nelson, Heather (Thesis director) / Corbin, William (Committee member) / Verpeut, Jessica (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
Behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging evidence has demonstrated that multiple object tracking (MOT) tasks draw upon visual perception, attention, and working memory cognitive processes. Functional neuroimaging studies identified the middle temporal visual area (MT+/V5) as one of several brain regions associated with MOT in humans. MT+/V5 is thought to be responsible for processing motion from visual information, regulating smooth pursuit eye movements, and encoding memory for motion. However, it is unclear how MT+/V5 interacts with attention and working memory performance processes during MOT. To investigate this question, the right MT+/V5 region was identified in 14 neurotypical subjects using structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI). The right MT+/V5 was stimulated using intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS), continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS), and sham transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) using a within-subjects design. Average MOT performance was measured before and 5-min, 30-min, and 60-min after each stimulation protocol. There was no significant difference in average MOT performance across time, regardless of the stimulation condition.
ContributorsAlucard, Myles (Author) / Duran, Nicholas (Thesis advisor, Committee member) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis advisor, Committee member) / Burleson, Mary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023