Matching Items (119)
Description
Most people are experts in some area of information; however, they may not be knowledgeable about other closely related areas. How knowledge is generalized to hierarchically related categories was explored. Past work has found little to no generalization to categories closely related to learned categories. These results do not fit well with other work focusing on attention during and after category learning. The current work attempted to merge these two areas of by creating a category structure with the best chance to detect generalization. Participants learned order level bird categories and family level wading bird categories. Then participants completed multiple measures to test generalization to old wading bird categories, new wading bird categories, owl and raptor categories, and lizard categories. As expected, the generalization measures converged on a single overall pattern of generalization. No generalization was found, except for already learned categories. This pattern fits well with past work on generalization within a hierarchy, but do not fit well with theories of dimensional attention. Reasons why these findings do not match are discussed, as well as directions for future research.
ContributorsLancaster, Matthew E (Author) / Homa, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Chi, Michelene (Committee member) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
There are several visual dimensions of food that can affect food intake, example portion size, color, and variety. This dissertation elucidates the effect of number of pieces of food on preference and amount of food consumed in humans and motivation for food in animals. Chapter 2 Experiment 1 showed that rats preferred and also ran faster for multiple pieces (30, 10 mg pellets) than an equicaloric, single piece of food (300 mg) showing that multiple pieces of food are more rewarding than a single piece. Chapter 2 Experiment 2 showed that rats preferred a 30-pellet food portion clustered together rather than scattered. Preference and motivation for clustered food pieces may be interpreted based on the optimal foraging theory that animals prefer foods that can maximize energy gain and minimize the risk of predation. Chapter 3 Experiment 1 showed that college students preferred and ate less of a multiple-piece than a single-piece portion and also ate less in a test meal following the multiple-piece than single-piece portion. Chapter 3 Experiment 2 replicated the results in Experiment 1 and used a bagel instead of chicken. Chapter 4 showed that college students given a five-piece chicken portion scattered on a plate ate less in a meal and in a subsequent test meal than those given the same portion clustered together. This is consistent with the hypothesis that multiple pieces of food may appear like more food because they take up a larger surface area than a single-piece portion. All together, these studies show that number and surface area occupied by food pieces are important visual cues determining food choice in animals and both food choice and intake in humans.
ContributorsBajaj, Devina (Author) / Phillips, Elizabeth D. (Thesis advisor) / Cohen, Adam (Committee member) / Johnston, Carol (Committee member) / Bimonte-Nelson, Heather A. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
ABSTRACT This thesis proposes that a focus on the bodily level of analysis can unify explanation of behavior in cognitive, social, and cultural psychology. To examine this unifying proposal, a sensorimotor mechanism with reliable explanatory power in cognitive and social psychology was used to predict a novel pattern of behavior in cultural context, and these predictions were examined in three experiments. Specifically, the finding that people judge objects that require more motor effort to interact with as farther in visual space was adapted to predict that people with interdependent self-construal(SC) , relative to those with independent SC, would visually perceive their cultural outgroups as farther relative to their cultural in-groups. Justifying this cultural extension of what is primarily a cognitive mechanism is the assumption that, unlike independents, Interdependents interact almost exclusively with in-group members, and hence there sensorimotor system is less tuned to cross-cultural interactions. Thus, interdependents, more so than independents, expect looming cross-cultural interactions to be effortful, which may inflate their judgment of distance to the out-groups. Two experiments confirmed these predictions: a) interdependent Americans, compared to independent Americans, perceived American confederates (in-group) as visually closer; b) interdependent Arabs, compared to independent Arabs, perceived Arab confederates (in-group) as closer; and c) interdependent Americans, relative to independent Americans, perceived Arab confederates (out-group) as farther. A third study directly established the proposed relation between motor effort and distance to human targets: American men perceived other American men as closer after an easy interaction than after a more difficult interaction. Together, these results demonstrate that one and the same sensorimotor mechanism can explain/predict homologous behavioral patterns across the subdisciplines of psychology.
ContributorsSoliman, Tamer (Author) / Glenberg, Arthur M. (Committee member) / Kwan, Sau (Committee member) / Cohen, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Conversion to Judaism has a long history, and changes in Jewish law for converts over the centuries have reflected changes in the relationship between the Jewish community and the larger societies within which Jews have lived. As American Jews now live in the most open society they have encountered, a split is developing between Orthodox and liberal Jewish rabbinic authorities in how they deal with potential converts. This split is evident in books written to advice potential converts and in conversion narratives by people who have converted to Judaism. For this project over 30 people who were in the process of converting to Judaism were interviewed. Their stories reflect the ways in which liberal Judaism has been affected by American ideals and values, including feminism and an emphasis on spiritual individuality.
ContributorsCohen, Mariam (Author) / Gereboff, Joel (Thesis advisor) / Woodward, Mark (Committee member) / Cohen, Adam (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Recognition memory was investigated for naturalistic dynamic scenes. Although visual recognition for static objects and scenes has been investigated previously and found to be extremely robust in terms of fidelity and retention, visual recognition for dynamic scenes has received much less attention. In four experiments, participants view a number of clips from novel films and are then tasked to complete a recognition test containing frames from the previously viewed films and difficult foil frames. Recognition performance is good when foils are taken from other parts of the same film (Experiment 1), but degrades greatly when foils are taken from unseen gaps from within the viewed footage (Experiments 3 and 4). Removing all non-target frames had a serious effect on recognition performance (Experiment 2). Across all experiments, presenting the films as a random series of clips seemed to have no effect on recognition performance. Patterns of accuracy and response latency in Experiments 3 and 4 appear to be a result of a serial-search process. It is concluded that visual representations of dynamic scenes may be stored as units of events, and participant's old
ew judgments of individual frames were better characterized by a cued-recall paradigm than traditional recognition judgments.
ew judgments of individual frames were better characterized by a cued-recall paradigm than traditional recognition judgments.
ContributorsFerguson, Ryan (Author) / Homa, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Categories are often defined by rules regarding their features. These rules may be intensely complex yet, despite the complexity of these rules, we are often able to learn them with sufficient practice. A possible explanation for how we arrive at consistent category judgments despite these difficulties would be that we may define these complex categories such as chairs, tables, or stairs by understanding the simpler rules defined by potential interactions with these objects. This concept, called grounding, allows for the learning and transfer of complex categorization rules if said rules are capable of being expressed in a more simple fashion by virtue of meaningful physical interactions. The present experiment tested this hypothesis by having participants engage in either a Rule Based (RB) or Information Integration (II) categorization task with instructions to engage with the stimuli in either a non-interactive or interactive fashion. If participants were capable of grounding the categories, which were defined in the II task with a complex visual rule, to a simpler interactive rule, then participants with interactive instructions should outperform participants with non-interactive instructions. Results indicated that physical interaction with stimuli had a marginally beneficial effect on category learning, but this effect seemed most prevalent in participants were engaged in an II task.
ContributorsCrawford, Thomas (Author) / Homa, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / McBeath, Michael (Committee member) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
The unpleasant bitter taste found in many nutritious vegetables may deter their consumption. While bitterness suppression by prototypical tastants is well-studied in the chemical and pharmacological fields, mechanisms to reduce the bitterness of foods such as vegetables remain to be elucidated. Here tastants representing the taste primaries of salty and sweet were investigated as potential bitterness suppressors of three types of Brassicaceae vegetables. The secondary aim of these studies was to determine whether the bitter masking agents were differentially effective for bitter-sensitive and bitter-insensitive individuals. In all experiments, participants rated vegetables plain and with the addition of tastants. In Experiments 1-3, sucrose and NNS suppressed the bitterness of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower, whereas NaCl did not. Varying concentrations of NaCl and sucrose were introduced in Experiment 4 to assess the dose-dependency of the effects. While sucrose was a robust bitterness suppressor, NaCl suppressed bitterness only for participants who perceived the plain Brussels sprouts as highly bitter. Experiment 5, through the implementation of a rigorous control condition, determined that some but not all of this effect can be accounted for by regression to the mean. Individual variability in taste perception as determined by sampling of aqueous bitter, salty, and sweet solutions did not influence the degree of suppression by NaCl or sucrose. Consumption of vegetables is deterred by their bitter taste. Utilizing tastants to mask bitterness, a technique that preserves endogenous nutrients, can circumvent this issue. Sucrose is a robust bitter suppressor whereas the efficacy of NaCl is dependent upon bitterness perception of the plain vegetables.
ContributorsWilkie, Lynn Melissa (Author) / Capaldi Phillips, Elizabeth D (Thesis advisor) / Cohen, Adam (Committee member) / Johnston, Carol (Committee member) / Sanabria, Federico (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
For this master's thesis, a unique set of cognitive prompts, designed to be delivered through a teachable robotic agent, were developed for students using Tangible Activities for Geometry (TAG), a tangible learning environment developed at Arizona State University. The purpose of these prompts is to enhance the affordances of the tangible learning environment and help researchers to better understand how we can design tangible learning environments to best support student learning. Specifically, the prompts explicitly encourage users to make use of their physical environment by asking students to perform a number of gestures and behaviors while prompting students about domain-specific knowledge. To test the effectiveness of these prompts that combine elements of cognition and physical movements, the performance and behavior of students who encounter these prompts while using TAG will be compared against the performance and behavior of students who encounter a more traditional set of cognitive prompts that would typically be used within a virtual learning environment. Following this study, data was analyzed using a novel modeling and analysis tool that combines enhanced log annotation using video and user model generation functionalities to highlight trends amongst students.
ContributorsThomas, Elissa (Author) / Burleson, Winslow (Thesis advisor) / Muldner, Katarzyna (Committee member) / Walker, Erin (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
A converging operations approach using response time distribution modeling was adopted to better characterize the cognitive control dynamics underlying ongoing task cost and cue detection in event based prospective memory (PM). In Experiment 1, individual differences analyses revealed that working memory capacity uniquely predicted nonfocal cue detection, while proactive control and inhibition predicted variation in ongoing task cost of the ex-Gaussian parameter associated with continuous monitoring strategies (mu). In Experiments 2A and 2B, quasi-experimental techniques aimed at identifying the role of proactive control abilities in PM monitoring and cue detection suggested that low ability participants may have PM deficits during demanding tasks due to inefficient monitoring strategies, but that emphasizing importance of the intention can increase reliance on more efficacious monitoring strategies that boosts performance (Experiment 2A). Furthermore, high proactive control ability participants are able to efficiently regulate their monitoring strategies under scenarios that do not require costly monitoring for successful cue detection (Experiment 2B). In Experiments 3A and 3B, it was found that proactive control benefited cue detection in interference-rich environments, but the neural correlates of cue detection or intention execution did not differ when engaged in proactive versus reactive control. The results from the current set of studies highlight the importance of response time distribution modeling in understanding PM cost. Additionally, these results have important implications for extant theories of PM and have considerable applied ramifications concerning the cognitive control processes that should be targeted to improve PM abilities.
ContributorsBall, Brett Hunter (Author) / Brewer, Gene A. (Thesis advisor) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Amazeen, Eric (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Attachment relationships serve a variety of important functions for infants and adults. Despite the importance of attachment relationships in adults, the mechanisms that underlie the formation or maintenance of these kinds of relationships outside of romantic relationships remains chronically understudied. The current research investigated whether the mechanism of synchrony, which is associated with attachment formation in the parent-infant literature, may still be tied to attachment in adults. To measure this association, these studies showed participants videos to prime synchrony, and then measured activation of attachment concepts in a word completion task. The results of Experiment 1 showed that attachment style moderated the effects of the video prime such that those who were securely attached showed activation of attachment concepts while watching the Synchrony video. Those with a preoccupied attachment style showed activation of attachment concepts when they viewed the Asynchrony video. Those with a dismissive attachment style showed an unhypothesized activation of social distance concepts when viewing the Synchrony video. Experiment 2 suggested an overall effect of the Synchrony video on activation of attachment concepts. However, there was no effect of attachment style on these results. Limits of these studies and future directions are discussed.
ContributorsYee, Claire Ida (Author) / Shiota, Michelle L (Thesis advisor) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Committee member) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015