Matching Items (201)
Description
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of partial exemplar experience on category formation and use. Participants had either complete or limited access to the three dimensions that defined categories by dimensions within different modalities. The concept of "crucial dimension" was introduced and the role it plays in category definition was explained. It was hypothesized that the effects of partial experience are not explained by a shifting of attention between dimensions (Taylor & Ross, 2009) but rather by an increased reliance on prototypical values used to fill in missing information during incomplete experiences. Results indicated that participants (1) do not fill in missing information with prototypical values, (2) integrate information less efficiently between different modalities than within a single modality, and (3) have difficulty learning only when partial experience prevents access to diagnostic information.
ContributorsCrawford, Thomas (Author) / Homa, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Mcbeath, Micheal (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Intuitive decision making refers to decision making based on situational pattern recognition, which happens without deliberation. It is a fast and effortless process that occurs without complete awareness. Moreover, it is believed that implicit learning is one means by which a foundation for intuitive decision making is developed. Accordingly, the present study investigated several factors that affect implicit learning and the development of intuitive decision making in a simulated real-world environment: (1) simple versus complex situational patterns; (2) the diversity of the patterns to which an individual is exposed; (3) the underlying mechanisms. The results showed that simple patterns led to higher levels of implicit learning and intuitive decision-making accuracy than complex patterns; increased diversity enhanced implicit learning and intuitive decision-making accuracy; and an embodied mechanism, labeling, contributes to the development of intuitive decision making in a simulated real-world environment. The results suggest that simulated real-world environments can provide the basis for training intuitive decision making, that diversity is influential in the process of training intuitive decision making, and that labeling contributes to the development of intuitive decision making. These results are interpreted in the context of applied situations such as military applications involving remotely piloted aircraft.
ContributorsCovas-Smith, Christine Marie (Author) / Cooke, Nancy J. (Thesis advisor) / Patterson, Robert (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Homa, Donald (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Oscillatory perturbations with varying amplitudes and frequencies have been found to significantly affect human standing balance. However, previous studies have only applied perturbation in either the anterior-posterior (AP) or the medio-lateral (ML) directions. Little is currently known about the impacts of 2D oscillatory perturbations on postural stability, which are more commonly seen in daily life (i.e., while traveling on trains, ships, etc.). This study investigated the effects of applying 2D perturbations vs 1D perturbations on standing stability, and how increasing the frequency and amplitude of perturbation impacts postural stability. A dual-axis robotic platform was utilized to simulate various oscillatory perturbations and evaluate standing postural stability. Fifteen young healthy subjects were recruited to perform quiet stance on the platform. Impacts of perturbation direction (i.e., 1D versus 2D), amplitude, and frequency on postural stability were investigated by analyzing different stability measures, specifically AP/ML/2D Center-of-Pressure (COP) path length, AP/ML/2D Time-to-Boundary (TtB), and sway area. Standing postural stability was compromised more by 2D perturbations than 1D perturbations, evidenced by a significant increase in COP path length and sway area and decrease in TtB. Further, the stability decreased as 2D perturbation amplitude and frequency increased. A significant increase in COP path length and decrease in TtB were consistently observed as the 2D perturbation amplitude and frequency increased. However, sway area showed a considerable increase only with increasing perturbation amplitude but not with increasing frequency.
ContributorsBerrett, Lauren Ann (Author) / Lee, Hyunglae (Thesis director) / Peterson, Daniel (Committee member) / Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Learning and transfer were investigated for a categorical structure in which relevant stimulus information could be mapped without loss from one modality to another. The category space was composed of three non-overlapping, linearly-separable categories. Each stimulus was composed of a sequence of on-off events that varied in duration and number of sub-events (complexity). Categories were learned visually, haptically, or auditorily, and transferred to the same or an alternate modality. The transfer set contained old, new, and prototype stimuli, and subjects made both classification and recognition judgments. The results showed an early learning advantage in the visual modality, with transfer performance varying among the conditions in both classification and recognition. In general, classification accuracy was highest for the category prototype, with false recognition of the category prototype higher in the cross-modality conditions. The results are discussed in terms of current theories in modality transfer, and shed preliminary light on categorical transfer of temporal stimuli.
ContributorsFerguson, Ryan (Author) / Homa, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
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
Infectious diseases have been a major threat to survival throughout human history. Humans have developed a behavioral immune system to prevent infection by causing individuals to avoid people, food, and objects that could be contaminated. This current project investigates how ambient temperature affects the activation of this system. Because temperature is positively correlated with the prevalence of many deadly diseases, I predict that temperature moderates the behavioral immune system, such that a disease prime will have a stronger effect in a hot environment compared to a neutral environment and one's avoidant behaviors will be more extreme. Participants were placed in a hot room (M = 85F) or a neutral room (M = 77F) and shown a disease prime slide show or a neutral slide show. Disgust sensitivity and perceived vulnerability surveys were used to measure an increased perceived risk to disease. A taste test between a disgusting food item (gummy bugs) and a neutral food item (gummy animals) measured food avoidance. There was no significant avoidance of the gummy and no significant difference in ratings of disgust sensitivity or perceived vulnerability as a function of temperature conditions. There were no significant interactions between temperature and disease. The conclusion is that this study did not provide evidence that temperature moderates the effect of disease cues on behavior.
ContributorsOsborne, Elizabeth (Author) / Cohen, Adam B. (Thesis advisor) / Kwan, Sau (Committee member) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The present study explored the relationship between desired purchasing behavior and individual differences using two nationally-representative, longitudinal samples of the U.S. population early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Past research has shown that individual differences provide information about how one might respond to threat. Therefore, we predicted changes in desired purchasing behavior across different sociodemographic variables that might reflect those differences. Specifically, we investigated hypotheses related to political orientation, age, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and whether or not the participant had children. We measured participants’ reported desired purchasing behavior across eleven categories of goods and investigated the connection between specific demographic variables and desired purchasing behavior. We found that conservatives desired to purchase more basic protection goods (guns/ammunition, cash, gas) and that older people desired to purchase more cleaning supplies and toiletries. These findings illustrate possible explanations for purchasing behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic and reveal directions for marketing designed to influence purchasing behavior.
ContributorsZeider, Justyn (Author) / Varnum, Michael (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Regular instances of employee and petty theft seem to suggest that stealing is common. Certain situations make stealing an advantageous opportunity, and studies show that most people will steal under the right conditions. However, these "right conditions" vary widely among individuals and are a combination of biological, social, psychological, and situational factors. In an attempt to better understand the rationality of stealing, our research team applied evolutionary psychology principles to a social experiment involving gift card theft. To find trends in how people will steal when given the opportunity, we attempted to create these "right conditions" (which we believed would encourage theft by minimizing cost) so that we could measure how a random sample of subjects (male students on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University) responded to variation in benefit. We predicted that if the cost was kept low, and if some gift cards conferred greater advantages than others (by possession greater value or utility), then the more advantageous gift cards would be stolen at a higher frequency from the sample pool than less advantageous ones. The results show that our assumptions were wrong. Theft almost never occurred and the few cards that were stolen were not the more "rational" choices as predicted. The experimental design indicates a flawed understanding of how the subjects weighed the benefits and costs of stealing gift cards. One major issue is that we failed to consider pro-social behavior as the norm. We also neglected the evolutionary benefits of cooperative behavior while overemphasizing the evolutionary benefits of theft. A more thorough and nuanced examination of the literature must be performed to avoid these fundamental flaws in the experiment in the future. The experiment also suffered from issues which might have inadvertently discouraged theft including the location, population, presence of other students, and time given to contemplate theft. If we wish to truly examine trends in theft to see if there is a trend towards the rational theft model we proposed, we must work with a population in which individuals already have a propensity to steal, the benefit is sufficiently high, and social pressures to be cooperative are low.
ContributorsKumar, Davina Sangitha (Author) / Angilletta, Michael (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The Latino population is the fastest growing minority group in the United States (U.S Census Bureau, 2003). Such a rapidly changing demographic stresses the importance of implementing strategies into the community social framework to accommodate for cultural and language differences. This research paper seeks to answer: what factors influence the sense of community among Latino families in Phoenix? The following questions will help to assess the dynamic relationship between sense of community and literacy 1) what is the perceived importance of literacy among Latino families living in Phoenix? 2) How is language development reflected among the family dynamics within a predominantly collectivist culture? It is hypothesized that both collectivism and literacy are the main influences on sense of community among this population.
ContributorsBennett, Julie (Author) / Glenberg, Arthur (Thesis director) / Restrepo, Laida (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
Contextual cues can impact how statements are perceived. Specifically, they may be perceived as more aggressive than they otherwise would be. For the study, both medium of communication (in-person versus online) as well as how competitive the context was (non-competitive or competitive) were examined, with a bit of focus on gender. 130 Arizona State University students enrolled in Psychology 101 were surveyed; the mean age was 19.32 (SD = 1.43). A 2x2 factorial design was used, consisting of four possible conditions: In-person/Competitive, Online/Competitive, In-person/Non-Competitive, and Online/Non-Competitive. Participants read two scenarios, each featuring a target character who says an ambiguous statement, and each scenario with one of the four conditions at random. One scenario involved earning a promotion, and the other involved trying to win a voucher via mini-golf. After, participants answered questions regarding how they felt about the intent of the ambiguous statement, how the participant would feel in the scenario, and what kind of person the participant felt the target character was. Exploratory Factor Analysis with Principal Axis Factoring and Direct Oblimin Rotation was used to find outcome variables. We hypothesized that Perceived Aggression and Participant Negative Emotion would be higher in both the competitive condition as well as the online condition, and that Perceived Agreeableness would be higher in both the non-competitive condition as well as the in-person condition; this applied for both scenarios. The results were mostly not statistically significant, and contrary to the hypotheses, Perceived Aggression and Participant Negative Emotion were higher in the in-person condition than the online condition. However, as predicted, Perceived Agreeableness was higher for the in-person condition, and the competitive led to higher levels of Perceived Aggression and Participant Negative Emotion, along with lower levels of Perceived Agreeableness, as opposed to the non-competitive condition. Limitations included a small age range and only one type of online communication (instant messaging), along with the fact that the study was a survey. Future studies are needed to examine what factors affect perception of aggression, as very few have been conducted.
ContributorsRobins, Alexander Eric (Author) / Shiota, Michelle (Lani) (Thesis director) / Neuberg, Steven (Committee member) / Danvers, Alexander (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05