Search results

Title: The structure of attentional biases in anxiety : a latent variable analysis of anxiety-related modulations of attentional control
Creator: Moran, Timothy Patrick
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "[Examines] the interrelationships between anxiety, distraction by threat, distraction by physical salience and more general cognitive abilities, such as working memory capacity and perceptual/motor speed in 200 undergraduates."--from abstract.

Title: The dimensionality of cognitive structure : a MIRT approach and the use of subscores
Creator: Cheng, Yi-Ling
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The present study explored the dimensionality of cognitive structure from two approaches. The first approach used a famous relation between Visual Spatial Working Memory (VSWM) and calculation to demonstrate the multidimensional item response analyses when true dimensions are unknown. The second approach explored the detectability of dimensions by using person fit indices. Findings from the first study demonstrated that there were shared dimensions between VSWM and calculation. Additionally,...
Show moreThe present study explored the dimensionality of cognitive structure from two approaches. The first approach used a famous relation between Visual Spatial Working Memory (VSWM) and calculation to demonstrate the multidimensional item response analyses when true dimensions are unknown. The second approach explored the detectability of dimensions by using person fit indices. Findings from the first study demonstrated that there were shared dimensions between VSWM and calculation. Additionally, error analysis with the MIRT approach revealed only one dimension, the Number dimension, of VSWM is related to subtraction and division. These results showed the usefulness of the MIRT analysis in analyzing cognitive structure. The result of the second study revealed that person fit indices, however, were insensitive to the simulated dimensions when estimated ability parameters were used. More sensitive detection indices need to be developed. The present study combines several dimensionality analyses with perspectives from diverse areas in the hope of providing insights into the dimensionality of cognitive structures.
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Title: Understanding health care disparities among families of children with ASD : the role of advocacy, empowerment, and parent-professional partnerships
Creator: Casagrande, Karis
Date: 2016
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) utilize a greater number of health care services compared to children with other developmental disabilities. Despite this, children with ASD remain at high risk for unmet service needs, which are compounded by differences in SES. Additionally, these families experience low levels of service satisfaction and poor relationships with their service providers, prompting them to engage in advocacy on behalf of their child. This study aimed to understand...
Show moreChildren with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) utilize a greater number of health care services compared to children with other developmental disabilities. Despite this, children with ASD remain at high risk for unmet service needs, which are compounded by differences in SES. Additionally, these families experience low levels of service satisfaction and poor relationships with their service providers, prompting them to engage in advocacy on behalf of their child. This study aimed to understand the contributions of advocacy, empowerment, and parent-professional partnerships to service disparities in families of children with ASD using parental education as a proxy for SES. First, a quantitative measure of advocacy specific to this population was validated. Second, the relationship between education and service outcomes in families and children with ASD was confirmed. Third, possible mediators of service disparities were examined. Finally, predictors of parent advocacy were explored. The results of the current study strengthen claims in the literature that families of children with ASD experience high levels of unmet needs which are exacerbated by low levels of education, and that parent-professional partnership plays a role in explaining these service disparities. As such, increasing parent-professional partnerships through family-centered care and professional training may help to reduce service disparities and improve satisfaction with care for families and children with ASD. Additionally, advocacy and empowerment should be researched further, as they appear to have important roles in helping families of children with ASD access services.
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Title: Intraspecific variation in behavioral flexibility in spotted hyenas
Creator: Johnson-Ulrich, Lily
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The question of how intelligence evolves across the animal kingdom remains unresolved despite more than a century of intensive research. The Social Intelligence Hypothesis (SIH) predicts a primarily social function of intellect whereas the Cognitive Buffer Hypothesis (CBH) suggests that intelligence is most adaptive for dealing with environmental novelty and change. Recently, there has been growing recognition of the value of intraspecific studies of wild, free-ranging populations because...
Show moreThe question of how intelligence evolves across the animal kingdom remains unresolved despite more than a century of intensive research. The Social Intelligence Hypothesis (SIH) predicts a primarily social function of intellect whereas the Cognitive Buffer Hypothesis (CBH) suggests that intelligence is most adaptive for dealing with environmental novelty and change. Recently, there has been growing recognition of the value of intraspecific studies of wild, free-ranging populations because they allow researchers to examine the correlates of cognitive variation in an ecologically valid context, and also to examine the fitness consequences of this variation. In my dissertation, I examine the causes and consequences of intraspecific variation in behavioral flexibility in wild, free-ranging spotted hyena (Crocuta crocuta) populations. Behavioral flexibility is the ability to adaptively modify a behavior as current circumstances demand and, akin to fluid intelligence in humans, behavioral flexibility is thought to be an important aspect of intelligence across non-human animals. Spotted hyenas show a great deal of intraspecific variation in behavioral flexibility and persist under a diversity of socio-ecological conditions, making them an ideal model organism for testing hypotheses about the evolution of intelligence with the intraspecific approach. In Chapter One, I review hypotheses for the evolution of intelligence and the methods used to measure intelligence across animal taxa. Next, in Chapters Two and Three, I present evidence for the validity and reliability of apparatus used to measure behavioral flexibility by examining the individual traits that predict high behavioral flexibility and individual consistency in performance. Next, in Chapter Four, I examine the social correlates of behavioral flexibility. My results reveal that socially low-ranking hyenas that live in larger groups have greater behavioral flexibility and that hyenas of any rank that grow up in larger cohorts have greater behavioral flexibility, a result that supports predictions of the SIH. In Chapter Five, I examine the ecological correlates of behavioral flexibility by comparing behavioral flexibility across populations of hyenas experiencing varying degrees of urbanization. Urbanization causes widespread environmental change and introduces a high degree of novelty into habitats; however, my results reveal that the degree of urbanization is negatively correlated with behavioral flexibility, which challenges the CBH. Finally, I examine the fitness consequences of behavioral flexibility in Chapter Six. My results reveal that behaviorally flexible females have lower offspring survivorship but produce significantly more cubs annually than behaviorally inflexible females, which suggests there may be important trade-offs with regards to behavioral flexibility. In sum, my research demonstrates that the intraspecific approach is a powerful tool for understanding how and why behavioral flexibility evolves. My results generally support the SIH and suggest that social living is a key correlate of behavioral flexibility in spotted hyenas. However, it appears that high behavioral flexibility in spotted hyenas may have also been an important factor in facilitating their adaptation to urban environments. Urbanization is putting an increasing number of species at risk globally, and understanding how or why some animals adapt, while others go extinct, is crucial for wildlife conservation.
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Title: Modeling decisions among many alternatives
Creator: Kvam, Peter
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Many of the actions we take depend on being able to make selections among many alternatives or even along a continuum. However, our understanding of the decision processes underlying these selections is sparse, largely due to a traditional focus on developing models of binary decisions. Recent forays into modeling multi-alternative decisions have been forced to build in relations between representations of available alternatives. In this paper, I propose and test a general framework for...
Show more"Many of the actions we take depend on being able to make selections among many alternatives or even along a continuum. However, our understanding of the decision processes underlying these selections is sparse, largely due to a traditional focus on developing models of binary decisions. Recent forays into modeling multi-alternative decisions have been forced to build in relations between representations of available alternatives. In this paper, I propose and test a general framework for modeling decisions between arbitrarily large numbers of alternatives that naturally incorporates psychological relationships between the representations of available alternatives. In the first study, I construct and evaluate the basic components of a model of this process by establishing benchmark empirical phenomena for decisions on a continuum. In the second study, I examine how the number of alternatives and the relations between them affect representations and the components of the decision process. Taken together, this paper establishes benchmark empirical results in a new choice domain (continuous selection), proposes and tests a new modeling framework that accounts for these phenomena, and brings together decision and representation models in order to develop an over-arching theory of how people make decisions among many alternatives."--Page ii.
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Title: The Timing of Misinformation Matters : Sleep both increases memory distortion and protects against it
Creator: Day, Alison J.
Date: 2020
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Prior work investigating the effect of sleep on false memory using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm has yielded equivocal results. Here, we sought to clarify the effect of sleep on false memory using the misinformation paradigm. Participants watched a film of a mock robbery, were given post-event misinformation about the film, and completed a recognition test after a 12-hour retention interval that consisted of waking activity or sleep. We manipulated when participants received...
Show morePrior work investigating the effect of sleep on false memory using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm has yielded equivocal results. Here, we sought to clarify the effect of sleep on false memory using the misinformation paradigm. Participants watched a film of a mock robbery, were given post-event misinformation about the film, and completed a recognition test after a 12-hour retention interval that consisted of waking activity or sleep. We manipulated when participants received misinformation; half received misinformation after watching the film and before the retention interval and half received misinformation after the retention interval, before the test. Thus, for participants who slept, half received misinformation prior to sleep and half received it after a sleep period. Most interesting, we found an interaction between sleep condition and timing of misinformation. In the sleep group, participants who received misinformation before the retention interval showed higher false memory than those who received misinformation after the retention interval. Timing of misinformation did not affect false memory in the wake condition. These results suggest that consolidation processes can have opposite effects on false memory. If conflicting information is presented after sleep, consolidation protects memory from distortion possibly by mitigating interference effects. However, the same consolidation processes may increase distortion if conflicting information is presented prior to sleep possibly by integrating related memories that are available at the time of sleep (i.e. the true event and the conflicting information). This work has implications for theories of memory and applied implications for the criminal justice system.
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Title: Testing the role of vigilant attention as a mediating process for cognitive deficits due to sleep deprivation
Creator: Stepan, Michelle Elizabeth
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Sleep deprivation impairs lower-level cognition such as vigilant attention. However, the effect of sleep deprivation on higher-order cognition, such as problem solving or working memory, is not well understood. One prominent theory, referred to as the attention-mediated theory, posits that deficits in higher-order cognition can be entirely attributable to deficits in vigilant attention, as attention is a global process required for nearly all cognitive tasks. Across four of the largest sleep...
Show moreSleep deprivation impairs lower-level cognition such as vigilant attention. However, the effect of sleep deprivation on higher-order cognition, such as problem solving or working memory, is not well understood. One prominent theory, referred to as the attention-mediated theory, posits that deficits in higher-order cognition can be entirely attributable to deficits in vigilant attention, as attention is a global process required for nearly all cognitive tasks. Across four of the largest sleep deprivation studies ever conducted, we investigated the effect of sleep deprivation on vigilant attention and a broadly relevant component of higher-order cognition called placekeeping. Placekeeping is important for problem solving and linear thinking, even more so than working memory capacity. In the evening, participants completed UNRAVEL, a measure of placekeeping ability and memory maintenance, and the Psychomotor Vigilance Task (PVT), a standard measure of vigilant attention, as a baseline assessment of performance. Participants were then randomly assigned to sleep at home for the night or to remain awake in the laboratory overnight. In the morning, all participants completed UNRAVEL and PVT again. In Experiment 1, we show that vigilant attention cannot fully account for deficits in placekeeping or memory maintenance after sleep deprivation. In Experiment 2, we show that the ability to manage proactive interference, a potentially important process of memory maintenance, did not show a significant deficit due to sleep deprivation. Experiments 3 and 4 investigate two interventions, caffeine and brief naps, and the extent to which they mitigate cognitive deficits due to sleep deprivation. Caffeine selectively benefitted vigilant attention but had no effect on placekeeping for the majority of participants. A brief nap during a period of sleep deprivation did not enhance vigilant attention or placekeeping performance; however, different aspects of sleep architecture during the naps were related to performance on the two tasks. Collectively, findings across the four studies do not support the attention-mediated theory; vigilant attention does not completely underlie deficits in placekeeping or memory maintenance after sleep deprivation. Instead, sleep deprivation appears to directly impair placekeeping and memory maintenance and may cause domain-specific deficits to cognition.
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Title: Demographics, impacts, & motivations of Michigan 4-h horse judges
Creator: Rising, Maria Rose
Date: 2019
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The horse industry is a thriving, diverse industry with many breeds, disciplines, and levels of competition. Horse judges are a focal point of horse shows, given that their opinions are central to the competitive activity. There is very little known about horse judges, although, a survey done by Skelly et al. (2005) at an equine extension workshop found only 4% of respondents were comfortable with the current state of horse show ethics and 70% of respondents felt it was the judges'...
Show moreThe horse industry is a thriving, diverse industry with many breeds, disciplines, and levels of competition. Horse judges are a focal point of horse shows, given that their opinions are central to the competitive activity. There is very little known about horse judges, although, a survey done by Skelly et al. (2005) at an equine extension workshop found only 4% of respondents were comfortable with the current state of horse show ethics and 70% of respondents felt it was the judges' responsibility to uphold ethics at horses shows, showing dissatisfaction with judges. The Michigan 4-H Horse Judges survey was developed with the aims of identifying demographic information, motivations for becoming a horse judge, and how judges gained their horse judging skills. The results showed that the current average age of surveyed judges was 48.6 years, with a range from 23 to 81. Respondents identified judging an average of 15 shows per year, for a total of 790 shows represented annually (n = 53). Respondents identified primary positive themes of being a 4-H horse judge as the educational atmosphere, meeting people, and personal and professional fulfillment. The top negative themes included negative attitudes, long days, poor weather, and time away from family. Respondents also identified their motivations for becoming judges as giving back, helping others, and working with horses and youth; all of which may enhance the quality of life of judges and exhibitors. This information is important as it informs both the literature for future research on the horse judging experience, as well as the impacts of 4-H horse judging activities.
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Title: An individual differences approach to improving low target prevalence visual search performance
Creator: Peltier, Chad
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: "Critical real-world visual search tasks such as radiology and baggage screening rely on the detection of rare targets that may only be present on as few as .3% of searches (Gur et al., 2004). When targets are rare, observers search for a shorter amount of time and miss targets more often than when targets are common, a phenomenon known as the low prevalence effect (LPE). Given the real-world importance of the detection of low prevalence targets, researchers have attempted to improve search...
Show more"Critical real-world visual search tasks such as radiology and baggage screening rely on the detection of rare targets that may only be present on as few as .3% of searches (Gur et al., 2004). When targets are rare, observers search for a shorter amount of time and miss targets more often than when targets are common, a phenomenon known as the low prevalence effect (LPE). Given the real-world importance of the detection of low prevalence targets, researchers have attempted to improve search performance. There have been several experimental attempts to reduce the LPE, but none have been wholly successful, as even the best methods have increased hits at the cost of more false alarms. As an alternative to improving visual search performance through experimental manipulations, researchers have recently started using an individual differences approach to predict those who would be best at rare target detection. The individual differences approach has shown that it is possible to predict low prevalence target detection using working memory capacity (WMC) (Peltier & Becker, 2016b; Schwark et al., 2012) and moderate prevalence target detection using a personality assessment (Biggs, Clark, & Mitroff, 2017) and vigilance (Adamo, Cain, & Mitroff, 2016). Experiment 1 expands on the previous research by predicting low prevalence visual search performance using measures of WMC, near transfer high prevalence visual search accuracy, vigilance, attentional control, and introversion. The regression using these predictors accounts for 52% of the variance in accuracy. Experiment 2 addresses practical and theoretical limitations of Experiment 1 by replicating the original finding, including new potential predictors of low prevalence search performance (fluid intelligence, task unrelated thought frequency, and far transfer search accuracy), using more realistic search stimuli to increase external validity, and using eye tracking to investigate how individual differences relate to specific components of performance. The results show that near transfer search, far transfer search, WMC, introversion, and fluid intelligence account for 53% of the variance in accuracy in a more realistic low prevalence search. Using the beta weights from Experiment 1's significant predictors and each observer's score on the corresponding measures in Experiment 2, I find that the old predictors account for 42% of the variance in a novel search task's accuracy. Finally, the eye-tracking results show that we can significantly predict quitting thresholds (the number of items inspected before terminating search), selection error rates (misses caused by never inspecting the target), identification error rates (misses caused by misidentifying an inspected target), item re-inspection rates, target decision times, and distractor decision times. I conclude that the individual differences approach has the potential to be a highly effective tool in selecting those who are most likely to perform at a high level in real-world searches."--Pages ii-iii.
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Title: The structure of effortful control and its associations to psychopathology in childhood
Creator: Vroman, Lisa
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The current literature investigating the structure of effortful control (EC) is mixed, as the results vary by the methods utilized. Much of the literature on the relation between EC and psychopathology indicates low levels of EC are most strongly associated with higher levels of psychopathology. Preliminary evidence, however, suggests a nonlinear association exists between EC and positive psychological outcomes. The aims of this study were twofold: 1) Examine the structure of trait EC...
Show moreThe current literature investigating the structure of effortful control (EC) is mixed, as the results vary by the methods utilized. Much of the literature on the relation between EC and psychopathology indicates low levels of EC are most strongly associated with higher levels of psychopathology. Preliminary evidence, however, suggests a nonlinear association exists between EC and positive psychological outcomes. The aims of this study were twofold: 1) Examine the structure of trait EC assessed via parent report, experimenter ratings and objective coding of child behavior in response to lab tasks, and attentional control measures, and 2) Examine concurrent and predictive linear and nonlinear associations between EC and two common dimensions of psychopathology (externalizing and internalizing symptoms) in a sample (n = 277) of children between 3-7 years of age. The results generally support a unidimensional structure of trait EC in young children, with modest-to-moderate convergent validity between parent report, experimenter ratings, objective coding of child behavior, and attentional control measures providing additional support for this model. Trait EC (across most methods of assessment) exhibited concurrent, as well as a few prospective predictive relations with maternal reported externalizing and internalizing behavior problems on the CBCL.
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Title: Attention and working memory : disrupting feature binding in visual working memory
Creator: Hakun, Jonathan G.
Date: 2013
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: In the current study we investigated disruption of working memory for multi-feature visual objects through a visual change detection paradigm modified with a distraction manipulation (termed the "Binding Distraction Task"). The paradigm included three processing stages (study, maintenance, and test) with a distraction event presented during maintenance. The judgment performed on each trial involved deciding whether a single two-feature test object (a colored shape) contained the same or...
Show moreIn the current study we investigated disruption of working memory for multi-feature visual objects through a visual change detection paradigm modified with a distraction manipulation (termed the "Binding Distraction Task"). The paradigm included three processing stages (study, maintenance, and test) with a distraction event presented during maintenance. The judgment performed on each trial involved deciding whether a single two-feature test object (a colored shape) contained the same or changed combination of shape and color as one of the study objects (i.e. contained the same feature binding). The distraction event involved presenting an array of visual objects arranged spatially in a manner similar to the study array. We compared performance on trials where distraction arrays contained objects sharing feature-overlap with the current trial's study objects (matched arrays) with trials where distracter objects contained study-related features but no overlap with the current trial's study set (related arrays). As compared with trials involving empty distraction arrays and baseline performance (no distraction), the presentation of matched arrays was consistently disruptive of binding change detection performance across all of the experiments presented here. The performance cost associated with related arrays however was more variable across experiments. Through an individual differences approach, we investigated an executive gating account of the distraction effect. That is, disruption is caused by a failure to keep distracter objects from reaching visual working memory (VWM) thereby displacing study objects. Based on this account we predicted that individuals with high working memory capacity (WMC), as measured through complex span and single feature change detection task performance, should be more resistant to distraction than low WMC individuals. However, the results of our individual differences analysis failed to provide support for the executive gating hypothesis (costs were unrelated to WMC). Alternatively, we proposed that distraction costs may reflect a special case of contingent attention capture. That is, attention may be biased toward distracter objects that overlap with the features active in VWM. To explore this hypothesis further we additionally conducted an fMRI study. The results of our fMRI analysis indicated that regions of the brain that are commonly involved in the voluntary and stimulus-driven control of attention responded in a manner consistent with our contingent capture hypothesis. Regions involved in the voluntary control of attention (superior parietal and prefrontal) parametrically scaled in activation in accordance with the proposed demands associated with each distraction condition. However, as further evidence against the executive gating hypothesis, activation in all of the regions involved in voluntary control did not relate to performance costs. On the other hand, regions associated with the contingent capture of attention (specifically, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, VLPFC, and temporo-parietal junction) only reliably responded to the filled distracter arrays (related and matched arrays). Further, activation within the right VLPFC was positively related to the performance cost observed in both conditions. Altogether the results of the current study support a stimulus-driven account of disruption of VWM for bound features. Specifically, we conclude that maintaining multiple bound representations in VWM creates a context in which distracter objects containing feature-overlap capture attention and result in the downstream impoverishment of stored representations.
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Title: Validating neural markers of effortful control in young children
Creator: Lo, Sharon Lee
Date: 2017
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: Effortful control (EC) in early childhood is a robust predictor of later mental health, social-emotional adjustment, and academic performance. EC is defined as the ability to regulate behavioral and emotional reactivity, and develops most rapidly during preschool-age years, a time recognized as a critical period to intervene and prevent later psychopathology. However, we have little to no knowledge of the basic etiological processes underlying EC in young children, which precludes the...
Show moreEffortful control (EC) in early childhood is a robust predictor of later mental health, social-emotional adjustment, and academic performance. EC is defined as the ability to regulate behavioral and emotional reactivity, and develops most rapidly during preschool-age years, a time recognized as a critical period to intervene and prevent later psychopathology. However, we have little to no knowledge of the basic etiological processes underlying EC in young children, which precludes the development of effective interventions based on mechanisms of action. Mastery of EC skills is reliant on the successful integration of brain processes underlying neural and behavioral systems, and event-related potentials (ERPs) represent a confluence of these systems, making it an ideal tool to understand the neurobehavioral underpinnings of EC in children. Two common conflict-monitoring ERPs known as the error-related negativity (ERN) and N2 are thought to index aspects of EC in children, but the nature and function of these markers is not understood. The present study used a short-term targeted training of effortful control (EC) as an experimental manipulation to address whether (1) the ERN and N2 are valid markers of EC in young children (aged 4-5 years), and (2) whether training-induced changes in EC as indexed by behavioral and neural measures are associated with changes in social-emotional adjustment problems. While results across behavioral, neurophysiological, and informant-reported methods indicated that EC skills were not substantially impacted by targeted EC training, they also suggested that the ERN and N2 may be dynamic measures of EC skills in young children, and may reflect similar processes in this age period. Future research would benefit from developing measures that are more sensitive to detecting changes in EC skills during this age period in order to better understand the coherence between brain and behavior processes that support the maturation of EC.
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Title: The impact of visualizations in promoting informed natural resource decisions
Creator: Turner, Sheldon
Date: 2013
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: The research in this dissertation was conducted in order to understand the ways in which scientific visualizations can influence the decision process of non-scientists. A wide variety of classical and novel methods were used in order to capture and analyze the decision process. Data were collected from non-scientists through role-play interviews on an interactive whiteboard, as well as a desktop eye-tracking device. These interviews were analyzed through qualitative content analysis,...
Show moreThe research in this dissertation was conducted in order to understand the ways in which scientific visualizations can influence the decision process of non-scientists. A wide variety of classical and novel methods were used in order to capture and analyze the decision process. Data were collected from non-scientists through role-play interviews on an interactive whiteboard, as well as a desktop eye-tracking device. These interviews were analyzed through qualitative content analysis, cognitive mapping decision analysis, and computerized network analysis. In the natural resource scenario given to these participants, these numerous techniques show that map style images promote the most complex, informed, and efficient decision strategies when compared to other visualizations or plain text.
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Title: An individual differences approach to investigate task-switching and its relationship to media multitasking
Creator: Alzahabi, Reem
Date: 2015
Collection: Electronic Theses & Dissertations
Description: While multitasking with media has increased dramatically in recent years (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010), the association between media multitasking and cognitive performance is poorly understood. In addition, the literature on the relationship between media multitasking and task-switching, one measure of cognitive control, has produced mixed results (Alzahabi & Becker, 2013, Minear, et al., 2013; Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009). The goal of this work was to examine the relationship between...
Show moreWhile multitasking with media has increased dramatically in recent years (Rideout, Foehr, & Roberts, 2010), the association between media multitasking and cognitive performance is poorly understood. In addition, the literature on the relationship between media multitasking and task-switching, one measure of cognitive control, has produced mixed results (Alzahabi & Becker, 2013, Minear, et al., 2013; Ophir, Nass, & Wagner, 2009). The goal of this work was to examine the relationship between media multitasking and task-switching performance. However, in order to do so, we began by first examining the structure of task-switching and identifying the factors that contribute to switch costs. We used an individual differences approach to evaluate how the different putative mechanisms (advanced preparation, passive decay, attentional filtering, and response conflict resolution) are related to task-switching performance. Participants performed a series of three different task-switching paradigms, each designed to isolate the effects of a specific putative mechanism (e.g., advanced preparation). For each paradigm, participants completed three blocks of trials, each with a different classification task and different stimuli (animal/furniture, number/letter, and plant/transportation classification tasks). The use of these three different types of classifications within the same paradigms allowed us to perform a latent variable analysis using structural equation modeling to examine the fit of a model that captures the inter-relationship between these putative factors within an individual. Participants also completed a series of surveys to measure media multitasking and (fluid and crystallized) intelligence. The results suggest that task-switching performance is related to two somewhat independent factors, namely an advanced preparation factor and passive decay factor. This two-factor model provided best fit for both reaction time and error data. We found no support for the putative attentional filtering and response conflict resolution factors being related to an individual's task-switching performance. In addition, multitasking with media was related to a faster ability to prepare for tasks, resulting in faster task-switching performance without a cost to accuracy. Fluid intelligence was associated with slower task-switching ability, but higher task-switching accuracy. This indicates that fluid intelligence may allow one to recognize the need to prepare for a task-switch, causing one to slow down and effectively prepare for a task-switch, which in turn, improves accuracy. Media multitasking and intelligence were both less related to passive decay factors. These findings are consistent with a two-component model of task-switching (Sohn & Anderson, 2001), as well as an automatic/executive framework of cognitive control (Shneider & Shiffrin, 1977).
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