Traditionally, the discourse on race relations in the U.S. has focused on relations between Whites and ethnic minorities, with little being known about the antecedents and consequences of inter-minority prejudice. This paper will present results from two studies that were conducted with Asian, Black, and Latino undergraduate students, assessing motivations to embrace a collective identity with ethnic minorities (versus express prejudice towards other ethnic minority groups). Blacks,’ Asians’, and Latinos’ ethnic group identification, as well their identification with a superordinate "people of color" (POC) category were assessed. POC identification was found to be closely aligned with one's political beliefs (e.g., perceptions that the system is unjust, and that racial minorities face discrimination in the U.S.) For Asian participants, POC identification predicted more positive attitudes towards other ethnic minority groups perceived to face similar discrimination in the U.S. (e.g., Latinos and Blacks.) However, Blacks' identification as POC actually predicted negative attitudes towards Asians, who were not seen as facing the same barriers to upward mobility as other racial minority groups in the U.S. The results indicate that the politics of POC identification might actually contribute to increased tension between ethnic minorities in the U.S.; implications for more effecting coalition building between racial minorities in the U.S. are also discussed in this paper.

No description available.

The conscious or unconscious acquirement of knowledge in implicit category learning was examined in accordance with predictions made by the COVIS theory of categorization (Ashby & Maddox, 2011). COVIS assumes separate category learning systems. The explicit system relies on easily verbalized rules while the implicit system requires integration of more than one stimulus dimension. Participants in this experiment categorized lines varying in length and orientation as belonging to one of two categories; in the rule-based (RB) condition only length was relevant, while participants in the information integration (II) condition needed to integrate both dimensions. Corrective feedback was provided during training. In test phases, participants were asked to attribute their responses to one of four criteria (guess, intuition, memory, or rule), a measure adapted from Dienes and Scott (2005). Neural activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was recorded with a 20-optode fNIRS system. We found that in the implicit (II) learning condition, participants who reported guessing less than half the time were learning but were unconscious to the structures driving that learning, reflected by accuracy, attribution self-report and neural activation. Our results substantiate the claim that implicit category learning is mediated unconsciously and evidence the dual-system model of categorization postulated by COVIS, furthering our understanding of category learning and thus, the ways in which to improve it.

The goal of this dissertation was to bridge the gap between perceptual learning theory and training application. Visual perceptual skill has been a vexing topic in training science for decades. In complex task domains, from aviation to medicine, visual perception is critical to task success. Despite this, little, if any, emphasis is dedicated to developing perceptual skills through training. Much of this may be attributed to the perceived inefficiency of perceptual training. Recent applied research in perceptual training with discrimination training, however, holds promise for improved perceptual training efficiency. As with all applied research, it is important to root application in solid theoretical bases. In perceptual learning, the challenge is connecting the basic science to more complex task environments. Using a common aviation task as an applied context, participants were assigned to a perceptual training condition based on variation of image complexity and training type. Following the training, participants were tested for transfer of skill. This was intended to help to ground a potentially useful method of perceptual training in a model category learning, while offering qualitative testing of model fit in increasingly complex visual environments. Two hundred and thirty-one participants completed the computer based training module. Results indicate that predictions of a model of category learning largely extend into more complex training stimuli, suggesting utility of the model in more applied contexts. Although both training method conditions showed improvement across training blocks, the discrimination training condition did not transfer to the post training transfer tasks. Lack of adequate contextual information related to the transfer task in training was attributed to this outcome. Further analysis of the exposure training condition showed that iv individuals training with simple stimuli performed as well as individuals training on more complex stimuli in a complex transfer task. On the other hand, individuals in the more complex training conditions were less accurate when presented with a simpler representation of the task in transfer. This suggests training benefit to isolating essential task cues from irrelevant information in perceptual judgment tasks. In all, the study provided an informative look at both the theory and application associated with perceptual category learning. Ultimately, this research can help inform future research and training development in domains where perceptual judgment is critical for success.

Essentialist thinking refers to the intuition that category membership and category-specific features are caused by an internal, invisible, essence. Across three studies, we investigated essentialism from a developmental, a cognitive, and a social perspective. In the first study, using a structured interview, we investigated whether Canadian children aged 5-to-8 hold an essentialist view of national identity, and whether their view differs from that of American children. Compared to older children, younger Canadian children were more likely to believe that Canadian identity was biologically based, and that traits associated with Canadian identity were heritable. However, we found no differences between Canadian and American children in terms of essentialist thinking. In the next study, we tested whether adults obscure their essentialist thinking and whether it may be unveiled by cognitive demand. We presented participants with a switched-at-birth paradigm where some participants were under time pressure and others were not. We found that adults under time pressure were more essentialist about national identity and gender than adults not under time pressure, though we saw no effect on race. This suggests that adults obscure their essentialist thinking, but it can be unveiled during cognitive demand. Finally, we assessed whether essentialist thinking is associated with addiction stigma. We presented participants with fictional news articles about scientific studies to prime either essentialist or anti-essentialist views about addiction. Both participants’ biological and non-biological essentialism were associated with addiction stigma, with the latter being a stronger correlate. This suggests that the extent to which individuals view addiction as a fundamentally distinct category has more impact on stigma than whether adults view addiction as genetically based. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Essentialism is the human intuition that category membership is caused by an internal, invisible, source. Humans treat category members as if there is something deep inside them that makes them who they are. Across three chapters, we investigated whether people are essentialist about social categories, and the subsequent consequences. In the first study, we showed that younger children, more than older children, believed in an internal, Canadian, essence. There was no difference between Canadian and American children in how they viewed national identity. Next, we demonstrated that adults are more essentialist about social categories like national identity and gender when they are under time pressure. Finally, we showed that thinking about addiction as a biologically based and distinct category is associated with addiction stigma.

This dissertation is composed of four different studies focused on using Human Factors Engineering (HFE) assessment tools traditionally used in industrial settings to evaluate personal protective equipment (PPE) footwear of basketball athletes and assessment of compressible soft robotic sensors to evaluate pressures. The first study developed a Basketball Shoe Taxonomy (BST) designed to categorize shoes using a combination of design factors and effects on performance. The second study investigated the influence of basketball shoe design on jumping performance. Using four jumping patterns, six male and ten female basketball National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I student-athletes completed 16 trials wearing two different Adidas basketball shoe designs. There was no significant difference in effect of shoe type on jumping performance (p > 0.05). The third study examined each athlete’s perception of comfort and quality of fit of the shoes used in the second study using a visual analog scale (VAS) and Likert scale survey. One student-athlete out of 16 reported that one of the shoes tested was their favorite and the most comfortable basketball shoe they had ever worn. Results indicated an average overall comfort rating below 60% for both shoes and there was not a significant difference in perception of comfort or quality of fit between the shoes (p > 0.05). The final study was designed to validate the use of compressible Stretchsense™ sensors (CSSs) to ground reaction pressures. Participants performed three repetitions of squatting, shifting center of pressure between the right foot and left foot, and shifting center of pressure forward and back between the toes and heels. Performance was evaluated using CSSs, BodiTrak Vector Plater™ (BVP), and Kistler Force Plates™ (KFPs). The results indicate that CSSs are an acceptable replacement to ground reaction pressure mats. In addition, the use of an Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model resulted in average R2 values greater than 90%. High R2 values in the ARIMA modeling indicates that the software accurately models the human 3D foot-shoe interaction pressures used in the development of the ground reaction pressure socks (GRPS) for sport applications and for fall detection in elderly and balance impaired individuals.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

A Digital Library (DL) is an electronic information storage system focused on meeting the information seeking needs of its constituents. As modern DLs often stay in synchronization with the latest progress of technologies in all fields, interoperability among DLs is often hard to achieve. With the advent of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) and Open Digital Libraries (ODL), lightweight protocols show a promising future in promoting DL interoperability. Furthermore, DL is envisaged as a network of independent components working collaboratively through simple standardized protocols. Prior work with ODL shows the feasibility of building componentized DLs with techniques that are a precursor to web services designs. In our study, we elaborate the feasibility to apply web services to DL design. DL services are modeled as a set of web services offering information dissemination through the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Additionally, a flexible DL user interface assembly framework is offered in order to build DLs with customizations and personalizations. Our hypothesis is proven and demonstrated in the PhysNet reengineering project. / Master of Science