This dissertation examines how mathematics anxiety influences the cognitive and metacognitive processes of middle school Algebra 1 students during cognitively demanding tasks. Individuals who experience mathematics anxiety may feel lifelong consequences and avoid mathematics courses at the secondary and college levels, which limits access to careers in STEM fields. Research suggests that a variety of factors may impact an individual’s mathematics anxiety. With an increase in the number of students enrolled in Algebra 1 at the middle school level, this explanatory sequential mixed-method study examines how mathematics anxiety influences students’ cognitive and metacognitive processes as they complete cognitively demanding Algebra 1 tasks during a think-aloud protocol analysis. Findings from the study support that individuals with moderate mathematics anxiety struggle with accessing metacognitive strategies as cognitive demand increases. Implications for practice and research, including recommendations at the state, district, and school levels, are discussed, as well as suggestions for future research.

This study investigated the effects of foreign language reading anxiety on Korean ESL learners’ reading strategy use and reading comprehension. Data were collected from forty-five Korean students who were enrolled in either ESL programs or graduate programs at UT. The students took the foreign language reading anxiety scale (FLRAS) followed by a background questionnaire. Based on their FLRAS scores, six participants who were classified as high, mid, and low anxiety were invited to an individual reading study. Various types of data were collected from a reading comprehension task, a strategy inventory for reading comprehension, the Cognitive Interference Questionnaire, and interviews. The results showed that there is a fair amount of FL reading anxiety among Korean ESL learners. Although it seems at first glance that reading in a FL is not anxietyprovoking, the result indicated that it can indeed arouse anxiety in some learners due to distinct features of FL texts including a different orthography, textual organizations, and cultural topics. In addition, the results of reading processing of six participants representing different anxiety levels indicated that anxiety can affect learners’ reading processing in terms of their strategy use and cognitive interference. The results showed that highly anxious students who were occupied with off-task thoughts tended to use more local strategies while less anxious students employed more global strategies and background knowledge strategies. Lastly, the highly anxious students showed lower reading comprehension scores than their less anxious peers, suggesting that anxiety can play a detrimental role not only in reading processing but also in comprehension. / text

The present investigation examined the role of cognitive interference in sport. In Study 1 an instrument to assess intrusive thoughts athletes experience during performance was developed (Thought Occurrence Questionnaire for Sport; TOQS). In the first part of the study, which involved modification of an instrument constructed in educational settings, three types of thoughts were identified. These were 'performance worries', 'situation irrelevant thoughts' and 'thoughts of escape'. In the second part of the study, which involved validation of the modified instrument, support for the psychometric properties of the TOQS was provided through tests of convergent, concurrent and discriminant validity. Study 2 examined situational antecedents of cognitive interference. Discrepancies between expected and actual performance was identified as the best predictor of cognitive interference athletes experience, whereas cognitive anxiety was found moderately related to cognitive interference. Finally, it was found that athletes experiencing their anxiety states as facilitative reported less cognitive interference than athletes experiencing their anxiety states as debilitative. Study 3 investigated possible effects cognitive interference has on aspects of sport performance based on athletes' perceptions. Participants reported cognitive interference to be detrimental to their concentration. Furthermore, it was revealed that different types of thoughts influence effort input in different ways. The relationship between 'performance worries' and subsequent effort depended on goal attainment expectancies. Athletes holding higher expectancies reported that their worries resulted in increased effort, whereas athletes holding lower expectancies reported their worries to result in decreased effort. 'Situation irrelevant thoughts' were reported not to have any effects on subsequent effort, while 'thoughts of escape' were associated with decreases in effort. Finally, Study 4 examined relationships between achievement goal orientations and cognitive interference. A negative relationship between task orientation and thoughts of escape was the only strong and consistent association that emerged. Goal profiles analysis revealed that, in contrast to athletes holding self-referenced goals, for those holding comparative goals outcome is an important determinant of withdrawal thoughts. The results of the present investigation are discussed in relation to findings in educational and sport settings, and a conceptual model regarding the role of cognitive interference in sport is proposed. Overall, cognitive interference is identified as a topic which requires further examination in the sport psychology domain.

For many years, it has been known that Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a negative risk factor for the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It has been commonly assumed that RA patients’ usage of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have helped prevent the onset and progression of AD pathogenesis. Furthermore, experiments in animal models of Alzheimer’s disease have looked to inhibit inflammation, and have demonstrated some efficacy against AD-like pathology in these models. Thus many NSAID clinical trials have been performed over the years, but all have proven unsuccessful in AD patients. This suggests that intrinsic factors within RA pathogenesis itself may underlie RA’s protective effect. My dissertation research goal was to investigate this inverse relationship between RA and AD, in order to more precisely pinpoint critical events in AD pathogenesis toward developing therapeutic strategies against AD. It seemed improbable that any secreted factors, produced in RA pathogenesis, could maintain high enough concentrations in the circulatory system to cross the blood brain barrier and inhibit AD pathogenesis, without affecting all other organ systems. It did seem possible that the leukocyte populations induced in RA, could traverse the circulatory system, extravasate into the brain parenchyma, and impede or reverse AD pathogenesis. We thus investigated the colony-stimulating factors, which are up-regulated in RA and which induce most of RA’s leukocytosis, on the pathology and behavior of transgenic AD mice. We found that G-CSF and more significantly, GM-CSF, reduced amyloidosis throughout the treated brain hemisphere one week following bolus intrahippocampal administration into AD mice. We then found that 20 days of subcutaneous injections of GM-CSF (the most amyloid-reducing CSF in the bolus experiment) significantly reduced brain amyloidosis and completely reversed cognitive impairment in aged cognitively-impaired AD mice, while increasing hippocampal synaptic area and microglial density. These findings, along with two decades of accrued safety data using Leukine, the recombinant human GM-CSF analogue, in elderly leukopenic patients, suggested that Leukine should be tested as a treatment to reverse cerebral amyloid pathology and cognitive impairment in AD patients. It was also implied that age-related depressed hematopoiesis may contribute to AD pathogenesis.

The response inhibition ability is part of executive functions, which may be defined as a set of higher cognitive processes particularly located in the frontal-subcortical circuits. Since the main obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms seem to be relevant to the inability of inhibiting certain stimuli, it can be assumed that response inhibition in these patients will be disrupted. Studies related to this topic have brought inconsistent results. Our research dealing with OCD patients has focused on two dimensions of the response inhibition - the behavioral inhibition, which generally includes the behavior control (for instance impulse control), and the cognitive interference, which is considered to be the cognitive component of inhibition process and is mostly associated with the control of internal cognitive processes. The first part of our research included the verification of hypothesis, stating that the increased severity of obsession is associated with the degree of disrupted ability of cognitive interference, while the severity of compulsions correlates with the degree of disrupted performance in tests measuring behavioral inhibition. The second research objective was to clarify whether the inhibition response ability was different between patients when the predominance of symptoms was...

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