Thesis (M.S. in psychology)--Washington State University, August 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 19-23).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington State University, December 2008. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on July 10, 2009). "Department of Psychology." Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2008. / "December, 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 30-35). Online version available on the World Wide Web.

Different cognitive processes underlie the perception of vocalizations in many mammals, including humans. This perception now extends to a highly specialized form of sonar called echolocation. In habituation-dishabituation experiments, a high duty cycle echolocating bat, Rhinolophus clivosus, dishabituated significantly when echolocation calls of a different gender or individual were played to the habituation. Strong individual and gender signatures but weak geographic signatures were found in both the CF and FM components of their echolocation calls. In the individual discrimination trials reactions were more pronounced to an individual that was less acoustically similar to the habituation than to one that was more similar. Bats reacted to playbacks with a variety of social behaviours. Prior to the analysis of the experiment an ethogram was done on three groups of captive R. clivosus bats. This ethogram was used to categorize the behavioural responses of these bats to the acoustic stimuli in the experiments. The reactions to the habituation-dishabituation experiments show bats perceive gender and individual-specific signatures found in their conspecifics echolocation calls. This is the first study to show behavioural evidence for individual discrimination and second to show gender discrimination of echolocation calls in high duty cycle bats. This evidence supports the theory that echolocation, a system thought to have evolved solely for orientation and foraging, has been coopted for intra-specific communication and mate recognition in bats.

The feedback-related negativity (FRN) is a negative event-related potential (ERP) component associated with the presentation of task feedback. The possibility that the FRN may habituate has been briefly mentioned in previous research (Garrido Chaves et al., 2020), but not yet been actively investigated. Thus, the current study is the first one to explicity investigate the possibility of short-term (across trials) and long-term (across blocks) habituation effects on the FRN. This was done by using electroencephalography (EEG) and a time-estimation paradigm during which participants were tasked with guessing the duration of one second. Following each estimate, participants were presented with either positive or negative visual feedback (however, only trials with negative feedback were included in the subsequent statistical analysis). It was hypothesized that mean FRN amplitude would decrease, i.e. habituate, upon increased exposure to negative feedback. Contrary to the expected effect, repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) and t-tests revealed a stong, significant sensitization effect of FRN mean amplitude in the short-term comparison. However, there appeared to be multiple confounds involved, which made these results ambigous and difficult to interpret. No significant results were found for the long-term comparison, although the ERP waveforms suggested that there might be a (non-significant) habituation effect. This effect may become significant provided a greater sample size. Replication with a greater sample size is thus required before any firm conclusions can be drawn.

No description available.

It is well established in developmental science that 14-month-old infants have significant difficulty associating pairs of objects with pairs of words that differ by a single phoneme (i.e., minimal pairs). This study used a traditional switch procedure in two experimental conditions (i.e., no face versus face with shifting gaze) to habituate infants with objects and minimal pair labels. Additionally, infants participated in a joint attention task and parents completed questionnaires related to family demographics and infant health and development, to compare to switch task performance. It was expected that infants' difficulty with minimal pair associative learning would be replicated in the no face condition. It was also predicted that the addition of a female face and the cues it could provide would abate the challenge that this task typically presents. As a group, infants' performances in the two conditions were not significantly different from each other and were not significantly different from chance. Analyses explored the relations between switch performance, joint attention task performance and questionnaire data, resulting in a significant correlation between performance in the face condition of the switch task and number of ear infections (r = .62, p < .05). Taken together, the addition of a female face with shifting gaze to a challenging word learning task does not sufficiently attenuate the cognitive load created by the task. The implications of these results are discussed further. / Master of Science

Le polyhandicap est la conséquence d'une atteinte massive et précoce du Système Nerveux Central. Les personnes polyhandicapées présentent donc des difficultés motrices sévères ainsi qu'une déficience intellectuelle profonde, leur QI étant statistiquement estimé comme étant inférieur à 20. De ce fait, ces personnes ont besoin d'une assistance dans la réalisation des actes de la vie quotidienne, présentent des capacités d'apprentissage très limitées et n'ont pas accès à une communication symbolique. Aujourd'hui, nous ne savons que très peu de choses sur la vie cognitive des personnes polyhandicapées, et sur la manière unique et originale dont chacune d'entre elles construit ses connaissances sur le monde et développe ses propres compétences. Si l'étude et la compréhension du développement de l'enfant et du jeune polyhandicapé peut s'adosser sur les modèles et outils d'évaluation issus de la psychologie du développement, l'appréhension de sujets adultes reste, en revanche, très peu balisée. Ceci serait principalement lié au fait que chaque personne polyhandicapée présente des restrictions motrices importantes, une absence de langage oral et un répertoire de réponses comportementales dont l'interprétation va rester soumise à une importante variabilité inter-observateurs. L'objectif de ce projet de recherche est de mettre au point une méthode d'étude des compétences cognitives des personnes polyhandicapées de tout âge qui puisse tenir compte à la fois des spécificités liées à leurs handicaps multiples, tout en favorisant un cadre d'interprétation objectif des réponses comportementales de chaque personne. Pour cela, nous nous sommes donc inspirés des études menées chez des nourrissons âgés de quelques mois, basées sur le principe de l'habituation visuelle. Le paradigme d'habituation visuelle postule qu'un sujet exposé de manière répétée à un même stimulus visuel présentera un déclin progressif de la durée de fixation, correspondant à la construction et à la consolidation d'une représentation en mémoire de l'objet. La présentation d'un nouveau stimulus va donc entraîner une augmentation des temps de fixation, signe que le sujet s'est montré capable de comparer le nouvel objet à la représentation interne du précédent. Ainsi, il est possible d'étudier les capacités de discrimination et de mémorisation de sujets humains et non-humains, indépendamment de toute aptitude motrice ou verbale, seul le comportement visuel étant pris en compte. La première étape de notre travail de recherche a d'abord consisté à créer des conditions favorables à l'implémentation d'épreuves basées sur le paradigme d'habituation visuelle auprès d'un public de personnes polyhandicapées adultes. Une étude de faisabilité a donc d'abord été conduite à travers laquelle nous avons pu traiter d'aspects aussi bien matériels que méthodologiques. Nous avons ainsi pu mettre au point des conditions de passation et un matériel adapté. Ensuite, nous avons pu valider l'utilisation de cette approche auprès d'un échantillon plus large d'individus, en mettant en évidence un phénomène d'habituation et de déshabituation sur une épreuve de perception simple. Enfin, nous nous sommes penchés plus spécifiquement sur la manière dont ce paradigme pouvait s'appliquer à l'étude de certains domaines de compétences cognitives, et plus spécifiquement la perception du nombre et des quantités. Pour cela, trois tâches inspirées de la littérature en psychologie du développement ont été mises au point. Nous avons trouvé que les participants sont capables de différencier deux quantités d'objets lorsqu'aucune variable confondue n'est contrôlée, et que la position des objets reste déterminante dans leur capacité d'encodage des stimuli. Ces données nous ont conduits à réfléchir de manière plus globale sur la manière dont ces personnes peuvent construire leurs connaissances en l'absence d'action directe sur les objets de leur environnement. / L'auteur n'a pas fourni de résumé en anglais.

<p>This study was an attempt to replicate the positive results of a precognitive habituation (PH) experiment devised by Bem (2003). The procedure is based on the subliminal mere exposure (SME) design. In an SME procedure subjects are exposed to image-pairs in a preference task, after being exposed to one of those images (the target) subliminally. The target is preferred significantly more often due to the mere exposure effect. In the PH procedure the preference task precedes the exposure and images are of negative and erotic valence. It was hypothesized that due to exposure (in the future), subject preference will increase for negative and decrease for the erotic target images, especially for subjects classified erotically or negatively reactive (Bem, 2003). Also, that an overall (negative and erotic) effect would be shown. The results were not significantly above chance expectation for any of the hypotheses (50.0%; 47.2%, p = .149; 50.8%, p = .279).</p>

A rat model of novelty-seeking phenotype predicts vulnerability to nicotine relapse where locomotor reactivity to novelty is used to rank high (HR) versus low (LR) responders. This dissertation examines the neuropeptidergic and structural substrates of the expression of locomotor sensitization to a low dose nicotine challenge and associated social anxiety-like behavior following chronic intermittent nicotine exposure during adolescence in the LRHR phenotype. Data show the long-lasting nature of behavioral sensitization to nicotine and abstinence-related social anxiety-like behavior in nicotine pre-trained HRs compared to saline pre-trained controls. Moreover, this behavior is accompanied by an imbalance between the brain antistress/antianxiety, i.e., neuropeptide Y (NPY), and stress, i.e., corticotrophin releasing factor (CRF) systems in the amygdala. Moreover, a deficit in NPY signaling marked with decreased NPY and increased NPY Y2 receptor (Y2R) mRNA levels is observed in the hip pocampus, along with mossy fiber reorganization in nicotine pre-trained HRs. Furthermore, a Y2R antagonist administered 1 wk of abstinence reverses these behavioral, molecular and morphological effects in nicotine-exposed HRs. Additionally, the role of amygdalar synaptic plasticity in longlasting social withdrawal is also investigated by assessing brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and spinophilin mRNA levels in HRs following a behaviorally-sensitizing nicotine regimen. A persistent increase in BDNF and spinophilin mRNA levels in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) is observed in nicotine pre-trained HRs even across a long (3-wk) abstinence spanning into young adulthood. This strongly suggests BDNFmediated long-lasting neuroplasticity within the BLA that may regulate abstinence-related negative affect in HRs. / Moreover, a cannabinoid receptor 1 (CB1R) antagonist, AM251 treatment during a short (1-wk) abstinence is ineffective in reversing social anxiety, nicotine-induced neuroplasticity and the neuropeptidergic changes in the amygdala, although it is effective in reversing the expression of locomotor sensitization to challenge nicotine even following a long (3-wks) abstinence. Furthermore, the identical AM251 treatment given during the late phase of a long (3-wk) abstinence further augments social withdrawal and associated BLA plasticity in nicotine pre-trained HRs. These findings implicate neuropeptidergic and neuroplastic changes in the hippocampus and the amygdala in vulnerability to the long-lasting behavioral effects of nicotine in the novelty-seeking phenotype. / by Cigdem Aydin. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.