Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2006. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 76 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 51-59).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 99 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 53-60).

An experiment was conducted to compare the functional performance of young and old adults on familiar and unfamiliar tasks under two conditions of perceived control. Specifically, the relation between age and motor and process skills was examined. The familiar tasks were simple cooking tasks, whereas the unfamiliar tasks were contrived, meaningless tasks developed for this study. Young and old did not differ in the ratings of the familiarity of the tasks, but results from two Age by Task by Choice ANOVAs demonstrated a significant age difference for motor and process skills under all conditions. For the process skill scale, there was also a significant main effect for choice. This suggests that older adults demonstrate age-related decline even with activities that take motivational, experiential, and ecological validity components into account. Results also support the concept that perceived control can improve performance, but not differentially for older adults; that is, young and old adults both demonstrated improved performance when given their choice of tasks.

A yellowing which develops in some plants growing on naturally calcareous soils is called lime-induced chlorosis. The problem is complex, as indicated by Brown and Holmes (1956) and Porter and Thorne (1955). Species and varieties of plants differ in their iron requirements, susceptibility to lime- induced chlorosis, and inter acting soil f actors which affect iron supply (Thorne et al 1950). Chlorosis of plants does not appear, therefore, to stem from a common causative factor. At least a part of this difference has been found to be associated with the plant roots. Thus, through the use of resistant root stock Wann (1941) was able to produce non-chlorotic grapes. These grapes grown under similar conditions without the resistant root stock would have been high1y chlorotic. Certain citrus root stocks have also been used on calcareous soils because they give citrus trees resistance to chlorosis.

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An agent's facial expression may communicate emotive state to users both young and old. The ability to recognize emotions has been shown to differ with age, with older adults more commonly misidentifying the facial emotions of anger, fear, and sadness. This research study examined whether emotion recognition of facial expressions differed between different types of on-screen agents, and between age groups. Three on-screen characters were compared: a human, a synthetic human, and a virtual agent. In this study 42 younger (age 28-28) and 42 older (age 65-85) adults completed an emotion recognition task with static pictures of the characters demonstrating four basic emotions (anger, fear, happiness, and sadness) and neutral. The human face resulted in the highest proportion match, followed by the synthetic human, then the virtual agent with the lowest proportion match. Both the human and synthetic human faces resulted in age-related differences for the emotions anger, fear, sadness, and neutral, with younger adults showing higher proportion match. The virtual agent showed age-related differences for the emotions anger, fear, happiness, and neutral, with younger adults showing higher proportion match. The data analysis and interpretation of the present study differed from previous work by utilizing two unique approaches to understanding emotion recognition. First, misattributions participants made when identifying emotion were investigated. Second, a similarity index of the feature placement between any two virtual agent emotions was calculated, suggesting that emotions were commonly misattributed as other emotions similar in appearance. Overall, these results suggest that age-related differences transcend human faces to other types of on-screen characters, and differences between older and younger adults in emotion recognition may be further explained by perceptual discrimination between two emotions of similar feature appearance.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Indiana University, 1931. / Bibliography: p. 52-55.

Thesis (Ph.D)--Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2010. / Committee Chair: Rogers, Wendy; Committee Member: Catrambone, Richard; Committee Member: Charness, Neil; Committee Member: Feldman, Jack; Committee Member: Fisk, Arthur. Part of the SMARTech Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Collection.

This cross-sectional study evaluated the trend in sensory and motor skill development for an archival dataset used in the standardization of the Dean-Woodcock Sensory Motor Battery (D-WSMB). Measures from the D-WSMB were organized into three broad categories according to a factor model identified by Davis, Finch, Dean and Woodcock (2006). Three primary hypotheses were evaluated: a confirmatory factor analysis would support the Davis et al. model for the current dataset, performance on sensory and motor tasks would exhibit a pattern of development and decline across age levels, and gender would not be a significant factor in variability in performance. CFA results indicated the Davis et al. factor model was a poor fit for the current dataset but that each measure loaded significantly on the factor to which it was assigned. Curve estimation identified a significant quadratic relationship between age and performance on each of the skill categories. A significant age and gender interaction was noted for each skill category. The statistically poor fit of the Davis et al. factor model was thought to be due to potential correlations between factors and between measures within the factors, although further research is needed to evaluate the impact of these relationships on model fit. Results confirmed the hypothesis that sensory and motor skill exhibit a pattern of development and decline across age levels, which can guide the interpretation of performance in a clinical setting. Further research is needed on the nature of the age and gender interaction to clarify the impact on performance on measures of sensory and motor skills. In an addendum to this study, performance on individual measures of the D-WSMB was plotted to provide further guidance in the interpretation of results in clinical settings. / Department of Educational Psychology

The objective of this research is to explore high-speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) using silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) for wireless digital receiver applications. The stringent requirements of ADCs for the high-performance next-generation wireless digital receiver include (1) low power, (2) low cost, (3) wide input signal bandwidth, (4) high sampling rate, and (5) medium to high resolution. The proposed research achieves the objective by implementing high-performance ADC's key building blocks and integrating these building blocks into a complete sigma-delta analog-to-digital modulator that satisfies the demanding specifications of next-generation wireless digital receiver applications. The scope of this research is divided into two main parts: (1) high-performance key building blocks of the ADC, and (2) high-speed sigma-delta analog-to-digital modulator. The research on ADC's building blocks includes the design of two high-speed track-and-hold amplifiers (THA) and two wide-bandwidth comparators operating at the sampling rate > 10 GS/sec with satisfying resolution. The research on high-speed sigma-delta analog-to-digital modulator includes the design and experimental characterization of a high-speed second-order low-pass sigma-delta modulator, which can operate with a sampling rate up to 20 GS/sec and with a medium resolution. The research is envisioned to demonstrate that the SiGe HBT technology is an ideal platform for the design of high-speed ADCs.