<p> The purpose of this series of studies was to evaluate the extent to which a non-reinforcement based correlation training procedure could combine with a Yes/No evaluation method to establish and test for derived equivalent and spatial relations. In the first experiment, participants were trained stimulus pairs between A-B and B-C across three stimulus sets. Participants were subsequently tested using a Yes/No evaluative procedure of untrained B-A, C-B, A-C, and C-A relations. Experiment two utilized the same training structure as well as testing for the same derived relations, however used a complex semi-random trial structure. In both experiments 1 and 2 the majority of participants responded accurately to all of the possible tested derived relations. In experiment 3, the same training and testing procedure was employed to establish spatial relations. Tests for possible derived spatial relations were observed for the majority of participants. The three experiments demonstrated the effectiveness of a correlation training and Yes/No evaluation procedure that to date has not been reported in the derived relational responding literature. </p><p>

<p> Since Csikszentmihalyi identified the psychological experience of flow over 40 years ago, the experiences have been heralded as the optimum human function and prescriptive to high levels of well-being and quality of life. Csikszentmihalyi theorized that flow represented an autonomous reality that represented an altered state unlike any other human experience. Flow states emerged from intrinsically motivated behavior that represented a fragile balance between the level of enjoyment from novel task stimulation and a sense of self-efficacy required to meet the specific task demands. However, flow is not well understood and research is skewed toward to phenomenological investigations that described the nature of the experience and many of the significant variables of interest across a diverse range of activities. The lack of experimental exploration of flow has created fundamental research gaps. The general problem is that flow is predictive and related to positive psychological outcomes; however, current assessment methodologies and research have not provided the functional neuroanatomy involved. The purpose of this quantitative experimental study was to examine the hypofrontality theory that a flow state occurs concurrently with decreased cognitive activation in the frontal cortex (hypofrontality) during the flow phenomena. Participants consisted of expert piano players that were assessed for changes in alpha activity in the frontal cortex during a flow and non-flow condition. Results from the paired samples paired t-test conducted revealed there were statistically significant differences in alpha power in the experimental conditions (DV) versus the control conditions (IV; <i> M</i> = 93, <i>SD</i> = 105, <i>N</i> = 14), <i> t</i>(13) = 3.29, <i>p</i> = .006. These results supported the main hypothesis that there is increased alpha power in the frontal cortex during flow states. This finding provides the first empirically validated biomarker for a flow. These results will assist future research to understand flow experiences as a conceptually unambiguous variable.</p><p>

<p> One of the quintessential properties of the human semantic system is its ability to flexibly combine the meanings of smaller pieces into larger wholes. However, not all smaller conceptual pieces are created equal; concepts differ in the extent to which they can drive meaning composition. Some concepts can drive semantic composition by establishing relationships with other concepts, while others cannot. For example, we know the concept labelled by &ldquo;friend&rdquo; can drive composition, since one cannot be a friend without being <i>someone</i>&rsquo;s friend, while an animal can be a cat without standing in a similar relationship. We can thus divide the conceptual space of humans into two sections: relational concepts labelled by words like &ldquo;friend&rdquo;, and non-relational concepts like the one labelled by &ldquo;cat&rdquo;. </p><p> Evidence in favor of this division indicates that in early childhood humans are aware of the relationality of concepts (Smiley and Brown 1979; Mirman and Graziano 2012), and as we age, relational concepts remain extremely common in our lexicon, making up nearly half of the adult English vocabulary (Asmuth and Gentner, 2005; Gentner, 2005). Some relational words have been extensively studied by cognitive psychologists and formal linguists alike. One relatively mature set of investigations utilizes functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural basis of relational verb meaning, and finds that relational (i.e., transitive) verbs drive activity in left perisylvian cortical regions more than their intransitive counterparts (Meltzer-Asscher et al., 2015; Thompson et al., 2010, 2007; Bornkessel et al., 2005; Ben-Shachar et al., 2003). These investigations attribute this activity to verb-specific or event-specific information that is stored as part of the verb&rsquo;s conceptual representation. Some support for this comes from Binder and Desai 2011 that holds that the left AG is a main semantic hub that specializes in event processing. However, formal linguistic investigations suggest that relationality should be independent of verbhood or eventivity; it is an independent abstract property of some lexical items which enables them to establish relationships and drive semantic composition. The neural basis of relationality and whether it can be independent of verbhood and eventivity is still relatively underexplored. As relationality straddles the boundary between syntax and semantics, disentangling the contributions of various linguistic features, such as syntactic category, eventivity, and plurality to left AG activity becomes a crucial exercise&mdash;one that a linguist is uniquely poised to address. </p><p> A main candidate region for relational processing is the left Angular Gyrus (lAG), because prior literature suggests it is sensitive to at least some of the features that a region that processes relationality would be sensitive to. In addition to being implicated in tasks that probe the argument structure of verbs, the left AG was found to be the most consistently activated region across numerous semantic tasks in a recent, large-scale meta-analysis (Binder and Desai, 2011), prompting it to be dubbed a domain-general &rdquo;semantic&rdquo; hub (Bonner et al., 2013; Binder and Desai, 2011). Because of this, this dissertation reports the results of three MEG experiments and one computational experiment, and focuses on the left AG and surrounding perisylvian cortical regions, and uses Magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate its role in relational processing. </p><p> Chapter 2 asks whether left AG tracks relationality, the eventivity of verbs, or a word&rsquo;s combinatorial context, and finds a main effect of relationality from 170&ndash;260 ms after the visual presentation of the target noun, and no other effects of the other factors, suggesting that it is indeed relationality and not eventivity (or context) that drives left AG argument structure findings. </p><p> Chapter 3 asks whether relationality effects could be driven by something other than the relationality of concepts, namely, by the quantity of concepts. In addition to being activated for numerous number-related tasks (see Dehaene et al. 2003 a.o., for a review), the left posterior perisylvian cortex has been found to be differentially active for plurals as opposed to for singulars (Domahs et al., 2012), suggesting that the lAG might track semantic information about plurality. Contrasting plural and singular nouns that vary in relationality, I replicate the relationality effect, and find no interaction with plurality, suggesting that, indeed, left posterior perisylvian relationality effects cannot be explained as a type of quantity processing. </p><p> Chapter 4 presents a filler experiment to the second experiment, which investigates the mass-count distinction and asks whether left AG activity is sensitive to countability and whether it interacts with plurality. I observed a main effect of countability (count nouns > mass nouns), in a broad swath of left hemisphere from 295&ndash;465 ms after noun presentation, and additionally observe a left frontal effect of plurality (bare nouns > plurals), paralleling what I found in Chapter 3. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.) </p><p>

Navigation is a task that involves processing two-dimensional light patterns on the retinas to obtain knowledge about how to move through a three-dimensional environment. Therefore, modifying the basic characteristics of the two-dimensional information provided to navigators should have important and informative effects on how they form their representations of the environment. Despite this, few basic research studies have examined the effects of systematically modifying the available levels of spatial visual detail on mobility performance. In this study we tested the effects of a range of visual blur levels---approximately equivalent to various degrees of low-pass spatial frequency filtering---on participants" route learning performance using desktop virtual renderings of the Hebb-Williams mazes. Our findings show that the function of blur and time to finish the mazes follows a sigmoidal pattern, with the inflection point around +2 diopters of blur. This suggests that visually guided route learning is fairly robust to blur, with the threshold level being just above the limit for legal blindness. These findings have implications for models of route learning, as well as for practical situations in which humans must navigate under conditions of blur.

The three essays in this dissertation present field experiments exploring phenomena in behavioral and public economics in real-world settings. The first essay outlines a field experiment that uses mailers with peer rank information to motivate water conservation. The essay contributes some of the first pieces of evidence on how comparisons with specific peers might influence behavior. The main finding is that while competitive framing of peer information has positive impacts on efficient homes, it has simultaneous negative impacts on inefficient homes, which are larger in magnitude. In particular, the essay finds that households who rank last in a displayed peer comparison are demotivated by their poor performance, and increase their water use relative to controls. The second essay studies the impact of signing an explicit promise statement at loan initiation on ensuing loan repayment behavior. The essay provides one of the first field tests of a phenomenon observed in laboratory studies, namely that making a promise can change people's ensuing behavior. Interestingly, the essay does not find support for this claim, and shows the potential difficulty in generalizing laboratory results to real-world settings. The third essay focuses on decision making about risk. Specifically, it presents two field studies that use quasi-random, real-world events to explore how emotions influence risk decisions. These studies are among the first field tests of the relationship between emotion and risk preferences. The essay offers mixed results, finding that negative emotions seem to increase risk aversion only when the emotions derive from events linked to individual self-responsibility. / Public Policy

When consolidated memories are reactivated, they become labile and have to go through reconsolidation to become stabilized.  This property of memory may potentially be used to reduce the impact of highly negative episodic memories.  Because detailed and vivid negative episodic memories are mediated by high arousal, if arousal is lessened during reconsolidation, then memory accuracy and vividness should diminish.  In this study, I examine this hypothesis.  Participants viewed a stressful, suspenseful movie on Day 1 to develop negative episodic memories.  Then, 24 to 29 hours later, they saw a brief reminder of the stressful movie (or not), and then viewed a neutral (or positive) movie.  Another 24 to 29 hours later, I tested the accuracy, vividness, and anxiety associated with their memory of the stressful movie. Participants who watched the reminder and then the neutral movie showed reduced memory accuracy.  Despite the reduction in memory accuracy, their memory vividness and anxiety associated with the stressful movie did not decrease. The results partly supported my hypothesis.

<p> As adolescents transition to middle school, math confidence and performance declines (Eccles et al., 1993; Lee, Statuto, &amp; Kadar-Voivodas, 1983). These declines are typically attributed to social and maturational changes (Eccles, Lord, &amp; Midgley, 1991; Simmons &amp; Blyth, 1987). In this dissertation, I explore the hypothesis that low parent support for schoolwork is also responsible.</p><p> Latino-American adolescents are especially at risk for math difficulties. Maintaining adolescents&rsquo; engagement and performance in math are important goals for mothers because high levels of both are requisites for many professional careers. This dissertation will focus on Latino-American families to determine if mothers&rsquo; homework involvement is associated with changes in children&rsquo;s math-related outcomes across the transition to secondary school.</p><p> Parental involvement in math homework is assumed to mitigate declines in math performance during this transition. Cognitive models suggest that involved parents utilize scaffolding (Rogoff &amp; Gardner, 1984) and instruction to ensure math achievement (Pomerantz &amp; Moorman, 2010). Motivational models suggest that involved parents foster math engagement by bolstering child confidence, modeling management strategies, and promoting values that encourage children to work hard (Grolnick &amp; Slowiaczek, 1994; Simpkins, Fredricks, &amp; Eccles, 2015). However, empirical evidence in support of the importance of parents in math achievement is limited. While positive forms of involvement co-occur with better math outcomes (Bhanot &amp; Jovanovic, 2005; Rice et al., 2013), no studies have examined such associations longitudinally. Children who are uninterested in math may be more susceptible to the effects of parental homework involvement because they lack internal motivation for mastery that underlies performance in other children.</p><p> The present study examines the extent to which Latina-American mothers&rsquo; involvement in math homework is effective in preventing declines in child math-related outcomes (i.e., perceptions of math ability, etc) during the transition to middle school. Child math interest was postulated to moderate this association. Results indicated that low maternal homework involvement predicts worsening child math-related outcomes, but only for children who were intrinsically uninterested in math.</p><p> The findings hold important implications for parents, who must work to ensure that they remain engaged in their children&rsquo;s activities, especially if children appear uninterested in math.</p><p>

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Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.