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Use of liquid administration paradigms in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research has rapidly increased and expanded. Despite rapid expansion, there are no studies examining the methods setup of this paradigm. The present study aims to address basic questions about the methodology of liquid administration paradigms using a series of three experiments. These questions include whether using timing files generated by the study computer accurately represent the time of taste receipt, whether variation in methods setup meaningfully impacts time of taste receipt, and whether inaccurate receipt time impacts first-level analysis of fMRI data. Experiment 1 used an equipment setup simulating the running of an fMRI study with three taste stimuli; tasteless solution, chocolate milkshake, and chocolate milk. For each taste stimulus, we captured and compared the times of administration recorded by the study computer and the time of receipt captured using two measurement systems. Experiment 2 used a similar setup with only one taste stimulus: chocolate milkshake. Using high-definition video, we captured the time elapsed as the taste stimulus passed through the tubing at three infusion speeds and varying temperatures. In Experiment 3, we used the fMRI data from a previous study, in which five participants were administered chocolate milkshake to demonstrate how the lag times captured in Experiment 1 affect first-level fMRI data analyses. There were significant differences in time of administration recorded by the computer and time of receipt, demonstrating the existence of a lag time. This lag time was greatest for chocolate milkshake. Semiautomatic pump speed also was significantly associated with lag time. Temperature and length of tubing were not significantly related to lag time. Additionally, our fMRI analyses show that the variation in the methods setup have a meaningful impact on first-level fMRI analyses. When using the computer-generated time that was not corrected for lag time, increased neural activity in response to the chocolate milkshake taste was shown in three out of the five participants. When correcting using the lag time, increased neural activity in response to chocolate milkshake taste was found in all five participants. Overall, this study demonstrates a “proof of concept” that the practice of estimating liquid administration times from computer-generated files may not be accurate, that variation in methods setup may affect the timing in this paradigm, and that these differences in timing introduce variation in the fMRI data of individual participants. / Psychology

A lack of English proficiency in the Latino community living in America has great repercussions, especially in communication between family members and education or health care providers. Latin parents are left to rely on their children to act as translators when communicating with their teachers or school personnel. Furthermore, Latino parents often have a limited understanding of the U.S. school system, curriculum, and what they are entitled to as parents. Latin-American parents could benefit from learning specific education-related terms to better understand the education system. Stimulus equivalence is a behavioral technique that can be applied to language learning and target these specific terms. This study worked with Latin-American parents with a lack of English proficiency in education-related terms such as national education initiatives. Six education-related terms were selected and two participants were tested and trained for relations among the stimuli through match-to-sample procedures. Stimuli were presented in five different categories: name, acronym, picture, English definition, and Spanish definition, creating a total of twenty possible relations. Results showed the emergence of 9 and 11 relations, while only two to four were explicitly taught to the two participants. This adds to the literature on stimulus equivalence and demonstrates the effectiveness of using stimulus equivalence procedures to teach language to parents in the Latino community. / Teaching & Learning

Page 193 is included twice. Numbered the same, but are different pages. / Although visual illusions have been used extensively to explore the mechanisms subserving perception and action, controversy exists regarding the extent to which illusions may differentially affect the perceptual and motor systems. In part, this is because it is often difficult to accurately assess the perceptual influence of illusory stimuli since participants are usually asked only to report binary size decisions (bigger or smaller) of an illusory stimulus relative to a control figure. Questions of relative size or the direction of misperception remain unanswered. In this thesis, 10 experiments, comprising eight separate studies, were conducted to address these issues. In Experiment 1, a software tool was developed that allowed participants to size-match a target to a Control figure (Experiment 1a), as well as both the Large (Experiment 1b) and Small Annuli (Experiment 1c) Ebbinghaus Illusion stimuli. These experiments provided an accurate percentage of misperception score when each of the three conditions was presented in isolation. Results from Experiment 2, however, suggest that when each of the three conditions are presented in a random and repeated stimulus array, a degree of perceptual adaptation occurs in which illusory effects are biased in the direction of the large annuli stimulus. Experiments 3-8 provided evidence to suggest that the degree of motor involvement (Experiment 3), number of illusory stimuli present (Experiments 4 and 5), direction of attention (Experiment 6) and visual field laterality (Experiments 7 and 8) have minimal influence on the adaptation effects observed in Experiment 2. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)